The Emperor's Elephant(69)
Chapter Eleven
ROME
*
ABRAM’S ITINERARIUM marked a road running parallel to the coast that would eventually bring us to Rome. The dragoman’s attendants had brought the map ashore, along with my precious copy of the Book of Beasts and our other valuables, but all the travelling furniture – the folding tables and chairs, the tents and camping equipment – had been lost with the ship. As a replacement the ever-resourceful Protis, now once more bubbling with self-confidence, devised two houses on wheels for us – moving homes. He boasted these contraptions would save us from having to stay overnight in the hospitia, the flea-ridden hostels designed for pilgrims on the way to the Holy City. Equally practical and ingenious were the wheeled cages the shipwrights put together for the aurochs and the ice bears. The carpenters held a stock of curved timbers, normally used for the ribs of ships. They adapted them as bars for the cages so that our large animals travelled in elegant creations like skeletons of upturned boats. The effect was, as Osric remarked, to make our little procession along the road resemble a travelling circus.
It was late November by the time we finally reached the outskirts of the Holy City, and the weather had turned both rainy and cold. On Abram’s suggestion I went ahead to find Alcuin’s friend, Paul the Nomenculator, to ask if he could assist us in finding warm, dry accommodation where our embassy – including the animals – could spend the winter.
As Abram had predicted, my impression of Rome was that of a city falling apart. A steady drizzle made it a dull, cheerless morning as I passed through an archway, beneath what had once been an imposing bastion in the ancient city wall. Flaking plaster revealed rotting brickwork underneath, and there were no guards or sentries to be seen. I was on foot and carried Alcuin’s letter of introduction, but no one asked me my business. I picked my way around a few farm carts loaded with produce on their way to market and dodged a small party of wealthy travellers on horseback, wrapped up against the weather in their fur-lined cloaks. But the majority of my fellows were families; men, women and children dressed in drab clothing, with hoods pulled up to keep off the rain. They trudged along under the unrelenting drizzle, many with backpacks. One man pushed a barrow with two of his children riding on top of their belongings. Eavesdropping on their assortment of languages, it was obvious that they were pilgrims from many countries and regions, all coming to visit the Holy City. But the miserable weather dampened the excitement of their arrival. The whining of children and the bickering of their parents prevailed over any expressions of wonder and anticipation.
As I walked deeper into the maze of streets, then across a bridge over a murky-looking river, I saw building after building that had once been grand and imposing. Now they were derelict and grimy. Most had been turned into squalid tenements occupied by the poor. Everything was so run-down and jumbled together that it was difficult to make out whether I was in a district that was residential or commercial. Respectable mansions gone to seed stood cheek-by-jowl with shops, warehouses, or smaller dwellings. From time to time I would turn a corner and find myself confronted by a crumbling structure dating back to the glory days of the Roman Empire: a triumphal arch, a long-abandoned theatre, a victory column, an ornate fountain long since run dry, public baths closed for centuries. One monument – a former theatre – was being actively looted for its material. A builder’s gang was using crowbars to prise away the marble facing, then smashing the slabs with sledge hammers, before tossing the broken fragments into a smoky kiln to make lime for mortar. Luckily they understood my Latin well enough for them to tell me that I did not have to go as far as the office of the Nomenculator. The man himself had been seen with a party of papal officials inspecting a newly renovated basilica dedicated to Santa Maria not far away. Helpfully they despatched a boy to lead me there.
The church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin came as a pleasant contrast to the general urban decay. The building was conspicuously well maintained. Modest in size, it stood on the edge of an open space that I was already learning to call a forum. Seven round-headed arches that gave it a simple elegance pierced the plain red brick façade. A large group of servants lurked in a nearby alley, and in the portico of the basilica four or five men dressed in long dark tunics and cloaks sheltered from the drifting rain, conferring. My guide pointed to one of them – a short, heavy-set man wearing a broad-brimmed hat who was standing slightly apart from the others and rubbing his hands together to keep warm. He looked up as I approached, and – to my amazement – gave me a broad wink.