“Your father writes whenever he can,” Helena said as they moved to the cushioned couch and low table, where the old servant who had been with them in Naissus had laid out a light supper of meat, bread, fruit and wine in silver goblets hammered with the Phoenician symbol of the star, a present Constantine had bought in Antioch and sent to his mother.
“Is all well with him?”
“The campaign in Britain is over, except for a few rebellious towns that his lieutenants can control. Constantius has left Ebora cum, where he made his headquarters in Britain, and returned to Treves in Gaul.”
“It was a brilliant campaign. I read about it in the imperial dispatches.”
“You have three stepbrothers, you know. Their names are Con stantinus, Hannibalianus and Constantius.”
“Which puts the nothus that much farther away from the purple.” “Don’t say that word!” his mother cried sharply. “Your birth is as legitimate as theirs.”
Constantine reached over
“Forgive me, please, Mother.” Constantine reached over to touch the arm of the beautiful and stately woman who, though she had been an innkeeper’s daughter, had never lost her pride that a Caesar had chosen her for his mate. “I’ve been in a bad mood lately.” “Something wrong at the court?”
“No. The Emperor trusts me and favors me, but sometimes I wonder whether I took a wrong turn of the road in Antioch. King Tiridates offered me the command of his kingdom’s military forces.”
“And you refused? Is that what troubles you?”
“I suppose so.”
“Why did you do it, then?”
“Because my two strong parents gave me ambition,” he said wryly. “Because I am vain. Because of perhaps a hundred other reasons. Who can say?”
“Wasn’t it really because you are looking to something higher?” “How did you know?”
“A woman doesn’t suckle a child without knowing just from the way he demands her breast what kind of a man he will be, or that he is born to command. I have never doubted that you will one day have high position.”
“As high as a Caesar, like Father?”
“Or Augustus, the position your father will soon hold. Do you really doubt it in your heart?”
“No,” he admitted. “I don’t think I do.”
“Diocletian has sworn to rule no more than twenty years. He will celebrate his Vicennalia soon, but he has never had any use for Borne, so he is obviously going there to tell Maximian he must abdicate too. Then your father will become Augustus of the West and you may be his Caesar.”
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