Dacius came in and wiped the sweat from his forehead with his forearm, although the air outside was not warm. “Well, she’s safely out of the way,” he said. “But don’t ever get into this sort of trouble again if you value your life.”
‘I had nothing to do with it,” Constantine reminded him. “When do you think she decided she would marry me?”
The first time she saw you, of course. That was about a week ago.”
She did decide the first time she saw me,” Constantine agreed.
But it was the day I almost killed Crocus in Nicomedia.”
“By the blood of the sacred bull!” Dacius exclaimed. “I remember now that Maximian and his family were there, on account of Maxentius. But Fausta was a mere child then.”
“I don’t think Fausta was ever a mere child,” Constantine said with a note of awe in his voice. “She’s determined for me to be Emperor, Dacius.”
“And you?”
“I don’t like the idea of being led around by the nose.”
“No married man does, but it happens just the same.”
“Not to me,” Constantine said, with suddenly rising confidence. “I’m going to take matters into my own hands.”
“How?”
“I want Fausta and there’s no need for us to wait. If I ask Emperor Diocletian to demand her from Maximian for my wife, I’m sure he will do it.”
Dacius agreed
“He might, sometime,” Dacius agreed. “But not right now.
“Why?”
“I saw one of the Emperor’s eunuchs outside just now. Diocletian has been seized by a fever and his physician has advised him to get out of Rome. You know how bad the fevers are here.”
“Where are we going?”
“To Salonae.® It’s on the way back to Nicomedia. We leave in the morning and this is no time to talk to him about personal affairs.”
“That leaves everything undecided,” Constantine protested, but Dacius shook his head.
“It leaves you exactly where you were before. Fausta has determined to make you Emperor, so Emperor you shall be. And I hope I’m not the one ever to stand in her way.”
Split or Solin
The summer was almost past when Constantine saw Nicome Ldia again. But long before they left Salonae, where Diocletian had paused when the fever returned, he learned that things had changed markedly in the eastern capital during their absence. The Emperors attempt to remedy the Empire’s economic difficulties by a rigid system of wage and price controls, with some reforms in currency, had been in effect for nearly two years but, if anything, conditions were worse than they had been before. Few goods were available at the prices set by the government and buyers were forced to purchase in secret at much higher figures. In fact, the only group who seemed to have profited under the new order was the army of civil servants required to collect the taxes and enforce the edicts.
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