Raven (24 page)

‘Damned place is making my eyes itch,’ I heard Olaf complain through the seething downpour.

‘I have never seen anything like it,’ Sigurd admitted. ‘Which is half the reason we are here. More than for the curiosity of it and the silver to be made, I suspect Rome might arm us … up here,’ he said, tapping his head, ‘for what lies ahead in Miklagard. We can learn much here, I think.’ I smiled at his deep thinking. ‘Do you think Asgard looks something like this?’ he asked me.

‘I reckon it might, lord,’ I replied, ‘though without all the lean-tos.’ For against almost every solid stone wall there was a timber dwelling, many of them owned, according to Gregor, by farmers and families who worked the vineyards and fields both inside and outside the Aurelian walls. Even those temples that had not been taken over by the Christians had found new uses as granaries or houses. Almost every stone building that could be used had been built on and against. Though some of those timber lean-tos had been burnt, recently too by the looks, and were nothing more than twisted, blackened skeletons now.

‘Actually, I had always thought of the gods living in great timber halls,’ I said, ‘like our own but much bigger of course and carved with such skill as a mortal man could never match. But now?’ I shook my head, flicking water off my hair. ‘If the Romans built all this in stone I don’t see why our gods could not do the same.’

Sigurd pursed his lips. ‘It is astonishing,’ he said, peering
through the rain which showed no signs of giving up. ‘I would not have believed it if I had not seen it with my own eyes. But don’t you think there is something cold about the place? All this lifeless stone?’ A memory flashed in my mind, like the first glimpse of a fish on your hook before you pull it in. ‘Whatever spirits were here have left this place,’ Sigurd said. I looked around me. Though many of the enormous structures still stood proud, many more had fallen into disrepair, their stones plundered to patch up other buildings, and the whole city had the feel of being at once dying and yet reborn in a different, humbler form.

‘I dreamt of it,’ I said, suddenly filled with gloom. The previous night had lain heavy on my own spirit, like a burial mound through which I had clawed my way out and emerged into the new day, still cold and damp to the bone.

Sigurd stopped walking and turned to me. Many of the others had gone their own way by now. Too impatient to wait for my translations, men had wandered off in twos and threes, having given their word to Olaf or Sigurd that they would stay out of trouble, for there was trouble to be had in Rome, we all felt it.

‘You dreamt of this place? Of Rome?’ Sigurd asked. He swept his soaking hair back and tied it at the nape of his neck.

I shook my head. ‘No, not like this,’ I said. ‘I dreamt of a corpse. It had been dead a while. The flesh was rotting and some of the bones were sticking out. Maggots were all over it. It was just a dream but I could hear them sucking on the flesh.’ I felt the grimace eat into my face. ‘I think that somehow that corpse was Rome.’ I let my eyes follow a pretty girl as she threaded her way through the crowds, but I soon lost her. ‘All these people, they’re the maggots,’ I said, ‘and the bones poking through the rotting flesh are these stone buildings.’

Sigurd frowned, his eyes fixed on my face – though mainly on my left eye, or so it seemed to me. Men always tended to favour my blood eye, even if they did not want to, the way a moth will fly into a flame because it has no choice.

‘It was just a dream, Raven,’ he said. ‘We all dream of death.’ He smiled then, water dripping from his golden moustaches. ‘It reminds us not to get ourselves killed.’

‘Are you not impressed with our city?’ Gregor asked, coming and putting a soft hand on my forearm.

I smiled at him. ‘We could not have dreamt of such wonders,’ I said, at which my smile jumped on to his face and he nodded and happily turned to continue leading us. ‘We have never seen so many people in one place, Gregor,’ I called.

‘That is because everyone wants to come to Rome! Rome is the light of the world!’ he yelled, spreading his arms and drawing glances from several passers-by though he did not mind at all. ‘You know who said that?’

‘Yes,’ Father Egfrith said under his breath, too quietly for Gregor to hear. I had thought we’d lost the monk to one of the many churches, but there he was again, his old habit more water than wool nowadays.

‘It was an English man,’ Gregor announced proudly, ‘the great Alcuin of York, the man to whom our emperor turns for advice.’

‘We have met Alcuin,’ I said, unable to resist. But Gregor simply swatted my words away without even breaking stride, for he must have thought our meeting Alcuin was as likely as him becoming the next emperor.

‘The light of the world!’ he hooted again, this time to an old man pushing a cart piled high with golden loaves of bread that were covered with rainproof cloth. I noticed the old man was armed, a long-bladed knife even older than he tucked unsheathed into his belt. He stopped so that we could pass, cursing Gregor and shooting the rest of us a look that would wither a nettle, before going on his way.

‘There remains to you now only a great mass of cruel ruins,’ Egfrith chirped.

‘What’s that, monk?’ I asked.

‘That’s the rest of what Alcuin said about Rome,’ Egfrith
replied, ‘because he could see what it once was but is no longer. Gregororovius must have forgotten that part.’

It
was
strange, I thought, that even amidst all that chaos, the farmers and traders and whores and travellers, I yet felt engulfed by the immense and towering silence of the massive ruins around me.

‘Where are you taking us, Gregor?’ I asked, my head nearly twisting itself off my neck at all there was to see. I saw Penda looking up at a stone likeness of one of Rome’s emperors from hundreds of years ago. Patches of colour still clung to the figure, who gripped a sword as firmly as he ever had.

‘To the Palatinus,’ Gregor said. ‘Rome sits on seven hills, but the Palatinus is the centremost of them. It is where it all began.’

‘These short swords are what beat our ancestors time and again, Wiglaf,’ Penda called to the Wessexman who was making an offering of a coin to a bunch of Christ slaves who were singing one of their miserable songs beside another temple.

‘That’s it, Wiglaf!’ I yelled. ‘Pay them to shut their mouths.’

‘It’s a stabbing sword,’ Penda went on, thrusting an invisible blade under an invisible enemy’s ribcage, ‘and when the Romans fought in their shieldwalls these short swords made good gut rippers.’ How someone had carved a man with all of a man’s features out of stone was almost unimaginable. That this stone warrior, even after all the years, yet looked as though he were about to slaughter enemies hundreds of years in their graves was enough to make your mind feel it was drowning.

The view from this hill was staggering. Even through the lashing rain, which was thick as a hide curtain, I got an idea of the hugeness of the place. Rome was a great sprawling confusion of a city. Some of the enormous buildings seemed to fight for the same ground with none winning outright. Others had claimed small rises upon which they were safe from other stone buildings, though not from poor men who had built
timber shelters against them so that they might own at least one wall of solid stone.

‘Now I know how a mouse must feel looking up at Svein,’ I told Penda, who nodded dumbly, running a scarred hand through his short hair.

‘To the south is the Aventine Hill, to the east the Caelian.’ Gregor pointed north-west. ‘There, between the Forum and the Campus Martius, you see the Capitoline Hill with its temples unequalled in beauty, and to the east is the Esquiline Hill. Beyond them to the north, which you cannot see for the rain, is the Viminal and north of that the Quirinal.’ Gregor shivered and plucked at his sopping tunic. ‘It has not rained like this for weeks.’ He seemed embarrassed.

‘Where we come from we never take off our helmets for fear of the rain flattening our heads,’ Sigurd said, at which Gregor gaped until he realized that the jarl was teasing him. Our guide went on telling us the story of this place or that, but I was only half listening and so, I think, were most of the others who stood there on that hill – almost oblivious of the rain now because they were too caught up in the seidr web of that incredible place. For we were staring north-east at such a building as I believed even the gods would be hard-pressed to equal in magnificence.

‘It is the Amphitheatrum Flavium,’ Gregor announced, his own voice breathy with awe. ‘And it has stood there for nearly eight hundred years. It is not what it once was, of course, but even now it has the power to capture our imaginations, no?’

‘What is it?’ I asked. The building was so enormous that it towered above many others which were themselves the largest places I had ever seen until that day. More egg-shaped than a perfect ring, it had been built in four layers of columns, one upon the other, and between each column was a rounded opening identical to the one next to it, so that the whole building was full of perfect holes as neatly done as the finest stitching.
It was mostly open to the sky, for surely not even the Romans could have put a roof over it.

‘Don’t tell me it’s a Christ house,’ someone said in Norse.

‘In the old times the people would go there to watch men hunt fierce beasts that were brought here from the far corners of the empire. Fifty thousand Romans at one time could enjoy the spectacles.’

‘Do we look like fools to you, lad?’ Wiglaf challenged Gregor. ‘Fifty thousand people in one building? This beardless whelp must think we’re idiots.’

I could not even imagine so many people. Were there so many people in the whole world?

‘It is true on my life,’ Gregor said, shocked that one of us should suggest that he was lying.

‘And now?’ I asked. ‘What is it used for now?’

‘Many things,’ Gregor answered, shaking his head. ‘But recently some things I am too ashamed to speak of.’ The smile had gone from his face as he gazed down towards the impossible structure. ‘It is a place of death,’ he said, wiping rainwater from his forehead. ‘It has always been a place of death.’

‘Take me there,’ Sigurd said. For a moment Gregor seemed unsure. Gone was the cheerful, energetic young man and in his place was someone burdened by troubles he would not speak of.

‘Gratiosus said I was to put myself in your service for as long as you are here in Rome.’ He glanced at me and then at Penda, Wiglaf and Father Egfrith. ‘If you really want to go there I will take you the day after tomorrow.’

‘Why not now?’ Sigurd asked. ‘This pissing rain means nothing to us.’

Gregor stepped closer. I could smell wine on his breath, which was fogging in the rain. ‘Forgive me, lord, but it is better not to speak of it. You will understand the day after tomorrow. For now let me show you some of our other wonders. Come! There is so much more to see.’ The carefree young man was back
again, as though he had never left us. ‘You will be amazed by the Circus Maximus,’ he said, turning north and setting off down a cobbled path along whose gutters rivulets of water were gushing. ‘It was used for chariot races. Two hundred and fifty thousand people used to take their seats and watch the charioteers and their horses go round and round as fast as lightning!’

‘Two hundred and fifty thousand?’ Wiglaf spluttered. ‘Now listen carefully, you smooth-faced whoreson,’ he shouted after Gregor, striding down the hill in the guide’s wake, ‘if you lie to us again I’m going to kick your Roman arse around your Circus Maximus until your farts scream for help!’

It was late by the time we followed the smell of duck shit and slick green weed back to the river and the ships. The men we had left behind were furious at us for not relieving them sooner, especially seeing as it was night time now and they would have to wait until morning to look around for themselves. As it was, the best they could do was listen to the rest of us wearing our jaw bones thin with stories of a hundred different marvels, our eyes wide and shiny as coins and theirs resentful slits of scepticism. Still, they listened, and I do not believe we exaggerated much either, because the truth was hard enough to swallow as it was. Afterwards they got over their disappointment by getting under some of the local whores who sold their goods down by the river where there were always bored men guarding their boats. It stopped raining, too, and so we took the opportunity to change into dry clothes, wringing out sopping tunics and breeks and hanging them over the sheer strakes.

Next day, I was one of those who had to guard the ships whilst the others went ashore clamorously, eager to lose themselves within the ancient, astonishing city, and the sun had barely begun to warm the morning air before I was picking out my own whore from a bunch that Svein brought aboard.

‘They were the best I could find.’ He shrugged apologetically.
‘You can take the pretty one if I can have those two,’ he suggested, nodding at two girls with thin yellow hair and the ashen skin of those who mostly work at night and sleep during the day. They looked identical, too, but for one of them having three black teeth and the other having no teeth at all that I could see.

‘Sisters, I think,’ Svein said, guessing the question before I said anything. I was about to tell him his suggestion about the split was a good one, when Cynethryth came aboard hefting an ass’s leg over her shoulder.

‘I’d rather chew a handful of nails, Svein,’ I said loudly enough for Cynethryth to hear, ‘but I wish you luck with them. Though I’d be gentle with that one,’ I said, nodding at one of the yellow-haired girls. ‘If you rattle her bones too hard I’ll wager those last few teeth will fall out.’

The giant frowned and scratched his head, then Cynethryth called for Sköll and Svein turned, clapping eyes on the girl who was showing her wolf the ass’s leg he would soon be chewing. Svein swung back to me and shook his head and there was more pity than annoyance in that gesture, so that I had to look away for shame.

Why should Cynethryth care if I took a whore? After all, I had shared my shelter with a blauvif on Lyngvi for the winter and Cynethryth had said nothing about it. But when it came to Cynethryth, my feelings were a knotted ball of twine I doubted I would ever unravel. Perhaps I wished she did care, that she was even jealous and longed for things to go back to how they used to be between us. And that made it all the worse, for it was clear as rainwater that she did not.