‘I told you there was no point in trying to deceive her, or the boy.” Marios turned and spoke directly to Constantine. “That’s why your task is so important, Flavius.”
Constantine only his immediate family ever called him by his given name of Flavius looked blank. “What your Uncle Marios is telling you in his own blunt way,” his father explained, “is that you are going to Nicomedia with him tomorrow to begin your military training.”
The boy was stunned by the news for even his rosiest imaginings had not taken him to Nicomedia until he was several years older.
And that everyone will try to find fault in you because your father will one day become an Augustus,” Marios added.
“Will he be safe?” Helena asked quickly.
“Diocletian has given me his promise that my son’s rights will be guarded,” Constantius assured her. “I insisted upon that before I agreed to his going to Nicomedia. Naturally he will receive no more favor than the other young officers training there.”
It was well after midnight when Constantine awakened. He’d had trouble going to sleep, excited by the news that he was about to become an officercadet, starting the upward climb which he confidently expected would eventually win him the purple cloak of a Caesar, or even an Augustus.
Become Augusti
In the hour or more while he lay awake, Constantine had come to a number of decisions. First, he must work hard at Nicomedia, so he would be commissioned as a tribune and given a command. Next he must earn the respect of Emperor Diocletian, for everyone knew that when the aging ruler abdicated, the present Caesars would become Augusti and in turn would appoint Caesars to succeed themselves. Sobered by these thoughts and his own responsibilities, he finally drifted off to sleep and had not even awakened when Marios had come to his own couch in the same room the villa not being very large.
His uncle’s snoring must have awakened him, he decided now, and feeling thirsty he got up from the couch and padded across the garden barefooted to the kitchen, where the servants always kept a crock of water filled from the nearby well. The house was dark, though the rising moon illuminated faintly the garden around which it was built in the shape of a rectangle with one side open. From long experience Constantine was able to find his way to the kitchen and drink deeply from the crock without having to light another candle from the one that burned all night in the triclinium, so there would be a flame in the morning with which to light fires.
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