against their enemies. Junius shows Constantine the pin that was stabbed through it. It’s gold, a hook-shaped clasp in the form of a pouncing lion. I’ve seen it often enough gleaming from the shoulder of Constantine’s cloak.
‘Your fibula,’ says Fausta. ‘He must have stolen it, to work his black magic on you.’
‘I never touched this piece of evil.’ Contempt wins out over fear in Crispus’s voice – for the moment.
The expression on Constantine’s face haunts me to this day. He’s aged ten years in a night. For the first time in his life, he looks lost.
‘What is the truth?’ he murmurs. ‘That my own son wanted to overthrow me, when I would willingly have given him all the power and glory he could want? Or that my wife is spreading the most terrible and false lies?’
‘How can you ignore what’s in front of you?’ There’s a hysterical edge to Fausta’s voice. ‘Do you want to wait until all our children are dead before you’ll believe it?’
‘And believe my heir’s a murderer?’
Fausta spreads her arms around her children.
‘I’m taking our sons back to Constantinople. They won’t spend one more hour under the same roof as this monster.’ She advances across the room, eyes blazing. She’s a head shorter than Constantine, but just at the moment she seems to have grown to an equal size. And he’s shrinking; he doesn’t know what to do. This was supposed to be his triumph, his moment of mastery, and it’s all disintegrating.
Junius steps forward. ‘If I may …?’
Constantine nods.
‘There’s a villa at Pula, three days ride from here. The governor’s a loyal man. Send Crispus there, out of the way, until the facts can be established.’
‘
‘If he stays, I go,’ says Fausta.
They both look to Constantine, whose gaze is fixed at a point on the wall midway between them. His face is as hard as marble, unreadable. The whole room – the whole world – hangs on his decision.
Something Crispus said about the bishops at Nicaea comes back to me.
Constantine decides. The merest twitch of the head – that’s all it takes. Fausta bows. Four guards in white surround Crispus and lead him out of the room. He doesn’t resist.
‘I’ll send someone,’ Constantine says, but it’s so faint I doubt Crispus hears him.
In the Chamber of Records the lamp’s burning low. I sit cross-legged on the floor, ringed by a circle of scattered papers. I’ve pulled out so many, they spill beyond the light and into the infinite darkness beyond. Alexander did his work too well. I’ve read for an hour, maybe more, and I haven’t seen the least hint that Crispus and Fausta were there in Aquileia. Or that they even existed at all.
I’m defeated. I sweep up the papers and jam them back into their files, cramming them in like rubbish. I struggle to my feet. A wash of dizziness rocks me; I sway, clinging on to the lamp for dear life. If I lose that, I’ll be lost in this darkness for ever. I try to anchor my gaze on a distant point, but there’s nothing to latch on to. The shelves stretch for ever. The harder I look, the further they retreat.
I feel as if I’m floating, my physical self dissolved in the air. I’ve been reduced to my soul. Or perhaps this whole room
I can’t blame Alexander for what he did to the records. I’ve done the same thing in my own memory, editing it and cleansing it to make it bearable. It isn’t painless: each cut leaves a hole, so many that in the end I’m little more than a paper cut-out of a man. But how else could I live with myself?
I put out an arm and feel something solid. One of the pillars. It’s cold against my palm and the cold feels real. My fingers claw into the stone, feeling the grooves where the characters have been chiselled. XV / ?. I press my skin against the sharp edges.
A thought comes to me. All the files have the same designation – XV / ? – as you’d expect. But when I was looking through the scraps in Alexander’s case, that night in the palace, there were other marks.
The thought gives me purpose. Purpose makes me real again. I lift the lamp and hurry down the passages between the shelves, counting off the columns until I find the right place.
Simeon’s voice drifts back to me through the paper walls.
Alexander definitely came here – the seals give him away. I pull out anything where the wax is fresh. After a few pages it’s clear that most of these papers have come from the court of the Dowager Empress Helena. She never settled in Constantinople; she lived in Rome and died nine years ago. Constantine must have had her papers shipped here for safekeeping.
A lot of the boxes have been opened, and a lot of the pages have been mutilated. Helena doted on her eldest grandson and wrote to him often. Unlike the imperial chancery, she kept her records bound up in codices like the Christians use. I can follow Alexander’s path through them by the holes left in the pages like footprints in snow. The only sound in the vast chamber is the murmur of my own voice as I read aloud.
The lamp’s starting to flicker; the oil must be almost dry. I know I have to get out, but I still sit there, turning the pages compulsively.
