Secrets of the Dead (6 page)

‘I know how hard it must be for you, coming to terms with this. The best thing for you is to stay at home and get some rest.’

Please
, she wanted to say. Don’t make me go back there. But she let him open the door, and steer her out of the office. She thought he’d leave her at the lift, but once again he insisted on accompanying her all the way to the street.

‘Good luck,’ he said. ‘If there’s any news, we’ll call straight away.’

‘My phone’s been disconnected.’ She dug the new mobile out of her bag and gave him the number. ‘This is how to find me.’

But she knew he wouldn’t use it.

She picked up a curry on the way home and ate it curled up on the sofa. She was already putting on weight, though she’d lost so much in the hospital she thought it didn’t matter. She stared out of the windows at the suburbs below. She imagined a glass canopy covering the whole city, cocooning its inhabitants in their daily lives, and herself above it hammering to be let in.

An hour on the web turned up no one called Lascaris in York. She tried to look up some friends, panning through online profiles to dredge up their contacts. But the numbers she could find were out of date or not answering; most of her friends, she supposed, weren’t even in the country. It occurred to her she hadn’t really had that many friends, not for a long time. She even thought about calling Hector – was seriously tempted – but drew the line at that.

And how long’s that going to hold?

Somehow, she survived three more days. She forced herself to take walks on Clapham Common, morning and afternoon, setting herself little goals each time: the bandstand, the fishing lake, the Tube station. She binned the takeaway leaflets and bought a stack of supermarket ready meals, which she told herself was progress. She searched the Internet for news of her case, though there was nothing. She took her pills.

And then the letter came.

She almost threw it out. The address and the postage were both printed on the envelope: it looked like another reminder from TV Licensing. But it had her name on it, and she was grateful for anything that proved she still existed to the outside world.

How pathetic am I?
she wondered as she tore it open.

It wasn’t a demand from TV Licensing. It was a single sheet of paper, with three lines of text typed in the centre.

Jenny Roche

36 Bartle Garth

York

Constantinople – April 337

A LIFETIME WITH
Constantine has allowed me to form certain opinions. One is this: that the secret of greatness is escaping the past. The past is a fog, always trying to smother you, a chorus of cavilling voices counselling caution, restraint, moderation. A reproachful ‘No’ with the full weight of history.

A great man is dissatisfied with the world and impatient to improve it. The past’s a messy impediment. A great man wants to rationalise the world, to remake it in the image of his own clarity.

That’s why Constantine never liked Rome. Too much history. Too much mess. Temples built of mud and reeds, palaces overshadowed by tenements. In our youth, when we were taught how Julius Caesar grew up among plebeians in the Subura, I could see this jumbling of the natural order appalled Constantine. Grandeur and disease, divinity and squalor all tangled together. Too much history, too many ghosts.

I don’t like Rome either.

Constantinople gave Constantine a blank canvas to start afresh (not literally – there had been a town here for a thousand years, Byzantium – but another aspect of greatness is the ability to see only what suits you). And so the new city, Constantine’s city, fits his vision of how the world should be. It stands on a promontory, not a marshy river basin. It progresses in orderly grades along the peninsula: plebeians out by the land walls; then the middling sort, merchants and
curiales
, as you head east towards the Philadelphion; then the grades of Senators, the
spectabiles
and the
clarissimi
, their grand houses queuing towards the hippodrome like fans on race day; and, finally, the imperial palace at the tip of the point. Beyond that, the only neighbour is the sea.

Or that’s the theory. In practice, the city’s only five years old and already it’s beginning to deviate from Constantine’s plan. Weeds have sprouted in the tiered garden he laid out: a tenement block somehow growing in the space between two villas; a grand house sold and converted into apartments; jumped-up merchants muscling in on an upscale neighbourhood. I imagine it causes Constantine more grief than barbarians or usurpers ever have.

I walk up the Via Mesi towards the palace. In my hand I clutch a paper scroll, a list of the men who were in the library that afternoon, as much as the porter could remember them. I’ve spent the last two hours interrogating the men who were still there and not learned a thing. Nothing seen, nothing heard. No one recognises the monogram necklace. A part of me whispers this might all be some elaborate hoax.

But the blood on the desk was real enough, and there are names on my list I haven’t yet seen. Starting with that notorious hater of the Christians, Aurelius Symmachus.

Aurelius Symmachus was here. He left not long before I found the body
.

Aurelius Symmachus lives suitably close to the palace, as befits his impeccable status. His doorman looks at me in disbelief when I announce myself: he can’t believe I’ve come alone. He cranes his head out so far looking for my retainers he almost falls into the street. Of course, he’s too well schooled to say anything. He admits me through to a peristyle garden surrounded by colonnades. White carp sit motionless in an oblong pool, watched over by a quartet of stone nymphs. In the shadows under the colonnades, I glimpse painted scenes of reclining gods. Dark heads watch me from the alcoves. Everything’s exquisite and strangely dead.

Aurelius Symmachus emerges from a door, glancing over his shoulder as if midway through a conversation. He’s a short, stout man who walks with a stick. He’s almost bald, though white hair sticks out in tufts from behind his ears. He’s wearing a toga: he must be getting ready to go somewhere, though for the moment it just enhances the impression that he’s an anachronism. But his jaw is firm, and the eyes that watch me are as clear as diamonds.

We exchange pleasantries and size each other up. I suspect he dismisses me as a jumped-up soldier who’s risen beyond all reason on a great man’s coat-tails. He probably thinks I see him as a fossil of an order that passed a hundred years ago. Neither of us is entirely wrong. But neither of us has lived as long as we have without keeping an open mind.

‘Were you at the Egyptian Library this afternoon?’ I ask.

His stick scratches the ground, leaving a snake trail in the dust. ‘I was.’

‘Why?’

‘To read.’ He cocks a bushy white eyebrow, as if to say
I
expected more of you
.

‘Who were you reading? Hierocles, maybe?’

‘Not today. Seneca, I always go back to, and Marcus Aurelius. They speak to our age.’

The mask on his face hasn’t moved. Neither has mine. His stick still draws patterns in the dust.

‘What do they say?’ I ask.

‘How ridiculous it is to be surprised at anything that happens.’ The stick pauses. ‘Imagine what I’ve seen in my life. Civil wars and peace. Sometimes one emperor, sometimes many, sometimes none. A bizarre cult condemned by one emperor, and that same cult now triumphant. Everything changes – even the gods.’

Does he think I’m seventeen? I know all this. But I’m not going to let him distract me playing the rambling old man.

‘A man died in the library today.’

His face doesn’t change. ‘Alexander of Cyrene.’

‘You knew him?’

‘He was the Emperor’s friend. That alone made him worth knowing.’

I admire the old philosopher’s ambiguous phrasing.
That alone
– or –
that only
? We both know he might be talking about me.

‘Did you see him there?’

‘It’s not a bathhouse. I don’t go there for company.’

‘When did you leave the library?’

‘When the sun had moved round off my desk.’ He brushes his hand over his eyes. ‘My sight’s not as strong as it was.’

‘Did you know Alexander was dead when you left?’

‘Of course not. Otherwise, I’d have stayed.’

‘To see what happened?’

‘So as not to look guilty.’

A pause. I look at the fish in the pool, as still as the reflections on the water. The house is close to the Via Mesi, Constantinople’s great thoroughfare, but the walls do a good job keeping out the sound. I can hear servants in the rooms inside, filling lamps and fetching crockery. It’s late in the day. The sun’s come so low it’s prised its way under the lip of the portico, washing the paintings and the statues in gold. My gaze wanders over them – and stops.

‘Who’s that?’

I take two steps towards the bust that’s caught my eye, but Symmachus’s voice outpaces me.

‘Hierocles.’

Does he sound surprised? Was he expecting me to notice?

‘Do you read him?’ he asks. ‘You should. He was no friend of new religions. Nor are you, I hear.’

I murmur Constantine’s old platitude, ‘Every man should be free to worship in the way that seems best to him.’

‘Perhaps that’s why you fell out with the Emperor,’ he taunts me. I don’t rise to the provocation. He must know it’s not true, but he carries on regardless. ‘They say you’re not seen at the palace as often as you were.’

I turn politely. ‘There was a bust of Hierocles in the library. Someone used it to smash Bishop Alexander’s skull.’

Another pause. Our eyes lock.

‘Has Constantine made you his
stationarius
now? A thief-taker dragging good men into the gutter?’ His tone is even, but his craggy face is alight with rage. ‘The penalty for bringing unsubstantiated charges is steep, Gaius Valerius. Even with the Emperor behind you, I doubt you could afford it.’

‘Everyone knows your attitude to the Christians.’ At the far end of the garden, beside the door, I can see the small shrine
of
the
lararium
, where he venerates his household gods. They’re not so fashionable these days, I hear. Lots of families have moved them out of sight, into a back room where they can be safely ignored.

‘
Every man should be free to worship in the way that seems best
.’ He spits the words back at me, bobbing up and down. I watch him carefully. The anger’s too real to be manufactured – at my age, I can tell the difference – but that doesn’t mean he can’t control it.

‘Free to worship – as long as it’s for the public good.’

He bangs his stick on the ground. ‘If you want to accuse me of murder, say so. Say it, or get out of my house.’

But at that moment, a new actor enters our drama through the door by the
lararium
. He must be even older than me, but he has an air – a boyish grace, a carelessness – which makes him seem younger. His face is still handsome, his hair still dark, his smile still easy. He’s munching on a fig, and he throws the peel into the fishpond as he passes. It’s the first time I’ve seen the fish move.

Symmachus forces himself to swallow his anger.

‘Gaius Valerius,’ he introduces me. ‘This is my friend Publilius Optatianus Porfyrius.’

The name catches me by surprise: it’s not the first time I’ve heard it today. It’s on my scroll of paper.

‘Were you in the Egyptian Library today?’

I try to phrase it blandly, but he’s attuned enough to catch the undertone of suspicion. He gives me a curious look. ‘Is it a crime?’

‘A man was murdered there,’ says Symmachus. Is there weight in the glance that accompanies the words, a warning? Porfyrius doesn’t seem to notice. He laughs, as if the old man’s made a joke.

He sees that neither of us has joined in and his laugh trails off. He looks between us.

‘But I was there myself,’ he exclaims, redundantly. ‘I didn’t hear anything.’

‘What were you doing?’

‘I’d gone to meet Alexander of Cyrene.’

I wait for him to notice the look I’m giving him. I wait for the penny to drop. It doesn’t take long.

‘No.’

Porfyrius looks stunned. He recoils, as if he’s felt the blow himself; he throws up his hands. Every movement’s overdone, like an actor on the stage. Though, like an actor, it seems natural when he does it.

‘Clubbed over the head,’ Symmachus adds.

All the life’s gone out of Porfyrius. He sits on the edge of the pond, his head in his hands. ‘He was alive and well when I left him.’

‘Why were you there?’

‘The Augustus had commissioned him to write some sort of history. I served twice as Prefect of Rome – perhaps you remember? – and he wanted to check some facts about my tenure.’

‘What sort of facts?’

‘The monuments Constantine erected. The arch the Senate dedicated to him. Small details.’

‘Did he seem frightened? Any hint of something worrying him?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Alexander’s secretary said he had a document case. Do you remember it?’

‘Yes … no …’ Porfyrius drops his head. ‘I don’t remember.’

I pull out the necklace Constantine gave me.

‘Do either of you recognise this?’

That forces them to look towards me, though they give nothing away. Both these men are so well schooled in the ways of court I could pull out their own mothers’ heads and neither one would flinch.

Porfyrius stands, and moves closer to examine it.

‘It reminds me of the Emperor’s monogram. But not quite.’

He’s right. Constantine’s monogram is an X superimposed on a P, thus:
. The version in the necklace is subtly different, the two characters melded into one:
. I ought to have noticed straight away.