Conspiracies of Rome Read Free Page B

power. ‘Get that poncy tunic of his up. Let’s have a butcher’s at what he’s still got under there. Two sheep, Alfred, it’s no bigger than a baby’s finger.
        ‘Not that it makes any difference now,’ he went on to Alfred, ‘but do you really believe it was this snivelling little piece of shit who got your girl up the duff?’ He turned back to me and grasped at my clothing, leering maniacally up at me.
        ‘Give me a knife,’ he snapped at one of his retainers. As I heard the rasp of iron on leather, he had second thoughts. ‘No – first get me one of them torches. And get me some mutton fat.’
        As he slowly raised my tunic, I swallowed and began to pray under my breath to the god of the missionaries.
        ‘Halt!’
        In a deep-accented English, the word cut through the air like a knife. The room fell silent. Even the dogs ceased their yapping.
        ‘Halt in the name of God and the Church!’
        Maximin stood by the door, his sodden robe sticking to his little round body. How did he get here? I thought. He must have flogged his donkey half to death to get over so fast from Canterbury.
        He advanced into the room. ‘The boy belongs to Holy Mother Church. None may touch him.’
        A couple of Ethelbert’s men sprang at him, swords drawn. He gave them a brief, contemptuous look, then turned back to Ethelbert.
        ‘Let one hair of this boy’s head be harmed’, he said in the strong, dramatic voice he used for preaching, ‘and you will answer to Holy Mother Church in this life and to God Our Father in the life that is to come. ‘I tell you this as the representative in this room of the universal bishop in Rome who sits in the place of Our Lord’s Apostle Peter.’
        There was a laugh at the back of the room. We weren’t ten years into the first mission to England, and these savages didn’t care either way for the Faith. A word from Ethelbert, and they’d cut him down before he could draw breath again.
        But Ethelbert had dropped on his knees, his face grey with fear. It may have been thoughts of hellfire. More likely, it was thoughts of Queen Berthe. She was hard at work, building more new churches than her husband had fathered bastards. The last thing he wanted was the whole kingdom excommunicated.
        No one – certainly never in public before his senior men – had spoken like this to him before. Yes, he’d been defied, but no one had ever denied his authority to do as he liked when he liked. And yet he was grovelling among the filthy rushes on his own floor before a little, soft-handed foreigner.
        You can forget all those fake miracles the Church lays on for the simple. So far in Maximin’s service, those were all I’d seen. He’d explained them to me as necessary frauds for getting a barbarous race to accept a truth not otherwise communicable.
        Now, for the first time, I was seeing the real thing. I’ve seen more like it since then. These priests have a courage born of belief that none of the heroes in our old epics come close to matching. You can kill them. You can burn their shrines and wipe your arse with their books. You will never touch the fundamentals of their imperium over the soul. Rome’s conquest of Britain was by the sword, and by the sword it was lost. Its conquest of England has been by men like Maximin, and this will never be lost.
        ‘Reverend Father,’ Ethelbert cried. ‘This boy is a criminal. He has sinned against God, and he has broken our law too. He must be punished according to our law.’ He looked desperately round for confirmation. There was a mutter of agreement from somewhere. Otherwise, the room was now as tense and silent as in a village just before a promised miracle. Though not sheathed, the swords were all now pointing down. The churl who’d betrayed me was repeating his dead act, his face pushed deep into the reeds as if to avoid notice.
        ‘He has sinned against God, that