The Boat of Fate (28 page)

Read The Boat of Fate Online

Authors: Keith Roberts

Tags: #Historical Fiction

I walked to the one narrow window. It looked out across the grounds of the place. In the distance, masons were working on the outer wall; the ring and tap of a trowel came to me faintly, muffled by the thin greenish glass. Nearer at hand, a man hoed a vegetable patch with slow, methodical strokes, stooping from time to time to pluck and toss away a weed. From somewhere within the building itself came the deep-toned chant of voices, interspersed now and again with the ringing of a handbell.

There was an air of security and peace; the hot, restless world I had left seemed suddenly very far away.

I was roused from my brooding by the opening of the door. The man who entered was tall; as tall or taller than I. Like the rest of his Order he wore a plain brown robe, caught at the waist by a girdle; on his breast, suspended by a necklace of beads, hung a massive cross. His face was thin, strongly yet delicately boned and enlivened by a pair of brilliant light grey eyes. They studied me for a moment before he spoke. ‘I am Cassianus,’ he said simply. ‘You are welcome to my House, Tribune. I understand you have some pressing business to discuss; but before that, would you care to break bread with me? The Domitian Way is both dusty and tiring, as I know very well.’

I agreed, thanking him; for I had ridden the ten miles or so non-stop, and hadn’t yet eaten that day. He inclined his head gravely and turned to precede me, sandals shuffling on the new pale flags.

The monastery was airy, spacious and cool. I followed my host down a tiled corridor, its cream stone walls untouched by plaster or paint. We crossed a hall lit by narrow windows. Kitchens opened from it; as we passed a Brother emerged carrying a platter of bread. He stood back respectfully at sight of his superior. I glimpsed what looked to be a wine store, the lines of tall jars standing neatly in their racks. Beyond again, an antechamber led into the refectory.

The Brothers took their meals at wooden benches set down the sides of the wide, low room. The hum of conversation ceased momentarily as I entered. At one end of the place tall windows of the same greenish glass admitted a bursting of sunlight. Beneath them, raised slightly on a low stone dais, was a table set a little apart from the rest. I saw there was to be another guest. He was already seated; a well-built, silver-haired man with a fleshy, aquiline nose. His clothes and bearing marked him as a person of consequence; I guessed him to be the head of some local noble family. When Cassianus introduced him I had a shock. ‘Allow me to present,’ he said in his quiet, cultured voice, ‘the Senator Prudentius Aurelius Clemens, a good friend of our Order. My Lord, the Tribune Sergius Paullus. You may have heard,’ he said, turning to me, ‘of the Senator’s work. He is the foremost poet of the Christian cause, and a pillar of our Western Church.’

I swallowed. This was the man whose diatribes I had long ago wished might be painfully expunged; of all people he was about the last I had ever expected to meet, least of all in a Gallic monastery. I greeted him formally, admitting that not only had his fame reached my ears but that I had studied his writings while at school. Prudentius, who had been watching me somewhat narrowly, beamed at what he construed to be a compliment and lost no time in plunging into a discussion of his current projects. ‘I am preparing,’ he said, ‘my most ambitious work to date; a work that will prove--logically prove, mark you, in the very tongue and accents of his deriders--the singularity of the one true God and of his Son, given to us to be the redeemer of the world. With the publication of the
Contra Symmachum
the voice of that capering bigot, that unbeliever, that mouthpiece of Satan himself, will finally be silenced. Praise be to the Lord, who gives us the strength to work his divine will . . .’

There was more, all in the same high vein. I addressed myself to my meal while the Senator continued his speech, to which Cassianus responded from time to time with murmured compliments on the fineness of the poet’s work and his untiring zeal.

The food was plain but nourishing: meat, wheaten cakes and fruit, washed down with rough, well-watered wine. I ate hungrily, wasting no time in talk; I couldn’t in any case have stemmed the flow of the great man’s oratory for long. The platters were cleared away before Cassianus turned to me to enquire gently the purpose of my visit. I explained as briefly as I could the conditions I had found on taking over the mine. I described the improvements I had been able to make, stressing the great amount that still needed to be done, and ended with an appeal for funds, however slight, that would allow the work to continue.

The reaction of the listeners was hardly what I had anticipated. The monk frowned thoughtfully, looking troubled; while Prudentius, who had begun to evince mounting impatience, appeared suddenly to be on the verge of apoplexy. ‘Father, this is intolerable,’ he burst out. ‘Quite intolerable.

The Church exists, under God, to the furtherance of his glory; are we to succour those who in their wilfulness and blindness deny their Lord, who in their evil counsels prevail on men to take his name in vain?’

I could only stare at him blankly. ‘But,’ I said finally, ‘I think you must be mistaken, sir. My slaves are Christians.’

He glowered at me. ‘They are heretics,’ he said. ‘Subverters of the divine will, to whom neither mercy nor compassion may be extended.’

‘And I tell you you’re wrong,’ I said, getting annoyed in my turn. ‘But even if it were true, there are children to consider. Am I to understand the Church withholds its charity even from them? Are they to suffer regardless, for sins they’re not old enough to understand?’

That brought him to his feet, fairly stamping with temper. ‘Don’t presume, young man,’ he said, ‘to lecture me in my Christian duty; or, what is worse, to criticise the edicts of the Faith. A Faith of which, it seems to me, you stand in most alarming ignorance. Is not the foremost of your band a Scythian freedman?’

Cassianus interrupted before I could answer, holding up his hands for quiet. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said. ‘Gentlemen, please....’ He turned to me. ‘I’m afraid,’ he said, ‘this freedman, the Goth Ulfilas, has been causing some slight dissension in Massilia. You were perhaps unaware of this?’

But the Senator’s indignation would not be bottled up for long. ‘Dissension!’ he bellowed, bouncing up again. ‘Dissension! Dissension and worse, Father, dissension and worse! I saw the wretch myself, and heard him, preaching his filth on the streets in the plain light of day. I’d have given him something for his trouble, I promise you, if I could have come up with him; I’d have thrashed him within an inch of his life. But the creature was too quick for me ...’

Events seemed to be rapidly leaving me behind. ‘But,’ I said, baffled, ‘Ulfilas is a Christian. I’ve heard him speak myself, to the slaves at the camp . . .’

‘He is a heretic!’ thundered the Senator, hammering the table with rage. ‘A follower of the excommunicant Arius, a spreader of sedition, a rejector of the Son of God himself. I myself heard him proclaim that the rich shall be brought low, that cities--good Roman cities, Christian cities--will be put to the flame, that barbarism--all that is chaotic, and of the Night--will conquer, and reign supreme!’ He raised his eyes to Heaven, represented temporarily by the refectory roof. ‘O God of our fathers, hear thy faithful servant; visit the unbeliever with thy living fire!’

It sounded like Ulfilas, right enough, but by this time I was too angry to remember the original purpose of my visit. Helping those wretches at the mine had cost me both money and labour; now here was this fifth-rate panegyricist quibbling technicalities I barely understood, using them as an excuse to refuse aid to people outwardly Christian, who had presumably offended his sensibilities on some minor point of dogma. The insolence of the whole thing practically took my breath. ‘That was most remiss of him,’ I said when I could once more make myself heard. ‘Be assured I’ll take steps to correct his error. But,’ I added, ‘viewed dispassionately, perhaps his mistaken concern for the poor is understandable. Our Lord, after all, chose to make his appearance on earth in the guise of a carpenter; maybe it would have been better all round had he been born to the clarissimate . . .’

‘Tribune!’

This time Cassianus was on his feet. ‘This is my board,’ he said, fixing us both with his piercing stare. ‘And you are under my roof. By your leave, my friends, we’ll have an end of this.’ Silence fell. Prudentius glared at me, blowing through his nostrils like an overworked horse; I glared back, equally bad-tempered. Those of the Brothers who had turned their heads at the sound of raised voices readdressed themselves hurriedly to finishing their meal. A further pause; then Cassianus turned to me. ‘Tribune,’ he said, ‘I’ll have a word in private with you, if you please. Forgive us, my Lord.’ To one side of the dais was a low door; he stepped to it, motioning me curtly to precede him. I walked through silently. Beyond was a small room, furnished in part as an office. Cassianus closed the door behind him, leaned against it pursing his lips and shaking his head. ‘Well, my son,’ he said finally, ‘for a seeker after charity you have some curious notions of how to achieve your aims.’

I was still bitterly angry. I held my hands out, showing the calloused palms, the cracked and broken nails. ‘I’ve been told, Father,’ I said, ‘that Faith without works is dead. I’ve worked …’

‘Peace,’ he said. ‘Be still. We are none of us strangers to toil.’ He walked to the window of the place, stood with his arms folded across his chest, chin sunk forward as if in thought. ‘It’s fortunate,’ he said at length, ‘that I have a certain regard for sincerity, however oddly it chooses to express itself. You must learn to exercise a similar forbearance. Enclosed though we are, we are by no means unaware of the world around us. I’ve been hearing a great deal about your activities; I could wish that you had come to me sooner.’

I snorted. Prudentius struck me as a true author of his poems, a sententious bore; I muttered something to the effect, but the Father shook his head. ‘The Senator,’ he said, ‘labours under a weight of Faith; and Faith, Tribune, can be a sore burden to the best of us. This you still have to learn. Now listen, and cleanse your heart of anger.

‘In what he said, the noble Prudentius was perfectly correct. Your freedman is, unfortunately, a heretic; a follower of Arius, who preached the indivisibility of the One. His very name might have suggested it to you; for Ulfilas was a disciple of Bishop Arius, and carried on his ministry among the Goths. An energetic man, some say demoniacally inspired, who finally succeeded in converting the entire nation to his master’s beliefs. Beliefs they still for the most part hold.’

I eyed him wearily. ‘But all this happened centuries ago,’ I said. ‘Divisibility, indivisibility . . . Father, can you honestly say it matters? When just a few miles away Christians are dying for plain lack of air and sunlight?’

‘They are not Christians,’ he said quietly. ‘Try to understand ...’ He turned back to me earnestly, ticking off points on his fingers. ‘If God the Eternal is indivisible, then logically he created the Son not from himself but from nothingness. From the void. If Jesus, our Saviour, was not of his father’s substance, then God never intervened physically on this earth. We restrict his authority to the matters of the spirit, and query the right of the Church to interdict the affairs of mammon. But if we accept, as we must accept, the higher mystery--that the Word was made flesh, and lived and died among us--then we see that here on earth God did indeed speak his will. We see that through his disciples' the Word flowered and grew. We see that through an unbroken line--the line of the Bishops of Rome, each of whom inherited the mantle of the holy Peter--that Word continued to be uttered, and is uttered today. And that to flout it is disaster to the soul, for Kings as well as for commoners. This is the very touchstone of Faith; for on this the Church bases her right to rule.’

I stared at him. ‘To rule, Father?’

He nodded. ‘You heard me well enough, I think.’

I was silent. I understood, dimly, the nature of the heresy he had outlined, but its political implications had never struck me till now. The anger was gone; I saw, in a flash of comprehension, how the Church, rich as she already was, would continue to grow in power and authority, till her word stood above the once-divine will of the Emperors themselves. I seemed to sense, on the instant, a dim and mighty conflict; clergy and the State, Church and Emperor, contending everywhere for the very destiny of man.

He realised I had understood. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘the battle has yet to be fully joined; but joined it must be, one day. It was ordained, from the first; when a Roman Emperor gave the Church authority, to use or abuse as she chose. The burden of power; a burden she had to take up, or herself wither and die. But what the end will be, passes our imagining.’

He turned back to the window. ‘For this reason,’ he said, ‘when we saw the destiny God had laid on her, our little Order drew apart. For this reason others will draw apart, in future years. Sometimes in our watchings we pray for the souls of men; sometimes for the Church herself. That she may be guided rightly, and not fall into sin more deadly than Arius could conceive.’

He stayed still a moment longer, brooding though the glass. ‘You perhaps see now,’ he said, ‘just how you played with fire; and why your fingers were so sharply burned. The Senator sometimes speaks from his heart rather than his head; hardly, as you will concede, a mortal sin. But whatever he may lack in understanding he makes up for in zeal; you’ll find him a true mouthpiece of Holy Mother Church.’ He crossed to me, dropped a hand on my shoulder. ‘And now, my son,’ he said, ‘having counselled you longer by far than your brusqueness warranted. I’ll lay a penance on you; a penance you’ll perform, wholeheartedly, before we go any further.’

He pointed to the door. ‘Through there is an exceedingly angry man; a man who, as God has arranged the affair, also happens to be our chief benefactor.’ He smiled again at the stricken expression on my face. ‘We own nothing for ourselves,’ he said, ‘as you ought to be aware. The funds that established this House, the very ground it stands on, came to us largely through the Senator’s gift. You’ll make your peace with him as best you can, begging forgiveness for your rudeness. Go on, I’ll hear no more argument; a little humility won’t do you any harm.’

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