I was trying again for some words — any words — of comfort, when the Dispensator got up and stood beside the icon of Saint Luke.
‘Felix,’ he said.
The old man looked up bleakly.
The Dispensator raised his arms and stretched them out to the old man. ‘Felix, it is the settled conviction of our Faith that the end of this life is no more than a gateway through which all must pass into a new life. Whether you had gone before your daughter, or she has now gone before you, is a matter of the Divine Providence that it is not for us to question. It is enough for us to know that whatever happens must assuredly happen for a purpose that is ultimately good. Your daughter is with Jesus, and you will, it is the promise of our Faith, see her again on the latter day. I tell you this from my own conviction. I tell you also as representative of the Universal Bishop.’
The old man wept as the sermon continued. But he was no longer looking wildly about. In matters of faith, as in all other matters, you might as well have argued with the waves on Dover Beach as with the Dispensator. Odd to say — and he’d never dressed otherwise, or acted other than as chief functionary of the Pope — but I’d never thought of him as any kind of priest. Now, as I heard that irresistible flow of comfort, I realised what a good missionary the Church had lost when the Lord Fortunatus first took possession of his mean little office in the Lateran. Given that mood of bleak despair, even I might have drawn comfort from his words. A reasonable man must face facts as they are, not as he might wish them to be. Equally, there are times when no reasonable man will challenge false consolation. There is something in what Plutarch said against Epicurus.
‘She will be forgiven her sins?’ the old man asked.
‘There is not the smallest doubt, my son,’ came the reply.
Trying for a devout look of my own, I listened to the conversation. Once or twice, when the poor old creature lapsed into Greek, I had to give a whispered translation to the Dispensator. I was glad he’d come along, to show me the house and join me in the act of bullying I’d had in mind. I could never have managed this flow of commanding comfort. Even Martin could only have had the authority of a firm but untonsured believer. I listened, impressed — and I worked hard to make sense of the incidentals of what Felix had let slip about the nature of his daughter’s dealings with the Lord murdering Count of Athens. They were broken. They were repeated. They were contradictory in their details. The senility that despair can throw like a blanket over an aged mind is one of the few mercies in life. If he was never to recover his wits, and if his days would not now be prolonged, the old man’s suffering would not be all that it might otherwise have been. The bitter despair of the old has no other cure. But I’d learned something.
Chapter 31
‘You have no choice, Aelric,’ Martin whispered beside me. ‘You have to act.’
Still silent, I looked again at the icon of the Risen Christ. He glared disapprovingly back at me from the wooden panel, the Virgin clutching at His left hand, the tomb broken open beneath His feet. I had to grant that, once you accepted the glitter all about us of jewelled relic boxes, and the endless profusion of bright colours, Justinian had employed architects and workmen of great ability to convert the Temple of Athena into a church. You really couldn’t tell that the main structure had been turned round, so it was now entered from the west, nor that the internal columns had been removed to make room for worshippers to stand inside. I’d seen the gold and ivory statue of Athena in Constantinople; it had been placed in the covered Theatre of Oribasius, so the seats flowed round it. Here, it must have been placed behind me, where the main door was now located. I looked up at the ceiling. This had been replaced at some time during or before the conversion, its weight now supported by a couple of brick arches in the modern style.
But there was to be no more thinking about architectural details. Martin drew breath to carry on in his whispered Celtic. I almost wished he could have gone back to insisting on a dishonourable flight from Corinth. I sighed and got in first. ‘He was fucking the girl,’ I conceded. ‘I have no reasonable doubt of that. He was fucking her, and leading her along with all the usual promises. What happened next, though, may be doubted. We might assume this was a sex killing. A man in the Count’s position is able to develop and indulge some questionable tastes. .’
‘You know perfectly well it was sorcery!’ Martin hissed. ‘We both heard that he sacrificed her to whatever demon was being asked to drown us at sea. Why else his behaviour when you found the body?’
I could have thrown doubt on all of this. What we’d heard in the library was at least ambiguous. All that Nicephorus had said and done beside the tomb of Hierocles could make sense on the assumption of a mere sex killing.
The Dispensator, though, had now finished his own long prayer for the soul of the dead, and was standing behind us. ‘God understands all,’ he said in a voice that, however softly he spoke, echoed from the curved ceiling. ‘But I choose to think it both unfriendly and a sign of guilt if your conversation is in a language that neither I nor any other worshipper here can understand. You know, Alaric, that the poor girl was murdered. Will you resist me if I claim the right to all the information you have about her death?’
I certainly would resist him, and I did. Not so buggery Martin. After a few promising evasions and shifty looks, he gave straight in and told the lot, probable sorcery and all.
The Dispensator got down again on his knees, this time beside us, and prayed for what seemed a very long time. ‘We have been called to Athens,’ he finally said, now very grim, ‘to agree some process by which heretics may be reconciled to the Faith as laid down at Chalcedon. I now learn that the Count of Athens himself is in communion with the demons of the Old Faith, and that this communion has not stopped short of human sacrifice. Might I ask His Magnificence the Lord Senator Alaric why this fact has not been reported?’
The plain answer I could have given was that Nicephorus was the normal authority to which these things should be reported. Since that was out, I was the next authority, and I already knew all about his crime. What I did about it was a matter for me alone to decide. I turned and looked nervously about. We weren’t alone in the church. But the five monks behind us had the dark beards and eyes of Easterners. The old women who’d probably come in out of the sun, and were muttering to each other as they carried on with their knitting, also could be trusted not to follow any of the Latin in which we were speaking. The previous day, I’d fixed myself like a cart in some ancient rut. There was justice in its widest sense to be served here. If murder was murder, there was also an empire that had to be saved. We’d save this most effectually by sorting out the Monophysite heresy — not by setting everyone in a twitter with allegations of sorcery.
‘Look, Fortunatus,’ I said, trying to sound reasonable, ‘the moment I’m ready, I’ll have that bastard Count clapped in chains before he can squeal the name of his goddess. He can then be shipped off to Constantinople for trial before the Emperor. But there are, for the moment, other things to consider. .’ I fell silent and began to feel dirtier than ever. I looked back at the icon. You don’t expect a few daubs of paint on wood to give advice on how to govern Church and state. I got no guidance whatever. Like a fool, I turned and stared into the pitiless face of the Dispensator. At once, I felt myself back in his office in the Lateran. I might be His Magnificence the Lord Senator to everyone else. But here was someone who knew just as well as Martin who I actually was. Unlike Martin, the Dispensator would never back down from that knowledge. I looked straight down at the limestone tiles that must have been laid over the ancient floor, and tried to focus on a meaningless graffito someone had scratched there.