‘I’ve had to play along with my father’s plans,’ Fausta went on. ‘Or the plans of his advisors, I should say. Even if the performance was repugnant to me.’
‘As have we all, nobilissima,’ Castus said grimly. He wondered if she was referring to the night in the garden house too. The implication was hardly flattering.
‘When I discovered what he intended, during our journey to Arelate, I immediately sent a message to my husband, warning him to march south as soon as possible.’
‘You did?’ So that was how Constantine had been able to move so quickly, Castus realised. Fausta had betrayed her own father.
‘I wanted to stop this before it grew into something monstrous,’ she said. ‘But I was too late. However, here we are.’
‘Here we are,’ Castus repeated quietly. For a short while they sat in silence, and he wondered if she was waiting for him to speak.
‘It seems we must choose sides,’ she said. ‘We wait for the gods to advise us, but they do not. So it’s up to us. I have chosen my husband over my father and brother. Perhaps a selfish choice, impious, but I leave it for others to condemn me.’
Castus gazed at her as she spoke, marvelling at the calm assurance in her voice and manner. She was not yet seventeen years old; her face was still plump with adolescence: where had she gained this sense of poise? Already she understood power. And many people, Castus thought, had underestimated her. Himself included.
‘I need your assistance,’ she said. ‘I have done all I can, but somehow this siege needs to end. You must find a way to surrender the city to my husband, as soon as possible.’
Before the traitor in Constantine’s camp knifes him in his tent, Castus thought. Did Fausta know about that too?
‘Surrender the city,’ he said. ‘You think it’s that easy?’
‘I don’t know!’ she exclaimed, and for the first time he saw a crack in her cool facade. ‘But somebody must do something soon – start a mutiny, an uprising of the people, anything… You are the kind of man, I believe, that other men might follow…’
‘Not to their deaths, domina,’ Castus said.
‘Then you must find men who are not afraid of death!’
She had half turned towards him on the bench as she spoke. Castus noticed that she was breathing quickly, and the colour had risen in her cheeks. Beneath her apparent calm she was in turmoil. He had a sudden vivid memory of the night in the garden house: the feel of her body naked beneath him, that drowning desire, and then the fear that had followed. His throat tightened, and without intending it he met her eye. Was she thinking of the same thing?
‘You know,’ she said quickly, turning back to stare at the sea, ‘that the domina Sabina is a widow now?’
‘I guessed she might be.’ Castus looked down at his hands. His right knuckle was grazed and spotted with dried blood.
‘Her husband was executed by my brother’s troops in Africa,’ Fausta went on, her tone deliberately light and airy, casual-sounding. ‘In fact, her father had been arrested earlier for his rebel sympathies, and apparently he too has been put to death. Her mother died years ago, so now she is alone in the world, and has nothing.’
‘Nothing?’
‘Oh, she has some property in her own name, but it’s in Rome, of course. My husband is her legal guardian now, her paterfamilias.’ She paused for a moment, to let this information sink in. ‘If you assist him in his victory,’ she went on in that same lightly casual tone, ‘he would certainly consider giving her to you.’
Castus stifled a snort of disbelief. ‘Giving her to me?’ he said. ‘For what?’
‘For whatever you please,’ Fausta said with a slight shrug. ‘Marry her, or keep her as a whore.’
Staring away down the portico, Castus tried to remain still and not shift himself away from the girl beside him. How had she become such a strange and heartless creature? He waited for the shock of anger to pass.
‘You don’t care about people very much, do you?’ he said slowly.
‘People have never cared much about me.’ She had pulled the shawl back to cover her face. He reminded himself that she was only a girl, barely more than a child. And she was well out of her depth here.
‘I think a lot of people have cared about you, nobilissima,’ Castus said. Just not in a very positive way, he thought.
She hunched forward, rounding her shoulders. A moment later he heard her sniff. Her shoulders were shaking slightly beneath the shawl.
‘All my life,’ she said, and he heard the tears in her voice, ‘I have been treated as livestock. By my family. By those around me. I forget, sometimes, what it is to speak to a human being.’
Castus reached out, instinctively, then caught himself. This is the emperor’s wife. You have already dishonoured her. Then she too reached out, clasping his thick fingers in both her hands. When she looked back at him he saw the wetness on her cheeks.
‘That night at the villa,’ she said, her voice choked. ‘I knew it was you. Of course I remember… Just for a moment I pretended it was truly me that you wanted. Not her. I’d never been wanted like that, never. It was good to pretend. Shameful, but good. I forgive you for what you did. You must forgive me too.’
‘Nobilissima,’ Castus said, deeply uncomfortable, but moved. She tightened her grip on his hand. Her palms were soft and damp, her fingers stiff with rings.
‘Will you help me?’ she asked. ‘If you do, my husband will honour you, I’m sure. But I would be grateful to you always.’
‘I’ll do what I can,’ he said.
She released his hand, drawing a deep and shuddering breath. Castus stood up smartly, stepping away from her. The sky above the sea was glowing pink and gold now, the sun almost gone. He was about to make his salute and leave when a thought struck him.
‘Back in Treveris,’ he said. ‘I saw you in the necropolis one night. A magical ritual. Astrampsychus of Cunaxa.’
She stared up at him, her eyes once more cool and deep-hooded. She smiled and shrugged. ‘Yes, I was there,’ she said. ‘I wanted to employ the sorcerer to place a curse upon my husband’s concubine.’ Her voice sounded childlike, almost playful.
‘On Minervina? How?’
‘They can do these things. They make a doll, about that big…’ Her jewelled fingers described a shape in the air. ‘And they stick it with pins and nails, and summon demons to enact the same injuries on their victim.’
Castus fought down a shiver of unease. The thought of such things made his scalp creep. ‘And you did this?’
‘Oh, yes,’ she said, smiling slowly. ‘Although I don’t know if it ever had any effect. Perhaps he wasn’t a very good sorcerer?’
It was an easy matter to slip out of the palace once darkness had fallen. Less than an hour had passed since his conversation with Fausta on the portico, and Castus felt the fatigue in his limbs, the hunger eating at his strength. But the energy of action was propelling him. What he had in mind seemed desperate, and the plan only partially formed, but he knew he needed to act. He could no longer wait for whatever devious schemes Nigrinus was hatching to bear fruit. To act: he fixed his mind on that, and forced himself to block out any further considerations. He wished he had been able to find Brinno before setting out. Then again, the young Frank might too easily have seen the absurd flaws in what he intended. Perhaps it was better just to fling himself out into the night alone.
Slipping through the side door from the kitchen court, Castus dashed across the darkened portico and dropped down into the bushes on the far side. He pushed through them, emerging into the grove of tall pines above the theatre. The city was spread below him, the rooftops merging into a smoky grey terrain. Fires still burned outside the temples on the hilltops, but the towers along the city perimeter were in darkness. Castus waited for a moment, crouched in the trees, watching and listening. The resin smell of the pines was strong around him, mingling with the briny scent of the sea; he heard the gentle creak of the trees, the rasp of crickets, the roll and hiss of the waves from the shoreline to his left. He moved off again.