Conqueror by Stephen Baxter Page A

chance? Yes, there is something I want at Lindisfarena. But perhaps there is a way you can profit too, Belisarius.’
    He told Belisarius the story of Sulpicia, his ancestress, of how she had come to the north - ‘somewhere along the line of the Wall, nobody remembers where, perhaps it was here’ - and found herself caught up in a dispute between a Northman and a German over a strange document called ’the Menologium of Isolde’.
    ‘You must remember that I am recounting family legends preserved by slaves - illiterate slaves at that. This Menologium was a prophecy of some kind. It belonged to an aged Briton. And it had already begun to prove itself, already come true. That’s the crucial thing. Now, the Northman and the German fought. The Northman killed the old man, or it may have been the German, and the German raped Sulpicia, leaving her pregnant, or it may have been the Northman. Between them they stole the prophecy, and Sulpicia, abandoned and pregnant, left ruined, was forced to sell herself and her unborn child into slavery.’
    Belisarius nodded. ‘But this prophecy was not stolen from your ancestress. The wretched old man was the victim of this crime.’
    ‘He was British, as was Sulpicia. Did she have no rights?’
    It seemed to Belisarius a slight grudge to have been nursed over two centuries. But even slaves needed hope, it seemed.
    Macson told him that the Menologium had been burnt, and its words had only survived at all by being committed to memory by the Northman and the German. After some generations a descendant of the German had been taken into the monastery at Lindisfarena with the Menologium in his head, and it was written down. And, with time, news of its preservation there had seeped back to the family of slaves who believed they had a right to it.
    ‘So now you hope to reclaim it,’ Belisarius said.
    ‘There’s every chance those chanting monks won’t realise the value of what they have.’ Macson glanced at Belisarius, calculating. ‘And of course there may be profit to be made from it. For both of us.’
    Such a curiosity, Belisarius conceded, would be of great value to the collectors of Constantinople, perhaps even in the emperor’s court itself. The latter Romans, all good Christians, were just as fond of superstitions and oracles, omens and augers as their pagan ancestors.
    Of course when they got their hands on this Menologium, if it existed at all, the manipulative Macson would think nothing of betraying Belisarius in order to keep any profit to himself. But Belisarius also had no doubt of his own ability to cope with such a situation when it arose.
    That night Caradwc weakened. Macson came and said that the old man was asking for Belisarius. He longed to hear Belisarius talk of the holy sites he had visited.
    So, in the light of a fire built in the ruins of Banna’s headquarters building, Belisarius spoke of Bethlehem, where he had seen a grotto faced with marble, known to be the site of Jesus’ birth. And he spoke of Jerusalem, where he had seen the hill of Golgotha, and the rock where the cross of Jesus had been raised, where now stood an immense silver cross and a bronze lamp-bearing wheel. And he spoke of a mighty church erected by the first Emperor Constantine, at the site where his mother Helena had discovered the True Cross.
    ‘Helena, yes,’ Caradwc whispered. ‘The British always loved Helena ...’
    Those were the last words he spoke, and by the morning he was dead. With help from Belisarius his son buried him on the ridge that overlooked the river, his grave marked by a simple wooden cross.

X
    Some days after her talk with Rhodri, as the whale-blubber candles burned smokily in the hall and the conversation rumbled contentedly, Gudrid approached her father with her suggestion that he should go back to Lindisfarena.
    She wasn’t surprised when he was sceptical.
    ‘It might be fun to split open a few monkish heads,’ Bjarni said. ‘But it’s not what we’re