Richard Blake - Conspiracies of Rome

It was a fine sight, I suppose. I’d so far killed about twelve men – forgetting the churl I’d accidentally pushed over a cliff above Dover. That was a good total for a man of my age and quality who’d never yet fought in a regular battle. This kill had been a good one, almost worth commemorating in verse. But it didn’t register. I was as if in a dream. All it meant to me at the time was that I wasn’t going back to Rome until I was ready.

As cool as iced water, Lucius counted the horses and assessed their power and speed. He found nothing written in their bags. Again, he ignored my suggestion to hamstring them. Instead, he cut away the leather ties that attached saddles and bridles. They would be unharmed but useless to anyone who found them. Then, with a shout and a few jabs from his sword, he drove them off into the woods.

He turned to me. ‘Mount up, my Alaric,’ he said. ‘Don’t ask me how the dispensator got these men ahead of us. But if he can get some ahead, he might get others. Let’s press on.’

We mounted and galloped forward along the road.

In ancient times, some of the Greeks used to fill their armies with lovers. It made the armies into invincible fighting machines – though not in the end against the Romans. I felt the power of that force as we tore along the road. That moment of calm as I’d sat in the road had passed. Now, we raced through the late afternoon. My body was on fire with an exultation I’d never before felt. To speed over those paving stones with Lucius beside me was better than the best sex I’d ever had. We rode on and on, until the horses began to falter.

Then we stopped.

We stopped beside another of those little streams and watered our horses. As we washed the blood and gore from our own bodies, I noticed for the first time that I’d been wounded. The left sleeve of my riding tunic was slashed down to the wrist. There was a deep vertical gash on my arm underneath. There was another shallow puncture in my left side. How I’d got these I couldn’t imagine. I’d felt nothing at the time, nor afterwards. Now, I sat beside the stream feeling suddenly weak and cold as the blood poured down my arm in a crimson stream. I could see the parted skin hanging loose in flaps.

Lucius washed and dressed the wounds.

‘I don’t think this will turn bad,’ he said grimly. ‘But I guarantee it will hurt by nightfall like nothing you’ve ever felt.’

‘Thank you for coming back, Lucius,’ I said feebly.

Lucius stood over me, looking down. ‘How could you possibly think I would ever have gone off without you?’ he asked. ‘You are my beautiful young Alaric. You are the sun that illuminates my soul. So long as I live, I will never leave you, my golden love, my everything. We go together through life, or not at all.

‘Fuck the letters in my bag,’ he added, more lightly. ‘I couldn’t go off without you.’

‘We made a proper mess back there,’ I said. Well, Lucius had made a proper mess. All I’d done was blunder about like a drunk in a tavern. I took another gulp of the wine he held out, and looked at the notches cut here and there in my now blunted sword.

‘You fought well,’ said Lucius firmly. ‘You have strength and speed. You have the courage of your noble fathers. All you need more is the practice that brings them together. We’ll see to that in Ravenna, when everything else is over.

‘And you’ll soon enough have a lovely scar to show off in the baths.’ Lucius grinned as he helped me back onto my horse.

I could have managed a longer rest. But Lucius was right. How the dispensator had got an interception party ahead of us was beyond our imagining. But if he could get one, there might easily be others. We needed to get out of the papal zone as quickly as we could.

I felt a decided chill as the evening came on. At first, I thought it was the change of temperature. Then I began to sweat. A concern on his face that worried me, Lucius kept looking at me in the failing light. I felt nothing in my side. But, as he’d promised, the wound on my arm had begun to throb, sending spasms of pain up into my neck.

We came to another post inn. Lucius dithered a while over the keeper’s offer of a bed for the night. In the end, he showed the exarch’s letter to get us fresh horses, and bought some food and some drugs.

I don’t know if it was the drugs or the rising fever, but I rode on through the night feeling increasingly detached from my body. I began to sing snatches of ballads in English, alternating these with long passages of the Lucretius I’d read in the library of Anicius. They made an incongruous match – the unreflecting joys of battle and the hunt, and that sombre meditation on the futility of life.

Lucius tried to quieten me several times. But I was hardly aware of his company. I raved on in a feeble croak until my throat was dry as dust and I called for wine. Lucius gave me sips of water. Several times, I thought he was Maximin, and questioned him about the finer points of the Monophysite controversy. I shouted impatiently at him as he failed to answer my queries about the perfect union of God and Man in a single substance.

I then thought Lucius was one of my fellows in that raiding party I’d briefly joined on the Wessex border. I jabbered on and on in English about nothing in particular.

Then everything seemed to clear, and I was sitting on horseback beside that broken sewer in Rome. It was night again, and I could see without any moon above. Lucius sat beside me on the left. Again, there was the heavy crunch of footsteps on the steps. It was coming closer, and I could hear the rough, laboured breathing of something unaccustomed to movement, but still immensely powerful.

This time, we didn’t turn and run. We continued to sit, looking down from horseback at the awful blackness of the sewer.

‘There’s nothing to fear, do be assured,’ Lucius said. His voice shook, giving the lie to his words.

‘We must see what it is,’ I agreed. My teeth began to chatter.

Suddenly, Maximin – or was it the diplomat? – stood beside me to my right. Sometimes it was one, sometimes the other, sometimes both at once. I looked at the shouting face and felt the gentle breeze fanned up by the frantic gestures. But I heard nothing.

I turned back to the sewer opening. Something was coming out. It was big. It was dark. It was And now I was back on the road with Lucius. The moon was bright overhead, and I could hear the sound of eight hooves on the road. My teeth were chattering in reality, I was very cold, and Lucius was leaning over to support me.

I know that, after a while, I couldn’t sit up on the horse. I felt as tired and as weak as a kitten. Lucius stopped and laid me across the horse. We rode on through the night at a very slow pace. We compensated as best we could by not stopping.

By the morning, I felt some return to coherence. Still very weak, I wasn’t up to any galloping. But I could at least now sit on the horse and ride slowly beside Lucius.

At a watering place for the horses, we came upon an armed carriage. Its main passenger was a Greek official on his way to Rimini to hand in some cadastral reports his subordinates had made up for him. Lucius showed his magic letter from the exarch, and I was soon wrapped up in the back seat of the carriage. A slave woman dabbed at my fevered brow, and poured some poppy juice down my throat.

This was one of those carriages that you still saw in those days – partly closed, partly open. The main bumping of the road was kept away with leather straps that secured the seating to the main body. I was soon deliciously comfortable.

The Greek travelled on my horse to reduce the load and allow us to keep up a decent speed.

Lucius rode beside the carriage. As I drifted off into a drug-induced sleep, I asked him where he’d got his knowledge of the Lombard language. I thought he knew only Latin. He explained that he’d been taught to ride and fight by a Lombard captive when he was about my age. He didn’t know enough to hold a proper conversation. Besides, everyone in the Lombard nobility had now learnt Latin rather well. And even the humbler Lombards could speak it after a fashion. But he’d picked up most of the riper expressions from his teacher, and these came out as if naturally in moments of great danger.