and with rapid strides.
‘The only exit from that street is by the Aemilian Bridge,’ said Lucius urgently. ‘You and you,’ he spoke to his slaves, ‘get down the short route past the Shrine of Saint Glabrarius. I want you at the far end of this street before he gets to it. I want him alive,’ he called after them.
We followed down the long street to the river. There were no side streets. There were no particularly ruined houses to let him off the street. Unless he could force a door open, we’d have him. It would be two against one at worst – four against one if we didn’t catch him before the junction with the embankment.
We ran over the smooth, reasonably uncluttered paving stones. One-Eye never looked round. He ran ahead, his black cloak billowing around him like the wings of some great bird. For such a large man, he moved very fast. We could scarcely keep pace with him.
‘Stop!’ Lucius cried. ‘We need to talk with you.’
A feeble instruction, you’ll agree. It was still better than the mouthful of obscene threats I’d had ready.
We rounded a corner. Before us was the end of the street. Beyond was the embankment and the bridge. There were the slaves standing guard.
But One-Eye was now on horseback. How he’d left his horse unattended with any expectation of coming back to it was a mystery to me. But he had. With a clatter of hooves, he was off. The slaves put up their arms to stop him. He knocked them down as a storm flattens an old tree.
He was across the bridge in moments. We stood impotently, watching him canter off to our left along the Via Portuensis. He stopped once and looked back at us. He raised his riding whip in the now familiar gesture. Then he was off.
‘Fuck you pair of incompetents!’ Lucius swore at the slaves. ‘Get me a fucking horse. I’m giving chase.’
But there was none to be had. The streets were empty of traffic. One-Eye was soon out of sight into some trees.
Back at his house, Lucius punished the slaves with his own hand. While they cowered screaming before him, he flogged them until their blood spattered his face and hands. His eyes blazed with anger. I’d never seen him like this.
‘Please, master,’ one of them cried. ‘Don’t hurt us. We did our best. Please don’t use us like the others.’
But Lucius only beat all the harder, his face like black stone.
‘Take them away,’ he gasped at length to his steward, dropping the soaked, now broken cane. ‘I want them in chains for the next month. Permanent latrine duty. Only bread and water. I want them brought to me for another flogging every time the weals scab over. They’ll bless me at the end if I don’t sell them into a lead mine.’
I looked on, appalled. You don’t treat even churls like that – well, not unless they’ve done something really bad. And these had tried. Could you stop a mounted man twice your size?
Over an early dinner, Lucius recovered some of his composure. I suggested he might have been rather harsh with his slaves.
‘Alaric,’ he smiled, ‘you really don’t understand anything about the management of a household. I will make sure to educate you fully in this before you set up your own house here.
‘Slaves may look like human beings,’ he lectured me. ‘But they aren’t. They are in all respects an inferior breed. Everyone agrees on that. I know the priests witter on about the equality of all human souls. But even they don’t actually believe that. If they did, the Church wouldn’t have several hundred thousand slaves, or however many it is, getting with their sweat and blood all the gold that pays for their spreading empire of corruption over the Earth. Slaves are lower creatures. They are kept in line by force and the threat of force. Even today, do you know how many slaves there are in Rome? Can you guess at their ratio to citizens?
‘They are there to do as they are told, and when they are told. It doesn’t matter what instructions you give them. It doesn’t matter whether they can or can’t be carried into effect. If a slave disobeys, he must be punished. Flogging is normal for that. If he betrays you, or raises a hand against you or any of your own interests, you proceed to mutilation or burning. You rule by terror, or you don’t rule.
‘If you ignore this simple truth, you’ll be lucky if you’re simply laughed at. Do it too often, you’ll wake one night with a knife to your throat.’
‘But will you go all the way and sell them into the mines?’ I asked.
‘By the Twelve True Gods, of course not!’ he laughed. ‘I’d not get much of a price for city-bred trash like them. And I’d only replace them with worse.
‘Since it seems to trouble your tender heart, I’ll knock them around a bit more, then show clemency at a meeting of all the household. How does that suit you? Call it another birthday gift.’
A slave with an impassive face refilled my cup.
‘All this and more, my dear Alaric, I’ll do for you,’ Lucius added, a pleading note now in his voice. ‘Just say whatever you want, and it’s yours.’
Well, friendship has its obligations as well as advantages. Lucius had done so much for me these past few days. All I’d done was to take. Indeed, I’d now withheld a fair bit of information.
‘It isn’t late,’ I said, ‘but it’s been a long day. I can’t take it permanently yet. But I’ll gladly take up your offer of a bed for tonight.’
Lucius smiled and leaned back complacently into his chair.
37
That night, I committed with Lucius what Maximin had always called ‘the abominable sin of the ancients’. The punishment, by the way, is castration, plus the usual confiscation of goods. I have known the law to be enforced in Constantinople – but only against those who’ve already got on the emperor’s bad side and against whom no other charges are likely to stick.
We woke naked in each other’s arms. A slave was standing over us with clean water to drink and some raisins. I couldn’t get free from his embrace at first, and I thought for a moment Lucius would start the same enquiries about my feelings for him as Gretel had taken to making. But he grabbed at the dish and sent the slave on his way. I slid free and stood stretching in the early sunlight.
After this small refreshment, Lucius taught me the use of his gymnasium. He’d been right. It was so much better than the barbarian forms of exercise. I don’t except any of these, even sea bathing. I resolved as we shared a cold tub afterwards – still no wood for the big furnace – that this was another civilised usage I’d adopt.
I was glad Lucius had said no more about the investigation. I was feeling increasingly guilty that I’d advanced more than a little by myself, and was revealing none of it. Then again, he had seemed alarmed by the discovery of a political angle to the murder. It was probably for the best if he didn’t yet know the exarch of Africa was now sniffing about for the letters.
From Lucius, I hurried back to Marcella’s to collect some papers. I was delayed there awhile by the delivery of yet more clothes. I hadn’t time to try them on properly. But Gretel helped me into some of them, and swore I looked like a god. She danced around me so provocatively that I tore everything off and ravished her on the floor. It was an unexpected pleasure, and it really set me up for the day proper. Afterwards, she got water for me and suggested a touch of face powder to cover the sunburn I’d picked up going with the diplomat down to the financial district.
Then to the Lateran, where the copying was back in full swing. Martin showed me the first completed books. They still hadn’t dried well enough to risk opening them. Even if they were wholly devotional, they looked very good.
I’d go over to the Exchange later. I’d sniff the financial air against the day when I went there as a dealer in my own right. I’d also look for that old man with experience of the English market. I could discuss the mechanics of shipping books to Canterbury. And I could press him again about the Column of Phocas. He’d known more than he was saying. I needed to know what that was.
I worked everyone until some while after the normal time for lunch. I let Martin go with a guilty pang, and took myself across the river to the financial district.
