Conspiracies of Rome (19 page)

    I hadn’t thought of that. I’d picked up scraps of philosophy here and there. I’d had to join much of this for myself. When you’re young and largely on your own resources, it’s easy to suppose you’ve reached the truth of a matter. It’s invariably a truth that – even if real – doesn’t stand up very well to informed criticism.

    Anicius saw the look of confusion on my face. He got up and began pacing firmly about the library. His age, his infirmities, his evident depression of spirits forgotten, he took me through a lecture on the importance of logical paradox as a guide to the truth.

    Matter could not exist, he told me. There can be no such thing as an indivisible extended atom: whatever has a front side and a back side must also have a middle along which it can be divided. And so if an atom has any extension in space, it must be divisible into two smaller particles. If these have extension, they also must be divisible. This process of division must continue until we are left with an unextended particle. This cannot be further divided.

    But two unextended particles, added together, do not make any degree of extension. Nor do a million unextended particles. Nothing comes of nothing. Therefore, any object containing less than an infinity of atoms must be infinitely small. Anything containing an infinity of atoms must be infinitely large.

    Since an infinitely large object would leave no room for us, there is no such thing. Nor can infinitely small objects exist.

    ‘Therefore,’ Anicius concluded, ‘matter does not exist.’

    This and much else that he said confused me horribly at the time. It didn’t help that Anicius went into Socratic mode – asking me questions that I didn’t understand, and then picking my answers apart. From paradoxes that I could understand but not explain, he led me gradually into a cloud of hot air that I later realised was neoplatonism. Again, I’ll not trouble you with an account of the ‘Single Mind’ and its progressively corrupted emanations. By comparison, you’ll find arguments over the Monophysite heresy relevant to our everyday concerns. In any event, much of this – if under different names – has seeped into the more learned formulations of our own Christian Faith.

    ‘But what does any of this matter?’ Anicius gasped at the end of his lecture. He fell again into his rickety chair and closed his eyes. When they opened again, he was back to normal.

    ‘None of it matters,’ he said mournfully. ‘The ancient times are gone forever. They will never come again. And soon I shall be dead myself,’ he added. ‘I shall be dead, and all this corrupt and useless learning can die with me. Already, there is plague again in the poor districts. It always comes back to feed on the living.’

    I must have given his gloomily satisfied tone a sceptical look. He leaned suddenly across the table and quoted an old poet: ‘After death there is nothing, and death itself is nothing –
Post mortem nihil ipsaque mors nihil
.’ His breath nearly threw me backwards onto the floor.

    ‘That isn’t your Epicurus,’ he hissed. ‘But that’s what your Epicurus believed. And who knows? Perhaps he was right.’

    There wasn’t much answering that. I had been considering a reply that poured scorn on Plato and all the other hot-air merchants who’d darkened the light of the Greeks. But while I could counter his ill-informed rant about the end of the world, I had just been given a lecture of a brilliance I’d never before encountered. He might be a semi-demented bore, denouncing a world that had settled him on the backs of slaves charged on pain of death to keep him from falling down. But he had once been something much more than that. I didn’t fancy more slicing from that razor mind. I was already feeling rather small.

    But it was now that I conceived my true mission in life. This has not been wealth and sex and pleasure of the bestial kind – though I’ll not deny I’ve managed more than the common share of all these. It is something of which Epicurus himself would have approved. My mission has been to save all that I could of the ancient learning.

    By the time I met Anicius, the civilisation that had produced all that truth and beauty was dead. Much of its produce was still alive, but was often hanging to life by a single thread. How many other libraries were there in Rome like that of Anicius – filled with books that crumbled to dust almost as you read them? How many Church libraries were there, filled with the occasional gem that would one day be washed clean with vinegar, so it could be covered with some extended graffito about Saint Nemo or some meaningless difference over Church doctrine?

    No, the light of learning was going out in Rome. But the Church had big ideas for England. We were to be made into the force that would evangelise the world for it. Why not hitch a ride on that immensely powerful vehicle? What I had copied here in Rome could be stored in England and recopied and recopied again. And when the missionaries went out to convert other lands, they could educate as well.

    I began in my mind to form some hexameters in echo of Vergil:

Others with buildings grand may please the sight,

And in their high and gorgeous domes delight;

A nicer touch to the stretched canvas give,

And teach their animated rocks to live.

Let England’s Might stand guard on Learning’s fate,

And keep each threatened book in pristine state,

To gather all the rays of setting light,

And wait the passing of our own world’s night  . . .

And that is what I’ve spent my life doing. Now that I’m old, I can see the tree bear fruit from the seed that I planted. From the monastery where I’m sitting, the missionaries are already preparing for Germany. And they’ll be taking perfect copies of the books that I’ve saved with them. The world wasn’t coming to an end when I was young. It was just going through a rough patch. It had been there before and recovered. Things haven’t much improved since then. Indeed, they’ve grown steadily worse. They may get worse still.

    But the ‘ancient ways’ were not gone forever. They would come again. There will one day be a recovery – though I can’t say when. And I shall have been its father or grandfather or great-grandfather.

    Now, am I hitching a ride on the Church? Or was this always part of the ‘plan’? Was it expected that I, or someone like me, would be there at the right moment? That I can’t say. But I have no doubt Abbot Benedict and the authorities in Canterbury have been most indulgent hosts. Of course, they knew what sort of old monster they were taking in. And still they took me in.

    I know that Anicius was talking like a burst water pipe in that library. But I wasn’t listening as I conceived my own plan. I’d need more money, I decided. Even in a world where it was so short, that gold wouldn’t begin to pay for what I wanted. Yes, I could get as many books out of Anicius as I wanted. I might get them for free if I’d sit listening to his lectures. But they’d need copying before anything could go off to Canterbury. Even the limited copying I’d ordered earlier in the day would eat up a quarter of what I took on the road from Populonium. How to get more? I’d have to speak to one of the merchants back at Marcella’s.

    Better still, there was that Ethiopian diplomat. He seemed to know more than most, and had been quite friendly in the toilet. There was always money to be made from commerce, I knew.

    ‘You know, young man, you really must come again,’ said Anicius into the pool of light cast by the lamp that had been set beside us. ‘It’s so long since I last had a chance to hear what the young have to say. It’s so very interesting. You must come again. Take whatever of these useless old things you want. But do come again.’

    I looked at the pile of books beside me on the floor. But, as I was divided between the thrill of ownership and the need to compose a speech of appropriate thanks, we were interrupted by one of Marcella’s slaves. He burst into the room, panting hard.

    ‘I came as fast as I could, sir, once I’d found where you were.’

    ‘What is it?’ I asked.

    ‘Sir, the reverend father went out before nightfall. He was – he was drunk, sir. He hasn’t come back. No one knows where he is. Please come, sir. My lady is worried.’

19

‘But I don’t know exactly when he went out, or where,’ Marcella wailed.

    She was deep into hysterics, and was setting off everyone about her. They clustered round the entrance hall – other guests, slaves, a few neighbours who’d been attracted in by the sound of chaos. The place must have been that way for a while. Only half the lamps had been lit, and some of those were beginning to smoke badly.

    ‘It was around nightfall,’ she continued. ‘It was ages ago. He went alone, and he ain’t back. No one never goes out alone at night in Rome  . . . Oh my!’

    She pressed both sets of knuckles to her face, in a gesture of fear and despair that chilled my blood. But I at least had to stay rational. In a moment, Maximin would step through the door, announcing he’d been for a stroll before supper. In the meantime, someone had to take charge of this mob.

    ‘Did Maximin tell anyone where he was going?’ I shouted, trying to be heard above the babble. No answer.

    ‘For God’s sake,’ I bellowed now, ‘will you please shut the fuck up!’

    Silence.

    I continued at normal volume: ‘Did he say where he was going?’

    Gretel stepped forward. Her face had the same ghastly look as her mistress’s. ‘Sir, I heard him say he had business with the Sisters of the Blessed Theodora.’

    ‘Where is that?’

    ‘I – I don’t rightly know, sir.’

    ‘I do,’ the old watchman volunteered. ‘It’s by the Shrine of Saint Tribonius.’

    Leaning forward, Martin answered my blank look. ‘It’s by the Salarian Gate, sir,’ he said. Behind the freckles, his pale face shone white in the lamplight.

    That was miles away, on the east of the north wall.

    ‘Right,’ I said, ‘we’re going out. I want a search party.’

    I pointed to the two largest of the household slaves, and to the two Lateran slaves who’d come back with me. They were big men.

    ‘A solidus for each of you who come with me,’ I said. ‘Five solidi,’ I added, ‘and the price of your freedom to any who brings Maximin back safe by morning.’

    I turned to Marcella. ‘I want these men armed – swords and knives, if you please.’ She nodded, fiddling with the key chain she carried so the armoury could be opened. ‘And a good stock of torches.’

    ‘Sir,’ the old watchman stepped forward. ‘I’m no good with a sword now, but I know this city better than anyone.’

    ‘You come too,’ I said. ‘The same terms.’

    I turned to Martin. ‘How are you with weapons?’ Though weedy, he was, after all, a barbarian. But he shook his head, more scared than ever.

    ‘No matter. Come with me anyway.’ I paused, and added: ‘Same terms.’

    He stared back at me as if I’d hit him, but then went off for his cloak.

Rome this night was a place of nightmares. The sky had clouded over and a slight drizzle was starting. The streets were utterly black and, except for us, empty and silent. Even the rats were few in number. I’d thought of riding ahead. But a horse in these streets at night would have been slower than going on foot. In any event, we had to keep reasonably close together.

    We raced down the streets. I kept running ahead, and had to keep slowing down to wait for the others. Wheezing and gasping behind us, the old watchman called out directions for the quickest route to the convent. Even so, it seemed to take an age to get there.

    The convent was a high, dark building; more fortress than house. It wasn’t possible in the night to see that much of the place, but it loomed forbiddingly above and around the fortified gate. It stood alone, the neighbouring buildings having fallen down or been demolished.

    ‘Open!’ I cried, banging hard on the gate with the pommel of my sword. ‘We seek information about one of your visitors.’

    No response.

    I banged again, harder. Two of the slaves shouted in unison.

    There was a shuffling sound within. A little slot opened a few feet above my head.

    ‘There are no strangers within,’ an old man quavered. ‘Go away. We have arms, and know how to use them.’