“Augustus…” the Bishop said softly.
“Have you come to nag me again, Ossius?” Constantine answered tiredly without looking up. “You speak of the laws of heaven, but I am responsible for the Empire. You have no right to reproach me—”
Ossius started to object that he was responsible for the Emperor’s soul, but my gesture silenced him.
“Perhaps not, but here is one who does!” Pulling the cloth away, I stepped forwards and thrust Crispus’s death-mask into the light.
“My son!” Constantine recoiled, hands splayed in self-protection, and the table lurched and sent cup and flagon flying. Spilled wine spread like a tide of blood across the tiles.
Constantine’s gaze moved from the mask to the wine and then, finally, to me. His face was pasty and there were dark circles under his eyes as if he had been unwell.
“I had to do it! I had no choice!” he cried. “God called me to sacrifice the son I loved, just like Abraham, but He provided no substitute, no lamb. So Crispus must have been guilty! God would not be so cruel!”
His head swung back and forth, eyes bulging, as if he could not see me at all. I wondered suddenly if he ever had seen me, or only an icon that he called “mother”, with no more resemblance to the person I really was than a holy image painted on a wall.
“Did God send you a vision, or was it some mortal who persuaded you, Constantine? What did you think Crispus had done?” Did he even know who was talking to him, or was my voice echoing the accusations of his own soul?
“He wanted me to abdicate, and when I would not he was going to rebel against me—he had consulted an oracle! He meant to make Fausta his wife to legitimize his rule. Another civil war would have destroyed the Empire. Crispus consorted with sinners. He was an adulterer, and God would have cursed us all. One God, one Emperor—we must have unity, can’t you understand?”
Fausta! Perhaps Constantine did not understand, but for me, a picture was beginning to come clear.
“Is that what Fausta told you?” I said in a still voice. “Has she given you hard proof of all this—or any proof at all? Did you allow Crispus to defend himself—did you ask him any questions, or were you afraid to see the judgment of God in his clear eyes?”
Constantine flinched at each question, but he was still shaking his head in denial.
“You are wrong! You hate her because she is the half-sister of Theodora, who took my father from you! But Fausta’s first loyalty has always been to me—she told me when her father was plotting against me, she supported me against her own brother—”
“She betrayed her own blood for the sake of power—do you think she would hesitate to sacrifice yours?” I spat back at him. “She did this for the sake of her own sons, not for you, intending that one day they would give her the authority you have given me!”
“Your mother speaks reason, my lord,” said Ossius softly. “My investigations have revealed no evidence of treachery.”
“Are you a traitor too?” A vein bulged at the Emperor’s temple as he turned. “I had to safeguard the succession,” he said then. “Crispus was only a half-brother. There would have been war between him and Constantinus… Fausta kept on and on about it, and I could see how the people loved him…”
“Did you think she would poison you in a dish of mushrooms as Agrippina poisoned the Emperor Claudius, for the sake of her son?”
“She said that Crispus had tried to make love to her!” he cried.
“You are not Abraham—you are Theseus, and a fool!” I raged, waving the mask in his face until he cowered away. “Even if he had tried, which I do not for a moment believe, what kind of sin is a failed seduction compared to the murder of your own child?! Perhaps the Christian god can forgive you—He allowed his own son to die! No pagan deity could forgive such a crime!”
Like a great tree falling, Constantine sank to his knees. “God has abandoned me…” he whispered.