Secrets of the Dead

by Tom Harper

  Did it cost Alexander his life? A week ago, I was convinced he must have been killed because of what he knew about Eusebius. Symmachus, too. Now, I’m not so sure.

  Constantine: Symmachus said he knew the truth about my son.

  But Bassus, sweating in the baths: He said he’d found out something about a Christian bishop. A scandal.

  Which was it?

  Alexander burrowed deep in the Chamber of Records, stripping out every last reference to Crispus. I know he was looking at the papers from Aquileia, and from Helena’s household. Did he find something that got him killed – and that Symmachus saw when he took the document case?

  Does it matter? What are one or two deaths against the death of an emperor? I remember something Eusebius said: Leave the dead to bury the dead. It sounds like good advice.

  But if there is a truth behind Crispus’s death – a truth that’s worth killing for – then …

  Heavy boots echo down the corridor. The generals have emerged from their meeting. They knot around the courtyard in twos and threes, grim-faced and urgent. Flavius Ursus comes across to me, flanked by four guards. His position is the most powerful – but also the most precarious.

  ‘Is everything decided?’

  ‘The Emperor’s sons will divide the empire between them.’ He’s holding a piece of paper; I imagine a map on it, the fates of millions described in a room in this villa.

  ‘Does everyone accept that?’

  ‘The army’s content.’ No doubt Claudius, Constantius and Constans will reward them handsomely for their support – and there’s the war with Persia, which promises rich pickings for the army and its sycophants. ‘This is a time for unity.’

  I think of old Constantius, left on his deathbed for two days after he died until Constantine got there. It’s lucky York’s so cold.

  ‘When will you announce the death?’

  ‘Constantius is coming from Antioch. We’ll wait for him.’

  That’ll be two weeks – maybe three or four depending on the roads and the mountain passes. ‘Can you keep the secret that long?’

  ‘It’s safest. The army is united, but there are other factions that might try to take advantage. Already, there are rumours …’

  ‘There are always rumours.’

  ‘And they need to be investigated. So we have a job for you.’

  He hands me the piece of paper – not a map, but a list. I scan down it: eminent senators, retired officials. The old guard, men who might object to the new settlement. Among them, I notice Porfyrius’s name.

  ‘Find these men. Tell them that if or when the Augustus’s sons take power, they’ve got nothing to fear.’

  ‘Have they got anything to fear?’

  He gives me a crooked look. ‘Just tell them.’ He sees my reluctance and growls. ‘I’m doing you a favour, Gaius – for old times’ sake. I’m giving you a chance to prove your loyalty.’

  He jerks his head over his shoulder, at the generals and tribunes congregated in the courtyard. ‘Not everyone would give you that. There are rumours, and with your history …’

  He pats me on the shoulder.

  ‘Now get out, while you have the chance.’

  XLI

  Split, Croatia – Present Day

  ABBY SAT IN the hotel room. It was the nicest place she’d been in a week – Egyptian cotton on the bed, Swiss chocolates under the pillows and Welsh mineral water in the fridge. She barely noticed. She sat hunched on the bed, her knees pulled up against her chest and her arms wrapped around her legs.

  Across the room, a woman in a red skirt and a cream jumper sat in a wingback chair. She must have been about the same age as Abby, though far more robust: a strong, big-limbed body; an athletic rosiness on her cheeks and long, honey-coloured hair worn loose. She said her name was Connie. She didn’t try to make conversation, but sat there watching Abby, occasionally looking down to fiddle with the BlackBerry in her hand.

  In the corner, a man in a black fleece leaned against the door, arms folded. The curtains were drawn, the lights tastefully low, but he still wore a pair of sunglasses. Something bulged under the fleece, brutish like a tumor. Connie called him Barry.

  The remnants of a chicken salad lay on a plate beside her. At least her captors had let her order room service. She’d eaten their food and told them everything. The tomb, the scroll, the poem and Gruber. A Roman soldier who’d been stabbed seventeen hundred years ago; and Michael, who jumped off a cliff and came back again. She’d told them about the labarum, Constantine’s unconquerable standard, how Dragović wanted it and how the poem and the necklace might lead to it. The only person she left out was Dr Nikolić, whose one crime had been helping them. By the time she’d finished, she felt as though there was nothing left in her.

  Someone knocked discreetly at the door and murmured something. Barry raised his sunglasses and put his eye to the peephole. Satisfied, he dropped the safety bolt and took three steps back.

  Mark entered, holding a piece of paper.

  ‘The good Germans in Trier just faxed this through. A printout from Dr Gruber’s computer. Apparently, they were quite upset to find out he’d been moonlighting for wanted criminals.’

  The jewellery box sat on a chest of drawers next to the television. Mark took out the necklace and laid it on the bed with the fax. He took a pen from his jacket.

  ‘Show me how it works.’

  She leaned forward and aligned the necklace with the poem. The original had been blurred; the fax was muddier still. But she’d spent so long staring at it on the bus from Serbia, puzzling out the letters one by one, she found they came more easily now. She traced the outline of the necklace on the paper, boxing in the letters, then lifted off the necklace. This time, she could see what she’d connected. Starting from the top of the monogram, she read:

  ‘CONSTANTINUS INVICTUS IMP AUG XXI.’

  Mark made her read it again, then wrote it out on a blank sheet of paper.

  ‘I’ve got a classicist from Oxford waiting on the line – someone who’s worked for us before. We’ll see what he makes of it.’

  Abby looked up. It would have taken a lot to make her laugh just then, but she managed a bleak smile.

  ‘I can save you the phone bill. “Constantine the Unconquered Emperor Augustus, twenty-one.”’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘But that’s just his name.’ He brushed back a lock of hair that had fallen in front of his eyes. ‘And what does twenty-one mean?’

  She slumped back. ‘Ask your expert.’

  Mark disappeared into the bathroom. The noise of the extractor fan drowned anything Abby might have heard – not that it mattered. When Mark came out, he looked baffled and angry.

  ‘He gave the same translation. Twenty-one probably means the twenty-first year of Constantine’s reign, which would date the poem to 326 or 327. For what that’s worth.’

  It jogged something in Abby’s memory – something Nikolić had said.

  ‘The labarum was still around in the ninth century. A Byzantine historian wrote about it.’

  ‘Is there a point to this history lesson?’

  ‘So even if this poem is about the labarum, it’s not going to tell you where it’s hidden. The Byzantine emperors had it on open display for another five hundred years.’

  Mark stared at her blankly. ‘It doesn’t tell us anything – that’s the point.’ He kicked the leg of the bed. ‘This whole thing’s bonkers.’

  In the armchair, Connie looked up from her BlackBerry. ‘It doesn’t matter. If Dragović thinks it leads somewhere, he’ll go there. We just have to plant the idea in his mind.’

  Mark shook his head. ‘It’s got to be watertight. If he’s going to show up, he has to be convinced 100 per cent it’s genuine. He has to see it for himself.’

  He went back into the bathroom. Abby leaned forward again and studied the poem. Whether as a child with a riddle, or a UN investigator wading through witness test
imony by the light of a wind-up torch, she’d never been able to leave a puzzle.

  She tried to clear her mind of everything that had happened in the last two days and focus on what was relevant.

  All his surviving poems contain secret messages.

  OK. If you traced the shape of the monogram over the letters, it gave you Constantine’s name and titles. That was pretty clever – she could only imagine the patience it must have taken to arrange the words to make that happen.

  But for a man with that kind of mind, why stop there? Why go to all that effort just to spell out a name?

  Around 326 Porfyrius was pardoned and came home.

  So maybe he was grateful. But then there was the awkward question of the substance of the poem. The grieving father gave his son. If Constantine had just had his son Crispus murdered, you wouldn’t write a poem pointing it out, however clever you were. Not if you’d just come back from exile and didn’t want to go back.

  There had to be something else.

  She picked up the necklace and examined it. Connie looked up, but didn’t say anything. Barry watched from behind his dark glasses. Mark stayed locked in the bathroom.

  Though, actually, this is not a true Christogram. This one is called a staurogram. From the Greek word stavros, meaning ‘cross’.

  Now that he’d said it, she could see it clearly. A simple cross, with the extra loop connecting the top point and the right arm. And at each of the four points of the cross, and in its centre, a red glass bead that showed the letter underneath.

  Some scholars think the poems might even have been presented to the Emperor inscribed on gold tablets, with gemstones underneath the key letters.

  Five beads, five letters. She’d marked them on the piece of paper in the café toilet, but she’d been so rushed she hadn’t even had time to think, let alone read them. She laid the necklace over the poem and squinted through the cloudy red glass.

  S S S S S.

  The same letter under each of the beads.

  It couldn’t be a coincidence – but then what did it mean?

  She lifted the necklace off and studied the placement of the letters in the poem. Unsurprisingly, they made the same shape as they did on the necklace: a cross.

  Gemstones underneath the key letters. But the letters were all the same. She frowned; she felt her headache coming back.

  And then an idea. What if it isn’t the key letters, but the key words? She picked out the five words that contained the S’s and wrote them out, then swung herself off the bed and knocked on the bathroom door. Barry followed the movement with his head; his hand moved closer to his jacket pocket.

  Mark unlocked the door and jerked it open, his phone pressed to his ear. He scowled when he saw her.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Is your Oxford professor still on the line?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Ask him what this means.’ She handed him the paper with five words written on it. SIGNUM INVICTUS SEPELIVIT SUB SEPULCHRO.

  Mark’s eyes widened. ‘I’ll call you back,’ he said to whoever was on the other end of the phone. He pressed some buttons and put it back against his ear. Abby waited while he read out the phrase, then spelled it letter by letter. Jamming the phone against his shoulder, he leaned over the bathroom counter top so he could write down the reply.

  ‘Thanks.’ He rung off and stared in the bathroom mirror for a moment. Over his shoulder, Abby could see total confusion wrapping his face.

  ‘A basic translation is, “The unconquered one buried the sign under the grave.” My man Nigel says that it’s not too much of stretch to say, “The unconquered one – i.e., the Emperor Constantine – buried the standard – i.e., the labarum – beneath his tomb.”’

  ‘Do we know where his tomb is?’ It was Connie, who had come up behind Abby and was staring past her at Mark.

  But Abby knew the answer. She remembered Nikolić telling her.

  When the Turks conquered Constantinople, they destroyed Constantine’s mausoleum, which was the Church of the Holy Apostles, and built their own mosque on the site.

  ‘It’s in Constantinople.’

  ‘Istanbul,’ said Connie. ‘Constantinople got the works.’

  ‘Under a mosque.’

  ‘A mosque?’ Mark looked worried. Connie tapped something into her BlackBerry and had an answer in less than thirty seconds.

  ‘The Fatih Mosque.’

  Mark was already halfway to the door. ‘Let’s go.’

  ‘What about Michael?’ Abby asked. She remembered his face in the courtyard, the anguish as he turned and vanished out the gate. To lose him again so soon hurt her worse than the bullet.

  But Mark wasn’t interested. ‘Dragović is the target here.

  We’ll bring Michael in sooner or later.’

  ‘And what about me.’ She remembered what he’d said in the café – three hours to be home, safe and out of this insane rat run. All she wanted to do was sleep.

  ‘You’re coming with us.’ He saw her face collapse and gave a mean smile. ‘We need you. You’re the bait.’

  XLII

  Constantinople – June 337

  THERE’S NOTHING LIKE the threat of death to slow a man down. The last month is the slowest I’ve ever lived. Each day since I returned from Nicomedia I’ve followed the same unimpeachable routine. I rise late and go to bed early. I work my way through Ursus’s list, using the lie that Constantine has asked me to canvass their support for his sons. I visit the public baths, but avoid conversation; I never go to the forum. I’ve dismissed all my slaves except my steward, and even he isn’t taxed with my simple demands.

  Sometimes I wonder if this was how Crispus spent the last week of his exile in Pula. And I wonder who’s coming for me.

  The last name on my list is Porfyrius. I’ve saved him to the end – he represents things I don’t want to think about. When you’re living under a suspended death sentence, you need to keep a tight grip on your imagination.

  The day I go to see him is hot and stifling: the naked sun beats down on the city, enraged by the loss of his favourite son. I spend a long time on the doorstep; I’m almost resigned to going home when at last the door opens.

  ‘I’m not receiving many visitors these days,’ Porfyrius apologises. ‘It’s safer.’

  Through an open door I can see a table set out in the atrium, loaded with cups and plates. I don’t comment.

  ‘You don’t mind if we speak in the study? I’m having the atrium redecorated.’

  I glance back towards the atrium – I hadn’t noticed any sign of workmen. All I see is the door, silently shut by an unseen hand.

  He leads me into his study. The desk is littered with papers, plans and drawings for what looks like a temple. A slave brings us wine. I take a cup, but don’t drink.

  ‘Constantine asked me to come.’ The line’s so well rehearsed by now, I’ve almost forgotten it’s a lie. Porfyrius isn’t so naïve.

  ‘I heard the Augustus had …’ A delicate pause. ‘Taken sick.’

  ‘He was alive the last time I saw him.’ That much is true. ‘But – he’s an old man. He’s concerned for the future of the empire.’

  ‘Does he have a list of troublemakers he’s worried about?’ He holds up a hand to stop me answering, and rattles off the names of half a dozen of the men I’ve been to visit in the last fortnight.

  ‘If you know who I’ve seen, you probably know what I’ve said to them.’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘This is no time for factions. Whoever Constantine names as his successor, or successors, they’ll need a peaceful, united empire. People who support them will have nothing to fear.’

  A shrewd look. ‘Are you making me an offer?’

  ‘I’m passing on a message.’ I open my hands in innocence – or impotence. No guarantees.

  ‘Consider it delivered.’ He picks up a pen from the desktop and spins it in his fingers. ‘You forget – I spent ten years in exile because I wrote a poe
m that offended Constantine. I’m not keen to go back.’

  He puts the pen down. His hand’s shaking; it knocks against a brass lamp which is weighing down the end of a scroll. The lamp falls on the floor; the scroll ravels up, pulling back like a curtain to reveal the drawings underneath. I peer forward.

  It’s an elevation of the pediment of a temple or a mausoleum, a triangular face with a wreath in the centre. And inside the wreath, a monogram: a slanted X with its top looped around.

  ‘The plans for my tomb,’ says Porfyrius. ‘I have an architect working on it.’

  ‘Are you expecting to need it soon?’

  ‘I’m prepared. Our generation – you, me, the Augustus himself – our time is running out. You should think about your own.’

  ‘Mine’s already built.’ Dug into the slopes of the valley behind my villa in Moesia, surrounded by cypresses and laurels. A lonely place. I wonder if I’ll live to see it.

  I make a show of examining the plans. ‘It’s an interesting choice of decoration.’

  His face – usually so animated – is very still. ‘Everybody has Constantine’s monogram on their tombs these days. I wanted something different – but still to proclaim my faith. I remembered it from the necklace you showed me. And a way to remember my old friend Alexander.’

  He rolls up the plans and slots them into a rack on the wall. ‘Thank you for coming.’

  I’m about to go when shouts intrude from the street, piercing through a high window in the back wall. It sounds like a riot. A moment later a slave runs in, flustered and jabbering.

  ‘They’re saying the Augustus is dead.’

  Porfyrius takes the news calmly. He doesn’t look any more surprised than I do.

  ‘Things are going to start changing.’

  ‘Be careful,’ I remind him. ‘It would be a shame to need your tomb before it’s ready.’