One afternoon when I was alone with him in the room Constantius woke from a brief sleep and called my name.
“I am here, my dearest,” I took his hand.
“Helena… I feel that this is one battle I am not going to win. The sun shines brightly, but he is declining, and so am I. I have done most of what I set out to do in this world, but I fear for the Empire, at the mercy of Galerius and his puppet Caesars.”
“No doubt Augustus thought the same, but Rome still stands,” I told him. “Her safety, in the end, depends on the gods, not you.”
“I suppose you are right—when an Emperor receives divine honours, it becomes hard to tell the difference, sometimes. But the gods do not die. Tell me, my Lady, can this body heal?”
For a moment I stared at him, blinking back tears. His gaze was clear and direct, and there had always been truth between us. I could not deny it to him now.
“It has been long since I studied the arts of healing,” I said finally. “But each day you spend more time in sleep. The life-force in your body sinks lower. If it continues to do so, I think you may stay with us a week, but no more.”
Astonishingly, his face brightened. “That is more than I have been able to make my physicians say. A good general needs as much accurate information to plan an orderly retreat as he does when he seeks victory.”
I would not have thought of it that way, and despite my tears I returned his smile.
“Constantine asked you to heal me, but now I ask you a harder thing, my beloved priestess. I have spent too much of my life in trying to stay alive on battlefields, and it is hard to let go. Now you must teach me how to die.”
“I can only do this if I become wholly the priestess, and when I do so, the woman who loves you will not be here.”
He nodded. “I understand. When I led Constantine in battle, it was the Emperor, not the father, who ordered him into danger. But we have a little time, my darling. Be my beloved Helena today, and we will feast on our memories.”
I squeezed his hand. “I remember the first time I saw you, in a vision that came to me when I was only thirteen years old. You shone like the sun, and you do so still.”
“Even now, when my hair has faded and my strength is gone?” he teased.
“A winter sun, perhaps, but you light the world for me all the same,” I assured him.
“The first time I saw you, you looked like a wet kitten,” he said then, and I laughed.
We spent the rest of that day in talk, replaying our every meeting in the gentle light of memory. For a time Constantine sat with us, but it was clear that this was something in which he had only a peripheral part, and he went away to rest before his watch. When I went to my bedchamber that night I wept for a long time, knowing that this had been our farewell.
In the morning, I came to Constantius robed in blue and wrapped in the invisible majesty of a priestess. When he opened his eyes he recognized the difference immediately. Others responded to the change without understanding, except for Constantine, who gazed at me with a child’s panic at the loss of the familiar mother he thought he knew.
You are an adult now, I tried to tell him with my steady gaze. You must learn to see your parents as fellow travellers upon Life’s road. But I suppose it was not surprising that he still saw us with a child’s eye, having been separated from us when he was only thirteen years old.
“Lady, I salute you,” said Constantius in a low voice. “What have you to teach me about the Mysteries?”
“All men who are born of woman must one day come to life’s ending,” I murmured, “and the time is coming now for you. Soul to soul, you must listen, and not allow yourself to be distracted. Your body has served you well, and become worn out in that service. You must make ready now to release it, to depart from it, to rise from the realm of the tangible, which is subject to change and decay, to that place where all is Light, and the true and eternal natures of all things are revealed…”