Secrets of the Dead

XXII

Constantinople – April 337

ANOTHER SUN IS setting as the dust of another day begins to settle. The shopkeepers hang their shutters; the smiths and potters douse their fires for the night. Behind closed doors, pickpockets flex their fingers, murderers sharpen their knives, and jealous wives stir poison in their husbands’ wine.

I wait on the hillside watching copper sunlight streak the sea below. I’m standing sentry duty, patrolling the frontier between day and night. I don’t know who I’m looking for; I’m hoping I’ll know him when I see him. I’m alone. Simeon wanted to come, but I sent him away. His story about the message left in the church hardly seems credible – but I’m curious to see where it leads.

The statue of Venus stands in a small square where five roads meet, on the southern slopes of the city overlooking the sea. Inevitably, prostitutes use it as a rendezvous, though there aren’t so many about tonight. Perhaps my watching puts them off.

Like sentries the world over, my mind wanders and I remember …

… tumbling out of bed in the darkness, pulling on my coarse wool cloak and trying not to wake the others. The night was so cold that the waterskins have frozen solid and cracked open. It’s the darkest day of the darkest month, in one of the darkest places on earth.

Constantine opens the door and we slip out. Across the parade ground, along behind the headquarters and past the stables. At this hour, the world exists as smells and sounds: woodsmoke from the ovens, sheep bleating in their pen as they wait for the butcher, the slurp of a horse munching hay from the byre. The main gate is locked, but there’s a postern in the east tower and the sentry’s asleep.

Beyond the walls, our boots crunch the frosty grass. We’ve crossed a frontier; we’re beyond the edge of the world. We scramble over the earthen dyke, down into the valley and across the stream, up the facing hill. My head hurts with the cold but it’s a good pain: clean and pure.

At the top of the hill stands a copse of three birch trees and a holly bush. There’s light in the sky now, though no sun. Constantine halts, orients himself to the bluest part of the horizon, and waits. His misting breath makes a nimbus of the air around him.

‘If the Tribune finds out we left camp without permission, we’ll have night-time guard duty for a week,’ I grumble (it must be early in our lives, this memory; I don’t think we’re more than sixteen). ‘Or worse. What if the locals find us, two Roman soldiers on the wrong side of the wall?’

Constantine draws his sword and points it at the horizon, then swings it round behind us. ‘Do you know what the difference is between here and there?’

‘Better-looking women?’ I guess.

He points back to the fort, dimly visible on the ridge behind us. ‘That wall. Behind it, no one fears attack. In front, there’s nothing worth defending.’

‘Does that make you feel better about standing here freezing to death and listening to the shadows?’

He’s not paying me any attention. ‘Do you know why?’

‘Why what?’

‘Why the empire means peace?’

‘Because our armies beat the fight out of anyone who threatens us.’

‘Conformity.’ He’s still looking at the fort behind us. ‘There are fourteen thousand miles of frontier in our empire, and on every one of them there’s a fort that looks like that, and the same men inside speaking the same language. Whether you’re looking at the Danube, the Nile or the Tyne you taste the same food, hear the same songs, praise the same gods.’

I stamp my feet and wonder how I’ll explain frostbite to the centurion. Constantine turns to me.

‘Why do we pray to the gods?’

I rub my eyes; I’m too tired to be having this discussion now. The black sky above is softening to an imperial purple.

But Constantine’s waiting for an answer. ‘To avoid bad fortune?’

‘Exactly.’ It’s what he wanted me to say. ‘But perhaps we should expect more from our gods. They’re gods, after all.’

‘They’re jealous, adulterous, murderous – parricidal, fratricidal, infanticidal – and have a strange taste for bestiality.’

‘Old gods.’ He dismisses them the same way we dismiss old men. ‘You know there was a Greek philosopher, I’ve forgotten his name, who said the old gods were just stories – real men, whose legends got exaggerated over generations until we thought they must have been gods.’

I touch the iron amulet I wear around my neck, my lucky charm to ward off evil.

‘For the last fifty years our rulers behaved like those old gods and almost lost the empire. We need to look beyond. A higher god.’

‘Change begins at the top.’

‘The old gods are lords of darkness. We ought to worship a god of light. A single god for a single world.’ He plucks a berry from the holly tree and squeezes it between his fingers. It looks as though he’s pricked himself. ‘The light came into the world and the darkness could not comprehend it.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Something I heard in the mess.’ He sounds far away. ‘Wherever you are in the empire, you look up and you see the sun and know that he’s with you. Warming your back, ripening your crops, lighting your way. Even in the dead of winter, it returns. Unconquerable light.’

He turns to the east, arms outstretched. A dull glow glimmers on the horizon. But for the moment, the sun stays down, and the world’s in darkness.

I wonder why I have this memory. Not because it mattered later. It doesn’t say so in Alexander’s Chronicon, but historians who are free to write after he’s gone will record that Constantine’s contribution to the defence of the empire was to weaken its borders. He pulled the field army back and concentrated it deep in the empire, leaving auxiliaries and local levies to patrol the frontiers. As the frontier populations mingle freely, half the people they were supposed to keep out were their own relations.

Like letting the hull of the boat rot, and hoping you’ve got enough buckets to bail you out, said a friend who worked in Levantine shipping.

But the memory persists. Constantine, waiting for the dawn with dewy eyes, determined to find something better over the horizon and convinced he’ll get there.

I blink. Someone’s coming up the street towards me, a stout old man with the hood of his cloak raised against the evening breeze. He sees me, pauses, pulls back the hood to reveal white hair tufted around a bald scalp. It’s Aurelius Symmachus.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘Walking.’ His eyes go over me. ‘More than you’re doing.’

‘I’m waiting for someone.’

‘And still waiting to find out who killed Bishop Alexander? The Augustus will be getting impatient.’

I’m only half listening to him, wondering why he’s here. Is he the man I’m supposed to meet? He’s certainly not acting as if he expected to run into me.

‘Have you spoken with the Christians?’ he demands.

‘They suggested I speak to you. Your friend Porfyrius, in particular, had some very interesting stories about the persecutions.’

Symmachus rolls his eyes. ‘There’s nothing a Christian loves better than telling you about his own past misdeeds. It lets him think he’s improved himself.’

I don’t disagree – but I’m surprised to hear him say it. ‘I thought Porfyrius was your friend.’

‘He was my guest. When you get to my age, you don’t bother with the fictions of friendship.’

Again, I don’t disagree.

‘Do you know what I believe in?’ Symmachus asks unprompted. ‘Rome. Diocletian didn’t persecute the Christians out of spite. He wanted to heal the empire – to end the divisions that had ruined so many emperors and let in the barbarians. He thought if he could unite Rome under a common faith, he’d save the empire. Constantine has the same agenda and a different god. That’s all.’

Again, I remember that winter’s morning with Constantine.

‘Constantine believes in a unifying god,’ I agree. ‘But he doesn’t try to compel piety with hot irons and the rack.’

‘I suppose you think that makes him more devout.’

He swings his stick and hobbles away, surprisingly fast. Six paces on, he turns back.

‘Think about Alexander,’ he warns me. ‘Whatever they say about love and peace, every religion needs its blood sacrifice.’

Ten paces more and he’s vanished. In all the time we’ve been talking, I’ve been watching the statue behind him for anyone loitering there. Now I can hardly see it: night’s falling fast.

But not so fast that I miss him. A tall, thin figure – not much more than a shadow among shadows – strides out of the gloom to the statue. He pauses, bends as if to fix the strap of his sandal, then walks on.

A new shape’s appeared in the darkness. I can see the squat outline of a box or a case sitting on the step next to the statue. I hurry down and pick it up.

It’s a document case, a leather box with brass bindings. The cheeks bulge; when I lift it, I can feel the weight inside. My finger traces the Greek letters carved into the ivory handle.

ALEXANDROS.

The man who left the case has almost vanished between two tenements – but there’s a cluster of lights at the end of the alley where votive lamps burn in front of a small shrine. For a moment, he’s silhouetted against the dappled firelight like a monster emerging from its cave. Tall and spindly, long legs and a short tunic.

He turns left and disappears.

I hurry after him – as best I can, with old legs and the case weighing on my arm. Down to the shrine and left, up the hill. It should be dark, but it isn’t: even at night, the city seems to glow with the brightness of its own existence. But if I can see him …

Struggling to keep up, my footsteps ring loud on the pavement. The man ahead looks back and sees me. For another few yards he tries to wish me away, or pretend he hasn’t noticed. Then he checks again, sees the case in my hand and loses all doubt. He breaks into a run.

I can’t go much faster, certainly not carrying the bag. Should I drop it? Even if I did, I probably couldn’t catch him. He’s almost at the top of the hill now, and once he crosses the main road he can disappear into the warren of streets in the old town and be lost for good.

A thin figure in a white tunic sprints past me. He looks familiar, though I can’t see enough to be sure. The man ahead sees him and seems to panic. He hesitates, then ducks down a side street. It’s no escape. By the time I get there, I can hear the thuds and grunts of a bare-knuckle fight in the darkness. The man’s been caught and is wrestling his pursuer on the ground. He breaks free, springs up like a dog. A high wall confines the alley: he gets his arms over the top and kicks to get himself over. I try to grab his legs, but he lashes out and catches me in the face. He’s over the wall and gone. My mouth’s sour with blood and numb with pain, but nothing compared to the fury of letting him escape.

‘Who is he?’

It’s Simeon, picking himself up off the ground and rubbing his shoulder. I told him not to come, but it doesn’t matter now. I need to get over the wall and I can’t do it by myself. I make him crouch against the wall and cup his hands to lift me into the darkness. The bricks are cold and uneven; I half-expect I’ll pull it down with my bare hands if my old arms don’t give out first. I flap and flail like a fish to get myself up.

‘Should I –?’

I’ve made it. I lie on top of the wall for a second, gasping the night air. ‘Hand me the bag.’ It’s the one thing I’ve got; I’m not going to let it go.

Simeon passes it up to me.

‘Now go and find the Watch.’

He nods and runs back down the alley. Clutching the bag, I drop down behind the wall. My knees jar, but nothing breaks.

I’m in a building site. One day it’ll be a well-appointed villa for a court official; at the moment, it’s a maze of low brick walls and shallow ditches barely visible in the darkness. I strain my eyes looking for the fugitive, but there’s nothing.

As far as I can make out, the wall surrounds the entire site, but there must be a gate somewhere. I edge my way around the perimeter, scanning the darkness. The harder I look, the more my eyes adjust, the more complicated the picture becomes. In the dark, every plank or pillar or half-built wall takes on the shape of a man. But if I can get to the gate before he does, I might still catch him.

I follow the wall around a corner and on a little further. My hand trails along the brick, feels a gap, then rough wood, hinges and a hasp. The gate. I push against it, but it doesn’t move. The builders probably locked it from the outside when they left.

He hasn’t got out that way. He might have climbed back over the wall, but not without making a noise. That means he’s still in there, trapped with me like a gladiator in the arena.

And I’ve still got Alexander’s document case weighing me down. I move away from the gate and lay the case in a ditch behind a knee-high wall, scraping loose earth over it. Every sound plays on my imagination, distorted by fear, until I don’t know what I’m hearing. Perhaps I was wrong – perhaps he’s long gone, and come morning I’ll still be squatting here in the mud, alone.

I can’t bear the silence any longer.

‘Are you there?’

No answer. The night swallows my words.

‘Who are you?’

Nothing.

‘Did you kill Alexander?’

I hear a clatter from my right, the noise of scattering pebbles. He must be moving again. I peer cautiously over the wall. The night breeze blows the sound to me; I think I glimpse movement.

On all fours, I crawl along behind the wall. The ground’s pitted with loose stones, which dig into my palms and knees, but I can’t see to avoid them. I come up against a pile of tiles and almost send them flying.

I’m nearly there. I can see the silhouette of his head just above the low parapet, swaying slightly as he glances this way and that. He doesn’t know where I am.

I leap up – and stop, defeated. It’s not a man; it’s a bucket hanging from a rope on a tall scaffold. When the wind blows, the bucket moves; if it goes too far, the gravel inside it rattles. That’s what I heard.

And he knew it. He’s had me all along. Before I can move, he’s there behind me. He grabs an arm and pins it behind my back; he reaches past my face and grabs the rope dangling from the scaffold, twisting it around my neck. He’s going to throttle me. I struggle, but he’s stronger than me. The bucket bounces against my chest, the gravel shaking like a death rattle.

And suddenly there are shouts and light. Flames light up the broken ground. Simeon’s brought the Watch. Firm hands pull my antagonist off me. The rope unwinds; I collapse, gasping. By the time I’ve stood up, they’ve kicked my assailant pretty well into submission.

I walk over and stare down. Hobnailed boots pin him to the ground. He’s a gaunt man with close-cropped grey hair and blood trickling out of his nose. Even now, there’s a proud, superior sneer he can’t shake off his face.

‘Why did you leave the document case at the statue?’

‘My master ordered me to.’

‘Who’s your master?’

He sniffs and wipes his arm across his face, smearing blood along it. Dark eyes look up at me, resist me.

The Watch sergeant puts his boot on the man’s hand and slowly presses down. Something snaps; the man screams. Not an insensible, animal scream, but a name.

‘Aurelius Symmachus!’