At breakfast I was silent, still thinking about the night’s visions. The palace burnt in the rioting had been rebuilt and most mornings we took our first meal in a pleasant chamber that opened out onto the shaded walkway that surrounded the gardens. Constantius, finishing his gruel, asked me if I was well. I shook my head. “It is nothing—I had strange dreams.”
“Well, then, there is something I need to discuss with you. I should have spoken of it before.”
I forced my attention away from my own concerns, wondering what on earth this could be. Since Carus’s accession, over a year had passed. The reports from the East had been glorious—the cities of Seleucia and Ctesiphon had surrendered almost without resistance, and the enemy, distracted by warfare on their own eastern borders, seemed unable to resist the Roman advance. It seemed possible that the Parthians, who had been a looming menace since the days of the first Augustus, might be finally overcome. But what did all that have to do with Constantius or me?
“Does the Emperor think you can somehow curb Carinus?”
In the preceding months it had become clear that the gift of imperial power in the city of the Caesars had gone to the young man’s head. He had executed the advisors his father had given him and replaced them with his drinking companions. In a few months he had married and divorced nine wives, leaving most of them pregnant, in addition to his other amusements. If Constantius tried to advise him, he was likely to go the way of the others. Surely no amount of devotion to duty would require that useless sacrifice.
“No… the Emperor has always been a man of justice rather than mercy, and I fear he has ceased to hope that his elder son will prove worthy. So he is looking for a substitute…” he slowed, stirring his spoon around and around in the empty bowl. “He wants to adopt me.”
I stared at him. This was my own Constantius, his hairline somewhat higher and his frame stockier than that of the young man who had stolen my heart thirteen years ago, but the honest grey eyes were still the same. I gazed at the features of the man who had been my mate for a dozen years overlaid by the splendour he had worn when he first came to me in the light of the Beltane fire. If he became Caesar, everything would change.
“It is not an honour that one can easily refuse.”
I nodded, thinking that I had known from the beginning that Constantius had the potential for greatness. Was this the meaning of my vow to Ganeda’s spirit? I would never be Lady of Avalon, but I might indeed become Empress one day.
“But why you?” I blurted suddenly. “No one could be more worthy, but when did he have a chance to know you so well?”
“The night of the mutiny, after Probus died. Carus and I hid in a fisherman’s hut at the edge of the marsh while the men were rioting, and as men will when the situation is desperate, we bared our souls. Carus wanted to bring back the old virtues of the Republic without losing the strength of Empire. And I… talked to him about what I thought was wrong with us now, and what, with honest government, Rome could be.”
I reached out to take his hand, that warm flesh that I had come to know as well as my own.
“Oh my dearest, I understand!” With the powers of a Caesar he could do so much—such an opportunity must outweigh any consideration either for his comfort or my own.
“Until the Emperor returns from Parthia I will not be required to decide,” said Constantius, managing a smile. But we both knew that there would only be one possible decision when that time came.
I heard a clatter of sandals on the flagstones of the walkway and then the door crashed open. For a moment Con clung there, panting.
“Father, have you heard the news?” he cried when he had got his breath once more. “They are saying that the Emperor is dead in Parthia—struck by lightning in a storm, and Numerian is bringing the army home!”