Secrets of the Dead

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Constantinople – April 337

I’M DISTRACTED. I should be thinking about the task at hand, but every time I try to concentrate my mind slips the leash and is back in the past. I’m lying on a couch in the triclinium of my house, poring over Alexander’s papers by the light of a bronze lamp. Even the slaves have gone to bed.

Alexander’s Chronicon lies open, walking me through my own history. What strikes me most, in the years after Constantine’s acclamation, is the great profusion of names. Maxentius named Augustus … Severus Caesar killed … Licinius named emperor by Galerius. Names which once carried so much power. Now their statues have been pulled down and their names are never spoken. Not unless someone whispers them off a page in the deep darkness of the night.

Trier – March 307 – Thirty years ago …

When the army acclaimed Constantine emperor, Galerius responded as he always did: with bad grace and a play for time. He accepted Constantine’s accession – he didn’t have the strength to oppose him – but gave him the junior rank of Caesar, rather than the senior rank of Augustus, which Constantine should have inherited from his father. If Galerius hoped to provoke Constantine into an act of treachery, he was disappointed. Constantine accepted the slight without demur, and sent his credentials to Galerius to show he would willingly serve under him.

But emperors aren’t what they used to be. For more than two hundred years after the first Caesar Augustus, one man ruled the empire as sole proprietor. In the last thirty years, it’s become a joint enterprise. I still wonder why. Did the empire become so bloated that no one man could manage it? Or did men somehow shrink in stature, unable to fill the purple shoes of the giants who made Rome? Whichever it is, the ramifications are obvious. Emperors are like rabbits: either there is one, or there are many. Diocletian split his empire into two, then expanded it to four. Some of those four had sons who needed an inheritance; others abdicated, then thought better of it. At last count, there were six men claiming the title of Imperator Invictus – unconquered emperor.

Six men, each jealous of the others, can’t all stay unconquered for long.

Two of those men are a father and son called Maximian and Maxentius. Old Maximian was persuaded to abdicate five years ago, but retirement didn’t agree with him. Young Maxentius was overlooked for promotion, like Constantine, but found an obliging corps of praetorian guards in Rome who, for a consideration, were willing to drape him in purple. They’re an impossible family, each as bad as the other. Both have dainty flushes on their cheeks that make them look permanently embarrassed, and wide, feminine eyes that have seen every wickedness imaginable.

But today they’re on their best behaviour. They’ve come to Constantine’s capital at Trier to celebrate the marriage of Maxentius’s sister Fausta to Constantine. It’s actually Constantine’s second marriage, but his first needn’t detain us. It certainly didn’t detain him, when a quick divorce offered the opportunity for a more advantageous match.

Everyone’s pretending it’s a completely normal occasion. No one’s so crass as to mention the fact that this happy day is also a calculated act of treachery. By allying himself with the pair of father-and-son usurpers, Constantine is leaving Galerius no choice but to move against him.

‘Maximian and Maxentius could have made peace with Galerius and combined to crush me,’ Constantine explained, when I warned him against the match. ‘If Galerius wants to come after me now, he’ll have to attack my new brother- and father-in-law first.’

‘You’ll be obliged to defend them,’ I pointed out.

Constantine smiled. ‘Perhaps.’

For now, harmony reigns. We’re gathered in the throne room of Constantine’s palace, which is decked with garlands and the light of a hundred torches. The marital bed stands in the centre of the room draped with a purple cloth, embroidered in gold with scenes of hunts and battles. It’s only symbolic. The real action will happen elsewhere, later.

I hear singing as the bride approaches, the glow of torches from the chamber beyond. Slaves throw open the doors and there she stands. A veil spun from russet silk covers her face, and her dress is belted under her breasts with a cord tied in the intricate knot of Hercules. The bridegroom’s supposed to unpick it, though knowing Constantine, he’ll probably just cut it.

Her attendants lift her over the threshold – carefully. You don’t want to drop an emperor’s bride in front of him. Everyone’s watching. I’ve seen brides shrink under the attention, but Fausta seems to be enjoying it. She’s only fifteen, but there’s nothing of the virgin in her pose. Under her dress, one leg’s cocked slightly forward, thrusting out her hips and arching her back. As if she’s daring us to imagine what’s going to happen that night.

Constantine steps forward, a torch in his hand and his auspex beside him. The auspex is supposed to read the entrails, though there’ll be no blood sacrifice at Constantine’s wedding. Constantine takes Fausta’s hand and asks her name in the ritual fashion.

‘Wherever you are Gaius, I am Gaia,’ she replies, the words so ancient no one knows what they mean.

When Constantine married the first time, I stood beside him as auspex. Now that he’s an emperor, only a fellow emperor will do. I try not to let it bother me.

Constantine hands her the torch. His brother-in-law-to-be Maxentius passes him a gold ewer filled with water, and Constantine gives that to Fausta, too. Then he pulls back her veil.

Whatever the political merits of the marriage, there’s no denying its physical compensations. The family resemblance comes out well in Fausta: the long-lashed eyes and buttery skin, so effeminate on her father and brother, give her a voluptuous beauty. She’s at an age where her body’s plumped up like ripe fruit, breasts and hips and thighs swelling under her gown, while her face still keeps its childish innocence. A dangerous age.

Constantine leads her to the marriage bed. They recline there in a stylised embrace, while the guests queue to congratulate them. There are three emperors here and precedence is a nightmare, but there’s no question who should go first. Constantine’s mother, the Dowager Empress Helena. She’s sixty, but still the most commanding woman in the room: high cheekbones and a stern mouth, blue eyes that miss nothing, no hint of a stoop in those bony shoulders. Rumour says she was the daughter of a brothel keeper, but I’ve known her all my life and never dared ask. Underneath the applications of white powders and Tyrian vermilion it’s impossible to tell what she’s thinking. Perhaps she’s wishing this was a Christian ceremony. Perhaps she’s thinking she’s seen this scene played out before: when Constantine’s father divorced her to make a more expedient marriage.

In fact, the parallel’s even more excruciatingly exact. Constantine’s father divorced Helena to marry one of old Maximian’s daughters; now Constantine has shrugged off his first wife to marry another of the fecund old man’s children. His uncle-in-law will become his brother-in-law. Even the women of that family are serial usurpers.

A small boy barges into the line behind Helena and grabs the skirts of her dress. No one else would dare touch her, but Crispus is her only grandson and can tap a seam of indulgence that even Constantine can’t access. Perhaps he reminds her of Constantine as a boy: even if you’d only ever seen Constantine’s profile on coins, you’d know Crispus was his son. He has the same round face, the same brilliant light in his eyes. Helena lifts him up on to the bed. Constantine hugs him and ruffles his hair; Fausta lets him give her a kiss on the cheek. She smiles, though it doesn’t reach her eyes. The look she gives him makes me think of a cuckoo sizing up another bird’s eggs.

Crispus’s tutor, a skinny man with a long beard, runs up and pulls him back off the bed. The crowd laugh.

‘What will become of him, do you think? The boy, Crispus.’

A courtier, I can’t remember his name, has sidled up behind me. He tips his cup towards the marriage bed, as if toasting the happy couple’s health.

‘Will the Emperor push him aside, do you think?’

I hate these guessing games. ‘He’s still Constantine’s firstborn son,’ I say firmly. ‘Constantine, of all men, won’t abandon him.’

Constantine knows what it’s like to see your mother jilted for a younger, better-connected woman. Not that it’s stopped him doing exactly the same thing.

Too many wives and too many emperors, and too many sons repeating their fathers’ mistakes. No wonder the empire’s always at war with itself.