The Psalter (39 page)

“Father, you have a job, but so do I. A priest is dead, along with suspected terrorists. One of your Psalters was stolen and everything is somehow related. I’m just trying to connect the dots before anyone else gets killed.”

“I’m afraid I can’t offer much assistance.”

“Why will you not help?”

“I would if I could, but the books were confiscated.”

“Taken? This is becoming a habit,” Del Carlo said. “By who?”

“The Defender of the Faith.”

“Cardinal Keller? Why?”

“If I tell you,” Romano said, “I must have your personal assurance that you won’t divulge what you hear.”

“State secrets?”

“Something like that,” Romano nodded.

“Father, this is a murder investigation and evidence is evidence.”

“Naturally, but you have none, and neither do I. I’m not asking you to hide anything you discover, only to keep what I’m about to say in confidence.”

“You have my word,” the colonel said.

“Did you ever hear of Saint Malachy?” Father Romano began.

36
The Borgo

Prince Ahmad crept through the front door of the
schola cantorum
between the prayers of Lauds and Prime, in the hour before dawn when the city begins to stir and cast off its nighttime covers for the labors of the day. He hung his cloak and removed his metal collar, which wasn’t really attached. Johanna had seen to that. The iron was just for show, for Ahmad’s safety she told him.

“You’re empty-handed.” Johanna looked dumfounded. “Did you meet with trouble?”

“Not I, but I fear Cardinal Anastasius is about to. San Marcello is swarming with soldiers. They found a body in his cell.” Ahmad nodded in Anastasius’ direction.

“He didn’t kill the man. I did,” Johanna admitted.

“He was an assassin,” Anastasius said, “and would have killed me had Johannes not struck.”

“You need explain nothing to me,” Ahmad said blithely. “I’m but a humble slave.”

“No such thing,” Johanna replied. “At least not within these walls.”

Ahmad bowed. “In any case, a chafing collar didn’t cause the burn on your neck.” Ahmad turned from Anastasius to Johanna. “The body was clothed in a fine leather hauberk. He was no ordinary killer; he was an officer. Lucky for you your knife found his neck, otherwise the leather might have turned the blade.”

“You got close enough to see the body?” Johanna shivered.

“The moon doesn’t reflect a brown face as it does pale ones. I looked through the window and listened to what Bishop Benedict said to Count Theophylact.”

“They were there? How did they find out so quickly?” Johanna appeared dumbfounded.

Ahmad deduced the answer. “They would know if the assassin was their man. But you’re quite right, Master; Anastasius must leave now, on the hour. They’ll search the city and are certain to come here.” Then turning to the Cardinal of the San Marcello, he apologized. “I’m sorry, but I couldn’t collect your belongings. I would have been found out.”

“You’ve taken a considerable risk, and I give you my thanks. My meager things are worthless and can be replaced. All the same, I wish I had a few books for the road.”

Johanna wrapped her traveling cloak around Anastasius’ tall shoulders. It was too small and made him look like a comic minstrel mocking the priesthood in a passion play. She tucked her own Psalter into his hand and bid him farewell with a peck on the cheek, and he blushed in front of Ahmad. Ahmad looked down as though he hadn’t seen. “Lead him through the alleys as far as Nero’s plain, and protect him so he meets no harm.” Her instructions sounded like a prayer.

Ahmad slipped a long dangerous dagger into his belt and pulled his own cloak around. “Everything you ask, I shall do.”

Then Johanna pushed them out of the door, sank to her knees, and wept.

Pope Leo ordered Anastasius’ arrest on a charge of murder, but was forced to retract the warrant when Johannes testified that it was she who killed the assassin to save the cardinal’s life. Benedict raged and argued for a trial anyway. An officer commissioned by Count Theophylact had been stabbed to death, and a killing was no trifling matter.

“Truly,” Johannes answered his charge, “and just how did you happen to arrive at San Marcello with Theophylact and his men in the dark morning hours before Lauds to discover the dead soldier? Did a soothsayer reveal this foul deed in a dream?”

Benedict cowered, taken unawares, wondering desperately what Johannes had heard and how he might have heard it. “Who said I was about?”

“I do. Do you deny it?”

“I…I spent the evening at the home of my nephew, Theophylact, when word came of the murder.”

“Did Theophylact tell you, or did you give the news to him? Perhaps we should question the count separately to find the truth?”

In the end, Benedict withdrew his objection and Leo declined to uphold the charge after Bishop Arsenius reminded him that the Emperor would be incensed if a cardinal in his favor should be falsely accused.

Nevertheless, Benedict would not be denied. Three weeks later, he charged Anastasius with abandoning San Marcello and his parishioners. Once again, Arsenius came to his nephew’s defense using all of his diplomatic skills, as well as threats of the Emperor’s wrath. When his arguments were exhausted, he pleaded for mercy, saying that Anastasius wasn’t safe within the walls of the city. Johannes reminded the assembled cardinals and bishops that a cardinal of the Holy Church had been attacked by someone who wanted his influence silenced, permanently. She glared at Benedict the whole time she defended Anastasius, while the Bishop of Albano squirmed uncomfortably in his chair.

Benedict wasn’t cowed for long, however, and countered that the assassin, if indeed he was one, was dead and no evidence had been presented to show that any further threat existed. Nevertheless the rules of the
patriarchum
were clear: no priest could abandon his duties for a period longer than three weeks. Therefore Anastasius, the Cardinal of San Marcello, was excommunicated from the church.

Johanna was disconsolate and dreaded sending her beloved the terrible news, but Bishop Arsenius appeared unconcerned. “This isn’t a major setback,” he said, “only a bump in the road. Theophylact and his supporters fear that the Emperor extends his power within the Papal Palace, and they wish to nip it before his influence can take root. They believe they’ve won,” he laughed. “No such thing. Their authority doesn’t extend past the diocese of Rome. Anastasius is safe at my house in Chiusi where Lothair rules, just beyond their reach.”

“But he’s been deprived of his priesthood.”

“This is a political move not a religious one,” Arsenius said. “Anastasius will be a priest in Lombardy until he can return to Rome. Excommunications are just words. They can be pronounced but also withdrawn. Never fear for Anastasius. His excommunication will be undone, but you are the one who should take care. You stand in Benedict’s way. What they tried to do to my nephew, they are sure to visit upon you.”

“Are you saying they would try to assassinate me? I’m no favorite of the Emperor’s.”

“It wasn’t wise to stand up for Anastasius and expose Benedict in the bargain. Benedict can’t fathom how you undid him, and I should like to know as well. I won’t ask, for we all need our secrets. But while he doesn’t vie against you for power, for you possess little, Benedict is vexed the other cardinals listen to you. You revealed that you’re audacious enough to thwart his ambition.”

“I only wished to defend Anastasius,” Johanna said.

“Yet you’ve made Benedict fear you. Poor judgment, I must say. You’d do well to remember that in the Papal Palace, there are only two kinds of clerics: those who hold power and those who wish to take it from them. It’s not advisable to let people see which one you are.”

“I’m neither. I simply want to serve the church in the best way I can.”

“Um, too bad,” Arsenius said as he surveyed Johanna’s soft, hairless face. “I think you might be the cleverest of all. No matter, I’ll tell you where you must get for the time being. Leave the
schola cantorum
at once, or you won’t live many more days. Find a place outside the city walls where allies can watch you. There’s strength in numbers.”

“Where would I find such a place and still perform my duties as Cardinal?”

“Are you not English by birth, Johannes Anglicus?”

“Yes.”

“Then you should move to the Borgo. There’s an Anglo-Saxon school and a hospital as well as a church,
Santo Spirito in Sassia
, I believe. You would be with your own people where neither Benedict nor Theophylact nor any of their spies can enter without being spotted. Get you to the Borgo, Johannes Anglicus. You’ll be safe there.”

The Borgo, which was the old fourteenth district of Imperial Rome, lay sandwiched between the Vatican to the north and the Jewish ghetto in the Trastevere to the south, with the Tiber on the eastern edge. Its inhabitants were mostly Anglo-Saxons, but also Lombards, Franks and Frisians, and not a single Roman. King Ina, the monarch of the West Saxons, had founded the
schola Anglorum
in the Year of our Lord 727 with the blessing of Pope Gregory II. Attached to the
schola
, he built a church dedicated to the Virgin Mary to serve the spiritual needs of English pilgrims.

Yet many who made the arduous pilgrimage across the channel from Wessex to Francia, then crossing Burgundy and Italy, were the lame and infirm, who hoped to pray for a miracle at the tomb of Saint Peter. Alas, many prayers received no answer, so King Ina set aside a cemetery for their earthly remains. Later in the eighth century, the Anglo-Saxons’ most powerful sovereign, King Offa of Mercia in the English midlands, added a hospital to the
schola Anglorum
.

Around this island of English transplanted on the alluvial sands between the Tiber and the clay hills leading to the Vatican, a community of expatriates had grown. They set up shop to serve like-minded immigrants who flocked to Rome for a new life in the capitol of Christendom.

Thus did the Borgo become a safe haven for foreigners across the river from the city. Bishop Arsenius was right, neither Benedict nor Theophylact cast any influence here. In fact, Romans avoided the outsiders, who they considered to be of low caste. Those few who dared venture into the Borgo were watched with resentment and mistrust.

Not only did Johanna find safety among her own people, but Prince Ahmad could wander without his metal collar, unshackled and unmolested. Baraldus reveled in his newfound celebrity with his Lombard countrymen and guards of the foreign
scholae
, who he had commanded in the defense of Rome. They hailed him as savior of the city and bought him drinks in the taverns in exchange for tales of his exploits in the days when he was a captain in the army of the Empire. As for Johanna, the Borgo seemed like the home of her childhood, which she had put out of her mind for years and years.

Unlike Romans who fashioned their homes with flat brick and stone covered by marble veneers, the English built with wood. They constructed their houses and shops in the half-timber style, beams attached with pegs to frame the structure, and planks for the joists. The walls were fashioned in layers called a
cob
. The middle was a mat of branches or reeds woven into the frame and plastered over with a mixture of mud and straw. The floors were earthen or wooden boards, and the roof was thatch. The only stone to be found was the fireplace in the main room, which held a crackling fire that cast warmth and shadows. It was just the comfort Johanna needed, cocooned in the memories of her youth, and only a fifteen-minute stroll to a cup of tea, sweet cakes, and intellectual diversion at the table in the Rosh Yeshiva’s kitchen.

Her new home was better suited to her position as Cardinal of the Apostolic farms since the Borgo adjoined the Trastevere. A short stroll and Johanna could survey the Jewish craftsmen who worked with an industry and efficiency that dumbfounded her. Plows, rigid horse collars, yokes, and harnesses were manufactured by the hundreds, along with spades and scythes.

Baraldus, for his part, commanded the tenant farmers and freemen as he would a brigade, ordering which fields to plow and which to leave fallow; when to harvest, and which crops to rotate. He purchased the choicest cows, bulls, ewes, and rams like a shrewd hand. Then, running roughshod over the husbandmen in the raising of the beasts, the offspring bullocks, heifers, and lambs were sold to the fleshmongers.

Crops and cattle flooded Rome, and a large surplus was exported to the Frankish lands, Lombardy, Frisia, and Germany. Plows and farm implements were hauled to the port of Ostia and loaded on ships bound for foreign ports, even to the Saracens in Spain and Sicily. The great city of Rome that had fallen upon desperate times became prosperous and proud once again.

Laborers came from all over Lothair’s Frankish empire to build Leo’s new wall, and the finest artisans worked on the restoration of Saint Peter’s and Saint Paul’s as well as the ruined
schola cantorum
. People labored and laughed and played. Everyone was content; everyone, that is, except Johanna, who for long years lived inside her longing letters to her love, Anastasius. She took care, of course, not to post them with church’s couriers, for she knew they would be read. Instead she gave her dispatches to Avraham, who entrusted them to Jewish traffickers, traveling north to sell their goods in Chiusi’s markets and fairs.

Her visits with Avraham became as frequent as her letters and today she handed him the latest, lingering as usual to accept the hospitality of his cozy kitchen.

“What troubles your soul Johannes,” Avraham said. “You come to talk, yet are quiet. In truth, I think your body is here but your thoughts are far, far away.”

“I don’t know what ails me. It’s just that I feel rather useless, like I’m not needed.”

“Ridiculous. The farming is a great success. All of Rome is astounded by what you’ve done. Your genius is the talk of the city. Coins flow into everyone’s hands like water. Craftsmen and artisans can hardly keep up with their orders. Farmers are flush with crops and hard cash, yet their burden is eased. Money fills the church’s coffers once again, and Leo has the finances to build his wall, which even now spreads around the Vatican. Masons and carpenters rebuild your cathedrals grander and more glorious than before. This is a revolution the world has not seen in many centuries. Only the rich grumble. They watch their power slipping away.”