Dragović lay a few feet away, dead, a single bullet punched through his skull. Abby looked at him for a moment, just to be sure. Then she turned and headed for the light.
XLVII
Constantinople – July 337
THE PALACE IS still unfinished, but renovations have already started. Murals have been whitewashed over, ready to take new paint; inscriptions filled in with cement. A whole mosaic floor showing the labours of ancient heroes has been lifted out, to be replaced with salutary scenes from the life of Christ. Through a doorway, I glimpse a room crowded with statues: a marble host stoically awaiting their fate. Soon they’ll be sold off, or recut into something more fashionable. I can empathise.
An age has passed. Constantine is sealed in his porphyry sarcophagus, surrounded by the Christian apostles. Porfyrius’s corpse, rescued from the rooftop, is embalmed and on a boat to Rome, in accordance with his last wishes. I don’t know what happened to Crispus. The body was gone by the time I came down from the rooftop.
I’m the last one left. An old man, standing in a corridor, waiting to hear his fate.
The door opens. A slave beckons me in. Flavius Ursus stands behind a desk, arms folded. Two secretaries sit in front of him with tablets and styli. A breeze blows through the open window from one of the inner courtyards, chattering with the sound of a fountain.
He dismisses the secretaries and studies me. His face is unreadable.
‘You’ve had an extraordinary life, Gaius Valerius.’
I note the past tense.
‘There’s been a lot of discussion of what you’ve done. Some men think you should be executed for your part in the plot against the Emperor. Others say you saved the empire.’
I stay silent. Whatever they’ve said, the judgement’s already been made.
‘Some people are saying that they saw Constantine that day, his spirit rising above the pyre to heaven. The new Bishop of Constantinople hasn’t contradicted them.’
The new Bishop of Constantinople is Eusebius. Constantius confirmed him in the post last week.
‘As for what you were doing on the roof, with known enemies of the state …’ He shakes his head. ‘If you hadn’t sent me that message, things might have been different. As it is, everything is settled as it should be.’
Everything is settled. Constantine’s three sons – Constantius, Claudius and Constans – will divide their inheritance equally. Each with his own court, each with his own army needing conquests, battle and spoils. I give it three years before there’s open war.
‘You did the right thing,’ he says. ‘You’ve earned your rest. Go back to your villa in Moesia and enjoy your retirement.’
There’s something else he wants to say. He stares out the window into the courtyard, trying to find the words. He picks up a marble paperweight, a bird, and plays with it absent-mindedly.
‘You of all men ought to know. Up on the roof – was it really …?’
‘No,’ I say firmly.
‘I didn’t think so.’ He puts down the bird. His hand reaches for a piece of paper, another piece of work. Instinctively, he starts to read it. When he looks up, he’s surprised to see I’m still there.
‘My secretary will give you the necessary permissions on your way out. Go home to Moesia and rest.’
A reassuring smile, one old soldier to another.
‘If anything comes up, I’ll send someone.’
Belgrade, Serbia – June
It felt like the first day of summer. On Knez Mihailova, you could barely move for all the tables and chairs jamming the pavement outside the cafés. Geraniums spilled out from the concrete planters. Abby, dressed for work in a cream suit, sat bare-legged in the sun and picked away at an ice cream, letting it melt on her tongue. Behind her, a big-screen television showed a tennis match from Wimbledon.
She saw Nikolić, scanning the café tables with a newspaper under his arm, and waved him over.
‘You look well,’ she said.
‘You too.’
He ordered a coffee and angled his chair so as not to be distracted by the TV. He looked anxious, Abby thought. Fair enough, given that last time we ended up making him our getaway driver.
‘Thanks for agreeing to see me.’
‘A pleasure. You are in Belgrade on business?’
‘Different business to last time. I’m back in my old job with the International Criminal Tribunal. We’re here for some meetings.’
‘On the side of the sheriff. Last time, I was not so sure.’
‘Neither was I.’ It was the first time she’d been back to Belgrade since she’d fled that day in Nikolić’s car. She’d been nervous about returning; she’d avoided the Kalemegdan Citadel. But the seasons had changed – she’d changed.
As unemotionally as she could, she told him what had happened: the message hidden in the poem, how they’d gone to Istanbul –
‘But in 326, Constantine intended he would be buried in Rome,’ Nikolić interrupted.
‘If you’d been with us, you could have saved us a trip. We worked it out in the end.’
She carried on: the catacomb, the staurograms, and the sarcophagus that had been walled up for centuries. Nikolić heard her out in silence, letting his coffee go cold.
When she’d finished, he sat for a long time in silence.
‘Every time I see you, your story is more remarkable.’
Her ice cream had melted into a pool at the bottom of the dish. She scooped it up with her spoon.
‘Everything except the ending. The coffin was empty – it was all for nothing.’
‘Dragović died,’ he reminded her. ‘I saw it on television – his body pulled out of the ground. They had to show it here so we would believe he was dead.’ He thought a moment longer.
‘Of course, there is another possibility.’
‘What?’
‘There is another legend associated with Constantine. His mother Helena made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land just before she died. There, it is said, the Christians showed her the place where the True Cross had been kept secret since the Crucifixion of Christ. One report says that she proved it was the right one by bringing an old peasant woman back from the dead.’
Behind her, on the grass at Wimbledon, the Serbian player had won a set. People at the surrounding tables applauded and shouted encouragement.
‘You think –?’
‘Your poem – this word which is signum in Latin, tropaion in Greek. I said it has many meanings. It can be a battle standard or a military insignia – but it is also used by religious writers to refer to the Cross.’
‘The saving sign that lights the path ahead.’
‘And the symbol you found – the staurogram. I told you comes from the Greek word stavros, meaning “cross”. Many people think it is a variant of Constantine’s Christogram, but in fact it has a different origin. In very early manuscripts, scribes used it as an abbreviation, a shorthand symbol for writing “cross”.’
Abby considered it. ‘You’re saying we might have found the True Cross – the one Jesus was actually crucified on – and not even known it?’
Nikolić thought for a moment, then smiled in defeat. ‘Who knows? You said there was nothing in the coffin except dust. All history turns to dust eventually.’
He waved to the waiter for another coffee. ‘Maybe you can go down one time and have another look?’
She shivered at the thought. ‘It’s impossible. When Dragović blew up the tomb, he didn’t just take out that bit of the catacomb. There was an apartment block sitting on top of it: the whole thing came down. The landlord poured about a million tons of concrete over it so he could rebuild quickly. It wasn’t Vatican land so there was nothing they could do.’