For the eight days between the death of Constantius and his cremation, Constantine had kept to his chamber, eating little and speaking to no one. For me those days passed like a nightmare, in which the memories that came to me waking were worse than my dreams. But when the eighth day came to a close I put on the white garments of mourning and went out to follow my husband’s body to the pyre. Constantine was waiting, washed and shaved and wrapped in a snowy toga, and although his eyes were deep-shadowed, he had clearly recovered his self-command. I remember that night now as a series of images—torches whipping in the wind, pale in the gathering dusk, and the white marble of the new-made tomb glowing faintly in their light. Not for Constantius a burial along the road outside the town—the magistrates of Eburacum had claimed him, and if he could no longer protect them, in life, the honours paid to a tomb in the forum might persuade his hovering spirit to confer a blessing.
I have another image—Constantius’s body, wrapped in purple and crowned with the wreath of gold, lying upon a pyre, stacked high with good British oak and studded with spices. I remember torchlight on the grim faces of Asclepiodotus and Crocus, who had escorted us, and the glitter of their armour. And Constantine’s silence, as if he had been carved of the same marble as the tomb.
There is a sound, a wail that goes up from the populace when Constantine thrusts his torch between the logs. The soldiers who had filled an entire side of the square are murmuring, but their discipline holds, and as the smoke swirls skywards, hiding the still form of the Emperor, except for the weeping of women it becomes quiet once more. I have seen this before, in the vision at my passage into womanhood, but I saw myself wearing the purple, and that never happened, so how can this be true?
I remember the pyre beginning to fall into coals as the first stars pricked through the velvet pall of the sky, and the deep voice of Asclepiodotus, telling Constantine he must speak to the people now. Like a sleepwalker, Constantine turns, and now his eyes burn. He lifts his arms, and it becomes utterly still.
“My brothers and sisters, brothers-in-arms, and fellow-children of the Empire. My father and yours is dead, and his soul ascends to heaven. We are orphaned of our protector, and who will watch over us?”
And a wail rises from among the women, as swiftly overwhelmed by a deep cry from the throats of many men.
“Constantine! Constantine will protect us! Constantinus, Impera-tor!”
Constantine lifts his hands once more as if to quiet them, but the shouting only grows louder, and now the soldiers surge forwards,
Crocus in the forefront, one of them bearing a purple robe, and Asclepiodotus has my arm and is pulling me away.
I do not remember how we got back to the praesidium. But throughout that night it seemed to me that the heavens echoed back the cry—
“Constantine for Imperator!”
* * *
Part III
THE WAY TO WISDOM
« ^ »
o CHAPTER FIFTEEN
o CHAPTER SIXTEEN
o CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
o CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
o CHAPTER NINETEEN
o CHAPTER TWENTY
o CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
* * *
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
« ^ »
AD 307-12
In all the years I had travelled about the Empire as Constantius’s wife, I had never been to Italia. I had yet to see Rome, but Maximian’s new city of Mediolanum, on the north Italian plain, was said to be nearly as magnificent. Today, with the streets newly washed by the spring rains and every archway garlanded with flowers, I could well believe it, as the masters of the Empire attempted to forge yet another alliance by the marriage of Maximian’s young daughter Fausta to my son Constantine.
They had been betrothed in the year Constantius became Caesar. At the time, Fausta was only an infant, and in the long years when Constantine was hostage first to Diocletian and then to Galerius, it would have surprised no one if the potential relationship had been forgotten by everyone, including Constantine, except that I was beginning to realize that Constantine never forgot anything he had claimed as his own. I hoped that self-interest would dispose him to affection, and the fact that Fausta had grown up as his intended wife would incline her to respect, though it was asking a great deal to expect much companionship in the mating of a girl of fourteen with a man of thirty-five.