“My sole ambition is to do my duty as a soldier and a Roman, Augustus,” Constantine said evenly.
“Do you deny trying to turn Fausta’s head, for purposes of your own?”
“Lady Fausta has been very kind to me, since I have been in Rome,” Constantine said. “I will admit to having developed a considerable affection for her and, in time, I plan to ask your permission for us to be wed.”
“Wed!” Maximian sat up straight in his chair and his face became so suffused that, for a moment, Constantine was afraid he would topple over in a faint. But he recovered himself with an effort and, seizing a flask of wine from a tray on the table, drank great gulps from it. Finally he sank back in his chair and stared at Constantine, his eyes cold with hostility.
Illyrian peasant
“What has Rome come to when the bastard son of an Illyrian peasant can aspire to marry the daughter of an emperor?” he demanded.
Constantine could have reminded Maximian that he had been nothing but a common soldier, before rising through the ranks to become a general and, solely because of his friendship with Diocletian, an Augustus. Or that Constantine himself was descended from an emperor. But he realized that he had already made a major blunder in admitting his affection for Fausta and wisely kept silent, lest he make another.
“If you weren’t Diocletian’s favorite, you can be sure you would be breaking stones on the roads tomorrow as a military prisoner, or hanging from a cross beside the Via Appia,” Maximian added. “But you are still a soldier, and I order you now not to force yourself upon my daughter again.”
Nothing was to be gained by arguing, Constantine realized, so he merely saluted. When Maximian automatically returned the salute, he marched from the room, expecting at any moment for a string of curses to spatter his retiring back. In the room he shared with Dacius in the barracks that had been turned over temporarily to Diocletian’s personal troops, he took off his helmet and, sinking into a chair, stared at the blank wall while he considered the situation in which he found himself.
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