“Mother!” he cried, and then: “My mother is dead, and I am alone!”
Despite my resolution, I felt my own eyes filling with tears. I turned away, shadow into shadow, and hurried from the room. But as I hobbled down the corridor I could still hear the master of the Empire, weeping for the mother he had never really known.
That night, Flavia Helena Augusta passed away.
With the help of Cunoarda and one or two other servants who knew the truth about what had happened to Crispus and Fausta and were willing to assist us, the body of Drusa was placed in my bed, and taken from thence immediately to the embalmers, as word of the death of the Emperor’s mother spread through Rome.
It was very strange to assist at my own demise, though it was a necessary prerequisite to my resurrection. I was astonished by the tumult of grief that swept the city, even knowing that the people were not mourning me, but an icon of Saint Helena that was more than half the creation of Constantine’s propagandists. Perhaps I had done some good in the city, but I did not recognize this worker of miracles.
The air around the palace grew heavy with perfume from the flowers that people had heaped before the doors, already hung with cypress as a sign of mourning. Indeed, it was said that there was not a flower to be had in Rome, so many had been offered here and at impromptu shrines all over the city.
In all this, Constantine was the chief mourner, exchanging his purple for funeral white, his features gaunt with anguish. No one could have doubted his sorrow, and indeed, I believe that he convinced himself that the shrouded body in the chapel truly was his mother. Even if I changed my mind there was no turning back from my decision. I had hurt Constantine too badly, and he would see me dead in truth if I tried a public resurrection.
Bishop Sylvester was to be my executor, assisted in the distribution of my goods by Cunoarda. I had provided for her generously, and we had planned that I would wait at Ostia until she could join me. But I was seized with a morbid desire to observe my own obsequies, and disguised in my peasant clothes, I took refuge in the modest rooms near the Church of Marcellinus and Petrus that I had rented as a part of my disguise.
On the eighth day after my ‘death’, Bishop Sylvester celebrated my funeral mass. The great Lateran cathedral was crowded, for all the notables of the city were in attendance, whether or not they were Christian. The poorer folk, myself among them, crowded around the entrance. The tall doors were open, and from within one could hear the echo of singing and catch an occasional whiff of incense. But on the whole, I was relieved not to have to listen to the eulogies.
When it was finally over, the funeral procession emerged to carry the cedarwood coffin the short distance to the sarcophagus waiting at the Church of Marcellinus and Petrus. Constantine walked before the bier, barefoot, with his sons beside him. I could see Cunoarda among the veiled women who followed it. The crowd surged after, weeping, and I was borne along with the rest.
I had never quite understood the Christian attitude towards bones. The pagan Romans had had a horror of pollution, and required that their dead be buried outside the city. The roads that led out of every Roman city were lined with tombs. The tombs of heroes and emperors were separate mausoleums, where the offerings of pilgrims sustained them on their progression towards godhood. Even in Palestine, people honoured the tombs of the patriarchs. The graves of the great rooted their people in the land.
But the Christian dead were buried in the churches, in the midst of the cities. Already, every Christian church with any pretension to grandeur had its martyrium, where the body of some saint who by being murdered had achieved instant holiness was enshrined. But the ending of the persecutions had cut off the supply of martyrs. I wondered if they would be forced to take the bodies apart to make them go further—a finger bone in one place and a foot in some other church miles away? Bishop Macarius was right. People hungered for some physical evidence that their faith existed in this world as well as in heaven. But at some point they would have to learn to do without such tangible links. I suppressed a cackle of hysterical laughter at the image of God attempting to gather up all these scattered bits in order to restore the bodies of the saints at Judgment Day.