The Ghosts of Athens (5 page)

I was about to close up the opening in the shutters and feel my way back to bed, when I heard Jeremy groan and shift position till the bed boards creaked beneath him. He followed this with a fair impression of a death rattle and a return to snoring. I pulled a face, then smiled again. I pushed my face out into the fresh air and breathed in the smell of early shrubs.

Oh, Jeremy, Jeremy! Back in Jarrow, he’d not been my first choice as travelling companion. He’d not have been my first choice for anything. He wasn’t bright. He wasn’t brave. He wasn’t at all good to look at. His lack of personal hygiene might have been notable even in the monasteries of Egypt, where soap and sinfulness were seen in the same disapproving light. I’d sat on the panel that had considered his application to be trained as a monk. My only comment then had been a joke about raising the quality of the Northumbrian breeding stock by removing him from it. I’d only given in to Benedict’s urging when the boy I did have in mind had fallen out of a tree and sprained his ankle. That had left no one else strong enough to pull me all the way to Canterbury. So I’d sneered at him and poked him with my stick the whole way between Jarrow and Canterbury.

But, if he was lacking in all other qualities, Jeremy did possess a goodness of soul that you mustn’t overlook. As with holiness, that isn’t something I’ve ever myself possessed. But, as with holiness, it is something that must be recognised in others. And, unlike holiness, it is something to be valued. Tomorrow, I’d let him wake me, and dress me, and feed me, and bring me my false teeth, and comb and arrange the blond wig I told everyone I had to wear to keep my scalp warm. And I’d smile at him, and think of something pleasant to say. The moment I was done with Theodore, I’d lead him about Canterbury and show him where tree sap had been turned to beer – and I’d do nothing to persuade him it hadn’t actually happened. Sooner or later, even he’d complete his training. After that, he’d be sent off to risk himself on converting the tattooed savages who dwelt in the forests beyond the wide northern sea. Before then, he might as well be shown some of the love he’d be preaching to others.

Outside, all was dark. All was silent. I might achieve a little sleep before morning. Or I might lie choking in more of the foetid smells cast off by Jeremy. Whatever the case, it was cold over here by the window. And at last, I realised, I did feel very tired.

I was back with Theodore. The window of his room was now fully unshuttered, and I could see that it looked over a small garden. A warm breeze came through it, and the sound of birdsong. Looking ghastly, but more with it than the previous day, Theodore had got himself propped into a padded armchair that allowed him to see out of the window.

‘You will forgive me for not rising to greet you,’ he said with surprising firmness. ‘At our last meeting, I tried to discuss a favour that the Church would have of you. Because of the change in your status attendant on your return to England, this is not a favour that we can demand, and I shall understand if you feel that a conflict of interest prevents you from rendering any assistance.’

I smiled and took up the undisturbed wine. A bug had crawled into it and, without any consideration, died there. But I fished this out and flicked it on to the floorboards. Wulfric lifted a cup of something hot to Theodore’s lips, and I waited for him to gather more of his ebbing strength.

‘While you were away,’ he continued, ‘I had a letter from Rome. The Holy Father is involved in a matter of great delicacy with the Emperor in Constantinople. This involves the damnable heresy of the Monothelites. It is a shame that news of your own presence in the Mediterranean world did not arrive in Rome until after your return to England. It would have been most convenient had we been able to avoid all the delays of a correspondence between Rome and Canterbury.’

‘Monothelitism is dead and buried,’ I said, speaking carefully. ‘I sealed the decree against it myself twenty years ago. We blamed everything on poor dead Sergius, and I drafted a grovelling letter of apology from the Emperor to the Pope. Why should the matter still give trouble?’

‘Because it may now have been pulled, still twitching, from its grave,’ Theodore gasped. He took another sip and tried to sit upright. He failed, and Wulfric had to lift him higher on to the pillows. ‘You must have learned on your travels of the Emperor’s great victory over the Saracens. There are hopes in Constantinople that Syria may be recovered for the Empire. Because of this, the Imperial authorities are looking again at an accommodation with the heretics in that province.’

Syria to be recovered? That was news to me. I may have spent a fair chunk of the previous summer in Damascus. But, shut away in the Caliph’s palace, my news of the world beyond its gates had been sketchy at best. Still, it made sense that, if we were doing well against the Saracens, keeping Rome sweet would now be of secondary importance.

‘Of course,’ I said, trying for a tone of reassurance, ‘there’s nothing we can do to put pressure on Rome.’ I broke off and grinned. The
we
in that sentence had been an entirely accidental slip. ‘Do forgive me, Theodore: there’s nothing
the Empire
can do to Rome. The days are gone when a Pope could be arrested in the Lateran and dragged off to some Eastern monastery. Certainly, the council you held a few years back in Hatfield was far outside the Empire’s jurisdiction or sphere of influence. No one who signed its Acts can be in the slightest danger. Surely, if the new Emperor wants to go whoring among the heretical Churches of the East, all Rome needs to do is mutter a few complaints and wait for the military balance on land to swing back to the Saracens – and it will do that, I assure you.’

But Theodore didn’t look much assured. He moved his head a fraction of an inch and looked at a forbiddingly large sheet of parchment unrolled on one of the tables in the room. I glanced at the tiny writing that covered it. Whoever had produced that must have done well and proper for his sight. Even in bright sunshine, I wasn’t planning to wear out my own eyes on reading it. I looked back at Theodore. He was the theological expert. He’d spent half a century telling everyone who’d listen that I was just a smooth-talking fraud. If he wanted any help from me, he could at least begin by summarising whatever complaints he’d received from Rome.

But he gave me a bleak smile and went into English. ‘Do me the favour, Brother Aelric,’ he said, of explaining the Monothelite heresy to Brother Wulfric. It is beyond my abilities to do so in English. But you do have the advantage of being a native.’

I raised my eyebrows and looked into the wine jug. Explaining that mass of gibberish in Latin was challenge enough; why else, after all, had Rome looked so implicitly for advice to Theodore with his Greek and Syriac? Asking even me to put it into a dumpy language like English might well be seen as evidence of senility. But Theodore was in earnest. And Wulfric was looking at me with the first glimmerings of interest in two days. I sighed and drank deeply. I thought to give a summary of the account I normally gave my students in Jarrow. But that was in Latin, and the subtleties just didn’t translate. If I was to get anywhere at all, I’d have to make a fresh start, and without preparation.

I think I’d lost the boy long before ending my digressive hunt for equivalents in English of Substance and Will and the various shades of Person. His eyes had certainly glazed over by the time I was able to launch into the critical matter of how the Will of Christ might relate to any of these. But he managed to keep a polite look on his face as my voice droned on and my throat began to ache from the effort of speaking for so long and with so much complexity in a language in which I might still be fluent, but in which I no longer thought.

And Theodore was highly delighted. ‘Well said, Brother Aelric!’ he gasped, now in Syriac. ‘Well said, my Lord Senator Alaric. Age has not taken a jot of your talent for clear and shining evasion.’ I smiled modestly and had another drink. I could take it as read that I’d been put up to my lecture less for Wulfric’s enlightenment than to give Theodore an excuse to start ripping into me as he had in the old days. Sure enough, he shifted on his pillows and glared at me with open hostility.

‘You have only overlooked your own part in bringing this gross heresy into the world, and how it was
you
who made sure it was maintained just so long as it suited the Empire’s political convenience. The moment it had outlived its usefulness,
you
dropped it like a hot brick. The scandal would have been all the greater had anyone by then still believed that you had
any
religious convictions at all.’

The poor old thing had me there. Out of habit, I cast round for a politely vicious retort. As I focused on him, though, I suddenly found myself looking straight into the eyes of a ten-year-old boy. Horribly wasted, Theodore might be hovering on the edge of the grave. But, in all that really mattered, I was seeing him just as I had seventy-six years ago. Call it a spiritual burp brought on by the previous night’s opium. Whatever the case, it passed. I relaxed. No vicious retort, polite or otherwise, crossed my lips. I shrugged and looked round to see if anything edible had been laid out for me.

‘But where is my mother?’ he now cried, still in Syriac.

I raised my eyebrows and tried to smile. ‘Come now, Theodore,’ I said comfortingly. ‘You know she died in Tarsus. You must only have been eight at the time. I never met here, and was far off in Constantinople when the plague made its appearance.’

But he struggled back into a sitting position, and even pointed at me with his good arm. ‘Don’t play the fool with me, Alaric,’ he snarled. ‘It was you who debauched her. Everything was as it ought to be until you turned up. I ask you again:
where is she
?’

‘Debauched’ isn’t a word I’d have thought appropriate. Fortunately, Wulfric was out of the conversation. If he was shifting and muttering behind me, it was only over the funny colour his master had gone. I turned my attention back to the wine as the boy stepped forward and fussed harder than ever with pillows. When I did finally look at Theodore, he’d nodded off again. Hardly breathing, he lay with his head flopped back on the cushions. Wulfric paid no attention to me, but sat quietly beside his master the Bishop, nursing the one good hand in both of his. ‘We’ll get nowhere if we continue like this,’ I said to myself in Greek. Not that I was inclined to make any complaint. It was a lovely day outside. If I could fight off the slight headache the wine was producing, I could creep out of here and go off with Jeremy sooner than expected.

I’d got as far as the big stone porch of the building, and was pushing through a crowd of boys who were trying to read the inscription put up to commemorate a visit by the Bishop of Ravenna, when I heard the sound behind me of a throat being pointedly cleared.

‘When one has spent all his life hearing the most astonishing stories, you will surely agree what an honour it is to meet the object of those stories.’

I thought whether I could blame it on deafness if I paid no attention and hurried out into the sunshine. It would be five yards at most before I was lost in the swirling crowd of monks and tradesmen. But all the boys had turned round from the inscription. One was pointing past me. A couple were beginning to cry. I’d have to fight my way through them to get out. I gave in to the inevitable and turned to look at Sophronius. From the first sound of that fruity, affected voice, there could be no doubt who it was. Still in white, he’d creased his blubbery face into a look of reverential respect.

‘We are all so very pleased to see how well you remain, even after what must surely have been a difficult journey from the north,’ he added after giving me his name. He got slowly to his knees and bent forward to embrace my feet. ‘It is an honour beyond all expectations,’ he intoned, ‘to behold in the flesh one I have always so very much revered.’

There was no pulling back from that iron grip. I nodded and smiled, and waited for him to get up. There was a sound behind me of scared and disconsolate sobbing, and then a pattering of boyish feet as everyone ran out into the safety of the street. Lucky boys, I thought. For me, there’d be no escape.

Keeping a neutral look on my face, I stood back and acknowledged his further bow, and wondered when he’d get to the point. And there would be a point. With a man like Sophronius, there is always a point – and hardly ever a pleasant one. There’d be no escape for poor old Aelric. However bright and welcoming the sunshine might be in the street outside, I could kiss that morning goodbye.

‘That will be all, Brother Wulfric,’ Sophronius said as he ushered me back into the room where Theodore was still sleeping. ‘I will have you summoned when His Grace may have need of your attentions.’

He’d spoken the English of a native. I avoided any sign of surprise, but looked harder at him. Take away the snooty expression, and he could easily pass for a stallkeeper in the butchers’ market behind where I was staying. A fancy name he’d given himself on taking his vows. Then again, everything about him was fancy. It wasn’t just their places in the Church hierarchy that had Wulfric bowing his way straight out of the room. That sort of commanding tone is something a man like Sophronius picks up long before he’s decided to enter the Church.