He stood up and grabbed the letters, stuffing them back into the leather bag. ‘I’ve been thinking for a while of a trip of Ravenna. Now, I’m going there with you.
‘I had a message from the dispensator first thing this morning. He said he was sending men over to examine me for apostasy and blasphemy. The fucking nerve of it! Well, the next time I see him and that stinking old wreck Boniface, they’ll be shitting themselves together in Ravenna as they face charges of treason.’
He turned to me and lowered his voice. ‘And it might have all gone to plan if you hadn’t stepped off that road outside Populonium. By now, those letters and all that went with them might now be with Agilulf.’
I broke in again: ‘But surely, the exarch’s men were on to this in any event? We ran straight into them.’
‘And can you be sure they would have got there in time?’ Lucius asked. ‘Your One-Eye was well ahead of them. How do you know he’s with the Column of Phocas? What do we really know about him, other than he’s been hanging round you? Perhaps he killed Maximin. Perhaps he was up to something else that night.
‘No, I can see now why the Church was so desperate to get those letters from Maximin once it was known he had them. As for the Column of Phocas – as for that, you’ll need to ask Phocas himself if you want an answer.’
‘I don’t think it’s so uncertain as that,’ I said, speaking slowly as I gathered my thoughts.
I’d known awhile that rendezvous outside Populonium was a big thing. I’d never imagined it involved the fate of the whole world. I knew nothing yet at first hand about high politics. One thing, however, was already plain. Little people who get involved in them see their lives changed fundamentally. Most often, their lives come to a sudden end. So it had been with Maximin. How much did I want to join him?
‘Maximin wasn’t killed by the Church,’ I continued. ‘All the dispensator wanted was those letters back. He could have had that from his summons to Maximin. It was the Column of Phocas that was so desperate to get the letters. Those are the people who stopped Maximin from going out. Those are the people who prevented the second summons. They called Maximin out eventually. They killed him.
‘Why should I give the emperor’s men what they killed Maximin to get? Why should I lift a finger against the Church that he died to protect?
‘I say we burn the letters,’ I insisted. ‘We now know what happened. I say we burn the letters and forget their contents, except as may be required to get the bastards who killed Maximin.’
Lucius put the letters down in front of me. His hands shook still, but he now controlled his features. ‘They are your letters,’ he agreed. ‘You must do with them as you think best. But let me put this to you. If Maximin was really trying to protect the Church, why didn’t he burn these letters himself? At the least, why didn’t he take them off unbidden to the dispensator? He’d have had the thanks of the Church, and in all likelihood preferment. A truly faithful Son of the Church would have had his reward in the simple handing back. Why did he seal them up again and put them somewhere safe? What was he intending to do with them?
‘I’ll tell you why, Alaric. Maximin was trained in Rome, and ordained into the Roman Church. But he was born in Ravenna, a citizen of the emperor. You say he was troubled on that last morning? Well, that’s obviously because he felt a tug of loyalties – between pope and emperor. That’s why he became so drunk and rambling as the day wore on. He couldn’t decide where his real duty lay.
‘Maximin is now dead. You are at least morally his heir. You owe it to his memory to make the choice he hadn’t time to make for himself. I don’t think destroying them is an option.’
Lucius reopened the bag and took the letters back out. He spread them in front of me. ‘Let me now put this to you. If we take these letters to the dispensator, what will he do? He might say, “Thanks very much, my lad. Stay in Rome to your heart’s content, and good luck with the investigation. Never mind the further trouble you cause me.”
‘Rather more likely, he’ll have the pair of us done in before we can draw breath. He’s already got a case against you. He wouldn’t have trouble getting one against me – it’s even now on his list of things to do for the day. Why should he let us get out alive? With or without those letters, we have information that could drag him straight down from that cushy eminence. I know how these clerics think. He’d watch the pair of us beheaded, and wouldn’t miss a night’s sleep over it.
‘One thing I do promise, though,’ Lucius said in a tone of finality. ‘Even if the dispensator doesn’t kill us, he’s in no position to tell us who killed Maximin.’
He was right. What was it the dispensator had told me? ‘You have no conception of what I can do in this city – or of what I will do to protect the interests of the Church.’ He’d have us put out of the way, sure enough.
The exarch of Italy, on the other hand, might now benefit from the murder of Maximin. Almost certainly, the murderers were either his own men or men on his side. But put those letters into his hands, and there was more chance of getting to the bottom of the mystery than the dispensator could provide. The exarch had no reason to kill us, nor any to refuse me – if I were to help him now – whatever private revenge against his men I might care to demand.
Burning the letters was, indeed, not an option. It simply removed valuable evidence. I was faced with a choice: to whom should I give the letters? Pope or emperor? Exarch or dispensator? I cared little enough for any of them. If I were forced to choose, with no personal interest at stake, I’d have chosen the pope. At least his men hadn’t laid hands on Maximin – not so far as I could tell. Moreover, I’d eaten his bread, and my life mission was now connected with the success of the Church mission in England.
But I wanted a truth that the dispensator couldn’t give me, though the exarch might.
I replaced the letters in the bag and with a resigned sigh pushed it back to Lucius. ‘We go to Ravenna,’ I said.
Lucius turned and pulled some papers out of a cupboard. ‘We leave today,’ he said. ‘We leave now. You’ve got enough luggage with you. I’ll get you a horse.’
Lucius shouted for his slaves. In a moment, the house was in uproar, as they ran about filling bags with things for the journey.
The plan had been to send me off with a slave escort for protection on the road. Now, we were to travel light and alone. The dispensator would know almost at once what had happened. By then, however, we’d be out of Rome. By the time he could order armed guards to give chase, we’d be miles along the Flaminian Way. With our horses, and without armour to weigh us down, we’d easily outrun them, and keep ahead of any couriers sent on to intercept us. Fifty miles outside Rome, the temporal power of the Church began to fade. We could then trust in the letter of safe conduct he’d got from the exarch for his earlier journey.
Once in Ravenna, Lucius would show the letters. That would stop the whole plan. Whatever happened in the East, Italy would be saved from the unspeakable humiliation the Church had in mind for it. And I’d be at least closer to the truth about Maximin’s death.
As I got myself into the riding clothes Lucius gave me, I heard the clatter of horses being led out of his stable.
44
Though, like all the other great roads of Italy, it starts from the Forum, the Flaminian Way ran fairly close by the house of Lucius. Because it is the main road to Ravenna, it was kept clear and in good order. We had to dismount a few times as we hurried down the side streets that led onto it. Once on the road, however, we were very soon at the Flaminian Gate. No message had reached the guards there, and we passed through unhindered. I didn’t suppose even the dispensator could act that fast. Nevertheless, it was as if a weight had fallen from me as we passed through the heavy gate, the guards standing to attention for the lord Basilius.
Once out, we set a steady gallop. As we reached the great Milvian Bridge over the Tiber – the place where Constantine is said to have had the message from God that converted him – I lo
oked back. I could see the high walls of the city, but as yet no pursuit. Within the walls, I could see the tops of the higher buildings.
I’d stopped noticing how bad the air was in Rome, or how built up the place was, even if much of it was ruined. Outside the walls, it was almost a shock to breathe clean air again, and to have an unbroken view all around me.
As before, the road was raised above the surrounding countryside, running straight and white into the distance. On our left was the Tiber, sliding further away from us as we travelled north; on our right the ruins of a civil order that had once reached far outside Rome.
Unlike on the Aurelian Way, we weren’t alone. There was a thin but continuous stream of traffic: wagons laden with food and other goods for the Roman market, pilgrims coming in for the consecration or just to worship in the existing churches, the carriages and litters of the great. We passed a convoy of imperial couriers, bringing letters from the exarch. Covered in dust from the long journey, they now rode slowly, laughing and chatting. They called out a greeting as we passed them.
I looked back after a few miles. I shaded my eyes and squinted to see past the sun, which had risen high on my front left. My heart skipped a beat. There was a little cloud of dust in the south. The dispensator had at last got wind of our intentions, and had sent out a whole mounted brigade to ride us down. Another chase on a road. How would this one end?
Lucius looked back and laughed. ‘They’re too heavy and too far behind,’ he cried, waving his cap joyfully. ‘Unless they can grow wings on their horses, they’ll never catch us.
‘Come on! We’ll be out of their reach by nightfall.’
This time, I was with a skilled horseman. Lucius rode beside me, explaining the proper use of the reins and spurs, and showing me the correct posture. We didn’t seem to ride as fast as I had from those English mercenaries. The horse never once panted, let alone foamed. I didn’t feel any jarring of my back or straining of muscles. But we kept a smooth, steady pace along the road. Every time I looked back, the cloud in the south was a little more distant.
‘Even light armour is a drag on horses,’ Lucius said. ‘And they’re keeping in formation.’
He pointed at a few tiny clouds of dust closer towards us. ‘Those are the riders we need to watch,’ he said. ‘They aren’t meant to stop us. Instead, they’re to ride straight past and get an intercept at the next military station. If we try to stop them, the others will have a chance to get closer. We must keep well ahead of them.’
We rode on. There was a light breeze behind us to keep us cool in the hot sunshine. Lucius had a good look at everyone who rode past us in the opposite direction. He told me the advance couriers would co-opt every fast horseman they encountered. We’d soon have a small army on our backs. But we met no one who seemed to give him cause to quicken our speed.
After another few miles, we came to the first military station. This was based around a little fort built of reused materials. It stood on an earth mound, dominating the road and country. Some imperial foot soldiers lounged by a bar at about waist height that closed the road.
‘Important business with the exarch,’ Lucius called as we approached. ‘Get that bar raised.’
The officer in charge darted a glance at the letter Lucius held under his nose. With a barked order, the bar was up and we were through.
‘No horsemen back there or fresh mounts,’ he said quickly. ‘The Gods are with us today.’
We rode on through the afternoon. We stopped briefly a few times to water the horses and to stretch ourselves. As we got further away from Rome, and as the light of the late afternoon began to fade, the traffic grew thinner. There were fewer ruins along the road, and the countryside became wilder, with larger and larger clumps of bushes and small trees to give cover should it be needed.
As the light faded entirely, I looked back along the road from a high ridge. Could I see a small cloud in the distance? Or was it a trick of the dying light?
We came to a fortified post inn. In those days, Italy was still covered with these. They had been built in ancient times every so far apart along the main roads. There were fewer of them on the roads with every return journey I made there. I believe they are all ruined now. On my first visit, they were still in something like their old operation. This was the road that connected Rome with Ravenna.
All around – often very close – were the domains of the Lombards. The road had at all times to be kept open for communications. Every strategic point was fortified and controlled. The post inns were important links in that chain of control. They were also places where ordinary travellers could get a meal and a safe bed for the night. For those on official business, there was the added benefit of being able to change horses. Every inn had its stables and its many horses in continual readiness to speed those travellers with the relevant influence. The prohibitions of using the posts for private business had long since broken down. The whole operation now ran on a cash basis. But Lucius showed his letter from the exarch, and this got us the pick of the horses available.
Inside the gate, I could see that the inn had been built on a generous scale. On two storeys around the main courtyard, it offered individual rooms for travellers of quality, with descending levels of comfort for the humbler, and a good kitchen and eating area on the ground floor.
It was crowded when we arrived. The Lombards were still on the prowl after that cold winter, and everyone who could scrape together the minimal price of entry had squeezed himself in for the night. No stopping for us, however. A satchel of bread and wine and a change of horses, and we were off again. With the dispensator’s men in hot pursuit, we’d take our chance with the Lombards. We were two powerful men. We had fast horses. We were armed. It would be a desperate raiding party that tried to interfere with us on the road.
‘We’ll ride as long as we can through the night,’ Lucius told me. I suggested hamstringing the other horses in the stable. But there were too many, and we might be caught. We paid and rode off.
We rode until the moon was high overhead and until little puffs of steam came from the horses in the chilly night air. We stopped in a small grove high beside the road. This allowed a fine view back along the road. We didn’t bother with a fire, but sat down on a fallen tree and ate what we’d bought.
Lucius questioned me again about my life in England. I told him of the broken-down house in Richborough, and Auxilius, who with his loving pedantry had given me a key to the world beyond. I told him of the humiliations that had attended our fall from nobility and the increasingly desperate shifts by which I’d supplemented Ethelbert’s dwindling charity. I spoke of my dead mother.
‘Not that much difference between us, then,’ said Lucius when I’d finished. ‘We both come from families pushed below their proper station in life. The Gods willing, though, we’ll rise together all the way back to what we were born to, and – who knows? – we’ll die higher yet.’
He told me nothing in continuous narrative about himself. From the disjointed anecdotes he gave me instead, I gathered his parents had died in one of the plagues when he was very young. He’d then been handed around various grandparents and uncles, getting scraps here and there of an education, while his family had wondered what to do with him.
At last, the plagues had done him a favour. ‘It was like an invisible beast,’ he said, ‘the sort that comes again and again, but always takes others and never yourself.’ While he grew up without a day’s illness, all his relatives had sickened and died. His grandfather made sure to give the bulk of it away to the Church in his will, but Lucius had finally come into the full remaining wealth of the family. And he would have had more, but for those charges of treason laid in Constantinople against his one genuinely rich relative.
‘The man is trash,’ I agreed, hoping to deflect him from another of his denunciations of Phocas. ‘But when you came back to Rome, was it to be forever?’
‘Don’t forget, Alaric,’ the reply came, ‘I am a Roman. The city is my
world – this city and all that is natural to it.’
He’d come back to Rome, he then admitted, with no apparent alternative to settling into the life of a decayed noble. Except for his deep – if inconveniently placed – religious feelings, he was no different from any other member of the Roman nobility. He repeated himself: ‘I am a Roman, and the city is my world.’
He’d thought at first to refuse the invite to that dinner party. It was too painful, he said, to look at what he was sure he was now fated to become. All that had got him along there in the end was the chance to see the learned yet deadly barbarian from far-distant Britain. And he had met me.
‘And now,’ he concluded, ‘we are both fugitives from Rome on our way to what I hope will be a hero’s reception in Ravenna. The Old Gods have a sense of humour – and, I think, of justice.’
When the moon had risen high above, we took turns at sleeping, the other keeping watch. A few night birds aside, and the rustling of nocturnal animals in the undergrowth, I heard nothing. As I lay down to sleep, it was for all the world as if Rome had been a bad dream, and I was still travelling there with Maximin. Except the weather was far more clement, it was like any other night we’d spent camping out in the open.
‘They’re still following,’ said Lucius, prodding me awake. ‘But they are a long way behind.’
I heaved myself up in the first light of morning. Whatever dreams I’d been having vanished beyond recall. I was stiff and cold. But the sun was rising in a clear sky. This would be another lovely day, though a little cloud cover would have been better for the horses.
I looked beyond the arm that Lucius extended back along the road. Far in the distance, I could see the faint glint of armour in the pale sunlight. For some while, we’d been riding uphill. We were passing into the range of hills and mountains that run down the centre of Italy. Far below us, shining like ants after a storm, our pursuers toiled forward in search of a quarry they themselves couldn’t see. But still they came.
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