‘The idea was that they’d sit in their camp beside the shrine of Saint Antony, waiting for orders that would never come. Instead, they’d be taken by the prefect’s men, and the letters would be given to him. The pope would then be arrested before he could set out back from Naples.
‘That’s the truth, isn’t it, Lucius? You are the Column of Phocas.’
Lucius was silent awhile. Through my half-closed eyes, I saw a range of expressions flit across his face.
‘In a manner, yes,’ he said at length, speaking cautiously. ‘How long have you known this?’
‘For a long time,’ I lied. Or did I lie? As with Martin, the elements of the puzzle were assembling themselves into a chain of reasoning so firm that I could barely conceive of not having seen it from the beginning.
Lucius lay back and relaxed. He let one hand fall on my chest.
‘Very well,’ he said, ‘I’ll tell you.’ He closed his eyes and began.
‘There are details you haven’t caught. In the first place, the letters weren’t to be carried before the prefect. He’d only have sat on them or gone to the dispensator. The orders were that the mercenaries were to be killed and all that they had with them taken straight off to Ravenna, where the exarch would deal with the matter.
‘I told you I was with Phocas earlier in the year. I gave you the truth about our public meeting. He sent me away with nothing worth having. But he called me back to the Imperial Palace late in the evening. That’s where we first hatched the plan.
‘As you know, the man is short of money. Armies and officials need to be paid. Indemnities and bribes to the Persians require hard cash. The Eastern Church is rich, but is too close at hand to be despoiled. Take money from the Churches there, and you’ll have the priests leading insurrections in every city.
‘But the Western Church is fabulously rich – and no one in the East gives a shit about the sufferings of Latin priests who’ve been getting on every set of Eastern nerves for centuries with their presumptions of supremacy.
‘All we needed was a credible excuse to smash up the Roman Church. Any excuse would work in Constantinople – probably a simple decree would satisfy people there. But we needed something that would absolutely paralyse opinion in the West.
‘An offer to hand out the Purple to some illiterate savage, his hair stinking of rancid butter, would detach most civilians. An offer to tolerate the Arian heresy would detach the Churches in at least France, Spain and Africa. It might also cause uproar in Italy.
‘I timed the release of the letters for when Boniface was in Naples, up to his neck in mud. The dispensator may be the real power in Rome. But he still needs the pope to mouth the words he prompts. He can’t speak by himself for the Church.
‘But for you and your friend, those letters would by now be old news in Ravenna. The fresh news would be the arrival for trial of the pope and dispensator. Even if they could talk their way out of those charges, a trawl of the papal archives would surely turn up something else for which we could nail the Church. One way or another, we were to get an excuse to lay hands on whatever property of the Church was saleable and within reach-’
I broke in. ‘And in return, you were to get back your family estates in Sicily and Cyprus,’ I said. ‘But why make a deal with Phocas? No one believes he’ll be around much longer. Even if he is, how can you trust a man like that?’
Lucius smiled. He took the hand from my brow and kissed it. ‘Phocas and I hatched the plan together in Constantinople. That’s how I got the gold and the letters in Persian and Greek. But the plan grew and altered as I made the sea journey between Constantinople and Ravenna. By the time I’d had dinner with Smaragdus, certain important details were – ah – changed.
‘The letters were still to be intercepted and carried to Smaragdus. There were still to be arrests in Rome. But once we’d got our hands on the money of the Church, Smaragdus was to get himself declared emperor of the West. He has all the right qualifications, you know: birth, education, sufficient ability. He would denounce Phocas as a tyrant and an incompetent. He’d have stolen a march on the exarch of Africa, whose son and nephew still haven’t worked out which is to be the rival emperor. An emperor in being is worth a dozen possible claimants. At worst, we could do a deal. Africa is expendable, now the corn supplies from Sicily are adequate.
‘Most people in Italy would accept a Western emperor – someone at hand with the means and ability to throw out the Lombards. Though Smaragdus is a Greek, he’d govern through Latin ministers. Neither Phocas nor anyone else who might take over from him would be able to lift a finger to dislodge him.’
‘And the Church?’ I asked. ‘Where does the Church come into this? Orders from Constantinople are one thing. No one in Italy can get at the emperor there. But how long could Smaragdus last in Ravenna as the man who plundered the Roman Church?’
Lucius shifted his position and looked wistfully up at the ceiling. ‘My dearest Alaric,’ he said, ‘Smaragdus is an old man. As emperor, he might have at best a few years of power. From the start, he’d need a colleague. This colleague would be in all reasonable likelihood his successor. That colleague will be me.
‘And that answers your question about the Church. Plundered by Smaragdus, disestablished by me, it would be in no position to make serious trouble.
‘So, Phocas offered me some estates. Smaragdus has given me a future claim to all Italy.
‘And I don’t think I have to persuade you that I don’t want this for myself. I am the right man to throw out the barbarians, keep out the Greeks, restore the Old Religion, and generally give Italy back to itself. Just imagine that: all Italy united, and without all the imperial entanglements that got my ancestors distracted from the real prize. We could start again. A united Italy, Rome its capital.’
‘How did you get Martin to help in this?’ I asked.
‘The man is a slave of the Church,’ Lucius answered with a sneer. ‘He hates the Greeks who ruined his father and had him enslaved. He hates the Roman Church for something to do with doctrine or your people or whatever. He’s got some woman with child. He wanted freedom and money. The Gods led me to him, and I offered him what he wanted.
‘He did a good job on that papal letter. I watched your face closely as you read it. I don’t know when you stopped believing. But you certainly believed then. He also stole the relic. He was on the dispensator’s staff, and had easy access to the Church of the Apostles-’
‘It was your slaves,’ I interrupted, ‘who attacked me that night in Rome. You got yourself called away on some fake appointment with your lawyer – and I wondered how that slave found you so easily. You relied on me to refuse the escort you offered. Those were your slaves in the street. And that’s why you couldn’t get the wood for the bathhouse boiler. After I’d killed three of them, you were short of slaves.’
Lucius spoke sharply: ‘Alaric, I want you to know that those slaves had strict orders only to frighten you and then run away. I had to get your mind focused on those letters. You must understand how I needed them back, and how only you could lead me to them.
‘When I heard your story, I had the survivor beaten to death – him and one other who stood in the main street. I would never, under any circumstances, have had you harmed.’
So that was what the beaten slave had meant when he called out about ‘the others’. Was this fifth slave the one who saved me? I didn’t ask. Instead, I asked about Silas of Edessa.
That, Lucius explained, had been a mistake. He’d grown alarmed at what I’d heard in the Exchange about the Column of Phocas, so ordered the death of the old man. Unfortunately, the slaves had come across Silas boasting about the money I’d given him, and had killed him instead.
At last – and I’d dreaded this – I turned to Maximin. Why kill him?
Lucius looked away from me and spoke softly.
‘I was waiting all night and much of the next day on the Aurelian Way. The plan was that I’d intercept the prefect’s men as they rode back with the captured articles and have them taken straight off to Ravenna. I’d bought one of the officers.
‘Instead, the men rode by with just you and Maximin. There had been no interception, he said, nor battle, nor frustrated exchange. There had just been the rescue of a priest and his barbarian assistant from an attempted robbery. The priest had the relic. There was no mention of anything else.
‘I nearly panicked. I thought of riding right off there and then to Ravenna. Instead, I went back to Rome, to see what would happen, and what opportunities might still be available. I sacrificed to the Gods outside the city walls. They gave me a favourable answer.
‘In Rome, I had Martin check your movements. You didn’t tell the prefect about the letters. You didn’t give them to the dispensator. Either you were holding on to them for some reason of your own, or you hadn’t bothered
