The Ghosts of Athens (2 page)

But I’d had my share of luck for that day. ‘Master, he is still alive,’ young Jeremy babbled as he looked back from his inspection over the wall. ‘Alive, Master – he’s still alive!’ The boy’s talent for redundancy had outdone itself. Even I could hear the feeble cries from perhaps a dozen feet down. I swung stiff legs over the edge of the cart and tottered across the six feet that separated me from the wall. I leaned on the mossy stones and looked over. Sure enough, the creature had landed at a funny angle that suggested a broken back. He was feebly dabbing at the pin still buried in his eye socket and letting out a piteous wail for help.

I straightened up and looked about me. Many years before, in Constantinople, I’d had the old tax records for London dug out of the archive. The last time an undivided and still more or less complete Empire was ruled from the new Rome, London had been the third largest city in the West, behind only Rome itself and Carthage. Its population had been close to a third of a million, and it had been a considerable trading and financial centre. Even now, it was an impressive sight. The smaller buildings were heaps of overgrown rubble. The sun sparkled on a completely silent Thames, and rabbits were scurrying about its grassy banks. But the great basilica from which all the provinces of Britain had been governed still seemed to have its roof, and most of the churches looked solid enough. There was no reason to suppose the place completely abandoned. There might even be a few inhabitants who spoke Latin and tried to think of themselves as Roman. I’d passed through here just a few months before, on my return from the East. Then, the weather had been too unpleasant for thoughts of exploration. I’d now been looking forward to a spot of tourism.

‘Master, I think he will live a while,’ Jeremy said, breaking in on my thoughts. ‘Should we not go down and give divine comfort?’

‘Divine comfort?’ I asked, incredulous. ‘Divine bleeding comfort? You take up these handles and get moving again if you don’t want a good hiding.’ I looked about again. London would normally have been well worth
some
exploration – though, sad to confess, not now. So far as I could tell, the creature had been alone. Then again, he’d come as if from nowhere. Who could tell what accomplices he might have lurking in these ruins? ‘Come on, boy,’ I added. ‘Put your back into it.’

Divine comfort, indeed! When I was eighteen – accomplices lurking about or none – I’d have been straight down on to that river bank to slit the creature’s throat and dance in the blood. But that’s young people today, I suppose. Some of them just don’t know they’ve been born. I let the boy help me back into the cart and arrange a rug over my legs. As he bent forward to take up the handles again, I managed a nice blow from my stick across his shoulders. Divine comfort – I ask you!

Stopping in London was definitely off my list of things to do. At the same time, if there was nothing ahead for another twenty miles, we’d not be turning back for the monastery where we’d spent the night. We were on a stretch that might allow Jeremy to break into a slow trot. Certainly, it was worth trying for one. The sooner the Thames was vanishing on our left as we pushed along Watling Street, the happier I’d be. Somewhere or other on the road, we’d surely meet those bloody guards. Till then, it was just me and a useless boy. I lashed out again at Jeremy and swore at him to put his back into the work of pulling me to Canterbury.

As we passed out from the last of the southern ruins of London, he slowed to a walk and looked back at me. ‘You are sad, Master,’ he said in a mournful gasp. ‘Are you repenting the blood we have shed this day?’

‘
We?
’ I felt like asking. What had Jeremy done but stand there, trying not to shit himself with fright? I scowled at the sweating, spotty face and thought of telling him what sort of report I’d make to Benedict once we were back home. The Abbot might well give him the sound whipping I wasn’t up to providing. But the sun had risen higher, and the day was turning out as fine as I’d expected. I laughed and found a softer spot on my travelling cushions. ‘If that two-legged beast lies bleating there till the wolves come and devour him, don’t suppose I’ll lose any sleep over it. But that was a nice pin. I picked it up in Beirut. I doubt I’ll get anything so fine to replace it in Canterbury.’ I hugged myself and let out a long giggle that trailed off into a coughing fit.

Yes, the day had turned out nice again. Indeed, it hadn’t rained once since we’d set out from Jarrow.

Theodore, born in Tarsus, now Lord High Bishop of Canterbury, shifted weakly on the pillows that allowed him to sit upright in bed, and peered uncertainly at me. ‘Greetings, My Lord Alaric,’ he finally said in Greek. ‘I trust the journey was not too troublesome for one of your years.’

I shuffled across the floor and took his right hand in mine. As I lifted it to kiss the episcopal ring, I noticed the deadness that flesh often takes after a seizure. He grunted and let the monk who was attending him fuss with the pillows. I sat myself on the hard chair that had been placed beside the bed and stretched my legs. It was probably best not to excite the poor dear with any narration of our troubles on the road.

‘My Lord Bishop will surely recall that I am no longer His Magnificence the Senator Alaric,’ I replied, joining him in Greek. ‘I am no more than humble Brother Aelric, returned to die in the land of his birth.’ I’d tried for the appropriate tone of humility; difficult, though, when, even three days after disposing of that human offal, you’re still feeling pleased with yourself.

Theodore tried for a cough and made do with a groan. The monk looked anxiously at the pair of us. He was a native, and probably knew only Latin – and that only enough for praying. I turned my smile on him, and gave him a glimpse of the stained ivory that served me nowadays for teeth.

‘You may leave us, Brother Wulfric,’ Theodore croaked in bad English when he was sufficiently recovered to say anything at all. A look on his face of immense tenderness, the monk rose and bowed.

Once the door was shut, Theodore shifted again on his pillows and pointed a weak and trembling finger at a table beside the window. There was a jug on it and one cup. It would mean getting up and walking ten feet there and ten back. But the size of the cup suggested that the jug was filled with neither beer nor water. After three hundred miles, another twenty feet was worth the risk of disappointment.

No disappointment! ‘Is this from the East?’ I asked with an appreciative sniff.

‘It’s French,’ came the whispered reply.

Leaving the cup behind, I carried the jug back to my chair. I took out my teeth and had a long and careful swig. I’d had better, but this would do. I wiped the dribble from my chin and looked about the room. As a boy, Theodore had delighted in flowers. It was a love that had stayed with him through life. I didn’t suppose he was up to turning his head very much since the last seizure. But he’d had himself propped where he could look straight at a mass of spring blossoms arranged on another table near the door. My wine jug aside, it was the only cheer in an otherwise bleak room that smelled of the decay that attends the very old when they have forsworn the use of soap and water. If holiness is not a force that has ever guided my own actions, I can usually take account of it. But what on earth could have possessed Theodore – already an old man – to give up his nice little monastery in Rome and spend twenty-odd years on this grotty island? In the end, I’d had bugger all choice about coming here. He’d had a first-class excuse to stay put.

‘Why do you tell people that I’m senile?’ he asked in a suddenly querulous tone.

That was a hard one to answer, and my response was to pretend I hadn’t heard him.

‘I am dying – there’s no doubt of that,’ he went on. ‘But the reports of what you’ve been saying to your students in Jarrow do hurt me. I am forgetting my Latin. I sometimes find myself thinking in Syriac. But I am not senile.’

I continued looking into the jug. In the months since coming back from the East, my renewed acquaintance with opium had been carried to a certain excess, and I had perhaps been rather garrulous in my class. Then again, dwelling on local matters had been a way of deflecting those endless questions about what I’d been up to after my abduction from the monastery in Jarrow. I could have taken another mouthful of wine and pretended that drunkenness was adding to my deafness. But there was something in Theodore’s voice that reminded me of the old days – the very,
very
old days before we’d fortified ourselves from each other behind those palisades of words. I could feel a slight pressure of tears. I sighed and bent carefully forward to put the jug on the floor.

‘I am, of course, most grateful for all you’ve done for me,’ I said. ‘When I first arrived here, you’d have been within your rights to send me off to Ravenna for handing over to the Emperor’s agents. Instead, you overlooked all the frequently unfortunate dealings of our middle years and found a place for me at Jarrow.’ I fell silent and stared at the shrivelled creature who lay before me. If he’d been ten when I was twenty-two, he had now to be eighty-five or -six. At his age, I’d still been directing the affairs of a vast, if diminished, empire. A younger man would have found Theodore enviably full of years, despite his infirmity. For me, he was a pitiable sight. I got up and pulled his blanket into place. It was the least I could do. I sat down and played with my teeth. There was a piece of bread compacted into one of the depressions in the upper gold plate. I picked it out with a dirty fingernail and put it into my mouth. I washed it down with more of Theodore’s French red.

‘What you say about me is of no importance,’ he said with a slight show of vigour. ‘In any event, I am no longer your host. The circumstances of your return have made me your keeper, and this has a bearing on the nature of our present dealings.’ His voice suddenly trailed off and he closed his eyes.

I wondered if he’d fallen asleep. If so, it would be a chance for me to slope off and find what manner of quarters his people had arranged for me. A bath was probably out of the question. But I’d come to him straight from my journey, and I could do with a rest. However, as I was thinking to get up and take my leave, his eyes opened again.

‘I have summoned you to Canterbury,’ he said, ‘to ask a favour of you. It is a matter of some delicacy, and we thought it best at this stage to avoid putting things in writing.’ His good hand twitched under the blanket, and I thought for a moment he’d pull something out. But his eyes closed again, and he went limp on the bed. I waited for his strength to come back. This time, though, he had drifted away. His breathing settled into a faint but regular gasp.

There was a gentle knock on the door and the monk Wulfric entered. He looked at the sleeping Bishop, and hurried across to rearrange the pillows. The wine jug was still half full. It was too much nowadays to finish in one go. On the other hand, taking it with me might not create the best impression. I groaned softly as I got up and made for the door.

‘I’ll make my own way out,’ I said in English without looking back. It was a pointless utterance. If Wulfric bothered watching me leave, it was only to see when he could shut the door.

‘If this is the best you’ve seen,’ I said with what I hoped was a dismissive wave, ‘it is a
very
fine city.’

Brother Jeremy nodded and went back to his eager inspection of Canterbury. Of course, when you’re bumping along in a wheelbarrow, three feet above the ground, you’d think little enough of Constantinople itself. Here, I was most aware of the refuse that was the street’s only paving, and the shouting of the three churls who walked ahead of us to push everyone else out of our way. I had my back to these, and was looking instead at the scrawny churl who was making a right mess of pushing me in the direction of our lodgings.

‘But I never thought I’d see the like,’ Jeremy cried again with all the astonishment of youth. He pointed at the leather goods hanging before one of the shops we were passing. A youngish man of darker hue than England ever produces put on an expectant smile and stepped out of the shop. I sent him packing with a scowl and looked back at Jeremy, who was now staring up at one of the tiled roofs. Like most other building materials here, the tiles had the weathered look that told me they were reused from London, or even my own Richborough.

‘I never thought I’d see the like,’ he repeated yet again, delight and wonder in his voice.

I might not think much of this place. So far as Jeremy was concerned, though, the narrow, twisting street that led from the Bishop’s residence might as well have been one of the main thoroughfares in the great City that sits upon the two waters.

‘I was told that the Monastery of Saint Anastasius was on the left in the square containing the Great Church,’ he said, pulling himself back to the matter in hand.

I nodded vaguely. Canterbury had been my first proper stop the previous winter after I’d been dumped back in Richborough. Even I had to own that the church was a big one by Western standards. But I’d not have dignified the clearing in front of it with the word ‘square’. That gave far too grand an impression of this dreadful hole on the far edge of civilisation. I was thinking of that French red, when the wheelbarrow came to a sudden stop, and I was almost pitched backwards into the waiting filth.