Conspiracies of Rome Read online

  I think the sun was heading towards the west when I heard a rattling. ‘In the name of the Church, open this door!’

  It was a harsh, urgent voice. Still looking down at my poor, dead Lucius, I gave it no attention. ‘Open, or I break it open.’

  The voice was louder and more menacing. Still I ignored it.

  There was a great crash and splintering of timber. Fragments of shattered door hung loose on the hinges. The men who’d smashed it in stood smartly back. In their place, filling the doorway, stood One-Eye. Sword in hand, he was, as ever, dressed in black.

  He looked at us awhile with his good eye, taking in the situation. ‘Get dressed,’ he said at last in a quiet, neutral voice. He gave orders in an Eastern language I didn’t understand. His assistants went downstairs, where I soon heard cries and protests of diminishing volume.

  He threw my clothes over at me. ‘Get these on you,’ he said, now with a hint of anger in his voice. He leaned forward, speaking quietly again, though there was no one to overhear. ‘Your life is in the hands of the dispensator. He alone will decide your fate. But my orders are that, if at any time between now and our arrival in the Lateran, you speak a single word to anybody, I am to kill you on the spot. Do you understand? One word of any kind, and I kill you.’

  I nodded.

  ‘Then get dressed, and be fast about it.’

  As I finished dressing, One-Eye had his assistants pack everything up. The room was to be left empty, all trace of our presence there erased as if it had been a sheet of misused parchment. He made sure to take the obvious items into his own possession.

  At last, he scooped Lucius up and wrapped him in some of the bedding. He threw the body over his shoulder as if it had been a carpet.

  On the ground floor, everyone else at the inn had been forced at sword-point into the kitchen, where great and humble stood alike, all protesting at the violation of their rights. The door to the kitchen was guarded by the three assistants One-Eye had with him, also dressed in black.

  There were other armed men in that place, and these might have resisted. But the dispensator’s warrant, it seemed, was valid even to the gates of Ravenna.

  ‘God save us, master!’ a voice cried in rough Latin. One-Eye stood out in the courtyard, with me close beside. He was awaiting the final gathering and loading of our horses. He stiffened at the cry. From outside the main gate came the sound of many hooves. A whole party of men was tearing up or down the road towards the inn.

  One-Eye put a hand on his sword. He called out more orders in that unknown language. Then he turned to me. ‘Remember what I said,’ he repeated. ‘One word and you die. One step beyond where I set you, and you die.’

  He turned back to face the riding party as it pelted at full speed into the courtyard. It was obvious at once they’d been coming up from Rome, not down from Ravenna. One-Eye relaxed the grip on his sword, but kept it covered.

  It was a party of five men. Covered in dust from the long ride, the cloaks that covered their heads had turned from dark to streaky white.

  The leader of the party continued forward a few yards after the others had stopped. After a momentary pause to take in what he saw, he jumped briskly down and walked confidently over to us. He staggered just a little as he pulled back the hood of his cloak, but recovered his balance at once, and continued over to us as if just back from a brisk morning canter.

  The diplomat looked at One-Eye and smiled. He let his eyes linger a moment on the rolled-up bundle. ‘It seems, my friend, I am just a moment too late.’

  Except for his black face and the high, accented Latin, he might have been any other shabby horseman we’d encountered on the road. He looked back at his four assistants. He looked at me and smiled. ‘You would be the luckiest man alive, had I only got to you first,’ he said. ‘As it is—’

  ‘As it is,’ One-Eye took up in a voice of flinty grimness, ‘you are too late. Ride on towards Ravenna if you must. The exarch might not hang you. Or go back to Rome. In either case, you can get message back to your master in Carthage that you failed again.’

  The diplomat looked again at me. Silent, he bowed. He turned back to his assistants. They’d ridden like the wind up from Rome. They’d checked every inn along the road. But it had been too late.

  He called something at the others in their own language. Then he laughed. The others following, he led his horse into the stables.

  Unseen by anyone else, Lucius and I were taken back out onto the road. I was given a horse – something big and unfamiliar that it alarmed me ever so slightly to ride. One of the three assistants rode close beside me. Without speaking, he gave me to understand that the orders they’d received would be carried out to the letter if need be.

  They buried Lucius in the marsh. The city walls were just visible in the distance. Otherwise, I looked over a flat, dreary waste. There was no tree nor rise of the land to break up the monotony. Not even a bird sang. They gouged a shallow hole by the road and threw the body in. It landed unwrapped with the head by chance at a normal angle. The eyes looked at me from a face that carried some ghost of its living expression. I ignored the command to get back on my horse, and looked steadily down until the black, stinking mud had closed over him forever.

  Lucius had come so far. Now he lay in an unmarked grave by the long causeway that led from Ravenna.

  I wept. I wept so that I could hardly stand. I was made to remount, but I wept on, oblivious of the horse that moved beneath me, taking me further and further from the one I had loved.

  The journey back from Ravenna was less dramatic than my journey there. We didn’t bother with the Flaminian Way. Instead, we cut straight across country, riding on little, often unmade roads. In the winter and early spring, I don’t doubt, they were impassable. By now, the hot sun had done its work, and they were as hard and smooth as if they’d been paved.

  We crossed at some point into Lombard territory. We were met at the frontier by an armed guard bearing the insignia of the Lombard king. They gave a formal salute as we crossed over, and rode with us in close formation. They deterred any armed attack on us, and waved us through any official delay.

  We passed through regions of devastation more utter than I’d ever seen before. We passed also through regions of surprising prosperity. Some of the towns were just as large as, and no more apparently ruined than, those in imperial territory. But we didn’t stop at any inhabited point. Each evening, we camped in the open. I slept beside the fire, always under close watch. I said not a word. Beyond the minimal instructions that One-Eye rasped at me, no one spoke to me.

  I think we made still-better time across country than I had with Lucius.

  We crossed the whole northern width of Italy, coming at last to an isolated inlet somewhere on the western coast. A fast ship awaited us there. Propelled by strong slaves who kept time to the rapid beat of the drum, we made an uneventful passage to the south. I looked over the left side several times, thinking I made out some of the landmarks I’d seen coming along the Aurelian Way with Maximin. Once, I was convinced I saw the shrine of Saint Antony rising above the surrounding cover.

  On the tenth day after setting out from the marshes of Ravenna, we docked in the port of Ostia. Bathed in sea water and clothed in the white linen Lucius had urged on me for my reception by the exarch, I looked over the crumbling docks and semi-deserted town that had once served as the sea port for the greatest city in the world.

  One-Eye spoke earnestly with the captain, every now and again casting a look with his good eye in my direction.

  We transferred to a boat with a bottom flat enough to get us through the now silted estuary of the Tiber. We arrived in Rome early the next morning, disembarking by the island on the Tiber. I was taken in a covered litter straight to the house of Marcella. This was occupied by more of those dark guards. Neither Marcella nor the slaves spoke to me. Gretel darted me a concerned look as she hurried by. I smiled weakly back.

  Except they had been thoroughly search
ed, my rooms were more or less as I’d left them. It would have been painful, had I not still been so numbed, to look on those familiar things I’d left behind. There were my books and papers spread out on the table. There was the green stone Edwina had given me.

  Once more, I wished and wished I could have blotted out all the previous days. Only, I couldn’t know how far back I wanted to go. Was it to the day before Maximin was murdered? Was it to the morning when I’d sat beside Lucius to question the household? Or was it to the day when Lucius had given me the chance to burn those letters? He’d known I wouldn’t burn them. If only I had, things might have turned out so very different. What had been going through Maximum’s mind to keep him from burning the things? I’d never know.

  But time moves on like the pen of a rapid scribe. And not prayers nor act of human will can bring it back – nor any tears wash out a word of it. What had happened had happened. Only what might happen next was still in issue.

  I sat and tore at the loaf that had been set for me, and drank the whole jug of wine that came with it. For the first time in days and days, I began to put my thoughts in order, and to plan for that mystery of what would happen next.

  50

  The lamps were being lit as I was ushered into the dispensator’s office. He sat at his desk with One-Eye, who was interpreting and comparing the Greek and Persian letters. Over in the corner, sitting so still I barely noticed him, was a new monkish secretary.

  ‘Sit down, Aelric,’ the dispensator said. His voice and face were carefully neutral.

  As I sat in the chair he indicated, he returned to the forged papal letter. He read awhile. At length, he looked up. ‘I want you, Aelric, to tell me all that you know about these letters. Do not assume either knowledge or ignorance on my part. I want the whole truth as you know it.’

  For the first time since I left the inn outside Ravenna, I opened my mouth and began to speak. I did as I was asked, telling the truth exactly as I’ve given it to you. I held nothing back, no matter how embarrassing to me or criminal it might have been.

  I spoke for a long time. The dispensator interrupted me only twice, and that was to silence me when a slave came in a couple of times to adjust the lamps. The secretary in the corner took a full shorthand note of the narrative.

  I finished. The dispensator looked at me. One-Eye brushed his sleeve gently, drawing his attention to some words in what I took to be his own written report. The dispensator read and nodded some agreement. He looked over at me and spoke.

  ‘We had known for some time that Basilius was up to something. Our problem was that we didn’t know what. We had a spy among his household slaves. That allowed us to know that he was in communication with the exarch. And we knew that he had been involved in the murders of Father Maximin and of Brother Ambrose. But our spy was not privy to the secrets that Basilius shared with an inner ring of slaves. We were not even aware until very late that he had recruited Martin to the conspiracy.

  ‘We knew that he had arranged something outside Populonium. We knew that you and Father Maximin had accidentally wrecked that part of his plan. But we had no idea of what had been arranged.

  ‘Simon –’ he indicated to One-Eye, whose name I mention but think it rather late to start using – ‘did speak briefly with two renegades from those English mercenaries stationed outside Populonium, but was unable to gather from them as much information as you seem to have managed. By the time he was able to piece together from other sources that there was to be some kind of exchange by the shrine of Saint Antony, you and Father Maximin had been there first.

  ‘Simon followed you to Rome. He arranged for both of you to be closely followed.’

  So it was indeed One-Eye who’d been following us! I asked about the botched attack on me that Lucius had arranged. It was One-Eye again who’d intervened to save me just when I really needed help. I nodded an acknowledgement of his help without thanking him for it.

  The dispensator continued: ‘It was, as you rightly gathered, towards the end of our first meeting in this office that I was given a further report from Simon. Because of some delay for which I may blame Martin, this was handed to me a day late. In it, Simon informed me that there might have been letters with the mercenaries, that these had apparently disappeared, and that you and Father Maximin were the most likely present possessors. Because of my own delay in opening that report – I blame my own excitement over the return of the relic of Saint Vexilla – I was not able to call for Father Maximin until the following morning.

  ‘A further lapse on our part, though I cannot blame Simon for this, is that we lost sight of Father Maximin the evening before he died. You may recall that the pair of you were invited to a gathering of some of the more decayed Roman nobility. We were aware of this invitation. When Simon saw you go out with another dressed in Father Maximin’s cloak, he did not realise until too late that you had gone out with Martin. This meant that we had no more notion than you had of what Father Maximin could have done with those letters. It never occurred to us he did not still have them on his last day.

  ‘You know the rest of the story. I can only add that you and Basilius were watched closely throughout your investigation. The disguise you adopted to visit the financial district was penetrated at once, though Simon was not able to keep track of your movements on your last night in Rome, when you were directed by Basilius.

  ‘It was my decision to leave you and Basilius to the investigation that he must so richly have enjoyed. I knew that, sooner or later, you would lead him to the letters, and that Simon and I would not be far behind.

  ‘It is testimony to his resourcefulness – and to yours – that we were not able to keep up with you at the critical moments, and that the interception we asked our Lombard friends to arrange on the Flaminian Way was less successful than we hoped.’

  ‘Your Lombard friends?’ I asked, looking closely at his face. I saw no change in its bland, official expression.

  ‘Yes, our Lombard friends.’ He picked up the forged papal letter and looked briefly at it again. ‘This is a most ingenious production,’ he said, dropping it lightly in my direction. ‘Martin has a fine grasp of the diplomatic style. We really should have used him for more important work than we did.

  ‘Of course, what would have given the letter away as a forgery is the touch about toleration of the Arian heresy. I doubt if anyone would have believed that. It would have exposed the whole letter as a forgery.

  ‘Even so, it would not have done for this letter to get into the wrong hands. It might have been used to our brief but considerable disadvantage. A search of our archives would reveal much that we do not yet wish to be revealed to the world. Be assured, the Church has thought much about the future of Italy and the corresponding safety of Rome and the Lateran. Not all that we have discussed has been carried into effect. Much of it cannot be carried into effect. We have never considered the toleration of heresy. But there is little else we have not considered.

  ‘And yes, we do hope for some eventual full accommodation with the Lombards. For the moment, we try to keep relations with their kings as open as we can. Our accommodation may involve a wider political settlement – perhaps with the Lombards, perhaps with some other force. But this is not presently an option. For the moment, we remain good and loyal subjects of His Imperial Majesty in Constantinople, whoever this may be.’

  He looked again at all three letters. ‘Most ingenious. No, too ingenious. If I knew not better, I should assume that Martin had got himself access to our most secret archives.’

  He picked up the letters and stood. He dropped them into a metal box on the floor of his office. He poured in hot lamp oil and dropped in a lighted taper. The room filled with smoke and the acrid smell of burning parchment. Soon, the letters were reduced to crackling ash. Before they went out, as if as an afterthought, the dispensator added the papyrus note of our meeting and One-Eye’s report.

  ‘These letters never existed,’ he said firmly. ‘This meeting di
scussed no matters pertinent to any alleged existence of these letters. The lord Basilius has unaccountably disappeared. Bearing in mind the desperate state of his finances, this will surprise no one.

  ‘You, Aelric, have been out of Rome on confidential business connected with the English mission. Tomorrow, you will return to the scriptorium here, to continue supervising the work of copying that has proceeded regardless of your lengthy absence.’

  ‘So, I’m not to be killed.’ I didn’t ask. Rather, I made a statement of possibly doubtful fact.

  The dispensator threw up his arms. For the first time that evening, he smiled. ‘Goodness, no, Aelric! What could possibly have given you that idea? Ours is a Church of perfect love and forgiveness. We can have no blood on our hands, nor ever will have. For some offences, of course, we will hand over malefactors to the secular authorities for punishment according to secular law. But ours is a Church of peace and love.

  ‘I do not see what offence you can have committed to justify your handing over to the prefect. In any event, considering all the circumstances, I do not think it would be appropriate to send you before the prefect. And – again considering all circumstances – I do not think you would ever be foolish enough to take yourself before the prefect or any other official of the emperor.

  ‘Nor,’ he raised a finger in emphasis, ‘would you think to share any information with another person, presently absent from Rome, who acts for an entirely separate interest.’

  The dispensator examined the front of his tunic. ‘I did, at our last meeting, suggest that you might find the air outside Rome somewhat more to your liking. But this was purely to encourage you to give more attention to the work of finding those letters. And now you have tried the air outside.’

  I stood up as if to leave. I thought everything had been said. The dispensator stopped me. I could think of nothing more to say. As ever, he could.

  ‘There is one matter outstanding,’ he said. He nodded to One-Eye, who went to the door. There was a whispered instruction. A bound prisoner was pushed into the room. I could smell the filth clinging to the body and dirty rags of a man who’d been on the run in the sewers of Rome, and then in some disgusting prison cell.