Lest Darkness Fall (6 page)

            "It takes a long time,
doesn't it?" said Thomasus, rubbing his pudgy hands together nervously.
His good eye glittered at the nozzle from which drop after yellow drop slowly
dripped. "I think that's enough," said Padway. "We'll get mostly
water if we continue the run." He directed Hannibal to remove the kettle
and poured the contents of the receiving flask into a bottle. "I'd better
try it first," he said. He poured out a little into a cup, sniffed, and
took a swallow. It was definitely not good brandy. But it would do.

            "Have some?" he
said to the banker.

            "Give some to Ajax
first."

            Ajax backed away, holding
his hands in front of him, yellow palms out. "No, please, master —"

            He seemed so alarmed that
Thomasus did not insist. "Hannibal, how about you?"

            "Oh, no," said
Hannibal. "Meaning no disrespect, but I've got a delicate stomach. The
least little thing upsets it. And if you're all through, I'd like to go home. I
didn't sleep well last night." He yawned theatrically. Padway let him go,
and took another swallow.

            "Well," said
Thomasus, "if you're sure it won't hurt me, I might take just a
little." He took just a little, then coughed violently, spilling a few
drops from the cup. "Good God, man, what are your insides made of? That's
volcano juice!" As his coughing subsided, a saintlike expression appeared.
"It does warm you up nicely inside, though, doesn't it?" He screwed
up his face and his courage, and finished the cup in one gulp.

            "Hey," said
Padway. "Go easy. That isn't wine."

            "Oh, don't worry about
me. Nothing makes me drunk."

            Padway got out another cup
and sat down. "Maybe you can tell me one thing that I haven't got straight
yet. In my country we reckon years from the birth of Christ. When I asked a
man, the day I arrived, what year it was, he said 1288 after the founding of
the city. Now, can you tell me how many years before Christ Rome was founded?
I've forgotten."

            Thomasus took another slug
of brandy and thought. "Seven hundred and fifty-four — no, 753. That means
that this is the year of our Lord 535. That's the system the church uses. The
Goths say the second year of Thiudahad's reign, and the Byzantines the first
year of the consulship of Flavius Belisarius. Or the somethingth year of
Justinian imperium. I can see how it might confuse you." He drank some
more. "This is a wonderful invention, isn't it?" He held his cup up
and turned it this way and that. "Let's have some more. I think you'll
make a success, Martinus."

            "Thanks. I hope
so."

            "Wonderful invention. Course
it'll be a success. Couldn't help being a success. A big success. Are You
listening, God? Well, make sure my friend Martinus has a big success.

            "I know a successful
man when I see him, Martinus. Been picking them for years. That's how I'm such
a success in the banking business. Success — success — let's drink to success.
Beautiful success. Gorgeous success.

            "I know what, Martinus.
Let's go some place. Don't like drinking to success in this old ruin. You know,
atmosphere. Some place where there's music. How much brandy have you got left?
Good, bring the bottle along."

            The joint was in the theater
district on the north side of the Capitoline. The "music" was
furnished by a young woman who twanged a harp and sang songs in Calabrian
dialect, which the cash customers seemed to find very funny.

            "Let's drink to —"
Thomasus started to say "success" for the thirtieth time, but changed
his mind. "Say, Martinus, we'd better buy some of this lousy wine, or
he'll have us thrown out. How does this stuff mix with wine?" At Padway's
expression, he said: "Don't worry, Martinus, old friend, this is on me.
Haven't made a night of it in years. You know, family man." He winked and
snapped his fingers for the waiter. When he had finally gotten through his
little ceremony, he said: "Just a minute, Martinus, old friend, I see a
man who owes me money. I'll be right back." He waddled unsteadily across
the room.

            A man at the next table
asked Padway suddenly: "What's that stuff you and old one-eye have been
drinking, friend?"

            "Oh, just a foreign
drink called brandy," said Padway uneasily.

            "That's right, you're a
foreigner, aren't you? I can tell by your accent." He screwed up his face,
and then said: "I know; you're a Persian. I know a Persian accent."

            "Not exactly,"
said Padway. "Farther away than that."

            "That so? How do you
like Rome?" The man had very large and very black eyebrows.

            "Fine, so far,"
said Padway.

            "Well, you haven't seen
anything," said the man. "It hasn't been the same since the Goths came."
He lowered his voice conspiratorially: "Mark my words, it won't be like
this always, either!"

            "You don't like the
Goths?"

            "No! Not with the
persecution we have to put up with!"

            "Persecution?"
Padway raised his eyebrows.

            "Religious persecution.
We won't stand for it forever."

            "I thought the Goths
let everybody worship as they pleased."

            "That's just it! We
Orthodox are forced to stand around and watch Arians and Monophysites and
Nestorians and Jews going about their business unmolested, as if they owned the
country. If that isn't persecution, I'd like to know what is!"

            "You mean that you're
persecuted because the heretics and such are not?"

            "Certainly, isn't that
obvious? We won't stand — What's your religion, by the way?"

            "Well," said
Padway, "I'm what in my country is called a Congregationalism That's the
nearest thing to Orthodoxy that we have."

            "
Hm-m-m
. We'll
make a good Catholic out of you, perhaps. So long as you're not one of these
Maronites or Nestorians —"

            "What's that about
Nestorians?" said Thomasus, who had returned unobserved. "We who have
the only logical view of the nature of the Son — that He was a man in whom the
Father indwelt —"

            "Nonsense!"
snapped Eyebrows. "That's what you expect of half-baked amateur
theologians. Our view — that of the dual nature of the Son — has been
irrefutably shown —"

            "Hear that, God? As if
one person could have more than one nature —"

            "You're all
crazy!" rumbled a tall, sad-looking man with thin yellow hair, watery blue
eyes, and a heavy accent. "We Arians abhor theological controversy, being
sensible men. But if you want a sensible view of the nature of the Son —"

            "You're a Goth?"
barked Eyebrows tensely.

            "No, I'm a Vandal,
exiled from Africa. But as I was saying" — he began counting on his
fingers — "either the Son was a man, or He was a god, or He was something
in between. Well, now, we admit He wasn't a man. And there's only one God, so
He wasn't a god. So He must have been —"

            About that time things began
to happen too fast for Padway to follow them all at once. Eyebrows jumped up
and began yelling like one possessed. Padway couldn't follow him, except to
note that the term "infamous heretics" occurred about once per
sentence. Yellow Hair roared back at him, and other men began shouting from
various parts of the room: "Eat him up, barbarian!" "This is an
Orthodox country, and those who don't like it can go back where they —" "Damned
nonsense about dual natures! We Monophysites —" "I'm a Jacobite, and
I can lick any man in the place!" "Let's throw all the heretics out!"
"I'm a Eunomian, and I can lick any two men in the place!"

            Padway saw something coming
and ducked, the mug missed his head by an inch and a half. When he looked up
the room was a blur of action. Eyebrows was holding the self-styled Jacobite by
the hair and punching his face; Yellow Hair was swinging four feet of bench
around his head and howling a Vandal battle song. Padway hit one champion of
Orthodoxy in the middle; his place was immediately taken by another who hit
Padway in the middle. Then they were overborne by a rush of men.

            As Padway struggled up
through the pile of kicking, yelling humanity, like a swimmer striking for the
surface, somebody got hold of his foot and tried to bite it off. As Padway was
still wearing a pair of massive and practically indestructible English walking
shoes, the biter got nowhere. So he shifted his attack to Padway's ankle.
Padway yelped with pain, yanked his foot free, and kicked the biter in the face.
The face yielded a little, and Padway wondered whether he'd broken a nose or a
few teeth. He hoped he had.

            The heretics seemed to be in
a minority, that shrank as its members were beaten down and cast forth into
darkness. Padway's eye caught the gleam of a knife blade and he thought it was
well past his bedtime. Not being a religious man, he had no desire to be
whittled up in the cause of the single, dual, or any other nature of Christ. He
located Thomasus the Syrian under a table. When he tried to drag him out, the
banker shrieked with terror and hugged the table leg as if it were a woman and
he a sailor who had been six months at sea. Padway finally got him untangled.

            The yellow-haired Vandal was
still swinging his bench. Padway shouted at him. The man couldn't have
understood in the uproar, but his attention was attracted, and when Padway
pointed at the door he got the idea. In a few seconds he had cleared a path.
The three stumbled out, pushed through the crowd that was beginning to gather
outside, and ran. A yell behind them made them run faster, until they realized
that it was Ajax, and slowed down to let him catch up.

            They finally sat down on a
park bench on the edge of the Field of Mars, only a few blocks from the
Pantheon, where Padway had his first sight of post-Imperial Rome. Thomasus,
when he got his breath, said: "Martinus, why did you let me drink so much
of that heathen drink? Oh, my head! If I hadn't been drunk, I'd have had more
sense than to start a theological argument."

            "I tried to slow you
down," said Padway mildly, "but you —"

            "I know, I know. But
you should have prevented me from drinking so much, forcibly if necessary. My
head! What will my wife say? I never want to see that lousy barbarian drink
again! What did you do with the bottle, by the way?"

            "It got lost in the
scuffle. But there wasn't much left in it anyway." Padway turned to the
Vandal. "I guess I owe you some thanks for getting us out of there so
quickly."

            The man pulled his drooping
mustache. "I was glad to do it, friend. Religious argument is no
occupation for decent people. Permit me; my name is Fritharik Staifan's
son." He spoke slowly, fumbling for words occasionally. "Once I was
counted a man of noble family. Now I am merely a poor wanderer. Life holds
nothing for me any more." Padway saw a tear glistening in the moonlight.

            "You said you were a
Vandal?"

            Fritharik sighed like a
vacuum cleaner. "Yes, mine was one of the finest estates in Carthage,
before the Greeks came. When King Gelimer ran away, and our army scattered, I
escaped to Spain, and thence I came hither last year."

            "What are you doing
now?"

            "Alas, I am not doing
anything now. I had a job as bodyguard to a Roman patrician until last week.
Think of it — a noble Vandal serving as bodyguard! But my employer got set on
the idea of converting me to Orthodoxy. That," said Fritharik with
dignity, "I would not allow. So here I am. When my money is gone, I don't
know what will become of me. Perhaps I will kill myself. Nobody would
care." He sighed some more, then said: "You aren't looking for a
good, reliable bodyguard, are you?"