The Curse of Babylon (3 page)

I stared again out of the window. The steam that rose above the forest would soon clear. Whether or not it rained again, I’d make sure it was a lovely day.

Chapter 2

I once knew a poet called Leander. He was an Egyptian and, like me, had learned Greek as a foreign language. Unlike me, he never learned it well enough to adorn even the lower reaches of its literature. He was a dreadful poet, and I can almost rejoice that, away from his native Egypt, books written on papyrus die within fifty years unless recopied. What brings him now to mind is his habit, when he wanted attention, of stopping whatever he was doing to cry in a grand voice: ‘I can feel the Muse about to come upon me!’ I’ll not go quite so far as that. But I do feel that what began as one of my occasional diary entries ought to form part of a longer narrative. At the very least, since I’ve mentioned it, I should explain how I came to take possession once more of the Horn of Babylon.

This means the story doesn’t begin on Wednesday the 17th, but on Monday the 15th. It had been another promising dawn, though Ambrose made sure to spoil it, by shouting and threatening me out of my bed. Still, teeth cleaned and polished and pushed well back, wig on the right way round, I think I looked rather good in my wheelbarrow. Even Ambrose didn’t roar with laughter at my appearance.

We came to the point where the street leading from my place of confinement joined with the main square. ‘Put me down here a moment,’ I said to the boy who was pushing me. ‘I feel the need of a rest before showing myself to the people.’

‘You’re late as it is,’ Ambrose grunted with a nervous look at the sky.

I cupped a hand to my bad ear. ‘I hear no complaints from those who are waiting,’ I said brightly. To the boy: ‘Put the handles down and fan me with your hat.’ To Ambrose: ‘You’d surely not want me to die before I can assist in Gebmund’s inquiry.’

Ambrose took on the appearance of a caged animal when it looks through its bars. ‘Inquiry, my cock!’ he snarled. ‘You’re on trial for your fucking life!’

I gave him a flash of my nice teeth and added a look of faint senility. ‘Oh, is that why I’m a prisoner?’ I asked. I looked at the boy. If I wasn’t mistaken, his spots were all inflamed. Either he was feeling the morning chill, or he was still hurting from the buggery Ambrose had inflicted on him while I was deciding which hat to put on over my wig. It was probably the latter. I leaned back on the filthy padding. ‘Oh, let’s just get it over with,’ I sighed. I reached inside my woollen robe. I hadn’t left my double strength oil of frankincense behind. I unstoppered the pot and shook some of it down the front of my robe.

I was halfway across the square, when the crowd outside the church struck up a respectable cheer. Rattled by the sudden noise, the boy twisted my wheelbarrow to give me sight of the crowd. I took off my hat and waved it. That got me a louder cheer.

‘Not a word, you old fool,’ Ambrose said into my good ear. ‘If you cause another riot, it’ll be the worse for you.’

‘If you don’t keep a civil tongue in your head,’ I replied through a fixed smile, ‘I may see to it that you don’t have a head.’ I leaned forward and jabbed my stick into the boy’s stomach. ‘Come on,’ I urged. ‘You mustn’t keep the people waiting.’ He gave me the stupid look of one who hasn’t heard, but doesn’t want to admit he wasn’t listening. I repeated myself, now louder. He swallowed and dropped both handles of his wheelbarrow. Its impact had the blond wig straight off my head and into the dust. By the time it was recovered, I’d decided against putting it back on. Instead, I sat up and tried to look as dignified as a bald, shrivelled old thing ever can. ‘Well, come on, boy,’ I prompted. ‘It isn’t us they want to string up – no, not even Brother Ambrose today.’

Even as the boy got ready for one of his pubescent squawks, there was a loud groan, and the crowd took a collective step backwards and to the left. ‘There he is!’ someone shouted. ‘Oh, but hasn’t he got a nerve!’ someone else said.

It wasn’t that much of a nerve, to be fair. As the crowd broke into a low and disapproving chatter, I twisted round on my cushions and saw that Brother Aelfwine had followed us across the square. Flanked by his two elder brothers and any number of cousins and family hangers on, he had a strained look on his face even I could see. I thought he’d hurry past, so he could be in place before everyone else squeezed into the church. But he saw I was looking in his direction and hurried over.

‘Greetings, Brother Aelric,’ he said stiffly in Latin. Impassive, I looked back at him. I couldn’t doubt he was a pretty lad – far too pretty for a monk. What else, though, could he be but pretty? Not only Kentish, he was of royal blood. Being both myself, however much decayed, I may be biased. But, now we’ve given up on putting butter in our hair and rings through our noses, you’ll search hard to find a handsomer race than the better class of Kentishmen. No tonsure was enough to conceal his advantages of birth.

He leaned forward. ‘Why don’t you just confess?’ he whispered. ‘I’ll see to it that Gebmund gives you his mildest penance ever. Family is family, after all.’ He tilted his head at the crowd. ‘Must we inflame the common people any further?’

‘I have perfect faith that, when My Lord Bishop of Rochester has heard me, there will be no more talk of penances.’ I said loudly in English. For just a moment, he looked me in the eye. Then he looked away and breathed something that I couldn’t catch but got his flunkies into a dark mood. I was still trying to tell if the biggest of these wasn’t one of the King’s bastard sons, when I heard the doors of the great church open far across the square and, in a crowd of monks and deacons, Aelfwine’s cousin and mine began a slow and almost visibly unwilling progress towards the place appointed for his court of inquiry.

Leaning forward on his big chair, Bishop Gebmund looked nervously round the church. ‘For the benefit of our brethren from overseas,’ he stammered, ‘we shall conduct these proceedings entirely in Latin.’ I blew my nose loudly enough to be heard at the back of the crowded nave. In all decency, he hadn’t been able to keep the common people out. Looking surly, they sat cross-legged on the floor. One way or another, I’d find a way to keep them generally informed.

Gebmund got down from his chair and, trying not to breathe through his nose, approached the stone slab on which the body was laid. It wasn’t so many days since I’d assisted the Deacon Sophronius across the threshold of death. But it was as if the gross corruptions to which he’d given himself up in life were now seeping out through every pore of his body. Or, if you want a less poetic explanation, a combination of nice weather and excessive corpulency had brought on a speedy dissolution of the flesh. A cloth over his middle to preserve the decencies, Sophronius filled the entire slab. His mottled left arm hung down its side. Just below his hand, a pool of slime was already gathering on the floor. I plucked at the front of my robe. I snuggled deeper into the invisible palisade of my oil of frankincense. Not so lucky, a young deacon opposite me turned green and began to swallow repeatedly.

‘Dear Brothers in Christ,’ Gebmund began after much clearing of his throat, ‘I have called you here today to witness the full and fair inquiry that the Lord High Bishop Theodore and our Lord King Swaefheard have jointly commanded into the death of the Deacon Sophronius.’ He paused and looked about. No one dared stand up and say that the Dear Departed was, in fact, another of our cousins, and that the illiterate drunkard who was currently head of the family had been bullied into allowing this public washing of our linen. Gebmund hurried back to his chair and went into a rambling account of how Sophronius had been found at the bottom of the stairs that led from my place of confinement, his neck broken in two places. He stopped again and waited for the usual pious words to go the rounds.

He started again. This time, his face began to twitch with the strain of what he’d been given no choice but to do. ‘I don’t think anyone would object if I were to announce a verdict of accidental death,’ he said, plainly wishing that was just what he could do. ‘Sophronius was a large man, and a fall down so many stairs could only have one outcome.’ He shut his eyes. ‘However, I have been informed that the discoverer of the body wishes to address the court.’

He opened his eyes and looked about again. ‘Is Brother Ambrose with us?’ he asked hopefully. Hope faded as a creature hardly less bloated than our dear departed Brother in Christ heaved himself to his feet. He’d been sitting close by the body and leaning out of sight to watch the dripping of slime. He stood forward and bowed. Gebmund turned his mouth down. ‘Then I call on Brother Ambrose to explain his belief about the death.’

Ambrose struck a dramatic pose at the feet of the Episcopal chair. He looked about. ‘I am Brother Ambrose,’ he began loudly. ‘I look after the deluded sons of the Church who have fallen away from their vows and must be corrected.’ He stopped and looked up at the roof timbers for inspiration. ‘Me Latin’s gone off and hid somewhere it can’t be found,’ he said in English. ‘Can’t I do me bit in English?’

Put me in that chair and this would have been my excuse to call things off. At the least, I’d have adjourned them. After the briefest dither, though, Cousin Gebmund called for an interpreter and let the charade roll on. Ambrose had been put in charge of me last spring, he explained. Deacon Sophronius had ordered me to produce a long and elaborate report in Greek for the Lord High Bishop Theodore. I’d been confined to make sure I pulled none of my tricks. On the day the Deacon said he was to collect this report, however, he’d fallen down a staircase he’d used every day for months. Ambrose had found him at the foot of the stairs.

‘The fucker had it coming to him!’ someone shouted in English. There was a loud cheer from where most of the English observers were sitting, cross-legged on the floor. ‘Where’s all them kids gone?’ someone else shouted. That got a loud groan.

Gebmund jumped up and banged his staff for silence. ‘Do not interpret these impertinences for our overseas brethren,’ he cried. That got the French and Italian clerics murmuring among themselves. Gebmund coughed for attention. ‘I am able to confirm,’ he said, stammering again, ‘that Brother Aelric’s “long and elaborate” report in Greek turned out to be an essay in Latin on the rules of prosody.’ All eyes turned in my direction. I plucked at my robe, releasing another cloud of perfume. I pushed my teeth back and smiled.

‘I heard the Deacon shouting in anger,’ Ambrose continued. ‘I heard the Prisoner laugh and say something in Latin. Then I heard the door shut and the Deacon begin to come down the stairs. After six steps, he cried out as if in fear and fell all the way down. While I was trying to roll him over and perform the last offices, I heard a scraping at the top of the stairs and another laugh. Then I heard a soft closing of the Prisoner’s door. When I reached his room, the Prisoner was smiling and looking at his face in a hand mirror. I say that Brother Aelric murdered the Deacon Sophronius.’

One of the foreign observers burst out laughing. Someone else got up and walked out in visible disgust. I composed my face into a look of mild outrage. It was an accusation with feeble support. On the other hand – let’s be fair to Ambrose – he was spot on in the accusation. That was exactly how I’d killed the swine. I’d fabricated an argument with him and told him to fuck off. I’d counted his rather agitated steps outside my room and pulled hard on my cunningly hidden cord at number six. Sophronius had done the rest. The bronze pin I’d hidden away. The twine I’d cut into one-inch lengths and scattered, one at a time, from the window.

Gebmund finished his silent prayer. Getting up, he pointed at me. ‘Brother Aelric,’ he said, his raised hands shaking, ‘this is a most serious charge against you. Have you anything to say in your defence?’

I didn’t bother standing. ‘The charge is self-refuting trash,’ I sneered. I thought of the effect I wanted and let my voice rise to an aged whine. ‘No defence is needed. I’m ninety-eight. I can hardly stand up and walk, let alone commit murder. How am I supposed to have killed Sophronius? While he’s at it, my idiot of a jailor might also explain how a man half my age could then have hidden this “long and elaborate report” he claims he
heard
that I was writing. You won’t find it in the room where I’ve been unlawfully detained almost since my arrival in Canterbury.’

Gebmund held up his arms to quell the chorus of protests and contemptuous laughter that followed my answer. His face hardened. ‘Brother Aelric,’ he said, ‘if this is the only defence you are prepared to make, I must proceed to my verdict.’

That was what he’d been instructed to do – and he could reach any verdict he pleased, no matter how perverse it seemed on the face of it. My only recourse would then be an appeal to Rome. But, as I’d expected, the foreign observers were looking shocked. The natives too were getting restless. ‘It’s a bleeding stitch up!’ an old man shouted in English. ‘We know Old Aelric’s innocent.’ You don’t always need to understand a language to know roughly what’s being said. It was enough to start an increasingly obscene clamour. We’d have to be taken through a few niceties yet.

Gebmund bit his lip and waited for the clamour to subside. He looked once more at the putrid corpse. ‘I must insist, Brother Aelric,’ he said, ‘that you should give a fuller explanation of your actions than you have so far. You might begin by explaining in what sense you have been detained, or how this might be unlawful. As an ordained monk, you have a duty of absolute obedience to those above you in the Universal Church.’