‘Constantine!’ he cried out. ‘Give us Constantine!’
With his back to the pillar and his hand on the hilt of his sword, Castus craned upwards and stared in through the door of the basilica. The wall of Praetorians was moving too now, driving the crowd back with their shields and spearshafts. Castus leaped up onto a pillar base beside Valens. Within the block of Praetorians he could make out the lone figure with a cloak pulled over his head.
Rufinius, Prefect of the Sixth Legion, was up in the arch of the basilica now, yelling at the riotous crowd.
‘Men! Respect the wishes of the emperors! This is mutiny!’
‘No! Get down!’ the crowd cried in response. The tight mass of Alamanni had halted, and now the Praetorians were driving out from the basilica doors with Constantine between them. As the man passed, Castus saw his ruddy face and firm jutting jaw, his cheeks wet with tears. But was he smiling too? Castus blinked, and Constantine had moved on.
Out in the courtyard there was chaos, a milling riot of men pushing forward and back, screams, angry faces raised in the torchlight. Rufinius had given up trying to calm them. Now the Praetorians were leading a white horse from under the portico – where had that come from? – and helping Constantine to mount. The horse, terrified by the noise, champed and shied, rolling its eyes. All around there was struggle and confusion. Castus saw a body of men from the Rhine legions trying to forge their way through the cordon of guardsmen.
‘Are they trying to murder him?’ Diogenes called from behind the pillar. ‘Should we… go and protect him?’
Castus shook his head. He was watching Constantine care shy;fully: he was gesturing to the crowd, trying to wave them back, mopping his face with his free hand as if he were wiping away tears. Was this real, or theatre? Castus could not tell. But the violence in the courtyard was real enough. Soon there would be bloodshed.
‘Constantine, we pray to you!’ the Alamannic king bawled out in his bad Latin. ‘You must be our leader! You must be our Augustus! The army lusts for your rule! The world awaits you!’
And now Constantine was down off the horse, a tumult of bodies all around him. A moment later and he appeared again, raised on the locked and levelled shields of Hrocus’s warriors. Cheers rolled down from the men on the high porticos, and the courtyard echoed with shouts of acclamation. Even the Praetorians were cheering now, raising their palms in salute.
Swaying on the shields, Constantine struggled to stand upright, raising his face to the light. Hrocus, lifted on the shoulders of his men, seized a purple robe from the hands of a Praetorian and cast it around Constantine’s shoulders; one of the Protectores raised a golden circlet on the tip of a spear, and another placed it on Constantine’s head.
‘Augustus!’ the soldiers shouted, banging their weapons and stamping their feet. ‘Invincible Augustus Constantine! The gods preserve you – your rule is our salvation!’
And still the chant went on.
‘CONSTANTINE! CONSTANTINE! CONSTANTINE!’
‘And that,’ Valens said, leaning closer, his eyes alight with joy, ‘is how we make emperors at the edge of the world!’
‘Oh, no,’ Diogenes called from behind the pillar. ‘That is how we make gods.’
But Castus was still staring at the man raised on the shields. Constantine stood proudly now, the purple swath shy;ing his shoulders, his hawklike nose and firm chin shining in the torch shy;light. He raised an open palm, accepting the acclamation of the soldiers, and as he did so he turned and stared straight across the heads of the crowd to where Castus was standing.
Pushing himself away from the pillar, Castus threw up his hand, shouting into the roar of the crowd.
‘Constantine Augustus! Invincible Emperor!’
23
The sun was low and the breeze freshening as they approached the gates of the fortress. Castus could smell autumn in the air. Behind him on the road, the line of soldiers increased their pace with the promise of home.
‘Close up,’ Castus called over his shoulder, smacking his staff into his palm. ‘Military step!’
A muffled grumble, but the men did as he ordered. All of them were tired and filthy from a day mending roads, but they were soldiers and not labourers. Castus heard the regular crunch of boots on gravel. Woodsmoke was rising from the furnaces of the bath-house inside the walls.
Two months had passed since the great imperial entourage had departed Eboracum, bearing their new-made emperor off to Gaul. The fortress had soon fallen back into those same slow regular routines that Castus had found when he had first arrived there, two years before. But he was glad of the routines now, happy to pass his days in simple duty. He was centurion of a frontier legion, even if he still wore the fine gold torque of valour around his neck. How long, he wondered, would he remain so content?
The Blue House had been rebuilt on its old foundations, down by the river. Afrodisia was there, and Castus had already paid her several visits. Perhaps he would go there again this evening, with Valens… He smiled at the thought, and felt a warmth in his limbs. For a moment he pictured himself in ten or fifteen years, retiring with honour from the legion, a fat purse of gold in his fist and a grant of land to farm, married to Afrodisia with a crowd of children already growing up around him. The thought pleased him.
No, he thought. Not me. He remembered Marcellina, the envoy’s daughter; he often thought of her, and wondered what had happened to her. Married now, in some distant city. That was the way of civilians, after alclass="underline" they wanted homes, families, security. But Castus was not a civilian, neither would he ever be.
He recalled the funeral ceremony for Constantius, Eboracum’s last taste of imperial glory. The towering pyre built in the centre of the parade ground, three storeys high and taller than a house, the wood painted to look like marble, decked with garlands and hung with laurel wreaths. The linen-wrapped body of the old emperor had been placed at the top, under a canopy made to look like a temple pediment, and all the units of the army had marched around the pyre with reversed weapons.
Constantine had lit the pyre, of course. When the flames had risen to the top, an eagle had flown from the temple canopy, fluttering for a moment in the light and heat of the fire, the showering sparks, before vanishing into the night sky. The spirit of Constantius, so the orators said, released from his mortal flesh. Rain turned to steam in the heat of the burning pyre, and the massed soldiers had cried out their praises to the old emperor and the new.
Arma virumque cano… Castus thought. Arms and the man I sing… That was by Virgil – the greatest poet of Rome, so Diogenes claimed. Castus saw in his mind the word-symbols scratched onto his wax tablet: the writing exercises that the former schoolteacher made him perform during their secret tuition sessions. Just the simple stuff, Castus had told him. After all, even quite stupid people could read and write, so why should he not? He only needed enough skill to read a strength report or a watchword tablet, but the teacher insisted on starting with Virgil. Perhaps by spring, he had suggested, Castus would have mastered enough of reading and writing to get through the whole poem. Castus himself doubted that.
And by the spring, things could be different anyway. Already there were rumours, carried by the traders from Gaul, of new wars on the continent. The Franks had crossed the Rhine on plundering raids, and there was displeasure among the other emperors at Constantine’s assumption of the imperial purple. The soldiers had made Constantine – would Constantine need his soldiers again? The tide of history and great events had rolled over Castus and then receded, but still he knew the fierce joy of battle, the longing for action.