I know most of the ancients disagreed. They used slaves even as tutors to their children. The modern Greeks still do. That diplomat I came across at Marcella’s went one step further. He had a slave to wipe his arse. He’d take his place and sit talking about commodity prices with me beside him, and a slave would reach under and wipe him, while he continued as if nothing odd were happening.
Then, with Martin, there was the matter of his nationality. My people took the country from his people, and they hate us for it. Until I was small, they rationalised their hatred by calling us heathens. Then the missionaries turned up, and we started to become better Christians than they. So they thought up some trifling difference over dates and made it a big issue of orthodoxy – not caring if it made them into heretics in the eyes of Rome. When I was first in Canterbury, one of their bishops came through on his way to some business in Brittany. He wouldn’t set foot in our church. He wouldn’t even open the very nice letter Bishop Lawrence sent inviting him to have dinner.
A while back, I did some historical research on the synod our bishops had arranged at Whitby some years back. Because they had more learning, and had come straight from the Roman mould, they were able to trick the poor Celts back into communion. But that hasn’t stopped them from hating us still.
So Martin and I walked largely in silence down those black, deserted streets, while the rats scurried away from us and something human followed discreetly behind. A fine rain began to soak us through our outer clothes. What desultory conversation we managed was wholly about the matter of assembling the materials and personnel for the copying that was to start tomorrow.
We smelt the surrounds of the house from a distance. At first, it was a pungent, aromatic smell, as of heavily spiced food. As we drew closer, the smell grew stronger, until it almost overpowered us. It was the olfactory equivalent of a deafening noise. Someone had been digging up the drains across the road from the house – possibly to repair them – and the whole neighbourhood was using the hole to dispose of shit and general waste. A combination of frequent rains and the hot spring sun had started some kind of fermentation.
The rats seemed to love it – jumping in and out, and even swimming in the filth – so far as I could see from the little lantern we carried. I pressed a wet fold of my cloak to my face as we hurried past.
The house where dinner was arranged was scarcely better. The windows were shuttered against the smell, but it followed us in nevertheless. ‘You are the main attraction for tonight, sir,’ Martin had told me. ‘You should arrive last.’ That’s why we set out so late.
When we arrived, the dinner party was already in full swing.
Perhaps swing is not the correct word. You may have read descriptions of noble dinner parties in the old days – the many courses, the entertainments, the witty conversation. For all the efforts made, this one didn’t come up to the old standards. The host and his guests lay self-consciously on their rickety eating couches, not much cleaner than the beggars outside the Lateran. With the disruption of the water supply and the closure of the public baths, cleanliness had gone out of fashion among the upper classes in Rome. Most didn’t seem to have bathed in years. From their dirty hands and fingernails, many didn’t seem even to wash that often.
Now, bodies aren’t much of a problem where cleanliness is concerned. Washing helps the work of nature, but she herself manages to slough most of the dirt off an ordinary body. The real problem is clothes. Whether or not you wash, if you don’t change your clothes, you invariably stink. And these creatures stank. They added another bright strand to the tapestry of smells that drifted in from the street. They wore the togas I’d seen on the ancient statues of senators – only these didn’t hang in neat and elaborate folds, but drooped in grey and brown wrinkles, following the shapeless contours of those who wore them.
They looked mainly to be in late middle age – most balding, and with lean, saggy faces. As I entered – Martin was taken off to the slave quarters – they were stuffing themselves from dishes of what smelt like bad cabbage served by a few scrawny slaves. The few lamps were of good bronze workmanship, but were burning meat dripping rather than oil. They threw out as much foul smoke as light, and I walked in to stinging, streaming eyes.
‘We bid welcome to Alaric of Britain,’ a particularly dirty old man cried, pulling himself up from his couch. A battered wreath on his head, he was the host, I gathered. His name had been on the invite, though I forgot this almost at once, and it is unlikely to come back into my memory now. All eyes turned in my direction, and there was a little round of applause.
‘Here is the one who slew twelve barbarians with his own hand, yet is versed in all the wisdom of our ancient fathers,’ he went on. ‘Accept, O golden hero from the farthermost land of unending night, the welcome and gratitude of the mighty Roman Senate!’ The host raised his wine cup in greeting, or to have it refilled.
I was led to a couch at the front of the room where I could be seen, and was invited to arrange myself on it. This had once been a fine piece, and still had some of its ivory trimming. But it was warped and cracked with age, and there was a long, black stain running down its length where generations of greasy togas had rubbed against it. I carefully lay down, glad to have ordered other clothes from the tailor Marcella had recommended.
The food looked as bad as it smelt. I swear some of the smaller and less obviously bad meats were baked rat. I avoided the meats of whatever kind, and the uncooked dried fish. I accepted a dish of olives that didn’t look too mouldy, and crunched on some stale bread that still had the papal dole mark on its underside. The wine was surprisingly good, and I sipped on this without mixing in any of the brackish water I was offered.
Never mind the attendant circumstances, it’s the quality of conversation that really makes a gathering. As you might expect, though, this was dire. The everyday language of these people was the radically degraded Latin of the City. It’s easier for us barbarians: we learn Latin as a foreign language, and can, if not always do, learn its purest form. And the dialect can even be forcefully expressive when spoken with feeling, as I could hear when Marcella really lost her temper. But in their mouths, it sounded grotesque. Their drawls were so exaggerated and slow, I almost wanted to finish their sentences for them. Anything they did say in the pure language had obviously been got from the classics, adapted for its purpose, and carefully memorised. There was no conversation as this is normally understood. Instead, the guests made little set speeches, looking in my direction whenever about to say something they thought specially apt. They generally spoke of their present wealth and the glorious deeds of their ancestors. One gave a long description of his alleged estates in Africa that, when he could remember the correct order of words, scanned as elegiac couplets. Some of this was clever enough to bear listening to, though I never did learn the name of the poet.
At length they thought me sufficiently impressed by this display of leisured learning, and fell silent, indicating it was my turn to speak.
I gave the usual brief and censored account of my journey to Rome. It shouldn’t have taken that long to get through, only everyone kept interrupting me with expressions of wonder at how well I spoke. ‘Such milky copiousness of words!’ one exclaimed. ‘Such grace and purity of diction!’ cried another.