“You will obey, of course?”
I can do nothing else, though I had enough of that in Alexandria. But I wanted to be sure no one could trump up a charge and harm Mother and Crispus.”
“They are safe,” Marios assured him. “It’s you that Dacius and I are concerned about.”
“Why?”
“Diocletian will not be Emperor much longer. I’m satisfied that he is tired of ruling and ready to give up the throne.”
He told me as much at Salonae,” Constantine agreed. “Right now his main ambition is to grow cabbages there larger than any others in all of Illyricum.”
That means Galerius will soon become Augustus of the East and your father of the West. When that happens, you must be on your way to Gaul at once.”
“If they let me leave.”
Marios assured him
“Two powerful horses will be stabled here at all times and others will be in readiness no more than a day’s journey apart between here and the Alps at the villas of men I can trust,” Marios assured him. “Once there, you can lose any pursuers. Dacius knows the passes like he knows the streets of Nicomedia.”
“If I succeed in getting away and your part in my escape is discovered, you may forfeit your life,” Constantine reminded him.
“Your father saved my life by staying back to stanch the flow of blood when my leg was thrust through by a spear, so I owe him that much at least. Besides” Marios grinned “with a nephew as Emperor of Rome one day, I shall be a powerful man.”
By the time a detail of the Imperial Guards, with Constantine at its head, marched from the military compound behind the palace the next morning and took up a position on either side of the portico leading up to the palace, the square before it was packed with people. The central section between the palace and the Christian church that stood upon a little elevation across from it had been cleared, and shortly two thrones were carried out by the black Nubians Diocletian had brought from Egypt as bearers.
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