So it was the usual nepotistic stitch-up. The best job in the Church, short of a really juicy bishopric, and it had gone to another duffer who had to transact all business in the Imperial capital – a few formal occasions apart, where Latin was still used – through an interpreter.
‘What makes you suppose I’m any better as a scholar?’ I asked again.
The Dispensator’s smile broadened till it bordered on the grotesque.
‘But Alaric, I have from both Rome and Canterbury the most glowing reports of your scholarship. Only last month’ – he took up a sheet of papyrus from one of the trays on his desk and squinted over the writing – ‘you were praised in an oration to His Holiness himself as “the Light from the North; the beauteous young barbarian drawn here by the gold of our learning, not of our palaces”.’
I can’t say I’d seen much learning in Rome, or many palaces that weren’t half-ruined slums. Nor can I say I liked the bit about being a barbarian. At the time, though, I’d found the notice flattering. It made a change from all the complaints the Church authorities had been getting about my talent for shady finance.
Good as I was in Roman terms, that hardly fitted me to rub shoulders with the tenured intellectuals of the greatest centre of learning in the world. What mattered most, though, was that the Dispensator seemed to think otherwise. Rome hadn’t yet been flooded with refugees from the Saracen invasions. Back then, Greek had become a rare accomplishment.
But there was no point debating any of this. My mind was made up.
‘I won’t go,’ I said firmly. ‘You must accept my apologies for declining your invitation. But nothing you can say will make me go.’
I rose. I was starving for my breakfast and I had to get to that meeting about the Cornish tin. There was no saying what my associates would agree without me there to keep them in line.
The Dispensator ignored my preparation to leave.
‘I am asking a favour of some considerable importance,’ he said, his voice now silky smooth, his annoyance discernible but not evident. ‘I know you have persuaded His Excellency the Prefect to “recognise” your Roman citizenship, and your having reached an age that my sources assure me you have not. But there is more than a chance that success in Constantinople would bring a grant of senatorial status – just think of the social privileges, the legal immunities. Surely you would want that for yourself. If not for yourself, then for your unborn child?’
So he had heard about that. Was there anything he didn’t hear about? Still standing, though, I decided to end the conversation with a direct snub.
‘What you are offering only the Emperor can grant. And you can’t get him to grant Boniface the title of Universal Bishop. Since he murdered his way to the top, you people have been splashing flattery on Phocas as if it were mud thrown up by a cart. I can’t imagine how much gold you’ve slipped his way these past eight years. And all he’s done for the Pope is call him Universal Bishop in a correspondence that stops short of a formal grant.
‘And you’re offering me senatorial status? I really think, my Lord Dispensator, you will need stronger incentives than that to get me within five hundred miles of Phocas.’
I looked back as I left his office. For once, I had actually brought colour to the wretched man’s face. Yes, he was the most powerful man in Rome. But hadn’t I already done enough for him and his Church?
I missed the tin meeting. By the time I got to the financial district, all my associates had cleared off, and it would take at least another ten days to get them together again. As I passed the Forum on the way back, I dodged into a wine shop in what used to be a diplomatic archives building and drank myself into a better humour with the world.
‘Fucking cheek!’ I said to no one in particular as I looked out of a window at the roofless shell of the Temple of Isis. Beyond that lay the Forum, where, towering atop its column, the statue of Phocas lately set up by the Church was shedding its gilt.
‘The bloody, fucking cheek of the man!’
3
My good humour continued about fifty paces beyond the wine shop. All the bodies had now been cleared away, and the streets around the Forum were littered only with the usual filth. But there was now the beginning of a small riot between me and the Caelian Hill.
‘Anathema on the traitorous Exarch,’ someone at the front of one of the two opposing mobs bellowed. He wore a hood but wasn’t a monk, and spoke Latin with an accent that was neither Roman nor barbarian. ‘And on the Exarch’s son and on the Exarch’s nephew who would challenge our Lord Caesar Phocas for the Purple,’ he added. There was a ragged cheer behind him.
‘Anathema, much rather, on the tyrant Phocas,’ someone shouted back at him, ‘and blessings on the young hero Heraclius who, even now, journeys to Constantinople to heal the Empire’s grievance.’
More cheering, and a few howled insults.
And so they carried on at each other. For the moment, it was just more of the ritual shouting that had been getting on Roman nerves for the past six months. Both sides in the civil war had their embassies here, each negotiating for the blessing of the Church – which would bring the support of the whole West and a fair bit of the East. And while the Church stayed aloof but formally loyal to the Emperor in possession, each side had its hired mobs to fill the streets with noise.
For the time being, as said, it was just more of the shouting. At any moment, though, it might proceed to the throwing of dead cats and rotten vegetables, and then to actual violence. It was all a matter of what directions came from the covered chairs lurking just beyond each of the groups.
I hurried past the smaller of these groups. Someone clutched at my arm.
‘Will you sign our letter to His Holiness?’ he rasped, breathing garlic and bad teeth at me. He waved me in the direction of some other piece of scum who was carrying a suspiciously clean and expensive sheet of parchment.
‘Piss off and sign it yourself,’ I snarled. As he stood back, I took my sword half out of the scabbard and let him see its notched edge.
That got me past without any stains on my tunic. But as I walked towards the Caelian Hill my ears burned at the abuse they had called after me. I could just about stomach it from persons of quality. But to be called a barbarian by these verminous out-of-towners really was the limit. I was inclined to turn round and tell them that I was a man of considerable wealth and learning, and that I could trace my ancestry through a line of nobles and kings that reached back – my mother had assured me – to the Tribal Gods of Kent.
But I resisted the urge. My face turning redder and redder as I hurried past some of my neighbours, I went home and called for more wine.
I sat in my library much later. It was that time of day early in a Roman summer when the light is fading but there is no need yet for lamps. The preserving oil had now dried on the book racks, and the main smell in the room was of the dust my slaves hadn’t yet managed to clean entirely off the books. These were still mostly in their crates. Piled up beside me was an edition of Saint Jerome I had bought cheap at auction and was planning to send off to the Lateran scriptorium for copying and dispatch to Canterbury.
I should have been going through this, making sure the pages were stitched in the right order and that there were no obvious copying errors. Once in England, copies would be multiplied with great enthusiasm, but with no critical awareness. It was up to me to ensure that we’d send no cripples or bastards into the world.
Instead, though, I was going again through the rebuilding accounts. My requirements had been specific. I wanted something large and solid and readily defensible by just me and a few armed slaves. At the same time, the house had to be low enough on the Caelian Hill to receive water from the one aqueduct that hadn’t yet been cut. I was looking forward to having one of the only working bathhouses in Rome.