Secrets of the Dead

her hips and arching her back. As if she’s daring us to imagine what’s going to happen that night.

Constantine steps forward, a torch in his hand and his auspex beside him. The auspex is supposed to read the entrails, though there’ll be no blood sacrifice at Constantine’s wedding. Constantine takes Fausta’s hand and asks her name in the ritual fashion.

‘Wherever you are Gaius, I am Gaia,’ she replies, the words so ancient no one knows what they mean.

When Constantine married the first time, I stood beside him as auspex. Now that he’s an emperor, only a fellow emperor will do. I try not to let it bother me.

Constantine hands her the torch. His brother-in-law-to-be Maxentius passes him a gold ewer filled with water, and Constantine gives that to Fausta, too. Then he pulls back her veil.

Whatever the political merits of the marriage, there’s no denying its physical compensations. The family resemblance comes out well in Fausta: the long-lashed eyes and buttery skin, so effeminate on her father and brother, give her a voluptuous beauty. She’s at an age where her body’s plumped up like ripe fruit, breasts and hips and thighs swelling under her gown, while her face still keeps its childish innocence. A dangerous age.

Constantine leads her to the marriage bed. They recline there in a stylised embrace, while the guests queue to congratulate them. There are three emperors here and precedence is a nightmare, but there’s no question who should go first. Constantine’s mother, the Dowager Empress Helena. She’s sixty, but still the most commanding woman in the room: high cheekbones and a stern mouth, blue eyes that miss nothing, no hint of a stoop in those bony shoulders. Rumour says she was the daughter of a brothel keeper, but I’ve known her all my life and never dared ask. Underneath the applications of white powders and Tyrian vermilion it’s impossible to tell what she’s thinking. Perhaps she’s wishing this was a Christian ceremony. Perhaps she’s thinking she’s seen this scene played out before: when Constantine’s father divorced her to make a more expedient marriage.

In fact, the parallel’s even more excruciatingly exact. Constantine’s father divorced Helena to marry one of old Maximian’s daughters; now Constantine has shrugged off his first wife to marry another of the fecund old man’s children. His uncle-in-law will become his brother-in-law. Even the women of that family are serial usurpers.

A small boy barges into the line behind Helena and grabs the skirts of her dress. No one else would dare touch her, but Crispus is her only grandson and can tap a seam of indulgence that even Constantine can’t access. Perhaps he reminds her of Constantine as a boy: even if you’d only ever seen Constantine’s profile on coins, you’d know Crispus was his son. He has the same round face, the same brilliant light in his eyes. Helena lifts him up on to the bed. Constantine hugs him and ruffles his hair; Fausta lets him give her a kiss on the cheek. She smiles, though it doesn’t reach her eyes. The look she gives him makes me think of a cuckoo sizing up another bird’s eggs.

Crispus’s tutor, a skinny man with a long beard, runs up and pulls him back off the bed. The crowd laugh.

‘What will become of him, do you think? The boy, Crispus.’

A courtier, I can’t remember his name, has sidled up behind me. He tips his cup towards the marriage bed, as if toasting the happy couple’s health.

‘Will the Emperor push him aside, do you think?’

I hate these guessing games. ‘He’s still Constantine’s firstborn son,’ I say firmly. ‘Constantine, of all men, won’t abandon him.’

Constantine knows what it’s like to see your mother jilted for a younger, better-connected woman. Not that it’s stopped him doing exactly the same thing.

Too many wives and too many emperors, and too many sons repeating their fathers’ mistakes. No wonder the empire’s always at war with itself.

XI

Thalys Train, Near Rheims – Present Day

WHAT WAS MICHAEL doing with a seventeen-hundred-year-old scroll?

Why was he willing to pay a hundred thousand euros to read it, when he didn’t even know what it would say?

Where did he get that kind of money?

The questions chased themselves around her head as she sat in her seat and stared out of the rain-spattered windows. An illuminated readout above the carriage door registered their speed. 287 kmh. Hurtling along – going where?

Michael had always had money. If she was honest, it had been part of his appeal. Not the money itself, but his way with it, the easy extravagances. Growing up as the daughter of a minister, indulgence wasn’t just a practical impossibility: it was a moral outrage. Being with someone who spent his money without doubts or regrets had been a gush of freedom. His ridiculous car, which even the gangsters in Pristina wouldn’t touch; the champagne and fine wines that flowed every time he entered a restaurant; the hotel suites whenever they went away. Each time Abby thought she’d got used to it and couldn’t be shocked, he’d find some new way of spending money that appalled and thrilled her all over again. And if she said anything, he’d shrug and give her a kiss on the forehead.

You can’t take it with you.

A phone started to trill. She didn’t recognise the sound: it was only when other passengers started staring at her that she realised it was hers. It was the first time she’d heard it ring. She jabbed the button.

‘Abby? It’s Mark.’ She needed a moment to place the name. ‘From the Foreign Office. Are you out of the country?’

She hesitated. How does he know? The ringtone must have sounded different.

‘There wasn’t much to do in London,’ she said. ‘I thought a change of scene might help.’

‘Right. Gosh. No stopping you. Are you going to come back?’

‘I’m on my way home now.’

‘Wonderful. Give me a bell when you’re back and we’ll arrange for you to come in.’