particle of scum fit only to be kicked or beaten or stabbed or otherwise repelled in the shortest order.
We rolled the bodies into the ditch. I took a vicious little knife from the theologian’s belt. And we loaded our baggage onto the horses. Maximin plainly didn’t like the thought of climbing onto what seemed the more placid of the beasts. I can’t say I was a skilled rider. But we were better off on horseback than on foot. Just because we’d got through this attempt on our lives didn’t mean the roads would now be clear all the way to Rome.
As I dressed myself after washing down at the stream again – Maximin and the horses this time in clear view – and then ate breakfast, I was increasingly aware of the two-pound weight of gold swinging from my belt. It was a nice, comfortable weight, and I couldn’t help thinking how, without putting myself in too much danger, I might before the next morning increase it.
6
‘You’ll look lush, sir – really, truly lush.’ The younger of the tailors spoke with unforced enthusiasm as he looked up at me, his mouth full of pins.
‘Indeed, sir, you will,’ the other added, holding up the dented bronze mirror. ‘For a lady, is it, sir? Is she pretty? Will you be marrying her in Rome? Or simply visiting her?’
I ignored the questions and looked at what I could see of myself in the mirror. They were right. I looked remarkably fine. I’d looked good in Canterbury. But that was before all the walking and other exercise. I now looked ravishing. As I stared into that mirror, I had to work hard to repress a little stiffy I felt coming on.
Populonium, on the other hand, had seen better days. It had once been a rich little port town and a seaside retreat for the less wealthy of the Roman higher classes. Now, it was mostly ruined within its walls. The port remained, but the trade was largely gone. Still, it had its own bishop, and there was enough local demand to keep a few dusty shops going in the unruined centre.
We’d been lucky in finding the tailors. I had thought it unlikely we could get anything sufficiently good to be convincing in such short order. But the sight of one solidus had led, after a hushed and rapid conversation I hadn’t been able to catch, to the appearance of a most beautiful suit of clothes. They were, Maximin assured me, in the fashion of the wealthy young – tight linen trousers, loose woollen tunic, dyed blue and drawn in at the waist, and a little scarlet cloak. Ignore the slight pissy stain around the crotch and the neatly mended rent in the tunic under the heart – was that a darkness on the blue of the wool or a trick of the light? – and I could have passed easily among the grander passengers on the road, who’d been hurrying by on horseback, surrounded by armed bodyguards. Even the soft leather boots fitted, once they were reduced with a thick insole. At least the brimmed cap might have been made for me.
‘Tell me,’ I asked Maximin in Greek – I raised my arm as directed as a loose fold in the tunic was pinned back for adjustment – ‘who was Saint Vexilla?’
Maximin drifted out of his tipsy reverie. He’d taken in a good two pints of wine since our encounter of earlier that day. He looked into his empty cup, looked at the jug beside him, sighed, and put his cup down. ‘Saint Vexilla,’ he explained, sitting up a little, ‘was a beauteous and noble virgin in the time of Diocletian. She was pledged by her family for the idolatrous cult of Vesta. Then began the seventh and the last great persecution of the Faith. The martyrs of our Church were as the stars in the sky, or as the sands of the Libyan desert-’
‘Yes,’ said I. The wine was leading him into declamatory mode, and I wanted information, not a sermon.
He drew himself together and continued. ‘The tyrant, unlike earlier persecutors, was not satisfied with the blood of our martyrs. He also wanted to extirpate our books and other holy objects. His decree went out, that all copies of the Scriptures should be delivered up for consignment to the flames.
‘One day, as she was carried through Rome in her chair, Vexilla was approached by an ancient retainer, who was secretly of the Faith. “Take these precious books in safekeeping,” he begged her, giving her the Gospels according to Saint Matthew and Saint Mark. “There cannot be another day before I am caught. My old body is as nothing, O gracious lady, but save these precious books.”
‘Vexilla took and read and, by the working of the Holy Spirit, was converted to the Faith. And so it became her mission to go about Rome, gathering up whichever of our books could be saved from the flames.
‘One day, she was betrayed by her own brother to the authorities. She was bound and taken before Caesar himself. He looked grimly at her, his evil face as hard and smooth as the stone of his idols. “Deny this sordid cult, and you shall be freed with full honour,” he said. “Deny this cult and deliver up to us the writings we know you to have harboured.”
‘But Vexilla was obdurate. And so the tyrant had her given over to torture. A club studded with iron hooks was heated till red, and drawn across her white, virginal flesh…’
I won’t enumerate the tortures some lying monk had written with one hand. It was the usual stuff – drops of blood turning to rose petals where they fell, slaves brought in to rape her struck impotent or made to ejaculate stinking pus before they could touch her, and so on and so forth. Eventually, she was slowly broiled in a bath of molten lead while she prayed in a voice of unearthly sweetness.
All lies, of course. I’ve never seen a miracle but I’ve also seen how it was done. Why therefore believe a word about miracles I haven’t seen?
But, after one of his opium pills, Maximin continued. About fifty years after her alleged death, alleged parts of Vexilla turned up on the now booming market for relics, and were alleged to have miraculous properties. Her nose was a particular treasure – a single kiss to the cloth covering it was a sure cure for all respiratory disorders. It had eventually come into the possession of the Church of the Apostles in Rome, and there it should still have been – only now a band of heretical barbarians had it in their clutches.
‘We must get it back,’ Maximin said, his face red with anger at the impiety.
‘We certainly must,’ I agreed, thinking of the gold.
‘In his mysterious goodness, God has surely put in our path an opportunity to expiate all our many sins. To take back such a mighty relic and restore it to its proper keeping…’
Maximin fell silent, pouring another cup and doubtless thinking of his soul. I stood admiring myself as the tailors fussed and chattered around me, and thought of the gold.
Young as I was, I already knew the most important fact of all about money – that, in this world, you can’t fart without the stuff. If you aren’t lucky enough to inherit from your ancestors, you must somehow get it for yourself. From my early childhood, I could just recall a rude level of comfort. All other memories were of supplementing Ethelbert’s castoffs by living on my wits. Whether I’d ever see England again, or make my way in life on the shores of the Mediterranean, I was determined not to pass another day as a mendicant pilgrim. I’d live or die with money in my purse. So here we were in Populonium, getting prepared for a deception that – if successful – would, ten thousand times over and more, beat all the highway robberies in which I used to assist on the Wessex border.
I’d seen to the horses on our first arrival in town. Though big and powerful, those taken from the bandits had to be replaced. They were too recognisable and didn’t fit with our chosen image. There was a market in front of the main church, and I’d made a good exchange with a Frankish dealer. The two beasts we had, plus a little gold, got us a white and very striking horse for me and a smaller but still fast gelding for Maximin.
I knew a low profile was essential. But after transacting the horse business, I couldn’t resist a look around the town. As said, it was mostly in ruins, but it was still more in one piece than Richborough; and it had a few curiosities I hadn’t seen elsewhere on our journey.
Built into the nave of the church, for example, was the remnant of a very ancient building. About twenty feet across, it had been a circle of columns with a tiled roof. A temple of some kind, I had no doubt. But I’d now seen any number of converted uses along the way. What made this one interesting was the evident age of the temple and the inscriptions on lead plates that still covered some of the columns where the roof overhung. Most of these were in standard Latin and recorded thanks in stereotyped form for births, marriages and cures. Some of the older ones, though, were in often very strange Latin – letters added in words, letters written back to front, unexpected variations of grammar. Some weren’t even in Latin at all, but in a language unknown to Maximin, if for the most part in Latin script. More faded than the rough Latin inscriptions, these were very finely made.
And as I stood outside that church, with the market bustling away behind me, and the sun of an Italian spring burning down almost directly above, I’d seen in a burst of inner enlightenment a complete cycle of history. The
