Before getting to the river, I dodged into an empty side street and put on the hooded robe of a monk. I was almost used now to being followed in Rome. It seemed to involve no danger during the daylight. I was even a little flattered by the constancy of the attention. Nevertheless, I wanted a bit of privacy for what I was to do. The robe covered me entirely. I left through the other end of the side street into a crowd of pilgrims and shoppers. There were at least a dozen other monks of one kind or another. For my first time in Rome, I might now count on being unobserved.
The Exchange when I got there was in uproar. I took advantage of the milling crowd and stripped off the robe, throwing it into one of the containers set up on every corner so that rubbish didn’t have to be dumped in the street. Unless someone had guessed I was going there, and had sent spies ahead, I was unobserved.
Fat Silas, I was told, had been murdered in the night. Armed men had waylaid him as he staggered home from a brothel and cut his throat. That explained the uproar. This was the first serious crime the district had known in living memory, and the Jews and Syrians and others were in a blind panic. They’d forgotten all differences of religion and nationality, and agreed on setting up a committee of enquiry in the smaller synagogue – you see, this was close enough by the Exchange to let dealers run back and forth to keep an eye on the prices. There, they were issuing joint offers of rewards for any information that might lead to the killers. There seemed to be no question of involving the prefect.
This was a strange crime, I heard from the Armenian who’d bought my options. He was leaning alone against a pillar, making notes into a book of waxed tablets. He seemed quite pleased with himself. He gave me a queer look at first, but soon cheered up when he realised I didn’t yet have the full story. Silas had been murdered, he explained, but his purse and jewellery hadn’t been touched. This raised the matter from a property-related crime to something possibly much more alarming.
‘Good thing I dumped those options,’ he added thoughtfully. ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t have bought them in the first place. But at least I got out ahead. The poor sod I sold them to will have a hard job collecting from the estate.’
Well, this was unconnected with any of my business. Even so, it wasn’t nice to wander into what I’d thought the safest part of Rome outside the Lateran, only to find myself in another murder investigation.
For all he didn’t share in the general panic over Fat Silas, the Armenian was annoyed by the continued movement of prices. Following some vast, hidden intervention the previous day, they were still all over the place. The diplomat, on his earlier visit, had been observed in close conversation with some of the Jews. That had set things off again. The Jews weren’t saying anything. Everyone else was still trying to guess what he was really about. Since I had nothing to say on this, the Armenian soon lost interest in me and went back to his waxed tablets.
Inside the Exchange, I found the old man. So far as I could tell, he was arguing over the terms of a mortgage he was negotiating to buy. The seller had the golden hair and ruined complexion of an African Vandal. I waited for the transaction to finish, then made my presence known.
‘Hello, Aelric,’ said the old man in the buoyant voice of someone who’s just got himself a bargain. ‘Come down from the Caelian to make even more cash?’ He also didn’t seem that worried about the murder.
There was no point in asking how he knew my real name Instead, I asked for his advice on transporting books to England. We sat down privately together in the shade of a small portico just by the Exchange and bought some wine and hard biscuits from a passing vendor.
Ordinarily, he explained, the most secure transport would be by land. It would be slow, but there’d be no chance of saltwater contamination of the leather and parchment. This had to be taken into account when considering the lower costs of sea transport.
However, he was getting involved in a tin shipment from Cornwall, and there would be a big, heavy ship leaving from Marseilles in July. If I had enough books ready by then, they could travel in the ballast, at a very low rate, and in reasonable safety. I could get them to Marseilles on one of the grain ships from Sicily that was planning a triangular voyage.
The only drawback was that the ship wouldn’t put in at Richborough, but at one of the Wessex ports, and the books would have to be carried overland. Then again, an armed escort wouldn’t cost much for something like books, which hardly anyone would want to steal. Either that, or Ethelbert could be got at through his wife to stump up an armed party.
I asked about tin prices.
‘Pretty firm at the moment,’ he said. ‘There’s an expectation of all-out war in the East, and for a long time. Whatever happens between Phocas and the exarch of Africa, the Persians mean business. Getting them out of Asia will take hard fighting. I expect tin and all other goods related to the military to go up and stay up.’
I’d heard this already from the diplomat. ‘How secure are shipments out of Cornwall?’ I asked. ‘I’ve heard there hasn’t been much doing there for a while.’
‘You need to dig quite deep nowadays there,’ he said, ‘and that means some danger of flooding, which slows down extraction and raises costs. But prices will soon be high enough to cover that risk. So long as your people don’t decide to raid the mine and steal everything or kill all the slaves, I see good profits there.’
After some very stiff bargaining, I put myself down for a twentieth share of the cargo. That got me free shipment of the books. It got me a chance of at least a tenfold profit. It also allowed me to probe for the information I really wanted. ‘How long do you think the emperor can last?’ I asked in English. There seemed to be free speech here on all political issues so far as they affected business. But what I wanted to lead into wasn’t for anyone to overhear in Latin. I avoided using the name Phocas, instead using the English word ‘ cyning ’ for emperor.
‘Most say he’ll be out by Christmas,’ the old man replied in English. ‘I think it could be longer. He’ll lose to the exarch eventually. But there are differences within the exarch’s own side. His son and his nephew are in a race. One is invading the East through Egypt, the other by sea. Whoever gets first to Constantinople will be the one who deposes the emperor, and therefore takes his place. Because of this deal, each young man is quietly slowing the other down. I think the emperor will last a bit longer yet.’
I asked if Phocas had much support in Constantinople.
‘Not much. The man is feared, which means there won’t be open moves against him as there were against Emperor Maurice. But my information is that the whole administrative machinery has withdrawn its active support.’
‘Does that mean the Church as well?’ I asked.
‘Have you ever been East?’ he asked in reply. I shook my head.
‘I didn’t think you had. Until you’ve been in Constantinople, you won’t believe how controlled the Church is there. It’s almost a department of state. It’s not much different in the other Eastern patriarchates – for all the trouble they have with heresy. The Church won’t lift a finger against the emperor so long as he keeps his palace guard on side.
‘Here, it’s very different. Pope Boniface sends long letters of support and not much else. Oh, he pays the costs of defence against the Lombards, but he’d have to do that in any event. No one else will or can pay those. But he makes sure little of the money he sends to Ravenna leaves Italy. In the meantime, he keeps in with the exarch of Africa, and is waiting on events.
‘That statue of the emperor in the Forum will be up a while longer – but not that much longer.’
I ignored the opening for the moment. ‘Does the emperor still have the support of the -’ I paused and cast round for an English phrase for ‘ Agentes in Rebus ’ – ‘of the security services?’
The old man thought a little about the meaning of the words I’d used. Spies are for the civilised. Barbarians get by on gossip. ‘Not the active support,’ he said at length. ‘It’s the same all over the administration.’
Even though there was no chance we could be understood by anyone else in the square, he leaned forward and dropped his voice. ‘I heard there was a letter intercepted last January in Syracuse. It’s believed it came from King Chosroes of Persia to King Agilulf of the Lombards. I don’t know what it said. What matters is that it got that far. It was only intercepted by accident. The security people in Constantinople have always been very careful to shut off contacts between Persia and the West. That letter got as far as it did because it was allowed to go through.’
This was my chance. ‘That’s why the emperor now has his column, isn’t it?’ I asked.
The old man sat sharply up. ‘What do you know about that?’ he asked. ‘I shouldn’t have told you about it.
