It was a smell that brought me to my senses. Nay, not a smell: a stench, a miasma. I opened my eyes, or at least fancied that I had, for it was pitch dark. For an awful moment I was struck by the horrifying, juddering fear that I was smelling my own long-dead and rotten flesh. I could not move, not a sinew, and that dreadful reek was all about me, smothering me like cuckoo-spit on a leaf. I could not even move the tiniest breath of air through my throat, could not utter a sound. As slow as judgement I sank, choking, into the darkness once more. When I awoke again I was lying stretched out upon something hard. In a flash I fancied that it was the bottom of my coffin that I felt, but then I opened my eyes and saw, not the solid black of a grave, but whitewashed plaster arches, dimly flickering with lamplight. I shut my eyes again, disbelieving what they told me. But when I opened them again, I saw a tonsured head above me, and a face that, save for a pair of kindly eyes, was all nose and fleshy lips. I gave a small cry, for this was worse: surely now I was beginning my atonement for all my vile past, for why else would a monk be here with me? He was still there when I dared look again, though, and this time he spoke, not with the voice of a demon or a judge, but in the rough, reassuring tones of a Roman. 'Are you awake, my son? What is your name?' 'Is this hell?' I asked.
The monk chuckled. 'Only when the Abbot is in his cups,' he whispered. 'But I did not say that. No, you are in the Hospice of Saint Bartholomew.' 'In London?' I croaked, sitting up with a jerk.
'No, no!' said the monk, eyebrows signalling amusement on one side and concern on the other. 'On the Tiber Island. Is there one in London?'
I nodded, not wishing to explain how I knew. 'A fisherman found you and we brought you here, for you were lying no more than a few yards from our bridge,' he continued.
I lay back, trying to remember any of that, and failing. Then I remembered something after all. 'I was stabbed in the heart! How…'
'Stabbed, you say? Well, well. No, you were not stabbed, my son.'
'No, I saw…' I looked down, and realised that I was naked under a rough flaxen sheet, and that I stank, although not of the corpse-fetor I was expecting, but of vinegar. Despite a stiff neck I searched for the wound I was sure I would find in my chest, but instead saw only a great bruise, two or three small grazes and a long scratch, fine as a hair, under my arm. 'But truly, I saw the knife! I felt him stab me,' I protested. 'Him?'
'The… the footpad,' I stammered. 'There were two of them.'
Yes, they did rob you,' said the monk, frowning. We found no purse with you. We had to wash your clothes in vinegar, and swab you, too, for you were lying in a great dead fish, all slime and maggots.' He mimed being assailed by a ghastly stink.
I must go,' I said. 'Please bring my clothes, Brother. I am unhurt, it seems, and I must…'
'No, no’ said the monk, grasping my shoulders. You took a blow to the head, for one thing’
But I protested, vehemently if politely, and at last the poor, confused soul shuffled off to fetch my clothes, much scrubbed and free of the horror of dead fish, but practically glowing with the fumes of vinegar. They were still wet, and the vinegar made my various scrapes and bruises sting. I guessed that the doughty fishermen had taken my purse, and I considered the money well spent. I knew who had my knife. But it was not until I was limping out of the building, the monk fussing at my side and I making haste, for I did not want the Watch to be called, or to have questions put to me, that he sighed and said, 'A sorry night for guests in our city. You at least are leaving us on foot’ 'What do you mean?' I said, half listening.
Well, we pulled a Frank out of the river at sundown’ he said. 'A Frenchman. You were lucky, my son. That one was dead’
I stopped in my tracks. 'Dead?' I asked. A Frenchman? How do you know?'
'He carried a promissory note from the Margrave of Namur. Namur is in France, I think?'
You are right. Was he short, with grey hair and no front teeth?' The monk shook his head, humouring me. 'Then was he tall – taller than you, anyway, with a broken nose and an old scar on his face?' I drew my finger from my left temple down to the corner of my mouth.
'He was. He was! Lord in Heaven, did you know him?' The good brother was aghast. I shook my head hastily.
'No’ I lied. 'But a companion of mine, another Frenchman, was looking for his friend, a knight of Namur, who seemed to have disappeared this morning. Shall I send him down here to see if it is the right fellow?' I added guilelessly.
'Oh, please do so’ said the monk, crossing himself. What an ill fortune follows you, my son! Why not stay awhile, and I will hear your confession? Or you may pray in the church…'
But I was already gone, walking as fast as I could across the bridge to Trastevere, where I ducked into the narrow streets and left the hospice, and the kindly, confused monk behind me. And behind me also, the corpse of Fulk de Grez, late companion to the Emperor of Constantinople. Like a spirit summoned up from the mist on the river, I remembered something my father had told me many years ago on a wet Dartmoor afternoon. We were watching his dogs herd a flock of bedraggled sheep into a pen of hurdles, and I had exclaimed, worried that the dogs were going to harm the sheep, for they snapped at their heels with great fury. But no, said my father. Think of your hands and fingers, all the things you can do with them: tie knots, pick your nose. A dog has no hands, and perforce he must do everything with his mouth. A dogs teeth are his fingers, and he knows exactly what to do with them. He will not bite the sheep. When a dog snaps at your hand and misses, we think he tried to bite and failed, but no, it was a warning. If a dog wishes to bite you, bite he will. And now I thought: as dogs with their teeth, so Venetians with their knives. If a Venetian bravo wished to cut out your sweetbreads with a flick of his wrist, he would do it. These folk did not miss. I had been spared – spared, and warned. It was easy enough to get back to the Borgo, though it took what remained of the night. I found a path that ran between the high ground of the Janiculum hill and the river, where the folk of Trastevere have their gardens, and crept past sprouting cabbages and new beans, dozing chickens and rabbits shut up in their hutches. I saw nothing and nobody-save a fox, which did not bother to run from me but glared from beside an artichoke bed, and a polecat, surprised atop a henhouse, that fled silently. The gate into the Borgo was not guarded – or at least there was a guard, but he was at muffled rut behind a tree and I slipped past as the woman begged the guard to stab her with his great big sword.
I made my way home, squinting through a raging headache at the skinny cats who, by night, filled the doorways of the quarter. On my own doorstep, a fat, red-faced priest gaped at me with alarm and I stepped back, for he seemed to have four feet, two sandalled ones planted on the stone step, two bare ones reversed and facing me, soles out. Shaking my fuddled head, I realised that the bare feet belonged to a tart kneeling before him, his cassock providing a sort of confessional that covered her from the knees up, and indeed there were muffled sounds coming from under the cloth.
'She's making a full confession, I see’ I said. The man's eyes were bulging out of his face, and still he made an effort to avoid mine. 'And I believe that's worth a three-year penance’ I added, slipping past him and closing the door on his quivering back. This city was starting to bother me: I thanked the stars I was leaving in the morning.
I was sure that my lodgings would be watched, but they were not, or at least I saw nothing to make me suspicious. And I had been certain that they would at least have searched my rooms, but again all was safe and in its place. So I hastily pulled on my clean clothes, neatly folded on the bed, and stuffed the vinegary ones into a saddlebag. The gold was where I had left it, up in an old mortise-hole in one of the ceiling beams. The excitement I always felt before beginning a journey was offset by a sharp foreboding that, on top of my sleepless night and the blow to my head, began to make my limbs twitch as though Saint Vitus's dance were creeping over me.
Eventually I could bear my own nerves no longer and drank off a pint of the landlady's strong, sweet wine I kept for emergencies, but which I heartily disliked. But it did the trick, settling my stomach and curing me of the urge to scuttle away to the jakes every five minutes. At last I saw that I was ready for the off, and allowed myself a moment to lean on the cold marble of the windowsill. There was no one about down in the street. The air was cool and sharp, not the usual rich swirl of the sun-baked kennel, but astringent, dry: the breath of Rome's ancient stone. There was a pallor in the east, and the red flowers that cascaded from roofs and windows all around were beginning to glow with the first hint of sunrise. Time to go. I buckled on my sword and slung my bags across my shoulder.
Dawn was unfolding its petals far above the city as I looked up and down the street from the doorway. It was still night down here, and I saw nobody, heard nothing, until my own footfalls rapped – too loud, surely – along the dirty stones. I tried not to hurry around the corner, through the passageway beside the Frisian hostel, and as I saw that only the bony grey cats kept watch my heart began to grow calm and I slowed down. There was a lamp lit at the livery stables and a bleared and surly boy in a leather apron greeted me with an uncivil leer. My horse was deep in his nose-bag and bared his great teeth at us when we put an end to his breakfast, but when he saw it was me he had the grace to nod his head and even whinny a little. I raised an eyebrow to the stable-boy, who ignored my natural mastery of all creatures and instead presented me with his master's well-padded bill, which I paid with what was, by Roman standards, quite good grace. He watched me critically as I made my packs fast to the saddle and fiddled unconvincingly with the bridle and girth. I tossed him another farthing to get lost, and when I was sure no one was watching I patted the horse on the nose and muttered into one ear: 'Don't fuck me about, please, beast’
The horse – I could not bring myself to think of him as Iblis, a far too exotic and mysterious name for a pretty grey nag – regarded me with a jaundiced eye. I had never noticed how long horse eyelashes are, and seeing Iblis bat his girlish lashes at me, I began to feel much less afraid of him. I swung myself up into the saddle. This was the moment of truth; I made sure the stable-lad was not looking, and urged the horse on with a gentle rub of my heels. Earning my eternal gratitude, he snorted purposefully and headed for the door.
Horst, I realised, had taught me well. Now I was on my own, I found that riding held no terrors for me after all. Indeed, by the time we had wound our way through the tangled lanes of the Borgo, keeping the grim bulk of the Castel Sant'Angelo to our right, I felt, if not quite a centaur, at least almost normal. The guards outside the fortress gate regarded us with baleful disinterest. Dawn was soaking fast into the sky, and on the other side of the river the mouldering corpses that hung from the gibbets of the Tor di Nona were tinged a lovely shade of rose. I spat, and urged Iblis into a trot.
There were no straight roads in Rome, I knew, and so I plunged into the chaos of streets and alleys, always keeping the rising sun on my right hand. The great city was waking up, and as I rode deeper into the maze I found myself pushing through a growing crowd of people, some friendly, some not, but all of them as loud and vehement as a flock of magpies. Cooking smells filled the air, doing battle with the fetid reek of night-soil, and I was tempted by more than one food-seller. But I was in a hurry, and keeping my rumbling guts under control I pressed on. Now I found myself in a river of men and women pushing barrows, driving carts or bent under packs, all on their way to the Pons San Petri. They carried vegetables, fruit, flowers, all still with the morning's dew upon them. I passed what seemed to be a walking rosebush, and looking down, saw a little girl staggering along under the weight of a huge bunch of roses, all pink petals and gold stamens and so fresh and fragrant that a few sleepy city bees were taking breakfast there. The girl looked up at me and for a moment I caught her eye and she stuck out her tongue at me and cackled. She was the happiest creature I had seen that morning, and I would have dropped her a coin or two if I had not seen that she needed both hands and all her strength to carry her gorgeous burden. And I noticed, as I rode on, that the thorny stems had scratched her bare arms so that blood had begun to drip from the cut ends. I shuddered. As usual, Rome was making me feel slightly sick, but if it was with disgust or joy I had still not quite decided.
At last – it seemed as if I had been riding for an eternity, and I had begun to fear that I had missed my way – the dark, narrow alleyway down which I had been forcing Iblis, and which had seemed like the only even vaguely northward-leading route, suddenly gave out on to open country. Just like that, I had left Rome. The buildings thinned out abruptly until I was riding through a curious landscape of poor huts, vegetable plots, waste-ground through which jutted odd, decayed blocks of travertine, and everywhere the low, toadstool-shaped pine trees that grew wherever men had abandoned even the tiniest patch of Roman ground.
On my side of the river I was in a landscape of little hills, all terraced and planted with olives and vines, and crowned, every one, with a thicket of Roman pines. From every bush and tree, insects battered and clattered out their songs. Here and there, great clumps of butcher's broom were flowering, and the scent filled the dry air. It was already getting hot, although I found I had made good time so far. Leaving the city had been much easier than I had expected. And the day seemed to be going well for my fellow travellers as well, for I was riding against a flowing stream of country folk all hurrying towards the city. They were seemingly all in good humour, singing and laughing to one another, exchanging loud greetings with others passing in the opposite direction. It was impossible not to get caught up in the jollity, and soon I was beaming to myself as I rode along. And what was there to be sour about? The blue heavens stretched flawlessly above. A light breeze stirred the olive trees, and their silvery grey leaves danced against the sky. I was alone with nothing more daunting than this road before me, and – this above all else – I was friends with my horse.
And he, it appeared, was determined to be friends with me. He clopped along at a sprightly walk that had us overtaking most of the other traffic, but he did so with a supple grace that caused my arse, unused as it was to the hard contours of a saddle, no undue discomfort. Such was our progress that in what I judged to be an hour and a half we came up to the river Tiber – for I had asked the way to the Saxa Rubra from a couple pushing a handcart of pinioned geese – and to a disreputable, crumbling bridge that had undoubtedly stood there a very long time. I heard the words ‘Ponte Milvio' uttered several times by those preparing to cross, and then I realised that this was the Milvian Bridge I had read of in Eusebius, years ago in the college library of Balecester. This was where Constantine had seen the fiery cross and the words of the Lord before his battle with Maxentius that had won him the Roman Empire. I glanced up, but the sky was innocent of either cross or writing. In hoc signo vinces, the emperor had been told: In this sign you shall conquer’ But time appeared to have conquered here, and human frailty, judging by the party of lepers who squatted off to the side of the road, waiting for a break in the traffic so that they could cross without disturbing those of sound body. I looked down at the Tiber as it rippled below, hoping to catch some hint of the Divine, perhaps, or at least of something vaguely mysterious. But here, as at the ancient, holy monuments I had visited in Rome, there was nothing but decay and the exuberant intrusion of the present. I shrugged, scratched Iblis behind the ears, and rode on, looking out for Marcho Antonio Marso.
The Rubra Saxa were not the landmark I had expected, just an outcropping of reddish stone that reminded me of the red earth around Totnes, far away in Devon. Marcho Antonio appeared from a spinney of holm oaks, seated, to my amazement, upon an ass that supported his angry bulk with the detached look of a martyr in extremis. Who goes there: Maxentius or Constantine?' he boomed.
'At this point I'm the disembodied fucking voice’ I told him. 'There's not much else left’ He laughed and handed me my valise.
'I resisted the temptations of the Dark Lord and did not break the seal of Antichrist’ he said. 'Very sorely tempted I was, too. If you get the chance, ask Michel to explain it all to me one day, will you?'
I assured him that I would, and to my surprise he leaned across and embraced me. It was like being hugged by a bear that had bathed in wine and rubbed its pelt with garlic, and I was so moved that I began to weep. I halted for the night at the village of Rignano, that lies under the mountain called Soracte. It had been an easy ride but a long one, and the stars were beginning to shine and bats to whirr above my head as I guided my weary but uncomplaining horse up the narrow street to the inn, which a countryman, baffled at first by my request for directions in execrable Roman dialect, had kindly pointed me towards from the now almost deserted Ravenna Road. Dog-tired, I ignored the travellers' chatter around me in the common room as I hurriedly ate a chicken and bean stew, drank a jar of thin wine and took myself off to bed, but not before giving my vinegar-soaked clothes to a maid for the best wash she could manage. Iblis I left in the stable, face deep in a bag of oats. As a brand-new horseman who had just completed his first day in the saddle without mishap, I can perhaps be forgiven for the grateful kiss I planted on his bony forehead, and the silver coin I gave to the astonished stable-lad to buy the best possible care for my friend.
I secured the door to my room, and dropped on to the bed. It was time to examine the letter that Gilles had left me, and suddenly I hoped that it had not contained instructions for any task I should have performed before leaving Rome. I broke the seal with anxious fingers. The bulk of the letter – what had made it seem so fat – was merely another map, a simple copy of the one I already had, which dispensed with all except the line of the road and the towns and landmarks along it. I was pleased to see Rignano appear as a tiny turreted building, then squinted to see the word 'bedbugs', much underlined, scrawled beside it. Plainly, I should have opened the letter last night. I looked closer, and saw that the map was heavily annotated in many different hands. I recognised Gilles' letters, but there were others that were strange to me. Nevertheless they offered good advice, these absent guides: 'sweet water'; 'brigands'; 'dishonest landlord'; 'horrible wine'. Beside one village much farther up the line, someone who I took to be the Captain had scribbled Try the sheep's feet!'. In other places the only admonition was a stark 'AVOID'. I turned to the other part of the letter. To Petrus Zennorius, traveller, vanguard and agent of the ship Cormaran, greetings!
I trust this finds you recovered from your sickness. I trust you will pardon our precipitate departure, but I received word of a ship to be had at Brindisi, and I have already delayed long enough. My hope is that this crude map will be of use and comfort. I assure you, though, that I, and the others whose scrawl you will find upon your map, have trod those roads, and slept in those beds, more recently than Pliny.
One thing: I would have you perform a small service for us on your way. Take the branch of the Ravenna Road which passes through Spoleto – that is the right branch that comes soon after Narni – and in that interesting city put up at the White Lion. I have sent Horst there. He will have left some documents for you, letters of credit from some business contracted in Florence that Captain de M wishes you to deposit at our bank in Venice. If he is still there, make him buy you dinner, for he will have received a fat commission (but please do not tell him that you know this!). That is all. Then hurry to Venice. Your destination, in case you do not remember, is the Palazzo Centranico on the Rio Morto, hard by the Church of San Cassan in the sestriere of Santa Croce. You are expected, and more detailed instructions will await you there.
With any luck at all, you will also find some fresh communication from myself and perhaps Captain de M as to the progress of our affairs. If all goes well I shall see you there myself before next spring has passed. But we will discuss this in more detail, for, good Patch, I will require you to be a more diligent writer of letters than you have so far proved. Soy until we meet again, good luck and fine weather! Gilles de Peyrolles