The moment we reach the Principia, ready hands pluck Constantine away from me to some inner chamber. I loiter in a corridor and watch. Guards are moving heavy strongboxes towards the portico at the front of the parade ground, while officials keep count on wax tablets. Everyone seems to know exactly what they’re doing.
The heavy tramp of footsteps rises above the noise as Constantine comes around the corner. A knot of generals and aides in full uniform surround him: somewhere in the last hour he’s found time to scrub his face and put on a gilded cuirass. It’s jarring to see him like this, reclaimed by his old life. We’ve lived in each other’s pockets for months now, first in the palace and then on the road. I wasn’t prepared for how suddenly it would change.
As he comes level with me, I call out, ‘How’s your father? Will he –?’
‘He died two days ago.’ Constantine doesn’t look at me, doesn’t break stride. His entourage brush past, walling him off. ‘The Praetorian Prefect kept it secret until I got here.’
The Praetorian Prefect is marching beside him, a horsehair crest as stiff as a corpse. Constantine’s face is blank: it’s impossible to tell if he resents what they did or if he approves. Does he have a choice?
I fall in behind them as they march through a pair of double doors on to the parade ground. The whole assembled army roars when they see Constantine. He holds up his hands for silence, but they’re in no mood to obey. They keep on shouting, chanting his name and stamping their boots, while Constantine stands there with arms stretched wide apart. It’s impossible to tell who’s controlling whom.
I don’t remember exactly what Constantine says when they eventually fall silent. He tells them his father passed away half an hour ago and they bellow out their grief. He tells them that he, Constantine, has no standing in the empire and that Galerius will appoint a successor to Constantius in due course.
They don’t like that. An angry murmur swells within the crowd – and suddenly it’s not the noise but the crowd itself surging forward. The bodyguards at the front make an effort to hold them back, but it’s curiously ineffective. A dozen legionaries clamber on to the dais and start shouting at Constantine: it’s an extraordinary violation, but he doesn’t move, not even when they grab his arms and drag him down into the crowd. The clamour is deafening. The Praetorian Prefect fingers the hilt of his sword, but doesn’t dare move.
And then a curious thing happens. No one can see Constantine, but somehow the mood changes. Faces brighten; the menace in the air evaporates. The shouts no longer sound angry, but triumphant.
Constantine’s head appears, rising out of the crowd as if he’s being drawn to heaven. The noise redoubles. Somewhere in the scrum, someone’s managed to tie a purple cloak on to him. They hoist him on to a shield and hold him aloft. The shield sways and tilts as they pass it from man to man, but Constantine keeps his balance: shaking the upraised hands, smiling, shouting unheard replies to the acclamations of his men.
For some reason, the image that comes to mind is Neptune, his seaborne chariot skimming across the waves. Constantine looks magnificent – a god defying the elements.
But his footing is precarious. And if he falls, he’ll drown.
‘Count Valerius?’
I’m not in York. I’m standing in a ransacked apartment surveying the wreckage of a dead man’s life. And Simeon the deacon is waiting for me.
I’m embarrassed by my lapse into memory. To cover it, I ask, ‘Do you know a man called Publilius Porfyrius, a former Prefect of Rome?’
‘He was a friend of Alexander’s.’
‘He was in the library today – he said Alexander asked to meet him there. You didn’t see them together?’
‘Alexander had me running errands most of the day. I was barely in the library.’
‘What sort of errands?’
‘Fetching more paper and ink from the stationers. Picking up some books he’d had copied, and some documents from the imperial archives for his history. Delivering messages. That was why I was away when he died.’
‘Where had you gone?’
‘Alexander sent me to fetch Bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia.’
It’s the second time today I’ve heard Eusebius’s name. ‘Why didn’t you mention him before?’
The question surprises him. ‘He never arrived.’
‘Symmachus said he was there.’
Simeon’s face tells me what he thinks of that. ‘Eusebius is a bishop.’
I can’t tell if he’s trying to be provocative, or just naive. I remember Symmachus’s words.
IX
THE PASSPORT MADE her feel like someone else. The embassy had issued it to get her home from Montenegro, after her old one vanished somewhere between the villa and the hospital. It wasn’t the photograph, though that was pretty horrific: it was the emptiness. Her last passport was eight years old and had visa stamps from half the countries in the world, barely a page unfilled. ‘Your life in bureaucracy,’ Michael had teased her. And now it was gone.
But the new passport was valid, and that was enough for the bored man at St Pancras Station who waved her through the checkpoint. Six hours and three trains later she was in Trier, wondering if she was mad to have travelled halfway across Europe on a whim. Her shoulder hurt from being squashed on trains all day; she felt as though she’d run a marathon.
