Secrets of the Dead

XXVIII

Constantinople – May 337

EVEN IN MAY it’s cold before the sun comes up. Constantinople is a city of shadows: footsteps echo on the empty colonnades, the statues seem to come alive. A hundred feet in the air above the forum, Constantine watches me from the top of his column. Thirty feet tall and every inch the god: naked, with a radiate crown whose long spikes reach out to meet the dawn. He carries a spear in one hand, the orb of the world cupped in the other. The engineers mounted it on the column in a single night, so that when the sun came up next day Constantine had appeared above the city as if from heaven. I heard the Christians were furious.

The city feels empty. Constantine left for his war three days ago, dressed in golden armour and drawn in a gilded chariot by four white horses. In his hand was the labarum, the standard he forged before the Milvian Bridge. It’s almost twenty-five years since he unveiled it, and there’s hardly been a year since then it hasn’t led the army into battle. Goths, Sarmatians, Franks, rival emperors – they’ve all met the unconquerable standard and been crushed. And yet it’s hardly suffered a scratch. The golden wreath which frames the monogram is as bright as the day it was made; the sun shines through the nested jewels like stars.

And now it’s time for another departure. Symmachus leaves today on the boat to Piraeus, with an onward journey to some anonymous rock in the Aegean. I’ve come to see him off. I feel I owe him that much.

I descend the steep steps between two warehouses and come out on the quay. And at one end, where a ladder leads down to a waiting skiff, four soldiers from the palace guard stand swapping dirty stories.

I approach. ‘Is Aurelius Symmachus here?’

None of them recognises me, or salutes. They’d still have been children the last time I stood in front of a legion. The sergeant eyes me cautiously, just in case I make trouble.

‘Who wants to know?’

‘A friend of the Augustus.’ I show them the ivory diptych Constantine gave me and they snap to attention.

‘Not arrived yet,’ the sergeant says. He glances at the sky. ‘He’d better be here soon. My shift ends at dawn.’

‘There’s that one,’ a soldier adds. He points to a figure lurking in the doorway of a grain warehouse, the hood of his cloak over his face. ‘He was looking for the prisoner too.’

The figure hears our conversation and steps out of the doorway. The hood drops back: it’s Porfyrius. He seems to have aged in the last week. The theatrical energy I remember from Symmachus’s garden has been subdued; the spark in his eyes has dimmed. To my surprise, he embraces me like an old friend.

‘We old men should stick together,’ he says. ‘Before the young drive us out completely.’

He steps back and gives me a searching look. ‘I heard you didn’t approve what they did to Symmachus.’

‘The Augustus judged the case himself.’

‘You’d have thought if Symmachus wanted to make it so obvious, he’d just have confessed.’

Is he trying to make me say something incriminating? I glance around at the busy wharf: a stevedore sitting on an amphora eating a wrapped pie, a shipping clerk tapping his stylus on a tablet. Wherever you go in this city, there’s always an audience. Best to say nothing.

‘I heard the slave’s testimony was decisive,’ Porfyrius persists. ‘Did you interrogate him yourself?’

I wish I had. Whoever set up Symmachus, the slave was the key.

‘He was tortured in the palace. By next morning, he was on his way to the silver mines in Dardania.’ I open my hands. ‘Sometimes Roman justice moves too quickly for an old man to keep up.’

He nods – it’s as much as he’ll get from me. ‘But you still came to see Symmachus off. It’s good of you.’

‘The Augustus will want to be sure he’s really gone.’ I meant it as a joke, but it comes out sounding cruel. Porfyrius steps back a little.

‘No doubt on that score. Symmachus is a Stoic – he’ll leave with dignity, if nothing else.’

But there’s still no sign of him. The sun comes up; the soldiers grumble. Crates of fish get carted up the road to the market. Porfyrius starts to pace the quay, glancing up the hill expectantly.

The sergeant comes over to us. I have the Emperor’s commission: suddenly, I’m an authority.

‘He was supposed to be here an hour ago. Should we go to his house?’

I’m getting tired of waiting. ‘I’ll go.’

Porfyrius joins me without asking. It’s a hard climb for two old men. By the time we reach Symmachus’s house, we’re both puffing like cart horses.

The door to the house is locked. We ring the bell hanging outside, but no one answers. All his possessions were forfeit: his slaves will have been confiscated and sold, but he should have been left a freedman to prepare for his departure.

‘Maybe he took a different route down to the dock,’ I suggest. ‘We could have missed him on the way down.’

‘There’s a side door.’ Porfyrius is already heading towards the corner of the building. I’ve half a mind to let him go alone, but curiosity makes me follow. There are no windows on this side of the house, just a narrow alley between Symmachus and his neighbour’s mansion. And, halfway down, a wooden door in the brick wall.

Porfyrius tries the handle and it gives. We push through, into a vaulted storeroom that smells of sawdust. Splinters and bark litter the floor: even his firewood’s been taken away. In the adjoining rooms, dust’s already begun to settle.

Another door, another empty room, and suddenly we’re in the bright light of the peristyle, overlooking the garden.

The fish sit motionless in their pond. The blind philosophers watch from their perches in the colonnade. And in the centre of the garden, Aurelius Symmachus lies propped against the side of the pool, head lolling forward.

One glance is enough to know he’s not going anywhere.