Conqueror

XI

Wuffa, on a straw pallet, reluctantly sharing the floor of Ambrosias's kitchen with Ulf, found it difficult to sleep.

And when he did doze he dreamed of centuries, stretching around him like a vast firelit hall.

He imagined the power the Menologium might give him and his family. But he was afraid. Were even gods meant to know the future? Could it be that all this was an elaborate trap set by Loki – a trap he had walked into that day when he had gone breaking windows in a haunted city?

He dreamed of Ambrosias's fine, ruined face, his wrinkled neck, the drone of his voice as he pounded his Menologium into their heads. And he imagined wrapping his hands around that scrawny neck, choking the last life out of the old man who had inflicted this prophetic curse on Wuffa and his descendants.

He was woken by a scream.

It was a grey dawn. He glimpsed Ulf hurrying out of the door. He pushed out of his bed and rushed to follow.

The scream had been the bishop's. Wuffa found him in the triclinium, with Sulpicia. They were both in their night clothes, and at another time Wuffa might have been distracted by the glimpses of Sulpicia's ankles and calves, her bare arms. But Ulf was here too, glowering. The light from the open door was dim, blue-grey.

On the floor lay Ambrosias, Last of the Romans. His body looked oddly at peace, his arms by his sides. But his head was at an impossible angle, and purple bruises showed on his throat.

Wuffa smelled burning. He saw ashes around one of Ambrosias's animal-fat lamps on a low table, the remnants of a burnt parchment.

Bishop Ammanius, his battered nose livid, shook with rage. 'To have come all this way, for this!… It is obvious what has happened here. The old man read his prophecy to you two last night. Don't bother to deny it. I heard him, though I could not make out the words. And now one of you has come back, destroyed the parchment, and murdered this wretch – one of you has sought to steal the prophecy for himself. To think that I recruited you when I saw you save one old man, only for it to end like this, in the murder of another at your own hands.'

Wuffa looked at Ulf, who returned his gaze steadily. So, Wuffa thought, the only traces of Isolde's Menologium left in the world existed in their two heads. He had expected his rivalry with Ulf to last a lifetime. Now, he sensed, it was a rivalry that might last centuries. He shivered, as if the hall of time was opening up around him.

'And perhaps you have murdered the last man alive who knew Artorius. What a crime!' Ammanius glared at them, from one to the other. 'Which of you was it? Which of you?'

Wuffa was no killer. But he remembered his fragmentary dreams. He said truthfully, 'I don't know.'