‘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 Romans had taken this land from an earlier race – taken the land, the cities and the religion. They had grown in strength and wisdom, their language growing with them. Then had come the decline. Impoverished, ravaged by barbarians, in no place sufficient in numbers to fill the spaces within their ancient walls, the modern Latins jabbered and bargained in a language as broken as the stones of their cities.
Maximin might think this evident decline heralded the end of the world. Probably men of that earlier race thought the same when they were dispossessed. I had stumbled all by myself on the main difference of secular focus between the Church and the ancients – the difference between viewing history as a straight line, going from Adam and Eve, through Christ, to the Second Coming and Final Judgement, and viewing it as an endlessly repeated cycle of progress and decay.
I don’t know how long I stood looking at those lead plates, but Maximin had eventually coughed and nodded my attention to someone who was watching us from within the market. A tall, swarthy ruffian, with grizzled hair and a patch over his left eye, he was plainly on the lookout for something. He’d been talking to the horse dealer, and was now looking at us.
I didn’t like the look of him, and Maximin had agreed. So off we’d sloped to the tailors in search of something grand enough to hide the fact that I was just another barbarian on the make.
‘How long before I can have them?’ I’d asked in an affected Roman drawl imitated from Bishop Lawrence back in Canterbury. I don’t suppose it would for a moment have convinced a real member of the nobility. But I was finding a considerable talent for mimicry – it goes with the talent for languages – and it worked on the tailors.
‘For you, sir, before the close of business,’ they said together.
‘Indeed, yes, sir – you’ll look lush in the rays of the setting sun. Your lady in Rome will hardly recognise you.’
‘Is she pretty, sir?’ the younger tailor asked. ‘Do you sigh for her? Does she sigh for you? Ho!’
He ended with an expulsion of breath I took for a sigh. Were these people taking the piss, I wondered? Probably not. They lived in a world that had been turned upside down half a dozen times. I decided they were simply touched in the head, and ignored their chatter. For all my elegant Latin, they must have known they were dealing with an obvious barbarian whose sword had fresh notches cut in the blade.
‘Is she pretty, sir? Are you thrilled by her embrace? She will be thrilled by you. Can we follow your horse down to the city gate? You really are our finest customer this year.’
7
We were clear of the place just as the sun was setting. We trotted back along the road towards Rome. The shrine of Saint Antony, Maximin told me, was about a mile outside Populonium, a hundred yards off the road. On a slight rise in the land, it was a useful gathering point for bandits, as it gave them a good view – without they themselves being seen – of all traffic along the road.
For this reason, we made sure to start our deception some while before coming to the shrine. I held myself upright on the horse, proud and stiff. Maximin followed behind, bowed in silent prayer. We turned left off the road, following a little path that led upwards through bushes. We heard the subdued whining of horses long before we reached the shrine.
‘Who goes there?’ The harsh Latin cut through the darkness.
‘Your instructions,’ I said with slow precision, continuing forward.
Actually, I was feeling the need for another shit – not this time from dinner, but from pure nerves. Back on that sunny road, while the birds sang in the trees, and in Populonium, the plan had seemed daring but safe. Now, in the darkness, no moon yet risen, the temperature dropping, surrounded by roughs who weren’t likely to be as unprepared and stupid as the two I’d killed earlier, it all became less daring than foolhardy. How could I know these people hadn’t seen us ride past earlier in the day? We’d looked different, granted – but we were still two. Would they accept me as a young Roman noble? I had the clothes, and could mimic the accent and surface mannerisms. But I was still a big blond barbarian. How could I know they hadn’t already had those mysterious ‘instructions’ of which the theologian had spoken? How could I know he had uttered a word of truth?