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.
Chapter 2
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.