Conqueror (9 page)

‘I gave you a little opium. The pain will return, I’m afraid.’ Macson turned to him. ‘Thank you. You helped me. Though I’m not sure why.’

Nor was Belisarius. He had no business here, save to sell his books, and he certainly didn’t want any entanglement with local criminals. But perhaps there had been something in the dignity of this shabby Latin-speaker, tortured before his eyes by barbarian Germans, that had appealed to his soul. He said simply: ‘You asked me.’

Macson propped himself on his left elbow and laughed, hollow. ‘A man may ask for charity from a bishop, but he doesn’t always receive it.’

‘Besides,’ Belisarius said carefully, ‘you claimed you know me.’

‘So I do. You are Basil—’

‘Belisarius.’

‘Yes. Belisarius the east Roman. You deal in rare books from the libraries of Constantinople and Alexandria. I have worked for Theodoric before. You may not remember me - but I do you.’

Belisarius didn’t remember this man, but he had no reason to believe he was lying. ‘You are not a German.’

‘No. I was born on the other side of the estuary of the river Sabrina, in what was known as the land of the Silures, - in the days when this island was a province of Rome.’

‘You are of the
wealisc.’
Welsh.

He grimaced. ‘I am British. The
wealisc
is what the Germans call us. It is a word that means “foreigner”. Or “slave”.’

‘Tell me what was being done to you, in that church.’

‘It was a trial,’ Macson said darkly. ‘I am a learned man, sir, as is my father, who raised me as a scholar. I worked faithfully for Theodoric in his book business for many years. But Theodoric accused me of stealing from him. So I was brought to the church, to be paraded before supporters of Theodoric’s case.’

‘And you must return in three days.’

Macson studied his hand. ‘If the wound is healing I must be innocent, for God protects the good, and I will go free. But if the wound is festering it is because of the corruption of my inner heart.’

Belisarius shook his head. ‘These Germans call themselves Christians, but such a ritual has more of the pagan about it.’

‘How true,’ Macson said. ‘And how good it is to be able to converse in a civilised tongue.’

Belisarius, a hard-nosed trader, was immune to flattery. ‘Are you a slave, Macson?’

‘No,’ Macson said fiercely. ‘My father was born a slave, from a line of six generations of slaves. But we never forgot who we are. We are descended from a British woman called Sulpicia, who was raped by a German, or possibly a Norse. Her bastard child, neither British nor German nor Norse, was given up to slavery.’

‘Six generations? That’s a long time to hold a grudge.’

‘We remembered who we were, and what had been done to us. At last my father was able to purchase his freedom. Thanks to him I am free-born - the first since Sulpicia herself.’

Belisarius, not much interested, merely nodded. ‘Then tell me this, free-born. Are you guilty?’

Macson looked him in the eyes, and evidently calculated. ‘Yes. Yes, I am guilty. Theodoric is a fat, greedy fool who cut my pay. I stole food to keep my sick father alive. In your heart, do you believe that is a crime before God?’

Belisarius stood up. ‘I know very little about God. I have paid for the room for the rest of the day. You should rest. Keep your wound clean, bathe it in more wine, and try not to damage the skin further.’ He turned to go.

Macson, wincing as he moved his hand, struggled to his feet. ‘Wait. Please.’

‘I have business.’

‘I know. Perhaps I can help you.’

Belisarius, used to dealing with chancers, could see that Macson, groggy with pain and opium, was nevertheless thinking fast. ‘You can buy my books at a better rate than Theodoric, can you?’

‘No, but I can take you to better customers.’

‘Who?’

‘The monks. Especially in the north and east. Some of those monasteries are remarkably rich, Belisarius, considering what an impoverished island this has always been. And as they try to stock their libraries the abbots will pay a good price for your books - that is, they will pay a good price to Theodoric, once he brings them the books he purchased from you, marking up a handsome profit in the process.’

‘And how would I reach these monks of the north?’

‘I will guide you,’ Macson wheedled. ‘The old roads are still good, in places. It is not so difficult, if you know the way.’

‘Britain is a hazardous country, of many nations—’

‘Four. The British, the Picts, the Irish, and the Germans.’

‘Even the German lands are full of squabbling minor kings; everybody knows that.’

Macson shook his head. ‘For decades much of the German country has been under the sway of Offa of Mercia. The other German kings recognise him as
bretwalda,
over-king. He has brought a certain brutish calm to the island.’

‘Offa’s name is known on the continent.’

‘Then you see the wisdom.’

Belisarius hesitated. What Macson said made a certain sense. Theodoric was a mere middleman, and an odious middleman at that. Would it do any harm to cut him out of the deal, just this once? Besides, he suspected there was something more than Macson was telling him - something Macson wanted out of this opportunity which had so fortuitously fallen into his lap. But what could it be?

Belisarius was naturally inquisitive and adventurous; he would never have become a trader if he hadn’t been. And now his curiosity was piqued. To see more of this strange island, cut off from the Roman world for four hundred years, might make a good chapter in his memoirs of travel.

Macson, shrewd and watchful, saw something of this inner dialogue. ‘Think of the tales you will be able to tell!’

Belisarius made an impulsive decision. ‘We will make this journey—’

Macson tried to clench his fist in triumph, but winced as his burned claw refused to respond.

‘But,’ Belisarius said heavily, ‘not for three days.’

‘The law is the Germans’, not mine!’

‘If you are healing, if God’s grace is on you, we will travel on this exotic adventure of yours. If not - well, I will have lost nothing but a little time.’

‘You won’t regret it.’ Macson raised his hand. ‘I am confident this will heal, thanks to Roman medicine, if not God’s grace. One condition, though.’

Belisarius, heading for the door, turned, amused. ‘Are you serious?’

‘My father comes too.’

Gudrid walked around the village, looking for the slave from Lindisfarena.

Most of the houses, set back from the fjord’s shallow beach, were places of work: smithies, byres, barns. Stockades for the animals straggled up the hillside, as high as the grass could grow. But the big hall, thirty paces long and solidly constructed of squared and polished wood, was the centre of the community. Around its long hearth the endless winter evenings were passed in drink and talk, in play with the children, and in craft - sharpening blades, repairing clothes. The villagers were also proud of a small wooden building with stone-lined drains running under its walls. Here water was flung on burning logs to be turned to steam. Even in midwinter it got hot enough in there to make you sweat, and by day and night half-naked inhabitants crowded on its benches.

Did the monks of Lindisfarena have a hall, or a sauna? What were the trees like on Lindisfarena, what was the local stone? She knew nothing of the island, or of Britain. She didn’t even know what a monk was for. She burned with curiosity.

The slave had been put to work feeding the pigs. He had pails of bad meat and rotting vegetables which he was stirring with a long ladle. On his face was an expression of bored disgust.

His name, she had learned, was Rhodri. He was small, black-haired, round-shouldered. He was seventeen or eighteen, a few years younger than herself. His features were regular, his jaw strong, his ears a little over-large. He might have been good-looking, she mused, in a brooding British way, if not for a sullen downturn to his full mouth.

Rhodri became aware of Gudrid looking at him. He stopped work, leaned on his long ladle and stared back at her. His gaze, if sullen, was frank, almost defiant - and he stared speculatively at her body. She was faintly shocked; no slave had ever dared look at her that way before.

She snapped, ‘You’ll not get those pigs fed at that rate ... Do you understand me?’

‘Yes,’ he said, his voice heavily accented. ‘You Germans have different tongues, but you all sound alike to me.’

‘We
aren’t German. We are Norse. Or Viking. After our word Vik, which means “inlet”. We are the people of the fjords.’

‘Good for you.’ He yawned. ‘Anyway I picked up a bit of your tongue on the boat.’

‘My father’s boat.’

He raised his eyebrows. ‘You’re Bjarni’s daughter? Which one - Gudrid, was it? He mentioned you.’

‘You aren’t telling me he talked to the likes of you.’

‘It’s a small boat. And I have big ears, even if I am just a slave.’

She was growing angry at his easy insolence. ‘It’s a shame he didn’t teach you how to work.’

‘I am working,’ Rhodri interrupted, his voice now querulous. ‘Can’t you see?’ He rubbed his belly. ‘My gut’s still a knot from that boat. By Jesus’s wounds I puked myself half up.’

She snorted. ‘You’ll recover.’

He glanced at her, calculating now. ‘You’re the reason he went to Lindisfarena in the first place. You’ve got some kind of interest in it.’ Rhodri smirked. ‘A woman, interested in things. Your husband said it’s a shame your womb isn’t as fertile as your mind.’

She clenched down on her anger, at her father and husband for talking about her this way in front of a slave, at the slave himself for repeating it. ‘You watch your mouth,’ she snapped. ‘I want to know about Lindisfarena. Tell me about it.’

He considered. ‘What’s it worth?’

She was astonished. ‘Do you think I’m going to bargain with a slave? It’s worth not having the skin flogged off your back!’

‘All right, all right. What do you want to know?’

‘How did you come to be there? Were you always a slave?’

‘No,’ he said, absurdly indignant at the charge. ‘I was born free, in Gwynedd. That’s a British kingdom. I am the son of a noble. I am a Christian, and I was taught to read. I was taken prisoner when a German army came invading.’

‘Was your army defeated?’

‘I don’t know.’ He poked languidly at the pig swill. ‘They probably fought better without me. Maybe that’s why they wouldn’t pay the ransom for me.’

He was taken by a Mercian thegn, a companion of King Offa. But he was always an unsatisfactory slave, judging by an aggrieved list of beatings and other punishments. After a complicated series of sellings-on he found himself on the east coast of Britain, and was shipped to Lindisfarena, where he worked for the villagers. ‘Cockle-pickers,’ Rhodri moaned. ‘By God’s wounds I hate cockle-pickers. And cockles.’

‘Were you as lazy cockle-picking as you are pig-feeding?’

‘I was,’ he said with a dash of honesty. ‘I hung back one day to avoid carrying the baskets and almost got drowned by the tide. After that, I tried to be lazy somewhere safe. And then, when they found out I could read, the monks took me in. They bought me off the head cockle-picker. He took a reduced price.’

‘Do monks have slaves?’

‘Oh, no. They freed me. They took me in as a
novice.’

It was a word she didn’t recognise. ‘Why would they do that?’

‘I told you. I am Christian, and I can read. Even if I’m not the breed of Christian
they
are. They were training me to become one of them.’ He grinned. ‘Easiest place I’ve lived since I left my mother’s womb.’

‘So how did you end up here with the pigs?’

He sighed, mock-lamenting. ‘I think you know me by now, lady. The routine of a monastery isn’t hard, but it’s dull, dull, dull. I skipped what I could and got others to do the rest. But in the end the abbot found me out and ordered me returned to the cockle-pickers. Even Dom Wilfrid couldn’t save me.’

Dom Wilfrid, it seemed, was the monk in charge of the novices.

‘This Wilfrid must have seen your vices more clearly than anybody else. Why would he protect you at all?’

‘Ah, because poor, weak Wilfrid had a vice of his own. Much as he gave his wisdom to the novices, there was something he liked to get back from them. Up his bum, actually.’

She was disgusted.

He shrugged. ‘It was better than cockle-picking.’ Once again he looked at her, lascivious. ‘Maybe I could earn a few favours from you, lady. I was one of Wilfrid’s favourites. It’s not just my ears that are big about me, you know.’

Anger filled her, blood-red. ‘Give me one good reason I shouldn’t split open your grinning face right now.’

‘Because you need me to get to what you really want, which is Lindisfarena.’

She was appalled. She had never met anybody, let alone a slave, who was so manipulative. But of course he was right.

She didn’t know how to phrase the question. ‘Did you ever hear anything of a Menologium? Of a prophecy, a legend of Ulf and Sulpicia?’

He looked calculating again. ‘Your father said something about this on the boat ...’

She told him of the legend of her ancestor Ulf the Wanderer. Ulf, strong and smart, had died old, fat, wealthy, and the owner of many cattle and slaves. But over the hearth he always told stories of his time in Britain, the beautiful Sulpicia, and the remarkable prophecy he had glimpsed and lost.

And Gudrid told Rhodri how she had spoken to traders returning across the sail road from Britain and its many islands - and, from tantalising hints, how she had worked out that the prophecy, transcribed by monks, may have been stored in the monastery on Lindisfarena.

Rhodri listened to all this. ‘Well, it makes sense that your prophecy would be copied down at Lindisfarena, if anywhere. Always writing, those monks, scribbling things down and copying them and making more copies again. It’s a hive of letters, of ink and vellum and the scratch, scratch of styluses.’