Secrets of the Dead

A few yards in, it opened into a low, rectangular chamber with a curved roof. A stone trough ran across one end, with a niche in the wall above it where a statue might once have stood. Faded paintings in ochres, greens and blues covered every inch of the walls. By the light of the flame Abby saw a boat crossing a fish-filled sea; ivy tendrils winding around painted columns; a goddess in a gauzy dress descending to a sleeping hero, flanked by lions and the moon and the sun. There was writing, too, but try as she might she couldn’t make out the crumbling letters.

It’s a tomb, Abby thought. The stone trough was a sarcophagus – she could see the lid leaning against it, the white scrapes on the stone where Michael and Sanchez had prised it off.

She took her thumb off the lighter so it wouldn’t give her away. She sat on the floor in darkness, her wet clothes colder than death. She was shivering, though she barely noticed. She pressed her thumb against the lighter’s steel, just to feel the heat.

She thought of the skeleton ripped from his grave, and wondered if this would be her tomb, too. A life for a life, a corpse for a corpse. She remembered Shai Levin. Most likely he was stabbed through the heart. It was an effort to think that this chamber belonged to a man who once lived and breathed as she did. Probably rich. Lived a violent life. A man who had planned and commissioned his tomb for posterity, never imagining that seventeen centuries later it would be lost in an unpopulated corner of a contested country.

Noise from outside the cave. Shouts, the clatter of rocks. She lifted her head. A dull bang rolled down the passage and she knew, with the intuition of the grave, that someone else had died.

The daylight at the end of the passage went out.

She had nowhere to hide. If she was going to die, at least she’d make the bastard look at her. Soft footsteps padded down the passage, slow and cautious. She flicked on the lighter. The ghosts of gods and heroes peered down from the wasting paint and waited to claim her. The man in the passage – was it a man? – came nearer. For a moment, he existed in perfect darkness – beyond the day, before the flame. The breeze blew in his scent, dead leaves and wet soil, the smell of an open grave.

He stepped forward. His face swam in and out of the firelight. Deep shadows swallowed his cheeks, so that all she could see was the thrust of his skull, the curly grey hair matted flat by the rain.

Her head spun. She heard the gods calling her on and laughing. She must have died. She lifted the lighter, and the shadows dropped away from his face.

‘Michael?’

XXVI

Constantinople – April 337

‘DID YOU THINK I’d let you go without saying goodbye?’

In an empty tomb, Constantine leans across the unconsecrated altar and looks me in the eye. Last time I saw him he was dressed like a god; now all he wears is a plain white robe and a grey cloak against the evening chill. Only the weave of the cloth betrays its cost.

‘I thought you’d finished with me.’

A dozen gods used to live here. Now there’s only one. On the highest point of the highest hill in the city, Constantine has razed the old Temple of the Twelve Gods and built his mausoleum on its foundations. It’s his second attempt – the first, in Rome, is already occupied. Outwardly, it looks no different from the monuments that his sometime co-emperors built themselves: Maxentius in Rome, Galerius in Thessalonica, Diocletian in Split. A round tower in a square courtyard, with the surrounding arcades housing all the washrooms, lamp-stores and priestly accommodation that will be needed when the new occupant takes up permanent residence.

And he won’t be alone. There are seven niches in the rotunda. One’s for Constantine’s sarcophagus; the other six hold effigies of the twelve apostles of Christ. It’s typical of Constantine. He’s taken away the twelve old gods and put twelve Christian apostles in their place – like for like, pound for pound. When his project’s complete, no one will be able to see the joins.

Gods abandon the world and give way to men. That’s the way of history.

But for the moment, nothing’s completed. Scaffolding covers the entire eastern half of the wall. Dust sheets shroud the twelve effigies in the niches around the room. That’s also typical of Constantine. Great works, still in progress. The whole structure is a giant canister filled with dust. The late sun shines through the coloured glass and makes patterns in the air.

‘That night when we condemned Symmachus – you looked as if you wanted to say something.’

‘It wouldn’t have made any difference.’

I’m determined to resist him, to say the minimum necessary and go home to supervise the slaves packing up my household. I didn’t want to come. It’s only because he’s the Augustus.

‘You were supposed to find me the truth,’ he reminds me.

‘If you wanted it.’

‘You think he’s innocent?’

Something gives inside me. Outrage overflows my pride and spills out. ‘I don’t know if he’s innocent – but I’m sure he’s been set up. I was there when his slave handed the bag over. He could hardly have arranged it to be more incriminating.’

‘But he had the bag.’

‘His slave did.’

‘The slave testified under torture that his master gave it to him. We needed resolution quickly. The Christians were impatient.’ He sees the look on my face and sighs. ‘You never used to be squeamish, Gaius.’

Every religion needs its blood sacrifice. Symmachus saw it coming better than I did.