Richard Blake - Conspiracies of Rome

Lucius was already up. For the first time, I saw him reading a book. He read aloud, but was keeping his voice down so as not to disturb me. I heard the slow, halting mutter of something in one of the more complex lyric metres.

‘I never guessed you liked poetry,’ I said, looking over to the window where Lucius had his book.

‘Nor did I,’ came the reply. ‘I had a wretched education, and I’m beginning to feel I should do some catching up if I’m to be a fit companion for you. I borrowed the book from some deacon I was drinking with last night. It’s all rather difficult stuff, though, don’t you think? I’ve been up half the night, and I’m only on the fifth page of this thick, heavy book.’

I got stiffly out of bed and stretched. Lucius gave me an appreciative look.

‘I think I could do with a brief walk to get some movement back into me,’ I said. My arm was still aching. But I’d removed the bandage, as the wound was nicely scabbed over. I reached for some clothes.

‘If you’re going down, could you sort out another change of horses?’ Lucius asked. ‘Get something fine. I’ve had our good clothes aired and pressed. We shan’t be exactly splendid. But there’s much to be said for making the best entry possible into Ravenna.’

I reached for my purse. So far as I could tell, Lucius had paid the whole cost of our journey so far. With all my riches – and if the dispensator had frozen these, they’d soon enough be unfrozen – I had a plain duty to pay some share of all this travelling.

‘No, no, my golden Alaric,’ Lucius protested. ‘Take my purse with you. I absolutely insist.’

He got up and forced his purse into my hands.

Down in the stable, I chose a couple of black horses. They were a matched pair, and of good quality. But I thought they were rather expensive.

‘This is Ravenna, mate,’ the groom explained when I tried to haggle on the price. ‘You aren’t in some shithole pile of ruins now. This is an imperial city. You pay standard prices here.’

I wished I had brought my own purse. I was being forced to hand over almost as much as the previous six days had cost us. I sighed and opened the smaller compartment of the purse Lucius had grabbed up as we left his house.

I pulled out a couple of solidi. I looked at them. My heart froze. The coins all bore the head of the Emperor Maurice. On the reverse, the letters ‘CONOB’ were clearly stamped. The letter B was raised just a little above the other four letters.

I emptied the whole compartment into my hand, and spread out the smooth, regular coins.

‘It’s not that much, mate,’ the groom laughed. ‘Here, I can see you aren’t up with real coin. Let me sort out the price-’

‘That won’t be necessary,’ I snapped. ‘Keep those horses to one side. I’ll be back for them.’

Back in our room, I undressed and lay on the bed. I stretched out my arms to Lucius. He came to me. We fornicated for a long time.

Afterwards, I began in a slow, dreamy voice I’d been practising in my head.

‘Lucius,’ I asked, ‘We’ll be meeting the exarch later today, shan’t we?’

‘Yes. Probably in the late afternoon.’

‘You say he’s a bit mad. Does that make him dangerous?’

Lucius thought. ‘Not really dangerous,’ he said. ‘The man is getting old, and the tendency to shortness of temper that he’s always had is growing worse with age. I promise you’ll get on with him – no problem.’

‘But I’ll need to be careful what I say to him – after all, he’s the most powerful man in Italy.’

‘Of course,’ said Lucius. ‘But you don’t have to worry about that. Your speech and general manners are not in question.’

‘Yes,’ I continued, ‘but I’ll need to know the appropriate responses to what he says. In particular, I’ll need to know the truth about those letters. The truth for the whole world is one thing. The real truth is another. And I must have the real truth.’

Lucius sat up. I continued lying, my eyes half closed, my good arm across my brow.

‘Lucius,’ I said, ‘I know that you had those letters written. You got Martin and someone else to write them. You got them to those English mercenaries outside Populonium, and you set them up with the prefect’s men.

‘The idea was that they’d sit in their camp beside the shrine of Saint Antony, waiting for orders that would never come. Instead, they’d be taken by the prefect’s men, and the letters would be given to him. The pope would then be arrested before he could set out back from Naples.

‘That’s the truth, isn’t it, Lucius? You are the Column of Phocas.’

Lucius was silent awhile. Through my half-closed eyes, I saw a range of expressions flit across his face.

‘In a manner, yes,’ he said at length, speaking cautiously. ‘How long have you known this?’

‘For a long time,’ I lied. Or did I lie? As with Martin, the elements of the puzzle were assembling themselves into a chain of reasoning so firm that I could barely conceive of not having seen it from the beginning.

Lucius lay back and relaxed. He let one hand fall on my chest.

‘Very well,’ he said, ‘I’ll tell you.’ He closed his eyes and began.

‘There are details you haven’t caught. In the first place, the letters weren’t to be carried before the prefect. He’d only have sat on them or gone to the dispensator. The orders were that the mercenaries were to be killed and all that they had with them taken straight off to Ravenna, where the exarch would deal with the matter.

‘I told you I was with Phocas earlier in the year. I gave you the truth about our public meeting. He sent me away with nothing worth having. But he called me back to the Imperial Palace late in the evening. That’s where we first hatched the plan.

‘As you know, the man is short of money. Armies and officials need to be paid. Indemnities and bribes to the Persians require hard cash. The Eastern Church is rich, but is too close at hand to be despoiled. Take money from the Churches there, and you’ll have the priests leading insurrections in every city.

‘But the Western Church is fabulously rich – and no one in the East gives a shit about the sufferings of Latin priests who’ve been getting on every set of Eastern nerves for centuries with their presumptions of supremacy.

‘All we needed was a credible excuse to smash up the Roman Church. Any excuse would work in Constantinople – probably a simple decree would satisfy people there. But we needed something that would absolutely paralyse opinion in the West.

‘An offer to hand out the Purple to some illiterate savage, his hair stinking of rancid butter, would detach most civilians. An offer to tolerate the Arian heresy would detach the Churches in at least France, Spain and Africa. It might also cause uproar in Italy.

‘I timed the release of the letters for when Boniface was in Naples, up to his neck in mud. The dispensator may be the real power in Rome. But he still needs the pope to mouth the words he prompts. He can’t speak by himself for the Church.

‘But for you and your friend, those letters would by now be old news in Ravenna. The fresh news would be the arrival for trial of the pope and dispensator. Even if they could talk their way out of those charges, a trawl of the papal archives would surely turn up something else for which we could nail the Church. One way or another, we were to get an excuse to lay hands on whatever property of the Church was saleable and within reach-’

I broke in. ‘And in return, you were to get back your family estates in Sicily and Cyprus,’ I said. ‘But why make a deal with Phocas? No one believes he’ll be around much longer. Even if he is, how can you trust a man like that?’