Column 06/18/2024: Death of the Son, Episode Six: Interview with an Empress

Death of the Son, Episode Six: 

Interview with an Empress

[Episode One; Episode Two; Episode Three; Episode Four; Episode Five]

"Is he awake?"

In his memory, the old woman approached the couch slowly, her hands trembling. The soldier, however, did not tremble, but stayed perfectly still, his eyes open, but hoping--somehow--that she would not notice. 

But the old man's strong hands gripped him suddenly by the shoulders--those gnarled hands somehow so much stronger than those of his trainer or the optio of his century or the other soldiers who grappled with him each morning; with them all, he had fought and struggled and often thrown off their arms, but with the old man, the very idea of resistance seemed absurd--and rolled him in a moment over onto his back, exposed, his eyes suspended without recourse beneath the great, dark ones of the old woman. 

But the hand on his shoulder now was not that of the old deacon, but of the bishop Hosius--and Theodotus shook himself out of his reverie to find that it was Hosius' brown eyes, many shades brighter than those of the old woman, that now looked intently into his own.

How long, oh Lord? When will my penance be complete?

"Are you ready?" Theodotus felt, unexpectedly, a flash of anger, though whether at Hosius or Christ he could not be sure. Must everything be a test?

But he was coming out of his reverie now, and the anger was quickly lost, as it always was, in a rush of understanding. Hosius is no longer trying to test me; he is afraid, and looking for reassurance.

After a moment, then, he put his hand awkwardly on the older man's shoulder--just as the old man would have done. "Don't worry: we are carrying out our Lord's business, and he will help us," he said--just as the old man would have said. He wondered if the words sounded as awkward and hesitant to Hosius as they did to him.

But Hosius seemed satisfied. He turned rapidly back to the little, black-haired slave-woman who had been watching them, not without amusement, from behind her strange blue eyes. "Take us to the Empress." She bowed, stiffly, and led the way through the labyrinthine corridors of the Empress' Palace. 

As they walked, Theodotus again found himself studying the decor carefully--and was again struck both by what he saw, and what he did not. He had only recently been in the Imperial Palace, decorated and prepared for the Emperor's residence--before that he had on a number of occasions set foot in the palaces and mansions of the Antiochene rich, investigating a crime or bearing some message from the Episcopal Court. Only once, early in his tenure as a deacon, he had visited the Widow's House, where those holy women prayed and contemplated and fed themselves and the poor at the bishop's expense. That had been a sizeable dwelling for its place in the city, a donation from some local grandee, but cramped and austere, like a military barracks, narrow corridors and innumerable small bedrooms bearing little decoration but the occasional gilded image of Christ or the Virgin. He understood that Eustathius had since built a new, larger residence for them, using the funds that Constantine so beneficently showered down upon the dioceses--but he could not imagine it differing overmuch from its original. 

Helena's Palace, though, resembled none of these models, but rather a strange melding of them all, a material imprinted indelibly with something that he gradually came to perceive as the personality of the woman who reigned within it. At first glance, the religious house loomed largest--in the darkness and austerity of the corridors, the gilded mosaics and paintings of Christ and martyrs prominently displayed in every room, and most of all in the women moving here and there dressed in the rough, dark cloth, sewn with crosses, that served nearly everywhere in the Empire as the badge of consecrated widows and virgins. A minute later, though, and the signs of prosperity began to assert themselves--in the size of the rooms and corridors, the colored marble floors, the impressionistic paintings, false windows and doors and gardens, covering every wall, behind and above and around the religious images, and the occasional niches bearing draped or missing pagan statuettes. 

So far, though, it might be any wealthy woman's house recently converted into an impromptu haven for ascetics--of which many had sprung up throughout the Empire, even in Antioch. It was only when he passed into a sitting room and found himself confronted with a life-size porphyry image of Constantine and Helena, both reclining on couches with their hands joined, that he found himself suddenly confronted with the fact that he was in a house of royalty. After that, though, he began to find the signs everywhere--in the labyrinthine size and extent of the palace itself, the verdant pleasure gardens, trees and vines and flowers in abundance, glimpsed through real windows and doors, and most of all in the images of the Imperial family found in nearly every room, carved into statue groupings or painted onto the walls. 

It was with an even greater shock, though, that he found himself, turning another corner, suddenly staring into the face of the woman he had seen in his dream--Fausta herself, the Emperor's recently-deceased wife, seated in arrogant, beauteous splendor above the doorway, next to Helena, and with another young woman on her mother-in-law's other side, black hair elegantly curled and a broad face drawn in a wide smile. 

He glanced at Hosius. "Crispus' wife? ...she...?" 

The old bishop's brows tightened; but a shake of the head was his only response.

This encounter soured Theodotus' already shaken mood. For the first time, his intellectual interest gave away to a sense of the uncanny about this strange house, an Imperial Palace filled with images of living Christs and dead women. Even the living women...further glances dispelled his initial sense of familiarity in the figures that inhabited this strange landscape. That young woman in the simple brown dress...was she in fact a consecrated virgin? Or was she, perhaps, merely a fashionable young women, of some wealthy family, playing the devotee for a day, or merely there to gossip and enjoy the Empress' pleasure gardens? That older woman in richer garb, busied with clearing a table...was she a widow? Or was she merely a slave, the well-dressed servant of a great lady? Even those two women with crosses sewn on their dresses...were they officially sanctioned ascetics, their vows received by the bishop, or were they merely pious, wealthy laywomen dressed as them: or were they some third thing, outside of his current conception of the Church? 

And of course, the central question itself: what was Helena herself? Was she a widow of the Church, or an ordinary great lady of Rome: or was she simply the Empress, infinitely exalted above all others by the wealth of the Empire and the devotion of her son? What was Helena?

"I helped them kill your daughter. I..."

The old woman's eyes flinched, but she did not take her eyes off of his regardless. The old man's arms still held his shoulders, inexorable, trapping him onto the couch--but the soldier felt his hands tremble nonetheless. 

"It was not my daughter alone who was martyred." The old woman's voice was smooth, restrained, with not a crack in it either from age or emotion. "They have killed many...and not only killed, but stripped and tortured and mutilated and humiliated them all, like wild beasts, like demons. And you helped them."

The tears that spilled from the soldier's eyes were not tears of sorrow or joy, pain or exaltation: they were tears of shame alone. They flowed without hindrance, hot, salted streams of water pouring bitter into his mouth, choking and blinding him. But he never lost sight of the old woman's eyes; and at last, he saw them, too, slowly, fill with tears.

"The Empress Helena." The little woman bowed, though whether to them or to Helena herself it was difficult to say, and rapidly withdrew.

She was seated, or rather reclined, on an ornate couch rich with gold thread and rubies, her body tilted backwards at an angle that displayed her figure to full effect. In contrast with her surroundings, she herself was clad in a simple white chiton that might have been that of any poor woman in the streets of Antioch, except that its white threads shone with freshly-bleached splendor, and its cut showed, again, the tailor's full attention to displaying her body with the maximum of elegance. Her hair, though white with age, was drawn around her head in carefully coiled braids and teased here and there into curls to display her long neck as effectively as possible. 

How old is she? Simple mathematics told him she could not possibly be younger than her mid-sixties; and likely a great deal older. Yet besides her white hair, her body, and her skin where it showed, might have been that of a woman in early middle age, smooth and unlined and wrinkled only here and there.

Her face, though, when he at last saw it, entirely belied all this presentation: it was a simple, round face, a face that he might have seen on any street corner of any city in the Empire--and it was undeniably that of an old woman. A woman approaching death...

Then, again, and last of all, he saw her eyes, and immediately forgot everything else. For they were the eyes of a child: wide, guileless, innocent, torn transparently between fear and sadness. And as he watched, they began to fill with tears...

"Hosius." She was not looking at him, but at the old bishop beside him, and as he watched she stretched out one of her hands in a gentle, imploring gesture, a gesture of childish pathos. "Oh...I was so afraid you would not come back to me...I was so afraid you would not forgive me..."

At his side, though, Hosius was stiffly stern as any father confronting a wayward child. "Empress...I am afraid I have not come to speak with you, but only on behalf of my friend Eustathius, bishop of Great Antioch. He has sent his deacon to question you..."

She looked then for the first time at Theodotus, and he felt, with uncomfortable intensity, the sudden, eager curiosity and attention with which she looked him rapidly up and down, her eyes picking out his deacon's robe, the awkwardness with which he wore it, his soldier's gait, his beard, the face behind it... 

"Eustathius? What does he want with me? We have never spoken..." Her face showed only confusion, but Theodotus caught, for the first time, a hint of shrewdness behind it. "Well, of course, I would be happy to talk with any friend of yours; but afterwards, you and I must speak more privately. You can't know how difficult it has been for me...to feel that you were angry with me..." Her eyes again filled with tears, but as he watched they slid from Hosius to rest on his face again, and a look of curious, brooding concentration took over. 

A second more, and he understood. Her emotions are genuine, but she is not unaware of the effect they have on others. Indeed, she is very aware of that. And she has learned how to use that, to draw others to her, to get them to like her, listen to her, fulfill her desires; perhaps even without being fully conscious of doing so. 

His mind flashed back to his first consideration of her on the journey to Rome: an innkeeper's daughter, taught from her youth to attract powerful men and win a position as a concubine for herself and her family. A performer, but not of the kind I expected. I had expected a painted tavern-maid: but I should have realized that nothing fascinates powerful men so much as genuine female emotion. 

"Empress," he struck in quickly; for a glance at Hosius told him that the old bishop was on the verge of losing his temper and, perhaps, with it any opportunity for a genuine interview. First rule of episcopal court: never yell at the witnesses. "Eustathius, bishop of Great Antioch, sends you his greetings." Hosius still stood stiffly upright at his side; but he bowed, then hesitated for a moment. But this is an interview where subterfuge will accomplish little. He summoned all his memories of dealing with the rich and powerful of Antioch, and continued: "He has charged me with investigating the death of the Emperor's son of blessed memory; and now also that of the Empress Fausta, also of blessed memory. He believes that doing so would be for you a salvation-bringing deed, and would help to wipe out any debt of guilt you yourself may have incurred in relation to these deaths." 

He paused, inviting a response; but saw, unexpectedly, that Helena had blushed with what was clearly a sudden anger. She started to open her mouth, but after a moment glanced at Hosius and colored again, but this time with something more like embarrassment. After a moment, her hands lowered, and she looked back at Hosius, but now almost pleadingly.

"I have confessed to my bishop. And...I would confess to you, if I must. But to this deacon...?" Her face colored again with anger, and Theodotus barely prevented himself from taking a step back. "From a bishop of the East, a stranger to me?" Her face darkened. "What do you mean by this? Did you bring him here to insult me? To torment me for my sins? I would not have thought..."

Hosius had not moved a visible muscle, but as he glanced at him Theodotus saw that the old man's face, too, had filled with anger. He practically bit out his words. "His mission is not my doing. But now that you say Miltiades has absolved you...I would not believe any confession you made to me."

Helena rose to her feet, her face flushed as though she had been struck, her face a carved mask of imperious anger and indignation, the face of an Empress in a painting. She opened her mouth to speak--but then, her face fell, becoming in a moment inexpressibly sad, like a child's. Hosius, meanwhile, had not moved an inch, but still stood stiff and stern, watching her. This is not the first time he has provoked her anger...

"This is a deacon from Eustathius' Episcopal Court, Empress." Hosius bit out his words slowly, each one distinct. Helena colored again at this, but bit her lip. "He has the power from God of detecting men in lies, uncovering secret sins...until he tells me you speak the truth, I will not trust any word from your lips."

Helena looked at Theodotus, and for the first time he saw fear in her eyes. She looked back at Hosius one more time, started to open her mouth, then shut it. After a moment, she resumed her seat slowly, with composure and dignity. 

Theotodus took a step forward, and as he did so the familiar instincts of the interrogator took over.

"When did you last see Crispus before he died?" 

Helena's face was turned away from him, and looking at her now he saw only the old woman, her hair white, her body thin and worn and pale with many years spent in one Palace or another, her face wrinkled and crestfallen. She spoke slowly in response, not lifting her eyes.

"Crispus was always his father's son. I was at the adventus when they entered Rome, and greeted them when they entered the Palace, and dined at their table. Then I returned here, and he stayed with my son." 

She glanced up, and fixed her eyes on Hosius' face; they were angry and defiant.

"Crispus came to see me...the night before he left for Istria. He was very quiet, but he...asked me about his father. And about his grandfather...what happened between us. Whether I had loved his grandfather; and whether he had loved me. And what it had been like when he put me away...what had happened to me and his father, and how he and I had felt about his new wife."

Theodotus glanced at Hosius, and saw the old man's mouth open, his eyes fixed on Helena's face.  She has won him over already. Hosius was unbending now, unconsciously becoming knit within the web of Helena's emotions. She glanced at Theodotus; and for a moment, he saw clearly that she knew this; and also, that she knew that he knew. Her face clouded, then after a moment cleared, and she smiled at him, almost shyly, for the first time. 

I have passed the first test. She knows now she cannot charm me as she does others; and so she will have to tell the truth.

"Did you know Crispus has a son of his own?" She was speaking to him now, and not to Hosius. "And a wife...I met her, of course, but his son is very young. They were with him in Trier, and did not come with him to Rome." Her face grew clouded, and she lowered her eyes. "I wonder what will become of them now? Surely my son would not kill them, but..."  Her face was pale now, the life seemingly drained out of it, leaving only an ivory mask. "Did you in the East ever hear of Valeria Maximilla? Galerius' daughter, and the wife of Maxentius. Fausta's brother. After the battle, they found her and her son dead, in a house, they said, at the outskirts of the city...when I asked my son about it, he only laughed."

She turned back to Hosius. "When Crispus visited me, he was wearing white; he had been baptized that day. He did not tell me, but..." She shrugged. "He went to Miltiades, and asked for it to be done in secret." She shifted her gaze to Theodotus. "You know what that means, of course." Another test.

Theodotus nodded. "He knew he was going to be killed; or at least suspected it." He paused. "But why did he ask you about his grandfather?"

Helena all but beamed at him. She enjoys speaking to a man she cannot fool. He thought a moment; or else she is trying one more tactic to do so. "You know more than I do, and are far wiser. So you tell me, deacon." He detected just the hint of mockery in her voice.

Theodotus shrugged. I would rather speak to her than fifty priests of the court. Their deceptions are far harder to spot. "Most likely, he was thinking of his own wife and son. Was Constantine perhaps planning a better marriage for him, like the one that caused his father to divorce you?" He shook his head. "But if he thought he was going to die soon, why would that matter?" He paused. "You heard the rumors at court that he and Fausta were lovers?" 

Helena was continuing to smile intently at him now, all but ignoring Hosius. "Of course. And it is true that Crispus' wife was not high-born. Her name is Helena too." Her smile faded, and an odd defiance crept into her voice as she continued. "You're forgetting something, though, deacon. Crispus' mother, Minervina. A beautiful, beautiful woman...taken like me to be a soldier's concubine. And like me, put away so his father could marry an Emperor's daughter." Her lip twisted. "He pensioned her off, you know. In a little house in Nicomedia. They say he still visits her when he is in the East, and Fausta is not with him..." She shook her head, and her face now was openly bitter; she looked decades older. "If Crispus and Fausta were lovers, it would be strange indeed. She ruined his mother's life, and bore three sons to supplant him in his father's affections. But men's hearts are strange things..."

Theodotus steeled himself. Now for the only question that matters...

"And how did you feel about Fausta?"

Helena closed her eyes, and took a deep breath, as though steeling herself as well. Then she opened her eyes and looked Theodotus full in the face. This might have been intimidating, if Theodotus had not noted how carefully she avoided looking at the old bishop...

"I hated her, of course. How could I not?" She stood up abruptly, and began pacing back and forth, breathing hard, her words spilling out one after another, but still carefully avoiding the old bishop with her eyes and her walk alike. "I stayed with Constantine after his father abandoned us both; after he left us for that whore; after he sold his son to Diocletian to be a hostage for his own ambitions. I followed him to Nicomedia, cared for him, watched him learn to be a soldier, fight in campaigns for his father's enemies, wept for him when he came back sick and tired and wounded...and then, after all that, I had to watch him do to another woman just what his father did to me." 

She rounded on Theodotus. "Do you have any idea, deacon, what that is like? To be betrayed, first by your husband, then by your only son? He chose his father over me, the father who never loved him, who never cared for anything but soldiers and horses and Imperial purple and a beautiful woman in his bed, no matter who. When our lives were both in danger, he left me at Galerius' court and fled to be with his father, just long enough to get the purple from him before he died. He saw less of his father than of our chambermaid, and somehow still became him. Horses and soldiers and purple and an abandoned concubine and a son sent out to fight on the frontiers and a whore for a wife. I--"

She sat back down abruptly, breathing hard, and struggling, unsuccessfully, to master herself. Hosius was watching her in utter horror, his mouth agape. This is not a side of Helena he has seen before...neither the innkeeper's daughter nor the Empress, but something entirely different.

"And Fausta herself...everything Minervina was not. Everything I was not. Not that she or Theodora could hold a candle to us in looks, or on the couch...but that elegance, that charm, that arrogance of the Emperor's daughter..." Her lips worked silently, teeth all but gnashing. The next words, when they came, were barely audible, bit out from between clenched teeth. "Fausta was her sister. To marry the sister of the woman who supplanted his mother, the woman because of whom his father abandoned us both..." She struggled with words for a moment. "Do you know what I felt every time I saw them together, her laughing at his side, him touching her...him so much like his father, her so much like her sister, like his father's, her father-in-law's bitch?" She took a deep, shuddering breath, but kept speaking, her face flushed red with anger, with exultation, almost, her words tumbling out as though she could not hold them in. "She came to me, you know, Fausta, when my son killed her father...the one thing he ever did for me, and it wasn't even for me, but for his own ambitions...had him hanged, right there in his chamber, called it a suicide...only a little before he killed her brother, too...she came to me, weeping, those beautiful eyes all red with tears, and asked for my comfort. Mine. I laughed in her face...told her how happy I was...how much I had longed to see her and her sister both dead...but that at least, if I couldn't have that, I could take some pleasure in this. She cried and cried, and I laughed and laughed and laughed..."

Theodotus glanced at Hosius; the old man looked utterly crushed, weary, a thousand years old. He really did believe in her, then. He looked back at Helena, and found that she now looked just as crushed as the old bishop. She was slumped in her couch, her white head bowed over her knees, her hands clutching at her feet. 

This is where any decent person, any good man, would turn aside, and ask no more. But I am not such a person.

"Yes," the soldier said, his face wet with tears of shame. "Yes, I did it all to them, to them all. Your daughter...all of them...I..." He dragged his weak, feverish body upright in the bed and grasped for the old woman's knees like a suppliant, like a beggar... "Please...I'll do anything...my life is yours...tell me what to do...I will do anything...kill me, torture me...I beg you...you are my master...my god...anything...please..."

But the old woman only smiled at him, tears dropping from her eyes, and placed her hand on his forehead, tracing what he would only much later learn was the sign of the cross. She turned to her husband in something like triumph.

"You see...I told you he was repentant...I was not mistaken...though you wanted to leave him there, I told you...I knew...that this was the recompense for our daughter, from the Lord...from the Blessed Martyr..."

But the soldier only held onto her knees and wept, and after a moment she turned back to him, still wearing that triumphant smile between her tears.

"Listen, torturer. You will stay here, with us, and serve the Church with us as long as you are alive; and you will be baptized, to take away your sins. Soon enough the soldiers will come for us, and when they do you will die with us as a martyr...like her. That is how you will make atonement. The only way..."

And though he had no idea what she was saying, no idea what baptism was or atonement or the martyrs or the Church, he held onto her knees and nodded and wept and swore he would do just as she said, swore by Apollo and Hermes and Mithras and finally and belatedly by Christ. 

It was only a long time later, after the sobbing had subsided and the old woman had left the room, that the old man spoke to him for the first time, approaching the bed where he lay and laying one hand on his shoulder, but gently this time. His voice, too, was oddly gentle, surprisingly gentle, as it would always be every time he heard it until his death...

"When you are baptized, you will need a new name. Your old name is the name of a false god, an adulterer, a tyrant; but when you are baptized, you will call yourself Theodotus. For God gave you to us.

Rest well, Theodotus."

"I'm sorry..." Theodotus found, to his surprise, his own voice laden with emotion. "You must understand: what I do, I do as penance for my own sins. I must serve the Church, obey my bishop, until I die. I have sworn it. So I must ask you: did you kill Fausta?"

Helena wept, and between her tears, nodded once; at which Hosius groaned aloud like a lost soul and covered his face with his hands.

"When I heard that Crispus had been killed, I...I locked myself away for weeks, tried to pray...(with an accusing glance) tried to send for Hosius, but he would not come...paced about, meditating on all my wrongs, on all the betrayed wives, all the murdered children, until...until at last, I was so filled with rage, with fury...I went to him, to my son, right in a meeting with his comites, and screamed at him in front of them all. I...I called him a murderer, and...an unfaithful son...a traitor to his wife, and...many, many other things. But that was not all. I accused Fausta to him, I told him...that I knew she must be behind this...she was jealous for her sons' advancement...the evil step-mother, like Theodora...that she must have made up some story against him, all lies...and...I told him that I knew that she and Crispus had been lovers, I...I did not say I had seen it with my own eyes, but I...told him what I had heard bandied about the court...that his courtiers laughed at him behind his back, and called him Theseus, and her Phaedra, and Crispus Hippolytus...I told him...many other things...that she was a bitch unworthy to live...that he had betrayed me by marrying his step-mother's sister...and...and..."

Helena was now an ancient crone, bent over herself, her head hidden in her hands. The last words, when they came, came almost as a whisper.

"I told him...that if he could not be a good son to me...if he could not even leave me my grandson... that the least...the least he could do...the very least he could do...was to kill this...this unfaithful bitch for me."

Theodotus released a breath he had had not realized he had been holding. So that was it...

"The next morning Fausta was dead, and...and..." 

Helena put her head in her hands and wept like a mother over her only son. Hosius had crumpled into a chair with his head in his hands. And for what felt like an eternity, there was no sound in the chamber except for the sound of her weeping, and his ragged breathing.

Theodotus, though, stood still and poised as ever, and he took one step towards Helena, looming over her like a dark shadow in his deacon's robe and beard. So different from what I once was...

"Fausta had nothing to do with Crispus' death, you know. Nor were they lovers. During these months at court...she was cultivating a friendship with him for the sake of his father, and because she was afraid what he might do to her and to her children when he became Emperor. Everything she did, everything I've heard of her, can be easily explained by the simple fact that she was a fearful woman, who for the past two decades had seen her family murdered around her; and seen the hatred in your eyes. She was neither brave nor clever enough to lie to Constantine, to the man who had killed her father and brother and her sister-in-law and her sister-in-law's son--even if he was her husband. And that was why Crispus asked you about his grandfather: because he wanted to understand why she was so afraid of him. And maybe...because he wanted to understand why his own father would kill him." 

He paused. "That was what confused me from the very beginning. Nothing about Fausta's death made sense. She was not in secret contact with bishops...she was not an Imperial heir. If there were plotters, her death only made matters worse for everyone, including them...an Imperial execution requires no justification, and gives no sign of who might have instigated it. But this? A murder designed to look like an accident, but so sloppily that it looked more like murder than Crispus' death...carried out in such obvious haste, and not by the Emperor's officials. Even if they had been lovers, even if she had wanted Crispus dead, there were a thousand better ways to do it. Executions, trials for adultery or magic, even discreet strangling...it made the conspirators look like conspirators, skulking around the Palace in the dead of night; it made the Emperor himself look like a conspirator. There was no reason for Constantine to kill her, no reason for anyone to want her dead. Except for you. And even then..." He paused. "Constantine killed her for you. But even so...she must have known something, something she had agreed to keep quiet on, but that they were afraid would come out in a public trial, or even a private execution. Something they wanted to keep from everyone, including the Emperor's own officials. About Crispus, and his death. It's the only explanation."

Both Helena's sobbing and Hosius' ragged breathing had subsided, but Theodotus continued to stare at the old woman's hidden face.

At last, Helena raised a tear-streaked face, a mask of ancient tragedy out of which her childish eyes stared in simple misery. "What can I do...?"

And standing there in front of the Empress of the whole world, the answer was, suddenly, perfectly obvious--so obvious he was surprised that she herself had not seen it. A madness and lightness took hold of him, directing his steps, putting words into his mouth. With one part of his mind, he saw the folly of what he was about to do; but his mind was no longer in control. He stepped forward and, like the old man, placed a gentle hand on her shoulder.

"Do what I did. Promise that you will do penance, and serve the Church, until you die. Then leave this place. Leave your son, and your love and his betrayal alike. Leave all the dead people and memories that have led you into sin. Go serve God somewhere--somewhere far from here. Eustathius would gladly receive you in Antioch, and from there perhaps you could go on to Jerusalem, where many pilgrims travel now. Only make your promise to God, and do not look back."

There was a dead silence, in which he could hear only the distant laugh of a woman elsewhere in the Palace. Then Helena nodded. "Yes."

A moment more, and she had risen elegantly to her feet, without looking at Theodotus, and passed smoothly from the room. She paused a moment by the chair where Hosius was crouched, his head still in his hands. Theodotus carefully kept his head turned away, but he heard her whisper: "...if you can find it in you to think of me, to forgive me...pray for me. I will pray for you. And so we'll be together..." Then she was gone.

Theodotus stepped over to the old bishop, and put his hand on his shoulder. At his touch, the Spaniard slowly raised his head, tear-streaked, and on his face an expression of mingled sadness and horror. "I had thought...that what I saw during the Persecution was the very face of the Evil One. I had thought...that he was defeated, and all that was past. I had not imagined I would find yet worse things...in the Palace of the Christian Emperor, and in the hearts of Christians." He closed his eyes, and then opened them again, stronger this time. "Thank you. You have justified your bishop's confidence. And mine."

Theodotus shook his head. "No. You must not thank me...when I have just doomed us all." As he released the tension that had built in him all through the preceding interview, a wave of trembling took his body, spreading from his head to his toes.

His knees buckled and he started to fall, but he found himself upheld by the strong arm of the Spanish bishop; Hosius was looking at him in confusion and fear. "What do you mean?"

"Eustathius wanted me to discreetly examine Crispus' death, to draw no attention to myself or to him, but to quietly learn the truth and tell him of it, so he could decided how to proceed." He bowed his head. "Don't you see? When the Empress leaves Rome, when she leaves her son...they will all hear of it. He will hear of it. And if I understand anything about this Constantine, I know that he will be angry. He was labored for many years to placate his mother, to honor and glorify and make recompense to her and present the two of them united to the world. Now he will realize that he has failed. And when he hears that you and Eustathius and your friends were behind that failure..."

Hosius was still looking at him in confusion; but Theodotus gripped his hand, helping the old bishop to his feet. "Come quickly, we no longer have any time to waste. Or any path but one." 

He turned towards the door, dragging Hosius behind him.

"We must speak with Constantine."