Terror of Constantinople (4 page)

    The Dispensator gave me one of his bleak smiles and motioned me back into my seat.

    ‘Of course, Aelric,’ he said – as ever, when he needed my services badly enough, with a failed attempt at pronouncing my real name – ‘I have no means to compel you to do anything. You are a free agent. Our rule is one of persuasion and love, not of force. But do consider that you came here with Father – but I correct myself! with
Saint
– Maximin to gather books for the mission library in Canterbury. Now, think of the great libraries of Constantinople. Think of the entry to these that the Church could obtain for you. I can offer you all the learning of the ages – books the like of which haven’t been in Rome for a hundred years or more.

    ‘And you will be under the full protection of the Church,’ he added, ‘and our Permanent Legate in the City will watch over you at all times.’

    ‘So,’ I asked, trying to ignore the thought of those libraries, ‘why not get His Excellency the Permanent Legate to do your research? Isn’t it for that sort of thing that he gets paid?’

    ‘No, Alaric,’ came the reply. ‘The Lord Silas has many excellences, and comes from one of the very best families in Rome. But his Greek is not sufficient for our purpose. And we do not think a local agent would be appropriate.’

    So it was the usual nepotistic stitch-up. The best job in the Church, short of a really juicy bishopric, and it had gone to another duffer who had to transact all business in the Imperial capital – a few formal occasions apart, where Latin was still used – through an interpreter.

    ‘What makes you suppose I’m any better as a scholar?’ I asked again.

    The Dispensator’s smile broadened till it bordered on the grotesque.

    ‘But Alaric, I have from both Rome and Canterbury the most glowing reports of your scholarship. Only last month’ – he took up a sheet of papyrus from one of the trays on his desk and squinted over the writing – ‘you were praised in an oration to His Holiness himself as “the Light from the North; the beauteous young barbarian drawn here by the gold of our learning, not of our palaces”.’

    I can’t say I’d seen much learning in Rome, or many palaces that weren’t half-ruined slums. Nor can I say I liked the bit about being a barbarian. At the time, though, I’d found the notice flattering. It made a change from all the complaints the Church authorities had been getting about my talent for shady finance.

    Good as I was in Roman terms, that hardly fitted me to rub shoulders with the tenured intellectuals of the greatest centre of learning in the world. What mattered most, though, was that the Dispensator seemed to think otherwise. Rome hadn’t yet been flooded with refugees from the Saracen invasions. Back then, Greek had become a rare accomplishment.

    But there was no point debating any of this. My mind was made up.

    ‘I won’t go,’ I said firmly. ‘You must accept my apologies for declining your invitation. But nothing you can say will make me go.’

    I rose. I was starving for my breakfast and I had to get to that meeting about the Cornish tin. There was no saying what my associates would agree without me there to keep them in line.

    The Dispensator ignored my preparation to leave.

    ‘I am asking a favour of some considerable importance,’ he said, his voice now silky smooth, his annoyance discernible but not evident. ‘I know you have persuaded His Excellency the Prefect to “recognise” your Roman citizenship, and your having reached an age that my sources assure me you have not. But there is more than a chance that success in Constantinople would bring a grant of senatorial status – just think of the social privileges, the legal immunities. Surely you would want that for yourself. If not for yourself, then for your unborn child?’

    So he had heard about that. Was there anything he didn’t hear about? Still standing, though, I decided to end the conversation with a direct snub.

    ‘What you are offering only the Emperor can grant. And you can’t get him to grant Boniface the title of Universal Bishop. Since he murdered his way to the top, you people have been splashing flattery on Phocas as if it were mud thrown up by a cart. I can’t imagine how much gold you’ve slipped his way these past eight years. And all he’s done for the Pope is call him Universal Bishop in a correspondence that stops short of a formal grant.

    ‘And you’re offering me senatorial status? I really think, my Lord Dispensator, you will need stronger incentives than that to get me within five hundred miles of Phocas.’

    I looked back as I left his office. For once, I had actually brought colour to the wretched man’s face. Yes, he was the most powerful man in Rome. But hadn’t I already done enough for him and his Church?

    I missed the tin meeting. By the time I got to the financial district, all my associates had cleared off, and it would take at least another ten days to get them together again. As I passed the Forum on the way back, I dodged into a wine shop in what used to be a diplomatic archives building and drank myself into a better humour with the world.

    ‘Fucking cheek!’ I said to no one in particular as I looked out of a window at the roofless shell of the Temple of Isis. Beyond that lay the Forum, where, towering atop its column, the statue of Phocas lately set up by the Church was shedding its gilt.

    ‘The bloody, fucking cheek of the man!’

3

My good humour continued about fifty paces beyond the wine shop. All the bodies had now been cleared away, and the streets around the Forum were littered only with the usual filth. But there was now the beginning of a small riot between me and the Caelian Hill.

    ‘Anathema on the traitorous Exarch,’ someone at the front of one of the two opposing mobs bellowed. He wore a hood but wasn’t a monk, and spoke Latin with an accent that was neither Roman nor barbarian. ‘And on the Exarch’s son and on the Exarch’s nephew who would challenge our Lord Caesar Phocas for the Purple,’ he added. There was a ragged cheer behind him.

    ‘Anathema, much rather, on the tyrant Phocas,’ someone shouted back at him, ‘and blessings on the young hero Heraclius who, even now, journeys to Constantinople to heal the Empire’s grievance.’

    More cheering, and a few howled insults.

    And so they carried on at each other. For the moment, it was just more of the ritual shouting that had been getting on Roman nerves for the past six months. Both sides in the civil war had their embassies here, each negotiating for the blessing of the Church – which would bring the support of the whole West and a fair bit of the East. And while the Church stayed aloof but formally loyal to the Emperor in possession, each side had its hired mobs to fill the streets with noise.

    For the time being, as said, it was just more of the shouting. At any moment, though, it might proceed to the throwing of dead cats and rotten vegetables, and then to actual violence. It was all a matter of what directions came from the covered chairs lurking just beyond each of the groups.

    I hurried past the smaller of these groups. Someone clutched at my arm.

    ‘Will you sign our letter to His Holiness?’ he rasped, breathing garlic and bad teeth at me. He waved me in the direction of some other piece of scum who was carrying a suspiciously clean and expensive sheet of parchment.

    ‘Piss off and sign it yourself,’ I snarled. As he stood back, I took my sword half out of the scabbard and let him see its notched edge.

    That got me past without any stains on my tunic. But as I walked towards the Caelian Hill my ears burned at the abuse they had called after me. I could just about stomach it from persons of quality. But to be called a barbarian by these verminous out-of-towners really was the limit. I was inclined to turn round and tell them that I was a man of considerable wealth and learning, and that I could trace my ancestry through a line of nobles and kings that reached back – my mother had assured me – to the Tribal Gods of Kent.

    But I resisted the urge. My face turning redder and redder as I hurried past some of my neighbours, I went home and called for more wine.

I sat in my library much later. It was that time of day early in a Roman summer when the light is fading but there is no need yet for lamps. The preserving oil had now dried on the book racks, and the main smell in the room was of the dust my slaves hadn’t yet managed to clean entirely off the books. These were still mostly in their crates. Piled up beside me was an edition of Saint Jerome I had bought cheap at auction and was planning to send off to the Lateran scriptorium for copying and dispatch to Canterbury.

    I should have been going through this, making sure the pages were stitched in the right order and that there were no obvious copying errors. Once in England, copies would be multiplied with great enthusiasm, but with no critical awareness. It was up to me to ensure that we’d send no cripples or bastards into the world.

    Instead, though, I was going again through the rebuilding accounts. My requirements had been specific. I wanted something large and solid and readily defensible by just me and a few armed slaves. At the same time, the house had to be low enough on the Caelian Hill to receive water from the one aqueduct that hadn’t yet been cut. I was looking forward to having one of the only working bathhouses in Rome.

    I’d known that would come at a price. Apart from the financial district across the river, the Caelian was now the only decent part of Rome to live in. All the best people were there or trying to buy their way in. Most of the few habitable buildings that came on the market were being snapped up long before they got to auction.

    I’d been glad enough when the agent had found me this place. It had needed new floors throughout and much new plastering, but had been sound in its externals. So why were those swindling beasts putting in bills for new roof tiles? Indeed, bearing in mind the perfectly good tiles that could be harvested for free from the derelict properties at the foot of the hill, why charge at all for the things?

    ‘I suppose they think I was born yesterday,’ I sneered to myself. The more money you have, I can tell you, the more careful you become about giving it away. I took up a stylus and scratched through that part of the bill. There was room enough at the foot of the waxed tablet for some nasty comment. I looked up and tried to think of something cutting but simple enough for the owner of the building company to understand.

    My slave Authari knocked and put his head round the door. ‘The Lady Marcella and her man of law beg to be received,’ he said in the pompous manner he’d got from his last owner.

    ‘Do then show them in,’ I said, rising from my desk. ‘And do send in wine and cakes,’ I added. ‘We have important business to transact.’

    He stepped fully through the door. ‘Begging your pardon, Master,’ he said, ‘but the good wine is all spoiled.’

    He stood in a late ray of sunlight that slanted through the overhead window. Except that the battle scar on his face shone more livid than usual, his expression remained as bland as the Dispensator’s. As I opened my mouth to speak, Marcella came into the room. She wore a confection of silk that might have harmonised with the fresh blackness of her hair, but for the green tinge she’d taken of late to adding to the lead paste that covered her wrinkles.

    ‘Well, young Alaric,’ she said, not waiting for the formal greeting. ‘You’ve certainly brought this place on. My dear husband – the Senator, you know, or would have been had God spared him – couldn’t have done no better himself.’

    ‘Dearest Marcella,’ said I, ‘you are always welcome in my house – just as I was in yours. If you are no longer my landlady, I rejoice daily in your friendship.’

    I settled her into a chair and sat down opposite. The lawyer began fussing with his satchel. He wasn’t the jolly little man who’d drafted the terms of the agreement, but someone new – a big creature with a mass of brown hair and with bags under his cold, glittering eyes.

    Another slave entered carrying a tray. The wine was an embarrassment but, served in those nice glass cups the builders had dug out of the basement, no one had any right to notice.

    ‘The provisional agreement’, said the lawyer, still on his feet, ‘was made on the Kalends of May between the Lady Marcella, relict of the sub-Clarissimus Porcinus, official in the Imperial Service, and Alaric, citizen from the presently alienated Province of Britain. The citizen Alaric, believing himself to have got with child one Gretel, a slave in the household of the Lady Marcella, has offered a price to be agreed by further negotiation for the sale of the said Gretel. He has further offered to continue paying rent on his suite in the house of the Lady Marcella until such time as the said Gretel shall have been transferred to his ownership and until such time as his own house shall be ready to receive  ...’