Richard Blake - Conspiracies of Rome

I said nothing, my sword still pressed against his throat.

‘Look in our saddlebags,’ he whined. ‘It’s all yours. Go on, look.’

I nodded to Maximin. He came back with two leather bags. From the heavy chink as he put them down, I knew their contents. They were filled with golden solidi. But these weren’t the debased, shapeless copies I’d seen once or twice in England and more often in France. They were the smooth, regular coins of the Empire, imperial head on one side, ‘CONOB’ clearly imprinted on the other. There must have been two full sets of seventy-two to the pound. They were new and identical. Each of them had the same defect on the ‘B’, which was raised a little above the four other letters, indicating that they came from the same die.

I saw all this later. For the moment, I glanced at the coins, but my sword hand didn’t waver.

‘Look, mate,’ the theologian whined again, ‘I can show you more of them – bags and bags of them. Just let us up. We can talk over all the news from home. Then we can go and get the others. Fair shares for all, there can be!’

‘Tell me where they are,’ I asked in my flat voice. I pressed harder so a line of blood showed along the blade. ‘Tell me now.’

‘Yeah, yeah – don’t let’s be unfriendly,’ the theologian cried, trying to push his neck still closer to the ground. ‘Just take the sword away, and I’ll tell you everything.’

‘Where are they?’ I asked.

‘South along the road – about five miles,’ he babbled, breaking now and then into Latin. ‘We brung them down from Tarquini. There’s a ten-man guard on them – not good Englishmen, like us: just runaway slaves and other trash. We can take them together, no prob.’

He paused and looked ingratiating. ‘I see’d you cut up Bertwald right good. We won’t have no trouble with the others… Now, give us a drink, mate.’

I said nothing.

He continued: ‘We was ordered to wait there by the Saint Antony Shrine for instructions. Some Roman or summink was to come and tell us, or such. We didn’t know right, but we was to wait there – that’s all we was told on delivery.’

He spoke on in quick gasps in his strange mingling of languages. They were on some business, of which they knew nothing, for the Lombard authorities. They were to take delivery of a consignment of gold and a very holy relic – the nose of Saint Vexilla. They had no idea what would happen. They’d been told simply to wait for further instructions that would be obvious when they came.

‘All very hush hush,’ the theologian continued, trying to lick some moisture onto his dry lips. ‘Bertwald and me, we just grabbed what was rightly ours and was on our way back to Pavia. Come on, mate, I’m gasping for a drink. Don’t keep me down like this. The fucking sun’s in me eyes.’

Nothing more to learn here, I thought.

‘My father was not Ethelwulf. I have heard of no Ethelwulf of Rainham,’ I said. I drew the sword across his throat, cutting from under one ear right up to the other.

‘Oh, shit and fuck!’ I’d never cut a throat before, and wasn’t prepared for the fountain of blood. It went all over my face and hair and soaked my sleeve. I was mucky enough already from all that crawling in the ditch and the other death fight. But that was just washing muck. This would take hours of scrubbing, and still there’d be a stain on the grey wool of my tunic. Add to this the sword-thrust, and I’d be shabby as a churl. Of course, I had no other clothes with me.

‘Fuck!’ I pushed the jerking, gurgling body away. More blood splashed onto my trousers.

‘Was that quite in order, my son?’ asked Maximin. He sat on a slightly raised paving stone, looking with evident disapproval at the pool of blood now creeping towards him. I couldn’t tell if he was objecting to the dispatch or to the mess, or even to the attendant language – though English is a tongue rich in obscenities, and he must have picked up most of them in Canterbury.

‘He had it coming,’ I snapped. ‘If he and his friend weren’t involved in doing over that monastery, I’ve no doubt they’d have done similar elsewhere… And a dead bandit is always better than a live one.’

Maximin didn’t argue. He was probably thinking as I was – that if we’d stayed in that outhouse, none of this might have been necessary. In any case, we seldom argued now about matters of defence and violence. As I said, we’d been together on the road for months.

Back in England, he’d played me by the book. He’d led me round Canterbury and had me begging forgiveness in every church for my many sins with Edwina – and had me confessing them chapter and verse to the other missionaries, who had rolled their eyes and hugged themselves.

He’d still tried to lecture me on Christian humility back in Amiens, when I’d had cause to beat a cutpurse to pulp. Since then, we’d been pushing steadily through a dense mass of two-legged vermin. Even someone less intelligent than Maximin would soon have learnt the difference between a being created in God’s image and a particle of scum fit only to be kicked or beaten or stabbed or otherwise repelled in the shortest order.

We rolled the bodies into the ditch. I took a vicious little knife from the theologian’s belt. And we loaded our baggage onto the horses. Maximin plainly didn’t like the thought of climbing onto what seemed the more placid of the beasts. I can’t say I was a skilled rider. But we were better off on horseback than on foot. Just because we’d got through this attempt on our lives didn’t mean the roads would now be clear all the way to Rome.

As I dressed myself after washing down at the stream again – Maximin and the horses this time in clear view – and then ate breakfast, I was increasingly aware of the two-pound weight of gold swinging from my belt. It was a nice, comfortable weight, and I couldn’t help thinking how, without putting myself in too much danger, I might before the next morning increase it.

‘You’ll look lush, sir – really, truly lush.’ The younger of the tailors spoke with unforced enthusiasm as he looked up at me, his mouth full of pins.

‘Indeed, sir, you will,’ the other added, holding up the dented bronze mirror. ‘For a lady, is it, sir? Is she pretty? Will you be marrying her in Rome? Or simply visiting her?’

I ignored the questions and looked at what I could see of myself in the mirror. They were right. I looked remarkably fine. I’d looked good in Canterbury. But that was before all the walking and other exercise. I now looked ravishing. As I stared into that mirror, I had to work hard to repress a little stiffy I felt coming on.

Populonium, on the other hand, had seen better days. It had once been a rich little port town and a seaside retreat for the less wealthy of the Roman higher classes. Now, it was mostly ruined within its walls. The port remained, but the trade was largely gone. Still, it had its own bishop, and there was enough local demand to keep a few dusty shops going in the unruined centre.

We’d been lucky in finding the tailors. I had thought it unlikely we could get anything sufficiently good to be convincing in such short order. But the sight of one solidus had led, after a hushed and rapid conversation I hadn’t been able to catch, to the appearance of a most beautiful suit of clothes. They were, Maximin assured me, in the fashion of the wealthy young – tight linen trousers, loose woollen tunic, dyed blue and drawn in at the waist, and a little scarlet cloak. Ignore the slight pissy stain around the crotch and the neatly mended rent in the tunic under the heart – was that a darkness on the blue of the wool or a trick of the light? – and I could have passed easily among the grander passengers on the road, who’d been hurrying by on horseback, surrounded by armed bodyguards. Even the soft leather boots fitted, once they were reduced with a thick insole. At least the brimmed cap might have been made for me.