Conspiracies of Rome a-1

by Richard Blake

  I explained this to Lucius. He sat, looking for all the world like a clever schoolboy. ‘I say, then,’ he cried softly, ‘those letters are with the Sisters of the Blessed Theodora. That’s where he went the night before he died. Why else would he have said he was going there when he went out to be murdered? Anything else, and he’d surely have had the letters with him when attacked.

  ‘No, Maximin was ordered in that last message to take the letters down to the Lateran. Before he could do that, he had to collect them. That meant going back to the Sisters of the Blessed Theodora. I don’t like jumping to conclusions, as you know. But I’ll break that rule tonight for my own reasons, and because the evidence is at least highly suggestive. He was going to the Sisters of the Blessed Theodora on his last evening because he’d already been there the evening before.’

  He took another sip of his wine, repeating once more, and now with contemptuous relish, the name of the place. ‘If only the Column of Phocas could have been a shade more patient, whatever was in those letters might by now be before the whole world.’

  ‘But the abbess denied Maximin had been at the convent,’ I said.

  ‘Even if she had, why believe her unsupported word?’ Lucius asked with a curl of his lip. ‘Besides – though I don’t have our notes with me – she didn’t say that Maximin had never been to the convent. She only said he hadn’t been there on his last day.’

  ‘Then we must question her again,’ I said. ‘We can go as soon as the sun comes up.’

  ‘We haven’t much time,’ Lucius agreed. ‘But she might well tell us a direct lie if we ask a direct question. And then where does that leave us? Is there any objective evidence that Maximin was there?

  ‘I think we should get Marcella back out of her bed this moment, and start reconstructing Maximin’s probable movements from the time you and Martin left him.’

  I thought suddenly of that slip of papyrus Maximin had used as a bookmark when I’d found him reading. What did this say? Was it blank? Was it some final message from him? Or was it the message that the child had brought?

  I’d forgotten about it until now. It had passed me by in the confusion. But I thought more and more that it might have something to say that was valuable in one way or another.

  ‘Is the library here unlocked?’ Lucius asked after I’d told him about the thing.

  It was unlocked. We crept in with a couple of lamps. If the old watchman were still awake and sober, he might come snooping. But this was only a guest looking up a reference. And the lord Basilius was with him.

  I pulled down a book at random. It was an account of someone’s journey to the shores of the Baltic. It looked interesting in its own right, but was hardly the sort of reading material to satisfy Maximin. I looked along the titles on the bookcase, taking down everything that was religious and about the size of the book I’d seen with Maximin.

  We found the slip in – of all things – a life of Saint Vexilla. It marked a passage in which she made her long defence before Diocletian of the double nature of Christ – as if the old tyrant would have cared one way or the other about that: it simply dated what was said to be a contemporary record to after the beginning of the Monophysite dispute a hundred and fifty years after her alleged death.

  I moved the lamp closer and strained over the faint writing: ‘It was so good to see you again, and share memories of our dearest Jacob. You can trust absolutely in my discretion.’

  There was no name at top or bottom of the message. I turned it over. In much fainter writing, I saw:

  … tua nunc opera meae puellae

  flendo turgiduli rubent ocelli

  Lucius had been right about where Maximin had been. We had the woman! Serves the pious old philistine right if I now turned her convent upside down.

  ‘What now?’ I asked Lucius, back in my rooms.

  He looked again at the message. ‘My slaves will be back at dawn from their all-night deception,’ he said. ‘Until then, I suggest we sleep. It’s been the most dreadfully long day, I’m sure you’ll agree. I, at least, am quite fagged out. Who knows when we’ll sleep tomorrow?’

  Fully clothed, we lay down on my bed. I doubted I could sleep in all this excitement. But I was asleep almost before I was comfortable.

  42

  As agreed, the slaves returned just after dawn. They made a racket that got everyone up who wasn’t already awake, and they stank of wine and cheap scent.

  Lucius and I washed and took a private breakfast in my rooms. The sun was glinting at us over the tiles of the wing opposite.

  ‘I don’t think we should send ahead,’ he suggested. ‘The more warning she has, the more she may think of another deception.’

  I agreed. But how could we get me again out of the house without being seen and followed?

  ‘Confusing is deceiving,’ said Lucius.

  The slave who’d dressed in my clothes was to go out again alone, his head covered. Another was to go out with Lucius and the others, his head covered. Lucius would borrow another slave from Marcella to make up the number. Meanwhile, I was to slip out alone through the back door. If I thought I was followed, I was to make my way to the house of Lucius, who would think of another stratagem.

  If I was successful at the convent, I was to hurry back to Lucius with reasonable but not paranoid caution. He would send slaves close by the convent to cover me as I came away. He’d make sure they were slaves I could recognise.

  Though I couldn’t be absolutely sure, I thought I got to the Convent alone. I knocked again on the door. The old man peered out through his little slot overhead.

  ‘I have urgent business with the abbess,’ I said. ‘I come alone.’ This time, my voice didn’t allow of opposition.

  Still dressed in black, the abbess was on her seat in the ruined library.

  ‘Young man, this is most irregular…’ she began.

  I pushed the message under her nose.

  ‘Father Maximin came to you the night before he was murdered,’ I said harshly. ‘He left property with you that is now mine. I want it back.’

  She looked alarmed. She opened and closed her mouth. I thought she would call for assistance. Then her whole body seemed to relax. She looked back at me, the firm, Roman look on her face melting insensibly into despair.

  I pulled up a chair from against the wall and sat down just opposite her.

  ‘Your brother Jacob was a friend of Maximin’s,’ I said. ‘I think we came upon his smashed monastery outside Populonium. All that happened to us after that followed from our encounter. You knew Maximin when he and your brother were students here in Rome.

  ‘That is one reason why he came to you the night before he was murdered.’

  I’d expected a denial, followed by a long argument. Instead, she was weeping. Her body didn’t shake with sobs, but the tears ran in a continuous stream down her withered face.

  ‘He was with you,’ I said. ‘You spoke carefully at our last meeting. But he was with you the night before.’

  ‘We were young, so long ago,’ she said when she could control her voice. ‘You knew Maximin when he had grown into every inch the fat, jolly priest. I knew him when he was barely older than you. He was so intense and so devout – and yet so human…’

  She spoke haltingly on – perhaps to me, perhaps to no one at all – about the brief yet passionate affair that had set their lives on different paths in search of the same redemption for their sins. She had retired to her grandfather’s palace, hoping that endless piety and the destruction of ancient literature would atone for her weakness. He had become a missionary priest – for many years working among the village pagans who still spoke Greek in the south of Italy, and volunteering at last for the mission to England.

  She spoke about their midnight assignations, about the thrill in her heart as he’d reached out for her, about the emptiness of all her life since then; about the joy that had rekindled on his last visit, and the chaste kiss they had exchanged as he stepped out of the conv
ent to go off to his death.

  ‘He spoke to me of you,’ she said, looking up from her recollections. ‘He was so proud of you, so very proud of your bright mind and essential goodness of heart. You know, you were the son we might, but for our callings to God, have brought ourselves into this world.

  ‘When I saw you, a few days ago, I knew at once he was right.’

  I forced back the lump that had come into my throat.

  ‘Reverend Mother,’ I said softly, ‘We both loved Maximin. He was at all times everything the Church could want of a priest. If I could have taken his place on that final, dreadful evening, I would have done so with firm spirit. But the property he gave into your keeping will lead me to his murderers. I must ask for its return. I ask you to hand it into my own keeping.’

  She rose and went to a locked cabinet. She opened it and drew out the leather bag I well remembered from that evening outside Populonium. It had been crudely stitched shut and sealed across with the sign of the English mission. She held it a moment, and then gave it to me.

  ‘I know not its contents, but Maximin died to keep this safe,’ she said. ‘I know there has been a trail of death marking your return to it. I do beg you to be careful. Do you think Maximin would want you to throw away your own life in avenging his? There is a time for revenge, and a time for putting away revenge. I say this for Maximin, and I say it for myself.’

  I took the bag into my hand.

  ‘Do you think,’ she asked as I left, ‘that Maximin will be made a saint?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘The miracles will undoubtedly be attested.’

  I looked back at her from the doorway of the library. Still seated, she looked back at me. She had the sad eyes of the very lonely. She had lost and lost and lost.

  With a flourish, I dumped the bag down in front of Lucius. He was seated in his library. With his own hands, he was cleaning off a phallus he’d once drawn on a page of the Gospels. A slave stood beside him with a battered relic box.

  ‘We may expect a visit later today from the dispensator’s men,’ he explained, looking concerned. He turned to the slave. ‘Remind me – who was that procurator of Judaea who put the Galilean carpenter to death?’

  ‘It was Pontius Pilate, sir,’ the slave replied, looking rather pleased with himself. As Lucius turned back to me, I saw the slave actually smile and kiss the relic box.

  Lucius waved him out of the room. ‘Well, this bag has a fine, letterly feel to it,’ he said with sudden ebullience. ‘Let’s have a look inside.’

  I broke the seal on my bag with my sword. I drew out the three letters to which I’d given so little attention, when the shortest glance could have saved four lives. Their seals had been broken and then resealed – again with the mark of the English mission. There could be no doubt now that Maximin had read the letters, and that he’d thought them just as important as we’d guessed.

  One was a mass of elaborate squiggles that looked as impressive as it was meaningless. Another was in Greek. So far as I could understand the complex style, this was a translation of the first out of Persian. The third was in Latin. Lucius and I pressed close together over the table to read the tiny writing that covered the skin side of the parchment.

  It was a letter from the pope to the Lombard king. It had all the right seals, and was drawn in exactly the same form as the copy letters I’d seen in Canterbury written to Ethelbert and his queen. I won’t try to duplicate the windy recitation of titles with which these things begin, or the pompous language in which they are written. As it was, I had to read it twice to get the full meaning. I will instead summarise in a few words what was there expressed in a mass of words.

  The pope was proposing a deal to the Lombards. Phocas was increasingly beleaguered in Constantinople. All the Eastern Churches were on the edge of heresy or at least schism. Smaragdus, the exarch in Ravenna, was both mad and incapable of defending the True Church against its internal and external enemies. Bearing in mind the whole drift of the East, whoever replaced both emperor and exarch would be still less satisfactory as the civil power in Italy.

  The pope therefore proposed that King Agilulf should lay close siege to Ravenna. This was impregnable from the land side, so long as it had unbroken access from the sea. But it could be cut off from all communication with northern and central Italy. This done, he should march on Rome. Outside the walls, he should convert before his whole army out of the Arian heresy into the True Faith of Rome. The pope would then allow him into the city, where he would be crowned emperor of the West.

  The pope had this right of election, he claimed, on account of some grant of power by Constantine, which gave him supremacy throughout the West.

  Standing together in the Lateran, the pope and new emperor should declare a twenty-year toleration of Arianism, during which time all peaceful means should be employed to convert the Lombards to the True Faith. In return for this election to the purple, the pope should get written confirmation that the Church was the supreme spiritual power in the West, and all military assistance possible to assert this status over any refractory Churches in France and Spain.

  The cities of Italy, excluding Rome, should be ruled by joint councils of the Church and the Lombards, the surplus of any revenues to be shared equally. There was to be a common citizenship of the new Western Empire for all inhabitants of Italy, and a common obligation of service in both administration and army. All were to swear allegiance to pope and emperor jointly, and utterly to renounce allegiance to Constantinople, whether civil or military or religious. Rome was to be ruled jointly by pope and emperor, both of whom were to live there. It was to be the capital of the new Italy, with a revived Senate of Roman and Lombard nobles, who should be urged to intermarry and become a single order, and from which would be drawn all the highest officials of Church and State.

  The pope had been in contact with Great King Chosroes of Persia, and with the Eastern barbarians. These were prepared, on acceptance of the terms proposed by Agilulf, to mount a coordinated attack on Constantinople. If successful, this would entirely destroy the Empire in the East. The imperial forces there, as directed by Phocas, would be outnumbered and outclassed. And there would now be no hope of reinforcements from Italy. In any event, the combined assault in the East would prevent reinforcements from being sent to Italy. There was also a strong possibility that the Ethiopians could be brought to invade Upper Egypt, thereby tying down still more of the imperial forces.

  In token of his good faith, the pope signed his own name to the letter. In addition, he sent with it a sealed letter from the great king himself, together with one of the most holy relics of the Church and thirty pounds of gold. This would pay the first expenses of the march on Ravenna. A further three thousand pounds would be handed over once Agilulf had sealed his declaration of papal supremacy.

  The letter was dated a few days before that encounter with the bandits on the road between Populonium and Telamon. The combined attack on the Empire was proposed for the early autumn.

  The letter in Persian I couldn’t read. But what I could follow of the Greek translation said enough. Great King Chosroes had written to Agilulf, confirming the proposed deal from the pope. He swore he would so far as possible tie up all imperial forces in the East, and would open full diplomatic relations with any emperor of the West on the same basis of equality as had long existed with Constantinople. Within a mass of Oriental flattery, he hailed Agilulf as his ‘dearest brother’ and ‘Joint Eye of the World’.

  43

  We looked and looked at those letters.

  I looked up first. It all made perfect sense to me. The emperor was clearly unable to protect Italy from the Lombards. But he was able to keep the Lombards from the peaceful enjoyment of what they had conquered. An alliance of pope and Lombard king would give Italy its first chance of peace in forty years. Indeed, with the Greeks sent off to fuck themselves, it would return Italy to the good old days of King Theodoric – only this time without the problem of heresy th
at had brought his experiment in coexistence to an early end. Who in Italy could object to this?

  Lucius, I could see, objected. He was furious. I’d never seen him show the slightest concern for the common good. Now, he banged his fist on the table and was shaking with anger. ‘Those shitty clerics!’ he shouted. ‘I should have guessed they were up to something like this. They’d make a pact with the Jews – no, they’d make a pact with their devil – if they thought it would advance the interests of their Church.

  ‘You know something? When Alaric – the first Alaric, that is – was outside Rome, the pope of the day was told the city could be saved from sack by propitiating the Old Gods. Did he turn the advice down? Did he fuck! He said the ancient sacrifices could go ahead, but only if they were held in private to save his face. Because of that, Rome had its first foreign conqueror in a thousand years. Of course, there was a private deal before he was let in, and Alaric spared the churches.

  ‘These people don’t believe in anything but power! You know how they fuss on about heresy. Well, here they are, coolly offering to tolerate what they’ve always denounced as the most damnable heresy of all. So long as they get their hands on the full machinery of state, they’re perfectly happy to share it with a bunch of Arians.’ He paused and looked down again at the papal letter.

  ‘But Lucius,’ I protested, ‘this would mean no more Phocas.’

  He turned savagely to me. ‘For all we know, sitting here, Phocas is already out of power. Whatever the case, he’ll be out soon enough. If it isn’t the exarch of Africa or his relatives, it’ll be someone else. It’ll be another of my noble relatives. He’ll then set affairs right again.

  ‘Yes, I’m no lover of Phocas. That doesn’t mean I’ll stand by and watch what’s left of the Empire that my ancestors won with their blood and sweat handed over to a pack of fucking barbarians and clerics. It’s bad enough to have barbarian kings in Italy. A barbarian emperor – a barbarian emperor tied by every possible interest to the Church? Never!’