Perhaps I had been expecting angels, or stern-faced ancients in togas, but as my foot landed in a pile of fresh donkey-shit and a swarm of filthy ragged children seized me around both legs and held their hands up to me in eager supplication, chattering like sparrows, and as the scent of cooking grabbed me by the nose and filled me up with the promise of garlic, herbs and roasting meats while a passing tradesman yelled at us in fury or brotherly greeting – it was impossible for me to tell which it might be – I had my first inkling that this city was indeed the centre of the world, but not in any spiritual sense. For Rome, although it is the home of God's representative on earth, is above all else the centre of the world of men, and here is concentrated all the glory, chaos, beauty and squalor that man has ever created. 'Dear God!' I squeaked. 'Somewhat absent here,' said the Captain, shaking an urchin from him and waving to the tradesman, who had been greeting and not cursing. 'Despite the presence of His vicar. Throw some coin to get rid of these little ones, Patch, and let us make haste’
And so began my life in Rome. From that day on I began to roam its streets, sometimes with a crewmate, more often alone, gorging myself upon its strangeness, its age, and the ferocious, frenzied humanity of its citizens. It would take a whole book just to tell what I saw, and since the Mirabilia Urbis Romae has already been written I shall not repeat what it says. Sufficient to relate, I lost myself in the clamour, the filth and the beauty, and in so doing I began to blunt the cruel edge of memory, and to accept that the sun could still warm my skin while another's would never be warm again.
I had no adventures, save with the local food, and soon learned my way around the maze of streets. I was strolling through the Borgo one morning after a visit to Saint Peter's, marvelling as ever at the myriad stalls that crammed the streets close to the great church, devoted to nothing else but fleecing pilgrims. Gawping bumpkins, from Frisia and Ireland were handing over their last groats for worthless lead badges, and shrewd-eyed Catalans were striking what they believed were bargains for vials of holy water that had been Tiber fish-piss this very morning. Englishmen and Welshmen groused to one another about the local food, Danes gave directions to Basques, Hungarians argued with Swiss. It was like a county fair peopled by all of Christendom, a carnival for the gaily credulous, and I found it darkly fascinating, for was this not my company's business, writ large?
Wearying of the crowds I turned off the main street, for I remembered a small market in a square I had found a few days before that sold fine sausages from the countryside, and I thought I would bring some back for the dinner table. The market was busy, although here the crowds were local folk, women buying fruit and all the spiky and leafy vegetables the Romans love so well. I bought some sausages and had turned to leave when I heard a woman cry out behind me in anger. There was nothing unusual about that, except that the voice was English -I could have sworn it was English, and London at that, but when it came again the words were Italian, in some dialect I did not know. There she was: a slender figure with a cascade of yellow hair, over on the other side of the square. Curious despite myself, I began to wander towards her. She was standing, hands on hips, facing a thickset man in gaudy silk clothes. As I watched, the woman shook her head defiantly. Then, so quick I barely saw it, the man's hand darted out and caught the woman a hard blow on the side of her face. She fell as if hamstrung, and lay for a moment among the feet of the marketgoers, all shuffling now to get out of her way, or to get a closer look. She rolled over slowly and got on to all fours, head hanging; her hair falling about her face like a veil and trailing on the dusty cobblestones.
Her man looked down upon her. He had a crudely handsome face, somewhat florid – from too much wine, perhaps – and freshly shaved, for he had an oily gleam about the chops. His eyes were narrow and his eyebrows bristled above them like battlements. His nose had once been broken and his mouth had a proud downward curve at its corners; and his thick, curly brown hair was fashionably long. He was obviously a nobleman or a rich banker, judging by his clothes, which were the finest, no doubt, that could be bought in Venice – for by their cut I took him for a Venetian, and he was certainly as noticeable here as a pheasant amongst pigeons. And yet he had the look of a brawler, and it was not just his flattened nose that said this, but the loosely coiled way he held himself. He gave off an intelligent yet brutal menace, scanning the crowd as if daring someone to challenge him. Then he turned and stalked off.
The girl knelt, and pushed the hair away from her face. It was flushed and there was an angry red patch, already blueing, around one eye. Her nose was running and she wiped it, uncaring, with a sleeve. I shoved past two leering boys and was about to offer her my hand when she stood up and began to brush half-heartedly at her sullied clothes. I drew back, not wishing to embarrass her further, and the crowd began to drift away, pretending it had seen nothing, feigning no interest in the disputes of yet more mad foreigners. The girl – she was no older than me, I saw, swayed a little, then gathered herself and looked around. Her eyes were very blue, the colour of forget-me-nots, and one of them stood out, blazing from a purple halo of bruised flesh. She had a sharp nose, which she wiped again, and a wide mouth, twisting as if she were about to cry. But she did not, and with a defiant shake of her head she put her nose in the air and flounced off between the stalls and out of my sight. She plainly had not needed my help. She had been beautiful, though – no, not beautiful, but sensual. Reflecting that I had no doubt avoided making a fool of myself, I left the market, and by the time I had reached the Palazzo Frangipani I had forgotten all about the Venetian lord and his wench.
Chapter Three
And thus my life meandered for the next month or so – nay, I am being too casual with time. For although my days were lacking in both form and purpose I believe I noted the passing of every minute, for grief ordered my hours as strictly as any hour-glass and calendar, and I still spent my idle time meditating upon the stark text of Anna's death. Time passed in the world, and passed at another pace entirely within my head. And in Anna's tomb in heartless London, it did not pass at all. So it was not a month or so: it was exactly three weeks and two days, while the numberless bells of Rome were ringing out Sext, when Zianni caught me on my way out of the Palazzo.
'Horst and myself have been invited by our dear Captain to join him tonight at his favoured tavern. It is not far from here. Fine food, abundant wine, brave friends. You will come too.'
It was not an invitation, it was a command. And I had to accept. I knew full well that my shipmates – for if things were a little different now that we were on land, and matters did not move in the rigid order that perforce they had to at sea – had been putting up with me for far longer than I had any right to expect. In ship's terms I was a useless mouth, a non-paying passenger. I did no work – there was no work for me to do, but that is never an excuse for idleness – and I was not even amusing company. Plainly the time had come to stop indulging myself, and besides, what could befall me but good food and drink, and fine company?
But now, with that perversity that so often comes when the humours are disturbed, I began to feel apprehensive. So I took to my room again and paced there until Zianni, taking pity on me, came in to help me make ready. He picked out my clothes, for Zianni was Venetian to his fingernails, and regarded the world beyond the Rialto as no more than a rabble of uncouth and unfashionable savages.
We will show them’ he muttered, rummaging in my sea-chest and pulling out a handful of bright silk, at the sight of which my heart lurched.
It had been a gift from Anna. She had bought them for me in Bruges: a tunic of white damask, striped with black and gold, with sleeves that tapered to hug the forearm; a sleeveless tunic of the sort called cycladibus, cut from a rich bronze silk ringed from neck to hem with broad bands of deepest midnight blue. The hem itself was scalloped and, like the neck, edged with bronze ribbon, and it was very – indeed immodestly – short. Then there was a pair of hose the hue of very old clary wine, woven so that, alt
hough all of one shade, they appeared striped; and a coif of saffron-coloured linen, worked at the edges with silver thread. That night I had worn my Venetian finery for the first and only time, feeling horribly aware that my calves, resplendent in their striped hose, were on display. The height of fashion it might be, but I was more comfortable in the kind of things a rich Devon farmer might wear to Totnes Market. Soon afterwards we had set out for London, and soon after that the time for fine clothes was past. And yet Zianni had unerringly pulled out every item that Anna had selected for me. Perhaps it was a sign. Trying hard to banish the pain of memory, I dressed myself, and buckled on Thorn, my jade-handled Moorish dagger. Zianni sat back and whistled appreciatively.
'Que bella figura! Almost a Venetian, my dearest shepherd. I will have to dig deep to best you, but I shall, never fear!'
I will admit that I had no fears on that account, for when I descended to find the others I saw that Zianni had rigged himself up in an even more preposterous bedizenment. His hose were flame-coloured and he was within two inches of exposing his knees to the gaze of all, and his own cycladibus blazed in shifting hues of red: blood, rubies, fire. I could barely look at him.
'Do you like the colour?' he asked me, as one dandy to another. 'It is called sakarlat – Persian, you know.'
'Very nice’ I replied, glancing at the Captain, who honoured me with the ghost of a wink. As ever, he was dressed in plain black. Horst, dowdy, German and impatient, snorted. 'Time to drink’ he said.
We made an amen and strutted down to the street door. 'I hope no one laughs at my legs’ I muttered to the Captain.
He led us under a low archway, so low that I could feel my head brushing against the moss that grew beneath it, and into a narrow street lined with stone colonnades. The sun had almost set, but in here it was already night. Like everything else here, the buildings seemed to be sinking into the soft earth, and when we came to the door of the inn I realised that this place had once been at the level of the street, but was now all but underground. Following my friends, I found myself in a long room made of stone, great, honey-coloured blocks of it, lit everywhere by oil lamps and tapers, and by a fire that burned, festooned with cook pots and loaded spits, in a huge fireplace. There were people everywhere, making a great and lusty noise. The owner, a villainous fellow with close-cropped hair and a much-broken beak of a nose, gave a genuinely reverent bow when he saw us, and ploughed through his customers to seize the Captain in his arms and plant two fervent kisses upon his cheeks. Then, giving the rest of us a regal nod, he led us to an empty table over against the far wall, and sent over three surly pot-boys to ask our pleasure. I was feeling almost faint with hunger, and with the shock of being outside and in Rome, and so when a boy brought over a hot, greasy pie filled with what proved to be peppery, vinegary tripe I wolfed the thing down, felt slightly sick, and leaned back against the cool stone wall. Life began to ebb back into me, and after a few minutes spent watching the comings and goings around us, I was ready to join in.
The evening flowed happily on from there. It emerged that our host had once served in the Captain's company, although long before the time of any of us present – before, if such a time were imaginable, the Cormaran herself had first set sail. But the man, who delighted in the name of Marcho Antonio Marso, was plainly still a confidant of his old captain, for after we had been shown our table the two of them vanished into a back room together, and emerged a little while later with the intent look that comes after a deep conversation. Business, I imagined, and why not? Marcho Antonio kept a fine house. The wine was good, if somewhat sweet, and the food was abundant and tasty. I was beginning to gather that the Romans liked to eat every last bit of their beasts, from snout to ballocks, and indeed I had eaten both snout and ballock, I believe, by the time I was sated. I leaned on my elbows, picking at a dish of rice balls stuffed with cheese, watching the crowd ebb and flow and listening absently to my friends.
Zianni was explaining the finer points of Venetian etiquette to the Captain, and to Horst, who seemed to have fallen in love with a tart called Clementia he had met the day before. He had described her every charm to me at least six times already since we had left the palazzo. I thought of Anna, of course, but trying to banish such thoughts I pushed my chair back on its hind legs and stretched noisily. And in another instant I was scrabbling at the table as a jolt of shocked surprise sent me off balance.
For two men, soldiers by their weathered faces and cropped heads, had appeared behind Zianni and were looming over him, hands to the hilts of their swords. Between them appeared, as if by a mountebank's trick, another face. It was young, very young: a boy's face, smooth and slack, as if the puppet-strings that life weaves behind our visages had not yet taken hold there. I will call him a boy for that is how he always seemed, although when I first saw him he was in his twentieth year, married and already provided with a son and heir. He met my eyes, and smiled. His hands squeezed Zianni's shoulders and he looked down at the Venetian's coiffed head.
Well met indeed, Jean de Sol,' he said. Zianni sat, a marble idol of himself.
'Have a care, my lord huntsman, before you blow your horn,' said the Captain evenly. 'Do not sound the kill, for you do not have your prey, nor even know him.' Then he turned to me. 'Do you know what manner of man stands before us?' he asked. It was not a question I could answer at that moment, for I swung, unbalanced, between the safety of the table and the unknown void behind me, my right hand – even while my left hand reached for the table's edge – grasping the cool stone of Thorn's hilt. The Captain took my flailing hand and pulled me upright. In answer to his question I shook my head, never taking my eyes from the stranger's face. 'Not a man at all, in fact,' said the Captain. With a touch of his finger on my hand he pushed Thorn back into her sheath. The whole place had suddenly fallen silent, and with an almost painful surge of relief I heard her neat little click. 'No, not a man. And not merely a boy. This is an emperor’
The emperor blinked. He had large blue eyes that looked neither innocent nor malign; rather, they were the guileful eyes of a spoiled child forever trying to get his own way. I was staring full into them. He blinked again. I did not.
'Emperor of where?’ Horst asked the Captain, taking no pains to keep the rudeness from his voice.
Now the boys hand was on his sword – he was wearing a short sword, I now noticed, and so were his two men, and their hands were ready too. Horst had pushed his chair against the wall. Zianni's knuckles were white as he gripped the table's edge. The Captain looked past me and raised a casual finger, as if calling for another jug of wine.
'To your left, my lord Emperor’ he said. We all looked. The proprietor was leaning calmly on the marble counter, aiming a small crossbow steadily at the boy in green. The three pot-boys had cleared the floor and faced our table, legs apart, one holding an iron mace, one weighing a cudgel and one slowly swinging a gigantic falchion. The Captain turned back to me. I felt him release my knife hand. 'You were saying, Horst?' he said. ‘I merely asked, emperor of where?' he replied thinly.
I was staring at the boy again. He had released Zianni and I saw pride, anger and fear ripple over his face, which settled at last into a mask of resignation. It was not the look of a man who has been thwarted on the point of success, rather of one who, in his heart of hearts, never expected to succeed. Suddenly he looked very young indeed, and rather desperate. He turned to his companions. Wait for me outside, my good lads’ he muttered in French. They backed away like two big, angry dogs before turning and shouldering their way out through the crowd, who were watching the scene as if waiting for a cock fight to begin. Then the boy turned back to me.
'I am not about to trade words with anyone’ he declared. He spoke a very noble French, tinged with something that sounded much warmer.
'There is no trade, and no purchase’ replied the Captain politely. 'My colleague would like to know who you are. Please understand that if you part with this information you will receive nothing in retu
rn, except perhaps your life. Tell me: apart from those two strapping fellows you brought with you, will you be missed? Think carefully.'
The boy took a deep breath and blinked again. I was beginning to feel almost sorry for him.
'Perhaps you are accustomed to a herald’ said the Captain. The boy looked up with something like a flash of anger.
'It seems I must needs be my own herald, then, now as always’ he said, and drew himself up to his full height, which was not considerable.
Well then, know that I am Baldwin de Courtenay Porphyrogenitus, Emperor of Romania and Constantinople, Margrave of Namur’ the boy declaimed.
I sensed more than saw that Horst had slipped his knife from his boot and was holding it flat against the underside of the table. He glanced at the Captain.
'An emperor, this one?' he asked in his German-slanted Occitan. We had all been speaking French, and to hear the familiar tongue of the Cormaran was startling. 'He is telling us shite, yes?'
'Not at all’ answered the Captain. 'Has he answered your question, my Horst?' He nodded. 'Then I thank you, but you can put that away.'
Horst let go of his knife, still scowling. I felt surprising anger, although whether it was aimed at this strutting boy’s presumption, the menace of his companions or the result of my own confusion I could not tell. Meanwhile the Captain nodded seriously. He turned back to the boy.
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