He stepped forward. His face swam in and out of the firelight. Deep shadows swallowed his cheeks, so that all she could see was the thrust of his skull, the curly grey hair matted flat by the rain.
Her head spun. She heard the gods calling her on and laughing. She must have died. She lifted the lighter, and the shadows dropped away from his face.
‘Michael?’
XXVI
Constantinople – April 337
‘DID YOU THINK I’d let you go without saying goodbye?’
In an empty tomb, Constantine leans across the unconsecrated altar and looks me in the eye. Last time I saw him he was dressed like a god; now all he wears is a plain white robe and a grey cloak against the evening chill. Only the weave of the cloth betrays its cost.
‘I thought you’d finished with me.’
A dozen gods used to live here. Now there’s only one. On the highest point of the highest hill in the city, Constantine has razed the old Temple of the Twelve Gods and built his mausoleum on its foundations. It’s his second attempt – the first, in Rome, is already occupied. Outwardly, it looks no different from the monuments that his sometime co-emperors built themselves: Maxentius in Rome, Galerius in Thessalonica, Diocletian in Split. A round tower in a square courtyard, with the surrounding arcades housing all the washrooms, lamp-stores and priestly accommodation that will be needed when the new occupant takes up permanent residence.
And he won’t be alone. There are seven niches in the rotunda. One’s for Constantine’s sarcophagus; the other six hold effigies of the twelve apostles of Christ. It’s typical of Constantine. He’s taken away the twelve old gods and put twelve Christian apostles in their place – like for like, pound for pound. When his project’s complete, no one will be able to see the joins.
Gods abandon the world and give way to men. That’s the way of history.
But for the moment, nothing’s completed. Scaffolding covers the entire eastern half of the wall. Dust sheets shroud the twelve effigies in the niches around the room. That’s also typical of Constantine. Great works, still in progress. The whole structure is a giant canister filled with dust. The late sun shines through the coloured glass and makes patterns in the air.
‘That night when we condemned Symmachus – you looked as if you wanted to say something.’
‘It wouldn’t have made any difference.’
I’m determined to resist him, to say the minimum necessary and go home to supervise the slaves packing up my household. I didn’t want to come. It’s only because he’s the Augustus.
‘You were supposed to find me the truth,’ he reminds me.
‘If you wanted it.’
‘You think he’s innocent?’
Something gives inside me. Outrage overflows my pride and spills out. ‘I don’t know if he’s innocent – but I’m sure he’s been set up. I was there when his slave handed the bag over. He could hardly have arranged it to be more incriminating.’
‘But he had the bag.’
‘His slave did.’
‘The slave testified under torture that his master gave it to him. We needed resolution quickly. The Christians were impatient.’ He sees the look on my face and sighs. ‘You never used to be squeamish, Gaius.’
Every religion needs its blood sacrifice. Symmachus saw it coming better than I did.
An awkward silence hangs in the speckled air between us. Constantine gestures around the domed hall. ‘Look at this mess. If I died tomorrow, they wouldn’t know what to do with me.’ He laughs. ‘Don’t worry. I’m not going to die until the Persians are sorted out. A final victory to complete my work.’
A pause. Perhaps it’s occurred to him how many final victories he’s already won.
‘Do you remember Chrysopolis? The day after?’
Chrysopolis – September 324 – Thirteen years earlier …
On a warm Sunday morning, Constantine and his family are taking a walk. The long, hot summer still hasn’t let go: the sky is blue, the sea calm, the ground baked hard. The purple imperial boots kick up puffs of dust as they pick their way among the cypresses and pines on top of the bluffs. Constantine leads the way, with Crispus at his side pointing out details of the great fleet moored below them. I’m just behind. After me come the women and children – the youngest, Constans, only a year old and still in the arms of his wet nurse. They could be any Roman family out gathering berries or looking for eggs. In fact, they’re now undisputed masters of the empire. On the other side of the hill, twenty-five thousand corpses are awaiting burial.
By my count, it’s only the third day since June that I haven’t been in armour. We’ve fought our way through the summer. It’s taken ten years, but the confrontation between Constantine and Licinius has finally come to a head. In June, we marched into Thrace and sent Licinius packing from the Balkans, thirty thousand men lighter. In August, when Licinius hoped to stall us at Byzantium, Constantine literally marched over the city walls by building an earth ramp against them. At the same time, Crispus led our navy from Thessalonica and defeated Licinius’s fleet in the straits at Gallipolis. I was with Constantine at Byzantium, but by all accounts it was a magnificent, daring victory.
Watching them together in front of me now, father and son, it’s easy to believe this is a family touched by the gods. Constantine is just past fifty but as vigorous as ever, a strong man in his late prime. Crispus is a son any man would be proud of. Tall and handsome, with Constantine’s soft-featured good looks and jet-black hair, he’s at an age where fresh experience meets the confidence of youth, and nothing is impossible. He laughs easily and makes others laugh, even his father. When Constantine stumbles – he’s still nursing a thigh wound he sustained in the charge at Hadrianople – Crispus is quick to put out a hand and steady him. Crispus points to the fleet and tells his father stories: this ship grappled Licinius’s flagship; that one, the captain fell overboard because he tripped on a chicken that had escaped its coop.
Without warning, two boys run up behind us and start attacking Crispus with pine branches. Claudius and Constantius, eight and seven years old, Constantine’s elder sons by Fausta. Crispus laughs, finds a stick on the ground and chases his half-brothers shrieking back to their mother.
Constantine turns to me, eyes shining. ‘Was any man ever this happy?’
Yesterday, two hundred thousand men lined up on a dusty plain between Chalcedon and Chrysopolis to contest the fate of the world. It wasn’t Constantine’s greatest battle as a general. No daring ruse, no clever tactics. He put his standard, the labarum, in the centre of his line; he massed his cavalry behind the standard and his infantry behind the cavalry, and launched them in a sledgehammer blow straight at Licinius. Perhaps the magnitude of the occasion made him conservative. Or perhaps, again, he saw what others didn’t: that having been outflanked before and determined not to let it happen again, Licinius had left his centre weak. And that having marched all summer, our army was in a savage mood, ready to end the war quickly.
We’ve reached the end of the point. Gentle waves lap on the rocky shore below; across the sparkling sea, Byzantium rises from its promontory. At the moment it’s a small ferry port: a useful staging post for travellers crossing to Asia or up to the Black Sea, but too far upwind from the Mediterranean to generate any major commerce. At this distance, the only building of any prominence is the baths, with the low line of the hippodrome just visible beyond.
‘Is this what you brought us to see?’ asks Fausta. She’s come up behind us with the infant Constans. Her voice is muffled under the enormous hat and veil she’s wearing to keep the sun off her face. While Constantine’s lived his life at the frontiers, and can walk for miles, she’s a creature of the palace. She can’t comprehend walking anywhere that hasn’t been shaded, pruned and swept. It offends her.