In the daytime the Coliseum is a brutish place. Its stones bask in the sunshine with a kind of stolid self-satisfaction, and it dwarfs with ease the sightseers who dare to poke about in its cat-haunted mazes. On my wanderings I had learned that, only a few years before, the place had been a fortress until an earthquake had driven out the occupiers, and left it at the mercy of stone-thieves who picked away at the marble to burn in their lime-kilns. But as all men knew, it had been built in pagan times as a temple to all the old gods of Rome, and when Mother Church had ended their rule on earth they lingered on here as demonic shades, lappers of blood, who were known to issue forth and spread plague and misfortune through the city. They took the shape of beasts, and there were many who had seen them emerge from the great arches led by a phantom bull, mighty in size and red as blood, bellowing forth fire and smoke.
Nowadays the Romans themselves keep away from the stones, although they will picnic in its shade and make assignations - although, unlike any other ruin or alleyway, couples do not rut in its cool halls and caves, for the place has an atmosphere, an air as heavy as its vast round mass, that does not tempt one to linger there. It is the pilgrims from the northern lands who enter, rivalling the pigeons with their chatter, and who clamber over the walls and through the galleries, weaving excited, fatuous speculations as to past glories and horrors. But even they are oppressed by the place, and eventually seek ever more desperately for the way out, and one sees them regrouping - pale and over-sated, like guests at an over-rich meal at which the meat has spoiled - out in the sunshine, while the Romans regard them with superior contempt.
At night, though, it might be a different place altogether. While the merciless Roman sun makes the mighty circle of arches seem heavy with slothful menace, the moon, if it is bright, turns it into a many-eyed phantom. If in the daytime it squats, at night it appears to hover and shimmer, and if in the sun it is unquestionably the work of men who exercised all their brutal skill to draw it out of the base earth, at night it is unearthly, its myriad arches and windows giving it the mottled, silvery aspect of the moons face. Tonight there was not a living soul anywhere to be seen or heard as we rode out on to the dead grass of the field which surrounds it. We skirted the building, riding through the moon-shadow and out again into light, until at a signal from Michael we halted and dismounted. Our escort gathered up our reins and tied the mules up to a slender marble column that stood nearby. Then Michael took my upper arm gently but firmly and nodded his head once, solemnly. I saw that in his other hand he held a long, slender staff of dark wood that was finished in such a way that it did not catch the light. He inclined it very slightly, pointing towards an archway in which an immense door of studded wood hung askew off its hinges. It was very black beyond the door, as black as Michael's staff, which now led us onward under the mighty keystone of the entrance.
'Do you know Bede's words on this place?' Michael asked. His voice came from next to my ear. He was leading me through the thick darkness, through which I could see nothing, although his footfalls sounded as sure as if he were strolling about in broad daylight. In truth I had read the venerable monk's writings on Rome, but at that moment I was too full of confusion to recall them, for I had given myself over to the trust of this man whom I did not know in any real sense, and of whom I knew only the vaguest and most unpromising rumours. Nevertheless here I was, being drawn through the belly of this most cursed of all buildings in this whole haunted city, and I was not at all certain how I had allowed this to happen, and why I was not tempted, even now, to escape. So I shook my head, knowing that the gesture was invisible.
‘I cannot remember’ I breathed, suddenly terrified lest my words disturb whatever horrible legions might be hiding in the almost palpable dark.
“Quandiu stabit coliseus, stabit et Roma” Michael intoned. “Quando cadit coliseus, cadet et Roma. Quando cadet Roma, cadet et mundus?"
"While the Coliseum stands, Rome stands’" I said, remembering words I had read long ago, in the light of a spring morning in Devon, when my life still stretched before me, secure in the promise of its safety and blissful uneventfulness.
'Very good’ said Michael, approvingly. "When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall; when Rome falls the world shall fall." I take that to mean that this place is the very centre of the world - where all roads converge: all roads, the seen and the unseen’ With those words we stepped out into the moonlight once more.
We were on the lip of a vast pit which, with the play of the silver light over a confusion of trees and ruins, appeared to be full of boiling quicksilver. I could make out no order, for there seemed to be newer buildings here and there, and even the crooked belltower of a little church that lurched at a dangerous angle. I let out a small squeak of breath, more of relief than anything else, for I was still in a place, a location on the face of the earth, although as Michael had guided me through the darkness I had felt the growing fear that I was being led to no-place, a way station on the unseen roads of which he had spoken. But I had no time to gather myself, for my escort was beckoning. He had begun to pick his way through a sloping maze of truncated walls and roofless passages down towards the centre of the Coliseum, which seemed to be a sort of oval field of flat earth or grass on which had been built a rough cluster of sheds or huts, most of which had burned down or collapsed. There were trees growing there too: olives, a stunted pine and the spiny billows of gorse. I followed, keeping my gaze fixed uneasily on Michael's staff, which he held up in front of him, a line of blackness, as if the door to an even more absolute night were opened just a hair's breadth. There was an urgent scrabbling to my right and I started and turned to see a cat clambering up a mound of scree. Another was already there, regarding me with slit-eyed contempt, and I realised that if I had thought this place was deserted I was mistaken, for there were cats everywhere. At first I was relieved to find only cats and not flame-mouthed bulls and demons, but before I had even reached the level ground where Michael now stood waiting my fancy had begun to work upon me, for the gaze of a cat is powerful, and when that power is multiplied a thousandfold it becomes something quite frightful.
I strode quickly to where Michael awaited me, trying to appear brisk and not terrified. He had found the very centre of the oval field. I looked about me: now I was in the midst of the seething cauldron, and the black rim, sometimes perfectly regular, sometimes jagged, sometimes adorned with crude battlements, framed an oval window of sky.
At the centre of all things,' Michael said, startling me. His voice was low and calm - priest-like, in fact. It was hard for me to picture him as the priest I knew him to be. But what manner of priest would seek out such a place as this?
'Do you see how we are in a kind of bowl?' he asked. 'And have you seen how the water in a trough, when the bung is removed, forms a spinning vortex as it drains, or how a child's marble, dropped into a dish, will circle around, spiralling ever downwards until it finds the still centre? So it is here, at the world's heart. All things that travel the invisible roads of the earth and of the heavens, can be brought to rest here. We have only to call them.'
'Call what?' I asked, feeling as if a tiny clawed hand, cold as ice, had just settled on my belly and was seeking a way inside.
Whom, lad: whom’ said the man who had almost been Archbishop of Canterbury.
He bid me wait there while he vanished into a nearby hovel. Emerging with a bundle of firewood - it was tied, and did not look like a chance find - he placed it carefully, turning to the four points of the compass and adjusting it according to some hidden purpose. Then he drew me back and, with the end of his staff, drew a circle in the sandy earth around the sticks. Turning his face to the sky, he muttered something at the stars and drew four symbols that I did not recognise into the earth at the cardinal points. They seemed a little like Arabic letters but also like sinuous little pictures of something indiscernible. Then he stooped over the wood. There was a loud sigh, as sleepers make when they are in the throes of a dream, and fir
e blossomed under his hands. He stepped back, and flames flew up higher than his head, sparks hurtling towards the moon.
'Stand here’ he told me, taking my shoulders and positioning me, as if I were a mannequin, in front of one of his symbols - and indeed, from the moment I had been awakened by Michael's knocking I had been no more in command of myself than a puppet. I believe I was facing west. 'Now look into the flames. Look!'
Wordlessly I obeyed, for I had no choice. The wood was burning fiercely, and gave off a rich and sharp smell. Michael Scot muttered something and waved a hand at the fire, which crackled into a storm of violet sparks. Then there was a roiling of oily black smoke, and when this cleared I was staring into a sheet of pure, golden flame. It was as if I were a child again, newly woken in summer and opening the door on a perfect days morning. There was utter calm. I felt myself sway, and then Michael's hand was across my shoulders, steadying me. Then something disturbed the golden peace: at first it seemed as if the smoke had returned, for an ugly stain had formed amongst the flames, but as I watched it resolved itself into an image.
Have you ever seen a piece of amber in which the corpse of some insect, an ant or a fly, hangs suspended? One looks as if through a hole in time at the creature whose tiny limbs are still but seemingly not dead, for there is no corruption. It is not a picture but a real thing, held just out of reach and magnified by the lens of its glassy tomb. Thus did I look into the flames and see, hanging a little way from the searing bed of embers, a swirl of black hair, billowing as if in water. I gasped, and felt - or imagined that I felt - Michael Scot's hand taking hold of the back of my skull, for I tried to turn my head and could not. And I very much wanted to turn away, for I knew what I would see next.
Anna's good eye stared into my own, unblinking. Down her cheek, livid and incongruous as a poached egg, hung her other eye. With the unbearable clarity that sometimes comes in dreams I saw every detail of her face, as if through a reading stone: every pore, every tiny hair on her upper lip, the pock-mark that lay in the curve of her nostril, the smile lines at the corners of her mouth. And always the awful, the intolerable presence of the eye, as dead as this creature of flame, this fetch of my dearest Anna, was surely alive. As I stared — for now I could not have torn my gaze away even had I tried - I saw her hands rise from the embers. They seemed to reach for me, and although they did not leave the nimbus of flame I seemed to feel them grasp my own wrists, although their touch was cool, and to see my hands - for now I was, or seemed to be, both standing on the earth and also within that world of fire - as she guided them to her face. She pressed my palms to her cheek and my left hand felt the yielding orb of the dangling eye. I tried to scream, but I felt her fingers pressing mine, drawing them upward. So we stood, half in this world, half in another, for how long I cannot tell, for there was nothing in my head but the soft whisper of the flames and the almost-warmth of the flesh that held my own. Then I felt her grasp loosen, and what I thought had been my hands fell from view. I felt them, back in this world, hanging at my sides, but only dimly, for Anna had lowered her own hands to show her face once more, and now two brown eyes, almond-shaped and perfect, regarded me. She blinked once, and smiled, and I saw the gap between her front teeth for the last time, for she was dissolving, pure as a blessing, into the shimmer of flame.
Chapter Nine
I awoke from a black and dreamless sleep that had brought true rest for the first time in many weeks. The day was gone, and the shadows were gathering outside my window. As soon as I beheld the cobwebbed beams of my room I sat upright with a gasp of shock, for my last clear memory was of standing in the Coliseum at night, while someone lit a fire. Then, as with shaking hands I found a flask of water and drained it, I remembered that Michael Scot had called on me and led me through the streets to that terrible place, and what he had caused to appear. But the apparition he had conjured, for I knew now that I had witnessed some manner of necromancy, was not altogether clear in my mind, and after it everything faded into the haze of a dream. I recalled, with the effort with which one pieces together the events of a night when one has drunk oneself near-insensible, that Michael had led me back through the pitch-dark tunnel and out into the city where our mules and escort awaited, and that I had ridden in silence back to my lodgings, where I had allowed myself to be laid in bed. I thought perhaps that Michael Scot had sat at my bedside for a time before I had fallen asleep, but nothing was clear. But it was not, I found, a worry to me that I had all but lost the events of the night, for then, as indeed now, when I try to summon their memory, what had seemed ominous and then frightening had shed its fearfulness. Michael seemed a wise friend, our excursion a great adventure. And what I had seen in the flames - whom, rather - had not been a spirit or demon. Strange as it may seem, it was clear then, as it is even now, that a window was opened for me, and I was given the great gift of being able to look beyond this world, and in doing so to be healed of a dolorous wound. And when I try to discern the taint of magic or the hand of Satan I cannot, for it left me feeling as clean and whole as a bathe in a Dartmoor brook, and I knew with utter certainty that Anna was gone from me as a wounded ghost, but had returned, whole once more, to my heart.
I wandered over to the window. Evening was turning the shadows blue outside, and the air was cool, although the stone of the windowsill still held the sun's warmth. I looked down into the street. People ambled and scuttled, lounged and slumped. I took a deep breath and stretched, and found to my surprise that I was better. Where there had been searing pain there was only a dull ache upon my spirit, and the tight, fickle rawness of a new-healed scar. And there was the prospect of a journey ahead. It was time to leave this city, at least for a while. The landlady knocked on the door to tell me that the parties I had been waiting for had returned to the White Hound. That news put the final touch to my spirits. I called for some fresh water, and the landlady fetched it, beaming at my recovery, as if I had shaken off some mortal illness, and took my sweat-fouled clothes away to wash. I sluiced the staleness from my body, dressed in clean clothes and went out to find some supper. As I was opening the street door, the landlady startled me when she all but leaped from her own doorway.
I entirely forgot!' she exclaimed. ‘Your friend the Frenchman left this for you.' From the upland of her bosom she produced a fat letter. 'Oh, and some money; rather a lot ... it is all there!' she added hastily.
‘I am sure it is’ I told her, and waited for her to retreat into her chambers before I hefted the little purse. It was stuffed full of coin, which proved to be all of gold, and I doubted she had robbed me of very much. I was tucking the letter into my wallet when I felt the crackle of something already there. I pulled it out: a piece of parchment, quite old and mellowing into the colour of autumn oak leaves. Curious, I unfolded it. It was nothing but a few lines of Greek, a crabbed, hurried scrawl. I frowned at it for a full minute before the words began to come into focus. As they did so I gasped, for what I read there was this:
The Mandylion of Edessa
The Keramion
The Crown of Thorns
The Swaddling Bands
Sandals of Our Lord
The Cross of Basileus Constantine
A portion of the Cross
Another part of the True Cross
The miraculous Reed
The Spear of Longinus
A Chain, that bound Our Lord
The Sponge, from which he drank
A Stone, that came from the holy Sepulchre
The Shrouds
Holy Cloth in a sacred icon
The Grave-Clothes of Our Lord
The Syndon of Christ
The miraculous Tunic of Our Lord
A Towel from the washing of the Apostles' feet
Blood of Our Lord
Milk of the Theotokos
Maphorion of the Theotokos
Saint Bias, his head
Saint Clement, his head
Saint Simeon, his head
The Baptist, his a
rm, and also a portion of his head
Moses, his Staff
Baffled, I stared at the paper. I seemed to be holding a copy of the Inventarium of the Pharos Chapel, but it was not Baldwin's, not the one given to us by Pope Gregory. This had not come from Gilles, and it certainly had not come from the landlady. I remembered Michael Scotus standing over me as I fell off the high cliff of sleep: of course. It must have been Michael, but why should he give me such a gift?
I studied the list again. Some words I understood: Theotokos was the Virgin, the Syndon was, I guessed, something like the Sudarium, the cloth placed over the face of the dead Christ, that I remembered from the Gospel of St John, and that was on Baldwins inventory. But what of Keramion? What was this Mandylion? Like a sleepwalker I stepped out into the cool Roman night. I found food and walked for a while through the noisy crowds, my mind on the baffling list, and on the journey ahead. When I returned to my lodgings I stayed up, the map spread out on the bed, until the bells of the city chimed out the third hour of the night. I counted the Captain's money - there was a, princely amount of it, as the landlady had guessed. I thought to read his letter, but as I was about to, sleep began to creep over me at last. At last I laid my head upon the pillow, but my dreams were shallow and fretted with disturbing visitors: horse-teeth, the gibbets of the Tor di Nona, and the smoke from a greasy, raging fire, which grew until it overhung Rome like a storm cloud.
Chapter Ten
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