Conspiracies of Rome Read online

  The inside of the Exchange was mostly a single room. It was smaller than the temple I’d visited with Lucius, and had no gorgeous marble on the walls. But it was in similar style. It gave plenty of space for the jostling, shouting crowd of dealers who spent much of their waking lives there.

  In the middle of the room, I saw a circle of boards facing outwards. On these, slaves were hard at work chalking up the latest prices. Within the circle, on a high platform, sat an official dressed in blue silk. Behind him was a water clock in working order. Hung on these were icons of the emperor, the pope and various saints.

  The diplomat’s plan didn’t go quite as expected. The rumour of the pope’s death was quickly disbelieved. The shares fell by a little, and then began to recover. They were helped by a counter-rumour that Athens and all the Greek cities had declared for the exarch of Africa and closed their ports to Italy so long as it stood by Phocas.

  The shouting of offers and counter-offers mounted to a steady roar. I looked round, confused. What little the diplomat had told me about the markets hadn’t prepared me for the chaos around me. It was as if I’d stepped into a riot. For a moment, it looked even to me that the plan would have to be called off. If the shares rose back to their unmanipulated level, no one would sell options to buy for less.

  Then everything changed without warning. Other rumours began to circulate. They passed in quick succession from one chattering dealer to another. I couldn’t keep up with them. They came so quickly that no one believed them. The only question now debated was who was coining the rumours and for what purpose.

  Now suspicious and confused, the dealers began to mark all the prices down. They fell steadily. The slaves rubbed the boards and scraped wildly with their chalk. I later realised that this was one of those rare opportunities when nerve and ready cash can bring in a rich harvest of gold. At the time, I didn’t understand a tenth of what was going on. But I had fixed in my head the notion of the unmanipulated price of the shares in question; and I could see that the market price was heading firmly downwards.

  As agreed, I went over to Silas, a monstrously fat Syrian with a suspiciously black beard and gold rings sunk into all his fingers. You see, the diplomat had heard he fancied my type, and might be too excited to ask many questions. I showed him one of my letters of authority and asked him to help me buy the options. I flashed him a broad, open smile that screamed stupidity.

  ‘A nice boy like you needs to be careful in a place like this,’ he said, breathing garlic into my face. ‘But you’ve come to the right man. I’ll see you right, just you trust me.’

  And he did. I got options to buy at about three-fifths of the unmanipulated price. Silas weighed the coin while a clerk drew the contract. He took out some of the less regular pieces and tested them between his teeth. A few of them he tossed back to me. I replaced them with an equal weight of the imperial coins in my own purse.

  He looked oddly at these. But I fluttered my eyelashes and asked admiringly about the icon of Saint Simeon Stylites set up on his counting table. That took his mind off the good coins I’d handed over.

  He reached out and dabbled his podgy fingers over my bottom. I could feel the patting through the tight fabric of my trousers. I forced out a dazzling smile and tried not to shudder. His face sweaty with lust, he told me I’d done a brilliant deal – especially since he might not be inclined to be hard on me should I need to sell them back at some point. He was sure we could ‘come to some agreement’. He crossed himself and kissed the icon.

  I didn’t need to take up his kind offer. A shouting crowd had surrounded the diplomat. His secretary’s disguise had been uncovered in short order, and he was being pressed to explain his subterfuge. He looked wildly around. He caught my eye, and pulled hard on his crinkly beard. That was the message we’d earlier agreed. The planned actions were all off. I was to use my initiative. I heard him shouting loud above the surrounding roars of disapproval. The pope was expected back tomorrow, he cried. There were no other shipments of incense, from Athens or anywhere else. He was ever so sorry for any trouble he’d caused.

  ‘In the name of God and the double nature of Christ,’ he looked at the Syrians, ‘not forgetting His Single Directing Will, be merciful with me. I am but a poor black from the land of Kush. You have discovered me. Let that be my punishment.’

  One of the dealers made a gesture of wiping his arse with one of the options he’d lately bought. He sneered a question at the diplomat: would he be able to execute without selling his horse?

  More than ever, rumour clashed with rumour in that great trading room. The dealers ran about like disturbed ants, clasping hands when they met one another, and exchanging promises and slips of papyrus. The slaves scrubbed madly at the boards, chalking and rechalking the prices. The presiding official alone sat silent and serene.

  In this commotion, the shares rose sharply. They went straight back to par and then rose to one solidus and a tenth. As they headed towards one and a fifth, I sold my own options on to an Armenian. He sold them straight on for more. I could feel the sudden rush of confidence in the room. Every price was rising.

  I was tempted to spend some of my own money on what seemed an attractive forward contract on some Spanish slaves bound for a silver mine. But I knew enough about the markets to be aware of how little I yet understood them. I kept my purse resolutely closed.

  Looking over at him, I saw that the diplomat had suddenly lost his crestfallen look. He hadn’t made the absolute killing he’d described to me, but was somehow looking very perky. He was producing document after document before the other dealers. These had stopped shouting at him. Their laughter stilled; they were now pulling on their beards and looking nervously over at the Exchange officials. Some of them had gathered together under a clump of icons, and were talking very quickly in a language I didn’t know.

  I now realise the diplomat had been involved in an immense double or even treble bluff. My own part in the plan had been to help in a diversion from the main business of ripping off everyone in earnest. At the time, I suspected something of the sort, but lacked the understanding of the markets needed to say exactly what was going on.

  But I had no cause for complaint. I had a draft safely in my tunic for over a hundred pounds of gold. I’d seen for myself what fertiliser a few lies could be with just five pounds of the stuff. I’d had the draft made out to me. Once it was cleared at the Papal Bank, the diplomat could have his share. But I’d harvested a straight, easy, forty-five pounds of gold for myself.

  No more moonlit frauds for me, I thought. From now on, I’d do them all indoors. And every ounce of gold thereby gained would go on securing me from the common vicissitudes of life, and on preserving every ancient book I could lay hands on.

  I can now see where the diplomat had ostensibly gone wrong. His own part of the fraud was too gross to be believed. What he should have done was to say that the pope had been advised to put off the consecration to the autumn. That would have been more credible, and would probably have still sent the shares down before the truth came out. He also should have planned for a sudden rebound.

  But all this is irrelevant. I had been involved in a fraud that was meant to be uncovered. The real fraud was something much larger, involving many more securities besides the incense shipment. While the other dealers were laughing at him, the diplomat had made a killing on the markets. At the time, it really was all beyond me. Still, I hadn’t done badly. I’d saved the day where the secondary fraud was concerned. Perhaps I could even still insist on half. Bear in mind, I had all the takings in my own name.

  As I was balancing the certainty of keeping more of the gold, if I had a mind to, against the prospect of further riggings of the market with the diplomat, an old man sidled up to me. Short, thin, clean-shaven, he addressed me in a passable English of the Wessex dialect.

  ‘I know who you are,’ he said with a wheezing laugh. ‘You’re that boy whose friend was killed the other night.’

  �
��Where did you learn English?’ I asked nervously.

  ‘In England. Where else?’

  A reasonable answer. Where else would anyone want to learn such an unimportant language, and learn it well?

  He explained he’d lived there for several years, handling the local business for a company based in Carthage. He’d picked up pretty child slaves for rich profligates out East, and a few of our black pearls. He’d paid with dyed silks and pepper.

  ‘Good business in England,’ he said. ‘I hear Holy Mother Church is doing well there. Do you think King Ethelbert might want to borrow some money? You get me an introduction, and I’ll pay good commission. Kent has its moments in the summer months, and I’d like to see the place again.’

  I said I’d consider his offer, asking him to keep our little secret from Silas, whose face I could see at twenty yards was turning the colour of a roof tile. The diplomat and I had worried I might be recognised, but had decided to risk that – bear in mind, I’d only been out in Rome dressed as a noble, and had never before ventured across the river. Most dealers never left their own district.

  I thought to add to the old man that I had some good contacts in Wessex who probably wouldn’t hang him if he turned up with a bale of silk. At that moment, though, I saw through the open door that Martin stood in the square.

  At first, I thought I must be mistaken. But as I pressed my way through the tight crowd of dealers towards the door, I knew it was him. He was dressed in nicely pressed white linen. He was holding hands with a very pretty young woman. Dark, braided hair, obviously pregnant, she was gazing up at him with a look of happy trust on her face. Martin looked back at her.

  It was because of the expression on his own face that I thought I’d mistaken him. I was used to the reserved, often sullen look of a slave. Now he smiled, his face creased with the happiness of a day out in the sun. He pointed at the Exchange.

  I dodged behind a pillar and continued to observe. They carried on walking until I could no longer see them through the open door. I came out into the square, but they were disappearing into a crowded side street. I would have followed, but the old man had caught up with me.

  ‘Bad business with your friend,’ he said. ‘Still, he’s soon to be a saint of the Church if I hear right. But a bad business, all the same. You know,’ he continued, ‘you should be careful with the Column of Phocas. They’re a bad lot. They did for your friend. If you get on their wrong side, they’ll do for you.’

  ‘What is this “Column of Phocas”?’ I asked, spinning back to him, Martin forgotten. ‘What do you know about the Column of Phocas?’

  ‘All wise men know about the Column of Phocas. The wisest men don’t speak about it.’ He laughed at his epigram.

  I pressed him, but he’d closed up. I offered him dinner with Ethelbert. I did think to threaten him with a beating outside. But he’d closed up.

  ‘Beware the Column of Phocas,’ he said, slipping back into the crowd, ‘if you ever want to pray with me in the church at Canterbury.’

  31

  ‘Have you any notion of who this diplomat is?’ Lucius asked over lunch. ‘Did he tell you anything about himself?’

  He’d taken me to a select place in one of the restaurants in the Market of Trajan. Being higher than the Forum, this was still in use. We sat in the open with a canvas overhead to keep the hot sun at bay. There was a fine view over the upper parts of the Forum. In the bright sunshine, it didn’t look too derelict.

  ‘I really have no idea who the man is,’ I said. ‘I know he spends a lot of time at the Lateran. Otherwise, he sits in his rooms, thinking of ways to defraud the Roman dealers.’

  ‘We know that he spoke with Maximin on the day of the killing,’ Lucius said. ‘We have only his word for what was said.’

  I asked Lucius if he really thought the diplomat might have been involved in the murder.

  ‘I think nothing,’ said Lucius. ‘The man has been in Rome some while on a mission that no one is able to explain. If he’s from his local king, he should be in Constantinople, addressing himself to the emperor.

  ‘One rumour I picked up is that he’s working for the exarch of Africa. If old Heraclius can get the Western Church on side, that’s all the worse for Phocas. But I think nothing of rumours in themselves. All I know for certain is that he’s been flashing money all over the place, buying horses and various luxury goods. You now tell me how he gets his money. . . . Oh, yes, and don’t forget – he was the last person known to have had an extended conversation with Maximin. I say you should keep an eye on him.’

  Lucius asked me to explain again what I’d been doing with him in the markets. It still didn’t seem to go in. He knew enough about the law of property, and had been forced by circumstances to learn about the intricacies of the testacy laws. But financial speculation was beyond him. And I got the impression he thought it all somewhat demeaning. I let my words trail off.

  We turned back to the assault on me the previous evening. While I was going once more over the story in outline, a slave returned from the place of the attack. No bodies, he said, but plenty of blood. He held out the slashed, bloody cloak I’d left there. No one to identify, I groaned to myself. The one I’d injured must have come back with help. Someone at least was showing an unusual interest in keeping the streets uncluttered.

  ‘From now on, my dear Alaric,’ Lucius said, ‘I want you to promise me you won’t go out again at night by yourself. I should have sent back that escort for you. It was wrong of me to go off and leave you like that. Worse,’ he smiled, ‘it was careless. Nevertheless, I think we can now be sure those letters are still about somewhere.’

  I agreed.

  ‘And I think we can say that those men weren’t sent to kill you. I don’t doubt for a moment you can be good with a knife. But one of you against four experienced street scum – they’d have had you before you could realise if murder had been on their agenda. They wanted you alive. Someone wanted you to take him to those letters. The question now is, who wanted you?’

  ‘It was the Column of Phocas,’ I answered. ‘Our column isn’t a thing of stone and gilded bronze. It’s a group of men.’

  As you ought to know, my Dear Reader, the Latin word ‘columna’ means ‘column’. But it also can mean general support. ‘Columna Phocasi’ can therefore be translated into Greek as ‘Movement for the Protection of Phocas’.

  I was pleased I had uncovered more of the mystery – and had done it without help from Lucius. For the first time, I was taking information to him. I was less pleased that Lucius was so sure I hadn’t been in serious danger from those men.

  I suddenly felt less happy with myself. I hadn’t told him about the stranger who helped me. And I’d decided to hold back on my sighting of Martin. The first made my side of the fight less impressive. Revealing the second might only get Martin into a trouble I didn’t feel inclined to inflict on him.

  We sat awhile in silence. I looked past Lucius, over the terrace, down past the shabby or ruined or still fine buildings, to the Forum, and to the gleaming statue atop its column. I looked back to a polished wine pitcher on a table just a few yards from us. Though distorted, I could see myself in the reflection. I’d got those crude barbarian things off me as soon as I’d got back to Marcella’s. I was now dressed in my one good remaining suit of clothes. This was of heavy linen – white with no colour for the border. I looked decidedly beautiful. I felt better at once. I had to resist the urge to get up and go looking for a better reflection.

  Now I was even richer, I’d have those tailors stitching through the night for an entire new wardrobe. Perhaps I’d go for the heaviest grade of silk.

  ‘It looks,’ said Lucius, breaking the silence, ‘if what you say is correct, as if we’re dealing with some secret imperial security service. I’m surprised, I must say. I never thought our lord and master in Constantinople was up to running anything like that. I thought straight executions with a bit of torture beforehand was his limit.


  ‘Now, Alaric, this means we’re up against something big – really big. Something very fishy was going on at that rendezvous outside Populonium. You and Maximin got in its way. He’s dead because of it, and those letters are still missing. You tell me now those letters won’t lead us straight to the killers.’

  He stopped and pulled at some bread. ‘On the other hand, it doesn’t do to get involved in imperial politics. Few come out alive. Your friend didn’t. My uncle didn’t – assuming he was ever in them. You and I need to be decidedly careful from now on. I heard this morning that one of the sons of the exarch of Africa has just laid siege to Alexandria. The other son is ready to set sail for Asia.’

  This was interesting news. I wondered how it might play on the markets. But I forced my attention back to Lucius.

  ‘The only forces Phocas has to send against them,’ he continued, ‘need to be taken from already losing wars with Persia and the barbarians. He can’t move openly in Rome against anyone. But he does appear to have a reliable gang of cut-throats at his beck and call.

  ‘Yes, let’s go quiet on this for the moment. Don’t suppose I’ve been scared off our enquiry for good. But I am now scared. And so should you be. I need to sit down and think how best to proceed. Do, please, come to me for dinner this evening. For the moment, though, let’s carry on as if things have settled down.’

  As we parted, Lucius came back to the matter of the diplomat. ‘In view of what you’ve now told me,’ he said very quietly, ‘I’d be very careful of that diplomat. If he is working for Heraclius, he might be just as dangerous to us as the Column of Phocas. Do not, I beg you, suppose you can get close to the truth by playing these people off against each other.’

  After lunch, I decided on another visit to the library of Anicius. After banking the draft, I collected Martin from the Lateran, where he told me he’d been all morning at work with the secretaries. I let his deception pass. I had no reason for complaint. Some of the books were already copied. I checked these against the originals, and was happy with them. They were mostly perfect copies. Where they deviated was usually for the better – a silent correction here, a marginal comment there. We were dealing, after all, with the semi-educated. They would welcome the occasional help with difficult words or obscure facts.