Part 16 (1/2)

”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 amus.e.m.e.nts. 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 subst.i.tute...” 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!”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

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 a.s.sist 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 pa.s.sage his tutor had a.s.signed.

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.

”I don't understand,” said Constantine. ”Lucian says this man Alexander was a fraud, a deceiver, but it sounds as if he thinks that Delphi and the rest of the oracles are just as bad.”

”You must take the statement in context,” Atticus said soothingly. ”It is true that Lucian was one of the leading Sophists of the last century, and naturally prefers to base his conclusions on reason rather than superst.i.tion, but what has aroused his ire in this essay is the fact that Alexander intentionally set out to trick people, pretending to discover the snake in the egg, and subst.i.tuting another, big one, with its head hidden by a mask in the ritual. Then he told everyone it was Aesclepius reborn and said it gave him the oracles that he had written himself. But it is true that he sent clients to the great shrines to keep the priests from denouncing him.”

I remembered now hearing something of the story. Alexander had been quite famous at one time, and Lucian had not only written about him, but actively tried to unmask him as well.

”Do you mean to tell me that none of the oracles are true?” Constantine said suspiciously.

”No, no-my point is that you must learn critical thinking, so that you will be able to judge for yourself whether something is reasonable, rather than accepting blindly what you are told,” Atticus responded.

I nodded: that was more or less what we had been taught at Avalon. It was as foolish to deny that oracles could be faked as to blindly believe in them.

”That doesn't make sense,” protested Constantine. ”Those who are wise should decide what is true and be done with it.”

”Ought not every man be allowed to decide for himself?” Atticus said reasonably. ”Learning how to think should be a part of everyone's education, just as everyone must learn to care for a horse or use numbers.”

”For simple things, yes,” answered Constantine. ”But when the horse falls sick you call in a healer and you employ a mathematicus for higher computations. Surely in the realm of the holy, which is so much more important, it should be the same.”

”Very good, Constantine, but consider this-the flesh is tangible, and its ills can be perceived by the senses. Numbers are symbolic of items that can be physically counted, and they are always and everywhere the same. But each man experiences the world differently. His nativity is ruled by different stars, and he has a unique history... Is it so unreasonable to allow him his own perception of the G.o.ds?

This world is so rich and varied-surely we need myriad ways to understand it. Thus, there are the Sophists, who doubt everything, and the followers of Plato, who believe that only archetypes are real, the mystical Pythagoreans and the Aristotelian logicians. Each philosophy gives us a different tool with which to understand the world.”

”But the world stays the same,” objected Constantine, ”and so do the G.o.ds!”

”Do they?” Atticus sounded amused. He had been sold into slavery by his uncle, and I suspected he found it more comfortable to believe in no G.o.ds at all. ”How then, do we reconcile all the stories about them, or the claims of all the different cults, each of which declares that its deity is supreme?”

”We find out which is the most powerful, and teach everyone how to wors.h.i.+p Him,” Constantine said forthrightly.

I shook my head. How simple it all seemed to a child. When I was his age, there had been no truth but that of Avalon.

”Come now,” Atticus was replying, ”even the Jews, whose G.o.d permits them to wors.h.i.+p no other, do not pretend the other G.o.ds do not exist.”

”My father is beloved of the greatest of G.o.ds whose face is the sun, and if I prove worthy, He will extend that blessing to me.”

I lifted an eyebrow. I knew that Constantine had been impressed by the solar cult of Dalmatia, to which most of the officers Constantius had served with belonged, but I did not realize how far his attempt to model himself on his father had gone. I must find some way to teach him about the G.o.ddess as well.

Constantine continued, ”There is one Emperor on earth and one sun in the sky. It seems to me that the Empire would be much more peaceful if everyone wors.h.i.+pped alike.”

”Well, you are certainly ent.i.tled to your opinion, but remember, Alexander the Prophet gave his oracles in the name of Apollo. Just because a man speaks in the name of a G.o.d does not mean he is speaking true.”

”Then the authorities should stop him,” Constantius responded doggedly.