Conspiracies of Rome a-1 Read online

  But for the knock on the head, I suppose I might have given in to Maximin’s urging and gone into the Church. He was increasingly sure he could get the rules set aside in my favour. After my last appointment with Ethelbert, though, there could be no more talk of accelerated ordination, or any other place for me in the English Church.

  It was to be Rome now or nothing.

  In the event, it was nearly both.

  4

  There is no pleasure, I have always thought, at once so selfish and yet so intense as a good shit. And I’d just had a very good one. Its cause was last night’s meal, our first real one in a couple of days – Italian bread, olives, fish from the sea, which we’d roasted on the beach, and a big jar of wine we’d got in return for some of our bread.

  We were on the Aurelian Way, somewhere between Populonium and Telamon. Rome was still a few days along the road. I’d dodged off the road for my shit, leaving Maximin to fix breakfast, and was now washing myself in a little stream that ran down to the sea. Birds sang in the trees around me. Above, a spring sun shone from a cloudless sky, warming me after the night frost.

  That, though – considerable as it was – marked the limits of my pleasure. I’d grown up in a world of ruins, and nothing much should have affected me. But my people had moved into England centuries before, and had completed their work of destruction long before I was born. We’d driven out the Romans, pushing them west and southwest, or across the Channel, and had looted and burned until precious little remained. By my time, we held the land, and the few bits of town that were left had become wretched, crumbling places, the ruins mostly decorously hidden under little mounds. Until the missionaries turned up and began the rebuilding, it was a world of balance, in which the old was passing out of memory and the new becoming immemorial.

  Italy was different. The signs were all around us of recent, savage destruction. Coming out of France, we’d entered an active war zone. This wasn’t the half-hearted fighting within the royal family that had been slowly ruining France for generations. It was nasty stuff. Farms and villages and whole towns were abandoned. Whole regions that still, here and there, showed signs of formerly dense habitation, had reverted to wilderness. The roads remained – they were constructed of solid basalt on deep foundations. But they passed mostly through a desert, going for whole days from nowhere to nowhere else.

  It was all such a pity. Until just a few generations before I was born, Italy had been much the same as in ancient times. There was no emperor in Rome or Ravenna, and the Eastern capital, Constantinople, had no authority here. But the territory had passed under quite a decent barbarian, who’d tried to keep up the civilised decencies.

  Then that fool Justinian had reached out from Constantinople, eager to reunite all the provinces under his rule. It wasn’t enough for him to be emperor in the East and to enjoy a vague primacy over the new barbarian kingdoms of the West. He wanted it all.

  After twenty years of hard fighting, and the plague, there wasn’t that much left of Italy worth ruling. Since then, it had drifted further towards ruin. With the more settled barbarians shattered, and the imperial forces barely strong enough to collect the taxes, it hadn’t taken much for the Lombards to break in and really tear things apart.

  A nasty lot, the Lombards. They were rather like my own people. They’d recently improved somewhat by taking to the Faith – even if this was the usual Arian heresy. They’d also sort of agreed to stabilise the frontiers between their bits of Italy and the fragments left to the Empire. But it was all very grim. There might be hopes of peace, but its reality was a fading memory.

  After passing though a thin strip of imperial territory on the coast, Maximin and I had gone into Lombard territory. Except for the fact we had to hand over all our silver and persuade some barbarous priest got up in stolen finery that we weren’t wholly convinced by the Nicene Creed, we’d been let through unmolested. Now we were back in the part of imperial territory that surrounded Rome. At least, that was the theory. But there had been another hard winter, and a bit of plague the year before had got the Lombards back into a mood for localised plunder.

  We’d come across evidence of this the day before. Maximin had urged me up the road all afternoon, telling me about a nice monastery outside Populonium that would put us up for the night. Just before sunset, we arrived by a pile of smoking ruins. A plundering band had got there a few days earlier and somehow broken through the fortification. There was a bit of food left in an undamaged outhouse – hence our nice dinner. But the monastery itself was no more. We’d smelt what we found there from a good quarter-mile away. But two-score rotting bodies, many hideously mutilated before death, was a dispiriting sight. Maximin had studied with the abbot, and was naturally upset to find parts of the man carefully draped around what remained of the chapel.

  I found a couple of books that hadn’t been consumed by the flames, but they were too heavy to carry away, and weren’t worth the effort. At every monastery we’d stopped at along the way to beg a meal and a warm place for the night, I’d charmed my way into what library was available. In the evenings, I’d read. By day on the road, when not talking with Maximin, I thought about what I’d read. It was a good continuing of my education. But this was a dead monastery. There was nothing here for me.

  ‘We could spend the night here,’ I’d suggested, looking round the outhouse. It’s surprising what bad smells you can get used to after a couple of hours, and it would be warmer than bedding down again by the side of the road, and perhaps safer.

  Maximin wasn’t so sure. ‘This repose of the godly has been made into a house of Satan,’ he’d insisted.

  So we’d gathered up what food we could carry and started along the road again, turning after a while to the seashore, where some fishermen were looking for somewhere safe to put in for the night.

  We’d slept eventually in a little copse by the shore, waking in terror every time we heard the undergrowth rustle. Now it was morning, and I was sitting by the stream deliberately washing my bum.

  All the signs were for a lovely day ahead. During our passage of France, Maximin had kept me cheerful in the bitter cold and rain by teaching me Greek – he’d recite from The Acts of the Apostles, and let me struggle to compare this with what I could remember of the Latin version I’d read in Canterbury – and by assuring me that the world would soon come to an end. It was because of this, he said, that he’d volunteered for the English mission. Augustine and company and Pope Gregory were of a different opinion. They saw the mission as one of permanent occupation. Maximin’s interest, though, was in getting as many souls converted before the Second Coming of Christ. This would atone for his many sins. What these were, he never let on – I imagine he’d had a few impure thoughts twenty years before: his lack of scruple in advancing the Faith was evidently not something that had ever preyed on his mind. So he declaimed on and on about the approaching end, warming to his theme whenever we passed another derelict villa, or, once into Italy, some present evidence of the decline and fall.

  For myself, the decline and fall seemed purely a human matter. The trees still blossomed. The birds still sang in the trees. The warm Italian sun still shone as it surely always had. And it was a lovely sun – quite unlike anything I’d seen in Kent. It bathed the land in a beautiful golden light, and was reflected back in the living greens and pinks of the vegetation, and in the deep blue of the sea. It could even make the human devastation all around less bleak than it might otherwise have been.

  If the world really was coming to an end, that was not a fact taken into account by the armies of ants scurrying around me to collect building materials for their nest, or by the rabbits hopping about on the other side of the stream. Beyond all doubt, there had been a big change in human affairs – whether good or bad on balance, I leave to you. But the greater universe went undisturbed about its normal business.

  I heard a cry from the embanked road about twenty yards back. It was Maximin crying loud in Latin: ‘My sons,
I am but a lone priest on my way to Rome. Take these wretched morsels of food, but spare my life. Spare me in the name of our Common Father in Heaven.’ He began a prayer, then switched into Greek without any change of tone: ‘Save yourself, my boy, for I am surely lost. I have two brutes upon me.’

  5

  I pulled myself together and raced silently up the slope to the road. I crawled into the ditch beside it and darted my head up and then down again. Two mounted men had caught Maximin. They were big, ugly creatures, in furs and leather armour – possibly from the raiding gang that had taken the monastery. Whatever they might have done, it was plain they had no intention of letting Maximin pass unmolested. They were dismounted, both swaying gently as they passed a wineskin back and forth. They were turned away from me, swords still sheathed, and were laughing at Maximin while he begged at their feet.

  ‘You fucking old blackbird,’ one of them rasped in Vulgar Latin. ‘Do you think we give a shit about you and your Triple God?’ He sucked in a mouthful of wine and recited: ‘The Father is greater than the Son, and separate from him.’

  He continued with a garbled account of the Arian heresy, while Maximin nodded eagerly, doubtless considering whether they’d spare him if he pretended to convert.

  They were enjoying themselves too much to make an early end of Maximin. The drink had made them merry in their brutal way. Perhaps they would let him go. But I doubted this. I knew their sort. They’d soon grow bored, or their drunken mood would change in some other way, and then Maximin would be another bloody heap to frighten later passers-by as we’d in turn been frightened by the half-eaten corpses that had dotted the road every few miles from Pisa.

  I thought quickly. I’d acquired a good sword from a drowned brigand outside Paris. I had this in my hand. But there were two of them, and each was a match for me in open fight. What to do? Taking Maximin’s advice wasn’t an option. Once you’ve walked several hundred miles with someone, in generally disgusting weather, through dangerous country, you’re pretty well best friends. Besides, I owed him. I owed him my life. I owed him my further education. I owed him whatever prospects might present themselves in this world outside England. I owed him – and, unless you’re one of those degenerate Latins or Greeks whose sophisticated treachery is losing or has lost them control of the world, I don’t need to say more than that.

  I bobbed up again. They were still looking at Maximin. I waved to him. His eyes remained fixed on the bandits.

  ‘I have a silver crucifix in my baggage,’ he said in a wheedling tone. He jerked his eyes over to the far side of the road. Fortunately, one of the horses was sniffing at the baggage, concealing the fact that there was too much for one man to carry. The bigger of the two grunted and went over to look. By the horse, he steadied himself and stopped for a piss.

  That was my chance. I was up and across the road before either had a chance to look round. I swung my sword high and got the one by Maximin a blow to the unprotected head. He went straight down.

  With a shout of rage, the other had his breeches up and his sword out almost before I’d got my own sword clear and steadied myself from its recoil. He came at me, a dark stain growing down his left trouser leg. I jumped back, slashing at him.

  He grinned at me, an ugly scar running down his face into the straggly yellow beard. He stretched up and threw his arms wide, taunting me. ‘Come on, you miserable little fucker. See what you can do with a man who’s looking at you.’ He stamped on the ground and spat. ‘Come on. I want my breakfast!’

  I circled him, carefully staying out of sword reach. He seemed unbelievably big and heavy. He must have been pillaging and murdering since before I was born. He had armour. I had none. How I’d beat him I had no idea. I tried reasoning with him.

  ‘Get on your horse and be off,’ I said. ‘We saw Imperials just down the road.’

  No luck. He took advantage of the effort I put into the words and lunged at me. An inch to the right and he’d have had me.

  I danced back again and waved my sword. It felt suddenly heavy and twisted in my sweating hand. He stepped forward at me. His arm and sword were both longer than mine. I swung at him. Apart from a bit of playing back in Kent, and a quick running skirmish on the road in France, this was my first swordplay. Hardly moving, he parried me with a flick of his wrist. I staggered and nearly lost my sword as steel clashed on steel.

  Without warning, he lunged forward again, sword arm outstretched. Again, he nearly had me. It was only because I was still swaying about that he missed. As it was, he sliced a long cut into my tunic. He wheeled around, forcing me to look at him with the sun behind.

  I was breathing hard. He’d hardly raised a sweat. I could see he was enjoying himself.

  ‘Oh, fuck,’ I thought. This was a shitty hole I’d dug for myself. He’d skewer me with that blade of his and then turn back to Maximin, whose show of Arianism would have no chance now. I couldn’t even run away. He’d get on that horse of his and ride me down in no time. From the corner of my eye, I could see the wineskin deflating as it spilled its deep red content over the road. Not, you will agree, the most inspiring image in the circumstances!

  Thwack!

  Maximin had struck him a great blow across the back with his walking staff. The armour protected Yellow Beard from direct harm, but he was now fighting on two fronts. He swung round to wave his sword at Maximin, who fell back, jabbing at him with his staff.

  ‘Fuck you!’ I shouted, stabbing uselessly at the leather skirt that protected his buttock.

  He wheeled back to me, ignoring Maximin while he dealt with the greater threat. He lunged at me again. This time, I stepped out of his way and threw a random slash in his direction. Glory be – I felt a crunch of steel on flesh and bone. I’d got the wrist of his sword arm. He fell back with a scream of pain and fear. I’d gone deep and his sword fell to the road. He had it up at once in his left hand. But I now had the advantage. Sober, he’d only have been enraged by the slashed skin and muscle, and hacked all the harder with his good arm. But the wine and the intensifying sun were doing their silent work.

  He was backing away towards his horse, Maximin and I now facing him. I slashed again at him, roaring to raise my strength. But he knocked me away this time. I slashed again, and this time got him on the right forearm. Blood spurted. I lunged now, aiming at his throat. I fell short, but let him see my bloody sword. His face grey, he dropped his sword and ran for the horse. I followed.

  As he got to the horse, he turned back, knife in hand. But knife against sword is nothing, especially in the left hand. I could see terror and defeat in his eyes. I stabbed with an exultant yell. The blow glanced off his leather breastplate, but got him into a deeper panic. He bellowed like an ox taken to slaughter. All he wanted now was to get clear of me, but I was too close to let him on the horse.

  I stabbed again, and got him in the left shoulder. I stabbed again, and pushed straight through the fleshy part of his arm. He fell to his knees, babbling and raising his bloodied arms for mercy. I got the point of my sword between his neck and the edge of his breastplate, and pushed down with all my strength. As I pulled it out, he died with a gurgling, blood-frothing sigh. I watched as the life went out of his eyes.

  Suddenly tired and aching, I stood looking down at him. I felt the need of another night’s sleep.

  ‘Aelric, the other one’s alive!’

  I turned. He was twisting on the ground, covering his face and head as Maximin beat at him with his walking staff. I crossed over to them, and flopped onto the ground by the fallen man’s head, my sword at his throat.

  He was the theologian. I was sure I’d killed him with that heavy first blow. Instead, I’d only knocked him out, hardly drawing blood.

  ‘Quarter!’ he croaked in English, looking up at me.

  My strength recovering, I took his hair in my left hand, pushing my sword harder against his throat. ‘So, what brings you to this sunny clime?’ I asked in the same language.

  The answer was
obvious. Quite a few of my people had joined with Alboin in the first invasions. There never were that many true Lombards, and they’d increased their numbers by offering a share of the booty to any band of savages who would go in with them. Though the majority had gone away after he’d made it clear this would be his kingdom, some had stayed, and the occasional bravo still drifted over when England seemed too dull. I’d probably just killed one of them. Here was another.

  ‘You’re English, mate!’ He made an attempt at conviviality. ‘Well, it’s a time since I could share thoughts of home. What’s your name?’

  ‘I am Aelric, son of Ethelwulf of Rainham,’ I answered flatly.

  ‘Ethelwulf. He was a mate in the old days. Perhaps you was the boy I saw on his knees. You was a pretty child. You won’t remember me, but I remember you. Let us up – we can’t talk like this.’

  I said nothing, my sword still pressed against his throat.

  ‘Look in our saddlebags,’ he whined. ‘It’s all yours. Go on, look.’

  I nodded to Maximin. He came back with two leather bags. From the heavy chink as he put them down, I knew their contents. They were filled with golden solidi. But these weren’t the debased, shapeless copies I’d seen once or twice in England and more often in France. They were the smooth, regular coins of the Empire, imperial head on one side, ‘CONOB’ clearly imprinted on the other. There must have been two full sets of seventy-two to the pound. They were new and identical. Each of them had the same defect on the ‘B’, which was raised a little above the four other letters, indicating that they came from the same die.