Crown of Empire (The Byzantine Saga Book 3) by Richard Blake

Author:Richard Blake [Blake, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lume Books
Published: 2016-04-14T04:00:00+00:00

Part Three: Rome, Friday, December 22, 618AD

I

They’d arrived in the former Capital of the World a week into a thaw that seemed to spread across Central Italy. As they travelled south, snow had turned to sleet, and then to driving rain. They’d crept through the Northeast Gate in the biggest downpour yet. The following day had given a few hours of watery sunshine. Then the rain was back. It had continued all night. At some time before dawn, the Tiber had overtopped the ruined embankments and flooded the lower areas of the City.

The afternoon before, Rodi had avoided the worst puddles in the Forum by hopping from one peak to another of the cracked and subsided paving slabs. This morning, the whole Forum, plus the flattened area that spread past the Basilica of Constantine, was under a three foot deepness of brown water. Here and there, carters had to climb down and lead their horses through water that came to their chests.

Cosmas stood on the lower slope of the Palatine Hill. “But what is that smell?”

The inn Rodi had chosen for them was near the top of the hill. Its roof gave a panoramic view of Rome that was no longer immediately before his eyes. Seen from whatever position, though, the City was like a decrepit old woman of the higher classes. Here and there, her jewellery was fine enough, and sometimes new. Her clothing, stained with every bodily excretion, served only to draw attention to the shrivelled and deformed body it was supposed to conceal.

Rodi breathed in through his mouth. “The innkeeper’s boy told me the sewers have burst, and some of the plague pits have been washed out.”

He looked at the sky. For the moment, it wasn’t raining. Clouds the colour of lead didn’t bode well for the rest of the day. The Lateran Basilica would normally be a walk of a mile and a half. So far as he could see, the road he’d counted on taking was under water. It was out of the question they should so much as spoil their new shoes, let alone wade into that stinking filth.

Was it Rodi, or was it turning cold again?

Cosmas took a step towards the line of spume that separated water from the land. “We can’t be late. It’s the thighbone of Saint Thomas they’re showing today. One sight of it’s a sovereign cure for any depression of the spirits.”

Rodi smiled to cover his own annoyance.“ Then I’d better think of another route there.”

Cosmas wasn’t the only one with an appointment to keep. The boy called into mind the map of carved stone he’d seen in one the churches the previous day. It was an immense and intricate thing, made in the City’s days of glory and showing every single street. If they went to the other side of the Palatine Hill there should be some sort of causeway across to the Caelian. From there it would be a longer but a dry journey to the Lateran.

That was assuming the causeway still existed.

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