Richard Blake: The Ghosts of Athens

‘What you say about me is of no importance,’ he said with a slight show of vigour. ‘In any event, I am no longer your host. The circumstances of your return have made me your keeper, and this has a bearing on the nature of our present dealings.’ His voice suddenly trailed off and he closed his eyes.

I wondered if he’d fallen asleep. If so, it would be a chance for me to slope off and find what manner of quarters his people had arranged for me. A bath was probably out of the question. But I’d come to him straight from my journey, and I could do with a rest. However, as I was thinking to get up and take my leave, his eyes opened again.

‘I have summoned you to Canterbury,’ he said, ‘to ask a favour of you. It is a matter of some delicacy, and we thought it best at this stage to avoid putting things in writing.’ His good hand twitched under the blanket, and I thought for a moment he’d pull something out. But his eyes closed again, and he went limp on the bed. I waited for his strength to come back. This time, though, he had drifted away. His breathing settled into a faint but regular gasp.

There was a gentle knock on the door and the monk Wulfric entered. He looked at the sleeping Bishop, and hurried across to rearrange the pillows. The wine jug was still half full. It was too much nowadays to finish in one go. On the other hand, taking it with me might not create the best impression. I groaned softly as I got up and made for the door.

‘I’ll make my own way out,’ I said in English without looking back. It was a pointless utterance. If Wulfric bothered watching me leave, it was only to see when he could shut the door.

‘If this is the best you’ve seen,’ I said with what I hoped was a dismissive wave, ‘it is a very fine city.’

Brother Jeremy nodded and went back to his eager inspection of Canterbury. Of course, when you’re bumping along in a wheelbarrow, three feet above the ground, you’d think little enough of Constantinople itself. Here, I was most aware of the refuse that was the street’s only paving, and the shouting of the three churls who walked ahead of us to push everyone else out of our way. I had my back to these, and was looking instead at the scrawny churl who was making a right mess of pushing me in the direction of our lodgings.

‘But I never thought I’d see the like,’ Jeremy cried again with all the astonishment of youth. He pointed at the leather goods hanging before one of the shops we were passing. A youngish man of darker hue than England ever produces put on an expectant smile and stepped out of the shop. I sent him packing with a scowl and looked back at Jeremy, who was now staring up at one of the tiled roofs. Like most other building materials here, the tiles had the weathered look that told me they were reused from London, or even my own Richborough.

‘I never thought I’d see the like,’ he repeated yet again, delight and wonder in his voice.

I might not think much of this place. So far as Jeremy was concerned, though, the narrow, twisting street that led from the Bishop’s residence might as well have been one of the main thoroughfares in the great City that sits upon the two waters.

‘I was told that the Monastery of Saint Anastasius was on the left in the square containing the Great Church,’ he said, pulling himself back to the matter in hand.

I nodded vaguely. Canterbury had been my first proper stop the previous winter after I’d been dumped back in Richborough. Even I had to own that the church was a big one by Western standards. But I’d not have dignified the clearing in front of it with the word ‘square’. That gave far too grand an impression of this dreadful hole on the far edge of civilisation. I was thinking of that French red, when the wheelbarrow came to a sudden stop, and I was almost pitched backwards into the waiting filth.

‘Not more pigs in the way?’ I muttered. No, it was people — a whole crowd of them who’d resisted every effort to be pushed. They blocked the exit from the narrow street into what Jeremy had called the square, and stood mostly still and, but for a faint buzz of conversation I couldn’t follow, silent.

‘Make room for the guest of His Grace the Bishop,’ young Jeremy cried. He might have addressed them in Greek for all the sense he made in his Northumbrian dialect.

‘Get out of my bloody way,’ I snarled in the Kentish dialect, ‘or I’ll have my churls set about you with clubs.’

‘Eat shit and die,’ someone called cheerfully down at me. But the churls had taken the hint and were looking fierce. With a few protests and the dropping of something wet and foul between my feet, the crowd parted, and we moved straight into the square.

‘Strike harder! Strike harder!’ I heard someone cry in Latin over on my right. ‘Let him suffer in this world for his sins, that he may avoid damnation in the next.’ He’d called this out in a Roman accent too affected to be real. He was repeating himself, when there was the crack of a whip, and his voice was drowned out by a loud and enthusiastic cheer from the crowd. I gripped the right edge of my wheelbarrow and twisted round to see what was happening.

The voice was of an obese churchman in high middle age. Dressed in dazzling white, he was leaning forward from a raised chair as he continued his Latin harangue. There was bugger all I could make of it, though, for the cheers of the crowd. I climbed slowly out of the wheelbarrow and pushed my way to the front of the crowd. Though much decayed, I still have the remains about me of bigness. More important, I’ve still the air of power, long exercised, that people of this quality don’t even think to question.

From the front of the crowd, I could see the naked wretch tied to a stake, his wrists pulled up so high that his feet barely touched the ground. I’ve never been a connoisseur of these things, but it was a most impressive beating. With all the slow deliberation you see in a church service, two monks walked round and round the beaten man. At every one and a quarter circuit, keeping opposite each other, they’d stop and land two simultaneous blows with what looked like slave scourges. Except for the regular stops and the beating, it might well have been a service — that or a demonstration of astronomical movements.

‘Behold the mercy of Holy Mother Church,’ someone now called out in English from beside the chair. ‘Behold the penance, freely begged and lovingly given. Behold and wonder!’

There wasn’t that much for me to behold in detail — not with my blurry vision, at least. But even I could see that the scourges had the iron tips left on them. To be flogged with just one of these was to be tortured. Even the first blow, laid on with the right firmness, would get a scream out of most victims. Six would tear the flesh most horribly. A dozen would lay the back open like so much putrefied liver. This poor sod must be well past the dozen. By now, his bones would be showing through, and blood, expelled from his lungs, would be dribbling through his nostrils and ears. A master with any sense of propriety would normally offer an offending slave the choice of being hanged. For a flogging of this sort always smashed a man, and I’d never seen any who survived make a full recovery. But this was a Church matter, and, once the formalities of ‘choice’ had been rattled through, there would be no mercy. It couldn’t last much longer. The penitent’s body was dark with his own blood, and there were dark splashes all over the white robes of the two monks. And this was certainly a display that pleased the crowd. Between those bursts of cheering, there was a continual murmuring of approval.

‘You there,’ I said, tapping someone on the shoulder who’d had the nerve to stand in front of me. ‘I want to know what all this is about.’