Helena Read online

  For the last year he had been grim and calm, expectant. It was as though a long gestation complicated in its early stages by alarms and whims was at last coming healthily to birth.

  “This is undoubtedly something of great importance,” he said when he received the Emperor’s dispatch.

  “Yes,” said Helena sadly, “another move.”

  “I look forward to seeing all the changes at Nicomedia. He’s entirely modernized the place. They call it the New Rome,” he said.

  “Do they?” said Helena sadly. It seemed a name of ill omen.

  He was soon back, resplendently, imperially overdressed.

  “Chlorus, the purple!”

  His was not the complexion for it.

  “Yes, at last.”

  “You always meant to have it, didn’t you?”

  “It has been a long time coming and now it’s all happened so quickly and quietly that I can hardly believe it’s true. You’d never believe the way Diocletian lives. People sometimes used to say that Aurelian rather overdid things. They should just see Diocletian in full court rig. You have to go in on all fours and kiss his skirts. I never saw anyone look so shy in my life as old Maximian holding a gold pineapple in a suit so stiff with gold lace and jewels he could hardly move. We had to stand behind Diocletian for two or three hours while more and more fellows came crawling in—officials and ambassadors—all with speeches they’d obviously been preparing for weeks beforehand. I couldn’t believe they were meant seriously at first—fantastic, flowery stuff. I don’t suppose Diocletian understood a word. He just stood there looking stuffed—like Valerian. Then when it was all over he called the three of us—Maximian, Galerius and me into his office. You should have seen the change. He took off his coat, sat down in his shirt sleeves and said, “Orders, gentlemen,” just as he used at a staff conference in the field. He had it all worked out to the last button. We had nothing to do but agree. He and Maximian have both adopted a Caesar, me in the West, Galerius in the East. We become Emperors automatically after them. There are to be no more disputed successions… So much waiting and hoping and now, when it happens, it’s as simple as promoting a new centurion.” He sat in his purple cloak entranced by the mystery of success. “There were times, ostler, I thought it would never come off.” He used the old, fond nickname without design, a fruit of his happiness.

  “I’m very glad for you, dear. When do we move?”

  “Oh,” he said, “there’s one part of the plan I haven’t told you. I’ve married again.”

  Helena sat, struck dumb. Constantius paused, then as she said nothing continued affably: “You mustn’t mind. There’s nothing personal in it. Galerius had a wife, too, he’s had to divorce—a girl he was very fond of. Diocletian had the divorce papers already made out for us to sign; all perfectly legal and above board, you know. I’ve married Maximian’s daughter, Theodora. I don’t know what she’s like—haven’t seen her yet. She’s meeting me at Trèves.”

  Helena still said nothing. They sat in silence apart, each with separate thoughts; how far apart appeared when Constantius next spoke. “If it had happened any sooner or in any other way, I might now be dead,” he said reverently.

  At length Helena said: “And has Diocletian decided what’s to happen to me?”

  “To you? Why, anything you like. I should marry, if I were you, and settle somewhere.”

  “Then please, can I go back to Britain with Constantine?”

  “That’s impossible. There’s a very nasty little rebellion in Britain at the moment. Besides, I’m sending the boy away directly.”

  “Sending him away? Where?”

  “To Nicomedia. It’s time he started his political education.”

  “Could I go with him?”

  “No, that wouldn’t do. But go anywhere else. You’ve the whole Empire to choose from. Look, they’re lighting a bonfire. How very touching. It’s quite spontaneous, you know.”

  On Poseidon’s island, opposite the palace, an orange light rose and spread; the guards had built a pyre there since the first advance-riders had brought the news of Constantius’s elevation. Helena had watched them at work that afternoon, wondering idly what they were about. A crowd stood in plain outline feeding the flames and other boatloads, singing, were even now being ferried across from the dark shore into the firelight. The first, resinous smoke drifted to the terrace where Helena and Constantius sat. Pine branch and myrtle kindled and crackled; soon the big timber caught and the flames streamed skyward, yellow at the roots, red and full-billowing, folding under and over in the pungent smoke, hidden, breaking out in small tongues and a spray of sparks.

  The household servants ran out on the lower terrace, to the sea’s edge, clapping and laughing; the men on the island cheered; more boats put out from the mainland.

  “What did you say?” said Constantius.

  “Nothing. I was talking to myself.”

  “I thought you said something about Troy burning.”

  “Did I? I don’t know. Perhaps I did.”

  “A highly unsuitable comparison,” said Constantius Chlorus.

  Five

  The Post of Honor Is a Private Station

  For thirteen years Helena lived alone. Her hair lost its fierce color and, scorning dyes, she wore it always wound in a silk shawl. She thickened in limb and body, held herself firmer, moved more resolutely, spoke with authority and decision, took careful count of her possessions, gave orders and saw them obeyed. She had moved, on Constantius’s elevation, from Government House to his villa, purchased and enclosed a large estate and made it thrive. She knew every man and beast on the place and the yield of each plantation; her wine commanded a high price in the market at Salona. Westward in the rough sea-face of the sheltering islands the great waves struck and splattered; eastward, in winter, the high Dinaric forests were torn by blizzards which the people of the plain never heard; nor saw save as a smudge of indigo on the mountain crests and in the wreckage which drifted on the tideless channel and lay there, barely stirring, for the boys to pick. Here among oleander and myrtle, lizard and cicada, Helena gently laid down the load of her womanhood. Here, it seemed, far from home, she would in full time die.

  Constantius reigned sedately in Gaul. Constantine followed the fortunes of Galerius and the Eastern army. Beastly Maximian bullied the Italians and the Africans. The work of empire prospered, frontiers were everywhere restored and extended, treasure accumulated. But, out of sight on the shores of the Propontis, where the vested chamberlains stood like dummies, motionless as the stuffed thing that had hung in the Persian court, and the eunuchs scuttled like pismires when a soldier passed them; in the inmost cell of the fetid termitary of power, Diocletian was consumed by huge boredom and sickly turned towards his childhood’s home.

  He ordained a house of refuge on the shores of the Adriatic. Labor was impressed all over the province, a hillside was stripped of its timber, supply-ships rode in the bay. Walls grew at a startling pace.

  Helena and Calpurnia spoke of the new palace as “the eyesore.” Once when it was nearly complete, they drove round to inspect. It was the size of a garrison town; the neighboring farms had been emptied and their fields rutted and trodden to waste. It stood in a new, raw desert of its own making. Masons’ dust, trodden to paste in recent rains, clogged their feet, as they followed the clerk-of-the-works through the vaulted tunnels and blind caverns of new-cut stone. They plodded for an hour through the whitish mud. They were shown the cranes, the concrete mixers, the system of central heating, all of the latest pattern. Around them and above their heads gangs toiled on ropes and windlasses, dragging the great blocks on ramps and rollers, swinging them into place; skilled artisans astride the scaffolding chipped out, hour by hour, yard by yard, the regular scrolls of ornament. The two made suitable comments on the scale and efficiency of the work, took gracious leave and when they were alone in the carriage looked at one another with consternation.

  “It’s not a style that would ever go d
own in Britain,” said Helena at length.

  “I suppose it’s very modern, dear.”

  “Not a window in the whole place.”

  “On our lovely coast.”

  “I never met Diocletian. My husband had a great respect for him, but I don’t think he can be very nice.”

  “The coast will never be the same again if he comes to live here.”

  “Perhaps he’ll never come. Emperors often don’t do what they want.”

  But he came before he was expected, before the palace was furnished; without music, a legion of silent, tramping men, a litter in their midst; secretaries and doctors trotting round the litter; all disappeared into the new palace like gnomes into the cleft rock in a story Helena’s nurse used to tell her years ago in Colchester. Rumor said the Emperor was dying in agony; then after six months the procession emerged and swung East on the road to Nicomedia. He would return, rumor said; the Dalmatians watched and listened and remained glum.

  “I think I shall leave,” said Calpurnia. “I could never feel happy with that creature squatting so near. Let’s go together to Italy.”

  “I shall never move now. The time for that is past. I wanted to travel once, to Troy and Rome. After that I only wanted to go home to Britain. Now I’ve struck root here, Emperors or no Emperors.”

  “They say Constantius is going to be Emperor of the West. That’s why Diocletian has gone to Nicomedia. He and Maximian are retiring.”

  “Poor Chlorus,” said Helena. “He’s had to wait a long time. He must be quite an old soldier now. I hope he’s still able to enjoy it. He did want it so.”

  “It will make a difference to Constantine.”

  “I pray not. If only Constantine can keep clear of politics, I sometimes hope that perhaps one day, when he’s finished his service, he may want to come and settle down here with me. He’s married now with a son. I’ve made the place very nice for them. Just right for a retired colonel. If only he keeps clear of politics.”

  “That’s a lot to ask of an Emperor’s son.”

  “Oh, Chlorus has his own political wife and plenty of political children. Constantine and I are private.”

  She heard from Constantine regularly in dutiful, solicitous letters from Egypt and Syria and Persia and Armenia; she received frequent exotic gifts. His portrait, by a Greek, hung in her bedroom. Report made him an athlete, a serious soldier, a favorite in camp and at court. Any ex-serviceman from the East found hospitality at her house and a reward for news of him. Of Minervina, his wife, she learned little. “I suppose Chlorus didn’t write much about me,” she reflected. The grandson had been named Crispus, a family name among the “Flavians.” “I think he might forget the Moesian connection,” she said.

  “Perhaps he’s proud of it,” said Calpurnia.

  “He couldn’t be. Such dull, pushful people.”

  “They’re the nearest thing we have to a royal family, Helena.”

  “Oh, he must forget that too.”

  She bought more land, though prices were rising all along the coast since Diocletian had begun to build there. She started draining operations on some barren salt-marsh. “He’s used to big undertakings,” she explained. “He will want to keep busy.” She planted rows of tiny olive plants, a special Spanish type slow of growth but heavy of yield. “Perhaps, before they fruit, Constantine will be here,” she said. He was the focus of all her plans.

  At length after thirteen years, quite suddenly, he came and all her plans were at once obliterated.

  He came at sunset. “We’re off at dawn,” he said. “You, too, Mother.”

  He was just as she had imagined him, the portrait in full life, large, loving and rather formidable.

  “My dear boy, I couldn’t possibly go anywhere at the moment.”

  “I’ll explain later. I must look after the horses while the light holds. Minervina is outside with the boy. You might see if they need anything.”

  First things first; Helena went to the hall where she found, hunched on a marble seat, as she had been left, an almost insensible young woman and a small boy.

  “My dear, I am Constantine’s mother. I am afraid you are tired out.”

  Minervina began to weep.

  “Mother’s always tired,” said the child; “I am always hungry.” He was strolling about confidently and curiously. “I’m not a bit sleepy,” he said.

  The servants were bringing in the saddlebags.

  “Would you like something to eat now?” Helena asked her daughter-in-law, “or a bath before dinner?”

  “Nothing to eat, I just want to lie down.”

  Helena led her to a room. A maid tried to help, but as soon as Minervina’s boots were off she lay back on the bed, rolled to face the wall and immediately fell asleep. Helena looked at her a moment and then led Crispus from the room.

  “We’ve had such a ride,” he said. “Father had all the post-horses hamstrung behind us. Last night we never went to bed at all. We just lay down for a bit on straw at one of the inns.”

  “Let’s see if we can find some supper. I am your grandmother.”

  “My grandfather is Emperor. Are you an Empress?”

  “No.”

  “Then you can’t be my real grandmother, can you? Father says I had another grandfather, but he wasn’t real either. Can we go down to the sea?”

  “Tomorrow perhaps.”

  “Tomorrow we have to ride on again. I’m going to be a sailor when I’m Emperor.”

  “Do you want to be an Emperor, Crispus?”

  “Of course. There’s two sorts of Emperor you see, bad and good. The bad Emperor is trying to stop us getting to the good Emperor, my grandfather. But he won’t. We’ve been too quick for him and we’ve done for his horses.”

  *

  “Things are breaking up,” said Constantine after dinner. “They just held together as long as Diocletian was there. Now there’ll be trouble everywhere. You must come to my father’s territory.”

  “My dear boy, who is going to worry about a woman like me, living my quiet private life here?”

  “You don’t understand modern politics, Mamma. There are no private lives nowadays. You are my mother. That will be enough for Galerius.”

  “And you are a Tribune in Galerius’s army. You ought to be with your men, not careering across the Balkans laming a lot of good horses.”

  “I have no choice. When the historians write of me they will say that if I wish to live, I must determine to rule.”

  “Oh, history. I’ve read quite a lot sitting alone here year by year. Keep out of history, Constantine. Stay and see what I have done, the clearing and draining and planting. That is something better than history. And if I go, it will all fall to waste.”

  “Mamma, the whole Empire is going to waste. For the last century we have hung on by bluff and luck. People seem to think the Empire is eternal. They sit at home, read Virgil, and suppose everything will go on just as it always has done, without any effort on anyone’s part. On the frontier I have seen a whole province run to waste in a season.

  “I’ve been haunted lately by a vision of what might one day happen if we cease to fight—a dusty world, with all the canals of Africa and Mesopotamia dried up and the aqueducts of Europe breached, a line of broken arches here and there in a dead world divided between a thousand squabbling barbarian chiefs.”

  “And so you are off to join forces under the Divine Maximian,” said Helena. “That, I suppose, will save the world?”

  “Divine,” said Constantine. “Does anyone, do you suppose, really believe Maximian is a god? Does anyone believe in any of the gods, Augustus even, or Apollo?”

  “So many gods,” said Helena, falling in with her son’s mood; “more every day. No one could believe in them all.”

  “Do you know what holds the world together? Not the gods, nor the law nor the army. Simply a name. The fusty old superstitious sanctity of the name of Rome—a bluff two hundred years out of date.”

  “I don
’t like to hear you talk like that, Constantine.”

  “Of course you don’t. Thank God there are still millions of old-fashioned people like yourself who feel slightly uncomfortable when Rome is mentioned. That is what holds the world together—a slightly uncomfortable feeling. No one feels like that about Milan or Nicomedia, though politically they’re the important places nowadays. That is sanctity. If only we could make Rome really holy again… Instead we have the Christians. You should have seen some of the evidence that came out in the trials at Nicomedia. Do you know what they call Rome? ‘The Mother of Harlots.’ I’ve seen it in their books.”

  “But surely they’ve all been put down now?”

  “It’s too late. They’re everywhere. The army and civil service are rotten with them. You can’t disperse them as Titus did the Jews. They are a complete State within the State with their own laws and officials. My father hasn’t even tried to enforce the edict in his territory. I’m told half his court are mixed up with them. They have their holy places in Rome itself—the tombs of their first leaders. They’ve their own Emperor, or something like it, living in Rome at this moment, giving his orders. They’re the biggest single problem in the whole Empire.”

  Constantine fell silent and stretched himself wearily. “You’ll start with us tomorrow, Mamma?”

  “Not tomorrow. I can’t leave all these people here so suddenly. They expect more of me than that. I wasn’t brought up in your kind of court, my son. Besides, I doubt whether I should be welcome at your father’s. Go ahead, find some little place for me in the North. I’ll follow you,” and then she added: “These Christians—I wonder if in their way they too look on Rome as a holy city.”

  “My dear mother, I’ve told you. Their books—”

  “Oh books,” said Helena.

  Six

  Ancien Régime

  An Indian ape, the recent expensive present of a visiting diplomat, rattled his gold chain on the terrace. Helena threw him a plum. “I remember my late husband,” she said, “once telling me that there would never again be another disputed succession. This year we have six Emperors. That’s a record I think. They’ve even taken to calling me Empress.”