Secrets of the Dead (51 page)

Does it matter? If Crispus did rise, it was surely a miracle – but no different to the miracle the Christians profess, that a man was murdered and God brought him back. If this is God’s gift, we hardly deserve it. Men like Eusebius and Asterius take their faith and use it as a weapon, dividing the world into those who are for them and against them. Constantine, for all his faults, tried harder than most to give the empire peace. He thought his new religion would achieve it. His mistake, I suppose, was to rely on the Christians rather than their god.

Symmachus:
The Christians are a confused and vicious sect
. I can’t deny it. For what Asterius and Eusebius did, his verdict sounds too kind.

But should there be nothing good or true in the world because bad men might turn it to evil? Should we surrender the field to the persecutors and torturers, men like Maxentius and Galerius and old Maximian?

I remember a sentence I read in Alexander’s book.
Humanity must be defended if we want to be worthy of the name of human beings
.

A knock at the door. A shiver of dread shakes through me, but it’s just a reflex. I’m prepared. My tomb is dug, out in the woods beyond the house; a sealed jar with a few keepsakes – the scroll with my notes, Porfyrius’s necklace – is waiting
in
my coffin. I’ll take my secrets to the grave. If anyone ever finds me, let them puzzle out what it means. I’ve reached the end of my life and I don’t know anything.

The knock sounds again, loud and impatient. No doubt Flavius Ursus keeps them busy these days, tying up loose ends. I shouldn’t make them wait.

I get to my feet, but I don’t look round. My gaze fixes at the bottom of the pool, a tiny piece of decoration I’ve never noticed before, where two tendrils of seaweed tangle over each other in white space, making the sign of the Cross. Such a simple shape – you see it everywhere.

I’m ready. I’m not afraid of dying, or of what comes after. My voice, when I speak, is clear and strong.

‘Come in.’

My first major encounter with Constantine the Great was an undergraduate essay titled ‘Did Constantine feel he had a divine mission, and, if so, was it Christian?’ This book is, in a way, an extended attempt to engage with that same question.

Paul Stephenson’s recent biography of Constantine warns us how hard it is to be sure about the details of his life. ‘The written sources do not exist or are partial; they have not been preserved or have been preserved by design; they have been altered or miscopied; they cannot simply be mined for data.’ The best contemporary source, Eusebius’s
Life of Constantine
, was written by a churchman with a very particular agenda and focus. Constantine’s selective editing of his own history, described in this novel, was a real process. With that caveat, I’ve tried to be as accurate as possible regarding what the sources say about the history behind this book.

Most of the main characters in the historical narrative really existed. Publilius Optatianus Porfyrius was a poet, exile, and twice Prefect of Rome, who did actually write poems with
secret
messages which survive in many copies. Eusebius of Nicomedia was one of the principal churchmen of Constantine’s reign, ringleader of the Arian faction during the Arian controversy, and later Bishop of Constantinople. You get some idea of the way he played power politics from the fact that within ten years of the Council of Nicaea (which was, after all, a defeat for him) all his leading opponents had ended up dead or in exile. Asterius the Sophist was a Christian who lapsed during the persecutions, was excommunicated, but remained active in church circles as an
éminence grise
of the Arian faction. Aurelius Symmachus was a Neoplatonist philosopher and politician from an eminent family of pagans. Flavius Ursus became Consul the year after Constantine’s death, and is presumed to have been high up in the military command. Biographical details for all of them are incomplete, and I’ve used a novelist’s licence to fill in the gaps.

The members of Constantine’s family featured in the novel also all existed, and met more or less the fates described. Constantine’s campaign of
damnatio memoriae
was so effective that the truth of what happened to Crispus and Fausta will always remain a mystery: my account follows the most widely circulated version of events.

One minor change I’ve made from the standard historical usage is the way I refer to Constantine’s second son. He’s more commonly known as Constantine II, but in a novel which already features one Constantine, two Constantiuses, a Constans and a Constantiana, it seemed less confusing to call him by his first name, Claudius.

Bishop Alexander is a fictional creation, composited from aspects of Eusebius of Caesarea and the Christian writer Lactantius, who tutored Crispus. The ‘quotes’ from Alexander’s book in chapter eighteen are borrowed from Lactantius’s
Divine Institutes
. Gaius Valerius is also fictional, though you can trace his career path in the lives of other men.

As for Constantine, he remains one of the most significant, elusive and challenging figures in all history. His success in uniting the Roman Empire, almost for the last time, was extraordinary, though fleeting. His founding of Constantinople created a city that remained an imperial capital into the twentieth century. But his achievement in taking Christianity from a suspect cult to a world religion is as relevant today as in his lifetime. Almost seventeen hundred years after the battle of the Milvian Bridge, the faith he adopted remains the world’s biggest religion. And wherever there’s a church, chances are you’ll hear the creed he called into being at Nicaea being recited, still the great unifier of Christianity.

The question posed in my undergraduate essay – did Constantine have a Christian mission? – is unanswerable. The imagery and narrative of Christianity, imperial Rome, Hercules, Apollo, the Unconquered Sun and other contemporary cults overlap so much that it’s impossible to draw clear lines; I don’t imagine Constantine did.

In the end, Constantine infuriates us for the same reason that Christianity angers its detractors: the painful gap between noble ideals and compromised reality. Constantine lived his life in that gap. How we judge him depends, ultimately, on how we judge ourselves.

A lot of people gave me a lot of help in researching and writing this book.

Jelena Mirkovi
ć
introduced me to Belgrade, and gave me three chapters I didn’t expect. In Kosovo, Nick Hawton and his colleagues in the EULEX Press Office, especially Irina Gudeljevi
ć
, gave me invaluable insights into international life in Pristina. Captain Daniel Murphy showed me around Camp Bondsteel and gave me one of the most memorable days of any research trip; he was also unflagging in answering my questions when I tracked him down to North Dakota. I’m very grateful to Lieutenant Colonel Jerry Anderson, Major Robert Fugere and 1st Sergeant Rick Marschner, all of the North Dakota National Guard, for taking so much time to tell me about their work in Kosovo; also to Colonel Patrick Moran of the Irish Army, Major Hagen Messer of the German Army, and Lieutenant Toufik Bablah of the Moroccan Army for my visit to Camp Film City in Pristina.

A novel like this always trades in bad news and bad people. It’s worth saying that my overwhelming impression of the EU
and
NATO personnel I met in Kosovo was of thoughtful professionals doing a difficult and essential job in a small corner of the world a long way from home. I left with huge admiration for them and the work they do.

Back in England, my sister Iona told me about the Foreign Office; Emma Davies told me about war crimes; Kevin Anderson told me about gunshot wounds; Sue and David Hawkins told me about Istanbul; and Dr Tim Thompson told me about bones. Dr Linda Jones Hall steered me in the right direction for Porfyrius.

For every novel, there are a couple of books which become indispensable references. On this project, they were Paul Stephenson’s superb biography
Constantine
(Quercus), and Timothy D. Barnes’s meticulously detailed
The New Empire of Diocletian and Constantine
(Harvard University Press).

My colleagues in the Crime Writers’ Association, especially Michael Ridpath, made my year as Chair hugely enjoyable, and played their part in making sure I escaped the traditional ‘lost book’ curse of the CWA. My agent Jane Conway-Gordon kept my blood sugar up. My editors Kate Elton and Kate Burke, and all their talented colleagues at Random House, did a wonderful job improving, producing and promoting the book.

My son Owen crawled through catacombs with me and took a memorable train ride to Ostia. His brother Matthew arrived bang on time, and made the months writing this book a delight when he could easily have sabotaged it beyond repair. And my wife Emma, as usual, made everything better.