‘Dear me, no,’ said Maximin. ‘You really do need to mingle with these people. Some of them still have their family libraries, and you never know what you might find there. Go and enjoy yourself, and make some useful friends.’
All very well for him. He had an excuse for crying off the dinner. There was to be a meeting of Italian bishops the day after next. He’d been asked to address them on the English mission. Now, he was hard at work on another of his speeches.
14
I set out with Martin just as night was coming on. It had clouded over in the late afternoon and was looking set for rain. I put on a nice travelling cloak I’d bought earlier in the day. Maximin lent his own tatty cloak to Martin, who was assigned to guide me and supply some force of numbers should there be trouble in the street.
As yesterday and earlier in that day, I heard the soft patter of feet as we walked down the empty, darkening streets. It seemed that whoever wanted the relic hadn’t noticed we had given it back. But there was much else now. Rome comes to life at night. There are more people – shifty, dirty wretches obviously out for mischief of various kinds. But mostly there are the rats.
There could be millions of these in Rome. Certainly, there are more rats than people. So far as I can tell, they live during the day in the old sewers and in the deeper stretches of the ruins. At night, they all come out to gorge themselves on whatever rubbish has been deposited in the streets. They scuttled out of our path, but swarmed all around with a muted cacophony of squeaks and scratching. In the remains of the light, I could see the tide of brown bodies streaming around our feet. I pulled my sword out and skewered one that was moving slower than the others. I tossed it over against the wall. At once, in a little frenzy, the others were upon its twitching body, three deep, tearing at it and each other.
‘They have their uses,’ Martin said. ‘They eat dead animals, which keeps the streets a little cleaner. In Constantinople I was told that, when their coats turn black, you can expect the plague.’
Interesting. I’ve heard that one many times since, and it is true, so far as I can tell. I think there is some power in the contagion that changes them. I do know that they often die first.
I thought to start a conversation with Martin, but couldn’t think of an opening that wasn’t horribly contrived. In truth, I’ve never been very comfortable with slaves. They’re fine for sleeping with, but I find conversation embarrassing. I think the reason is that I grew up without them.
Yes, we have our churls in England. But they are so low as to be almost different beings. Excepting a few barked orders, there is no communication with them. It is the same elsewhere. I’ve come across whole races in my time, fit for nothing else but enslavement.
Unlike some of the old philosophers I’ve read, and some of the less worldly Christians, I’ve no objection to slavery in principle. There are some jobs so shitty – digging the fields, working the mines, rowing in galleys, and so forth – that they can only be got done under compulsion. And so there is an economy in nature that supplies certain answers to certain problems. But I’ve never got used to the idea of owning rational beings and setting them to work in areas where paid labour would be more humane and less costly. Secretaries come right into that category. I rather think even the higher household servants do.
I know most of the ancients disagreed. They used slaves even as tutors to their children. The modern Greeks still do. That diplomat I came across at Marcella’s went one step further. He had a slave to wipe his arse. He’d take his place and sit talking about commodity prices with me beside him, and a slave would reach under and wipe him, while he continued as if nothing odd were happening.
Then, with Martin, there was the matter of his nationality. My people took the country from his people, and they hate us for it. Until I was small, they rationalised their hatred by calling us heathens. Then the missionaries turned up, and we started to become better Christians than they. So they thought up some trifling difference over dates and made it a big issue of orthodoxy – not caring if it made them into heretics in the eyes of Rome. When I was first in Canterbury, one of their bishops came through on his way to some business in Brittany. He wouldn’t set foot in our church. He wouldn’t even open the very nice letter Bishop Lawrence sent inviting him to have dinner.
A while back, I did some historical research on the synod our bishops had arranged at Whitby some years back. Because they had more learning, and had come straight from the Roman mould, they were able to trick the poor Celts back into communion. But that hasn’t stopped them from hating us still.
So Martin and I walked largely in silence down those black, deserted streets, while the rats scurried away from us and something human followed discreetly behind. A fine rain began to soak us through our outer clothes. What desultory conversation we managed was wholly about the matter of assembling the materials and personnel for the copying that was to start tomorrow.
We smelt the surrounds of the house from a distance. At first, it was a pungent, aromatic smell, as of heavily spiced food. As we drew closer, the smell grew stronger, until it almost overpowered us. It was the olfactory equivalent of a deafening noise. Someone had been digging up the drains across the road from the house – possibly to repair them – and the whole neighbourhood was using the hole to dispose of shit and general waste. A combination of frequent rains and the hot spring sun had started some kind of fermentation.
The rats seemed to love it – jumping in and out, and even swimming in the filth – so far as I could see from the little lantern we carried. I pressed a wet fold of my cloak to my face as we hurried past.
The house where dinner was arranged was scarcely better. The windows were shuttered against the smell, but it followed us in nevertheless. ‘You are the main attraction for tonight, sir,’ Martin had told me. ‘You should arrive last.’ That’s why we set out so late.
When we arrived, the dinner party was already in full swing.
Perhaps swing is not the correct word. You may have read descriptions of noble dinner parties in the old days – the many courses, the entertainments, the witty conversation. For all the efforts made, this one didn’t come up to the old standards. The host and his guests lay self-consciously on their rickety eating couches, not much cleaner than the beggars outside the Lateran. With the disruption of the water supply and the closure of the public baths, cleanliness had gone out of fashion among the upper classes in Rome. Most didn’t seem to have bathed in years. From their dirty hands and fingernails, many didn’t seem even to wash that often.
Now, bodies aren’t much of a problem where cleanliness is concerned. Washing helps the work of nature, but she herself manages to slough most of the dirt off an ordinary body. The real problem is clothes. Whether or not you wash, if you don’t change your clothes, you invariably stink. And these creatures stank. They added another bright strand to the tapestry of smells that drifted in from the street. They wore the togas I’d seen on the ancient statues of senators – only these didn’t hang in neat and elaborate folds, but drooped in grey and brown wrinkles, following the shapeless contours of those who wore them.
They looked mainly to be in late middle age – most balding, and with lean, saggy faces. As I entered – Martin was taken off to the slave quarters – they were stuffing themselves from dishes of what smelt like bad cabbage served by a few scrawny slaves. The few lamps were of good bronze workmanship, but were burning meat dripping rather than oil. They threw out as much foul smoke as light, and I walked in to stinging, streaming eyes.
‘We bid welcome to Alaric of Britain,’ a particularly dirty old man cried, pulling himself up from his couch. A battered wreath on his head, he was the host, I gathered. His name had been on the invite, though I forgot this almost at once, and it is unlikely to come back into my memory now. All eyes turned in my direction, and there was a little round of applause.
‘Here is the one who slew twelve barbarians with his own hand, yet is versed in all the wisdom of our ancient fathers,’ he went on. ‘Accept, O golden hero from the farthermost land of unending night, the welcome and gratitude of the mighty Roman Senate!’ The host raised his wine cup in greeting, or to have it refilled.
I was led to a couch at the front of the room where I could be seen, and was invited to arrange myself on it. This had once been a fine piece, and still had some of its ivory trimming. But it was warped and cracked with age, and there was a long, black stain running down its length where generations of greasy togas had rubbed against it. I carefully lay down, glad to have ordered other clothes from the tailor Marcella had recommended.
The food looked as bad as it smelt. I swear some of the smaller and less obviously bad meats were baked rat. I avoided the meats of whatever kind, and the uncooked dried fish. I accepted a dish of olives that didn’t look
