Conspiracies of Rome Read Free

them.
        ‘Well, just look what the fucking cat’s brought in!’ roared Ethelbert, pulling himself unsteadily to his feet.
        The music stopped. He staggered towards me, his feet kicking up the reeds and the stinking filth below them. He nearly tripped over something that lay out of sight, and one of his retainers had to run forward and steady him.
        Ethelbert stopped for an extended fart. He took a gulp from his drinking horn. He looked round to make sure every pair of eyes was turned in his direction.
        If you read the history that I – or, more likely now, little Bede – will write, King Ethelbert is one of the heroes in the conversion of England. Because his Frankish wife was born into the Faith, he was the first ruler to welcome the missionaries. That’s why the Church made him a saint.
        The Ethelbert I knew was a pop-eyed monster with skin complaints and a partiality to other men’s wives. He’d put on even more weight than when I’d last seen him, a few months before my mother died. In the flickering light cast by the wall torches and the cooking fire, his face shone with sweat and mutton grease. There was that exultant tone to his voice that I remembered well from when he was minded to let everyone around him know who was the absolute boss.
        ‘You’ve been a bad boy’, he said, his voice dropping to what a stranger might have taken for good humour. ‘You’ve been making that two-backed beast with someone you shouldn’t never have looked at. You’ve dishonoured my best man’s daughter. You’ve dishonoured him. You’ve dishonoured me.’
        He stopped a few feet from where I was held fast, and gloated as I tried without the slightest effect to wriggle free.
        ‘Come on, my lad’, he said with a smile that showed a good dozen of his riddled teeth, ‘speak up.’
        ‘I can explain,’ I croaked. How I could explain I had no idea. I didn’t know how much he knew. I guessed Edwina had been to one of the household women to ask about herbs. But effective lying needs some awareness of what the other party knows.
        Besides, I was hardly able to keep the tears back. I knew what he could do, and was beginning to shake with terror as well as the cold.
        ‘I – I  . . .’
        And that was all the speaking Ethelbert wanted. He dropped the façade of good humour and reverted to his more usual tyrannical mode.
        ‘You fucking piece of shit!’ he screamed at me, his large face purple with rage, veins in his forehead swollen. ‘I gave you your life. I gave you food from my table. I gave you everything. And this is how you repay me.’
        He jerked his head over to the company. Alfred sat there among the others. He was somewhat less demure in his bearing than I’d seen him among the missionaries. And if he didn’t seem inclined to embrace me as a son-in-law, he didn’t seem that put out either by his daughter’s dishonour. He raised his horn and grinned at me.
        Ethelbert continued: ‘You snake. You fucker. You fucking piece of shit. Do you know what we’re going to do to you?’
        He put his face close to mine. I could smell the sour breath – all rotting teeth and vomity beer and food. His jowls shook.
        ‘See that ladder over there?’ he snarled. ‘I’m having you splayed on that like a rabbit ripe for gutting. I’ll have you begging for death before I’m done with you, you fucking piece of fucking shit.’
        He stopped. He opened his mouth wide. A belch came out, followed by a stream of mutton juice. It ran down his chin onto his front.
        I spoke quickly. ‘Sir, I am of noble birth. I am of your own house. I claim my right as a freeman to face my accuser, sword in hand. I claim my right under ancient custom.’
        I looked across at Alfred. He was really grinning now, his sword pulled halfway out. I couldn’t last long against him even in a fair contest. He must have been twice my weight and