Conspiracies of Rome (26 page)

    There wasn’t much of a library. What books I saw were mostly full of nonsense – magical spells and the like – from the Old Religion. Possession of these, Lucius carefully explained, was treason in itself. His whole life, he added, was a gigantic and deliberate crime against the modern world. He looked into my face as I scanned one of the pages – it was an incantation against haemorrhoids. How could someone be so rational in some matters, yet so ridiculously superstitious in others?

    ‘Do you believe in anything?’ he asked, taking up the question he’d earlier dropped. ‘Better an atheist, I suppose, than a Christian. But while I’ve heard of them, I’ve never met an atheist. Tell me, Alaric, what are your beliefs?’

    ‘Until yesterday,’ I answered, ‘I didn’t know how a book was made. Do you blame me if I keep an open mind about how many gods, if any, there may be watching over us?’

    Lucius had been honest with me. Why should I not be honest with him?

    ‘How old are you, Alaric?’ he asked.

    ‘Eighteen.’ I suddenly remembered: ‘I shall be nineteen come Sunday.’

    ‘Then we must celebrate. But so young and an atheist! I’m sure you get on well with Uncle Anicius. Don’t you have any sense of a higher power that directs the world? Even the God of the Galileans exists – though he isn’t the Supreme Being the priests say he is. There is a providence in our lives, you know. One day, you will have a sign, just as I did.’

    He paused and began a new line of questioning. ‘Tell me again, my dearest and golden Alaric, do you believe that laws must always be obeyed?’

    A year later, and I’d have stiffened and begun looking round for where spies might be hiding. But I’d grown up in a world where power, if often arbitrary, didn’t rely on informers. Besides, I had no reason to distrust Lucius.

    ‘The natural function of law,’ I said, trying not to slur my speech too much, ‘is to protect life and property. We are therefore obliged to obey the laws of any ruler – whoever he is and by whatever right he rules – that reasonably tend to this object. Any laws that go beyond this don’t bind in conscience. Perhaps they should be obeyed in public for the avoidance of scandal. But they should not stop us in private from doing whatever we please.’

    Lucius asked if that included laws prompted by the teachings of the Church.

    ‘Yes,’ I said. I’d have gone on, but my head was beginning to spin from all the wine, and I could feel myself on the verge of incoherence.

    I suppose, my Dear Reader, you will put my blasphemous rejection of what our Most Holy Faith enjoins on both rulers and ruled to my infatuation with Epicurus. Well, Epicurus does say all this and more. But I still hadn’t done more than guess that this was his position.

    Oddly enough, I’d had all this drawn to my attention by a priest in Canterbury, who’d got me to read an attack on the old British heretic Pelagius. The ignorant churls we were trying to evangelise had never thought about Divine Grace and how to reconcile this with freedom of the will. They’d thought no more of that than they had about the Divine Nature of Christ. But there was a slight fear among the missionaries that the independent views of the Romanised Britons we’d displaced might somehow have infected my own people.

    We moved out of the library, and now stood by a functioning bathhouse. The sudden chill did me good. I let the subject drop.

    ‘I can’t always justify the full thing,’ Lucius explained as he took me though the complex of steam rooms and hot and cold pools. ‘But there’s still unlimited water from the local aqueduct, and I can manage a hot tub in the morning. There’s a broken tenement down the road. You must come round one morning when I’ve had the slaves rip some more of the joists out of it to get the boiler up to full pressure. You’ll be amazed how glorious the experience can be.

    ‘Then there’s the gymnasium. I have a small one inside. But the days are warm enough now to use the larger one outside. You’re young enough and active enough to have a natural poise. But you won’t believe how much art can add to nature – or how it can extend the effects of nature.’

    I accepted the invitation, suggesting I should come back the day after next. This was a Saturday. We eventually agreed the day after that. There would surely be time on Sunday for recreation.

    ‘And here is my bedroom.’ He led into a high chamber, its walls faced with marble and painted plaster. I looked with surprise at the frankness of the painted scenes. In the middle of the room was a large bed of ebony heavily trimmed with ivory. It was neatly turned back, revealing the clean silken sheets. A few feet from it stood a small brazier to keep the night chill from the room.

    Lucius stood proudly by the bed. ‘There is another of these in the next room. We once had more. My ancestors had them specially imported from Alexandria.

    ‘Would you like to have a bed made up for you next door?’ he asked. ‘It’s a way back to the Caelian, and I won’t say how exhausted you’re beginning to look. Indeed, why not move in as my guest? There’s plenty of room here. I know we’ll get on very well together.’

    A thought was stirring in my fuddled mind. ‘Lucius,’ I replied, ‘I’m really grateful for the invite. But I should be getting back to my lodgings. I need to be up and about there very early.’

    I saw his face drop a little.

    ‘As for moving in as your guest,’ I added, ‘I’ll give that strong consideration tomorrow. On the one hand, I feel drawn back there because of Maximin. And there may be evidence to be uncovered that I’ll only find by staying there. On the other, I do appreciate I may bring greater detachment to the investigation if I’m away from those direct memories.’

    Lucius forced a cloak on me against the night air, and then watched me as I vanished into the blackness. His slaves had me back in no time at Marcella’s.

    Gretel was up late in the entrance hall, making a good pretence of folding some linen. I was tired. But I was young and fighting sorrow. And the walk back to the Caelian had stirred up that mix of wine and drugs to give me an interestingly endless energy.

26

It was turning out useful for Maximin to be all but a declared saint. Even without the immense pleasure of having Lucius as a guest – even without the gross flattery he sprayed at her in a steady stream – Marcella would have been inclined to give us whatever we wanted.

    It was Friday morning, and we had assembled all the guests and household in the entrance hall. They sat facing us. Martin, conveniently returned from the dispensator – he wouldn’t say what his mission had been – sat to our left at a writing desk to take a verbatim note of the meeting.

    ‘We need,’ said Lucius, opening in his smoothest voice, ‘so far as possible to reconstruct the last day on earth of our former Brother in Christ, now Holy Saint Maximin. To this end, we have, our Gracious Lady Hostess kindly permitting,’ Marcella almost purred from her raised chair at the front of the household, opposite Martin, ‘brought you all together so that you can share any and all knowledge you may have of that sad yet glorious day. Our Gracious Noble Hostess has agreed to overlook any default that the slaves may confess to in giving up such knowledge. Our only concern is to apprehend those enemies of God and man who have committed this act of impiety. Let us therefore begin.’

    I rose and addressed the gathering. ‘We need to know everything that Saint Maximin did and said on his last day with us. In particular, we know that he received a number of messages throughout the day. We need to know when these came, and who brought them, and – if possible – what they said. We shall be most grateful for any information you can share with us.’

    I had thought that getting everyone together like this would be a mistake. Better, I’d said to Lucius, to have people in to a side room one at a time. ‘No,’ he’d said. Including slaves, there were over thirty people in that house. To question them all would take an age. Besides, what evidence they had might be corrected or supplemented by others if they could also hear it. Even so, I still thought a public enquiry might not reveal very much.

    I was wrong. The words were no sooner out of my mouth than the old watchman was on his feet.

    ‘It’s my job to see all who come and go in this house,’ he said, ‘and I remember everything that happened that day.’ He looked around to ensure he had full attention, cleared his throat importantly, and continued. ‘Shortly after the young sir had gone to his bed, a little boy came to the door. He had a message for the Holy Saint. I said I’d take the message myself. But he said it was private. He’d been told to give the message into the hands of the Saint directly. So I let him through.’

    ‘Who took him up to Maxi . . . to the Saint’s rooms?’ I asked.

    There was a pause, and then Gretel was on her feet. ‘I took him up,’ she said. Unfortunately, she hadn’t gone into Maximin’s rooms. She’d only seen that he was writing at his desk. He’d got up and closed the door as the boy entered. The boy had been there a very short while, and then had come out with a papyrus note.

    ‘Would you recognise the boy,’ I asked the old watchman, ‘if you ever saw him again?’

    ‘Of course, sir. I never forget a face.’ To Marcella: ‘That’s right, isn’t it, my lady?’ He gave a description that might have fitted every child in Rome above the lowest, unhealthiest class.

    Martin’s pen scratched away as various slaves began to murmur agreement, commenting on the old watchman’s excellent memory for names and faces.

    I held up my hand for silence. ‘Very well,’ I said, ‘that was the first visit. Can anyone add to what we have heard? Did anyone else see the child? Does anyone else perhaps know who the child was?’

    No real answers here. Others had seen the boy as he was led through the house, but had nothing to add to what we already knew.

    The next visitor Maximin had received was the monk Ambrose – the one, that is, who’d been found dead the previous day. He’d come with an oral message. There was no need to ask what he’d said. I’d been with Maximin and had heard the summons.

    I turned to Martin. ‘Have you any idea why the dispensator sent his private secretary with that summons?’ I’d told Martin when I had met him later down at the Lateran about the summons. But perhaps he had something of his own to offer.

    He laid his pen down. ‘None, sir. Ambrose never discussed his private work for the dispensator. I only know it was highly confidential. The first I knew of the summons was when you told me about it. The dispensator certainly said nothing to me.’

    The old watchman broke in. ‘He was found yesterday morning, just down the road. I was on an errand for the mistress just after dawn today. I spoke with the slave who found him dying.’

    Lucius sat up. ‘We must speak as soon as we possibly can with that slave. Did he tell you anything significant when you met him?’ he asked.

    ‘I’m sorry, sir, but I didn’t think to ask. I can take you to the slave, though. His master is our local wine dealer. He’s a good man.’

    Lucius turned to Martin: ‘We need a meeting as soon as possible. You can make the arrangements after this meeting.’

    I continued. ‘After I went down to the Lateran, did the Saint receive any other visitors?’

    ‘Yes, sir, he did.’ The old watchman spoke again. ‘Some while after you’d gone, another monk arrived at the door. He said he had a private message for the Saint.’

    Again, Gretel had shown him up. She hadn’t heard what passed between him and Maximin. However, she did suspect he wasn’t a monk. ‘As I showed him down, he . . . he tried to take liberties with me.’ She cast her eyes down in a very good impression of shocked innocence.

    ‘How so?’ asked Lucius.

    ‘He tried to touch me on . . . in my secret places. I’ll swear he was no monk.’

    Well, lechery and monastic vows have often been well acquainted, and at first I was inclined to dismiss Gretel’s insistence that the man hadn’t been a monk. The way she bounced around, she could have excited a stone idol. Then again, she was no stranger to the world. She’d doubtless been touched up by bishops, let alone monks. Still, she insisted this hadn’t been a monk. Either she was holding back on something she didn’t want to discuss, or she’d picked something up from his general manner that she wasn’t able to describe in words. I suspected the latter.

    The old watchman disagreed. ‘He was a monk, I’ll swear. Man and boy, I’ve been watching over this house forty years. No wrong ’uns ever got in before. Isn’t that so, my lady?’

    ‘It most certainly is,’ said Marcella. ‘My watchman is the best in Rome, I’ll have you all know.’

    ‘Of course he is,’ said Lucius smoothly. ‘But we know the Evil One can take many forms. Were not even the holy saints of the desert often deceived by devils in human form?’