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CHAPTER ELEVEN
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AD 284-85
As the Empire mourned Carus so did I, though my sorrow was more for Constantius’s lost chance for greatness than for the Emperor, whom I had known only for a little while. If I had understood the inevitable consequences of my husband’s elevation, I should have rejoiced. Because Carus died when he did, I had Constantius for almost ten more years.
The Emperor had died as a consequence of the flux which was a constant hazard on campaign. But the death had occurred during a thunderstorm, and when the Emperor’s tent caught fire, the troops believed he had been killed by lightning, the most evil of omens. Our forces had been well on the way to conquering Parthia at last, but there were prophecies, it was said, that the River Tigris would forever mark the limits of Rome’s eastern expansion. Indeed, there were any number of signs, omens and portents for folk to gabble at in those first, horrified weeks after the news arrived.
The troops acclaimed Numerian as co-emperor with his brother Carinus, but refused to continue the war. And so the Army of the East was making its slow way back home while Carinus ran riot in Rome. Did he know that Carus had intended Constantius to supplant him? Suddenly Dalmatia seemed entirely too close to Italia, and when Maximian, who now held the command in Gallia, requested Constantius to join his staff, we agreed that he would be prudent to resign his post as governor of Dalmatia and accept the invitation.
Our new home was a villa in the hills above Treveri. It was not Britannia, but the country folk here spoke a language not unlike the British tongue, and even two hundred years after Julius Caesar had suppressed them, the Druids were remembered. Someone among the servants whom we had engaged to assist our household slaves must have recognized the fading blue crescent upon my brow, for I soon found they were treating me with a respect that went beyond duty. When I went about in the countryside people would bow before me, and from time to time offerings of fruit or flowers appeared by the door.
Constantius thought it was amusing, but it made Constantine uncomfortable, and from time to time I would catch him watching me with troubled eyes from beneath the shock of fair hair. It was his age, I told myself, and pretended unconcern. He was twelve now, leggy as a young hunting dog, the big bones out of proportion, and the superb co-ordination that had carried him through childhood likely at odd moments to let him down. If he could have laughed at himself it would have been easier, but Constantine had never had much of a sense of humour. With the approach of adolescence he was becoming reclusive, fearing to expose himself to ridicule.
But there was nothing wrong with his mind, and Atticus found that he suddenly had a willing pupil, eager to sink his teeth into the meat of Greek philosophy and literature. At present they were studying the works of Lucian. As I directed the girls who were cleaning the mosaic of Dionysos with the dolphins on the floor of the dining room, I could hear the murmur of voices from the study, Constantine’s uncertain tenor rising and falling as he translated the passage his tutor had assigned.
Tomorrow would see the beginning of the month the Romans had named after Mercurius’s mother, Maia. In Britannia, I thought, smiling, they would be preparing for the festival of Beltane. If I read the signs rightly they celebrated here as well. The weather, which had been chill and rainy, had suddenly turned warm, and wildflowers starred the green hills.
I took a deep breath of the sweet air, then paused to listen, as the maids opened a door and Con’s voice grew suddenly louder.
“They saw that… the thing that both the ones who fear and the hopeful ones needed and, uh… wanted the most was to know about the future. This was the reason Delphi and Delos and Clarus and Didyma had ages ago become rich and famous…”
I paused to listen, curious to learn what they were reading and what my son would make of it.