she couldn’t have moved. She closed her eyes and listened for her own death.
In that ancient catacomb, time became a river flowing through her. She didn’t know how long she lay there in the grave. It could have been an hour, or a day or three. Her only companion was stone. Its smell filled her nose; it pressed against her ears until the blood pumping through them felt like the pulse of the rock. It embraced her, so that she no longer knew where flesh ended and rock began. With nowhere to flow, her tears pooled in her eyes. She wondered if, given a few millennia, they might bore a channel to the surface and well up as a spring.
But, by degrees, feeling returned. She felt pins and needles prickling her legs; an ache in her shoulder where a knob of rock dug into it. She reached out into the passage. The space felt good.
Tentatively, tugging with her free arm, she wriggled herself out of the niche into the tunnel. She felt the smooth plastic dome of her helmet, and when she flicked the switch on the lamp it came on.
Dragovic 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
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.’
‘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.’
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 cafes. 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 Nikolic, scanning the cafe 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.
