I felt muscles straining and pulling. I have seen soldiers fight and train many times in my life and most can maintain their strength and agility for quite some time, but any man not trained by a centurion or a lanista who tells you he spent half an hour hacking at a palus is a liar. Twenty strikes is all it takes to drain the last reserves of power from your arm and to increase the weight of the sword exponentially with each blow, such that it soon feels as though you are trying to throw a trireme.
I had stepped up my exercises with the Praetorians since coming back from the East. Something about that nerve-racking sojourn in the lands of my enemy had made me feel that I needed to be more capable of my own protection, and who better to train the emperor than his own guards, the elite of the Roman military?
Shoulder muscles screaming at me, I lifted the heavy blade once more and jabbed at the palus. The tip struck the timber and the reverberation up my arm almost floored me.
‘Fifteen more and you can rest, Domine,’ reassured the grizzled centurion with the impressively scarred nose. Fifteen more? Two would be pushing the bounds of my endurance.
‘Fifteen is not possible,’ I gasped between breaths, pulling back my arm and feeling the sword drop almost to the ground.
‘You’re an emperor, sir. The son of emperors and protector of Rome. You can do it.’
It was a good effort at enthusing me, but I was flagging beyond hope.
‘Think of something that enrages you, sir,’ the centurion said, coming close so that his voice sounded low and menacing. ‘That’s what I tell my lads if they seem to be wanting for drive. You’d be surprised how much energy anger lends you.’
Angry. What made me angry? The problem with the Popes and their flock had all but gone away. Africa was settled, and Licinius, while he was on the move, seemed to be concentrating on the north and ignoring me. There was one thing, though I was trying very much not to think about it unless I had to. Even thinking about why I wasn’t thinking about it was enough to start the blood coursing and before I’d even realised it, the tip of the blade had come up again.
‘Constantine,’ I hissed under my breath, imagining that broad, honest-looking face with its mop of curly hair before me on the battered wooden stake. I slammed the tip of the sword into his visage, imagining it breaking bone and shearing muscle.
‘Bastard son of a whore,’ I snarled, pulling back the blade with reserves of strength of which I’d been unaware, tapped through focusing on my northern opponent. Remembering the previous day, when the rumour had first reached Rome and quickly spread through the streets like a conflagration, I roared and slammed the blade in once more, deep into the centre of Constantine’s smug, lying, slandering, malign face.
‘My mother,’ I snarled, slamming in the sword again. Not my dreadful horrible father who, though I’d deified, I still reviled. The man who had made my youth so difficult and had almost done for me as an adult. No. Constantine, who knew first-hand how awful my father was, had left the old fool’s shade alone and instead attacked the good name of my mother!
Slam.
My good, pure, loving mother!
Slam.
This from a man who had been my friend.
Slam.
A man I had almost called brother.
Slam.
A man who was my brother-in-law!
Slam.
‘My mother!’ I bellowed.
Slam, slam, slam, slam .
By the time I finally ran out of strength, I had hacked and chipped a huge shredded section of the palus away, and oddly what remained was faintly reminiscent of a grinning skull. I howled and smashed the sword into it, fury driving me even as it began to abate.
The other Praetorians in the garden had stopped what they were doing and were staring at me. The training centurion reached out gingerly towards my sword.
‘That was more than fifteen, Domine.’
Sweat was pouring down my face, streaming into my eyes and half-blinding me. My hand was shaking wildly as it gripped the sweat-soaked hilt of the heavy blade, which slowly dragged itself back down to the ground. I felt utterly drained. Of course, I was blaming Constantine for something that might not have come from his own mouth. After all, equally unkind words that had struck him had actually come from Volusianus. Indeed, if I was going to be angry with anyone, it should have been my Praetorian Prefect, for it was he who had started this slinging of insults. But it was done, and now the pendulum of hate was swinging with heavy inevitability.
I let the centurion take the sword and stared down at my shaking hand, gripping and releasing a fist to try and stop the trembling. Turning to leave the garden and visit the baths to clean up, I spotted Volusianus in the doorway and the fist gripped again. I fought a powerful urge to use it to break the prefect’s nose. The anger was going now, though, most of it driven into the wooden stake at sword point, and leaving only empty resignation. I walked across to the doorway, accepting a towel from a slave and wiping the worst of the sweat from my head and face.
‘Good work, Domine,’ the prefect noted. ‘You could stand your ground among the Praetorians these days.’
‘What is it, Volusianus? I’m tired and I need to bathe.’
The prefect huffed and I noticed a twitch appear in his lip for just a moment.
‘I am concerned, Domine.’
‘You’re always concerned about something. Make yourself clear.’
‘The treasury, Domine. It drains rapidly.’
‘It is in the nature of treasuries to drain. If the Aerarium is running low, top it up from the Fiscus treasury – my personal funds are more than adequate and can be drained a little. And there must still be money in the Military Aerarium, too. Just have the officials move the money around to make sure there’s enough.’
‘Imperator, there is not enough. The Aerarium is almost empty. One of the priests at the temple of Saturn said there is so little metal in the vaults he’s worried the whole temple will float away. Priests have a peculiar sense of humour, I know, but if even the priests are concerned…’
‘Move it around,’ I repeated wearily. ‘Make Gaius Annius a quaestor and let it be his problem. He’s desperate for a job. So long as he doesn’t leave my personal funds empty.’
‘Your own Fiscus is not so healthy, Domine. You already authorised the praetor in charge to release extra funds for the military, which, I expect you can guess, means that the Military Aerarium is also thinning alarmingly.’
I paused, throwing the sodden towel to a bench. ‘Then where is the money going? We had enough a few months ago.’
‘Your damned Christians, Domine. You restored all their property, built new churches and repaired old ones. Their property, which you restored, was a significant portion of the treasury, and has been ever since Diocletian first seized it. And your Pope—’ he spat the word with distaste ‘—Miltiades, is still asking for more. We cannot give him any more money. We cannot afford to give him what we already have!’
‘Volusianus…’
‘Domine, we are supporting a massive army, bigger than those in the north and the east. It costs a huge amount to keep it active and ready, yet we cannot afford to cut down. Our forces are what stop Licinius, Daia and Constantine from simply walking into Rome and plucking you from the throne. And we’re still paying off the extra grain we had to buy in during the African revolt. Years of excess shipments cost a king’s ransom and we have been fortunate indeed to be able to pay our dues slowly over time. And the fortification of the north-east. That does not come cheap. Even with the army doing much of the work, a substantial financial outlay is required. We’re going to have to find some more money soon, and you have to stop giving it to the Christians.’
I sighed and turned to the doorway.
‘I’m going for my bath, Volusianus.’
As I stalked irritably off into the dim interior of the building, I could hear Volusianus in the doorway shouting after me like some peasant in the forum.
‘You have to do something about it, Domine. You can’t just ignore this.’
But I did. That was exactly what I did.