I blinked, and realized it was Constantine. How long had he been standing there? And how much had he heard? I sat up, suddenly aware of how I must look to him, with my hair unbound, my eyes dazed with trance. I stretched out one hand towards him in an unvoiced plea. For a moment longer he stood there, on his face an expression half-avid and half-appalled. Did he think I was like Alexander the Prophet? My eyes filled with tears as he turned and disappeared.
“Lady,” said Docles in his deep voice, “is it well with you? You have given us a great blessing.” His face had its usual calm, but his eyes shone. In Maximian’s face I saw something almost like fear. I looked from one to the other, knowing that all three would wear the purple one day.
“Only if you make it so,” I whispered, remembering how the last two emperors had died.
“You have told me what I needed to know,” answered Docles. “Constantius, take your lady to her chamber. She has done us good service this night and should rest.”
“And what will you do?” asked Maximian.
“I shall return to Numerian and wait. Jupiter smiles upon me, and will make my way clear.”
In the months that followed, all seemed confusion. In November of that year, Numerian died. Docles seized the opportunity, accusing the Praetorian Prefect, a man called Arrius Aper, of having poisoned him, and executing him on the spot. The next thing we heard was that the army had acclaimed him Emperor. But he had changed his name, and now he was calling himself Diocletian.
Carinus, who was a good commander when he put his mind to it, roused himself from his debaucheries to defend his throne, and Roman warred against Roman once more. Maximian and Constantius declared for Diocletian and prepared to hold the West against Carinus. But when the compaigning season opened the following spring, the gods, or perhaps it was Nemesis, decreed against another lengthy civil war. In the confusion of a battle a tribune whose wife Carinus had seduced seized the opportunity to slay his commander and take his own revenge.
Diocletian was now supreme. His first act was to name Maximian as his junior colleague. And that summer, when the new Caesar, who had appointed Constantius to be his praetorian prefect, was busy dealing with the latest incursion of Germans, Diocletian sent a letter requesting that my son Constantine join his household in Nicomedia.
Constantine’s bedchamber was strewn with gear and clothing. I paused in the doorway, arms full of linen undertunics fresh from the clothesline. In such confusion, it seemed impossible that all this gear would be packed and ready by tomorrow’s dawn. A brief fantasy of a midnight raid to steal the baggage played through my imagination. But no attempt to delay my son’s departure could achieve more than a momentary confusion, and Constantine was of an age to be embarrassed by his parents even when they were acting sensibly. Even Constantius, had he been at home, could not have resisted an imperial command.
“Has your bodyservant packed your woollen leggings?” I asked, handing the tunics to the maidservant to add to the pile.
“Oh, Mother, I won’t need those old things. Only peasants wear them: I’d look like a peasant parading through Diocletian’s marble halls.”
“I remember very vividly just how cold it got in Bithynia, the year we lived in Drepanum, and imperial halls are likely to be draughty. If it is cold enough for you to wear the leggings, I assure you that you will also be wearing enough outer gear to hide them from view.”
The young Gaul we had bought to be Constantine’s body-servant when he turned thirteen looked from one of us to the other, comparing frowns, then turned towards the chest that held the things his master had intended to leave behind.
“Come with me, Constantine, and let us leave the slaves to their work. Here, we will only get in the way.” In truth, I would have preferred to pack his gear myself, with a blessing on each garment as I put it in, but that was something that others could do. No one else could tell my son what was in my heart.