Secrets of the Dead Read Free Page A

more water into the pool and lean forward into the steam, peering through the mist at the black-and-white sea gods picked out in the floor tiles. They stare back and reproach me. Dying gods from a dying world. Do they know the part I’ve played in their oblivion?
    Another shiver. I’m ready to die: it’s death that terrifies me. The afterwards. Gods who die in springtime occasionally come back to life; old men murdered in autumn never do. But where they go …
    The steam thickens.
    All my life I’ve contended with gods – a god who became a man, and a man who became a god. Now, at the end of it, peering into the steaming abyss, I have no more idea what the gods intend for me than I did when I first peered over the edge of my cradle all those years ago. Or even four months ago, on a dusty April afternoon in Constantinople, hearing about a dead man who would change my life. As much as remains of it.
    Memories cloud about me and bead on my skin. The mind is a strange land with many walls but no distance. I’m no longer in the bathhouse, but another place and time, and my oldest friend is saying …
    ‘… I need you.’
    We’re in an audience hall at the palace, though there’s no audience. None except me. We’re both old men with the years scored into us, but it’s been this way since I can remember. He performs, I applaud.
    Except now I’m not applauding. I’m listening to him tell me about a death and wondering if I look right. After so many years at court, I can pull out my emotions like masks from a well-oiled drawer, but I’m not sure what the occasion demands. I want to seem respectful to the dead man. But not too much – I won’t invest in his death, as I’m being invited to do. Does that make me callous?
    ‘They found him two hours ago in the library by the Academy. As soon as they realised who he was, they sent straight to the palace.’
    He’s trying to draw me in to the story, pique my curiosity. I stay silent. There aren’t many men alive who can stay silent when he wants them to speak – I might be the only one left. We grew up like brothers, inseparable sons of officers in the same legion. His mother was an innkeeper, mine a laundress. Now titles adorn him like the gems sewn into his heavy robe. Flavius Valerius Constantine – Emperor, Caesar and Augustus, Consul and Proconsul, High Priest. Constantine the Pious, the Faithful, the Blessed and Benevolent. Constantine the Victorious, Triumphant and Unconquered. Constantine – succinctly – the Great.
    And even now, a grandfather in his declining years, the greatness radiates from him. I still feel it. His round face, puppyish and seductive when he was young, may have fattened out and sagged; the muscles that wrestled together an empire may have gone soft. But the greatness remains. The artists who paint him with a golden nimbus are only colouring in what every man knows. Power inhabits his body – the unconquerable confidence that only the gods can give.
    ‘The dead man’s name was Alexander. He was a bishop – important in the Christian community. He also tutored one of my sons, apparently.’
    One of my sons, apparently . Something wraps around me like a cold current in the sea, though I don’t flinch. My face betrays nothing. Neither does his.
    Without warning, he tosses me something. My body’s grown slow and cumbersome, but I still have my reflexes. I catch it one-handed, then open my fist.
    ‘They found this near the body.’
    It’s a necklace, about the size of my palm. An intricate web surrounding Constantine’s X-P monogram, the bright new gold studded with red glass beads. A broken chain shows where it was ripped off someone’s neck.
    ‘Did it belong to the Bishop?’
    ‘His servant says not.’
    ‘The man who killed him, then?’
    ‘Or it was left there deliberately.’ He breathes an impatient sigh. ‘These are the questions I need you to answer, Gaius.’
    The necklace is cold in my hand, an unwanted token of the