Conspiracies of Rome a-1 Read online

  I saw all this later. For the moment, I glanced at the coins, but my sword hand didn’t waver.

  ‘Look, mate,’ the theologian whined again, ‘I can show you more of them – bags and bags of them. Just let us up. We can talk over all the news from home. Then we can go and get the others. Fair shares for all, there can be!’

  ‘Tell me where they are,’ I asked in my flat voice. I pressed harder so a line of blood showed along the blade. ‘Tell me now.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah – don’t let’s be unfriendly,’ the theologian cried, trying to push his neck still closer to the ground. ‘Just take the sword away, and I’ll tell you everything.’

  ‘Where are they?’ I asked.

  ‘South along the road – about five miles,’ he babbled, breaking now and then into Latin. ‘We brung them down from Tarquini. There’s a ten-man guard on them – not good Englishmen, like us: just runaway slaves and other trash. We can take them together, no prob.’

  He paused and looked ingratiating. ‘I see’d you cut up Bertwald right good. We won’t have no trouble with the others… Now, give us a drink, mate.’

  I said nothing.

  He continued: ‘We was ordered to wait there by the Saint Antony Shrine for instructions. Some Roman or summink was to come and tell us, or such. We didn’t know right, but we was to wait there – that’s all we was told on delivery.’

  He spoke on in quick gasps in his strange mingling of languages. They were on some business, of which they knew nothing, for the Lombard authorities. They were to take delivery of a consignment of gold and a very holy relic – the nose of Saint Vexilla. They had no idea what would happen. They’d been told simply to wait for further instructions that would be obvious when they came.

  ‘All very hush hush,’ the theologian continued, trying to lick some moisture onto his dry lips. ‘Bertwald and me, we just grabbed what was rightly ours and was on our way back to Pavia. Come on, mate, I’m gasping for a drink. Don’t keep me down like this. The fucking sun’s in me eyes.’

  Nothing more to learn here, I thought.

  ‘My father was not Ethelwulf. I have heard of no Ethelwulf of Rainham,’ I said. I drew the sword across his throat, cutting from under one ear right up to the other.

  ‘Oh, shit and fuck!’ I’d never cut a throat before, and wasn’t prepared for the fountain of blood. It went all over my face and hair and soaked my sleeve. I was mucky enough already from all that crawling in the ditch and the other death fight. But that was just washing muck. This would take hours of scrubbing, and still there’d be a stain on the grey wool of my tunic. Add to this the sword-thrust, and I’d be shabby as a churl. Of course, I had no other clothes with me.

  ‘Fuck!’ I pushed the jerking, gurgling body away. More blood splashed onto my trousers.

  ‘Was that quite in order, my son?’ asked Maximin. He sat on a slightly raised paving stone, looking with evident disapproval at the pool of blood now creeping towards him. I couldn’t tell if he was objecting to the dispatch or to the mess, or even to the attendant language – though English is a tongue rich in obscenities, and he must have picked up most of them in Canterbury.

  ‘He had it coming,’ I snapped. ‘If he and his friend weren’t involved in doing over that monastery, I’ve no doubt they’d have done similar elsewhere… And a dead bandit is always better than a live one.’

  Maximin didn’t argue. He was probably thinking as I was – that if we’d stayed in that outhouse, none of this might have been necessary. In any case, we seldom argued now about matters of defence and violence. As I said, we’d been together on the road for months.

  Back in England, he’d played me by the book. He’d led me round Canterbury and had me begging forgiveness in every church for my many sins with Edwina – and had me confessing them chapter and verse to the other missionaries, who had rolled their eyes and hugged themselves.

  He’d still tried to lecture me on Christian humility back in Amiens, when I’d had cause to beat a cutpurse to pulp. Since then, we’d been pushing steadily through a dense mass of two-legged vermin. Even someone less intelligent than Maximin would soon have learnt the difference between a being created in God’s image and a particle of scum fit only to be kicked or beaten or stabbed or otherwise repelled in the shortest order.

  We rolled the bodies into the ditch. I took a vicious little knife from the theologian’s belt. And we loaded our baggage onto the horses. Maximin plainly didn’t like the thought of climbing onto what seemed the more placid of the beasts. I can’t say I was a skilled rider. But we were better off on horseback than on foot. Just because we’d got through this attempt on our lives didn’t mean the roads would now be clear all the way to Rome.

  As I dressed myself after washing down at the stream again – Maximin and the horses this time in clear view – and then ate breakfast, I was increasingly aware of the two-pound weight of gold swinging from my belt. It was a nice, comfortable weight, and I couldn’t help thinking how, without putting myself in too much danger, I might before the next morning increase it.

  6

  ‘You’ll look lush, sir – really, truly lush.’ The younger of the tailors spoke with unforced enthusiasm as he looked up at me, his mouth full of pins.

  ‘Indeed, sir, you will,’ the other added, holding up the dented bronze mirror. ‘For a lady, is it, sir? Is she pretty? Will you be marrying her in Rome? Or simply visiting her?’

  I ignored the questions and looked at what I could see of myself in the mirror. They were right. I looked remarkably fine. I’d looked good in Canterbury. But that was before all the walking and other exercise. I now looked ravishing. As I stared into that mirror, I had to work hard to repress a little stiffy I felt coming on.

  Populonium, on the other hand, had seen better days. It had once been a rich little port town and a seaside retreat for the less wealthy of the Roman higher classes. Now, it was mostly ruined within its walls. The port remained, but the trade was largely gone. Still, it had its own bishop, and there was enough local demand to keep a few dusty shops going in the unruined centre.

  We’d been lucky in finding the tailors. I had thought it unlikely we could get anything sufficiently good to be convincing in such short order. But the sight of one solidus had led, after a hushed and rapid conversation I hadn’t been able to catch, to the appearance of a most beautiful suit of clothes. They were, Maximin assured me, in the fashion of the wealthy young – tight linen trousers, loose woollen tunic, dyed blue and drawn in at the waist, and a little scarlet cloak. Ignore the slight pissy stain around the crotch and the neatly mended rent in the tunic under the heart – was that a darkness on the blue of the wool or a trick of the light? – and I could have passed easily among the grander passengers on the road, who’d been hurrying by on horseback, surrounded by armed bodyguards. Even the soft leather boots fitted, once they were reduced with a thick insole. At least the brimmed cap might have been made for me.

  ‘Tell me,’ I asked Maximin in Greek – I raised my arm as directed as a loose fold in the tunic was pinned back for adjustment – ‘who was Saint Vexilla?’

  Maximin drifted out of his tipsy reverie. He’d taken in a good two pints of wine since our encounter of earlier that day. He looked into his empty cup, looked at the jug beside him, sighed, and put his cup down. ‘Saint Vexilla,’ he explained, sitting up a little, ‘was a beauteous and noble virgin in the time of Diocletian. She was pledged by her family for the idolatrous cult of Vesta. Then began the seventh and the last great persecution of the Faith. The martyrs of our Church were as the stars in the sky, or as the sands of the Libyan desert-’

  ‘Yes,’ said I. The wine was leading him into declamatory mode, and I wanted information, not a sermon.

  He drew himself together and continued. ‘The tyrant, unlike earlier persecutors, was not satisfied with the blood of our martyrs. He also wanted to extirpate our books and other holy objects. His decree went out, that all copies of the Scriptures should be delivered up for co
nsignment to the flames.

  ‘One day, as she was carried through Rome in her chair, Vexilla was approached by an ancient retainer, who was secretly of the Faith. “Take these precious books in safekeeping,” he begged her, giving her the Gospels according to Saint Matthew and Saint Mark. “There cannot be another day before I am caught. My old body is as nothing, O gracious lady, but save these precious books.”

  ‘Vexilla took and read and, by the working of the Holy Spirit, was converted to the Faith. And so it became her mission to go about Rome, gathering up whichever of our books could be saved from the flames.

  ‘One day, she was betrayed by her own brother to the authorities. She was bound and taken before Caesar himself. He looked grimly at her, his evil face as hard and smooth as the stone of his idols. “Deny this sordid cult, and you shall be freed with full honour,” he said. “Deny this cult and deliver up to us the writings we know you to have harboured.”

  ‘But Vexilla was obdurate. And so the tyrant had her given over to torture. A club studded with iron hooks was heated till red, and drawn across her white, virginal flesh…’

  I won’t enumerate the tortures some lying monk had written with one hand. It was the usual stuff – drops of blood turning to rose petals where they fell, slaves brought in to rape her struck impotent or made to ejaculate stinking pus before they could touch her, and so on and so forth. Eventually, she was slowly broiled in a bath of molten lead while she prayed in a voice of unearthly sweetness.

  All lies, of course. I’ve never seen a miracle but I’ve also seen how it was done. Why therefore believe a word about miracles I haven’t seen?

  But, after one of his opium pills, Maximin continued. About fifty years after her alleged death, alleged parts of Vexilla turned up on the now booming market for relics, and were alleged to have miraculous properties. Her nose was a particular treasure – a single kiss to the cloth covering it was a sure cure for all respiratory disorders. It had eventually come into the possession of the Church of the Apostles in Rome, and there it should still have been – only now a band of heretical barbarians had it in their clutches.

  ‘We must get it back,’ Maximin said, his face red with anger at the impiety.

  ‘We certainly must,’ I agreed, thinking of the gold.

  ‘In his mysterious goodness, God has surely put in our path an opportunity to expiate all our many sins. To take back such a mighty relic and restore it to its proper keeping…’

  Maximin fell silent, pouring another cup and doubtless thinking of his soul. I stood admiring myself as the tailors fussed and chattered around me, and thought of the gold.

  Young as I was, I already knew the most important fact of all about money – that, in this world, you can’t fart without the stuff. If you aren’t lucky enough to inherit from your ancestors, you must somehow get it for yourself. From my early childhood, I could just recall a rude level of comfort. All other memories were of supplementing Ethelbert’s castoffs by living on my wits. Whether I’d ever see England again, or make my way in life on the shores of the Mediterranean, I was determined not to pass another day as a mendicant pilgrim. I’d live or die with money in my purse. So here we were in Populonium, getting prepared for a deception that – if successful – would, ten thousand times over and more, beat all the highway robberies in which I used to assist on the Wessex border.

  I’d seen to the horses on our first arrival in town. Though big and powerful, those taken from the bandits had to be replaced. They were too recognisable and didn’t fit with our chosen image. There was a market in front of the main church, and I’d made a good exchange with a Frankish dealer. The two beasts we had, plus a little gold, got us a white and very striking horse for me and a smaller but still fast gelding for Maximin.

  I knew a low profile was essential. But after transacting the horse business, I couldn’t resist a look around the town. As said, it was mostly in ruins, but it was still more in one piece than Richborough; and it had a few curiosities I hadn’t seen elsewhere on our journey.

  Built into the nave of the church, for example, was the remnant of a very ancient building. About twenty feet across, it had been a circle of columns with a tiled roof. A temple of some kind, I had no doubt. But I’d now seen any number of converted uses along the way. What made this one interesting was the evident age of the temple and the inscriptions on lead plates that still covered some of the columns where the roof overhung. Most of these were in standard Latin and recorded thanks in stereotyped form for births, marriages and cures. Some of the older ones, though, were in often very strange Latin – letters added in words, letters written back to front, unexpected variations of grammar. Some weren’t even in Latin at all, but in a language unknown to Maximin, if for the most part in Latin script. More faded than the rough Latin inscriptions, these were very finely made.

  And as I stood outside that church, with the market bustling away behind me, and the sun of an Italian spring burning down almost directly above, I’d seen in a burst of inner enlightenment a complete cycle of history. The Romans had taken this land from an earlier race – taken the land, the cities and the religion. They had grown in strength and wisdom, their language growing with them. Then had come the decline. Impoverished, ravaged by barbarians, in no place sufficient in numbers to fill the spaces within their ancient walls, the modern Latins jabbered and bargained in a language as broken as the stones of their cities.

  Maximin might think this evident decline heralded the end of the world. Probably men of that earlier race thought the same when they were dispossessed. I had stumbled all by myself on the main difference of secular focus between the Church and the ancients – the difference between viewing history as a straight line, going from Adam and Eve, through Christ, to the Second Coming and Final Judgement, and viewing it as an endlessly repeated cycle of progress and decay.

  I don’t know how long I stood looking at those lead plates, but Maximin had eventually coughed and nodded my attention to someone who was watching us from within the market. A tall, swarthy ruffian, with grizzled hair and a patch over his left eye, he was plainly on the lookout for something. He’d been talking to the horse dealer, and was now looking at us.

  I didn’t like the look of him, and Maximin had agreed. So off we’d sloped to the tailors in search of something grand enough to hide the fact that I was just another barbarian on the make.

  ‘How long before I can have them?’ I’d asked in an affected Roman drawl imitated from Bishop Lawrence back in Canterbury. I don’t suppose it would for a moment have convinced a real member of the nobility. But I was finding a considerable talent for mimicry – it goes with the talent for languages – and it worked on the tailors.

  ‘For you, sir, before the close of business,’ they said together.

  ‘Indeed, yes, sir – you’ll look lush in the rays of the setting sun. Your lady in Rome will hardly recognise you.’

  ‘Is she pretty, sir?’ the younger tailor asked. ‘Do you sigh for her? Does she sigh for you? Ho!’

  He ended with an expulsion of breath I took for a sigh. Were these people taking the piss, I wondered? Probably not. They lived in a world that had been turned upside down half a dozen times. I decided they were simply touched in the head, and ignored their chatter. For all my elegant Latin, they must have known they were dealing with an obvious barbarian whose sword had fresh notches cut in the blade.

  ‘Is she pretty, sir? Are you thrilled by her embrace? She will be thrilled by you. Can we follow your horse down to the city gate? You really are our finest customer this year.’

  7

  We were clear of the place just as the sun was setting. We trotted back along the road towards Rome. The shrine of Saint Antony, Maximin told me, was about a mile outside Populonium, a hundred yards off the road. On a slight rise in the land, it was a useful gathering point for bandits, as it gave them a good view – without they themselves being seen – of all traffic along the road.

  For this reason, we m
ade sure to start our deception some while before coming to the shrine. I held myself upright on the horse, proud and stiff. Maximin followed behind, bowed in silent prayer. We turned left off the road, following a little path that led upwards through bushes. We heard the subdued whining of horses long before we reached the shrine.

  ‘Who goes there?’ The harsh Latin cut through the darkness.

  ‘Your instructions,’ I said with slow precision, continuing forward.

  Actually, I was feeling the need for another shit – not this time from dinner, but from pure nerves. Back on that sunny road, while the birds sang in the trees, and in Populonium, the plan had seemed daring but safe. Now, in the darkness, no moon yet risen, the temperature dropping, surrounded by roughs who weren’t likely to be as unprepared and stupid as the two I’d killed earlier, it all became less daring than foolhardy. How could I know these people hadn’t seen us ride past earlier in the day? We’d looked different, granted – but we were still two. Would they accept me as a young Roman noble? I had the clothes, and could mimic the accent and surface mannerisms. But I was still a big blond barbarian. How could I know they hadn’t already had those mysterious ‘instructions’ of which the theologian had spoken? How could I know he had uttered a word of truth?

  To be sure, he’d lied about the nature of the guards. They weren’t the ‘runaway slaves’ of his description, but were big Englishmen, speaking the dialect of Wessex. And, dark as it was, I could see something in the way they bore themselves that told me they weren’t simple bandits. There was an order in the little camp and a general discipline that chilled me.

  We rode straight among them. They had a little fire going in a hollow, and were getting some game ready to cook. I stayed on horseback, looking down at them with a lordly confidence I didn’t feel. Maximin dismounted and began a silent and exaggeratedly devout prayer in front of the shrine, which appeared so far as I could see to be an old tomb with a cross stuck on top.