The Ghosts of Athens

complexity in a language in which I might still be fluent, but in which I no longer thought.

And Theodore was highly delighted. ‘Well said, Brother Aelric!’ he gasped, now in Syriac. ‘Well said, my Lord Senator Alaric. Age has not taken a jot of your talent for clear and shining evasion.’ I smiled modestly and had another drink. I could take it as read that I’d been put up to my lecture less for Wulfric’s enlightenment than to give Theodore an excuse to start ripping into me as he had in the old days. Sure enough, he shifted on his pillows and glared at me with open hostility.

‘You have only overlooked your own part in bringing this gross heresy into the world, and how it was you who made sure it was maintained just so long as it suited the Empire’s political convenience. The moment it had outlived its usefulness, you dropped it like a hot brick. The scandal would have been all the greater had anyone by then still believed that you had any religious convictions at all.’

The poor old thing had me there. Out of habit, I cast round for a politely vicious retort. As I focused on him, though, I suddenly found myself looking straight into the eyes of a ten-year-old boy. Horribly wasted, Theodore might be hovering on the edge of the grave. But, in all that really mattered, I was seeing him just as I had seventy-six years ago. Call it a spiritual burp brought on by the previous night’s opium. Whatever the case, it passed. I relaxed. No vicious retort, polite or otherwise, crossed my lips. I shrugged and looked round to see if anything edible had been laid out for me.

‘But where is my mother?’ he now cried, still in Syriac.

I raised my eyebrows and tried to smile. ‘Come now, Theodore,’ I said comfortingly. ‘You know she died in Tarsus. You must only have been eight at the time. I never met here, and was far off in Constantinople when the plague made its appearance.’

But he struggled back into a sitting position, and even pointed at me with his good arm. ‘Don’t play the fool with me, Alaric,’ he snarled. ‘It was you who debauched her. Everything was as it ought to be until you turned up. I ask you again: where is she?’

‘Debauched’ isn’t a word I’d have thought appropriate. Fortunately, Wulfric was out of the conversation. If he was shifting and muttering behind me, it was only over the funny colour his master had gone. I turned my attention back to the wine as the boy stepped forward and fussed harder than ever with pillows. When I did finally look at Theodore, he’d nodded off again. Hardly breathing, he lay with his head flopped back on the cushions. Wulfric paid no attention to me, but sat quietly beside his master the Bishop, nursing the one good hand in both of his. ‘We’ll get nowhere if we continue like this,’ I said to myself in Greek. Not that I was inclined to make any complaint. It was a lovely day outside. If I could fight off the slight headache the wine was producing, I could creep out of here and go off with Jeremy sooner than expected.

I’d got as far as the big stone porch of the building, and was pushing through a crowd of boys who were trying to read the inscription put up to commemorate a visit by the Bishop of Ravenna, when I heard the sound behind me of a throat being pointedly cleared.

‘When one has spent all his life hearing the most astonishing stories, you will surely agree what an honour it is to meet the object of those stories.’

I thought whether I could blame it on deafness if I paid no attention and hurried out into the sunshine. It would be five yards at most before I was lost in the swirling crowd of monks and tradesmen. But all the boys had turned round from the inscription. One was pointing past me. A couple were beginning to cry. I’d have to fight my way through them to get out. I gave in to the inevitable and turned to look at Sophronius. From the first sound of that fruity, affected voice, there could be no doubt who it was. Still in white, he’d creased his blubbery face into a look of reverential respect.

‘We are all so very pleased to see how well you remain, even after what must surely have been a difficult journey from the north,’ he added after giving me his name. He got slowly to his knees and bent forward to embrace my feet. ‘It is an honour beyond all expectations,’ he intoned, ‘to behold in the flesh one I have always so very much revered.’

There was no pulling back from that iron grip. I nodded and smiled, and waited for him to get up. There was a sound behind me of scared and disconsolate sobbing, and then a pattering of boyish feet as everyone ran out into the safety of the street. Lucky boys, I thought. For me, there’d be no escape.

Keeping a neutral look on my face, I stood back and acknowledged his further bow, and wondered when he’d get to the point. And there would be a point. With a man like Sophronius, there is always a point — and hardly ever a pleasant one. There’d be no escape for poor old Aelric. However bright and welcoming the sunshine might be in the street outside, I could kiss that morning goodbye.

Chapter 6

‘That will be all, Brother Wulfric,’ Sophronius said as he ushered me back into the room where Theodore was still sleeping. ‘I will have you summoned when His Grace may have need of your attentions.’

He’d spoken the English of a native. I avoided any sign of surprise, but looked harder at him. Take away the snooty expression, and he could easily pass for a stallkeeper in the butchers’ market behind where I was staying. A fancy name he’d given himself on taking his vows. Then again, everything about him was fancy. It wasn’t just their places in the Church hierarchy that had Wulfric bowing his way straight out of the room. That sort of commanding tone is something a man like Sophronius picks up long before he’s decided to enter the Church.

He gave me another of his ceremonious bows, and waved me towards a couple of chairs and a small table in the far corner of the room. As he passed it, he took up the sheet of parchment.

‘Since His Grace is overcome once more by tiredness,’ I said, ‘I must look to you for an explanation of his reason for calling me here. I hope it is a good one. Jarrow is not an easy journey at my age.’ I had thought of announcing that I was tired. One look at Sophronius, though, and I had given up at once on that.

He smiled and arranged himself into the chair opposite mine. It creaked horribly, and I hoped for a moment that it would give way under his vast bulk. But he leaned forward on to the table, and the careful distribution of his weight allowed him to sit with all the dignity of a gloating toad.

‘I must inform you,’ he opened as soon as I could describe myself as comfortable, ‘that His Holiness of Rome is being challenged to the point where he will have no choice but to issue a formal reprimand to the Emperor. Shortly before Christmas, a letter arrived in Rome from Constantinople. The claim that Pope Honorius, at your urging, may long ago have endorsed the Monothelite heresy is one that we have dealt with. His Holiness was deceived as to the issues, and treated them, in the manner of your presentation, as a question of Latin grammar. There is, however, a further claim that is not so easily answered. This is that, nearly eighty years ago, Pope Benedict of blessed memory knowingly subscribed to that heresy.’

I shrugged and wondered if I could ask for what remained of the wine to be brought over. But Sophronius didn’t look the sort of man who could be deflected by any show of aged helplessness. There might not be a decent bath on this entire island. Not even a full century, though, since Augustine had first set foot in England, and we’d grown up our own race of Imperial churchmen. Sophronius might occasionally dream in English. That aside, there was nothing to distinguish him from the snootiest cleric in the Lateran. Little wonder these people had rolled straight over the Celtic Church a few years earlier at Whitby.

‘The Holy Father is Universal Bishop,’ he continued. ‘Except where he has been misled, or is obviously suffering the infirmities that are natural to the human condition, he is inerrant in all matters of Church doctrine. The other four Patriarchs are due the utmost respect, but do not have the same standing before God as the successor of Saint Peter. It is therefore impossible that Benedict of sainted memory could have subscribed to the Monothelite or any other heresy. Yet the Imperial Government has had the effrontery to claim it has written testimony that he did so subscribe through his representatives.’

I was in no need of lectures on that Thou art Peter text. I’d spent the better part of a lifetime trying neither to endorse nor deny the meaning put on it by Rome. But I’d already guessed what was coming, and kept a polite look on my face as I inspected my dirty fingernails. I’ve said there was no decent bath in England. There was, however, a kind of bathing establishment close by the Monastery of Saint Anastasius. If I could get young Jeremy to overlook that it was also a brothel. .

‘Whatever the authorities in Constantinople claim to have found in their archives,’ Sophronius went on as