Conspiracies of Rome Read online

  2

  The gleemen were singing an old battle song as I was pushed into the high single room of the lodge. It was built in the traditional style – a layer of reeds on the trampled earth of the floor, a central hole in the thatch covering that let rain in from the drizzle above while not doing much with the smoke from the great fire below. The damp wood smoke competed with the smell of farting. I quickly gathered that the company had been feasting for hours. Sitting pulling meat off a whole roast sheep were Ethelbert and about thirty of his cronies and retainers. Snarling and yapping, their dogs ran among them.

  ‘Well, just look what the fucking cat’s brought in!’ roared Ethelbert, pulling himself unsteadily to his feet.

  The music stopped. He staggered towards me, his feet kicking up the reeds and the stinking filth below them. He nearly tripped over something that lay out of sight, and one of his retainers had to run forward and steady him.

  Ethelbert stopped for an extended fart. He took a gulp from his drinking horn. He looked round to make sure every pair of eyes was turned in his direction.

  If you read the history that I – or, more likely now, little Bede – will write, King Ethelbert is one of the heroes in the conversion of England. Because his Frankish wife was born into the Faith, he was the first ruler to welcome the missionaries. That’s why the Church made him a saint.

  The Ethelbert I knew was a pop-eyed monster with skin complaints and a partiality to other men’s wives. He’d put on even more weight than when I’d last seen him, a few months before my mother died. In the flickering light cast by the wall torches and the cooking fire, his face shone with sweat and mutton grease. There was that exultant tone to his voice that I remembered well from when he was minded to let everyone around him know who was the absolute boss.

  ‘You’ve been a bad boy’, he said, his voice dropping to what a stranger might have taken for good humour. ‘You’ve been making that two-backed beast with someone you shouldn’t never have looked at. You’ve dishonoured my best man’s daughter. You’ve dishonoured him. You’ve dishonoured me.’

  He stopped a few feet from where I was held fast, and gloated as I tried without the slightest effect to wriggle free.

  ‘Come on, my lad’, he said with a smile that showed a good dozen of his riddled teeth, ‘speak up.’

  ‘I can explain,’ I croaked. How I could explain I had no idea. I didn’t know how much he knew. I guessed Edwina had been to one of the household women to ask about herbs. But effective lying needs some awareness of what the other party knows.

  Besides, I was hardly able to keep the tears back. I knew what he could do, and was beginning to shake with terror as well as the cold.

  ‘I – I . . .’

  And that was all the speaking Ethelbert wanted. He dropped the façade of good humour and reverted to his more usual tyrannical mode.

  ‘You fucking piece of shit!’ he screamed at me, his large face purple with rage, veins in his forehead swollen. ‘I gave you your life. I gave you food from my table. I gave you everything. And this is how you repay me.’

  He jerked his head over to the company. Alfred sat there among the others. He was somewhat less demure in his bearing than I’d seen him among the missionaries. And if he didn’t seem inclined to embrace me as a son-in-law, he didn’t seem that put out either by his daughter’s dishonour. He raised his horn and grinned at me.

  Ethelbert continued: ‘You snake. You fucker. You fucking piece of shit. Do you know what we’re going to do to you?’

  He put his face close to mine. I could smell the sour breath – all rotting teeth and vomity beer and food. His jowls shook.

  ‘See that ladder over there?’ he snarled. ‘I’m having you splayed on that like a rabbit ripe for gutting. I’ll have you begging for death before I’m done with you, you fucking piece of fucking shit.’

  He stopped. He opened his mouth wide. A belch came out, followed by a stream of mutton juice. It ran down his chin onto his front.

  I spoke quickly. ‘Sir, I am of noble birth. I am of your own house. I claim my right as a freeman to face my accuser, sword in hand. I claim my right under ancient custom.’

  I looked across at Alfred. He was really grinning now, his sword pulled halfway out. I couldn’t last long against him even in a fair contest. He must have been twice my weight and size. But anything was preferable to what Ethelbert had in mind for me.

  It might have been better if I’d gone on to add an appeal to the whole company: If Ethelbert could do this to a noble’s son, after all, what might he one day do to their sons?

  No time. Ethelbert recovered himself.

  ‘Don’t give me none of that poof talk,’ he screamed, all control gone. He landed a great punch in my stomach.

  He took me by surprise. If I hadn’t been held fast on both sides, I’d have gone down like a fallen roof tile. I slumped into the grasp of his men, gagging and coughing. He aimed a kick at my balls, but missed, his nailed boot opening a gash in my thigh.

  I tried to scream, but only a croak issued. I was numb with terror. This couldn’t be happening. It was surely a nightmare. In a minute, I’d wake in the mission library and go back to thinking how to lay my hands on enough cash to get myself and Edwina across the Channel.

  But I was awake and this was really happening. I was in the absolute power of a filthy barbarian tyrant. I’d seen any number of times what he could do when the mood took him. Now he had me. I could have shat myself, but had nothing in my guts but wind.

  ‘Don’t you dare lecture me like some fucking priest about your fucking so-called rights,’ he continued. ‘You lost your free status when your father tried to fuck me over. That made you nothing. You’re only alive now because I didn’t kill you then.

  ‘By the time I’m done with you, my boy, you’ll wish the sweating sickness had taken you as well as your brothers.’

  There was a blur of motion just out of sight on my left. Then:

  ‘He’ll be lower than me – lower than me!’

  It was the churl who’d lured me into that side street. He reeled into sight, clutching uncontrollably at himself. A copper bracelet shone new from his withered wrist.

  ‘Let me cut his hair off, Lord King. Give me his golden hair.’

  I can’t say if my hair back then was my best point. There’s no doubt, though, it completed me as a vision of loveliness. It was this that had first brought me to Edwin’s attention at those interminable banquets where I’d acted as interpreter between Bishop Lawrence and her father. I’d even turned the heads of quite a few of the priests. ‘Non Anglus,’ they used to coo at me as they’d reach up to pat my curls, ‘sed angelus’ – ‘not English but an angel.’

  But it had never struck me before that a churl could even notice these things, let alone envy them. His shrill, demented pleading almost took my mind off the greater horrors as I looked at him properly for the first time.

  It was a brief interlude. Ethelbert kicked him out of the way. This was his show, and he wasn’t sharing it with anyone – least of all a churl.

  He stepped right up to me. He embraced me and suddenly kissed me. He forced his slimy tongue deep into my mouth and flickered it against my throat. I could feel his swollen cock throbbing against me through his breeches. I tried to pull away, but was held fast in a grip tighter than iron.

  Ethelbert stepped back, now under control. He gave me another of his exultant grins.

  ‘Hey, Alfred,’ he called over in a light voice. ‘Do you want this little shitbag afterwards to comb your daughter’s hair? He’ll be safe enough then with her. Or do you want him in your fields with the other churls? Do you want him with or without eyes?’

  ‘No, please,’ I whispered.

  But I was lifted bodily and carried towards the ladder over by the far wall. I squirmed and jerked about like a landed fish. But it was to the same lack of effect. I was caught. There were a few laughs and appreciative murmurs as my legs were forced apart and I was tied in place with lea
ther bands.

  ‘Come on, look lively,’ Ethelbert shouted, wheeling round to take in the whole display of his power. ‘Get that poncy tunic of his up. Let’s have a butcher’s at what he’s still got under there. Two sheep, Alfred, it’s no bigger than a baby’s finger.

  ‘Not that it makes any difference now,’ he went on to Alfred, ‘but do you really believe it was this snivelling little piece of shit who got your girl up the duff?’ He turned back to me and grasped at my clothing, leering maniacally up at me.

  ‘Give me a knife,’ he snapped at one of his retainers. As I heard the rasp of iron on leather, he had second thoughts. ‘No – first get me one of them torches. And get me some mutton fat.’

  As he slowly raised my tunic, I swallowed and began to pray under my breath to the god of the missionaries.

  ‘Halt!’

  In a deep-accented English, the word cut through the air like a knife. The room fell silent. Even the dogs ceased their yapping.

  ‘Halt in the name of God and the Church!’

  Maximin stood by the door, his sodden robe sticking to his little round body. How did he get here? I thought. He must have flogged his donkey half to death to get over so fast from Canterbury.

  He advanced into the room. ‘The boy belongs to Holy Mother Church. None may touch him.’

  A couple of Ethelbert’s men sprang at him, swords drawn. He gave them a brief, contemptuous look, then turned back to Ethelbert.

  ‘Let one hair of this boy’s head be harmed’, he said in the strong, dramatic voice he used for preaching, ‘and you will answer to Holy Mother Church in this life and to God Our Father in the life that is to come. ‘I tell you this as the representative in this room of the universal bishop in Rome who sits in the place of Our Lord’s Apostle Peter.’

  There was a laugh at the back of the room. We weren’t ten years into the first mission to England, and these savages didn’t care either way for the Faith. A word from Ethelbert, and they’d cut him down before he could draw breath again.

  But Ethelbert had dropped on his knees, his face grey with fear. It may have been thoughts of hellfire. More likely, it was thoughts of Queen Berthe. She was hard at work, building more new churches than her husband had fathered bastards. The last thing he wanted was the whole kingdom excommunicated.

  No one – certainly never in public before his senior men – had spoken like this to him before. Yes, he’d been defied, but no one had ever denied his authority to do as he liked when he liked. And yet he was grovelling among the filthy rushes on his own floor before a little, soft-handed foreigner.

  You can forget all those fake miracles the Church lays on for the simple. So far in Maximin’s service, those were all I’d seen. He’d explained them to me as necessary frauds for getting a barbarous race to accept a truth not otherwise communicable.

  Now, for the first time, I was seeing the real thing. I’ve seen more like it since then. These priests have a courage born of belief that none of the heroes in our old epics come close to matching. You can kill them. You can burn their shrines and wipe your arse with their books. You will never touch the fundamentals of their imperium over the soul. Rome’s conquest of Britain was by the sword, and by the sword it was lost. Its conquest of England has been by men like Maximin, and this will never be lost.

  ‘Reverend Father,’ Ethelbert cried. ‘This boy is a criminal. He has sinned against God, and he has broken our law too. He must be punished according to our law.’ He looked desperately round for confirmation. There was a mutter of agreement from somewhere. Otherwise, the room was now as tense and silent as in a village just before a promised miracle. Though not sheathed, the swords were all now pointing down. The churl who’d betrayed me was repeating his dead act, his face pushed deep into the reeds as if to avoid notice.

  ‘He has sinned against God, that much is sure,’ Maximin continued, with a grim look in my direction. ‘But he stands within the Church, and he shall be judged within the Church. Give him up to me now, King Ethelbert. I speak with full authority.’

  ‘What judgement shall the Church make against him?’ Ethelbert whispered.

  ‘None less than His Holiness in Rome shall decide the penance,’ Maximin replied.

  I thought he had gone too far now, but Ethelbert remained kneeling.

  ‘We leave for Rome before Advent,’ Maximin added. ‘Depending on the penance, the boy may never return.’ He pointed at my guards. ‘Untie him and give him to me.’ Ethelbert nodded to them. I felt a knife brush cold against my wrists, and the blood came back into my hands. I stumbled forward. Someone held me from falling.

  Maximin beckoned me to follow him and walked towards the door. As I walked past him, Ethelbert, still kneeling, said in a voice so low I wasn’t certain I heard him: ‘If I catch you in my realms after this man has left for Rome, I’ll have your balls on a church plate, and fuck the priests.’

  The man was a stinking bastard. Some years later, I rejoiced when I heard about his death. It was from some disgusting pox he’d caught off one of his whores. The priests put out their usual rot about the deaths of those who have advanced the Faith – angelic choirs above, flowery smells, and all that – but my source told me he died screaming while maggots dropped out of his burst scrotum.

  When we were about fifty yards down the cart track towards the road, the music started up again. I turned to Maximin in the darkness. I was shaking.

  ‘What will we do next?’ I asked.

  ‘As I said,’ he replied blandly, ‘we are going to Rome. You have penance to seek there. And I have been sent to gather more books for the mission library. After that, I have no idea. But I have no doubt you will find our trip of interest.’

  I heard the rattle of his pillbox.

  3

  I was dreaming again last night. I’d normally be glad of that. My bodily pleasures may be less than they were. But the dreams remain as vivid as always.

  Sadly, this wasn’t one of the good dreams. I was back in the early March of the year I moved to Canterbury. It was the late afternoon, and I’d just arrived back in Richborough from some business I’d been transacting inland – that is to say, I’d been stealing. Instead of my mother mending clothes, I found the renegade monk Auxilius in the ruined storehouse where we’d been dumped by Ethelbert. He was giving her the last rites while his woman cleaned vomit off the floor.

  She’d eaten something bad Ethelbert had sent over. It had been fast, Auxilius told me. Between her falling down outside the privy and dying had been barely enough time to get her baptised.

  ‘Baptised?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Auxilius replied firmly, but looking away from me. ‘She died in the Faith.’

  Was she poisoned? I’d put nothing past Ethelbert. But it was more likely he’d simply killed her with the more than usually shitty food he had taken to sending us. He’d been going off her in the past year, and his charity was going the way of desire. My half-sister sat in a corner clutching a broken doll and weeping quietly. My mother lay still quieter on the rush bed.

  Given any control, I’d have stopped the dream there. But it had carried on regardless of my own will, every sight and sound and smell as clearly recalled as if I’d been standing there again.

  Spring was coming on early. The birds were singing outside. The trees were beginning to bud. But a shaft of sunlight came through the open door and played on my mother’s dead features. I could remember when she had been so beautiful and strong. It had only been a few years before. A young fisherman had used to come and sing to her from outside the house while she tried to look scandalised. But then she had grown so suddenly old and pinched. Now she was dead. It hadn’t been much of a life, and now it was all over at the age of thirty-two.

  Little wonder I woke crying again. I pulled the window open and ignored the rain as I waited for dawn and then the call to morning prayers.

  It wasn’t all bad in Richborough, you know. I was too young to remember the time before Ethelbert had killed m
y father and taken our lands. While they were alive, my brothers would tell me what scraps they could themselves remember. My mother never spoke of the past.

  So Richborough was all I really had. I was happy enough there as a child. I’d run about with the other boys, playing at hide-and-seek in the empty shells of the administrative buildings. Often, I’d climb onto the broken walls to watch the grey, surging waves of the Channel.

  I even got an education there. When I was seven, I went to the school run by Auxilius. He’d killed a man in France. Even under King Chilperic, that was considered not quite proper for a man of the cloth. So he’d gone on the run. Safe in Richborough, he’d taken a wife and some students.

  He used to teach in a little church that still had most of its roof. ‘I am a man of God,’ he would say. ‘Therefore, God’s house is mine.’

  To be fair, no one else wanted the place. The few Christians left in town were even more lapsed than he was. He taught me and a few of the other boys in town. In return, we dug his garden and took him drink and whatever food we could lift from the local villages. What I remember most about him is his pockmarked face and his habit of blowing his nose on the ragged hem of his monastic robe – I don’t think he had any other clothes. But he was a good teacher.

  He started me on scratching the letters and syllable combinations on bits of broken roof tile. Then he taught me the use of a stylus he’d dug out of the ruined basilica. Bronze, a point at one end, a flat blade at the other, this had been used in the old days for writing on wax tablets. In small things as in great, Auxilius believed in the old ways, and he had me and the others smearing mutton fat on small pieces of board. He would dictate. When I’d got it right, I had to wipe the fat smooth and start on the next task.

  On hot days, he’d take us round what was left of the town, getting us to read the inscriptions. Or we’d go out to one of the graveyards. In those days, the stones were still in place, not yet taken off to build into walls. To my knowledge, he never instructed anyone in the Faith. But he could really bring the stick out for linguistic faults. He wasn’t interested in teaching the debased, conversational Latin of our age. What he gave us was the pure language. ‘Petere fontes,’ he used to say as he let us read from the few books he’d stolen before going on the run from his monastery – ‘Go to the sources.’