Helena

by Evelyn Waugh

  “These are the fellows who have been building my arch,” he explained, as the chamberlains led forward three men, barefooted, simply dressed, but holding themselves none the less with a certain air among the more splendid throng.

  “It is twelve years,” said Constantine, “since I ordered—since the Senate very graciously voted me—a triumphal arch. Why isn’t it finished?”

  “The Office of Works diverted the labor, sir. Masons are scarce nowadays. They took everyone they could lay hands on for the Christian temples. In spite of that, however, the work is to all intents and purposes finished.”

  “I went there myself yesterday to look at it. It is not finished.”

  “Certain decorative applications…”

  “Certain decorative applications. You mean the sculptures.”

  “We meant the sculptures, sir.”

  “That’s precisely what I want to talk about. They are atrocious. A child could do better. Who did them?”

  “Titus Carpicius, sir.”

  “And who is this Titus Carpicius?”

  “If you please, sir, I am,” said one of the trio.

  “My dear,” said Fausta. “You must remember Carpicius. I have mentioned him to you often. He is quite the most distinguished sculptor we have.”

  Constantine seemed not to hear her. He fixed the artist—no stripling; a man of ripe middle age and massive brow—with a frown before which governors and generals trembled. Carpicius glanced at Fausta to assure her that he had taken no offense, and regarded the Emperor with mild patience.

  “So you are responsible for those monstrosities I saw yesterday. Perhaps you can explain what they are meant to represent.”

  “I will try, sir. The arch, as conceived by my friend Professor Emolphus here, is, as you see, on traditional lines, modified to suit modern convention. It is, you might say, a broad mass broken by apertures. Now this mass involves certain surfaces which Professor Emolphus conceived had about them a certain monotony. The eye was not held, if you understand me. Accordingly he suggested that I relieve them with the decorative features you mention. I thought the result rather happy myself. Did you find the shadows too pronounced? They detract from the static quality of the design? I have heard that criticism.”

  Constantine’s patience had been strained by these words. Now he asked icily: “And have you heard this criticism? Your figures are lifeless and expressionless as dummies. Your horses look like children’s toys. There is no grace or movement in the whole thing. I’ve seen better work done by savages. Why, damn it, there’s something there that looks like a doll that’s supposed to be Me.”

  “I was not aiming at exact portraiture, sir.”

  “And why not, pray?”

  “It was not the function of the feature.”

  Constantine turned to his left. “You say this man is the best sculptor in Rome?”

  “Everyone says so,” said Fausta.

  “Are you the best sculptor in Rome?”

  Carpicius gave a little shrug. There was a silence. Then Professor Emolphus rather bravely intervened. “Perhaps if your Majesty would give us some idea of what exactly you had in mind, the design might be adapted.”

  “I’ll tell you what I had in mind. Do you know the arch of Trajan?”

  “Of course.”

  “What do you think of it?”

  “Good of its period,” said the Professor, “quite good. Not perhaps the best. I prefer the arch at Benevento on many grounds. But the arch of Trajan is definitely attractive.”

  “I have the arch of Trajan in mind,” said Constantine. “I have never seen the arch at Benevento. I’m not the least interested in the arch at Benevento.”

  “Your Majesty should really give it your attention. The architrave…”

  “I am interested in the arch of Trajan. I want an arch like that.”

  “But that was—how long—more than two hundred years ago,” said Fausta. “You can’t expect one like that today.”

  “Why not?” said Constantine. “Tell me, why not? The Empire’s bigger and more prosperous and more peaceful than it’s ever been. I’m always being told so in every public address I hear. But when I ask for a little thing like the arch of Trajan, you say it can’t be done. Why not? Could you,” he said, turning again on Carpicius, “make me sculpture like that?”

  Carpicius looked at him without the least awe. Two forms of pride were here irreconcilably opposed; two pigs stood face to face. “One might, I suppose, contrive some sort of pastiche,” he said. “It would not be the least significant.”

  “Damn significance,” said Constantine. “Can you do it or can’t you?”

  “Precisely like that? It is a type of representational work which required a technical virtuosity which you may or may not find attractive—personally I rather do—but the modern artist…”

  “Can you do it?”

  “No.”

  “Well, who can? Find someone else, for God’s sake. Professor Emolphus, all I want is a battle with soldiers that look like soldiers and goddesses—I mean traditional symbolic figures—that look like traditional symbolic figures. There must be someone in Rome capable of doing that.”

  “It is a question of vision as much as virtuosity,” said the Professor. “Who can say whether any two people see the same soldier. Who can say how your Majesty sees a soldier?”

  “I know what he means, don’t you?” said Fausta.

  “I see soldiers just as they are on the arch of Trajan. Is there no one in the whole of my empire who can make me soldiers like that?”

  “I should very much doubt it.”

  “Then God damn it, go and pull the carvings off Trajan’s arch and stick them on mine. Do it at once. Start this afternoon.”

  “Spoken like a man, my son,” said Helena.

  There was more official business of a less humane kind. Constantine liked his audience to hear him at work. Helena grew impatient.

  “My son, I came here to see you, not the Fiscal Procurator of Moesia.”

  “In one moment, Mamma.”

  “I want to talk to you about Crispus.”

  “Yes,” said Constantine. “Something must be done about him. But not now. Now we will have prayers. It is a practice I have just instituted. You will approve I am sure.”

  A little bell was rung and the court arranged itself. Several officials groveled and left the hall. “The heathen,” Constantine explained. The main doors were shut. Deacons emerged from a sacristy with lights, thuribles, a reading-stand and huge books of devotion embossed and enameled. When everything was ready Constantine, still in his emerald wig, left the throne and was conducted amid clouds of incense to the lectern. First they sang a psalm. Then in a special tone of voice which he had lately grown for the occasion, Constantine fruitily exhorted them: “Oremus.” He gave thanks to God for all the blessings of his reign in a detailed autobiography. He mentioned his high birth and eminent suitability for the supreme power, the divine providence which had protected him from the various ills of childhood, his preservation among the daring exploits of his military career. He sketched his irresistible rise to power and the extinction of his many rivals. He gave thanks for his sagacity as a general and as a statesman, providing instances of both. Coming to recent events, he particularized the events of that afternoon not forgetting his mother’s presence, the satisfactory report of the Fiscal Procurator of Moesia and the conclusion of the designs for his triumphal arch… “per Christum Dominum nostrum.” The court sang: “Amen.” He then read a passage from one of St. Paul’s epistles, briefly expounded its meaning and in silence broken only by the rattle of the thurible, he proceeded with bowed head and clasped hands towards the throne and left the hall by a little door immediately behind it. Fausta slipped out with him.

  Helena barely saw them go.

  “Where’s he off to?” she asked Constantia.

  “The private apartments.”

  “I have a lot to say to him.”

  “Oh,
I don’t suppose we shall see him again today. Wasn’t the sermon wonderful? He gives us one nearly every day now. Such a treat.”

  The private apartments had no windows and were massively set in the very center of the palace. In the lamp-lit study Constantine and Fausta were interviewing two new witches, who had lately been sent from Egypt with a letter of commendation from Nicagoras; an old woman and a girl, both black. The girl was in a trance, stiff as a statue on the table muttering unintelligibly.

  Fausta had seen the exhibition before and acted as showman.

  “She’s completely insensible. You can stick a pin into her. Try.”

  Constantine stuck. The hysteric continued to mumble showing no sign of discomfort.

  “Very amusing,” Constantine conceded, sticking again.

  “In ordinary life she knows no language except her own. In her trances she speaks Greek, Hebrew and Latin.”

  “Well, why doesn’t she now?” asked the Emperor petulantly. “I can’t make out a word she’s saying.”

  “Make her talk,” said Fausta to the old woman.

  The old woman took the medium by the nose and gently rocked her head from side to side.

  “I suppose she wants a present,” said Constantine. “They always do.”

  “She’s already been paid.”

  “Well, send her away if this is all she can do. I can stick pins into people anytime I want to. Into people who jump, too. That’s much more fun.”

  Suddenly the young woman sat up and declared very loudly in Latin: “The Sacred Emperor is in great danger.”

  “Yes,” said Constantine wearily. “I know. I know. They all say that. Who is it this time?”

  “Kiss Crip Cris Kip Crip,” babbled the witch and then sank back on the table.

  “How do you wake her up?” asked Constantine.

  “Kipriscipiscripsip.”

  “Wake her up,” said Fausta.

  The old witch bent down and blew hard into the young witch’s ear. The eyeballs which had been hidden, emerged; the lids closed; she began to snore. The old witch blew into the other ear. She sat up, stood up, prostrated herself.

  “Take her away,” said Fausta.

  The two negresses waddled away.

  “Not as good as the one we had in Nicomedia,” said Constantine.

  “But he turned out to be a fraud.”

  “And this one isn’t?”

  “What did you think?”

  “Well, keep her for a bit. Go and see her sometimes. Report if she has anything really interesting.”

  “I believe she must have been trying to say Crispus.”

  “Well, why didn’t she? No one ever seems to talk sense to me nowadays.”

  Fausta went to her bath, which was the most luxurious in the world, with a sense of discouragement. As she lay in the balmy steam she tried to fix her mind on “homoousian” and “homoiousian.” Often those magical words had the power to soothe her. But not that day.

  *

  “Oh, very well then. Licinianus too,” said Constantine and sighed, “Anyone else?”

  “Constantia,” said Fausta, cool as fish. “Constantine, Dalmatius Annibabianus, Dalmatius Caesar, Dalmatius Rex, Constantius Flavius, Baslina, Anastasia, Bassianus, Eutropia, Nepotianus, Flavius Popilius Nepotianus.”

  “Were they all in it? Why, Flavius Popilius Nepotianus was only christened yesterday. I chose the names for him.”

  “Better send them all to Pola together. It will save trouble in the long run.”

  “Trouble,” said Constantine crossly. “I’ve had nothing but trouble since I came to Rome. You drive me too hard. Besides I have to prepare my sermon on Regeneration. Everyone is looking forward to it so much. I’ve done quite enough for one day. Crispus and Licinianus can go. The rest must wait.”

  He scrawled his name to the order, popped on a wig and shuffled away to his private oratory.

  It was briefly stated in the Court Circular that Crispus and Licinianus had gone abroad on a special mission. Everyone knew what that meant. On the Palatine no one mentioned the affair. In the freer world outside a few patricians wondered over their wine: “Why Licinianus? Who next?”

  In the streets a couplet was circulated:

  Who wants the olden age of heroes?

  For us the diamond and ruby—Nero’s.

  But there was little curiosity. For a long time now the Romans had grown accustomed to the succession of grim, adroit families who emerged from the Balkans and destroyed themselves. The Jubilee, thank heavens, was nearly over. Soon the court would pack and leave the City to its proper concerns.

  On the Palatine the unspoken question “Who next?” was in every heart; a more lively question than “Why Licinianus?”; but the days passed and as the courtiers looked anxiously about them they found everyone still in his usual place. It seemed that this was purely a family affair.

  Constantine did not appear. He was known to be in one of his moods. There were no more sermons. Fausta alone had the entrée. The highest officials had to work through her. They gave her papers and from time to time she gave them back, signed. She alone knew the Emperor’s condition.

  They had been through many of these moods of his, he and she together. This was something blacker and deeper than ever before. It had come on him quite suddenly. He was at his most bland, his sermons were at their most elevated pitch, for the first few days after Crispus’s departure. Then without warning he canceled all audiences and took to his room. There he lay, hour after hour, in his shift, in the feeble lamplight, wigless, unpainted, tearful, in an intermittent stupor of melancholy. Fausta stayed by him. It was no time to let his fancies run free.

  Three days after his change, when the prison ship was already at Pola, he ordered its recall. He said he wished to speak to Crispus. He asked for him repeatedly until Fausta found herself obliged preposterously to break the news to him of his son’s death. What had he died of? Fausta improvised a story of plague on the Dalmatian coast. Crispus had insisted on going ashore, had died in twelve hours, was cremated there at once for fear of infection.

  Constantine fell into a paroxysm of grief and then demanded more details. What were the symptoms? What remedies had been attempted? What were the names and qualifications of the attendant doctors? Was there no suspicion of foul play?

  She remarked that Crispus had not suffered alone. His little cousin Licinianus had succumbed too, with several of their closest entourage. It had been a very virulent kind of plague.

  This seemed to comfort Constantine for a time. He lay still muttering: “Swelling in the groin… black vomit… coma… putrefaction” until later he said: “That is not at all how I intended them to die. I gave quite different, quite explicit orders for their murder.”

  “It was not murder. They were executed for treason. It was necessary.”

  “It was not necessary at all,” said Constantine severely. “I would sooner, far sooner, it had never happened.”

  “It was your life or his.”

  “Well, what’s the difference?”

  It was not an easy question to answer. Constantine repeated: “Tell me the difference. Why is it ‘necessary’ that I should live rather than anyone else?”

  “You are the Emperor.”

  “So was your father. That didn’t keep him alive. I killed him. He was a beast, anyway.”

  The beastliness of the Emperor Maximian proved a consoling topic. Constantine expatiated, Fausta mildly assented. Then he fell into another long silence, all that night, all next day, and when he spoke it was to renew the former topic. “Everyone is always telling me that it is so necessary for me to live. It must be, I suppose. There seems to be unanimous agreement on the subject. But I can’t see any reason in it.”

  So the days of the black mood wore on, until at length he said: “Is my mother still in Rome?”

  “I believe so.”

  “Why hasn’t she come to see me? She must have heard how unwell I am. Do you think she can be angry with me
about anything?”

  This was the question above all others which Fausta wished to avoid. The Empress Dowager was very angry indeed and she had come to the Palatine daily since the announcement of Crispus’s death, demanding her son. They told her he had been called away to quell a mutiny; that he had left suddenly for Benevento to get ideas for the completion of his arch. Helena had not believed a word of it. True daughter of the house of Boadicea she had stormed about the palace from room to room driving before her a scurry of eunuchs and prelates. Only the impenetrable intricacy of the ground-plan baffled her till now. One day she would find the entrance to Constantine’s apartments and, when she did, no sentry would withstand her.

  “She was very fond of Crispus,” Fausta ventured to say.

  “Yes, naturally. She brought him up, you know. He was a dear little boy.”

  It was then that Fausta conceived her one egregious mistake.

  “I can’t help wondering,” she said, “whether perhaps your mother didn’t know something about the plot.”

  The very tone resounded in Constantine’s disordered mind. It was familiar and peculiar. How many had Fausta not undone in just those accents? Constantine listened intently and heard the death knell of old comrades-in-arms—villains mostly—hacked, strangled, poisoned one after another, in the ups and downs of twenty years of married life. He said nothing. She continued: “Crispus visited her at the Sessorian Palace, we know. It was just at the time when she arrived in Rome that the plot came to a head.”

  Constantine said nothing. Fausta was accustomed to these pauses. Presently to keep the subject alive, she asked: “Where did your mother come from originally? No one seems to know.”

  “Britain. It was one of my father’s few secrets.” And as though he had forgotten the subject of their conversation he began to talk about that remote island, of the white walls of York and the rich poetic legends of the place, saying he hoped one day to revisit it.