I said nothing.
He continued: ‘We was ordered to wait there by the Saint Antony Shrine for instructions. Some Roman or summink was to come and tell us, or such. We didn’t know right, but we was to wait there – that’s all we was told on delivery.’
He spoke on in quick gasps in his strange mingling of languages. They were on some business, of which they knew nothing, for the Lombard authorities. They were to take delivery of a consignment of gold and a very holy relic – the nose of Saint Vexilla. They had no idea what would happen. They’d been told simply to wait for further instructions that would be obvious when they came.
‘All very hush hush,’ the theologian continued, trying to lick some moisture onto his dry lips. ‘Bertwald and me, we just grabbed what was rightly ours and was on our way back to Pavia. Come on, mate, I’m gasping for a drink. Don’t keep me down like this. The fucking sun’s in me eyes.’
Nothing more to learn here, I thought.
‘My father was not Ethelwulf. I have heard of no Ethelwulf of Rainham,’ I said. I drew the sword across his throat, cutting from under one ear right up to the other.
‘Oh, shit and fuck!’ I’d never cut a throat before, and wasn’t prepared for the fountain of blood. It went all over my face and hair and soaked my sleeve. I was mucky enough already from all that crawling in the ditch and the other death fight. But that was just washing muck. This would take hours of scrubbing, and still there’d be a stain on the grey wool of my tunic. Add to this the sword-thrust, and I’d be shabby as a churl. Of course, I had no other clothes with me.
‘Fuck!’ I pushed the jerking, gurgling body away. More blood splashed onto my trousers.
‘Was that quite in order, my son?’ asked Maximin. He sat on a slightly raised paving stone, looking with evident disapproval at the pool of blood now creeping towards him. I couldn’t tell if he was objecting to the dispatch or to the mess, or even to the attendant language – though English is a tongue rich in obscenities, and he must have picked up most of them in Canterbury.
‘He had it coming,’ I snapped. ‘If he and his friend weren’t involved in doing over that monastery, I’ve no doubt they’d have done similar elsewhere… And a dead bandit is always better than a live one.’
Maximin didn’t argue. He was probably thinking as I was – that if we’d stayed in that outhouse, none of this might have been necessary. In any case, we seldom argued now about matters of defence and violence. As I said, we’d been together on the road for months.
Back in England, he’d played me by the book. He’d led me round Canterbury and had me begging forgiveness in every church for my many sins with Edwina – and had me confessing them chapter and verse to the other missionaries, who had rolled their eyes and hugged themselves.
He’d still tried to lecture me on Christian humility back in Amiens, when I’d had cause to beat a cutpurse to pulp. Since then, we’d been pushing steadily through a dense mass of two-legged vermin. Even someone less intelligent than Maximin would soon have learnt the difference between a being created in God’s image and a 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.”