The Sign of The Blood

by Laurence OBryan

They crossed the river by a sturdy looking triple-cart-wide wooden bridge, after showing their passes at a busy guard post. The Moselle was wider than an arrow’s flight here. It sparkled in the sunlight as eddies swirled about the bridge’s monumental pilings. A long line of barges floated downstream below them as they rode across.

  A racket of clattering hooves and squeaking carts filled the air. Constantine looked up. A pair of hawks flew high, patrolling. He thought about Juliana, wondered how she was, and when he might hear from Lucius.

  On the far side of the bridge stood the massive Porta Moselle, a huge gate tower made of dark-gray basalt blocks. A long sullen-gray stone city wall stretched away on either side, interrupted in places by high towers with banners flapping in the breeze.

  It was late afternoon by the time he arrived at his mother's villa in the busy commercial part of the city, behind the forum. When he announced who he was, there was at first suspicion, then, after the old stable master recognized him, great excitement.

  All the slaves rushed about, bowing and offering him refreshments, and it was only after he'd calmed them that he was shown to her bedchamber. The villa had a dusty look, he thought, as if no one was bothering to keep the place tidy, as guests never came there anymore. The line of painted marble busts of women outside his mother's room were all off their pedestals, lying on their sides on the floor. He strode past them as the door ahead was thrown open by a slave who’d hurried in front.

  At the threshold to his mother's bedroom a sickly, sweet odor of heavy rose perfume assaulted him. Helena hadn't changed.

  And then he saw her.

  She was sitting in a high-backed wicker chair in front of an iron-grilled window. She was attempting to get up. She looked much older than he’d ever remembered her.

  Her hair was still raven black, though, and still tied up in a severe bun, the way she always wore it, but her pallor was sickly, and streaks of gray ran through her hair. He hugged her awkwardly as she struggled to stand upright. She sat back down quickly as soon as he let her go.

  “Mother, what happened to you?”

  “My son, my son, it is so good to see you. I was lucky to get out of Rome with my life. Maxentius made me swear allegiance to him.”

  “He’s scheming to become an emperor,” said Constantine.

  “Maybe we can use him.”

  “That day is a long way off.”

  “It’s good to see you. Your presence cures me quicker than a hundred temple offerings can.”

  He relaxed a little. She sounded like her old self.

  “Theodora told me you were gravely ill.” He went down on one knee in front of her. “I was planning to visit at the end of the campaign, but she said your life was in danger, so I came at once.”

  His mother motioned him to her, grabbed his shoulders, pulled him closer. Her eyes shone. “That evil witch will have you declared illegitimate too, if she has her way.” She let him go, sank back, looked up at him, then looked away, shaking her head.

  “What happened between you and her? Tell me.” Constantine’s voice resounded in the room.

  “After Theodora visited me, I had a fever. I am sure she put something in my wine. I begged her to send the court physician, but I had to pay a passing charlatan myself instead. I had a crisis many nights ago, but it's long passed and now all I can think about is how evil she is.” She waved her hand for the slave who'd brought him to disappear.

  Constantine felt relieved the danger was over, but angry he’d been manipulated to leave Britannia so hurriedly by the empress and what she may have done.

  “Are you sure she did this?”

  She stared into his eyes.

  “You cannot make anything of my suspicions now, Constantine. You must wait for a moment when she is vulnerable.”

  “And father still pays for everything for you?” he said.

  “Yes, the witch hasn't won that battle yet, but everything will change for the better now that you're with me. We can decide what we'll do with her when you become emperor. You are staying here, aren’t you?” She looked at him, wide-eyed.

  He leaned forward and kissed her again on both cheeks. Her dreams of him becoming emperor were undimmed. It felt good to hear her certainty of purpose. That alone was worth the effort of coming here.

  “Yes. I have been told to stay here, but I plan to write to the emperor and ask for a position with the Alemanni. As for who becomes emperor after him, he hasn’t said anything about changing the official succession. But I expect I'm being kept well away from this year’s campaign in case I win glory long before his new empress' precious sons.” He sighed, and made a fist with both hands, his frustration clear. “He even refused for me to marry Fausta, an offer Maxentius sent.”

  “If you survived all those years of intrigue at Diocletian's court, my son, I'm sure you can survive the wiles of Theodora for a while.” Helena’s bony finger trembled as she pointed at him.

  “It's better anyway that you'll not be away fighting while that woman is around your father's camp. Bide your time. What we've all prayed for will come. I've told you often enough, you will be emperor. It's been foretold. There are many people working for it. That stupid witch will not steal it all from us. You are his firstborn son. How dare she even think of stopping you!”

  She shook her fist, echoing his gesture, coughed, sat back and smoothed her pale blue gown over her knees. It reminded him of cobwebs.

  “Now tell me, have you decided on a wife? If Fausta considers you worthy I'm sure there are other suitable candidates too. A man of your age and position should be married and married well.”

  “I have no need for a wife. It’ll be years before I need an alliance with any great family. And I'll not be tied to some spoon-fed patrician.” He hesitated for a moment, took a deep breath, and pressed on. He had to tell her.

  “I have found the woman I want to be with, Mother. A woman more elegant than a princess. Her name is Juliana.”

  “How did you meet her.”

  Constantine hesitated. It would come out if he lied.

  “She is Lucius’ slave.”

  His mother let out a cry. “No! Not a slave girl.” She broke into a sob, let out another pained cry.

  “I thought you of all people would understand, Mother.”

  “You cannot take a slave girl as a wife. You know that. We're not like other families now.” She shook her head with a firmness that made it clear she would not change her mind. “It's impossible. Theodora is marrying her cousins’ daughters into the richest families in the provinces, horse traders and tin merchants and those land hoarders, and all expecting to be rewarded with estates in Caledonia. How could you spoil your chances by taking a slave as a wife? I will not allow it. Use her, yes, let her warm your bed by all means, Constantine, if you must, but you will marry well and soon, not least because you need the dowry.”

  She leaned forward, reached toward him. “If you do this you'll expose us to nothing but ridicule. What girl of quality would take you if you even talk about this?” She coughed, raised her hands to her face. A violent spasm passed through her. She coughed again, bent over as the coughing went on. He grabbed a water goblet and held it out to her.

  She took it, drank from it, then coughed again.

  “You have no idea what I went through to come here, Constantine. Some days I thought I would not make it. Do not disappoint me. Everything depends on you doing the right thing at every step.”

  “Shall I call for a doctor?”

  “No, it will pass. It is something I picked up in Rome. It will ease with your support now that you are here.” She coughed again.

  He shook his head, his lips pressed tight. He had little choice now. If his mother was ill he could not go against her. She would say he wanted to kill her. He knew his mother. She had done it before when she wanted her way. He would wait and bide his time. For now, at least Juliana would be with him, under his protection.

  He stared at the ochre tiled floor. So much was
changing. He remembered his mother, Helena, as a tall attractive woman, always vivacious, and warm hearted to slaves. She'd given up all hope of another husband by staying on at his father’s court for his sake, even though she knew the new Empress Theodora hated her. He could not throw aside the person who had kept his fate tied to an emperor’s and had cast aside her own to do it.

  He put a hand on her shoulder, steadying her as the coughing subsided. In the Moesian village she came from, people were as tough as granite and private, hardened by tough lives, hot summers and deep snow in winter. Marrying your children well, that was what mothers there worried about. He felt a tug of exhaustion. He had to sleep. If she didn’t want a doctor, there was nothing more he could do.

  “I have a room set aside for you,” said Helena. She clapped her hands.

  The following night, at a feast in his name his mother insisted on holding, he met the governor of Treveris and was introduced to many of the senior administrators of the city, a class of men he'd always despised. Petty, pompous, rule-making men with quivering bellies and bulging eyes. If, as some of them claimed, they were military men, they were fit only for parade ground duties.

  Most of these bloated blood-suckers took great pleasure in describing their virtues to Constantine in mind-numbing detail. He kept his thoughts to himself, but inside he seethed. Administrators were not real men. This was not what he wanted to be.

  The only thing that lifted his spirits were daydreams of Juliana and what they would do when she got here. Every moment since his arrival, to his amazement, his gaze had leapt to the door every time it opened. She had burrowed deeper into his heart than he’d expected. Lucius' letter, the confirmation of sale, could be with him soon. He would persuade his mother to take Juliana into their household. She would be won around when she met Juliana. He would not give way on this. Everything would work out if he planned it right.

  He’d done everything he was supposed to so far. But one thing felt strange, the longer he was separated from Juliana, the more he wanted her. No woman in Treveris, or the ones he’d been with in the east, was anything like her. She was different, smart, beautiful, and she was a connection to all he’d been through. And she knew his dreams and what he hoped for.

  How strange it was to come so far in search of something, only to find it among those you were with on your travels.

  It felt as if Juliana was haunting him.

  He excused himself and went out into the town. As he walked the empty cobbled streets the buildings around him seemed to be holding their breath. Near the city gate three fresh heads dripped blood onto tall stakes. He stopped. Presumably they had been put there to deter visitors to the city from causing trouble.

  It was not how they did things in the east, but there the enemy tribes were hundreds of leagues away. Here there were tribes in the great forest a day’s ride away, under the loose control of the Alemanni, who needed to be taught how to behave in a Roman city.

  The dripping heads made him think of all the blood that had soaked into his own skin and the dead faces he had seen. Faces that always took days to disappear from his mind.

  He went close to the heads. Graffiti had been written about their tribes in Latin on the stakes they were impaled on. Some here hated Saxons the way they hated Sassanians and Scythians in the east. One of the pieces of graffiti claimed that the men ate children. The claim made him smile, but not for the reasons intended. He had heard similar claims made about the Persians in the east.

  He heard a dog barking and looked around. The street was empty. He felt out of place, disconnected. He knew that while he lived here he would always be different, an outsider, both by his position in society and his family origins. Few people in Treveris, at the edge of the empire, had ever lived in the east, or even travelled there, and many had strange ideas about how lives were lived in other provinces or beyond the borders of the empire. They thought themselves superior, not only to the people from beyond the limits of their empire, but from every other province in it. They saw themselves as different.

  But he saw so many similarities. He’d seen hardship etched in many faces here, just as he’d seen it in many other cities. And sickness among the poor killed here just as quickly as it did everywhere in the empire. What was needed was a more unified empire, but that was unlikely to happen in his lifetime.

  He sniffed. The steaming middens, that was another thing that was the same all over the empire. The air was filled in certain streets with the stench of bowel. He looked up. The thickly thatched roofs looked just as ready to burn as they did in Britannia.

  He clenched his fists. The talk among men at the feast had been about which were the best brothels in town, and how soon they could go on leave to their villas, and the upcoming games. He needed something more.

  He needed something to make everything he’d lived through worth it.

  That night, after he fell asleep, he saw a great army, masses of cavalry walking slowly, moving forward in seething shifting columns, an army greater than any he’d ever seen. An army that would make people rub their eyes and look again and talk about the sight to their grandchildren. An army that could change things. He woke with a start and sat up, sweating.

  The sights he’d seen in the east had never left his dreams. The sights and sounds and smells of shit, and guts and blood from battlefields, they were too strong to forget. Something an Eastern sage in a town they had retaken from the Persians had said to him, which had stuck in his mind, came back to him.

  “You can do anything you think you can do, if you believe in it.”

  But could he do anything? He considered his treatment since his arrival in the West. It had not gone as he’d expected.

  But would he live to see that army? Would he even live the year out with Theodora plotting against him?

  He had never feared assassination, though he knew that Theodora might have planned such an end for him. He knew how to bear such thoughts from his many sleepless nights in the East after he was first taken there as a hostage for his father’s compliance to the Emperor Diocletian’s will. The emperor who had plucked his father from obscurity and made him a Caesar.

  And, in any case, he always kept his weapons about him. He turned to the window, pulled his knife from under his pillow. The blade shone in the moonlight. He touched the tip to the palm of his hand, as he’d been taught. Blood trickled onto the flagstone floor.

  LX

  Lindum, Northern Britannia, 306 A.D.

  Before he departed Lindum, the emperor ordered the main body of Alemanni cavalry to proceed as the army's vanguard. The Alemanni under Crocus were well used to this task. The route north took them along the new westerly route to the city of Eboracum, past the great fort at the new bridge over the River Don. Here they’d move from the territory of the Coritanii to that of the Brigantes. The Alemanni cavalry would then proceed beyond Eboracum to set up camp at the supply fort of Corstopitum, a few leagues south of Hadrian's Wall. From there they could raid north into Caledonia proper.

  The rest of the army would remain at Eboracum, a city built on river flats at the center of a great vale, a position which allowed it command of all the main trade routes in north eastern Britannia. The outer streets of the city were filled with new and rambling villas. Roman colonists had been busy rebuilding and expanding, aided by the newly affluent natives. Many of them had grown rich on the trade in wool, slaves and fish, much of it from beyond Hadrian’s Wall. The city usually had a relaxed air too, with a calm weekly market, unlike the frenzied ones which were the hallmarks of commerce of its southern counterpart, Londinium, where they were held every day.

  The afternoon the army arrived, though, the city was anything but relaxed. A welcoming festival had been arranged which was, as far as Juliana was concerned, the best they'd been treated to in all the time she'd been in Britannia. She was getting used to travelling in an imperial entourage, even if she always rode half a league behind the emperor himself.

  As they rode thro
ugh the main street leading from the main river gate, little girls on either side, dressed in off-white tunics, showered the visitor’s path with shimmering handfuls of pink and white petals, while fife and flute players played lively tunes and bobbed and bowed at the passing visitors. At the forum a tumultuous clashing of swords against bucklers greeted them. Troops of guardsmen and members of the city watch saluted every part of the passing parade while onlookers cheered rapturously. Even the sun had come out to greet them and many slaves cheered that day as if they’d all been freed, such was the excitement. Juliana felt like an orphan who'd found a gold coin.

  At one point, her every muscle stiffened as she leaned forward on her horse. “Constantine!” she shouted, excitedly, at a tall dark-haired man whose back was turned to her. Then, abruptly, acute embarrassment rose up inside her. It wasn't him. She closed her eyes and gripped tight with her thighs to steady herself on her small gray mare, willing the noise and people around her to fade away.

  She'd been relieved when the Empress Theodora had followed Constantine to Gaul. She could bear the waiting a lot easier now. It was obvious that the empress had more to concern herself with than Juliana. Nothing at all had been said about her being found with Constantine, though until Theodora departed she’d half expected to be called at any moment and questioned about what had occurred. Constantine could have any slave he wanted, but there was a possibility that Theodora would want Juliana to tell her things about her stepson.

  Now the empress was gone her fears had faded. Her concern now was why she was still waiting. Had there been a delay in Lucius' message reaching Constantine? Had his reply been lost? She kept telling herself she shouldn't panic, but her nights in the tent she’d been allocated on the road north were filled with an expectation she hadn’t known since she’d been a child waiting for her mother to come back from the market. And it grew stronger every day she was apart from him.

  The thought that she was now in Eboracum, and that her father might be near, added another twist of sadness to it. A sadness that overcame her every time she thought about her real chances of finding him.