THE CITY OF ROPES

Albert Tucher

“She might not be dead.”

“So go in and look,” I said. “Either way, he’ll want to know.”

In the torchlight, Anastasius looked unhappy. “But if she isn’t, somebody else will be. Namely, me. They say she has powers.”

“Then why has she spent four years in a dark cell?”

“Send Theodore in. She hasn’t hurt him, yet.”

“It’s no good sending Theodore in. He can’t tell us anything. He’s deaf and dumb.”

I said the words as if explaining to an idiot. Deaf Theodore was her caretaker because she could not trick him into communicating with her – at least, not in the dark. He had come to us with wild grunts and gestures. Since the Senatrix Marozia was his only responsibility, his problem had to concern her.

Theodore stood with us in the spiral corridor of Castle of the Angel Saint. In the flickering light, it would have been easy to mistake him for a moss-covered stump, until he moved. Anastasius shooed him back into the cell. He came back out in seconds.

“I guess she hasn’t miraculously recovered,” I said. “That would be too much to hope for.”

I took a deep breath. I would need it. However foul the air was in the corridor of the fortress prison, in the cell it would be worse. I took the key from my sleeve and turned it in the lock. The door groaned as I stepped inside.

“Torch,” I said to Anastasius behind me. I could see nothing.

Anastasius passed me the torch, which guttered and nearly went out. There on the floor, almost concealed by rotting straw, lay the woman who had once ruled Rome.

“Marozia, daughter of Theophylact and Theodora, are you living or dead?”

My words brought no response. If she was dead, I almost envied her. Having spoken, I now needed breath. The air in the cell almost sent me to my knees. The decaying straw and the smell of human excrement were only the beginning. All of the world’s corruption seemed concentrated here.

The torch dimmed again. We had used most of it getting to the cell.

As the light faded, Marozia opened her eyes. In the near darkness, they seemed to give off a light of their own that sliced into my eyes. I admit that I screamed.

“What?”

Anastasius barked manfully, but I could not help noticing that he stayed outside.

“She’s alive.”

Terror had turned my voice to a whisper.

The torch died and the darkness became complete. I could feel the absence of any life but my own.

“Never mind.”

My voice returned, but my eyes felt as if someone had singed them with hot coals. I groped my way out of the cell into the corridor. When I saw Anastasius in the light of his torch, relief weakened my legs. I realized that I had expected to find myself blinded.

“We have to tell the Prince,” I said. “And we need to get out of here. That’s our last torch.”

I touched Theodore’s shoulder and pointed, but he shook his head. He would stay with the body. Anastasius and I began to descend the inclined corridor. We emerged from the base of the Castle into the slightly-less-fetid air that blew from the Tiber. We crossed the moat and climbed stairs. In the intermittent moonlight, we found our armed militia men, who waited near the bridge that crossed the river.

I counted more men than I had brought. Another party of six had joined us.

“Change of plan,” said one of them. “The Prince wants us at the Lateran Palace.”

“That’s quite a slog,” I said.

“We can cut out some of it.”

He had a rope coiled over one shoulder.

We marched halfway across the bridge and found two more of our men keeping watch over our escape route. I stepped between them and looked over the parapet. The black shape of a boat was barely visible against the dark surface of the river.

The man with the rope tied one end to the parapet and dropped the coil toward the river.

“The Prince has forbidden having a rope this close to the city walls,” I told him. Anyone who left a rope dangling could let our enemies into the city.

“You want to walk all the way to the Lateran?”

“No.”

“We’re the Prince’s men. We can do what we want.”

One after another, several of our men climbed over the parapet and slid down to the boat.

“Wait,” said Anastasius.

He pulled the rope up and fashioned a loop in the free end. I appreciated the thought. I could still climb but no longer as easily as a young man. Nor could Anastasius.

The men still on the bridge lowered me to the boat. I looked around. It was a fishing vessel, one of the larger ones that worked the Tiber.

The fisherman grumbled, until I opened the cloth purse folded over my belt. Silver glinted in the moonlight.

“There’s a coin here for you and you’ll still make it back in time to fish.”

The rope went up and brought Anastasius down. Then the rest of our men used the rope, one by one.

Traveling by water, we would avoid a great deal of mud and many possible ambushes. In the daylight, the Romans would recognize us as the Prince’s men, but darkness made us nothing more than prey.

We passed under the third bridge, where the river veered outside the city walls. Anastasius called out a password to the guards as we slid under them. To our right, campfires dotted the plains and hillsides that surrounded the city, but the points of light offered no reassurance. They meant that the Burgundian forces of King Hugh of Arles were besieging the city, as usual.

The fisherman and his three sons manned their oars and started guiding us downstream. To our left, we saw nothing but darkness, but we knew that more militia men kept watch on the ramparts of the walls.

The King had certainly posted his own sentries, but not to guard against us. Their task was to watch for marauding Hungarians, who also surrounded the city. The mounted archers from the east could ride silently among the campfires, slit a few Burgundian throats, and disappear.

We knew what they could do if they ever got inside the city.

Before the Hungarians came, we had played unwilling hosts to the Arabs, but their heyday was history. It was always something.

We maintained complete darkness. If we showed a light, the Hungarian archers would make quick work of us.

Ahead of us I heard a thud, a groan and a splash in the river. Another paid assassin had earned his fee. By the time we reached the spot, any trace of the transaction had disappeared.

We came to the Island. The best fishing areas clustered around it and numerous families slept on their boats near their livelihoods. Our fisherman grumbled again.

“You’ll make it back by dawn,” I whispered to him.

“Someone will take my spot.”

He knew it was unlikely. The Prince enforced fishing claims strictly. The man simply liked to complain.

The river cut back behind the wall. Soon, the Aventine Hill loomed huge and black to our left. Our fisherman steered toward the bank. He probably knew the currents as well as any Roman knew the streets of the city. The boat scraped on the shallow bottom. I paid the fisherman. Our men began to jump out into the mud.

I sent several men ahead in a protective formation. Anastasius and I then disembarked.

I am no longer a young man and the hour was very late. Floundering through the mud cost me, but I had no choice. The winter weather had turned just cold enough to make my feet ache. We reached the Lateran palace. The commander led me to the Prince, who had occupied the innermost apartment of his brother John, the Bishop of Rome.

Prince Alberic sat, hearing reports. Men his age need little sleep. His fair hair held no grey, and his face no lines.

He favoured tunics and boots that would have suited commoners, which meant that his nobles also had to wear plebian garb, no matter how embarrassing we found it. The Roman mob loved Alberic for the gesture. They had favoured him for four years now, but it proved little. No one knew better than Alberic that the Romans might stop loving him in a moment.

I waited through three recitations from his spies. They kept their voices low and I heard nothing. The Prince spoke a few words to an Arab slave, who began clearing the hall. I knew it was time to approach.

“So?” he said.

“Prince, your mother is dead.”

He nodded. “Tell my brother,” he said. “And my sisters.”

I looked around the empty hall.

“Are you sure, Prince? We can keep the secret.”

“Not this kind of secret,” said Alberic.

“Yes, Prince. Will your brother say a Requiem mass tomorrow?”

“No. Tomorrow, we’ll have a trial.”

At the age of nearly fifty, I had seen much. I knew what he meant, as few Romans could.

Anastasius and I spent the next day directing the militia men, as they cajoled, threatened and flogged the citizens to the Lateran Basilica. Now we walked up the northernmost aisle toward the sanctuary and surveyed our work. We passed the Romans, all who could cram themselves into the rear of the nave. Next came the foreign communities: the Saxons, Franks, Greeks, Lombards, and others. All wore their national dress, although many were the grandchildren of pilgrims who had come to Rome and stayed. They no longer spoke their ancestral languages.

We had allowed them closer to the sanctuary, because they kept better order, and because they had always supported the Prince. He trusted them to stand between him and the mob, if necessary.

Alberic sat facing the high altar on his wooden throne from his palace in the Via Lata. I saw no signal, but ranks of monks standing at both sides of the altar began to chant. I hated the sound. I have no ear, but even I could tell that their Latin was vile and their modes off.

John the Bishop of Rome, eleventh of that name, approached from the north, where he had a protected walkway between his palace and the basilica. He wore a petulant expression and I knew why. He had just learned that he would not say the Requiem mass for his mother. I doubt he cared much for her, but he cared a great deal for his privileges and rituals.

He took a seat prepared for him next to the Prince. Neither brother acknowledged the other.

From the same direction came the Prince’s two sisters, surrounded by a formation of nuns.

My gaze inched up toward the ceiling, with its ancient fresco. Men and women, in their strange white draperies, did things that I could not quite understand. It did not help that crucial parts of the painting had faded badly.

Somehow, the monks knew when to stop chanting. They may simply have become bored. The Romans, never silent even during the most solemn occasions, raised their usual din of quarrelling and bargaining.

Anastasius fought his way through the ranks of nobles and churchmen behind the Prince and his siblings. He faced the Romans.

“Quiet!” he bellowed. “We have come to do justice and justice will be done.”

I turned to watch. Men at arms blocked the exit from the nave. More waded through the sea of Romans, and kicked and clubbed those who refused to pay attention.

“Good,” said Anastasius. His voice carried through the huge space. “Bring the accused.”

I still watched behind me. Light appeared at the far end of the basilica, as the doors opened. Then I saw a party of a half-dozen rough commoners, the kind of men who spend their lives hauling things for others. Their burden did not seem to bother them.

It was another wooden throne. I knew what weighed it down.

So did the Prince. He did not turn to look. He waited until the men had detoured around him and deposited their burden in front of the high altar.

Anastasius spoke into my ear. I started. I had not seen his approach, which was a bad omen.

“You’re elected.”

“Why?”

“You were here for the last one. You know how it goes.”

“I know that. I mean, why is he doing this?”

“You can figure that out.”

Indeed, I could. The Prince had not wanted to try his mother while she lived and could defend herself. Now he wanted to poison her memory and cement his supremacy among the Romans.

For a moment, I sat without moving, but I had no choice. I stood and approached the chair under the altar. As I looked, memory assailed me. The similarities were too great to miss.

I saw myself as a young boy again. By staying low and keeping quiet, I had just reached the front of the crowd in the same basilica. I had evaded the kicks and cuffs of dozens of churchmen. My goal was to get a closer look at Formosus, the former Bishop of Rome. He wore the robes of his office, but he had looked better.

More than a year in his tomb had seen to that.

His cheeks had sunk into his bones and pulled away from his teeth. His skin had turned a grey that matched pale granite. He smelled cold, as if he carried the chill of the tomb with him. For days afterward, I could not get warm, no matter how close I sat to the fire.

Dead, Formosus would hold still for the vengeance he had parried in his nimbler days. Now his enemies saw nothing to fear. Bishop Stephen led the attack, howling and spitting accusations. A young deacon stood by to offer the dead Pope’s defenses. The young man trembled too much to speak, but that did not matter. The proceedings required nothing from him but the appearance of justice.

Someone jostled my young self. I looked to my right and saw that a small girl had joined me. I had seen few noble girls in my short life. As a rule, they did not leave their homes.

This one had. She watched the trial of a dead man as if she had seen worse.

Our eyes met. Mine burned.

Forty years after the trial of Formosus, I looked at the body of the young girl I had met that day. She had become a woman celebrated for her beauty, or perhaps it was her power, or both. I had never again come close enough to exchange looks with her.

Her face had swollen, and her skin had mottled red and purple. Where Formosus had chilled me, she reeked of hot corruption.

I knew my job. The dead woman was entitled to an advocate. A stupid advocate would do his job zealously. I did not intend to be stupid. The young deacon who had failed to defend Formosus had shown me the prudent course.

“Marozia, daughter of Theophylact,” Anastasius began, “how many husbands have you had?”

I looked again at the corpse. No one had closed the eyelids. No one had shown even that much respect for a dead Christian. For the third and last time, I looked into those eyes. It could not have been tears that stung my own eyes. I had given up grief with other childish things.

“Three husbands,” I said.

“Three? A pious woman has just one. What were their names?”

“Alberic, Guy and Hugh.”

“Alberic the Elder was the father of our beloved Prince.”

Anastasius looked sideways at the Prince, who ignored the flattery.

“But Hugh of Arles – is he not the enemy of Rome? Is he not the same Hugh who besieges our city, as we speak?”

“The same,” I said.

“And why did you marry Hugh of Arles?”

“My ambition misled me,” I said. “Hugh is a descendant of Charlemagne.”

“Who died over a hundred years ago!”

“Nonetheless, Hugh had a claim to the highest office. With my help, and the help of my son the Bishop of Rome, he seemed destined to become Emperor. I truly repent my error.”

“Repentance is good, but first, let us get the whole truth. Was there conflict between Hugh and our Prince before he became Prince?”

“Hugh planned to kill my son. The King wanted me to have no male heir when I became his empress.”

“And you were willing to let this happen?”

“I was, to my shame.”

“Our Prince inspired the Romans to rebel and chase Hugh from the city. Your son imprisoned you. But you never gave up your ambition, even in prison. And now, Hugh prevents anyone from entering or leaving our city.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but has your Prince not sealed the gates?” The words had come from my mouth. What was I doing? “And has your Prince not threatened with death anyone caught near the walls with a rope?”

Anastasius gaped at me, but I was not finished.

“What I did, I did for Rome, to restore our greatness. We could have been the seat of emperors, again.”

“Did you not sneak out of the city by night to meet with the Hungarians?”

“That would be treason.”

I noticed that my words fell short of denial. Now I looked straight at the Prince and raised my voice.

“Romans, do you want to restore your glory?”

Here is the thing about the Romans. They bore easily. Anyone can sway them with a speech. Alberic had done it when he inspired the Romans to overthrow Hugh. They had hounded the King to the walls of the city and down a rope to the outside world. Alberic had ruled us for four years. Now it was time for us to forget the whoring and murdering of the mother, and turn against the son.

That explained the reeking shout that rose from every mouth full of rotting teeth in the vast basilica.

Alberic stood and faced the mob.

“Romans! Romans, listen to me! Have you forgotten? This woman tried to raise up a Burgundian over you. A Burgundian whose place should be on his knees lacing your boots. Four years ago, I asked for your help to protect your ancient rights. You answered me with deeds. You chased Hugh the Burgundian over the wall and out of the city like a thief. You threw this woman into prison, where she belonged.”

It was working. The bellowing and jeering subsided. Alberic seemed about to finish this sordid business in the strengthened position that he sought.

“Romans!” said another voice – my voice.

“Romans! Look at this son of mine. His throne looks modest, but it has cost you much – not in treasure but in blood. Each of you knows of someone murdered on this man’s orders. Only when it came to his mother did he shrink from shedding blood. But not from murder. He murdered his mother slowly and in stealth, through starvation and neglect. And for what? For daring to survive as a woman in a man’s world. I call upon you all to absolve me.”

The Romans bellowed their approval.

“This Prince stole your ancient liberties. Remove him. Chase him, hound him, kill him. Is this not your birthright as Romans?”

They were very close to the words Alberic had used against his mother and her husband Hugh at their wedding, the moment that should have been their triumph.

The strange hold released me and just in time. Alberic made a gesture and his men at arms charged into the mass of Romans with clubs swinging. The foreign communities joined them. If the Prince felt relief when they obeyed, he gave no sign.

I had no doubt that he would deal with me, but at the moment, the mob was his most urgent problem. I turned in a circle, unsure of what to do. I came face to face with Anastasius.

“What the hell were you up to there?!” He shouted just inches from my face, but I could barely hear his words.

“That wasn’t me!” I shouted back. “She made me do it.”

“She made you. Brilliant. Get going.”

“Get going where?”

“Do I have to explain everything?”

He did not. I had to run and no place in the city would be safe from Alberic. I would have to go to Hugh of Arles. I only hoped that I had something to offer him.

I thought this as I ran for the vestibule, dodging Alberic’s men and kicking and punching men, women and probably children, for all I know, who got in my way.

The nearest section of wall was directly to the south of the Lateran. If I could reach it ahead of my pursuers, I could hope to pay silver for a rope and a boost over the wall. I churned a great deal of mud getting there. I could not believe that the militia men had beaten me there, but they had. They thought they had hidden themselves well enough to lure me into a trap. But I saw their tracks on the wall where they had climbed to the battlements.

I turned and headed north. Maybe the most distant point would be the most unexpected. But the journey was long and exhausting, and as dusk began to gather, I looked for a place to hide overnight.

By the time full darkness had come, I had become lost somewhere in the heart of the city. I had never left Rome, but I still knew how to get lost. I staggered through the streets as blindly as if Alberic’s torturers had put my eyes out. I had slipped in the mud and stumbled over blocks of stone embedded in the ground, or newly fallen from ancient buildings.

Then I came to a stone fence that, to my questioning hands, felt like something built on a human scale and maintained by living men. With the last of my strength, I climbed over the fence and collapsed against it.

I expected to sleep like a dead man, but exhaustion kept me awake. I kept seeing Marozia, several days dead, then as a child, then as a child several days dead. That last vision made me whimper and my snivelling brought a response. It sounded at once human and bestial, and it came closer to me. One voice became several and then more than I could have counted, even had I not covered the sounds with my own shrieks.

With my back to the stone fence, I kicked out and encountered solid flesh. By the sound of them, my attackers retreated briefly, but then they came at me again. I screamed, “No, you devils! Don’t take me to Hell! I only followed my orders!”

Light came from somewhere, first dimly then with more strength. The light became a torch that bobbed mundanely and reassured me. The bearer was human.

“Caught myself a pig thief, have I?”

The bearer of the torch illuminated his own face as he guided himself. I did not know him, but I had seen him among the butchers at the meat market.

“No, Cola, I am not a pig thief.”

Half of the butchers in Rome are named Cola, but I saw that I had succeeded in impressing him.

“Do I know you?” he said.

That one was easy. “One time when you were drunk. I spoke with the militia and they didn’t beat you.”

“I must have been very drunk. I don’t ever remember them not beating me.” He hauled me to my feet. “Mustn’t sit here. Pigs will eat you.”

I believed him. From what I could see in the torchlight, Cola’s pigs looked more than half-wild.

“Come. I have a better place for you to sleep.”

“Why would you help me?”

“You spoke up for the Senatrix.”

Cola had undoubtedly cheered her overthrow four years earlier, but I decided not to remind him. If it was Alberic’s turn to fall from the Romans’ favour, that was his fault.

We climbed his stone fence, again, and he led me to his hovel. I ducked to enter and encountered odours almost as vile as those in Marozia’s cell, beginning with his smoky fire. I did not want to consider what Cola burned for fuel.

He extinguished the torch. In the dim light from his fire, he pointed me toward a straw pallet.

“My wife’s. She died.”

He looked me over by torchlight. “You look like man who needs a rope.”

For a moment, I misunderstood. Did he intend to strangle me and present my body to Alberic?

“To leave the city,” he said.

“I’ve never been out of the city.”

“Same with most of us. The Senatrix was different, though. She feared nothing and no one.”

“Did she really visit the Hungarians?” It would be interesting to find out what he believed of her.

“I once saw her coming back. At night, yet. She climbed up the wall without a rope. Like a bat, she looked, in the moonlight.”

A day ago, I would have ridiculed him, but now I needed him.

“Friend of mine up north will help you,” said Cola. “I’ll take you if there’s a coin in it for me.”

“There will be. When I’m on the wall with the rope in my hand.”

“Fair enough.”

Cola sprawled on his own pallet and in moments, started snoring. I stretched out on his wife’s straw and stared into the darkness.

His hovel did not improve in the daylight. Wordlessly, we shared some bread, chickpeas and sour wine.

“Might want to look more like one of us,” he told me. He threw me a tunic that was more holes than fabric, but his point was sound. I needed to look more like a plebian and less like myself. I stripped off my better tunic.

We headed north. I lacked the time for furtiveness and the most direct route took us past the Pile, the largest building in Rome. A good part of the population lived in it, or did business in it, or buried their dead in it, while others dismantled it for building materials. It was large enough to accommodate all of these uses.

The ancients seemed to have sat in it and watched spectacles, but we no longer knew what they had seen.

In my borrowed tunic I strode boldly up the Via Lata with my new friend. Soon, we reached the People’s Gate at the northern rim of the city.

I looked and thought, I can die now.

The gate stood open. I had seen an open gate once before. It was my earliest memory. I had watched Formosus greeting an emissary from Constantinople.

Prince Alberic rode a horse, the finest in his stable. On another fine mount, a man in a warrior’s leathers faced him. Even at a distance, their smiles looked like the leers of false friendship.

I had not survived the past forty years in Rome without learning something about powerful men. Alberic no longer trusted the Romans and he had turned to another source of strength. He would make an alliance with Hugh of Arles, besieger of the city, last husband of Marozia, and Alberic’s enemy until now. Young Alberic had chased Hugh from the city. Alberic the ruler had invited him back.

“That,” said Cola, “leaves you the Hungarians. I hope you can learn to ride a pony.”

“Possibly. I doubt I can learn to shoot one of their bows.”

Cola shrugged.

“Now, about that coin.”

“Several. Here’s the first.”

Cola kept his word, which no one assumes of any Roman. He and his friend lowered me to the plain outside the walls. Until dusk, I cowered in the shadows, where the watch would not see me. Then I set out on foot. I had no destination, but I needed none. I wanted only to make myself visible.

Sinewy men on wiry ponies surrounded me. The silence of their sudden appearance would have terrified the old me.

“A Roman,” said a man who acted as their leader. “We kill Romans. Why shouldn’t we kill you?”

“You would lose an opportunity,” I said.

The words tasted unfamiliar as I said them. They emerged in a language that I did not speak.

“What kind of opportunity?”

“You want to plunder Rome,” I said. “I want to rule Rome.”

Poor Rome, I thought.

“You sound like someone we used to know,” he said.

“Imagine that.”

“Let’s talk.”

Albert Tucher’s hardboiled crime fiction has appeared in numerous print and online publications. He is the creator of suburban prostitute Diana Andrews, who figures in five unpublished novels and thirty published short stories, one of which appears in The Best American Mystery Stories 2010. For years, he has been trying to use the bizarre and fascinating Rome of the tenth century AD in fiction. At last, success!

The author speaks: Few historical periods are as obscure as the early tenth century in the city of Rome. Literacy was rare and sources are sparse, but it seems clear the city had closed its gates figuratively, if not literally. Where a half-million-to-a-million people had once crowded within the city walls, perhaps twenty thousand now lurked among the ancient ruins. One family ruled the city as a private domain and betrayal was their way of life.