‘We need to wait,’ Castus told Brinno, whispering between his teeth. ‘Wait for Massilia – things will be decided then.’
He heard Brinno smack his lips in frustration. There were seagulls whirling and crying above them now, and the air smelled of brine.
‘Decided how?’ the young barbarian hissed. ‘And if not by us – then who?’
‘I don’t know, brother,’ Castus told him, unable to meet his eye. ‘I don’t know.’
The Aurata and her flotilla of smaller vessels left the mouth of the canal that afternoon, and a fine westerly breeze carried them across the bay before sundown, to anchor in the lee of the small barren islands off Massilia. The night was calm and clear, the stars very bright, and as the sun rose the oarsmen backed water and turned the head of the ship towards the narrow inlet of the harbour mouth.
Standing beneath the high gilded prow, Castus watched the city appear out of the sun-haze of dawn. To either side was a rocky coastline, grey crags dusted with the grey-green of olive groves and wild trees. With the sun glaring off the water, Castus could see little of the city at first. Then he made out the wall that circled it on the seaward side, a massive fortification rising from the naked rock, with squat square towers every few hundred paces. As the Aurata pulled closer, it appeared that the wall entirely closed the city, cutting it off from the sea; then, as the ship turned, Castus made out the narrow neck of the harbour, clinched between the fortified headland and the rough slopes on the far side.
The galley pulled in through the neck, and the harbour opened before her. An expanse of enclosed water, glimmering pale blue in the early sun, half of it filled with moored vessels. Beyond the forest of masts and yards, the city rose in a broad arc around the northward side of the harbour, clustered houses climbing the hills in terraces. At the summit of each of the hills was a temple, the pillars and pediments gleaming white and gold in the morning sun.
It was a magnificent sight, the air so clear and clean that Castus felt he could see every detail of the city in perfect focus. For a few moments he forgot the grim mission that had brought him here, and gloried in the view of the city before him across the water.
But then, as the Aurata crawled the last distance between the moored ships in the harbour, Castus made out the squalor of the docks, the stone quays slippery with fish guts, the jetties of rotting black timber, the wrack of rubbish and half-decayed wreckage in the mud at the water’s edge, and the mass of people spilling down through the gates in the harbour wall and between the chaotic assemblage of warehouses and taverns along the dockside. Horns were blaring from the temples on the hills, and the gathering crowd was already cheering, waving palm branches, crying out its acclamations. The people of Massilia, like those of Arelate before them, had been instructed on how to greet their new master.
Maximian stood up on the stern platform of the galley, beneath a flapping purple pennant. Castus stared at him, bemused for a moment. The emperor appeared different. His face had been whitened with some kind of paste, his cheeks rouged, his beard and hair dyed jet-black. Standing stiffly in his heavy embroidered robe and his jewelled imperial tiara, Maximian resembled a painted statue. Jupiter, maybe, or Hercules himself.
The oars backed water, bringing the Aurata smoothly round to the wide stone quay at the western end of the docks. Slaves wearing flowered wreaths lowered a gangway down to the galley’s deck, and on the quay twenty young maidens of the city were drawn up in lines carrying baskets of flowers. As Maximian made his way with slow and stately tread up the gangway and along the jetty, the girls cried out praises and scattered the flowers before him. Music of pipes and tambourines eddied through the noise of the cheering.
At the head of the quay, across an open paved area, the grandees of Massilia were assembled to greet the emperor: the curator of the city, with decurions of the city council, the flamines and augurs of the temples and the imperial cults. All of them dressed in their heavy white wool togas, their rich silk and linen tunics, their plushly embroidered cloaks. As Maximian approached, all of them knelt on the greasy cobbles and performed their adoration.
Castus came up the gangway after the imperial party, with Brinno at his side. He tried to keep his expression blank, tried not to stare too critically at all the outpourings of loyal devotion. What was wrong with these people? How much had they been paid? How much had they been threatened?
He saw Fausta and her retinue disembarking from one of the smaller galleys at the next jetty. Constantine’s wife had given up her pretence of mourning, and wore the full splendour of her wealth once more. Castus watched her as she moved to join her father; what were her loyalties now?
‘Maximian Augustus! Eternal Augustus! Greatest of emperors! May the gods grant you eternal life! May the gods grant you eternal rule!’
On and on it went, until Castus felt the massed voices drumming in his skull. He scanned the crowd, trying to read the faces of individuals, but saw nothing. All looked as blank and bemused as he felt. Maximian stood in the cleared area at the top of the quay, motionless as a statue with his retinue around him.
Now there was one voice, rising clear above the rest. The cheering and the chanted acclamations died away, and the voice carried onwards. A panegyric of praise, of course. The orator was a plump-faced man dressed all in wine-red, and he sketched florid gestures in the air as he spoke.
‘…lover of your country, lover of the true gods, O greatest of emperors, you bring glory to our city by your Sacred Presence! All civil strife is banished, all traitors and impious followers of outlaw sects slink away before the dawn of your arrival! Maximian Augustus, the city cries aloud with one voice in praise and in ardent gratitude that you have chosen this place to commence once more your Divine Rule and given us this opportunity to once again adore your Sacred Features…’
Just as Castus felt his ears growing numb, he noticed a stir running through the crowd at his back. Turning, he made out another voice, shouting from a short distance away, a harsh angry yell rising above the hushed noise of the crowd. Beside him was the low stone platform of a dockside crane: Castus shoved aside a couple of lounging labourers and clambered up onto it, peering back over the throng towards the line of warehouses that fronted the harbour wall.
‘…Brothers and sisters, you see before you the emissary of the devil! A persecutor, despised by God! A man who has shed the blood of innocents, the blood of the faithful!’
The speaker was an older man, powerfully built but plainly dressed, with a bald head and flaring grey beard. He was standing on the back of a cart drawn up outside the warehouses, and the crowd was thick around him. As he spoke his words gained in power and volume, drowning out the honeyed phrases of the orator.
‘Once more he comes amongst us, brethren, in the guise of an emperor, but he is the devil’s shadow! I call upon you – cast him out! Reject this usurper, this persecutor, this enemy of God!’
‘Who’s he?’ Castus said to a slack-mouthed youth sitting on the crane.
‘That’s Oresius, the head priest of the Christians,’ the youth said, and spat. ‘Bishop, they call him. He almost managed to get his head lopped off the last time Maximian was in power here. Reckon he wants to be one of their martyrs, eh?’
Already the crowd was splitting apart, a solid wedge of Praetorians with locked shields driving a path towards the man on the cart. Another man was calling out to the Christian priest: a well-dressed citizen, wearing the insignia of a city magistrate.
‘Cease this disturbance!’ the magistrate shouted. ‘For the good of the city, Oresius, I beg you – stop this criminal madness!’