Secrets of the Dead

XVIII

Constantinople – April 337

I SIT IN the stern of the boat. The sun’s setting over Constantinople; the palace is in shadow, while on the opposite shore the roofs of Chrysopolis burn gold. I’m in a black mood. I’m furious that I let Severus provoke me, but that’s passing. It’s not the first time I’ve lost my temper. There’s something deeper, something malignant inside me that I feel but can’t touch.

I force myself to think about the substance of our discussion. If Constantine’s son Claudius has sent his chief of staff from Trier to Constantinople, he must be worried for his father. More accurately: worried for his inheritance. As Constantine himself proved thirty years ago in York, a son’s place is with his dying father. When the crown slips, he wants to be there to catch it.

It’s a shock to think that Constantine might be dying. He seemed well enough when I saw him. But I’m ignorant. Constantine has physicians and doctors who examine every drop of bile or blood; he also has the slaves who attend him. If there’s blood in his stool, or strange marks on his skin, or if he’s up half the night coughing out his guts, someone will know. And the news will spread to those who are willing to pay for it.

So why was Severus interested in Alexander? I don’t believe he had Constantine’s secret will. If it was that important, Constantine would be turning the city upside down, not asking me to make discreet enquiries.

A dense web surrounds Alexander. I try to trace its spirals in my thoughts. Symacchus, unreconstructed adept of the old religion, and Eusebius, high priest of the new. Asterius the Sophist, peering into cathedrals he’s forbidden from entering. Simeon the Deacon. Now Severus and Ursus.

Symacchus the persecutor who could have killed Alexander thirty years ago.

Asterius, who perjured his faith, while Alexander kept his.

Eusebius, the churchman whose promotion Alexander blocked.

Simeon, always in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Severus the Crow, waiting for death and the future.

And Alexander, the fly in the centre of the web, jerking and twitching as the spiders stalk their threads.

A boat rowing across the Bosphorus is a good place to consider these things. The slaves strain, the oars swing; the boat seems to move, but the coast never gets any nearer.

I sleep badly, then wake late. I sit in my empty house and pick at Alexander’s manuscripts that Simeon gave me. One’s called The Search for Truth. I wonder if Simeon meant it ironically.

You cannot marry truth with violence, nor justice with cruelty.

Religion is to be defended not by killing but by dying; not by cruelty but by patient endurance; not by sin but by good faith.

Humanity must be defended if we want to be worth the name of human beings.

I put down the book and roll it up. I won’t find the truth I’m seeking there. It makes him sound like a reasonable man – likeable, even. Nothing to suggest why someone would want to kill him.

Religion is to be defended not by killing but by dying. Who was he defending his religion from? An old enemy like Symmachus? Someone from within his own church? Or a man like Severus, for whom religion and politics are two faces of the same coin?

Alexander can’t speak from beyond the grave, I realise. He isn’t in it yet. He’ll still be lying out for the mourners to pay their respects.

A morbid curiosity overcomes me. I never knew him in life. Perhaps seeing him in death will give me knowledge.

In Rome, denied recognition, the Christians squeezed their churches into converted shops, warehouses, even private homes. When Constantine built his new city, he endowed it with plenty of churches – but the Christian congregation has grown so fast they’ve overflowed and resorted to the old expedients. The Church of Saint John fills the ground floor of a tenement block near the city walls that used to be a bathhouse. Planks cover the holes where the pools used to be; the Triton on the wall has been defaced, and the sea nymphs painted over, though they’ve kept a few of the fish. Whoever decided that Alexander should be laid out here didn’t want to encourage his mourners.

On a Monday morning, the church is almost deserted. I’m glad there’s no one to see me: I feel awkward enough trespassing in their sanctuary. Alexander’s body lies on an ivory litter at the front of the church. Candles burn at the four corners; incense smokes from a brazier at his feet. He’s dressed in a plain white robe, feet towards the door and a white cloth covering his face. I remember the weapon that killed him, the blood and hair matted on the bust, and hesitate. I never used to be this squeamish.

I pull back the cloth and wince. The undertaker’s tried his best, but only made it worse. Bloodstains mottle the beard and the skin’s floury where a cosmetic’s been applied. Worst of all is the forehead. It’s been smashed in, a single overwhelming blow that shattered the skull and tore a bloody gash in the skin. There are small perforations where the undertaker tried to sew it shut before abandoning the effort.

I reach out two fingers and pull back the eyelids. A clear liquid oozes out like tears – a salve that the undertaker’s used to hold the eyes shut. A pair of deep brown eyes gaze up at me with what looks like surprise.

And suddenly the surprise is mine. I’ve known him more than half my life. The tutor at the wedding chasing after the boy who’d climbed up on the bridal bed; and again, in the tent on campaign in Italy, bent over a table teaching the boy Greek, while Constantine pondered his god’s intentions. I would have seen him dozens of times around Constantine’s household, and never paid him the least attention. Did I know his name? I must have done.

He also tutored one of my sons, apparently.

Strange that I should have forgotten him. Like turning the house inside out for a lost coin, only to find it in your purse all along.

The smells of incense and embalming fluid have seeped into my stomach. Dark spots blot my vision; I need air. Leaving Alexander’s face uncovered, I run to the door. There’s a square at the end of the road with a plane tree. If I can just sit down in the shade a few minutes I’ll be fine. I’ll –

‘Gaius Valerius?’

I can’t ignore him – I’ve almost run into him. I step back and see a man in a formal gown, sparkling eyes and a smile too wide for the horrors inside. The man I met in Symmachus’s garden.

‘Porfyrius?’

‘I came to pay my respects to Bishop Alexander.’ He sees my ashen face and breaks off. ‘Are you …?’

‘I need to sit down.’

He steers me to his litter. I don’t lie down – I’d feel I was lying on my own funeral bier. I sit awkwardly on the edge of the platform, in the shade of the canopy, while one of the slaves fetches water from a fountain.

‘What are you doing here?’ I ask.

‘Paying my respects to Alexander.’

‘You went to see him in the library.’ My voice is shaky, still grappling with the memories. ‘Did you know him well?’

‘He helped me understand the truth of the Christian religion.’

I don’t hide my surprise. ‘I thought … as a friend of Symmachus …’

‘Aurelius Symmachus is a Stoic.’ A wry smile. ‘Outward things cannot touch his soul.’

‘He was less accommodating thirty years ago.’

‘We all were.’ His eyes lose focus for a moment, then return. ‘Do you want to know the truth, Valerius? Thirty years ago I persecuted the Christians just as furiously as Symmachus. That was my first encounter with Alexander, and it wasn’t pleasant.’

The web I drew around the dead bishop takes on another strand. ‘What made you change your mind?’

‘I saw the sign of God’s truth.’

It’s impossible to know if he’s serious. He never stops smiling; every word he says has a subjective quality, as if he’s merely testing how it sounds. I try to imagine that smiling face standing over a brazier, digging his iron into the coals.

He shrugs. ‘I was a former proconsul who’d slipped off the path of honour, and I was ambitious.’ A quick look to see if I understand. ‘There was a scandal – perhaps you heard? Carmen et error – a poem and a mistake, as Ovid said. The next thing I knew, I was sitting in a small house on the edge of the world, in the shadow of Trajan’s Danube wall, contemplating my errors. Ten whole years I spent there.’ A sigh, a shrug. ‘At least I wrote a lot of poems. And I met Alexander.’

‘Why was he there?’

‘A religious dispute.’

He kicks at a loose stone in the road. ‘You can imagine how awful it was – the persecutor and his victim, thrown together again after all those years. And yet, we became friends. Unlikely, I know, but Alexander was extraordinary. I’d tried to make a martyr of him and now he became a saint. He never mentioned what had happened. I waited and I waited – it drove me mad. I analysed every gesture, every word he said, convinced it was part of some trap. One day, I couldn’t bear it any more. I asked him straight out if he remembered me.’

His voice drops. ‘He forgave me everything. Not the grudging forgiveness you might get from a friend you’d done wrong, lording his generosity over you. No rebuke, no lecture. He said, “I forgive you,” and that was all. He never mentioned it again.’

And a lot of good it did him, the cruel voice inside me retorts. A picture flashes in my mind of the white corpse laid out on the bier. I can smell embalming fluid on my fingers. I feel ashamed, and resent it.

Porfyrius stretches. ‘Do you know what Alexander wrote in one of his books? “In order to rule the world, we have to have the perfect virtue of one rather than the weakness of many.”’

‘He was speaking about Constantine?’

‘He was speaking about God. But what is true of God serves for His creation. For too long we had too many gods and too many emperors and we suffered for it. With Constantine, we have one God, one ruler, one empire united. No division, no hatred, no war. Who couldn’t believe in that?’

That raises my eyebrows. ‘No war? You know Constantine’s massing his army for a campaign against Persia as we speak.’

I stand up from the litter, driven by a surge of anger I thought I’d mastered. ‘You want to know why I didn’t convert, when everyone from the Emperor to the bathhouse attendant did?’

Porfyrius waits politely. That only makes me angrier.

‘The hypocrisy. You preach peace, forgiveness, eternal life – and then you end up like Alexander, laid out on a slab with your eyes glued shut.’

Porfyrius laughs and laughs. ‘Do you think you won’t end up like that too?’