The messenger fell to his knees as if succumbing to the baking-hot sun. A sultry breeze passed over the palace’s rooftop terrace, casting the fellow’s thin hair back. His dry lips moved wordlessly, unable to repeat the statement that had seen me rise up from my seat like a scorpion’s tail.
‘He said… what?’ I demanded once more, my voice tremulous, my vision shuddering with each beat of my heart. A fire spread across my skin and an invisible, choking hand squeezed my throat. For all the world, it was as if I had been taken back to that day of my youth in this very city, long before it was mine: when Father had publicly taken Theodora as his highborn wife, estranging Mother and me.
The messenger was now paler than Persian sand and shaking like me, though with fear instead of anger. ‘He… he said… he… he…’ the poor fellow tried and tried again, but he could not repeat the message that had struck me at the first time of airing like a Frankish axe to the breast.
Helena is no noblewoman; she was merely a concubine. Thus, the mighty Constantine is but the spawn of a whore!
‘He said… he—’ The fellow’s words were mercifully ended when Batius’ ham-like hand settled on his shoulder. The messenger almost leapt from his robe with fright, but the big man quickly soothed his fears. ‘The emperor does not need to hear it again,’ Batius said, ‘but your swiftness in bringing this to his attention will not be forgotten – and it takes a brave man to bring bad news to the imperial palace. The Magister Officiorum is looking for an assistant, and I will see to it that your name reaches him,’ he continued, opening the terrace door to let the relieved man make his escape inside the palace’s cool halls. Batius remained at the door for a time, back turned, scratching his sweaty, stubbly scalp, and I knew he was composing himself. He had been like an uncle to me back then in my younger days. I would not be so easily mollified now.
‘Does he know how hard I have worked to resist the calls of my council?’ I snarled. ‘Does he? How could he do this?’
Aye… he : for this outrageous spite had come from the tongue of Maxentius. On that day when my father had shamed me, Maxentius had been there. Batius and he were the only ones to offer me kind words, to spare me the hard, mocking eyes cast by the many other gull-like nobles there that day. Now, it seemed, he had not merely turned his back on me… he was goading me, slandering the ones he knew I dearly loved.
Batius turned now, his face long, scars and age lines picked out as ribbons of shadow by the stark sunlight. ‘I doubt he even knows that message made it onto a scroll, Domine, let alone that it reached you here.’
I raked my fingers through my thick curls of hair, eyes sweeping around the terrace, a single breath held captive… then, with a roar, I swept a hand across the table, scattering the empty and half-empty wine cups and plates there across the tiled floor – some bouncing through the balustrade and toppling off down into the gardens. Once the din had faded, I shot an accusing finger out, as if Batius was to blame. ‘Even if he never spoke those words, he let the message travel across imperial lands. What do you expect of me? To forgive him?’
‘Not in the least,’ Batius replied, utterly unruffled by my behaviour – he had seen my tantrums as a boy when we used to practise sword fighting together, and he looked at me now as he had done then. I know now that my conduct that dog-hot morning was barely forgivable. Two jugs of wine – drained before noon – and the sticky summer air had mixed to boil my mind before the unfortunate messenger had arrived. Yet Batius stood there like a granite bluff, his only sign of emotion the sadness in his eyes. ‘However this found its way to you, we must now accept that it has.’
‘It has not just travelled to me though has it, Batius? Rumours and more scrolls, the messenger said, all across my realm and that of Maxentius. How can I pacify my tribunus and my prefects – proud generals who only demand that I let them fight for me – or the carrion gulls of my senate, now?’
‘Because you know there is still a crumb of hope,’ the big man said.
‘Is there?’ I scoffed. ‘If there is then it is only a worm-infested morsel, dangled from the tarnished gods of the Tetrarchy,’ I spat, Lactantius’ musings fuelling my convictions.
‘While there remains hope of avoiding war with Maxentius, you must embrace it,’ Batius persisted. ‘Fight one another, and you will hand the world to Licinius. Fight one another… and our spathae will be stained with Roman blood.’ He hesitantly shook his head, gazing through me. ‘That cannot be the way… surely?’ he questioned the ether.
‘I cannot let this go unanswered,’ I snarled through gritted teeth. ‘He. Called. My. Mother. A… whore! ’
‘Someone in his camp did,’ Batius tried to correct me. ‘The same person who ensured the slur was spread far and wide like a blight. Did you not say it wasn’t Maxentius but one of his retinue who had organised that cut-throat to strike at you in Agrippina?’
‘He claimed so,’ I scoffed, ‘as would any man caught with their hand on a bloody knife.’
‘And what if it was not a claim, but the truth?’ Batius took a step towards me.
‘Scribe!’ I yelled, pouring myself a third cup of wine to the brim.
‘But, Domine,’ Batius added, ‘Maxentius is not here. We cannot establish what is behind this slur. Before we respond we should think carefu—’
The slap of the scribe’s sandals cut Batius off. The hunched, sandy-haired man seemed oblivious to the crackling atmosphere on the terrace, and halted between Batius and me, looking at us each in turn, a wax tablet in one arm and a stylus in the other hand.
‘This is the tale of Maxentius, False Prince of the South,’ I began, swinging away from the table, gulping at my wine in between strides to and fro. The scribe’s eyebrows arched, suddenly aware of the toxic situation he had just strolled into. His stylus scratched and tapped at the wax in a woodpecker-like fashion. ‘A proud man, but neither of purple blood, nor a Roman.’
‘Domine…’ Batius tried to halt me.
‘He sprung from a Syrian womb, where his mother often used the hot desert nights to lure men to her home.’
Batius slid a hand over his weary face, rolling his eyes and muttering an oath skywards.
‘Soldiers, fishermen, beggars… all have known the mother of Maxentius. Of course, the Tetrarchic gods intervened to ensure that it was Emperor Maximian’s seed that spawned the boy Maxentius. Who could question them, after all? Have Jove, Hercules and Mars not brought contentment across Roman lands?’ I laughed once without humour, Lactantius’ preachings echoing piercingly in my head now.
The Tetrarchic gods have failed: Jove, Mars and Hercules have fallen – look at the glorious ruin in which their followers wallow. Shun them, Constantine – just as you have shunned their lineage. I drew out a coin from the batch newly minted. Now they sported an image of me not as an emperor wearing a wreath, but as a greater being, nimbate, just as I was that day at the tumbledown shrine. A shiver of pride struck through me.
‘Have those gods not bestowed upon us the empire of today?’
‘Domine!’ Batius tried again.
But I threw up a hand, threw the rest of my wine down my throat, and threw caution from the balcony. ‘Make a hundred copies of this,’ I demanded of the scribe. ‘Have them sent to Britannia, to Hispania, all over Gaul. Send them to the East… and send riders south too: cross the mountains into Italia and nail this message in the market squares of the Padus valley cities.’
A knot of slaves shuffled onto the terrace, bowing their heads and averting their eyes, eager to give the impression that they had heard nothing. But that was just the thing: right then, I wanted them to hear, to talk, to spread the affront – to make Maxentius feel for himself the shame he had caused me. Then I saw the duo whom the slaves were escorting. The reed-thin Maternus and the slack-lipped Ossius. The bishops, whose visit for a ‘month’ had become a permanent residence.
My eyes narrowed to crescents and I offered them a faint nod. I noticed that Maternus was wearing a fine silver pectoral – a recent acquisition – draped over his white robe.
‘Domine,’ they replied in unison, offering full bows from the waist.
I glared at them until they shuffled nervously.
‘The last time we spoke, we talked of the will of God,’ Ossius said at last.
You did, I thought.
‘God has spoken to us again,’ Ossius said. ‘He fears that His flock is in great danger. The… False Prince of the South…’ he said with a self-congratulatory smile, ‘presents a dark threat.’
I could have laughed long and loud were it not such a grave matter. It was all I could do not to stare at them agog. They had beseeched me to ignore the senate and the legionary commanders not a moon ago.
‘The thirty-year reign was divinely granted, Domine, and it must be… protected. Were the legions and your hardy forest regiments to mobilise and march south,’ Maternus said, ‘then God would be content.’
‘Would He?’ I said, stepping towards them. ‘Would He really?’
The silver cup in my hand bent in my tight, powerful grip, a splash of wine leaping from it. Batius must have sensed the flames rising within me, as he stepped between me and the bishops. ‘Your advice is noted, though you should seek appointment or await a senate session in future,’ he said, gesturing to the tall doors leading back inside.
‘God’s will transcends the senate, soldier.’ Ossius smiled, the words dripping with superiority. ‘As we have discussed.’
Batius lost his soldierly stance for a moment. ‘Aye,’ he agreed.
The bishops left, and I realised the scribe had too. The dark slur on Maxentius was already on its way to the scriptorium, perhaps even now being copied out by the scribes there, and would soon be on its way to the corners of the empire. I was gripped for a moment with a fiery dread. What have I done? Then I recalled the smear that had prompted it:
The mighty Constantine is but the spawn of a whore!
I swung round, seeking a target for my ire, when another meek man emerged from the shady palace interior. A rider: slight and coated in dust – I knew them all too well these days.
‘What?’ I roared.
The rider gulped. ‘I bring word from the frontier forts of the south-east. Disguised Licinian scouts were apprehended in the market towns.’
‘Scouts?’ Batius said, his eyes narrowing. ‘Licinius’ scouts?’
The big man and I shared a look. It was less than a moon since I had banked on at least a season of respite from the East.
‘Aye. It seems that Licinius is ready to invade the West imminently – sees your territory as a riper prospect than Maxentius’ – and right now he plots an invasion of southern Gaul. Several of his legions have been sighted, at camp near a weak spot in our border in Noricum. The morning before I left to ride here, they were marching north-west… to penetrate your realm. An act of war, Domine.’
I beheld the rider for a trice, then swung away, booting the poor table across the terrace with an ox-like bellow. ‘Muster the Comitatus,’ I snarled at Batius.