Conspiracies of Rome Read online

  ‘The idea was that they’d sit in their camp beside the shrine of Saint Antony, waiting for orders that would never come. Instead, they’d be taken by the prefect’s men, and the letters would be given to him. The pope would then be arrested before he could set out back from Naples.

  ‘That’s the truth, isn’t it, Lucius? You are the Column of Phocas.’

  Lucius was silent awhile. Through my half-closed eyes, I saw a range of expressions flit across his face.

  ‘In a manner, yes,’ he said at length, speaking cautiously. ‘How long have you known this?’

  ‘For a long time,’ I lied. Or did I lie? As with Martin, the elements of the puzzle were assembling themselves into a chain of reasoning so firm that I could barely conceive of not having seen it from the beginning.

  Lucius lay back and relaxed. He let one hand fall on my chest.

  ‘Very well,’ he said, ‘I’ll tell you.’ He closed his eyes and began.

  ‘There are details you haven’t caught. In the first place, the letters weren’t to be carried before the prefect. He’d only have sat on them or gone to the dispensator. The orders were that the mercenaries were to be killed and all that they had with them taken straight off to Ravenna, where the exarch would deal with the matter.

  ‘I told you I was with Phocas earlier in the year. I gave you the truth about our public meeting. He sent me away with nothing worth having. But he called me back to the Imperial Palace late in the evening. That’s where we first hatched the plan.

  ‘As you know, the man is short of money. Armies and officials need to be paid. Indemnities and bribes to the Persians require hard cash. The Eastern Church is rich, but is too close at hand to be despoiled. Take money from the Churches there, and you’ll have the priests leading insurrections in every city.

  ‘But the Western Church is fabulously rich – and no one in the East gives a shit about the sufferings of Latin priests who’ve been getting on every set of Eastern nerves for centuries with their presumptions of supremacy.

  ‘All we needed was a credible excuse to smash up the Roman Church. Any excuse would work in Constantinople – probably a simple decree would satisfy people there. But we needed something that would absolutely paralyse opinion in the West.

  ‘An offer to hand out the Purple to some illiterate savage, his hair stinking of rancid butter, would detach most civilians. An offer to tolerate the Arian heresy would detach the Churches in at least France, Spain and Africa. It might also cause uproar in Italy.

  ‘I timed the release of the letters for when Boniface was in Naples, up to his neck in mud. The dispensator may be the real power in Rome. But he still needs the pope to mouth the words he prompts. He can’t speak by himself for the Church.

  ‘But for you and your friend, those letters would by now be old news in Ravenna. The fresh news would be the arrival for trial of the pope and dispensator. Even if they could talk their way out of those charges, a trawl of the papal archives would surely turn up something else for which we could nail the Church. One way or another, we were to get an excuse to lay hands on whatever property of the Church was saleable and within reach—’

  I broke in. ‘And in return, you were to get back your family estates in Sicily and Cyprus,’ I said. ‘But why make a deal with Phocas? No one believes he’ll be around much longer. Even if he is, how can you trust a man like that?’

  Lucius smiled. He took the hand from my brow and kissed it. ‘Phocas and I hatched the plan together in Constantinople. That’s how I got the gold and the letters in Persian and Greek. But the plan grew and altered as I made the sea journey between Constantinople and Ravenna. By the time I’d had dinner with Smaragdus, certain important details were – ah – changed.

  ‘The letters were still to be intercepted and carried to Smaragdus. There were still to be arrests in Rome. But once we’d got our hands on the money of the Church, Smaragdus was to get himself declared emperor of the West. He has all the right qualifications, you know: birth, education, sufficient ability. He would denounce Phocas as a tyrant and an incompetent. He’d have stolen a march on the exarch of Africa, whose son and nephew still haven’t worked out which is to be the rival emperor. An emperor in being is worth a dozen possible claimants. At worst, we could do a deal. Africa is expendable, now the corn supplies from Sicily are adequate.

  ‘Most people in Italy would accept a Western emperor – someone at hand with the means and ability to throw out the Lombards. Though Smaragdus is a Greek, he’d govern through Latin ministers. Neither Phocas nor anyone else who might take over from him would be able to lift a finger to dislodge him.’

  ‘And the Church?’ I asked. ‘Where does the Church come into this? Orders from Constantinople are one thing. No one in Italy can get at the emperor there. But how long could Smaragdus last in Ravenna as the man who plundered the Roman Church?’

  Lucius shifted his position and looked wistfully up at the ceiling. ‘My dearest Alaric,’ he said, ‘Smaragdus is an old man. As emperor, he might have at best a few years of power. From the start, he’d need a colleague. This colleague would be in all reasonable likelihood his successor. That colleague will be me.

  ‘And that answers your question about the Church. Plundered by Smaragdus, disestablished by me, it would be in no position to make serious trouble.

  ‘So, Phocas offered me some estates. Smaragdus has given me a future claim to all Italy.

  ‘And I don’t think I have to persuade you that I don’t want this for myself. I am the right man to throw out the barbarians, keep out the Greeks, restore the Old Religion, and generally give Italy back to itself. Just imagine that: all Italy united, and without all the imperial entanglements that got my ancestors distracted from the real prize. We could start again. A united Italy, Rome its capital.’

  ‘How did you get Martin to help in this?’ I asked.

  ‘The man is a slave of the Church,’ Lucius answered with a sneer. ‘He hates the Greeks who ruined his father and had him enslaved. He hates the Roman Church for something to do with doctrine or your people or whatever. He’s got some woman with child. He wanted freedom and money. The Gods led me to him, and I offered him what he wanted.

  ‘He did a good job on that papal letter. I watched your face closely as you read it. I don’t know when you stopped believing. But you certainly believed then. He also stole the relic. He was on the dispensator’s staff, and had easy access to the Church of the Apostles—’

  ‘It was your slaves,’ I interrupted, ‘who attacked me that night in Rome. You got yourself called away on some fake appointment with your lawyer – and I wondered how that slave found you so easily. You relied on me to refuse the escort you offered. Those were your slaves in the street. And that’s why you couldn’t get the wood for the bathhouse boiler. After I’d killed three of them, you were short of slaves.’

  Lucius spoke sharply: ‘Alaric, I want you to know that those slaves had strict orders only to frighten you and then run away. I had to get your mind focused on those letters. You must understand how I needed them back, and how only you could lead me to them.

  ‘When I heard your story, I had the survivor beaten to death – him and one other who stood in the main street. I would never, under any circumstances, have had you harmed.’

  So that was what the beaten slave had meant when he called out about ‘the others’. Was this fifth slave the one who saved me? I didn’t ask. Instead, I asked about Silas of Edessa.

  That, Lucius explained, had been a mistake. He’d grown alarmed at what I’d heard in the Exchange about the Column of Phocas, so ordered the death of the old man. Unfortunately, the slaves had come across Silas boasting about the money I’d given him, and had killed him instead.

  At last – and I’d dreaded this – I turned to Maximin. Why kill him?

  Lucius looked away from me and spoke softly.

  ‘I was waiting all night and much of the next day on the Aurelian Way. The plan was that I’d intercept the prefect’s me
n as they rode back with the captured articles and have them taken straight off to Ravenna. I’d bought one of the officers.

  ‘Instead, the men rode by with just you and Maximin. There had been no interception, he said, nor battle, nor frustrated exchange. There had just been the rescue of a priest and his barbarian assistant from an attempted robbery. The priest had the relic. There was no mention of anything else.

  ‘I nearly panicked. I thought of riding right off there and then to Ravenna. Instead, I went back to Rome, to see what would happen, and what opportunities might still be available. I sacrificed to the Gods outside the city walls. They gave me a favourable answer.

  ‘In Rome, I had Martin check your movements. You didn’t tell the prefect about the letters. You didn’t give them to the dispensator. Either you were holding on to them for some reason of your own, or you hadn’t bothered to read them. Martin soon guessed it was the latter.

  ‘Martin got himself assigned to you so he could watch you, and perhaps steal the letters back. When he learnt that the dispensator had called Maximin to an unexpected meeting, we knew he’d got wind of something, and would soon have the letters in his hand. That would have ruined everything. He already knew I was up to something. This would give him all the proof he needed. He’d dig and dig. Eventually, he’d come up with enough of the truth to get me and Smaragdus had up ourselves for treason. We had to get those letters back.

  ‘I arranged for the messenger who cancelled the meeting. I killed the monk Ambrose. Martin then wrote the letter that got Maximin out just as dark was falling.’

  ‘Did you kill Maximin?’ I asked.

  ‘No!’ Lucius spoke firmly. ‘Look Alaric, I’m telling you the whole truth. You must believe me that I didn’t kill your friend.

  ‘The plan was to jump him and grab the letters. I’d be home in time to arrange dinner for you. He’d get up the next day with a sore head. There was no need to kill him. You came into the plot without realising. You’d have been out before you realised.

  ‘But it all went wrong. First, Maximin put up the most tremendous fight. It took two big men and one smaller to get him off the street into the shade of that portico. Even then, he fought like a maniac.

  ‘Then, we ourselves were attacked from behind. It must have been the dispensator’s men. It can only have been them. If so, your One-Eye is one of them. But we were attacked, and there was a general fight. From those bloody footprints, you might think it was a premeditated killing. But it was much more confused than that. I just don’t know who struck the killing blow. It might not even have been one of us.

  ‘Maximin was down. We had no time to search him. We ran off. The next morning, I heard about the killing. I heard how the body had been carefully placed beside the Column of Phocas – a warning to us, I took this, from the dispensator. I heard from Martin about the search of your lodgings. I grew more and more convinced that the dispensator’s men hadn’t got the letters either.’

  ‘So you came looking for me,’ I said. ‘When you found me sleeping in the sun, you sat beside me and waited for me to wake up.’

  Yes, Lucius had used me like a clever hunting dog. He’d helped me gather up and connect the fragments of evidence available into a credible and largely true narrative. In return, I’d taken him steadily closer to the moment when he could set hands on those letters again. The dispensator would have no evidence. The plot could begin over again – only this time, with me to vouch for them and a trail of bodies, the provenance of the letters would be all the stronger for the brief delay. Losing the gold was well worth the additional prize.

  Lucius had acted his part in the drama with a smooth conviction that I’d never once doubted in my waking moments. Even as he handed out knowledge he already had, he’d made it look freshly uncovered.

  Did this mean . . . did this mean everything had been a lie?

  Lucius must have understood the look on my face.

  ‘Alaric,’ he said, ‘I was attracted to you in the physical sense when we first met at the dinner party. Then the Gods told me at the sacrifice that you would help me achieve the great purpose of my life. Even then, though, I was still prepared to use you and move on.

  ‘It was the next day, when I found you sleeping by the river, that everything changed. You can’t know how long it seemed when I sat watching you sleep. You can’t imagine the longing and tenderness and desire for moral cleanliness that welled up in my heart. I can’t feel your touch, I can’t look at you, but my whole body and soul catch fire.

  ‘I didn’t tell you the complete truth, Alaric. I couldn’t tell you that truth. But I love you, Alaric. And so long as I am alive, I will never be apart from you.’

  I moved my body close against his. We were both already sweating lightly from the heat of the day outside. Lucius moaned gently and ran his hands over the muscles of my upper back.

  ‘Alaric, in just a short while, we shall be in Ravenna. There are libraries there so great, you will not comprehend their size until you have seen for yourself. As a co-emperor’s consort, you will have open access to every library in the city, public and private. With Phocas out of the way, I can arrange Alexandria and Constantinople itself. Every piece of knowledge you’ve ever wanted will be yours for the having.

  ‘By all means, send books to England. But also have them copied for the new Italy. We shall build a great future – but on the foundations of our great past. We need to recover that past, now most of us have lost it. That includes all our learning. But we shall need new libraries, and teachers to explain the meaning of the ancient writings placed there. Who could be better as my minister for learning than you?’

  Lucius used the phrase ‘magister scholium’ – ‘master of the schools’. I wasn’t just to be his bed companion – his Antinous. I was also to be an integral part in his plan of renaissance. There were to be statues of me in every city, and my name on the pediment of every new school and library. I’d be . . . I racked my brain for a parallel. Except I’d be the younger, I’d be to him what Plato had tried to be to Dion of Syracuse.

  ‘A place in the imperial government,’ I said. ‘Every library in the world open to my direct or indirect inspection. An army of secretaries and architects and builders. The revival of learning in Italy, and me to supervise! You tempt me, Lucius.’

  ‘I don’t tempt, my love. I promise. Together, we will create a new order.’ Lucius sat up. ‘But we must be on the road again. We must get to the exarch before I can deliver on anything.’

  ‘Come to me, Lucius,’ I said smiling. I held out my arms. ‘Lucius, I love you.’

  I took his head in my hands as he sat beside me and kissed him long on the mouth. Still holding his head, I twisted my hands suddenly, one jerking forward, one back. I heard the snap of his neck like a dry twig.

  Lucius died at once, with a slight convulsion, his body flopped forward onto mine. The last thing he could have known was the unbounded happiness flowing from the surety that I loved him.

  49

  I don’t know how long I sat cradling his naked body against mine. I wanted to think this was another of the opium dreams – that I’d wake up beside him in another moment, and he’d send me down with a purse full of debased silver to negotiate a last change of horses; better yet that I’d wake and find myself still bumping along the road in that Greek official’s carriage, while Lucius fussed about with ointments and charms.

  But no – I was awake just outside Ravenna, and Lucius lay dead in my arms. The wonderful, glorious Lucius was dead. Lucius, whose charm, it turned out, had not failed him even with the emperor. In my arms had died the last of the Romans – and perhaps the first light of a new Italy. And I had killed him. And I now sat alone.

  Since then, Italy has gone from bad to worse. In those days, the embers of the old world still faintly glowed. They are now extinguished forever. I can’t say how many cities that were then just about surviving are now mere heaps of overgrown ruins. An age of chaos and destruction stands between tha
t world and whatever will finally emerge in its place.

  Did I contribute to that? Did I, to revenge the death of one man, help bring on the death of many more?

  I don’t think so. Lucius was a great man. He had almost every ability needed to do great things. One thing only he lacked, and that was common sense. At the level of high politics, I have no doubt he could have defrauded Phocas – and perhaps also the exarch – out of Italy. He could have done over the pope and dispensator as individuals. But did he seriously think he could replace something as solid as the Roman Church with a revived paganism led by a few eccentrics and vagrant magicians? I think not.

  All his noble plans would have been brought to grief in very short order by his proposal to base his new order on the rubble of the Church. He might have got as far as deposing Smaragdus in one palace coup. With every Italian of substance – no, every Italian – against him, I doubt he’d have lasted six months. At best, he’d have been another Julian. And he’d not even have left that legacy of interesting writings and speculations on what might have been. More likely, he’d only have accelerated a collapse that was already under way.

  But it wasn’t politics that went through my head as I sat alone with the body of Lucius. I tried to adjust the long lock of hair that fell down from his forehead, and close the dulling eyes. All I managed to do was push the loose head from one unnatural angle to another. The eyes and mouth hung open in expressions of blank horror.

  Lucius was dead, and I had killed him. For all I loved him, for all I clung to him, for all he had done with and for me, I had to kill him. Because I loved him, I had made his death as sweet as any man might want. He died in the arms of his love, just moments away from a triumph after which all else would surely be disappointment. I sent him into the darkness with all hopes undimmed. But I had killed him, and he lay dead in my lap.