Sister Fidelma exited with some relief through the ornately carved oak doors into the main hall of the Lateran Palace, where every Bishop of Rome had been crowned for the last three hundred and fifty years. The
atrium,
or public hall, was a magnificent structure, of that there was no doubt. Tall marble columns towered skywards to an arched roof. The floor was an ever-stretching carpet of mosaic, the walls were festooned with colourful tapestries and the vaulted canopies above were of polished darkened oak. It was a fitting palace for a temporal prince.
The palace guards, the
custodes,
stood at every entrance, each guard in ceremonial military dress with burnished breastplates and plumed helmets, short swords drawn and held across their breast; an impressive show of worldly splendour. Clerics moved hither and thither about mysterious tasks, their homespun robes making a curious contrast to the dignitaries and potentates from every conceivable country in the world.
Sister Fidelma paused to take in the spectacle again; for several hours she had been made to wait among the noisy throng before Brother Donus had summoned her to the presence of Bishop Gelasius. There could be little doubt, indeed,
that this was the meeting place of all the peoples in the world. The royal court at Tara, the seat of the High Kings of the five kingdoms of Ireland, seemed a quaint backwater compared with this magnificence. But, Fidelma reflected as she began to ease her way through the groups of chattering people, she preferred the quiet dignity of Tara, its homely atmosphere amidst the serene beauty of the royal province of Midhe.
A young religieuse, pushing her way forward in the opposite direction, collided with Fidelma.
‘Oh, forgive me …’
The girl raised her head and broke off with a look of flustered recognition.
‘Sister Fidelma! I have not seen you since we arrived in Rome.’
The young Saxon religieuse was about twenty-five years of age, thin with slightly melancholy features and mousy, untidy hair poking out from beneath her headpiece. Her eyes were dark brown but seemed to hold little expression and, although slight, her hands were strong and sinewy, calloused from hard work. It had come as no surprise to Fidelma to find that Sister Eafa had worked on a farm before entering the religious life. Fidelma smiled down at her. She had been in Sister Eafa’s company during most of the voyage from the port of Massilia to Ostia. The young sister was one of a small party of pilgrims from the kingdom of Kent who had come to witness Wighard of Canterbury ordained by the Holy Father. Fidelma felt a sympathy for the young girl. A simple, drab but amenable girl who seemed scared of her own shadow. The way she carried herself, the slightly stooping, awkward posture, and the way that she always wreathed her head and shoulders in her headdress, seemed to indicate a wish to make herself inconspicuous in the world.
‘Good day, Sister Eafa. How goes it with you?’
The young religieuse grimaced nervously.
‘Truly, I shall be glad to return to Kent. To be in the city where Peter, who walked and spoke with the Christ, and who was martyred here, is a truly moving experience. However …’ she gave a restless jerk of her head, ‘I have no liking for the city. In truth, sister, I find it rather threatening. There are too many people, too many strange people. I would rather be at home.’
‘I share your wish, sister,’ Fidelma’s sympathy was heartfelt. Like Eafa, she, too, was more used to rural life.
An anxious look suddenly passed across the lustreless features of Sister Eafa as she glanced beyond Fidelma’s shoulder.
‘Here comes Abbess Wulfrun. I must join her. I am accompanying her to the Oratory of the Forty Martyrs. We have already been to the tomb of the blessed Helena, mother of Constantine, this morning. Everywhere we go people see that we are foreign pilgrims and try to sell us holy relics and mementos. They are like beggars who will not be turned aside. Look at this, sister.’
She gestured to a small, cheap copper brooch with which she had fastened her headpiece. Fidelma peered at it closely. It displayed a piece of coloured glass mounted in the copper.
‘I was told that it contained a hair of the blessed Helena’s head and parted with two
sestertius
… I have no head for such coins. Do you think it was too much?’
Fidelma peered closely at the brooch and grimaced. She could just see a strand of hair embedded in the glass.
‘If, indeed, that was the hair of the blessed Helena, then it is worth the money, but …’ she left the sentence hanging with a shrug.
The young Saxon religieuse looked crestfallen.
‘You doubt that it is genuine?’
‘There are many pilgrims in Rome and, as you have already said, many people who earn their living by selling them all manner of things claimed as holy relics.’
Fidelma had the feeling that Eafa would have liked to talk more but she gave another quick glance over Fidelma’s shoulder and gestured apologetically.
‘I must go. Abbess Wulfrun has seen me.’
The young Kentish anchoress turned, anxiety still on her features, and pushed her way through the people to where a tall woman in religious robes stood waiting with an austere and disapproving expression on her beak-like countenance. Fidelma felt a pang of sorrow for the young sister. Eafa was making this pilgrimage in the company of Abbess Wulfrun. They were both from the abbey of Sheppey but, as Eafa had confessed to Fidelma, Wulfrun was a royal princess, the sister to Seaxburgh, Queen of Kent, and she made sure everyone knew of her rank.
That was probably why Fidelma had sought to befriend the young girl during the voyage from Massilia to Ostia, for Wulfrun treated the girl as little more than a slave. Yet Eafa had seemed more apprehensive of Fidelma’s offer of friendship than her own loneliness. She was reluctant to be friendly with anyone and made no complaints about the autocratic way Abbess Wulfrun ordered her to do this or that. A strange, lonely girl, reflected Fidelma. Introspective, not anti-social but simply unsociable. Above the hubbub of those around her Fidelma could hear the piercing tones of Abbess Wulfrun ordering Eafa to carry something for her. The Abbess’ imperious figure pushed its way through the crowds towards the palace gates, like the prow of a warship cleaving through
stormy water, with the thin, bobbing figure of Eafa in her wake.
Sister Fidelma halted a moment or two in order to let them vanish in the throng before, with a soft sigh, she passed through the palace doors and out on to the sunbaked marble steps before the great façade. The Roman sun enveloped her in its warmth causing her to pause and catch her breath. From the cool of the interior of the great palace, the emergence into the heat of the Roman day was like plunging from a cold shower into a hot one. She blinked and took a deep breath.
‘Sister Fidelma!’
She turned towards the crowd pushing their way up the steps and narrowed her eyes trying to identify the owner of the familiar deep baritone voice. A young man wearing rough brown woollen homespun, his dark brown hair capped by the
corona spina
of the Roman tonsure, detached himself from the group and waved to her. He was muscular, more like a warrior in build than a monk; a handsome man of her own age and height. She found herself smiling broadly in greeting, at the same time mentally questioning why she should feel such a surge of pleasure at seeing him again.
‘Brother Eadulf!’
Eadulf had been her companion on the long and tedious journey from the kingdom of Northumbria. He was secretary and interpreter to Wighard, the archbishop-designate of Canterbury. They had become friends during the council at Hilda’s monastery at Streoneshalh, by the coastal town of Witebia where, together, they had solved the dark mystery of the murder of the Abbess Étain of Kildare. Their abilities had complemented one another, for Eadulf had once been hereditary
gerefa,
the magistrate, of Seaxmund’s Ham before he had
been converted to the Faith by an Irish monk named Fursa and taken to Durrow in Ireland for his religious education. Eadulf also possessed a physician’s knowledge having also studied at the great medical school of Tuaim Brecain. Then Eadulf had spent two years in Rome and had chosen to follow Rome’s teaching, rejecting the rules of the Columban order, before returning to his native land. He had been at Hilda’s abbey in support of Canterbury and Rome while Fidelma had travelled there to support her fellow Irish clerics from Lindisfarne and Iona.
The two youthful religious stood facing each other for a moment, smiling happily at their chance encounter, on the sunbaked white marble steps of the Lateran Palace.
‘How goes your mission to Rome, Fidelma?’ Eadulf asked. ‘Have you seen the Holy Father yet?’
Fidelma shook her head.
‘No. I have only seen a bishop. One who calls himself the
nomenclator
, who has to assess my petition from Kildare and ascertain whether the Holy Father should be bothered by it. The bureaucrats who surround the Bishop of Rome do not even seem interested that I bear personal letters to him from Ultan of Armagh.’
‘You sound disapproving.’
Fidelma sniffed in agreement.
‘I am a simple person, Eadulf. I dislike all this temporal pomp and ceremony.’ She gestured with hand outstretched to the rich ecclesiastical buildings surrounding them. ‘Do you remember the words of Matthew? The Lord instructed: “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal …” These temporal treasures are blinding to the simplicity of our faith.’
Brother Eadulf pursed his lips and shook his head in mock censure. Although his expression was serious there was no disguising the quiet humour in his eyes. He was aware that Fidelma had a keen scholastic mind and could readily quote scripture to enforce her arguments.
‘It is their history, the sense of their past, that causes the Romans to keep such treasures, not their financial worth nor their faith,’ he replied in defence. ‘If the church has to exist in this world to prepare people for the next then surely it must be of this world with all its pomp and circumstance?’
Fidelma disagreed immediately.
‘It was clear, as Matthew said, no man can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other or else he will hold to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and Mammon. Those that live in this fine palace and parade in temporal aggrandisement must surely be placing Mammon before God.’
Brother Eadulf looked slightly shocked.
‘You are speaking of the household of the Holy Father. No, Fidelma; it is part of Rome’s heritage as well as the Christian heritage to be in this beautiful palace. Everywhere you go in Rome you will stand in history.’
Fidelma grinned derisively at his enthusiasm.
‘Anywhere in the world you would stand on a spot that has an historic memory to someone,’ she replied dryly. ‘I have stood on the poor bare hill of Ben Edair where the battle-torn, bleeding body of Oscar, son of Oisín, was taken for burial after the catastrophic battle of Gabhra. I have seen the cairn which was raised over the grave of Oscar’s widow, Aidín, after she had died of grief on seeing the body of her husband. A small cairn of grey stone can encompass as heart-rending a history as this big edifice.’
‘But look at this …’ Eadulf waved enthusiastically to encompass the great Lateran Palace and the adjoining basilica of St John. ‘This is the very heart of Christendom. The home of its temporal leader for the last three hundred years. It has such history in every brick and piece of mosaic.’
‘A marvellous set of buildings, I will accept that.’
Eadulf shook his head at her lack of reverence.
‘Even when the emperor Constantine gave the palace and its lands to Melchiades, three hundred and fifty years ago, so that he, as Bishop of Rome, could erect a cathedral for the city, it already had a history.’
Fidelma silently resigned herself to the monk’s animation.
‘It was the palace of a great patrician family of ancient Rome, the Laterani. At the time when the evil emperor Nero was persecuting the Christians there was a conspiracy to assassinate him. Gaius Calpurnius Piso, who was a consul, a great orator as well as a rich and popular figure, led the plot. But it was discovered and the conspirators were arrested and condemned to death, others were forced to commit suicide rather than face execution as respect and deference to their patrician rank.
‘Among them were Petronius Arbiter who wrote the
Satyricon
; the poet Lucan and the philosopher Seneca, as well as Piso. In addition to those intellectuals was Plautius Lateranus who owned this palace. He was deprived of his property and put to death.’
Fidelma eyed the rich façade of the Lateran Palace, still disapproving of its opulence.
‘It is a beautiful building,’ she said softly, ‘but not as beautiful as a pleasant valley or great mountain or windswept cliff.
That is true beauty, the beauty of nature untrammelled by man’s temporary constructions.’
Eadulf looked at her in sorrow.
‘I would not have marked you for a Philistine, sister.’
Fidelma raised a contradictory eyebrow and gave a shake of her head.