The Ghosts of Athens (Aelric) Page 4

  ‘Because it may now have been pulled, still twitching, from its grave,’ Theodore gasped. He took another sip and tried to sit upright. He failed, and Wulfric had to lift him higher on to the pillows. ‘You must have learned on your travels of the Emperor’s great victory over the Saracens. There are hopes in Constantinople that Syria may be recovered for the Empire. Because of this, the Imperial authorities are looking again at an accommodation with the heretics in that province.’

  Syria to be recovered? That was news to me. I may have spent a fair chunk of the previous summer in Damascus. But, shut away in the Caliph’s palace, my news of the world beyond its gates had been sketchy at best. Still, it made sense that, if we were doing well against the Saracens, keeping Rome sweet would now be of secondary importance.

  ‘Of course,’ I said, trying for a tone of reassurance, ‘there’s nothing we can do to put pressure on Rome.’ I broke off and grinned. The we in that sentence had been an entirely accidental slip. ‘Do forgive me, Theodore: there’s nothing the Empire can do to Rome. The days are gone when a Pope could be arrested in the Lateran and dragged off to some Eastern monastery. Certainly, the council you held a few years back in Hatfield was far outside the Empire’s jurisdiction or sphere of influence. No one who signed its Acts can be in the slightest danger. Surely, if the new Emperor wants to go whoring among the heretical Churches of the East, all Rome needs to do is mutter a few complaints and wait for the military balance on land to swing back to the Saracens – and it will do that, I assure you.’

  But Theodore didn’t look much assured. He moved his head a fraction of an inch and looked at a forbiddingly large sheet of parchment unrolled on one of the tables in the room. I glanced at the tiny writing that covered it. Whoever had produced that must have done well and proper for his sight. Even in bright sunshine, I wasn’t planning to wear out my own eyes on reading it. I looked back at Theodore. He was the theological expert. He’d spent half a century telling everyone who’d listen that I was just a smooth-talking fraud. If he wanted any help from me, he could at least begin by summarising whatever complaints he’d received from Rome.

  But he gave me a bleak smile and went into English. ‘Do me the favour, Brother Aelric,’ he said, of explaining the Monothelite heresy to Brother Wulfric. It is beyond my abilities to do so in English. But you do have the advantage of being a native.’

  I raised my eyebrows and looked into the wine jug. Explaining that mass of gibberish in Latin was challenge enough; why else, after all, had Rome looked so implicitly for advice to Theodore with his Greek and Syriac? Asking even me to put it into a dumpy language like English might well be seen as evidence of senility. But Theodore was in earnest. And Wulfric was looking at me with the first glimmerings of interest in two days. I sighed and drank deeply. I thought to give a summary of the account I normally gave my students in Jarrow. But that was in Latin, and the subtleties just didn’t translate. If I was to get anywhere at all, I’d have to make a fresh start, and without preparation.

  I think I’d lost the boy long before ending my digressive hunt for equivalents in English of Substance and Will and the various shades of Person. His eyes had certainly glazed over by the time I was able to launch into the critical matter of how the Will of Christ might relate to any of these. But he managed to keep a polite look on his face as my voice droned on and my throat began to ache from the effort of speaking for so long and with so much complexity in a language in which I might still be fluent, but in which I no longer thought.

  And Theodore was highly delighted. ‘Well said, Brother Aelric!’ he gasped, now in Syriac. ‘Well said, my Lord Senator Alaric. Age has not taken a jot of your talent for clear and shining evasion.’ I smiled modestly and had another drink. I could take it as read that I’d been put up to my lecture less for Wulfric’s enlightenment than to give Theodore an excuse to start ripping into me as he had in the old days. Sure enough, he shifted on his pillows and glared at me with open hostility.

  ‘You have only overlooked your own part in bringing this gross heresy into the world, and how it was you who made sure it was maintained just so long as it suited the Empire’s political convenience. The moment it had outlived its usefulness, you dropped it like a hot brick. The scandal would have been all the greater had anyone by then still believed that you had any religious convictions at all.’

  The poor old thing had me there. Out of habit, I cast round for a politely vicious retort. As I focused on him, though, I suddenly found myself looking straight into the eyes of a ten-year-old boy. Horribly wasted, Theodore might be hovering on the edge of the grave. But, in all that really mattered, I was seeing him just as I had seventy-six years ago. Call it a spiritual burp brought on by the previous night’s opium. Whatever the case, it passed. I relaxed. No vicious retort, polite or otherwise, crossed my lips. I shrugged and looked round to see if anything edible had been laid out for me.

  ‘But where is my mother?’ he now cried, still in Syriac.

  I raised my eyebrows and tried to smile. ‘Come now, Theodore,’ I said comfortingly. ‘You know she died in Tarsus. You must only have been eight at the time. I never met here, and was far off in Constantinople when the plague made its appearance.’

  But he struggled back into a sitting position, and even pointed at me with his good arm. ‘Don’t play the fool with me, Alaric,’ he snarled. ‘It was you who debauched her. Everything was as it ought to be until you turned up. I ask you again: where is she?’

  ‘Debauched’ isn’t a word I’d have thought appropriate. Fortunately, Wulfric was out of the conversation. If he was shifting and muttering behind me, it was only over the funny colour his master had gone. I turned my attention back to the wine as the boy stepped forward and fussed harder than ever with pillows. When I did finally look at Theodore, he’d nodded off again. Hardly breathing, he lay with his head flopped back on the cushions. Wulfric paid no attention to me, but sat quietly beside his master the Bishop, nursing the one good hand in both of his. ‘We’ll get nowhere if we continue like this,’ I said to myself in Greek. Not that I was inclined to make any complaint. It was a lovely day outside. If I could fight off the slight headache the wine was producing, I could creep out of here and go off with Jeremy sooner than expected.

  I’d got as far as the big stone porch of the building, and was pushing through a crowd of boys who were trying to read the inscription put up to commemorate a visit by the Bishop of Ravenna, when I heard the sound behind me of a throat being pointedly cleared.

  ‘When one has spent all his life hearing the most astonishing stories, you will surely agree what an honour it is to meet the object of those stories.’

  I thought whether I could blame it on deafness if I paid no attention and hurried out into the sunshine. It would be five yards at most before I was lost in the swirling crowd of monks and tradesmen. But all the boys had turned round from the inscription. One was pointing past me. A couple were beginning to cry. I’d have to fight my way through them to get out. I gave in to the inevitable and turned to look at Sophronius. From the first sound of that fruity, affected voice, there could be no doubt who it was. Still in white, he’d creased his blubbery face into a look of reverential respect.

  ‘We are all so very pleased to see how well you remain, even after what must surely have been a difficult journey from the north,’ he added after giving me his name. He got slowly to his knees and bent forward to embrace my feet. ‘It is an honour beyond all expectations,’ he intoned, ‘to behold in the flesh one I have always so very much revered.’

  There was no pulling back from that iron grip. I nodded and smiled, and waited for him to get up. There was a sound behind me of scared and disconsolate sobbing, and then a pattering of boyish feet as everyone ran out into the safety of the street. Lucky boys, I thought. For me, there’d be no escape.

  Keeping a neutral look on my face, I stood back and acknowledged his further bow, and wondered when he’d get to the point. And there would be a point. W
ith a man like Sophronius, there is always a point – and hardly ever a pleasant one. There’d be no escape for poor old Aelric. However bright and welcoming the sunshine might be in the street outside, I could kiss that morning goodbye.

  Chapter 6

  ‘That will be all, Brother Wulfric,’ Sophronius said as he ushered me back into the room where Theodore was still sleeping. ‘I will have you summoned when His Grace may have need of your attentions.’

  He’d spoken the English of a native. I avoided any sign of surprise, but looked harder at him. Take away the snooty expression, and he could easily pass for a stallkeeper in the butchers’ market behind where I was staying. A fancy name he’d given himself on taking his vows. Then again, everything about him was fancy. It wasn’t just their places in the Church hierarchy that had Wulfric bowing his way straight out of the room. That sort of commanding tone is something a man like Sophronius picks up long before he’s decided to enter the Church.

  He gave me another of his ceremonious bows, and waved me towards a couple of chairs and a small table in the far corner of the room. As he passed it, he took up the sheet of parchment.

  ‘Since His Grace is overcome once more by tiredness,’ I said, ‘I must look to you for an explanation of his reason for calling me here. I hope it is a good one. Jarrow is not an easy journey at my age.’ I had thought of announcing that I was tired. One look at Sophronius, though, and I had given up at once on that.

  He smiled and arranged himself into the chair opposite mine. It creaked horribly, and I hoped for a moment that it would give way under his vast bulk. But he leaned forward on to the table, and the careful distribution of his weight allowed him to sit with all the dignity of a gloating toad.

  ‘I must inform you,’ he opened as soon as I could describe myself as comfortable, ‘that His Holiness of Rome is being challenged to the point where he will have no choice but to issue a formal reprimand to the Emperor. Shortly before Christmas, a letter arrived in Rome from Constantinople. The claim that Pope Honorius, at your urging, may long ago have endorsed the Monothelite heresy is one that we have dealt with. His Holiness was deceived as to the issues, and treated them, in the manner of your presentation, as a question of Latin grammar. There is, however, a further claim that is not so easily answered. This is that, nearly eighty years ago, Pope Benedict of blessed memory knowingly subscribed to that heresy.’

  I shrugged and wondered if I could ask for what remained of the wine to be brought over. But Sophronius didn’t look the sort of man who could be deflected by any show of aged helplessness. There might not be a decent bath on this entire island. Not even a full century, though, since Augustine had first set foot in England, and we’d grown up our own race of Imperial churchmen. Sophronius might occasionally dream in English. That aside, there was nothing to distinguish him from the snootiest cleric in the Lateran. Little wonder these people had rolled straight over the Celtic Church a few years earlier at Whitby.

  ‘The Holy Father is Universal Bishop,’ he continued. ‘Except where he has been misled, or is obviously suffering the infirmities that are natural to the human condition, he is inerrant in all matters of Church doctrine. The other four Patriarchs are due the utmost respect, but do not have the same standing before God as the successor of Saint Peter. It is therefore impossible that Benedict of sainted memory could have subscribed to the Monothelite or any other heresy. Yet the Imperial Government has had the effrontery to claim it has written testimony that he did so subscribe through his representatives.’

  I was in no need of lectures on that Thou art Peter text. I’d spent the better part of a lifetime trying neither to endorse nor deny the meaning put on it by Rome. But I’d already guessed what was coming, and kept a polite look on my face as I inspected my dirty fingernails. I’ve said there was no decent bath in England. There was, however, a kind of bathing establishment close by the Monastery of Saint Anastasius. If I could get young Jeremy to overlook that it was also a brothel . . .

  ‘Whatever the authorities in Constantinople claim to have found in their archives,’ Sophronius went on as expected, ‘His Grace Theodore and you both know the truth of the matter. After all, you were both there!’

  I looked again at the ceiling and then back at Sophronius. It might be worth trying for an attack of tiredness. No one thought ill of Theodore if he kept dropping off. But I clicked my false teeth together and put the thought finally out of mind. Some refusals, after all, are best for not being delayed. ‘Look here,’ I said, ‘if you want me to set my name to an attack on the Imperial Government, you’re asking a year too late. I’m not a refugee any more. The position now is that the Church in England is looking after me on behalf of the Emperor. There’s been a grant of money for my upkeep, and I rather think I’m being written back into the official histories. In any dispute between Pope and Emperor, my duty is to remain neutral. Besides, I’m so old, no one would take me seriously. If you want an authoritative account of the Council of Athens, you should write one up yourself and get Theodore to sign it. After all, he is a bishop – and he also was there.’

  ‘If I might be so bold, Brother Aelric,’ the man pressed on, ‘your rehabilitation within the Empire has given much weight to your own testimony. And no one can claim that your memory of the proceedings at Athens might be at fault.’

  I gripped the table and pulled myself to my feet. ‘Be that as it may, Sophronius,’ I said, ‘you must accept my refusal to get involved. Now, if you would be so kind as to find Brother Jeremy, I will return to my lodgings and get ready to go back to Jarrow. My life as an actor in the world is well and truly over. I can only apologise that you had to come all the way from Rome to hear this.’

  Sophronius looked up at me. Slowly, he got to his own feet. Then he bowed. If he was trying for a show of respect, it was spoiled by his delay in getting up, and by his gloating smile. For the first time in our conversation, I felt a slight pricking on the back of my neck. ‘You are, of course, a free agent,’ he said. ‘If you will not help us, Holy Mother Church can do no more than seek the best means of assisting you back to the monastery in Jarrow.’

  ‘My dear Sophronius,’ I said, keeping any appearance of strain out of my voice, ‘I was brought here by young Brother Jeremy. I have the fullest confidence in his ability to take me back.’ Forcing a smile on to my face, I stared back at him very hard. Though as yet with no facts to organise, my mind was beginning to work faster.

  Sophronius broadened his own smile. He reached inside his robe and took out a small object. With another bow, he placed it on the table. I looked at it and sat down again. I sat down because the conversation was nowhere near ended – and to hide the trembling of my aged legs.

  ‘Oh, Brother Aelric,’ he said, in a mournful tone that fitted ill with the wolfish look now spreading over his face, ‘do please examine this object, and try to recall if it might be your property.’ Still on his feet, he bent forward and pushed it across the table. He watched closely as I stared at it. ‘This was recovered four days ago from the eye of one of His Majesty’s dearest servants,’ he explained.

  Not bothering to touch it where it lay before me on the table, I stared at my bronze pin. No one had bothered cleaning it. Getting the dried gore off it would take a good soaking in vinegar.

  ‘The tollman on London Bridge was not able to say very much before he died,’ Sophronius went on. ‘The facts, however, may speak for themselves.’ He stopped and sat down. He reached forward and pointed at the elaborate, gilded head of the pin. ‘This is surely of Eastern workmanship, is it not, Brother Aelric?’ he asked with a close inspection of my face. ‘Are these not the Greek letters AL? Might they perhaps represent the name Alaric?’

  Oh, sod, bugger, damn! I could have kicked myself. I’ll grant that it’s hard, in the most settled places, to tell the difference between tax-collectors and bandits. But I, of all people, should have known that you never leave a wounded enemy alive. I sat back and leaned against the chair. A mouthful of Theo
dore’s French red would have been very welcome. I had to make do with yet another stare up at the ceiling.

  ‘If, with the palsied hand of age,’ I said quietly, ‘I lost an object that should have been of great worth to me, please do accept my thanks for its safe recovery. But do also explain how its finding could disarrange the plans for my return to Jarrow?’ How Sophronius kept himself from peals of triumphant laughter would normally have been worth considering. For the moment, I noted the fact and waited for the inevitable.

  It wasn’t long in coming. ‘His Majesty, of course, is outraged at the insult to his dignity. There is no possibility that a man of the Church could be handed over to any secular authority. The agreement negotiated many years ago with King Ethelbert the Saint will stand for ever. But the young man’s crime will be treated by the Church as a sin of the utmost gravity.’ Sophronius paused and allowed himself an ecstatic roll of his engorged frame. ‘You will surely agree that it is fitting for any who would serve God and the Church of God to maintain at all times a spirit of the utmost humility. When that spirit is lacking within, there are penances to instil it from without.’ He stopped and put both hands on the table. He leaned forward and stared into my eyes. ‘The nail that sticks out,’ he said with quiet relish, ‘must be hammered flat.’

  I looked stonily back. I thought of that poor sod in the square before the big church.

  ‘It seems, my dear Brother in Christ,’ I said, ‘that there were no witnesses to what may have been a sad misunderstanding. But I can assure you that Brother Jeremy was in no manner to blame for whatever may have happened on London Bridge. Though not admitting to anything at all, I do take full responsibility.’

  Sophronius stopped me with a sad shake of his jowls. ‘Oh, Brother Aelric, your supreme goodness of heart is famed throughout the world. Even otherwise, though, do not imagine that a man of your venerable years could possibly be credited with the blame for so dastardly a crime as the one committed on London Bridge. If any must suffer for the crime, it shall be young Brother Jeremy.’