The Curse of Babylon Read Online Free PDF

people for a hundred years. When my royal kinsman Ethelbert was baptised all those years ago, he was told it was a step up in the world. He could get rid of his tribal witchdoctors and steal a march on his neighbours. No one told him, or any of his successors, he was putting himself under a theoretical jurisdiction from Constantinople that might one day be used to drive a wedge between him and his pious subjects. The next time you allow Gebmund to convene that fiddled inquiry of his, I will stand up and recite the relevant passages from Agapetus and a dozen of the Church Fathers, both Greek and Latin, until no one is in any doubt of the position held in Rome as well as in Constantinople. And I’ll do it in English too!’
    Wulfric came in with another jug, this one filled with rich, red wine. I thought of getting the boy to taste it. But I doubted if any of these scared old women would join poisoning to blackmail – murder was my speciality. I slobbered in one mouthful, and then another. So what if much of it ran out again? There’s nothing so heady as wine drunk in triumph.
    ‘Drop the whole matter,’ I said with final emphasis. ‘Give up on toadying to the Pope’s advisers – they’ll be humming a different tune next year in any event. Send me back to Jarrow. I’ll shut up, and you can find someone here with a dash of learning ready to lie about the true relationship between King and Emperor.’
    ‘Never!’ Theodore whispered.
    I got up, still holding my jug. ‘Then I dare you to make Gebmund reconvene his inquiry,’ I said. I pointed at Wulfric, then at my stick, and waited for him to make the obvious connection. I held my stick in one hand, and my jug in the other, and took a step towards the door. ‘You know where to find me.’
    But Theodore wasn’t finished. Incredibly, he struggled and sat up. ‘I curse the day I let you persuade me to give you refuge in England,’ he cried loudly in Latin. ‘It’s only because you were born here that I didn’t send you straight back to the Emperor – and – and – because of what we used to be to each other. Oh what a fool I was!’
    ‘There’s no fool like an old fool,’ I sneered, ‘And don’t give me any of that crap about the “happy days of old”. We both know how those ended. You’re bloody lucky I didn’t have you killed.’
    He fell back in a faint that might shut him up for the rest of the day. I jabbed Wulfric in the chest. ‘Show me out,’ I said. ‘He won’t be needing you.’

Chapter 4
     
    Brother Jeremy picked at one of his spots and tried to think. ‘But why did you have to kill him?’ he asked. He looked at the blood under his fingernails. ‘Also, I can’t hide your report forever. Everyone knows how you used up every sheet of papyrus in Canterbury, and how more had to be brought over from France.’ I pulled a face and carried on looking out of the window at the moon. No sneeze resulted, worse luck. I’d have to give him an answer.
    ‘Because, dear Jeremy,’ I said, leaving slight gaps between my words, ‘Sophronius told me that, if I didn’t finish his report, he’d have you flogged to death for that customs officer he said you killed in London.’ I stopped his reply. ‘It’s a minor detail that I killed him as well as Sophronius. All that counts is that, since the Deacon couldn’t have his report, it was him or you. Can I have some thanks for choosing as I did?
    ‘As for storing the report, I trust you put it where I told you. It’ll be safe enough there.’ I looked out of the window again. I finished my wine and let out a long and subdued burp of happiness. If only wine jugs were made of glass, the world would look such a fine place through their bottoms.
    Jeremy squeezed his eyes shut and made a supreme effort at rational thought. ‘Can I ask, Brother Aelric, why we need to store the report? Why not destroy it? No one would ever see it then.’
    I put my jug down. It spared me the temptation of hitting him