‘I was lucky. The others were not. That was the only difference.’
The man raised the gun and fired.
II
IT’S STILL AUGUST, but autumn has already arrived. Like every old man, I fear this season. Shadows fall, nights lengthen and the knives come out. On evenings like these, when the chill in the air makes my old wounds squirm, I retire to the bathhouse and order my slaves to stoke the fire. The pool’s empty, but I sit on the rim and tip water over the scalding stones. The steam goes up my nose and softens my flesh. Perhaps that will make it easier for my murderers, when they come.
I’m ready to die – it holds no terrors for me. I’ve lived longer than I deserved. I’ve been a soldier, a courtier and a politician: none of them professions noted for their longevity. When my murderers come – and they are coming – I know they won’t linger. They’re busy men these days. I’m not the last person they have to kill. They won’t torture me: they don’t know the questions to ask.
They’ve no idea what I could tell them.
A shiver goes down my back. I haven’t undressed – I’m not going to die naked – and my clothes are sodden. I throw more water into the pool and lean forward into the steam, peering through the mist at the black-and-white sea gods picked out in the floor tiles. They stare back and reproach me. Dying gods from a dying world. Do they know the part I’ve played in their oblivion?
Another shiver. I’m ready to die: it’s death that terrifies me. The afterwards. Gods who die in springtime occasionally come back to life; old men murdered in autumn never do. But where they go …
The steam thickens.
All my life I’ve contended with gods – a god who became a man, and a man who became a god. Now, at the end of it, peering into the steaming abyss, I have no more idea what the gods intend for me than I did when I first peered over the edge of my cradle all those years ago. Or even four months ago, on a dusty April afternoon in Constantinople, hearing about a dead man who would change my life. As much as remains of it.
Memories cloud about me and bead on my skin. The mind is a strange land with many walls but no distance. I’m no longer in the bathhouse, but another place and time, and my oldest friend is saying …
‘… I need you.’
We’re in an audience hall at the palace, though there’s no audience. None except me. We’re both old men with the years scored into us, but it’s been this way since I can remember. He performs, I applaud.
Except now I’m not applauding. I’m listening to him tell me about a death and wondering if I look right. After so many years at court, I can pull out my emotions like masks from a well-oiled drawer, but I’m not sure what the occasion demands. I want to seem respectful to the dead man. But not too much – I won’t invest in his death, as I’m being invited to do. Does that make me callous?
‘They found him two hours ago in the library by the Academy. As soon as they realised who he was, they sent straight to the palace.’
He’s trying to draw me in to the story, pique my curiosity. I stay silent. There aren’t many men alive who can stay silent when he wants them to speak – I might be the only one left. We grew up like brothers, inseparable sons of officers in the same legion. His mother was an innkeeper, mine a laundress. Now titles adorn him like the gems sewn into his heavy robe. Flavius Valerius Constantine – Emperor, Caesar and Augustus, Consul and Proconsul, High Priest. Constantine the Pious, the Faithful, the Blessed and Benevolent. Constantine the Victorious, Triumphant and Unconquered. Constantine – succinctly – the Great.
And even now, a grandfather in his declining years, the greatness radiates from him. I still feel it. His round face, puppyish and seductive when he was young, may have fattened out and sagged; the muscles that wrestled together an empire may have gone soft. But the greatness remains. The artists who paint him with a golden nimbus are only colouring in what every man knows. Power inhabits his body – the unconquerable confidence that only the gods can give.
‘The dead man’s name was Alexander. He was a bishop – important in the Christian community. He also tutored one of my sons, apparently.’
Without warning, he tosses me something. My body’s grown slow and cumbersome, but I still have my reflexes. I catch it one-handed, then open my fist.
‘They found this near the body.’
It’s a necklace, about the size of my palm. An intricate web surrounding Constantine’s X-P monogram, the bright new gold studded with red glass beads. A broken chain shows where it was ripped off someone’s neck.
‘Did it belong to the Bishop?’
‘His servant says not.’
‘The man who killed him, then?’
‘Or it was left there deliberately.’ He breathes an impatient sigh. ‘These are the questions I need you to answer, Gaius.’
The necklace is cold in my hand, an unwanted token of the dead man I’m being forced to carry. But I still resist. ‘I don’t know anything about the Christians.’
‘Not true.’ Constantine reaches out and touches my shoulder. Once, it would have been a natural and intimate gesture. Now his arm is rigid, holding me back. ‘You know enough to know that they feud like cats in a sack. If I send in one of their own, half his colleagues will immediately come to me condemning him as a schismatic and a heretic. Then the second half will arrive and denounce the first half for the same crimes.’
He shakes his head. God though he is, even he can’t fathom the mysteries of the church.
