mapping the contours of our ignorance. ‘Ask enough questions,’ said Lucius as we refreshed ourselves on raisins and wine, ‘and some of them will answer the others.’
27
The wine dealer had his shop at the foot of the Caelian Hill, just by the road leading to the Lateran. The old watchman and another slave were sitting together in the doorway when we arrived with Martin. From the size and state of the jug at their feet, they’d drunk nearly a gallon of pale wine.
‘So, back at last, O little Celt,’ the old watchman called. ‘Will you have a drink with us now?’
Then he remembered himself and got up to bow to Lucius and me. He pointed at the other slave. ‘This is the one you want, sirs,’ he said. ‘Davus found the dying man.’
Davus was so drunk he could barely stand. I took him by the arm and led him in out of the sun. As my eyes grew accustomed to the dim light within the shop, I saw that we were in a large, cool hall, stacked high and deep with ceramic jars. Each one was labelled with a papyrus slip, showing the vintage and the price per gallon. There were steps leading down to a basement, where perhaps the finer vintages were stored. We sat down at a central table that I guessed was used for letting customers sample the wares.
At first, I thought Davus was too drunk to give us anything. But he drank deep from a jug of red, and seemed to pull himself together. His master was away on business, he explained, and he had been left in charge of the shop. The slave evidently thought himself lucky to be on his own.
Poor master, I thought.
As you might expect, he gave his story in a slow, digressive manner. The previous morning, he’d got up early to open the shop. As he was pulling down the little awning over the entrance, he’d been taken short and had gone over to the entrance to an ancient sewer across the street. Pissing into it, he’d heard a faint groan beneath.
With help from a couple of passing slaves, he’d managed to reach down and get the man out of the sewer. It seemed he’d been stabbed some while before and dumped as if already dead in the sewer. Perhaps his attackers had thought he was dead. He was pale and weak from loss of blood. Davus had sat him up and poured some wine into him. But the manhandling had caused the last of his blood to gush out. With a gasp, he’d died. Shortly after, men from the Lateran had come over and removed the corpse.
‘Did he say anything before he died?’ I asked. ‘Anything at all?’
Davus thought hard. ‘He said many things. But he was weak and I had trouble hearing him. One thing he did say clearly. “It was the Column of Phocas,” he said. “Destroy the Column of Phocas.” ’
I looked at Lucius. He looked back at me.
‘Whatever could that have meant?’ I asked.
‘Search me,’ said Lucius.
‘Perhaps he really said something else, sir,’ Martin added.
‘No!’ cried Davus. ‘I know what I heard. He said to destroy the Column of Phocas. I would never make up such disrespect for our lord the emperor. I saw the column going up – and a very fine thing it is, too. Don’t you go putting treason in my mouth, you worthless piece of barbarian shit.’ He waved a heavy fist at Martin.
The man was clearly an habitual drunk. Yet he was quite sure of what he had heard. We had to accept his description, and try to work out its meaning for ourselves.
Outside, we examined the broken sewer. It was a gash in the road about six feet long. It had been dug up many years earlier for a repair that hadn’t been completed. Now, it was choked with so much dirt and rubbish that it would never be used again for carrying away waste. There were holes like this all over Rome. I’d seen a particularly nasty one the other evening. I’d nearly fallen down several before getting used to their random presence.
I thought of sending Martin down to look for any evidence we couldn’t see from above. But he was wearing the rather nice clothes he’d put on for the dispensator, and I didn’t want to push the rights of borrowed ownership that far. Besides, I doubted if there was anything to be found there.
Lucius wouldn’t have thought twice about saving Martin’s appearance. But he too didn’t seem to think there was anything down there to justify a closer inspection.
Now to the convent. In bright sunshine, even the dumpier parts of Rome can look reasonably cheerful. Certainly, the streets we walked along were better by day than on that dreadful evening. Some of them, as ever, were empty. In others were crowded the dirty rabble of the city. Others were filled with sturdy, brightly clad pilgrims, who were still coming in for the consecration. We moved at a restrained pace. The abbess knew we were to visit. But I didn’t think it would be appropriate to arrive too soon after Marcella had arranged for us to be there.
What had seemed a fortress the other night was now visible as a large town house of the old nobility. Though blackened in the usual way by dirt and smoke, the exterior remained imposing – a grand building with the remains of a portico and colonnade about the entrance. This was of marble, and had been mostly broken up and taken off for burning into cement.
The main building was a series of filled-in brick arches, supporting a number of brick domes, most of them still sheathed in lead. It had survived the troubles of the previous seventy years in pretty good shape.
Close by was the shrine of Saint Tribonian. This looked for all the world like a ruined privy. Perhaps it was. I believe Bishop Arius, who caused so much trouble with his heresy, died in a privy in Constantinople. His stomach exploded. It was a miracle, Maximin had explained in Canterbury. A Frankish monk who was inclined to Arianism had later whispered to me it was poison. Of course, that privy was soon demolished and the whole area redeveloped to pre-empt any claims of further miracles. Saint Tribonian, doubtless, had been an orthodox martyr.
Martin knocked on the door. It opened, and an old man – the one from the other night? – bowed and motioned us to enter. He took our weapons and placed them beside his small office. He led us down the carriageway straight into a large courtyard garden. This was neatly maintained, and planted, so far as I could tell, with various medicinal herbs. On the other side, we entered into a hallway, from which doors and passages led off to the interior rooms.
This hall had once been richly decorated with mosaics. These were now crudely painted over with a whitewash that still showed the occasional street scene in its thinner places. The marbles were cracked and broken. It was as if efforts had been made to remove all traces of former wealth from the room.
The rooms through which we passed were empty, but showed signs of recent use. I saw balls of thread and stitching frames in one room; in another a freshly broken loaf of dark bread. From far away inside came a collective whisper of prayers. The ladies of the house did not receive male visitors, and evidently preferred not to be seen by any who did come.
These rooms had also been made plain. In a few cases, a larger room had been divided up using wooden screens that reached to the whitewashed ceiling. A couple of rooms had even been partitioned with rough, unplastered brickwork.
The abbess sat alone on a chair placed in the middle of a library room. Around her I could see shelves of books and racks of papyrus rolls. Her face set sternly, she was dressed from head to toe in black. It was impossible from her face alone to tell what age she was. Early middle age was the best guess I could make.
She motioned to the old slave. He brought another two chairs so that Lucius and I could be seated. Martin stood back against the wall. We’d agreed to make a record of the conversation afterwards from our joint memories.
‘You are the men who disturbed our peace two nights ago,’ the abbess began in a stiff, clear voice. It was less a question than a statement of fact. I nodded.
‘I deeply apologise for any alarm I may have caused in this house,’ I began. ‘But, Reverend Mother, I was looking for my friend. He said before setting out from his lodgings he was coming here. Before he reached you, however, he was brutally murdered in the street.’
‘This world,’ she replied, ‘is a place of many dangers. I have heard the reports of that murder, and you have my sympathies. My own brother was murdered not long since.’
She sighed and let a fold of her black robe fall down from her body. She wore black underneath. ‘They are
