Conspiracies of Rome (13 page)

    And we got the promise of books. This being said, the assumption of the meeting was rather different from my original understanding. I thought Maximin was here for books, and I was tagging along. Now, it seemed, I was to be the primary collector of books. Maximin was to be given other duties in Rome.

    I wasn’t told this in so many words. But it was so. I can’t say I was put out. Find the right man for the job has ever been the practice of the Church. Or, when the right man appears, adapt the job.

    Afterwards, in his drab little office, the dispensator made the necessary arrangements with us.

    ‘We have a considerable library here in the Lateran,’ he said. ‘It dates back to before the Triumph of the Faith, and has been much enlarged over the years. We had a good harvest after the great wars. So many noble palaces lay in ruins. Our people went digging out their libraries, rescuing what could be repaired  . . .

    ‘Martin, I’ll be glad of your presence,’ he called suddenly in a raised voice.

    A clerk entered from an adjoining room. Taller, thinner, somewhat older than me, he had the freckles and red hair I hadn’t seen since I was deep into Wessex. I suddenly realised what a contrast I must have made beside all those sallow little Mediterraneans. Though he was dressed in good linen, and though he dressed his hair with obvious attention to effect, something about his cringing manner suggested he was a slave.

    ‘Martin handles all my correspondence with the East,’ the dispensator explained. ‘Though growing up in Constantinople, he is originally from an island to the west of Britain. I can assure you, however, he is neither a Celtic heretic nor a Greek semi-schismatic. He is a true son of the Church. He has my trust in all things. He has drawn an entry permit for the young man to our own library.’

    Martin handed over a sheet of parchment covered in the smooth, clear hand of the Roman Chancery.

    The dispensator continued: ‘He has also drawn an introduction to Anicius, an elderly nobleman of eccentric views who still has a library in his house. You’ll not find much there of spiritual sustenance. But one must read the pagan classics for their style.’

    Martin handed over another sheet drawn in similar form.

    The dispensator paused, looking at Maximin. Martin remained where he was and coughed gently.

    ‘Oh, yes. The young man’ – he squinted at my name on the report – ‘Alaric, is it not? Is that a Gothic name?’

    I didn’t correct the error. So began my life as Alaric rather than as Aelric.

    ‘Alaric,’ the dispensator continued with another look at the spelling of my name, ‘will need a team of copyists for our library. In many cases, our books exist in only a single copy, and we cannot possibly spare these. They will need to be copied. Anicius is poor, and may doubtless be brought to an arrangement for the surrender of originals. Martin has very kindly volunteered to guide young Alaric in the obtaining of books and in supervising the copyists.

    ‘Now,’ the dispensator stopped for a moment and looked up at a filing rack beside the little window of his office, ‘I understand that the pair of you, in the course of your journey here, have acquired a considerable sum of money.’ He pressed his fingers together, a hard look now coming into his eyes.

    Fucking bankers! I swore to myself. They’d so far shown themselves about as discreet as a drunken old woman.

    ‘Holy Mother Church, therefore,’ the dispensator continued, ‘will look to you to bear the whole cost of acquiring and arranging for the transport of books. This is, you will agree, very much to your advantage. We had in mind a fairly small gift in the first instance for the Canterbury library. Now, of course, you may gather as you please. Martin will help in the matter of the books. He is also fluent in Greek. This is nowadays an unusual accomplishment in our Church – indeed, Saint Gregory spent many years in Constantinople before becoming pope, and returned with not a word of Greek. We find Latin sufficient for our modern purposes.

    ‘Yet it is our intention that the English should, when the time is right, study Greek as well as Latin. It may not presently be useful, but it would make sense to take advantage of your opportunity and to form the basis of a Greek library in Canterbury. Martin will assist in the selection of the appropriate texts.’

    At last, we came to the relic. Maximin reached into his satchel and handed this over. The dispensator assured himself all was in order and looked up, now smiling. ‘Holy Mother Church is in debt to both of you,’ he said. ‘This precious relic of Saint Vexilla was stolen not ten days ago. It was an audacious robbery – in the very church where I sometimes pray.’

    Another clerk entered, this one in the rough, dark robe of a monk. He bowed silently and placed a sealed letter on the desk. The dispensator gave it a brief glance. ‘I will read this later,’ he said to the monk, ‘when I have time and am alone. No reply for the moment.’

    The clerk opened his mouth for what looked a protest, but checked himself. He bowed again and left. I saw Maximin stare at this letter, a curious look on his face. As if he’d noticed this look, the dispensator neatly covered the letter with a sheet of papyrus.

    ‘You did well,’ he continued, looking back to the relic, ‘not to hand it over to the prefect. You know how these Greeks like to set their paws on the holiest things of the Faith.’ He turned to me. ‘You know, young man, these Greeks have no sense of the holy. I can’t call them heretics, but there is something not altogether right about them.

    ‘Many years ago, when Saint Gregory was newly our pope, some Greek monks turned up in Rome. They were caught digging for the bodies of ancient martyrs by the Church of St Paul. When we examined them, they said they wanted relics to take back to Constantinople. They were proposing to touch relics that must be handled – if at all – only wearing gloves. They even said it was their national custom to wash the bones of saints. Did you ever hear such grossness? You’ll be relieved to hear they were struck dead as they left the city! Some while later, the empress wrote from Constantinople, asking for the head of Saint Paul. She probably wanted it on her dressing table. It took all our diplomacy to say no without giving offence.’

    Back to Maximin: ‘You need fear nothing of the prefect. He will do as we tell him.’

    Martin came back with us to Marcella’s. It was convenient that we should put him up while he showed me round the libraries, and so we took a small room for him on the ground floor. He’d be close by the toilets – but this was more than one step up from the slaves of the other guests: they were bedded down all together in the second stable building.

    Gretel passed me as I loitered by the glass table. I thought of giving her a quick grope, but Marcella was about, screaming over an egg someone had smashed on one of her limestone floors. Worse, I found on the table an invite for Maximin and me to have dinner at some noble house near the Baths of Diocletian. Unless we rode, that would mean a walk through half the city, and I’d be back too shattered to enjoy myself. Already, I was feeling the effect of not sleeping much the night before, and was beginning to wilt in every sense.

    ‘Is there some way of getting out of this?’ I asked Maximin, showing him the pompous invite that covered half a regular sheet of papyrus.

    ‘Dear me, no,’ said Maximin. ‘You really do need to mingle with these people. Some of them still have their family libraries, and you never know what you might find there. Go and enjoy yourself, and make some useful friends.’

    All very well for him. He had an excuse for crying off the dinner. There was to be a meeting of Italian bishops the day after next. He’d been asked to address them on the English mission. Now, he was hard at work on another of his speeches.

14

I set out with Martin just as night was coming on. It had clouded over in the late afternoon and was looking set for rain. I put on a nice travelling cloak I’d bought earlier in the day. Maximin lent his own tatty cloak to Martin, who was assigned to guide me and supply some force of numbers should there be trouble in the street.

    As yesterday and earlier in that day, I heard the soft patter of feet as we walked down the empty, darkening streets. It seemed that whoever wanted the relic hadn’t noticed we had given it back. But there was much else now. Rome comes to life at night. There are more people – shifty, dirty wretches obviously out for mischief of various kinds. But mostly there are the rats.

    There could be millions of these in Rome. Certainly, there are more rats than people. So far as I can tell, they live during the day in the old sewers and in the deeper stretches of the ruins. At night, they all come out to gorge themselves on whatever rubbish has been deposited in the streets. They scuttled out of our path, but swarmed all around with a muted cacophony of squeaks and scratching. In the remains of the light, I could see the tide of brown bodies streaming around our feet. I pulled my sword out and skewered one that was moving slower than the others. I tossed it over against the wall. At once, in a little frenzy, the others were upon its twitching body, three deep, tearing at it and each other.

    ‘They have their uses,’ Martin said. ‘They eat dead animals, which keeps the streets a little cleaner. In Constantinople I was told that, when their coats turn black, you can expect the plague.’

    Interesting. I’ve heard that one many times since, and it is true, so far as I can tell. I think there is some power in the contagion that changes them. I do know that they often die first.

    I thought to start a conversation with Martin, but couldn’t think of an opening that wasn’t horribly contrived. In truth, I’ve never been very comfortable with slaves. They’re fine for sleeping with, but I find conversation embarrassing. I think the reason is that I grew up without them.

    Yes, we have our churls in England. But they are so low as to be almost different beings. Excepting a few barked orders, there is no communication with them. It is the same elsewhere. I’ve come across whole races in my time, fit for nothing else but enslavement.

    Unlike some of the old philosophers I’ve read, and some of the less worldly Christians, I’ve no objection to slavery in principle. There are some jobs so shitty – digging the fields, working the mines, rowing in galleys, and so forth – that they can only be got done under compulsion. And so there is an economy in nature that supplies certain answers to certain problems. But I’ve never got used to the idea of owning rational beings and setting them to work in areas where paid labour would be more humane and less costly. Secretaries come right into that category. I rather think even the higher household servants do.

    I know most of the ancients disagreed. They used slaves even as tutors to their children. The modern Greeks still do. That diplomat I came across at Marcella’s went one step further. He had a slave to wipe his arse. He’d take his place and sit talking about commodity prices with me beside him, and a slave would reach under and wipe him, while he continued as if nothing odd were happening.

    Then, with Martin, there was the matter of his nationality. My people took the country from his people, and they hate us for it. Until I was small, they rationalised their hatred by calling us heathens. Then the missionaries turned up, and we started to become better Christians than they. So they thought up some trifling difference over dates and made it a big issue of orthodoxy – not caring if it made them into heretics in the eyes of Rome. When I was first in Canterbury, one of their bishops came through on his way to some business in Brittany. He wouldn’t set foot in our church. He wouldn’t even open the very nice letter Bishop Lawrence sent inviting him to have dinner.

    A while back, I did some historical research on the synod our bishops had arranged at Whitby some years back. Because they had more learning, and had come straight from the Roman mould, they were able to trick the poor Celts back into communion. But that hasn’t stopped them from hating us still.

    So Martin and I walked largely in silence down those black, deserted streets, while the rats scurried away from us and something human followed discreetly behind. A fine rain began to soak us through our outer clothes. What desultory conversation we managed was wholly about the matter of assembling the materials and personnel for the copying that was to start tomorrow.

    We smelt the surrounds of the house from a distance. At first, it was a pungent, aromatic smell, as of heavily spiced food. As we drew closer, the smell grew stronger, until it almost overpowered us. It was the olfactory equivalent of a deafening noise. Someone had been digging up the drains across the road from the house – possibly to repair them – and the whole neighbourhood was using the hole to dispose of shit and general waste. A combination of frequent rains and the hot spring sun had started some kind of fermentation.

    The rats seemed to love it – jumping in and out, and even swimming in the filth – so far as I could see from the little lantern we carried. I pressed a wet fold of my cloak to my face as we hurried past.