Caesar's Lord, page 40
As she took a seat on a marble bench to slip her feet into some wooden clogs, a dizzy spell hit her. She steadied herself with both hands on the bench and waited for it to pass. Instead, it grew worse. For a long time, she sat with her eyes closed and her head spinning. Once, she felt the need to vomit, but eventually that feeling passed. Only after what must have been half an hour did Fausta feel able to stand again.
Here we go, she thought. Just put up with it as long as you must. A day of enduring such trials is a small price to pay for a return to normalcy.
Fausta wasn’t worried about the dizzy spell because she knew exactly what had caused it. Last night, then again at dawn, a physician had administered drugs to start the abortion process. Now the extreme heat would finish the job. All I have to do is wait, Fausta reminded herself. I’ll deliver the fetus in the privacy of my bedchamber. The doctor will discard it, and no one will know it was from Pantera!
Fausta’s secret fear had been that the baby would have piercing green eyes like its father. Now that wouldn’t matter. No one would ever see the tiny creature except a midwife and a doctor—and they weren’t part of the palace staff, so they had no knowledge of Pantera. A feeling of exultation came to Fausta as she finally stood up and left the changing room. I’m going to get away with it!
She walked to the sauna, the only room in the bathhouse she planned to visit today. Normally, bathers would alternate from warm to hot to cool, then start the process over again. But today was all about extreme heat. The doctor had ordered Fausta to linger for as long as she could in the sauna, which was known for getting overheated at times. Even the caldarium—the hot pool room—wasn’t hot enough for the purposes of abortion. The dry heat of the sauna most enervated the body and caused the necessary convulsions of the womb.
The furnace man was checking the sauna’s temperature when Fausta arrived. He was an unkempt fellow with stubble on his jowls and hairy forearms. His only garments were a loincloth and cheap sandals made of rope. Though he should have bowed when an augusta approached, he seemed to have forgotten the proper demeanor of slaves.
But Fausta didn’t have time for reprimands. “I want the heat turned up to the limits of human endurance,” she told the slovenly worker. “When you think you’ve got it hot enough, throw on another log.”
“As you wish,” replied the furnace man with a curt nod of his head. He turned away and headed downstairs to tend the fire.
Fausta stepped out of her clogs and unwrapped the towel from around her body. As she was about to enter the sauna, she painfully stubbed her toe on a protruding pavestone. “Damned old place!” she shouted at the ceiling, then stepped into the sauna. As if to confirm her curse, she had a hard time shutting the warped door but was finally able to yank it into place. The sauna wouldn’t get hot enough without a tight seal to keep the heat from escaping.
Stone risers around the little round room provided places for Fausta to sit. She spread her towel on the top tier near the ceiling, where the heat was the greatest. Though the air in the sauna was dry, a sheen of sweat soon glistened on her body. But Fausta didn’t mind a good sweat; it was an excellent way to purge oneself of impurities. She was determined to stay in the heat longer than she ever had before. Today, the impurity she needed to purge from her body was of a more substantial sort.
Downstairs, the furnace man must have been doing his job well, for the heat was surely intense. Yet even when it began to grow arduous, Fausta didn’t budge. Finally, unable to tolerate the heat any longer, she moved down to the bottom tier and spread her towel there. The temperature at that lower level was only slightly diminished.
Another dizzy spell came over Fausta, which she considered a sign of good things to come. She placed both palms on the travertine seat to keep from toppling over. Her mind felt slow and sluggish—whether from the extreme heat or the doctor’s drugs, she didn’t know. Not . . . long . . . now, she told herself. Just . . . hang . . . on.
When a painful spasm racked Fausta’s abdomen, she felt relieved. The sharp pang in her womb meant the abortion process had begun. Soon, she could exit the sauna and go lie in her bed to let the events unfold. But before she left the heat, she wanted to make sure the process was truly underway and wouldn’t falter. She forced herself to wait a little longer.
The second contraction was even more acute than the first. It seemed to engulf her whole body, its pain like the stab of a knife. Now Fausta knew the time to leave had come. Naked, weak, and sweating profusely, she rose from her seat and staggered to the door.
And it wouldn’t open.
She pushed on the door and tried to jiggle it, but the wooden barrier refused to move. Though a wave of panic rushed upon Fausta, she ignored her fearful thoughts and focused on the one task before her. Push . . . hard!
She did—yet there was still no movement.
Fausta lowered her shoulder and gave the door a full-bodied shove. It didn’t yield, not even a little. The door felt like it was more than just stuck—like it had been firmly barred on the other side. More panic arose, and this time, Fausta couldn’t bat it away.
“Help!” she screamed, slapping the wood with her palm. “Open up! I need help!” But no one came. The only sound was the dull roar inside her head.
Fausta knelt down, then lay prone on the sauna’s floor and put her nose and lips near the bottom of the door. Perhaps she could receive some cool air from underneath? Yet there was no refreshment, no relief from the life-draining heat. More feebly than before, she banged on the door with her palm and yelled again for help. Nothing changed. There were no sounds of response, no voices of salvation.
The torrid heat was unbearable. Fausta could feel that her body had become overheated from within. If she hadn’t already been lying on the floor, she surely would have collapsed. To stand up now would be impossible.
Terrified at the prospect of her death, Fausta tried again to summon help. But no words formed in her mouth, only a feeble groan. Soon she would faint, and from that stupor she would never wake up. Yet was that so bad? The horror of her imminent demise was balanced by the instant relief it would bring. Just . . . let . . . go . . .
NO!
Gathering all her remaining strength, Fausta uttered one last plea. “Venus!” she cried to the ceiling, to the stars, to the heavens of the eternal goddess. “Save me!”
At last, a voice responded from the other side of the door. It was a female voice, firm and clear. Yet her words held out no hope. Instead, the message was one of condemnation. “There is no salvation,” the speaker said, “for those who murder the innocent.”
Was . . . that . . . Venus?
As the deep darkness closed around Fausta and the light of her consciousness dimmed, a final realization came to her flickering mind. The voice she had heard wasn’t the goddess of love.
It was the voice of Helena Augusta.
AUGUST 326
Sorrow pressed hard upon Constantine’s heart. His burdens were heavy. His sins were manifold. His bloodguilt was enormous. The Christian God had surely abandoned him. But, he reasoned, perhaps Jupiter has not?
“Your conveyance awaits you, my lord,” said the doorman at the Sessorian Palace. Hardly aware of what he was doing, Constantine stepped out into the hot sunshine and took a seat in his fancy litter. Then the eight beefy porters picked it up and began to move through the streets of Rome.
Constantine had recently learned some more facts about his son’s death. The night of the alleged rape, Crispus was affected by some kind of mind-numbing potion. He wasn’t guilty of any crime. Fausta had falsely accused him. Nonetheless, he was now dead. And so was Fausta. An accident had occurred at the baths during her abortion.
Is that really what it was—an accident? Helena had hinted that something else was being planned. “She should be executed for what she did,” Helena had said.
“Yes, she should,” Constantine had agreed. “But I can’t do that publicly.”
“May your will be done,” was Helena’s cryptic reply.
Did my words give tacit permission for capital punishment?
Nothing was clear to Constantine anymore—nothing except a few essential truths that shined like lighthouse beacons in a fog of uncertainty. One was that his wife had been guilty of death-deserving crimes. It could no longer be denied. She had committed adultery, murder, and high treason. No queen who did those things had ever been allowed to live.
Another truth was that three members of his family were now dead: his son, his wife, and an unknown infant. Their deaths had been brutal. Stabbing. Beheading. Overheating. Suffocation. Abortion. Terrible deaths involving great pain and suffering. Violence had come to the clan of Constantine.
The third truth was the clearest of all in Constantine’s mind: this whole episode had to go away—far, far away. It had to disappear from the eyes of the public. More importantly, it had to disappear from Constantine’s blackened soul. A washing like that would require a god who was less strict and demanding than the one found in the Christian scriptures. Fortunately, such a god existed. In fact, he lived nearby. His home was the Capitoline Hill.
The litter bearers arrived at the foot of the Capitoline and set down their burden in front of the Senate House. Today, Constantine didn’t intend to ascend the holy hill. That would come in due time. Instead, he had summoned the High Priest of Jupiter to meet him privately inside the legislative building where the Senate normally gathered for debate. Imperial bodyguards and some policemen from the Urban Cohorts were stationed at the front entrance to keep the masses away. Even the senators had been temporarily excluded from their assembly hall. Constantine stepped out of the litter and hurried inside the Senate House, then the doors were shut behind him.
The High Priest of Jupiter was standing beside the Altar of Winged Victory. Two chairs were there, so Constantine sat down and the priest followed suit. Though the High Priest wasn’t equal in power to an emperor, he was certainly Constantine’s social peer—an aristocrat from an eight-hundred-year-old Roman family. The man’s toga was beautifully tailored, and the cap on his head bore the olivewood spike that signaled his high religious status.
He greeted Constantine warmly and respectfully, then asked, “How might I help you, Your Majesty?”
Constantine had no intention of dragging this matter out, for it weighed too heavily on his mind. “I need cleansing from sin,” he announced.
The High Priest considered his reply for a long moment. “Sin is a primitive concept,” he finally said. “It was concocted by the Jews. And it is an obsession of the new cult that emerged from them, led by their crucified criminal. But our religion makes no place for that idea. The gods do not care about your moral life. They only want to be worshiped correctly with ritual and offering.”
“I know the gods overlook our petty crimes. Yet they grow agitated when men shed blood unjustly. Consider the Furies. They avenge the wrong deeds of men. The gods certainly aren’t oblivious to”—Constantine paused to choose his words carefully—“the immoral things an emperor may have done.”
“Be that as it may,” the High Priest said, “we do not have a means of atonement for sins. Sacrifices please the gods by their propriety and costliness, not as an expiation by blood.”
Constantine leaned forward in his chair. “Then I wish to make a costly sacrifice to Father Jupiter, the Best and Greatest. It will be a pure, white ox, given to the god according to all the rules. Jupiter will look favorably on me, and the cosmos will be restored.”
“If you say so,” the High Priest answered agreeably. “A sacrifice at the Capitol by the Augustus at the climax of his Twentieth Year is a worthy and befitting deed. The people will see your true piety and rejoice in your repudiation of that strange cult of the Jew.”
“Arrange it for three days hence,” Constantine commanded. “It must be preceded by a public parade.” After some specific details were discussed and various plans were made, he thanked the High Priest, then rose from his seat and ended the meeting.
On the appointed day for the public sacrifice, Constantine dressed in the full regalia of a Roman emperor. He wore a robe made of the finest wool, dyed to a deep purple and fringed with golden tassels. Gem-studded shoes bedecked his feet and a diadem of gold and pearls was on his brow. His inner voice whispered to him as he got dressed, You traitor! You wore these same garments at Nicaea! but he pushed that memory out of his mind. He didn’t want to think about the Christian God anymore because his holy standards were too hard for mortals to bear. Constantine didn’t have the strength for such high demands.
Just before leaving the palace to head to the parade’s starting point, Constantine retrieved the silver box that held Crispus’s lock of hair. He transferred the reddish curl into a slip of parchment, folded it, and tucked it into his belt pouch where it would be close at hand. After the sacrifice to Jupiter had been made, Constantine intended to burn the wisp of hair as well. In this way, he would relinquish all memory of his son forever. It would be a lavish and costly gift to Jupiter, which would surely avert the wrath of the gods.
The parade formally began at the Arch of Constantine, which served as a gateway into the heart of Rome. Arrayed in his regal attire, the emperor mounted a chariot drawn by eight noble stallions. Above his head, emblazoned upon the arch, was the relief sculpture that depicted his great triumph at the Milvian Bridge. The arch’s inscription declared that the victory had been won “by the prompting of the Divinity.” Though the senators who erected the arch used that phrase as a veiled reference to the Christian God, the terminology was vague enough to include Jupiter as well. And Jupiter was a god whose yoke was easy and whose burden was light.
With a snap of the reins, Constantine expertly guided the chariot beneath the arch, then took a left turn at the Flavian Amphitheater. Crowds lined both sides of the royal procession, kept back from the rolling chariot by the Urban Cohorts in full dress uniform. After also navigating through the Arch of Titus, Constantine headed toward the Forum on Sacred Street. To his right was the mighty basilica—the biggest in the empire—that Maxentius initiated but Constantine completed, installing his own colossal image in the hall’s apse instead of his fallen enemy’s. After passing the basilica and the Temple of the Divine Julius, where the famed general Julius Caesar was cremated after his assassination, the imperial chariot entered the Forum proper. Many senators thronged the way ahead, their gleaming white togas rippling like sea surf on this windy day.
Once the chariot had reached the Rostra, Constantine halted the stallions and handed the reins to a charioteer who was especially popular with the crowds. That man moved the vehicle away so Constantine could ascend on foot toward the mighty height of the Capitoline, the highest hill in Rome. The little lane that climbed its flank was called the Clivus. At the summit of the Clivus was the Capitol—the Temple of Jupiter. This deity was known as the father of the gods, the wielder of the thunderbolt, the eternal protector of Rome. Upon that ancient, rugged hill, the High Priest would meet with the emperor. There, the divine world would be conjoined with earthly, mortal life. A white ox would shed its blood, the people would marvel, and a beloved son would be relinquished forever and ever.
All the imperial splendor of the day came down to this one moment. Everything was just as it should be. Constantine stood at the foot of the Capitoline Hill while the aristocrats and commoners cheered him on. He was about to start up the slope when a lone man appeared on the Clivus ahead, declaring that none of this would be allowed to stand.
“Who shall go up to the mountain of the Lord? Who shall stand in his holy place?” the man cried in a voice endowed with power from on high. As he spoke, he raised his cross-shaped staff to the sky. A stunned silence descended on the watching crowd; and into that silence, the man projected his holy words. “He who is innocent in his hands and pure in his heart! He who has not lifted up his soul to vain idols, nor sworn deceitfully to his neighbor. This one shall receive a blessing from the Lord and mercy from God his Savior!” The speaker was Pope Sylvester, the fearless bishop of the Roman catholic church.
“Do not bar my way,” Constantine said, though not in a tone of anger or warning. Something significant was happening here—something he could feel but not define. A whisper in his soul told him not to speak harshly.
“Why do you ascend to the house of demons?” Sylvester asked. “They do not have what you seek, my brother.”
“And what do I seek?”
“Absolution from your sins! You seek divine forgiveness for the death of Caesar Crispus, whose execution order went out under your seal.”
At the confirmation of this terrible charge—which many in Rome had suspected but no one had known for certain—an angry murmur rippled through the crowd. Some people even booed and hissed, for Crispus was much loved and his undeserved death struck everyone as tragic. Constantine cringed, not only because of the bystanders’ accusing eyes, but even more because of the Accuser’s diabolical assault upon his soul.
Yet Sylvester directed his gaze toward the disgruntled crowd. “Silence!” he barked, thrusting forth his palm. “Which of you is innocent of sins against the Almighty?” The sharp rebuke quieted the restless bystanders, and their murmuring ceased.
Now that the truth had been cast into the open, Constantine decided to take matters firmly in hand. “You are right that I seek absolution for my wrongdoing,” he said to the bishop. “In the fog of confusion and deceit that enveloped my palace, I allowed a death warrant to go out beneath my seal. I did not try to recall it, for anger and vengeance had a hold on me. I believed things I shouldn’t have entertained. I gave credence to crafty lies. Now my son is dead. And I am to blame.” Though these facts were horrific, it felt good to speak the truth publicly.
Sylvester took a few steps down the incline of the Clivus, aided by his cross-shaped staff. Now he faced Constantine from only a few paces away. “So you admit it is for forgiveness that you are climbing this wicked hill behind me?”
