was far more clement, it was like any other night we’d spent camping out in the open.
‘They’re still following,’ said Lucius, prodding me awake. ‘But they are a long way behind.’
I heaved myself up in the first light of morning. Whatever dreams I’d been having vanished beyond recall. I was stiff and cold. But the sun was rising in a clear sky. This would be another lovely day, though a little cloud cover would have been better for the horses.
I looked beyond the arm that Lucius extended back along the road. Far in the distance, I could see the faint glint of armour in the pale sunlight. For some while, we’d been riding uphill. We were passing into the range of hills and mountains that run down the centre of Italy. Far below us, shining like ants after a storm, our pursuers toiled forward in search of a quarry they themselves couldn’t see. But still they came.
Lucius bent and stretched some life back into his stiff muscles. ‘If we can keep ahead of them till nightfall,’ he said, ‘we’ll be far outside the zone of papal influence. They can keep following, but their ability to command help will be at an end. By tomorrow, I’ll be able to use the exarch’s name to slow them down, or even have them turned back.’
We still had to look out for the lighter, faster pursuers. And we were making slower progress as we rode continually uphill. But there came a moment when, though we looked back, we saw no one in pursuit. No matter how I squinted back into the sunlight, I saw no pursuit.
‘We haven’t outrun them,’ said Lucius during one of our little stops. ‘They’re still back there, and any delay on our side will bring them back into sight. Don’t forget how desperate they are. But they’ll need all the luck in the world to catch us now.’
Because these high lands had never been much settled even in ancient times, there were fewer signs of recent devastation. I saw a few abandoned villages and a few broken temples. But these were so weathered and overgrown, they might have been out of use for centuries, perhaps even before the making of the law to close them all down. I wondered if the inscriptions that covered the fallen columns were in Latin or in that older language I’d seen in Populonium. But Lucius made sure to keep me moving on the road.
We spoke about women. As I’d thought, Lucius had no taste for them whatever. He’d once considered marriage. But this had been purely for cash. And her father had broken off the engagement when a more substantial catch arrived suddenly from Carthage.
He’d found release in his better-looking slaves, and sometimes in the boys who were laid on for anyone in the nobility or higher offices of the Church who wanted their services. Then his friend the priest had persuaded him to a life of semi-continence – he’d been assured it made him a more fitting instrument for the will of their Gods.
Either the adherents of the Old Religion had cleaned up their act in competition with the Church, or those declamations I’d read against their lustful ways were just lies. Whatever the case, his own priests weren’t unaware of how sex blunts the religious sensibilities. That may be why I’ve had so few of them – not even when I was posing as a bishop. Lucius had learnt to contain himself. Then he’d met me.
He asked me again about Edwina. Feeling the jealousy behind his playful tone, I spoke lightly of her. I said nothing of the love that had burnt – and still sometimes did burn – in my heart.
Though the sun shone bright overhead, the air was crisp. We passed streams and waterfalls. These were swollen with the snow from the mountains that rose about us. The tops of the mountains shone white in the sun. Even from a distance, I could see how densely the tops were fringed with the deep greens of the trees.
The rains and ruin of winter were over. All around us, later than on the plains, I could see the world coming back to life. Not for the first or the last time, I was forcibly impressed by the wondrous beauty of the nature in Italy.
Once, we passed a group of free peasants, taking their produce to some town along the road before us. We bought some food from them. For a few silver coins, they agreed to climb up to an outcrop above the road and force a rock fall that left a ten-foot-long band of jagged rocks. It took a while to supervise the work, but probably bought us much more time than we spent. It would take days to get that lot clear. Just getting horses over it would take long enough.
Onwards and upwards, the road extended. It cut through peaks and ran on bridges across the deeper ravines. Hardly once did it deviate from a straight line, and then only to skirt something that even the ancients didn’t think it worth trying to overcome. It must have taken years and whole armies of slaves to build. Lucius had barely any of the historical knowledge of Italy outside Rome that had allowed Maximin to bring the vanished past to life. But I could imagine the settled, populous Italy of earnest officials and competent engineers who had strained every nerve to push these lines of domination to the farthest corners.
We rode all day. In the evening, we stopped at another post inn. This was smaller, but otherwise just like the one at which we’d stopped the previous evening. We ate a meal of meat and bread. After a change of horses, we were off again. As before, we took turns to sleep and keep watch in the open. As before, we were undisturbed.
45
We ran into trouble on our third day on the road, this being a Thursday. We were just coming out of a particularly wild and quiet stretch of road. We were deep into the afternoon. The sun shone. The birds sang. There was no other noise but the sound of our horses, as their hooves clattered slowly on the road, and our few words of desultory conversation.
We rode over a small hill and down into a shallow depression. As we reached the bottom, I heard a sound to my left. It was the bridling of a tethered horse.
Lucius reached over and clutched at my arm. Before us, the road was blocked, just before the peak of the rise out of the depression, by eight men. Big, with the usual plaited hair and long moustaches, they were lightly armed irregulars. Whether they were Lombards or imperial mercenaries was impossible to say. They might even have been bandits, in search of valuables from the few passers-by. It was impossible to tell. They all looked alike in those days.
They weren’t bandits. That much was soon clear. We’d come on them by surprise. They were still wandering about after a slow lunch. But, if they hadn’t expected us just at that moment, there was no doubt they had been expecting us. Though on foot, they blocked the road in a broad, muscled mass.
One of them stood forward. ‘Lucius Decius Basilius and Aelric of England,’ he said in a thick Germanic accent, ‘we have orders to apprehend you for returning to Rome. You will dismount now and lay down your weapons.’
He spoke with an easy confidence. The men behind him drew their swords and grinned. They knew their business. They wanted none, but were prepared for trouble. Dead or alive, we were to be taken and sent back to the dispensator. What he’d do with us I could hardly guess.
I looked round. There were now two men behind us. On our right was a sheer cliff, on our left a gentle descent through trees so tightly packed together, I could hardly see beyond the tethered horses.
There was no point in denying who we were. We were trapped. If we were to escape at all, it would be by going back – and we knew what was back there. Even if we did make a dash for it, we’d be in the jaws of a closing trap.
‘How the fuck…?’ I heard Lucius mutter.
I thought the same. How could anyone have got ahead of us? Our pursuers must have been twenty miles back, if that close. There was no shorter route than the one we were taking. Lucius had joked about growing wings on horses. It seemed the Church had managed just that. Was this some genuine miracle of the Church?
‘Dismount now and lay down your weapons,’ the leader repeated, now louder.
Lucius pulled the reigns of his horse tight and drew his sword. I did the same. I’d left that heavy old Frankish sword behind in Rome. I had with me only the shorter sword Lucius had given me. But I tested its balance again, and looked at the bright gleam on its sharpened edges.
The men stood about ten yards before us, now spaced out on the road two deep. They knew exactly what they were doing. Breaking through might not be impossible, but would require great force and as much speed as we could manage uphill.
If anything in my narrative so far may have inclined you to despise the Roman nobility, let me assure you it
