Swords Around the Throne (47 page)

Castus stepped quickly to one side, blocking the door to Constantine's apartments. Brinno stood solidly at his shoulder. ‘We're sorry, dominus,' he said.

‘Let him pass.' The voice carried along the balcony, and both Protectores turned to see Hierocles, their primicerius, pacing quickly up behind them.

‘Dominus,' Hierocles said to the old man, bowing his head briefly. ‘Forgive these soldiers. You may go where you please.'

Castus looked at Brinno, who shrugged.

Hierocles stepped between them. ‘Move aside for the former Augustus,' he said. ‘That's a order.'

Squaring his shoulders, Castus took two steps to his right. Brinno moved aside likewise, and Maximian, ghostly in his long white tunic, passed between them and into the imperial apartments.

‘Dominus,' Castus said between his teeth. ‘What's going on?'

‘We should at least have searched him!' Brinno hissed.

‘Quiet,' the primicerius said curtly. ‘Be quiet and wait.'

For a long while they heard nothing. Hierocles cleared his throat with a wet cough.

Then, from deeper inside the building, a single cry.

‘Follow me,' Hierocles ordered, striding through the door. ‘Draw your swords!'

They marched along the dark corridor and across the mosaic floor of an antechamber. The slaves and eunuchs who usually waited there, attending the emperor, were gone. Then Hierocles swept aside a curtain covering the far doorway and they were stepping into Constantine's own bedchamber. A lamp burning on the side table lit the scene: the body huddled on the sleeping couch between the parted purple drapes; the damask sheet punctured in several places, blood spreading across the fabric. Beside the bed, Maximian stood with a knife in his hand, his head thrown back.

‘I've killed him,' the old man said, and turned to the men in the doorway. ‘I've killed him!' he shouted, his eyes gaining focus in the wavering lamplight. ‘I've killed Constantine! I am the only emperor now. Kneel before me.'

Castus stared at the bloody corpse on the bed. His throat was locked, his neck muscles stiffening, and the badly healed wound in his side flared with pain. He tightened his grip on his sword, fearing it would fall from his hand. He heard Hierocles exhale slowly. Then a door opened at the far side of the chamber.

First Probinus, the Praetorian Prefect, stepped into the room. After him came two more Protectores, also armed. Then came Constantine, hard-faced and staring, wrapped in a dark robe.

It was Brinno who stepped forward. He grasped the end of the bedsheet and dragged it back. The corpse lay on its side, naked and bleeding from several wounds. Reaching out with a grimace, Brinno shoved the body, rolling it onto its back. Castus knew the features at once. It was the eunuch, Serapion.

‘You are all witnesses!' Probinus cried, raising his hand to point at Maximian. ‘This man has attempted to murder the emperor!'

The knife fell from Maximian's hand. He staggered back, slumping against the wall, and let himself slide slowly down onto his haunches. His head dropped forward into his cupped palms.

‘The emperor's wife warned us of her father's insanity,' Hierocles told Castus quietly. ‘But, of course, we could do nothing until he acted. Her eunuch volunteered to take the emperor's place. A good death, for one of his kind.'

Castus found he could still not speak. He felt rooted, the strength drained from his limbs. Serapion had surely not volunteered to die. Had he been told that Maximian would be apprehended before he struck the killing blow? Had Fausta herself known? Castus had never trusted the eunuch, or liked him, but as he stared at the corpse on the bed he felt a strange sympathy for him.
I am just as human as you
, Serapion had told him once.
We are both slaves...

The two Protectores flanking the emperor had moved to seize Maximian and draw him to his feet. He hung between them, limp as a corpse.

‘Go to the prisoner's room before dawn,' Hierocles murmured, leaning closer to Castus. ‘Make sure he does the honourable thing. If necessary, help him to do it. But he must never see daylight again. Understood?'

‘We will do what we are ordered...' Castus said, reciting the customary soldier's oath. But the words clogged his mouth and tasted like ash.

A lamp was burning in a niche outside the room. Castus stood for a moment staring at the boards of the door. Then he raised his fist, knocked, and shoved the door open.

Maximian was sitting on the edge of the couch, still wearing his blood-spattered white tunic. The room was dark, and Castus carried the lamp through from outside and set it on the varnished wooden chest beside the door.

‘You've come to kill me, then,' the former Augustus said. ‘They've sent you to be my executioner.'

Castus wanted to deny it, but he could not. He stood at attention, thumbs hooked into his belt. Maximian was not even looking at him, barely even registering his presence. He looked old and wild, but there was still strength in the man.

‘They think you can do it?' he said, his voice rasping and catching. He lifted a hand and tugged at his beard. ‘They think you can kill me, the
Man like Hercules
?'

He twisted on the couch, staring at Castus. ‘You CANNOT!' he shouted.

‘I'm sorry, dominus. I have my orders.'

‘I... am... your...
EMPEROR
!'

Then, just as sudden as the burst of rage, the spirit seemed to ebb from Maximian. He sagged on the edge of the couch. ‘You know, when I ruled the world,' he said in a musing voice, ‘my colleague Diocletian warned me against pride. Only the gods direct our fate, he told me. We ourselves are just pieces in their game. You should remember that...'

‘Dominus,' Castus managed to say. ‘I can give you a sword if you need one.'

‘A sword?' Maximian said, staring at him with vacant eyes. ‘A sword? Don't insult me. I know what must be done. Leave me alone to do it.'

Turning on his heel, Castus strode from the room and closed the door behind him. In darkness he stood and waited. The light beneath the door shifted, and a short while later something clattered to the floor. Castus stood still, feet braced, hardly daring to breathe. Then he went back into the room.

The body turned slowly in the lamplight, the grey calloused feet hanging bare beneath the hem of the loose tunic, the kicked stool lying on its side beneath. Castus found it hard to look up. When he did he saw the girdle tied tight around the corpse's neck, looped over the roof beam above. The face of his former emperor was already swollen and distorted by death. He stepped outside again, closed the door, and let his forehead drop against the wall.

Constantine was sitting in one of the upper dining chambers, with a brazier of hot coals pulled up beside him. He had his back to the door, and did not move as Castus entered the chamber behind him. Three stamping strides across the floor, and Castus dropped to kneel, facing the emperor's chair.

‘Most Sacred Augustus!' Castus declared. ‘The former emperor Maximian... has taken his own life.'

Constantine raised a hand, one finger pointing upwards. ‘He has lived,' he said.

The faint cold breeze from the windows stirred the long drapes. Castus could see only the back of the emperor's head, the line of his jaw. Probinus made a sound in his throat, and he saluted quickly and got to his feet again.

‘What did he say?' Constantine asked before Castus could retreat. ‘When he came to my room, what did he say he wanted?'

Castus glanced at the prefect, who gave a quick nod.

‘He said, Augustus, that he'd had a dream. He didn't say what it was.'

In the moonlight from the windows Castus saw a muscle twitching in the emperor's cheek. ‘Shame,' Constantine said. He paused for a long moment, warming the palm of his hand over the brazier. ‘Most people have dreams,' he said. ‘But only the dreams of great men are sent by the gods. Was my father-in-law a great man?'

‘He was an emperor,' Castus said quickly. He caught Probinus's warning hiss.

‘For months now,' Constantine went on, ‘I have been waiting for a sign. A dream, a portent, a vision... Anything to tell me that my actions are just, that the gods commend me. Or any god, in fact. I wait for a sign and I receive nothing.'

He raised his hand again, stirring the air with loose fingers.

‘You have done well, Protector Aurelius Castus,' he announced in a brisk tone. ‘Your loyalty is proven, and you shall be rewarded.'

Then the prefect gestured, and Castus bowed once more and paced backwards out of the room.

* * *

They were smashing the statues of Maximian as the imperial retinue left Arelate. Castus watched the hammers swinging, the painted images shattering to lumps of rubble and dust. It pained him: most of the statues showed Maximian in a filial embrace with his former colleague Diocletian, and Diocletian's images were being destroyed along with them. Surely that was sacrilege, Castus thought. Whatever Maximian himself had done, the great Diocletian was above all criticism, his fame and glory immaculate.

But everything was changing now. Even sacred things could be smashed to ruin. Maximian was dead by his own hand. Constantine was rid of his troublesome father-in-law with all his honour intact, and nobody could say he had acted improperly. Maxentius would declare his dead father to be a god, and the battle lines would be drawn. It all seemed simple now. But Castus remembered what the old emperor had told him before he died.
Just pieces in their game
. He tried not to dwell on these thoughts.

It had been a hurried departure from Arelate. Only two days after the death of Maximian word had come from the army commanders on the Rhine that the Franks had again crossed the river and were plundering the provinces of northern Gaul. Constantine had assembled his force quickly and marched north at once, riding grim-faced and ferocious with his bodyguard around him. By the following morning they had reached Arausio, and the news met them that the Franks had retreated once more. They had fled before the terror of the emperor's name, or so the despatch claimed.

The barbarian threat were gone, but the journey north continued, back towards Treveris. The pace was slower now, allowing the baggage train to catch up with the vanguard, and Fausta and her household had followed with it. Somewhere in that moving column of carriages and wagons, Castus knew, was Sabina. And soon, only a few months from now on the first auspicious day in early spring, they would be married.

Before the sudden departure from Arelate, one of the imperial eunuchs had come to him with a message, which he was pleased to read out. The emperor Flavius Constantinus Augustus –
et cetera et cetera
, the eunuch had said, smiling – is happy to receive the request of the distinguished Aurelius Castus, Ducenarius of Protectores, that he become engaged to the imperial ward Valeria Domitia Sabina, Clarissima.

Castus was baffled at first, then apprehensive. He had not spoken to Sabina herself since that night in the prison cell in Massilia. He had barely seen her. He sensed the knotting of a net of obligation, a snare to drag him deeper into the wiles of the imperial court. But then the joy of it rose through his fears. That night, he had given grateful sacrifice to all the gods.

There was no great ceremony to their betrothal, no banquet or exchange of lavish gifts. In the audience hall of the residency in Arelate they had stood together before Baebius Priscus, the emperor's Quaestor and legal advisor, while a notary drew up a codicil of engagement. Sabina had appeared subdued, her face lowered beneath her veil. She was still in the drab costume of widowhood; the marriage would not be contracted until the official ten-month mourning period for her former husband had elapsed. Once their promises were exchanged and the formalities completed, Castus slipped the iron ring of betrothal onto her finger. He felt crude and coarse, and was aware of his heavy gnarled hands on her soft skin. But then he felt the gentle pressure of her touch, and through the thin gauze of the veil he saw the smile in her eyes. The memory of that smile had warmed him ever since.

Perhaps it had been genuine. Perhaps they would know happiness together. But always the shadow crept at the back of his mind, and he thought he heard a dry rasping voice whispering sly words. I am a simple man, he told himself. I am a soldier. Nobody can ask any more of me than that.

As they travelled north they met the change of season, and the weather turned chill and grey. A few days from Treveris the imperial retinue turned off the main road and branched away to the west. The emperor wished to visit the famous sanctuary of the great god Apollo, to give thanks for the retreat of the Franks and his own recent survival of the plot against his life. It was a cold day, the skies silvery with cloud as the imperial cavalcade passed between low wooded hills. Castus looked around for Brinno; his friend had ridden back down the column an hour before and had not yet returned. There would be a celebration that evening at Apollo's sanctuary. Perhaps – he allowed himself a smile at the thought – Sabina might even consent to set aside her mourning, just for one night, and come to his bed...

There was a cry from further along the road. Horses backed and shied as the column pulled to a sudden halt. Hand on his sword hilt, Castus stared at the woods to either side, then forward along the line of march.

‘Apollo!' a man shouted. It was Probinus, the prefect. ‘The god is with us!'

Castus peered around him, bemused. All along the column men were staring into the sky. Several dismounted and knelt beside the road. Then Castus saw the emperor climbing down from his horse and kneeling beside them.

‘The Unconquered Sun!' one of the officials of the retinue cried, and threw up his arms in salute.
Unconquered Sun, Lord of Heaven, Light against Darkness...

Looking into the sky, Castus saw only a bright point of light between the clouds. When he squinted, it seemed to expand and spread. ‘What did you see?' he asked the rider beside him.