Blood And Gold (The Vampire Chronicles 8)

How she had argued with me. How she had known the poets and philosophers. How she had been able to reason. And I, I had mocked her all too much.

I cannot tell you how many years passed in this fashion.

I was aware that even though we did not speak to one another, or even face each other in the street, Avicus and Mael had become companions to me by their very presence. And as for their keeping Rome clean of other blood drinkers, I was in their debt.

Now, I didn't pay much attention to what was happening with the government of the Empire as I think you can ascertain from all I've said.

But in truth I cared passionately about the fate of the Empire. For the Empire to me was the civilized world. And though I was a secret hunter by night, a filthy killer of humans, nevertheless I was a Roman, and I lived in all other ways a civilized life.

I suppose that I assumed, much like many an old Senator of the time, that sooner or later the endless battles of the Emperors would sort themselves out. A great man, with the strength of Octavian, would rise to unite the entire world once again.

Meantime the armies would patrol the borders, endlessly driving back the barbarian menace, and if the responsibility fell, over and over again to the armies to choose an Emperor, so be it, as long as the Empire remained intact.

As for the Christians who existed everywhere, I did not know what to make of them at all. It was a great mystery to me that this little cult, which had begun in Jerusalem of all places, could have grown to such tremendous size.

Before I'd left Antioch, I'd been amazed by the success of Christianity, of how it was becoming organized, and how it seemed to thrive on division and dissent.

But Antioch was the East as I have said. That Rome was capitulating to the Christians was beyond my wildest dreams. Slaves had everywhere gone over to the new religion, but so had men and women of high position. And persecutions had no effect at all.

Before I continue, however, allow me to point out what other historians have also pointed out, that before Christianity, the entire ancient world lived in a kind of religious harmony. No one persecuted anyone else for religion.

Even the Jews who would associate with no one else were easily infolded by Greeks and Romans and allowed to practice their extremely anti-social beliefs. It was they who rebelled against Rome, not Rome which sought to enslave them. And so this harmony was worldwide.

Of course all of this led me to believe, when I first heard Christians preaching, that there was no chance of this religion gaining ground. It placed far too much responsibility upon the new members to avoid all contact with the revered gods of Greece and Rome, and so I thought the sect would soon die out.

Also there was the constant strife among the Christians as to what they really believed. Surely they would destroy one another, I thought, and the whole body of ideas, or whatever it could be called, would dissolve.

But no such thing happened, and the Rome in which I lived in the three hundreds was thronged with Christians, as I've said. For their apparently magical ceremonies, they met in the catacombs and also in private homes.

Now as I went along, watching all this, and yet ignoring it, there were a couple of events which stunned me out of my dreams.

Let me explain.

As I have said, the Emperors of Rome were constantly at war. No sooner had the old Roman Senate ratified the appointment of one than he was murdered by another. And troops were always marching across the far-flung provinces of the Empire to establish a new Caesar where another had been put to rout.

In the year of 305, there were two of these sovereigns known as Augusti, and two known as Caesars, and I myself did not know precisely what these titles meant. Or shall I say, I had too much contempt for all involved to know what they meant.

Indeed these so-called "Emperors" more often than I liked were invading Italy and one by the name of Severus in the year 307 had come all the way to the gates of Rome.

Now I, with little more than the greatness of Rome to keep me company, did not want to see my native city sacked!

It soon became clear to me when I started to pay attention that all of Italy as well as Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia and North Africa were all under the rule of the "Emperor" Maxentius, and it was he who had-repelled Severus and was now repelling yet another invader, Galerius, whom he chased away in defeat.

This Maxentius who lived only six miles from the city walls was himself a beast. At one extremely unhappy event, he allowed the praetorians, that is, his personal guards, to massacre the people of Rome. And he was very against the Christians whom he persecuted needlessly and cruelly; and the gossip had it that he debauched the wives of outstanding citizens, thereby giving the greater offense. In fact, the Senators suffered a great deal of abuse at his hands, while he let his soldiers run riot in Rome.

None of this meant much to me, however, until I heard that one of me other Emperors¡ªConstantine¡ªwas marching on Rome. This was the third threat in recent years to my beloved city; and I was much relieved when Maxentius went out to fight the important battle a great distance from the walls. Of course he did this because he knew the Romans would not support him.

But w

ho could have known that this was to be one of the most decisive battles in the history of the Western world? Of course the battle occurred in the day so that I could know nothing of it until I waked with the setting sun. At once, I rushed up the stairs from my underground hiding place and, coming to my house, I found all my regular philosopher guests drunk, and I went out into the streets to learn what I could from the citizenry of what had taken place. Constantine was completely the victor. He had massacred the troops of Maxentius and the latter had fallen into the Tiber and drowned. But what was most significant to those congregating everywhere was the rumor that before Constantine went into battle he had seen a sign in the sky which had come from Jesus Christ.

Indeed the sign had been made manifest right after noon when Constantine had looked up and beheld just above the declining sun, the sign of the cross with the inscription "Conquer with This. "

My reaction was incredulity. Could a Roman Emperor possibly have seen a Christian vision? I went rushing back to my desk, wrote down all these particulars in my precarious journal of events and waited to see what history would reveal.

As for the company in my banquet room they were now all awake and arguing about the whole matter. None of us believed it.

Constantine a Christian? More wine, please.