The King's Cavalry by Paul Bannister Read Free Book Online Page B

less arduous. He opted to go to Rome overland because he needed the protection of a guard from a possibly-vengeful Caesar and he could not ship all those men and their equipment by water. But he planned to sail back from Rome if the season were not too late. He did not want his newly-acquired, precious relics to be at the mercy of every Belgic brigand or Gallic robber as the convoy trundled back across Gaul. A sea voyage from Ostia to Massalia in southern Gaul, then a river voyage up the great waterways from the southern coast to the northern shores and a swift voyage across the Narrow Sea was what he planned.
    The soldiers could march back, they’d be home by the turn of the year. The bishop, Bilic his bodyguard captain and a squad of picked men would sail back more swiftly and in greater comfort and safety.
    Candless was considering that return voyage as his train marched towards Rome. In the previous weeks, they had left the coast at Bononia, moved south through Bavay and on to Reims, where Arthur’s one-time mint lay shuttered and locked by the river. The blank walls of the town had been witness to a skill the bishop did not display often. At dusk, he had strolled out through the western gate to observe the sunset. Alone, seeming unarmed and in a cleric’s fine robe, he had attracted the attention of a cutpurse who stalked him to a quiet place.
    There, the man produced a knife and demanded the bishop’s coins. Candless never hesitated. He seized the man’s tunic in both hands, dragged him forward and off balance and headbutted him unconscious in one swift and practiced motion. “Robbing ME!” he murmured indignantly as he turned away. On impulse, he swiveled and leaned over the unconscious man, fumbled at his belt and pulled up the man’s own purse.
    A clink of coin told him there was reward in it. “For the poor, my son, for the poor,” he said aloud as he slipped the leather bag beneath his surplice. “God thanks you.”
    From Reims, the troupe took Agricola’s great highway south to the foothills of the Alps, turning east to Basel and halting for several days’ rest and repairs at Brigantia before beginning the laborious climbs and descents over the passes of the mountain ramparts of Cisalpine Gaul.
    In the second month of travel, Candless and his hardened men had marched past the blue lake of Como and had gaped at the splendour of the imperial palace in Milan. They had crossed the multiple rivers that water the soft-lit northern plains, the Padus, Rigony, Paala, Saternu m and Animo, and were marching to the seacoast of the Adriaticus on the Via Aemilia. Rome was only a week away, now.
    News of the bishop’s mission had run ahead of him as he entered Italia and a steady stream of monks and preachers had attached themselves to Candless’ entourage, seeking patronage or reward from this distinguished prince of the church. Potius and Bilic tried to keep them away from their master, but some had useful information and the Pict patiently heard them all.
    “There are tombs of the apostles Paul and Peter on the Via Ostia, and there are oratories over their graves,” one lean, unkempt hermit confided as he strode alongside Candless’ palfrey. “They have been there since the reign of Domitian.” Another mendicant insisted that the tombs were where the apostles had died – near the Vatican itself, the palace of the pontiff, while a third insisted that Peter was buried near the Tomb of Nero on the Via Aurelia.
    Gradually, as he rode and listened, Candless sifted the possibilities. The Circus of Nero was where the infamously bloody games were held in the spring of 65 in the anno domini and that was where the great slaughter of Christians took place, and where Peter, first bishop of Rome had died and was buried ‘between two obelisks,’ said the third monk.
    Paul was beheaded as was his right as a Roman citizen, and Candless listened eagerly to another, knowledgeable-sounding little cleric who trotted