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this would be his kingdom, some had stayed, and the occasional bravo still drifted over when England seemed too dull. I’d probably just killed one of them. Here was another.
        ‘You’re English, mate!’ He made an attempt at conviviality. ‘Well, it’s a time since I could share thoughts of home. What’s your name?’
        ‘I am Aelric, son of Ethelwulf of Rainham,’ I answered flatly.
        ‘Ethelwulf. He was a mate in the old days. Perhaps you was the boy I saw on his knees. You was a pretty child. You won’t remember me, but I remember you. Let us up – we can’t talk like this.’
        I said nothing, my sword still pressed against his throat.
        ‘Look in our saddlebags,’ he whined. ‘It’s all yours. Go on, look.’
        I nodded to Maximin. He came back with two leather bags. From the heavy chink as he put them down, I knew their contents. They were filled with golden solidi. But these weren’t the debased, shapeless copies I’d seen once or twice in England and more often in France. They were the smooth, regular coins of the Empire, imperial head on one side, ‘CONOB’ clearly imprinted on the other. There must have been two full sets of seventy-two to the pound. They were new and identical. Each of them had the same defect on the ‘B’, which was raised a little above the four other letters, indicating that they came from the same die.
        I saw all this later. For the moment, I glanced at the coins, but my sword hand didn’t waver.
        ‘Look, mate,’ the theologian whined again, ‘I can show you more of them – bags and bags of them. Just let us up. We can talk over all the news from home. Then we can go and get the others. Fair shares for all, there can be!’
        ‘Tell me where they are,’ I asked in my flat voice. I pressed harder so a line of blood showed along the blade. ‘Tell me now.’
        ‘Yeah, yeah – don’t let’s be unfriendly,’ the theologian cried, trying to push his neck still closer to the ground. ‘Just take the sword away, and I’ll tell you everything.’
        ‘Where are they?’ I asked.
        ‘South along the road – about five miles,’ he babbled, breaking now and then into Latin. ‘We brung them down from Tarquini. There’s a ten-man guard on them – not good Englishmen, like us: just runaway slaves and other trash. We can take them together, no prob.’
        He paused and looked ingratiating. ‘I see’d you cut up Bertwald right good. We won’t have no trouble with the others  . . . Now, give us a drink, mate.’
        I said nothing.
        He continued: ‘We was ordered to wait there by the Saint Antony Shrine for instructions. Some Roman or summink was to come and tell us, or such. We didn’t know right, but we was to wait there – that’s all we was told on delivery.’
        He spoke on in quick gasps in his strange mingling of languages. They were on some business, of which they knew nothing, for the Lombard authorities. They were to take delivery of a consignment of gold and a very holy relic – the nose of Saint Vexilla. They had no idea what would happen. They’d been told simply to wait for further instructions that would be obvious when they came.
        ‘All very hush hush,’ the theologian continued, trying to lick some moisture onto his dry lips. ‘Bertwald and me, we just grabbed what was rightly ours and was on our way back to Pavia. Come on, mate, I’m gasping for a drink. Don’t keep me down like this. The fucking sun’s in me eyes.’
        Nothing more to learn here, I thought.
        ‘My father was not Ethelwulf. I have heard of no Ethelwulf of Rainham,’ I said. I drew the sword across his throat, cutting from under one ear right up to the other.
        ‘Oh, shit and fuck!’ I’d never cut a throat before, and wasn’t prepared for the fountain of blood. It went all over my face and hair and soaked my sleeve. I was mucky enough already from all that crawling