Death of the Son, Episode VIII
In the Assembly of the Great King
[Episode One; Episode Two; Episode Three; Episode Four; Episode Five; Episode Six; Episode Seven]
Theodotus and Apollon slept, again, in their quarters--but only after Theodotus had made something of a show of locking all the doors, propping furniture carefully against them as the old priest watched nervously. It was all so much theater: if the Emperor's slaves wish to take us, they will do so. Otherwise, I am more than a match for any lone assailant. A locked door will not hold anyone determined. Yet Apollon seemed truly reassured, and after only a few minutes Theodotus had the satisfaction of hearing, through his own door, the old man's snores.
He himself, though, stayed awake a great deal longer, lying in his bed, his head propped up on his hands, considering the events of the previous day, and those about to come.
There must, he was sure, be some way to make sense of this tale...to wrest some victory from the jaws of apparent defeat. If he could only understand the players involved...deduce the secret both Crispus and Fausta had known, which Apollon had almost heard...the secret that had somehow involved the dead Emperor Licinius...the secret which he must know, when at last he spoke with Constantine...the secret that might save Eustathius' life...
But what could the secret be? So far as he and everyone else know, Licinius' tale was straightforward, if twisted in a way not uncommon for Emperors in time of civil war. A Dacian, friend of Galerius, appointed Augustus of the West to contain the usurpers Constantine and Maxentius...but unlike his fellow Tetrarchs, wise enough to see Constantine's potential, and first tolerate him, then ally with him against Maximinus Daza. Then for nearly ten years, Augustus of the East, ruling from Nicomedia, in partnership with Constantine.
In his mind's eye, Theodotus saw the statue he had passed every day, along his route from apartment to the chancery, for nearly a decade: the heavy body, the long head, the staring eyes gazing upwards, the small, confident smile. Licinius had been the Emperor he, and everyone in the East, had looked up to, appealed to, praised and thanked for defeating the cruel pagan, the arch-persecutor Daza, and bringing the Persecution to a close. Like most, Theodotus had payed little attention to the second, smaller statue set up beside Licinius', with its sharp nose and broad face and grave expression: Licinius' Western colleague Constantine. It was only when that second statue abruptly disappeared, one morning, from its place at Licinius' side that he, and everyone else, realized that civil war had begun.
The rest had been only rumors, let slip by tired soldiers in the taverns, or boasted of by confident, well-fed men in the market-places. Again and again, Theodotus had come into the room where his fellow court deacons worked to find them all huddled together, faces grave, discussing the latest news. Incursions, troop movements, raids, persecutions...
As the weeks went by, the talk turned more and more to this latter category. Licinius, it was said, had begun to fear the Christian clergy of his domain, seeing in them advocates and supporters of Constantine: spies, or worse. Bishops, it was said, had been arrested and put on trial before the Emperor for treason, priests expelled from the palace as spies. On every face, Theodotus saw the same fearful, enclosed expression, the same stirring memories, though no one ever actually spoke the words flicking through their mins: it is happening again...
As during the persecution, the people of Antioch began withdrawing. The crowds in the cathedral thinned by nearly a third; people began giving clerics a wide berth in the marketplace; and even the shopkeepers and slaves in the cookshops avoided Theodotus' eyes as they took his coins. Everywhere, there was a tense expectancy, like a storm about to break.
Theodotus had not known the previous bishop, Philogonius, at all well; apart from brief meetings where he and the other deacons explained the cases and proposed judgments of the court for his approval, the two men had never spoken. Yet he remembered well the sermon Philogonius had given barely two years before, at the height of the war.
The old bishop, like them all, had lived through the Persecution; barely ten years had passed since Daza's famous indulgences in the arena of Antioch. His thin, grizzled face had been pale even next to his white robe, and his hand had shaken as he had delivered his discourse.
He had exhorted them, obliquely and carefully, saying nothing that might call down Licinius' wrath or those of officials, to endurance. He called to their minds the sufferings of the martyrs; and his frozen face and unblinking eyes showed clearly that he was remembering even as he spoke. The martyrs, he had reminded them, had considered the loss of their earthly possessions, even the loss of their hands and eyes (everyone's faces involuntarily turning toward the old bishop's empty socket), as nothing in comparison to the gain of heaven. It made no sense, the bishop insisted, to save perishing trifles and in so doing lose imperishable treasure. Still, he insisted, those who had left the Church and returned to their former ways of life out of fear would be welcomed back upon their return. But those who fled from Christ would never receive his rewards.
The display had been effective; the crowds of departing Christians slowed to a trickle, and many returned, shame-faced, to receive the bishop's forgiveness. Among the clergy of Antioch, though, Philogonius' courage had caused a panic. The deacons abandoned their work entirely, and instead spent all their time discussing when the hammer would fall, when and where and how Licinius would take his revenge against their bishop for speaking so openly.
Abruptly, discussion of the Persecution ceased being taboo among the clergy of Antioch. Stories were swapped, in low tones, of brave men and women, and weak men and women, and their individual fates; of creative punishments administered to bishops by Daza, by local governors, in arenas and palace chambers and prisons. The implications, though never stated openly, were always the same: this is what will happen to Philogonius. Theodotus had taken no part in these discussions, but had wondered, idly, as he continued with his own work, if any of these discussions came to Philogonius' ears, and what the old man thought of it. He suspected the bishop had plenty of memories of his own to occupy him.
At last, it had, apparently, happened. A young priest, Eukalion, burst into the court office, just as the deacons were gathering to leave for the day, to tell them that a messenger had arrived for the bishop from Licinius. Though Eukalion had not heard the message himself, rumors had it that Philogonius had been summoned to Byzantium, where Licinius was currently holed up. Licinius, Eukalion speculated, must be furious; his rages, it was said, had grown worse and worse, and it was said he had had clerics killed in front of him, just like Daza. Even an invitation to court, Eukalion declaimed, his cheeks pale, was as good as a death sentence.
In the end, of course, nothing had happened. Whether or not Philogonius had been summoned to Byzantium, he did not go; nor was Licinius in Byzantium much longer. Within a matter of months, the old bishop was dead; a development not, Theodotus suspected, at all unrelated to the strain of those feverish months. This development seemed to sap the courage of the clergy of Antioch entirely; though month after month discussions were raised over electing a new bishop, nothing was done. There was no point, his fellow deacon Martinus had whispered, shrugging his shoulders, in electing someone who would go straight into the arena.
As the months passed by without incident, however, the specter of persecution did not dissipate; it seemed rather, to hang in the air over the city, dimming the sunlight. People went about their business with heads bowed, shooting resentful glances at the cathedral, treating it like a bad omen. After the initial flurry of activity, the civil war seemed to have stalled; though there were still rumors of battles, they were less plausible and more fanciful, and the people stopped discussing them. The cookshop Theodotus visited every evening for his dinner was now nearly silent, with people standing quietly in line and even the slave at the counter sullen.
Without a bishop, though, the work of the episcopal court ground to a halt; and Theodotus and his fellow deacons were reassigned to delivering food for the poor. This meant a great deal of traipsing through the streets, day and night, which allowed Theodotus an even better sense of the city's mood. It had soured, and it was clear the souring was against Licinius. People stopped paying respect to his statues as they passed, and a few even spit; graffiti calling for Constantine's victory appeared throughout the city, and after a few months the local Imperial administration gave up on removing it. A statue of Licinius, it was said, had been torn down in the night; and though it was set up and shining again when Theodotus saw it the next morning, soldiers with round shields slung on their backs now watched it, sweating under their armor and shooting suspicious glances at passersby.
Again, the crowds in the cathedral dwindled, though this time it was likely as much due to lack of a preacher than fear of persecution. The smaller chapels throughout the city, when Theodotus passed by them, seemed fuller than ever, people unable to fit inside down on their knees praying for deliverance and, increasingly, for Constantine's victory. Persecutor or not, Licinius had lost the confidence of his people. Living under Galerius and Daza had been frightening, but living under a possible persecutor was an intolerable strain, from which only the Christian Emperor could deliver them.
Finally, the war broke out again in earnest; not mere rumors, but detailed reports soon began pouring into the city, passed eagerly from well-dressed Imperial messengers in tabernae or soldiers in the town squares or slaves from the Palace; they spoke of battle after battle, all, it seemed, lost by Licinius and won by Constantine. Licinius' army of 150,000, it was said, had been routed by Constantine's much smaller force, bearing the sign of the chi-rho on their shields and with the Emperor's divine totem, the labarum (the design of which, it was said, had been given to him in a dream) borne before them. Licinius too, it was whispered, had dreamed of Christ taking the diadem from his head and placing it on a statue of Constantine. Bodies of martyrs, fresh from the slaughter, had spoken, telling of Licinius' defeat, and predicting his imminent demise.
Most trumpeted of all, however, was the news of the total defeat of the Eastern Emperor's fleet, the ships taken or burned off the Hellespont after a bold tactical maneuver had encircled them. The commander who had originated this strategy, and bravely led his men in boarding Licinius' ships, was not Constantine, though, but a heretofore unknown figure in the East: the Emperor's brilliant, dashing son, a great strategist, and equally brave, a pious Christian like his father, who had prayed on bended knee before a cross just before the battle: a worthy heir to the throne, a new Christian Emperor, a guarantee against any future persecution. His name, it seemed, was Crispus.
At that, Theodotus' thoughts were brought back, with a jolt, to the present. He sat up in bed, and silently mouthed the words: Constantine murdered Crispus. The Emperor killed his son.
Almost angrily, he lay back down again, and tried to force his mind to consider, once again, what the secret might be.
