explanation of what the search order allowed, they’d spoken not a word from start to finish.
The diplomat took me aside. ‘Is it true that an ethereal light was seen above the reverend father’s body when it was found?’ he asked. ‘This house may have been blessed by the final days of a saint. You should make sure to hold on to some of his property.’
Maximin a saint? He’d been many things, and I’d loved him for all of them. But a saint? I said nothing.
Marcella, though, was relishing the possibility that she had let rooms to a saint. She continued in hysterical mood. ‘They haven’t got no right to do this to persons of quality such as myself,’ she sobbed to no one in particular. ‘In my husband’s day, the rule with quality was always to ask to come in. Search orders was for everyone lower. Oh, what sad times these is… what terrible sad times. This world isn’t for much longer, I can tell you.’
So she raved on. But I could see the satisfied glint in her eyes. Having a guest murdered – even away from the house – would not in itself mean good business. But a martyrdom was an entirely different matter. When I got back, I’d seen a couple of well-dressed slaves hanging around in the entrance hall. These had been sent over to enquire about rooms. The city would soon be filling up with assorted dignitaries, you see, for the consecration of the converted temple. For business purposes, Maximin’s death had come at just the right moment. Already expecting a full occupancy of her rooms, I had no doubt Marcella was now calculating by how much she could increase her rates. She lashed out with her cane, telling all around her that persons of her quality expected better treatment. But I could see her mind was elsewhere.
I dodged behind her back, making for the exit. This was all too much. Maximin was dead. No one knew who had killed him. No one in any position to know seemed to care. I felt like a man who climbs down a well and then discovers that the friend holding the rope at the top has been called away. From that evening in Ethelbert’s palace till now, I’d always been able to turn to Maximin for support or for mere companionship. Now he was gone, and my world was falling apart in confusion and horror.
I wanted to get back to my room and gather my thoughts. But the diplomat saw me. He clutched gently at my sleeve and led me over to the glass table.
‘Listen,’ he said gently, ‘I know this is not the best time – though it is a valid question when is the best time for what I have to say. But I really want your company for breakfast the day after tomorrow, on the Jewish Sabbath Day.
‘No, I can’t say now. But I will say everything on Saturday. Can I count on your company for breakfast? It will affect both you and your dear friend, the now-blessed Maximin.’
His voice dropped to a whisper. ‘Please keep this quiet.’ He repeated in an even softer whisper, ‘Absolutely quiet.’
He turned back towards Marcella. I escaped into the sunlight. I didn’t want to go back to my room. I’d had another thought.
‘Where are you going, sir?’ Martin had appeared beside me from nowhere.
‘To the dispensator, of course. Where else do you think I should be going?’ I tried to put a firmness of purpose into my voice that I didn’t at all feel. I stepped back into the house. I’d not be needing a cloak in this sunshine.
‘Shall I come too, sir?’ asked Martin. ‘I can get you into the Lateran.’
‘I think I can do that for myself,’ I said, inspecting myself in a little mirror on the wall. My face looked rather haggard, but I wasn’t setting out on a social visit. ‘I’ll be grateful if you could start preparing the funeral, Martin. If you don’t know anyone, speak to the doctor. He must have a recommendation.’
‘I don’t think, sir, that will be necessary,’ he said with a close look. ‘The dispensator’s men placed a seal on the storeroom door. In view of the rumours circulating, I think the body will soon be removed to the Lateran.’
I ignored the invitation to talk about these ‘rumours’. I’d already dismissed them as the gossip of slaves for whom finding a murdered priest wasn’t enough. ‘We’ll speak again when I’m back from the Lateran,’ I said.
The dispensator was reading as I walked unannounced into his office. Getting into the Lateran had been easy. Getting into any building is easy, so long as you make it seem to the guards and receptionists or whatever that you are too important to be stopped.
I sat down opposite the dispensator, who continued reading. He must have known I was there. I waited. Eventually, he looked up at me.
‘You have an interesting past, young man,’ he said, waving his hand over what I could now see was Maximin’s report. ‘You came here for penance, and penance you shall be given.’
‘What is in those letters?’ I asked abruptly.
‘These letters from Father Maximin?’ he asked in return. ‘Their contents are for the eyes only of Holy Mother Church.’
‘Stop playing with me,’ I snapped. ‘You know perfectly well what we found outside Populonium. What is in those letters?’
‘Do you not know that yourself?’ The dispensator brushed an invisible speck of dust from his sleeve.
‘I didn’t read them. I don’t know their contents.’
‘Too busy with the gold, I imagine,’ he said, a hint of a sneer in his voice. ‘It might have been well for Father Maximin had you paid more attention when you could.’
‘You received a letter during our last meeting, didn’t you?’ I asked. ‘It told you about the letters. As soon as you’d read it, you sent for Maximin. What did you discuss with him? What is in those letters? Who told you about them? What else did you find in his papers?’
The dispensator raised a hand for silence. ‘Questions, questions, young man – so many questions. Please be aware that I ask the questions in this city. I do not make it my habit to give answers.’
He closed a file that had lain open on his desk. Its pages had been covered with tiny writing that I hadn’t been able to read from where I sat.
‘However, so far as I can tell, Father Maximin took the letters out with him last night. They were not found this morning with his body.’
‘But surely you had them from him yesterday,’ I broke in. ‘You called him here in the morning.’
‘I sent for him,’ the dispensator said. ‘He didn’t come. I sent for him again. My private secretary did not return. I sent out a search party for him. He was found this morning, dying from a stab wound. I never saw Father Maximin. I saw him last in your company in this office.’
I fell silent. What was going on in this city? ‘There are evils,’ Maximin had told me, ‘that will swallow you whole.’ They’d swallowed him instead. What had been in those letters?
I tried again. ‘Maximin was my friend and my confessor. I have a duty to find his killers. I need all the information I can get.’
‘Duty?’ The dispensator’s face took on a thin, contemptuous smile. ‘You have a duty? Was it not your duty in Canterbury to keep your breeches around your waist? As it is, you caused a potentially serious dispute between the Church and a local ruler who had previously been wholly favourable to our mission.’ He tapped Maximin’s long report. Then he reached for a sheet of unrolled papyrus. ‘If that weren’t enough, you hadn’t been in Rome two days before you were seen attending a nocturnal sacrifice.’
I slumped back in my chair. I’d come here to find answers. All I was getting was further questions. Yes, I was tired and drunk and drugged, and fighting back a despair that was threatening to reach out and floor me. But the dispensator would have been a match for me even otherwise. I’d burst into his office with some wild idea of getting a full explanation or a promise of justice. Instead, I’d smashed my face into a brick wall. I’d been landed with an accusation that would in all other circumstances have terrified me. Even now, I was baffled.
The dispensator continued: ‘You will have noticed that the prefect has much else to do beside the performance of his official duties. But I doubt if even he would take no action were I to send him a formal complaint. The old worship is strictly forbidden. I will not warn you again.’
He looked steadily into my face. I looked uncertainly back, fear at last clawing its way from the back of my mind.
‘I am sorry that Father Maximin is dead,’ the dispensator added, now in a softer tone. ‘He was a good and faithful servant of the Church. But you and he blundered outside Populonium into something beyond your comprehension. He did so from pardonable but unwise zeal, you from simple greed. Little people should keep away from such things.’
He closed the file. He made a mark in black on its papyrus cover and dropped it into an open box. ‘His was not the only death in the past day,’ he added. ‘I have lost a highly valuable assistant, and must now transact a
