Secrets of the Dead

‘That’s classified.’ She grinned. ‘But yes. Whenever there’s a power shift, things open up. If we’re lucky, a few of the bad guys fall through the cracks into our hands.’ She took the bill out of the shotglass where the waiter had left it, and put some dinars on the table. ‘There’ll be someone else, a new Zoltan Dragovic, picking up where he left off soon enough. It never goes away.’

‘But if there are people like you pushing back, they cannot win either.’

Abby blushed at the compliment. They both stood and shook hands.

‘I’ll probably be in Belgrade quite a lot in the next few months. Perhaps we could have dinner some time.’

‘I would like that.’

She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. ‘Thank you for saving me.’

‘Go well, as the Romans used to say.’

Moesia – August 337

The fire’s burned low; the slaves have gone to bed. Cold steam beads on the vault of my bathhouse and drips in puddles on the floor. My tunic’s soaked. Perhaps the murderers won’t come tonight.

They’ll come soon, though. For all Flavius Ursus’s smiles, I know he won’t let me live. I know too much, not just from the last three months but the last thirty years. I’m the past. As long as I’m alive they’ll see me as a threat.

First they get rid of you, then they send the assassins.

I stare at my reflection in the bottom of the empty pool, a blurry likeness drifting above the nymphs and gods in the tiles. This is me. I’ve spent my life among men who stood like gods; when I’m gone, their names and faces will survive in stone and mine will wash away from history.

Unless …

Did Crispus rise from the dead? Was Porfyrius’s story true, or just a vast lie to justify his coup? I’ve asked myself this question every hour of every day in the last two months. I still don’t know. Sometimes I think of the glazed eyes and say it couldn’t have been, but then I remember his last, forgiving smile and can’t imagine it was anyone else.

Have I spent my whole life worshipping the wrong gods? I feel like a traveller who’s nearing the end of a long journey, only to discover he’s been facing the wrong way all that time. I’ve gone too far from where I started. But how can I continue on this path, even one more step, if I know it’s the wrong direction?

Does it matter? If Crispus did rise, it was surely a miracle – but no different to the miracle the Christians profess, that a man was murdered and God brought him back. If this is God’s gift, we hardly deserve it. Men like Eusebius and Asterius take their faith and use it as a weapon, dividing the world into those who are for them and against them. Constantine, for all his faults, tried harder than most to give the empire peace. He thought his new religion would achieve it. His mistake, I suppose, was to rely on the Christians rather than their god.

Symmachus: The Christians are a confused and vicious sect. I can’t deny it. For what Asterius and Eusebius did, his verdict sounds too kind.

But should there be nothing good or true in the world because bad men might turn it to evil? Should we surrender the field to the persecutors and torturers, men like Maxentius and Galerius and old Maximian?

I remember a sentence I read in Alexander’s book. Humanity must be defended if we want to be worthy of the name of human beings.

A knock at the door. A shiver of dread shakes through me, but it’s just a reflex. I’m prepared. My tomb is dug, out in the woods beyond the house; a sealed jar with a few keepsakes – the scroll with my notes, Porfyrius’s necklace – is waiting in my coffin. I’ll take my secrets to the grave. If anyone ever finds me, let them puzzle out what it means. I’ve reached the end of my life and I don’t know anything.

The knock sounds again, loud and impatient. No doubt Flavius Ursus keeps them busy these days, tying up loose ends. I shouldn’t make them wait.

I get to my feet, but I don’t look round. My gaze fixes at the bottom of the pool, a tiny piece of decoration I’ve never noticed before, where two tendrils of seaweed tangle over each other in white space, making the sign of the Cross. Such a simple shape – you see it everywhere.

I’m ready. I’m not afraid of dying, or of what comes after. My voice, when I speak, is clear and strong.

‘Come in.’

Historical Note

My first major encounter with Constantine the Great was an undergraduate essay titled ‘Did Constantine feel he had a divine mission, and, if so, was it Christian?’ This book is, in a way, an extended attempt to engage with that same question.

Paul Stephenson’s recent biography of Constantine warns us how hard it is to be sure about the details of his life. ‘The written sources do not exist or are partial; they have not been preserved or have been preserved by design; they have been altered or miscopied; they cannot simply be mined for data.’ The best contemporary source, Eusebius’s Life of Constantine, was written by a churchman with a very particular agenda and focus. Constantine’s selective editing of his own history, described in this novel, was a real process. With that caveat, I’ve tried to be as accurate as possible regarding what the sources say about the history behind this book.

Most of the main characters in the historical narrative really existed. Publilius Optatianus Porfyrius was a poet, exile, and twice Prefect of Rome, who did actually write poems with secret messages which survive in many copies. Eusebius of Nicomedia was one of the principal churchmen of Constantine’s reign, ringleader of the Arian faction during the Arian controversy, and later Bishop of Constantinople. You get some idea of the way he played power politics from the fact that within ten years of the Council of Nicaea (which was, after all, a defeat for him) all his leading opponents had ended up dead or in exile. Asterius the Sophist was a Christian who lapsed during the persecutions, was excommunicated, but remained active in church circles as an eminence grise of the Arian faction. Aurelius Symmachus was a Neoplatonist philosopher and politician from an eminent family of pagans. Flavius Ursus became Consul the year after Constantine’s death, and is presumed to have been high up in the military command. Biographical details for all of them are incomplete, and I’ve used a novelist’s