movements from the time you and Martin left him.’
I thought suddenly of that slip of papyrus Maximin had used as a bookmark when I’d found him reading. What did this say? Was it blank? Was it some final message from him? Or was it the message that the child had brought?
I’d forgotten about it until now. It had passed me by in the confusion. But I thought more and more that it might have something to say that was valuable in one way or another.
‘Is the library here unlocked?’ Lucius asked after I’d told him about the thing.
It was unlocked. We crept in with a couple of lamps. If the old watchman were still awake and sober, he might come snooping. But this was only a guest looking up a reference. And the lord Basilius was with him.
I pulled down a book at random. It was an account of someone’s journey to the shores of the Baltic. It looked interesting in its own right, but was hardly the sort of reading material to satisfy Maximin. I looked along the titles on the bookcase, taking down everything that was religious and about the size of the book I’d seen with Maximin.
We found the slip in – of all things – a life of Saint Vexilla. It marked a passage in which she made her long defence before Diocletian of the double nature of Christ – as if the old tyrant would have cared one way or the other about that: it simply dated what was said to be a contemporary record to after the beginning of the Monophysite dispute a hundred and fifty years after her alleged death.
I moved the lamp closer and strained over the faint writing: ‘It was so good to see you again, and share memories of our dearest Jacob. You can trust absolutely in my discretion.’
There was no name at top or bottom of the message. I turned it over. In much fainter writing, I saw:
… tua nunc opera meae puellae
flendo turgiduli rubent ocelli
Lucius had been right about where Maximin had been. We had the woman! Serves the pious old philistine right if I now turned her convent upside down.
‘What now?’ I asked Lucius, back in my rooms.
He looked again at the message. ‘My slaves will be back at dawn from their all-night deception,’ he said. ‘Until then, I suggest we sleep. It’s been the most dreadfully long day, I’m sure you’ll agree. I, at least, am quite fagged out. Who knows when we’ll sleep tomorrow?’
Fully clothed, we lay down on my bed. I doubted I could sleep in all this excitement. But I was asleep almost before I was comfortable.
42
As agreed, the slaves returned just after dawn. They made a racket that got everyone up who wasn’t already awake, and they stank of wine and cheap scent.
Lucius and I washed and took a private breakfast in my rooms. The sun was glinting at us over the tiles of the wing opposite.
‘I don’t think we should send ahead,’ he suggested. ‘The more warning she has, the more she may think of another deception.’
I agreed. But how could we get me again out of the house without being seen and followed?
‘Confusing is deceiving,’ said Lucius.
The slave who’d dressed in my clothes was to go out again alone, his head covered. Another was to go out with Lucius and the others, his head covered. Lucius would borrow another slave from Marcella to make up the number. Meanwhile, I was to slip out alone through the back door. If I thought I was followed, I was to make my way to the house of Lucius, who would think of another stratagem.
If I was successful at the convent, I was to hurry back to Lucius with reasonable but not paranoid caution. He would send slaves close by the convent to cover me as I came away. He’d make sure they were slaves I could recognise.
Though I couldn’t be absolutely sure, I thought I got to the Convent alone. I knocked again on the door. The old man peered out through his little slot overhead.
‘I have urgent business with the abbess,’ I said. ‘I come alone.’ This time, my voice didn’t allow of opposition.
Still dressed in black, the abbess was on her seat in the ruined library.
‘Young man, this is most irregular…’ she began.
I pushed the message under her nose.
‘Father Maximin came to you the night before he was murdered,’ I said harshly. ‘He left property with you that is now mine. I want it back.’
She looked alarmed. She opened and closed her mouth. I thought she would call for assistance. Then her whole body seemed to relax. She looked back at me, the firm, Roman look on her face melting insensibly into despair.
I pulled up a chair from against the wall and sat down just opposite her.
‘Your brother Jacob was a friend of Maximin’s,’ I said. ‘I think we came upon his smashed monastery outside Populonium. All that happened to us after that followed from our encounter. You knew Maximin when he and your brother were students here in Rome.
‘That is one reason why he came to you the night before he was murdered.’
I’d expected a denial, followed by a long argument. Instead, she was weeping. Her body didn’t shake with sobs, but the tears ran in a continuous stream down her withered face.
‘He was with you,’ I said. ‘You spoke carefully at our last meeting. But he was with you the night before.’
‘We were young, so long ago,’ she said when she could control her voice. ‘You knew Maximin when he had grown into every inch the fat, jolly priest. I knew him when he was barely older than you. He was so intense and so devout – and yet so human…’
She spoke haltingly on – perhaps to me, perhaps to no one at all – about the brief yet passionate affair that had set their lives on different paths in search of the same redemption for their sins. She had retired to her grandfather’s palace, hoping that endless piety and the destruction of ancient literature would atone for her weakness. He had become a missionary priest – for many years working among the village pagans who still spoke Greek in the south of Italy, and volunteering at last for the mission to England.
She spoke about their midnight assignations, about the thrill in her heart as he’d reached out for her, about the emptiness of all her life since then; about the joy that had rekindled on his last visit, and the chaste kiss they had exchanged as he stepped out of the convent to go off to his death.
‘He spoke to me of you,’ she said, looking up from her recollections. ‘He was so proud of you, so very proud of your bright mind and essential goodness of heart. You know, you were the son we might, but for our callings to God, have brought ourselves into this world.
‘When I saw you, a few days ago, I knew at once he was right.’
I forced back the lump that had come into my throat.
‘Reverend Mother,’ I said softly, ‘We both loved Maximin. He was at all times everything the Church could want of a priest. If I could have taken his place on that final, dreadful evening, I would have done so with firm spirit. But the property he gave into your keeping will lead me to his murderers. I must ask for its return. I ask you to hand it into my own keeping.’
She rose and went to a locked cabinet. She opened it and drew out the leather bag I well remembered from that evening outside Populonium. It had been crudely stitched shut and sealed across with the sign of the English mission. She held it a moment, and then gave it to me.
‘I know not its contents, but Maximin died to keep this safe,’ she said. ‘I know there has been a trail of death marking your return to it. I do beg you to be careful. Do you think Maximin would want you to throw away your own life in avenging his? There is a time for revenge, and a time for putting away revenge. I say this for Maximin, and I say it for myself.’
I took the bag into my hand.
