Richard Blake - Conspiracies of Rome

I agreed. But how could we get me again out of the house without being seen and followed?

‘Confusing is deceiving,’ said Lucius.

The slave who’d dressed in my clothes was to go out again alone, his head covered. Another was to go out with Lucius and the others, his head covered. Lucius would borrow another slave from Marcella to make up the number. Meanwhile, I was to slip out alone through the back door. If I thought I was followed, I was to make my way to the house of Lucius, who would think of another stratagem.

If I was successful at the convent, I was to hurry back to Lucius with reasonable but not paranoid caution. He would send slaves close by the convent to cover me as I came away. He’d make sure they were slaves I could recognise.

Though I couldn’t be absolutely sure, I thought I got to the Convent alone. I knocked again on the door. The old man peered out through his little slot overhead.

‘I have urgent business with the abbess,’ I said. ‘I come alone.’ This time, my voice didn’t allow of opposition.

Still dressed in black, the abbess was on her seat in the ruined library.

‘Young man, this is most irregular…’ she began.

I pushed the message under her nose.

‘Father Maximin came to you the night before he was murdered,’ I said harshly. ‘He left property with you that is now mine. I want it back.’

She looked alarmed. She opened and closed her mouth. I thought she would call for assistance. Then her whole body seemed to relax. She looked back at me, the firm, Roman look on her face melting insensibly into despair.

I pulled up a chair from against the wall and sat down just opposite her.

‘Your brother Jacob was a friend of Maximin’s,’ I said. ‘I think we came upon his smashed monastery outside Populonium. All that happened to us after that followed from our encounter. You knew Maximin when he and your brother were students here in Rome.

‘That is one reason why he came to you the night before he was murdered.’

I’d expected a denial, followed by a long argument. Instead, she was weeping. Her body didn’t shake with sobs, but the tears ran in a continuous stream down her withered face.

‘He was with you,’ I said. ‘You spoke carefully at our last meeting. But he was with you the night before.’

‘We were young, so long ago,’ she said when she could control her voice. ‘You knew Maximin when he had grown into every inch the fat, jolly priest. I knew him when he was barely older than you. He was so intense and so devout – and yet so human…’

She spoke haltingly on – perhaps to me, perhaps to no one at all – about the brief yet passionate affair that had set their lives on different paths in search of the same redemption for their sins. She had retired to her grandfather’s palace, hoping that endless piety and the destruction of ancient literature would atone for her weakness. He had become a missionary priest – for many years working among the village pagans who still spoke Greek in the south of Italy, and volunteering at last for the mission to England.

She spoke about their midnight assignations, about the thrill in her heart as he’d reached out for her, about the emptiness of all her life since then; about the joy that had rekindled on his last visit, and the chaste kiss they had exchanged as he stepped out of the convent to go off to his death.

‘He spoke to me of you,’ she said, looking up from her recollections. ‘He was so proud of you, so very proud of your bright mind and essential goodness of heart. You know, you were the son we might, but for our callings to God, have brought ourselves into this world.

‘When I saw you, a few days ago, I knew at once he was right.’

I forced back the lump that had come into my throat.

‘Reverend Mother,’ I said softly, ‘We both loved Maximin. He was at all times everything the Church could want of a priest. If I could have taken his place on that final, dreadful evening, I would have done so with firm spirit. But the property he gave into your keeping will lead me to his murderers. I must ask for its return. I ask you to hand it into my own keeping.’

She rose and went to a locked cabinet. She opened it and drew out the leather bag I well remembered from that evening outside Populonium. It had been crudely stitched shut and sealed across with the sign of the English mission. She held it a moment, and then gave it to me.

‘I know not its contents, but Maximin died to keep this safe,’ she said. ‘I know there has been a trail of death marking your return to it. I do beg you to be careful. Do you think Maximin would want you to throw away your own life in avenging his? There is a time for revenge, and a time for putting away revenge. I say this for Maximin, and I say it for myself.’

I took the bag into my hand.

‘Do you think,’ she asked as I left, ‘that Maximin will be made a saint?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘The miracles will undoubtedly be attested.’

I looked back at her from the doorway of the library. Still seated, she looked back at me. She had the sad eyes of the very lonely. She had lost and lost and lost.

With a flourish, I dumped the bag down in front of Lucius. He was seated in his library. With his own hands, he was cleaning off a phallus he’d once drawn on a page of the Gospels. A slave stood beside him with a battered relic box.

‘We may expect a visit later today from the dispensator’s men,’ he explained, looking concerned. He turned to the slave. ‘Remind me – who was that procurator of Judaea who put the Galilean carpenter to death?’

‘It was Pontius Pilate, sir,’ the slave replied, looking rather pleased with himself. As Lucius turned back to me, I saw the slave actually smile and kiss the relic box.

Lucius waved him out of the room. ‘Well, this bag has a fine, letterly feel to it,’ he said with sudden ebullience. ‘Let’s have a look inside.’

I broke the seal on my bag with my sword. I drew out the three letters to which I’d given so little attention, when the shortest glance could have saved four lives. Their seals had been broken and then resealed – again with the mark of the English mission. There could be no doubt now that Maximin had read the letters, and that he’d thought them just as important as we’d guessed.

One was a mass of elaborate squiggles that looked as impressive as it was meaningless. Another was in Greek. So far as I could understand the complex style, this was a translation of the first out of Persian. The third was in Latin. Lucius and I pressed close together over the table to read the tiny writing that covered the skin side of the parchment.

It was a letter from the pope to the Lombard king. It had all the right seals, and was drawn in exactly the same form as the copy letters I’d seen in Canterbury written to Ethelbert and his queen. I won’t try to duplicate the windy recitation of titles with which these things begin, or the pompous language in which they are written. As it was, I had to read it twice to get the full meaning. I will instead summarise in a few words what was there expressed in a mass of words.

The pope was proposing a deal to the Lombards. Phocas was increasingly beleaguered in Constantinople. All the Eastern Churches were on the edge of heresy or at least schism. Smaragdus, the exarch in Ravenna, was both mad and incapable of defending the True Church against its internal and external enemies. Bearing in mind the whole drift of the East, whoever replaced both emperor and exarch would be still less satisfactory as the civil power in Italy.

The pope therefore proposed that King Agilulf should lay close siege to Ravenna. This was impregnable from the land side, so long as it had unbroken access from the sea. But it could be cut off from all communication with northern and central Italy. This done, he should march on Rome. Outside the walls, he should convert before his whole army out of the Arian heresy into the True Faith of Rome. The pope would then allow him into the city, where he would be crowned emperor of the West.