Ian Ross - Swords Around the Throne

‘You are all witnesses!’ Probinus cried, raising his hand to point at Maximian. ‘This man has attempted to murder the emperor!’

The knife fell from Maximian’s hand. He staggered back, slumping against the wall, and let himself slide slowly down onto his haunches. His head dropped forward into his cupped palms.

‘The emperor’s wife warned us of her father’s insanity,’ Hierocles told Castus quietly. ‘But, of course, we could do nothing until he acted. Her eunuch volunteered to take the emperor’s place. A good death, for one of his kind.’

Castus found he could still not speak. He felt rooted, the strength drained from his limbs. Serapion had surely not volunteered to die. Had he been told that Maximian would be apprehended before he struck the killing blow? Had Fausta herself known? Castus had never trusted the eunuch, or liked him, but as he stared at the corpse on the bed he felt a strange sympathy for him. I am just as human as you , Serapion had told him once. We are both slaves…

The two Protectores flanking the emperor had moved to seize Maximian and draw him to his feet. He hung between them, limp as a corpse.

‘Go to the prisoner’s room before dawn,’ Hierocles murmured, leaning closer to Castus. ‘Make sure he does the honourable thing. If necessary, help him to do it. But he must never see daylight again. Understood?’

‘We will do what we are ordered…’ Castus said, reciting the customary soldier’s oath. But the words clogged his mouth and tasted like ash.

A lamp was burning in a niche outside the room. Castus stood for a moment staring at the boards of the door. Then he raised his fist, knocked, and shoved the door open.

Maximian was sitting on the edge of the couch, still wearing his blood-spattered white tunic. The room was dark, and Castus carried the lamp through from outside and set it on the varnished wooden chest beside the door.

‘You’ve come to kill me, then,’ the former Augustus said. ‘They’ve sent you to be my executioner.’

Castus wanted to deny it, but he could not. He stood at attention, thumbs hooked into his belt. Maximian was not even looking at him, barely even registering his presence. He looked old and wild, but there was still strength in the man.

‘They think you can do it?’ he said, his voice rasping and catching. He lifted a hand and tugged at his beard. ‘They think you can kill me, the Man like Hercules ?’

He twisted on the couch, staring at Castus. ‘You CANNOT!’ he shouted.

‘I’m sorry, dominus. I have my orders.’

‘I… am… your… EMPEROR !’

Then, just as sudden as the burst of rage, the spirit seemed to ebb from Maximian. He sagged on the edge of the couch. ‘You know, when I ruled the world,’ he said in a musing voice, ‘my colleague Diocletian warned me against pride. Only the gods direct our fate, he told me. We ourselves are just pieces in their game. You should remember that…’

‘Dominus,’ Castus managed to say. ‘I can give you a sword if you need one.’

‘A sword?’ Maximian said, staring at him with vacant eyes. ‘A sword? Don’t insult me. I know what must be done. Leave me alone to do it.’

Turning on his heel, Castus strode from the room and closed the door behind him. In darkness he stood and waited. The light beneath the door shifted, and a short while later something clattered to the floor. Castus stood still, feet braced, hardly daring to breathe. Then he went back into the room.

The body turned slowly in the lamplight, the grey calloused feet hanging bare beneath the hem of the loose tunic, the kicked stool lying on its side beneath. Castus found it hard to look up. When he did he saw the girdle tied tight around the corpse’s neck, looped over the roof beam above. The face of his former emperor was already swollen and distorted by death. He stepped outside again, closed the door, and let his forehead drop against the wall.

Constantine was sitting in one of the upper dining chambers, with a brazier of hot coals pulled up beside him. He had his back to the door, and did not move as Castus entered the chamber behind him. Three stamping strides across the floor, and Castus dropped to kneel, facing the emperor’s chair.

‘Most Sacred Augustus!’ Castus declared. ‘The former emperor Maximian… has taken his own life.’

Constantine raised a hand, one finger pointing upwards. ‘He has lived,’ he said.

The faint cold breeze from the windows stirred the long drapes. Castus could see only the back of the emperor’s head, the line of his jaw. Probinus made a sound in his throat, and he saluted quickly and got to his feet again.

‘What did he say?’ Constantine asked before Castus could retreat. ‘When he came to my room, what did he say he wanted?’

Castus glanced at the prefect, who gave a quick nod.

‘He said, Augustus, that he’d had a dream. He didn’t say what it was.’

In the moonlight from the windows Castus saw a muscle twitching in the emperor’s cheek. ‘Shame,’ Constantine said. He paused for a long moment, warming the palm of his hand over the brazier. ‘Most people have dreams,’ he said. ‘But only the dreams of great men are sent by the gods. Was my father-in-law a great man?’

‘He was an emperor,’ Castus said quickly. He caught Probinus’s warning hiss.

‘For months now,’ Constantine went on, ‘I have been waiting for a sign. A dream, a portent, a vision… Anything to tell me that my actions are just, that the gods commend me. Or any god, in fact. I wait for a sign and I receive nothing.’

He raised his hand again, stirring the air with loose fingers.

‘You have done well, Protector Aurelius Castus,’ he announced in a brisk tone. ‘Your loyalty is proven, and you shall be rewarded.’

Then the prefect gestured, and Castus bowed once more and paced backwards out of the room.

They were smashing the statues of Maximian as the imperial retinue left Arelate. Castus watched the hammers swinging, the painted images shattering to lumps of rubble and dust. It pained him: most of the statues showed Maximian in a filial embrace with his former colleague Diocletian, and Diocletian’s images were being destroyed along with them. Surely that was sacrilege, Castus thought. Whatever Maximian himself had done, the great Diocletian was above all criticism, his fame and glory immaculate.

But everything was changing now. Even sacred things could be smashed to ruin. Maximian was dead by his own hand. Constantine was rid of his troublesome father-in-law with all his honour intact, and nobody could say he had acted improperly. Maxentius would declare his dead father to be a god, and the battle lines would be drawn. It all seemed simple now. But Castus remembered what the old emperor had told him before he died. Just pieces in their game . He tried not to dwell on these thoughts.

It had been a hurried departure from Arelate. Only two days after the death of Maximian word had come from the army commanders on the Rhine that the Franks had again crossed the river and were plundering the provinces of northern Gaul. Constantine had assembled his force quickly and marched north at once, riding grim-faced and ferocious with his bodyguard around him. By the following morning they had reached Arausio, and the news met them that the Franks had retreated once more. They had fled before the terror of the emperor’s name, or so the despatch claimed.

The barbarian threat were gone, but the journey north continued, back towards Treveris. The pace was slower now, allowing the baggage train to catch up with the vanguard, and Fausta and her household had followed with it. Somewhere in that moving column of carriages and wagons, Castus knew, was Sabina. And soon, only a few months from now on the first auspicious day in early spring, they would be married.