Triumph in Dust

by Ian Ross

  Pacing through the vestibule, Castus entered the cool pillared courtyard at the heart of the house. A figure stepped out from the far doorway, a stout and swarthy man with a mossy black beard and a sword-scar across his face.

  ‘Dominus,’ the man said with a wry salute. ‘Ready for our fight later? Today I’m going to drop you in the dirt – the gods told me so in a dream!’

  Castus hid his grimace. ‘Perhaps not today, brother,’ he said.

  Pharnax was from Numidia, and had fought as a professional gladiator for twelve years, until the sport was banned by imperial order. Now Castus employed him as a bodyguard, weapons trainer and sparring partner. At one time they had trained every day, out in the dusty yard behind the slaves’ quarters, Castus countering the ex-gladiator’s more flamboyant style with the familiar armatura sword drill he had perfected in the army. But every year their practice sessions became fewer.

  ‘You insult me!’ Pharnax declared, spreading his hands in mock disgust. ‘Soon I’ll have only your little girl to fight. And you, old man – you’ll just be keeping me around for my conversation!’

  ‘Save your strength,’ Castus growled. ‘You’ll need it to pick yourself up after I knock you down tomorrow.’

  He slapped Pharnax on the shoulder as he left the courtyard, then walked on through the darkened outer room and into his chamber. Castus had always shared a bedroom with his wife, but this small cell at the rear of the house was his own private domain. Sunlight beamed down through the window grille, falling across the table with its piled scrolls and tablets. Castus remained as scrupulously tidy as he had been during his days in the legions, but with nowhere else to go the contents of the room seemed to multiply in profusion.

  In one corner stood an armour rack, the gilded and burnished muscled cuirass displayed upon it gleaming in the angled light. Below it was a folded scale corselet, and on the shelf above stood a row of three helmets, together with Castus’s eagle-hilted spatha in its tooled red leather scabbard and his broad military belt. Years had passed since he had worn any of it, or the embroidered tunics and padded arming vests stored in the chests and cabinets along the far wall. Now he took one of the helmets from the shelf, brushing away the film of dust from the bowl. He caught his reflection in the curve of polished metal, and glanced away quickly. Inside, the leather lining was still stained with the sweat of some distant battle. From the back of his mind, Castus could summon those scenes clearly. The fog of dust; the swirl of bodies in combat. The noise of ringing iron and screaming trumpets, and the glory of hard-won victory. Never again would he know such things; he felt the loss of it now.

  One of the slaves came in with food and drink on a wooden platter. Placing the helmet back on the shelf, Castus seated himself beside the table and sipped from the cup of watered wine, then dipped the hard bread in olive oil and chewed thoughtfully. Left to his own tastes, he still kept to the old army diet, familiar all his years.

  Yes, he thought, this was his life now: the ritual of the morning swim, the weapons training with Pharnax, then walking or riding in the hills. Pleasurable hours with Marcellina and their daughter. He had a few acquaintances in the town of Salona, and several times old army friends had made the lengthy detour to the villa, to sit and drink wine with him and relive the days they had once known. It was enough; he told himself that. But still the sense of loss itched within him. The fear that had gripped him earlier when he felt himself plunging towards death rose once more. A cold sense of mortality.

  Soon all this too would be gone.

  Enough. He had never been prone to idle thoughts, and already he was beginning to feel recovered in mind and body. Finishing the last of his meal, he took a scroll from the table and scanned through it until he found the last passage he had read. Literature was a new discovery for him. Marcellina had always loved reading, but Castus himself had been illiterate as a youth and had found the written word alien until very recently. Now he made the effort whenever he could: not the poetry and philosophy that his wife so enjoyed, but sober prose histories that spoke of things he could understand. Turning the scroll to the light, frowning and muttering the words quietly to himself, he began to read.

  A movement from the far side of the room caught his eye, and he let the scroll drop. Hs daughter stood in the open doorway, perched on one leg and leaning against the frame.

  ‘Aeliana!’ Castus said, smiling. ‘You slept late?’

  The girl just pursed her lips. She was nine years old now, and becoming wilful in her attitudes. Crossing the room, barefoot on the tiled floor, she pressed herself against his shoulder so he could kiss her cheek.

  ‘What are you reading, Papa?’ she asked.

  ‘Titus Livius. It’s all about the ancient days of the Romans.’

  ‘Is it good?’ she asked, peering dubiously at the words on the scroll.

  ‘I like it. It talks about battles and military campaigns. Things I know well – though I doubt Titus Livius did! I can picture the scenes as I’m reading. But it’s very old, written in the Latin of hundreds of years ago.’

  ‘Older than you?’ Aeliana said with a mischievous grin.

  ‘Hard to believe, I know. But yes.’

  ‘Hylas said you looked ill after your swim,’ she said, her expression only shifting slightly with the change of subject. ‘Are you better now?’

  ‘Much better. It gets tiring being so very old, y’see. You’ll find out one day.’

  She held a cool palm against his brow. ‘Well, you don’t have a fever. But you should rest, I think.’

  Castus hugged her tight, kissing her again. ‘Oh, you’re my doctor now, hmm? Well, I promise I will.’

  Soon enough, he knew, his daughter would want to leave this place. She had lived at the villa all her life, excepting brief trips to Salona and once to Rome when she was only an infant. It was all she had known, and she was happy, although it would not be long before she would want more from life. The world was huge, and Castus had seen most of it. Even he felt his contentment to be stifling at times.

  Marcellina’s other children, his stepdaughters, were settled into their own lives now, with children of their own. Sabinus, Castus’s son by his first marriage, was serving with the imperial bodyguard, the Corps of Protectores. Castus had not seen him for over eighteen months, and the few brief messages he had received told him little he did not already know. But the world had moved on, he was forced to admit; both Sabinus and the women of his family were Christians now, just like the emperor himself. Recently, Castus had heard that even the Goths beyond the Danube were turning to the new faith. Here in this forgotten enclave on the Dalmatian coast, he felt like an inhabitant of an age that had passed.

  ‘Can I go with Pharnax in the boat later?’ Aeliana asked, breaking into his thoughts. ‘He’s just going around the promontory to the village and back. Please can I?’

  ‘Well…’ Castus said, considering.

  Before he could say more, a sound came from the courtyard outside. An unfamiliar voice; the scrape of studded boots on tile. With a hand on his daughter’s shoulder he urged her to remain in the chamber, then he got up and went outside.

  There was a stranger waiting in the courtyard with Pharnax and a couple of the door slaves. A young man in the cloak and uniform of an imperial courier. As Castus appeared he straightened, and gave a very correct military salute. He must have left Salona before dawn, Castus realised, and ridden hard to arrive here so early.

  ‘Excellency,’ the courier said, and held out a slim tablet. Even from several paces away Castus could make out the imperial seal. He took the message, then signalled to the slaves to take the courier to the kitchens and give him food and drink.

  ‘What is it?’ Marcellina said, pulling a silk shawl around her shoulders as she walked in from the portico.

  Castus just shook his head, turning the tablet in his hands. He could feel the warmth rising to his face, the tremors running up his spine. The message came from Constantinople, he could tell, from
the imperial court. He had received nothing like this for a decade, ever since he had been ordered to resign his commission and retire into private life.

  Breaking the seal, Castus opened the tablet and read the words scored into the wax. Then he took a deep breath.

  ‘I am ordered to Constantinople,’ he said, exhaling. ‘To present myself before the emperor.’

  Marcellina took the tablet from him and seated herself on the low wall between the garden pillars. She read the message quickly, then laid it down beside her. ‘Can they do that? Can they give you orders like that? You left the army years ago – you don’t have to agree to their demands now…’

  Castus could give no answer. Sensations rioted through his mind: amazement, then affronted anger, then a dark foreboding. But there was another feeling too, one that he could not deny. He felt now that he had been waiting for this moment for many years. The appearance of this message, so soon after his close encounter with death, seemed too much of a coincidence not to be significant. He felt the intricate strands of fate tightening around him. This time he could not disbelieve in them. Perhaps, he thought, perhaps life is not over quite yet.

  Marcellina stood up again, and placed her hands on his shoulders, gazing at him. ‘Look at me,’ she said. Castus could see the concern in her eyes. ‘Is there any way you can refuse this?’

  ‘None. The courier’ll report that the message was delivered and that I read it. I have to go, at least… That’s the only way I’ll discover what this is about.’

  ‘You know what this is about,’ Marcellina said, anguish in her voice. ‘Constantine needs you for some warlike scheme or other, something nobody else has the experience for – or nobody else wants. He’ll order you away to some distant place where your life will be in danger… Why else would he summon you out of retirement, after what happened ten years ago?’

  Castus cupped her face in his hands, kissing her brow. ‘It might not be like that,’ he said, trying to sound reassuring. ‘He wouldn’t be sending me off to war, not after so long.’

  Marcellina let out a groan, pulling away from him. ‘Have you really forgotten everything?’ she cried. ‘Or have you forgiven it so soon? Constantine killed his own wife and son, and would have killed you too! He threatened us all. A man like that has no care for you, no sense of humanity at all… I can’t believe you’re so willing to do what he commands!’

  ‘I’m not!’ Castus said, hearing the growl of anger in his voice. ‘I forget nothing, and I forgive nothing. But this… I can’t just refuse. It’s in my blood – I at least have to find out what it’s about…’

  ‘Oh yes, I can hear it in your voice already,’ Marcellina said quietly. ‘All these years I’ve thought you were done with soldiering, that you’d left all that behind you, all those things that could have killed you. But you’re like one of those old warhorses that can’t help responding to the sound of the trumpet. You want to go, don’t you? You want another chance.’

  He knew he should deny it, but they both knew that it was true. In the few short moments since he had read the message, Castus’s mind had begun to race, his blood to flow faster. The weakness he had experienced that morning, the sense that life was done with him, had been dispelled.

  His wife had dropped to sit on the wall again, pressing her brow into the heel of her hand. ‘If the emperor sends you away somewhere,’ she said. ‘Then I’m going to find you there. Even if it’s the furthest steppes of Scythia or the far end of the Nile. And our daughter’s coming too. I’m not letting you return to that life without me, do you understand?’

  ‘Of course,’ Castus said. It would be difficult, but in truth he was glad of her obstinacy. He had to be reminded that he was no longer a young man, and had much to lose.

  Marcellina was gazing at him again, and he could see the hurt in her eyes, the deep anxiety.

  ‘You’re sick, aren’t you?’ she said. ‘This morning, when you came back from your swim, I could see it. You looked like death, husband.’

  With an effort of will, he sat down beside her, embracing her. ‘I can’t deny it,’ he said. ‘But I’ve recovered now, and after a few days’ rest I’ll be fit to travel. I’ll go to Constantinople, find out what the emperor wants with me, then I’ll send a message back here to you. We can decide things from there onwards.’

  Marcellina pressed the hem of her shawl to her eyes, dabbing away tears. Of sorrow or of anger, Castus could not tell. Perhaps both. Then she took his hand and kissed it.

  Ten years, he thought. Ten years of peace.

  Was that all the gods would grant him?

  II

  ‘You have not, I think, visited the Great City before, excellency?’ the notary said, seated beside Castus in the open two-horse carriage as they rattled along the wide colonnaded main street of Constantinople.

  ‘I visited it several times,’ Castus replied. ‘Back when it was called Byzantium.’

  He was not in the best of moods. The previous evening he had arrived at the outskirts of the city, after journeying for nearly a month across Macedonia and Thracia. Much of the way he had travelled on horseback, or on foot, trying to build his stamina to its old levels. But the exertion had worn him down, and the distances had allowed plenty of time for his initial enthusiasm to shift into resentment and foreboding. He missed Marcellina and Aeliana badly, and the thought that he might not see them again for many months was painful.

  ‘This central avenue is called in Greek the Mese,’ the notary was saying, flourishing his hand at the colonnades to either side. ‘Broader and grander than any in the empire, so they say! And when we reach the Augusteion you’ll see wonders… Ah, but this is the Forum, and the Column of the Sacred Augustus.’

  The carriage had entered a broad circular plaza, surrounded by double-storey porticos. Castus estimated that the Thracian Gate of the old city must have stood here – no trace of it, or the old walls, now remained. In the centre of the plaza stood a tall column of purple marble. Gazing up, shielding his eyes against the bright morning sun, Castus made out the gleaming golden figure at the column’s head.

  ‘Sol!’ he breathed, and touched his brow reverently.

  ‘Ah, no,’ the notary said with an embarrassed smile. ‘Although the statue does wear the radiate crown of the sun god, it is in fact a portrayal of our Most Sacred Emperor. The base of the column, you know, contains several very holy relics. Among them the remains of the original loaves that Christ used to feed the five thousand! They were brought here from Jerusalem by the emperor’s late mother, the Sainted Augusta Helena.’

  Helena. Castus frowned at the name. He had known Constantine’s mother, and knew that she had been principally responsible for the accusations against Crispus and Fausta. The news that she was now regarded as some sort of divine figure was disconcerting.

  But the city was impressive, even if Castus was loath to admit it. He had last been here shortly after Byzantium had surrendered to Constantine’s besieging army. Back then, this whole area had been covered by military camps and siege works, amid the ruins of the orchards and villages that had stood here before that. Much of the ground inside the new walls was still a construction site, with tall brick apartment blocks and towers of scaffolding filling the residential zone. To either side of the central avenue, Castus caught glimpses of more building work, and even of poorer buildings, shacks and hovels, clustered behind the proud façades. Constantinople would be the greatest city on earth, some people claimed; already they were calling it the New Rome. But Castus had seen the Old Rome, and was not convinced.

  Moving on from the circular forum, the carriage continued down the slope and slowed to a halt beside a pillared monument – the ‘Golden Milestone’, the notary called it. Here they dismounted from the carriage and walked the last distance to the palace on foot. Huge buildings rose on all sides, with the dark blue waters of the Bosphorus visible beyond. The notary was already pointing out the Hippodrome and the Church of the Holy Peace, the Zeuxippus Baths and the
Golden Basilica. It was still early in the day, but like most of the rest of the city the streets and porticos were thronged with people; the celebrations of the Ludi Romani had just commenced, and huge numbers of spectators had flocked in from the surrounding countryside. After many years living in rural seclusion, Castus had grown unfamiliar with crowds, and to be surrounded by so many people put him on edge.

  At the end of the colonnaded street stood a great gateway, where soldiers of the Schola Scutariorum stood guard in full armour. The façade above them was adorned with marble statues and gorgon heads, with a large painting over the arched gate showing four golden figures, the largest jabbing a spear into a snake that writhed beneath their feet. The Christian symbol was painted above them.

  ‘The image of the Sacred Augustus and his sons, the Caesars,’ the notary explained, ‘trampling the serpent of evil and casting it into the sea…’

  The snake represented Constantine’s defeated rival, Licinius, Castus guessed. He had served in that campaign himself. But the emperor’s three surviving sons by Fausta had been children at the time; only the eldest son, Crispus, had played a major role. Now he, like Fausta herself, had been erased from history, and it was forbidden even to speak their names. Swallowing down sour memories, Castus followed the notary in through the gates of the palace.

  In the marble-panelled entrance hall, as large as a basilica, they waited while a steward ran to announce their arrival. Standing stiffly, Castus gazed around him at the host of others waiting in the hall. Anxiously he rubbed at his smooth chin. That morning he had shaved off the beard he had worn ever since leaving the emperor’s service. He was wearing his best tunic and breeches too, his finest cloak flung across his shoulder and secured by a jewelled brooch, but it was civilian attire. Without a sword by his side, and the broad military belt at his waist, he felt almost naked. Ludicrously overdressed too, although compared to most of those around him his clothing appeared almost drab.

  ‘Excellency.’ The inner doors had opened, and a pair of white-uniformed Protectores had marched forth to conduct him into the palace precincts. Without another word to the garrulous notary, Castus acknowledged their salutes and then followed them.