“Why are you hiding like a criminal, Constantine?” she demanded.
“Didn’t Dacius tell you?”
She wrinkled her nose in a wry expression. “Dacius doesn’t approve of me. He would tell me nothing, except that he was bringing me to you.”
Constantine gave her a quick summary of his difficulties with Galerius and his escape from Nicomedia.
“Maxentius was furious when he wasn’t named Caesar and that stupid Maximin Daia was,” she said.
“I was passed over too. Don’t forget that.”
“We all knew you wouldn’t be named Caesar,” she assured him. “After all, Galerius can’t afford to have your family and ours any more closely connected than we already are.”
“Where is Maxentius now?”
“In Rome, busy plotting against Severus.”
“If I ask your father for you, is there any chance that he will agree?”
Galerius and Maximin Daia
“Not now, darling, I’m too valuable for him to let me go so cheaply. Father has sworn to rule again, when Galerius and Maximin Daia make a mess of things in the East. And there’s no better way to gain the support of important men than to use the lure of a beautiful daughter.”
Looking at her now as she sat beside him on one of the couches in the room, he was sure she was right. For she was beautiful, even more beautiful than when he’d last seen her. But the thought brought him no satisfaction, for it seemed that she was still as far away from becoming his now as she had ever been.
“If you really loved me, you would go to Gaul with me,” he said.
“But darling!” she cried. “Love has little to do with royal marriages. I told you that in Rome.”
“You also said you made up your mind to marry me, when you first saw me fighting Crocus in Nicomedia.”
“I did. But I also made up my mind to be an Augusta some day. Make me one and I’ll be yours tomorrow.”
“Why do you have to torment me?” he demanded angrily. “You know perfectly well I’m further from the throne now than I ever was.”
“Ever since you saved so many men in the retreat from Persia, the legions have worshiped you,” she said. “You could have made yourself Augustus of the East by appealing to them in the name of your father when Diocletian abdicated.”
“How could I have destroyed Galerius?”
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