But Thalius found it impossible to be sour, despite the queuing and the petty corruption. You couldn't ignore the eagerness and anxiety, the hopes and dreams of the supplicants, for today Rome was here, on this windy British shore.

At last, thanks to his note from Ulpius Cornelius, Thalius found himself part of a crowd of petitioners drawn up before a stage, hastily erected just off the road inside the fort's western gate-a stage on which Constantine himself sat, advisers and guards at his shoulders, patiently listening to complaints and pleas.

If Thalius had expected to see a soldier on that wooden throne, he was disappointed. Constantine was a big-boned, strong-looking man in his early forties, but he wore his hair down to his shoulders, so luxuriantly blond Thalius was sure it had to be false. He was dressed in a long, flowing robe of what looked like silk, embroidered with flowery designs done in gold. Even his shoes were studded with gems. And though Thalius thought he detected a soldier's bluff amiability in Constantine's not unhandsome face, to approach him you had to go down on your knees and press your head to the floor.

He muttered, 'Why, he's not like a Roman at all. He looks like something out of Egypt or Persia. Augustus would have been horrified.'

Tarcho growled, 'He looks like what he is-the Emperor. Do you expect him to dress like a latrine cleaner? He has to put on a show. And he's a good lad, this one.' He cupped his hands and called out, 'Good on you, Constantine!'

Thalius knew that Constantine had always been popular among the British troops. After all it was they who in Eburacum, on the death of his father Constantius Chlorus, had elevated thirty-five-year-old Flavius Valerius Constantinus as the new 'Augustus', one of the college of emperors, and then had fought under him when Constantine had achieved his greatest victory so far in dislodging a rival, Maxentius, to become sole ruler in the west.

And he had won with the help of the Christian God, Constantine declared. On the night before the decisive battle outside Rome, he had a dream that the Christian God came to him. In the morning he had his troops chalk crosses on their shields. That victory had cemented God into his life, and his empire, for good.

The fruits of Constantine's conversion were visible before Thalius now. The Emperor's mother Helena travelled with him; once a concubine, she was becoming a kind of pilgrim with a mission to travel across the empire to Judea in search of relics of Christ Himself. And there were bishops among the Emperor's retinue, on the stage with him, almost as grandly dressed as he was, Thalius observed with disgust, men of wealth and power a world away from the vision of the carpenter's Son. There were cynics who muttered that it only took a mote of dust in the eye to enable anybody to see a cross in the sky, and Constantine's 'conversion' may have owed a lot to the manipulation of events by the wily bishops in his court.

And some Christians of the old school, including Thalius himself, were deeply troubled that it was a warrior deity that was being cemented into the machinery of state, not the gentler God of Christ's own teachings.

At last Thalius, his heart thumping, was beckoned forward towards Constantine's dais-but his way was blocked by the man whose response had brought him so far.

Ulpius Cornelius, aged perhaps forty, wore a purple-edged toga. He was tall, angular, thin, his hair black and swept back, his mouth small and down-turned, his prominent nose ideal for looking down on people. Before him Thalius felt poor and shabby, a low-class provincial. If Constantine looked like an eastern potentate Cornelius was every bit the classic Roman-and therefore out of place in Constantine's court.

Cornelius, consulting a list, looked Thalius over keenly. 'So you are the prophet,' he began bluntly.

'I wouldn't call myself that,' Thalius said, embarrassed and disconcerted. 'It is a legend of my family that-'

'But in your letter you did speak of a prophecy. Of specific warnings of an uncertain future, of momentous events unfolding in our lifetimes-events that might deflect the course of history forever. Yes?' His Latin was so pure it sounded strangulated.

'Sir, I am a Christian. I am here because of my concerns over the future of men's souls, not-'

'Yes, yes. But I am what is now referred to as a "pagan", what I would call a defender of Roman tradition. I have precious little interest in your slaves' cult. It is not your anguished proclamations of faith that caught my eye, citizen, but your claims about this Prophecy. I researched your family in the libraries in Rome and Alexandria. I even traced a mention in the biographies of the Emperor Claudius himself. Imagine that! And there is indeed something about a Prophecy there…But you say the Prophecy is lost.'

'Not entirely,' Thalius said.

Cornelius raised one plucked eyebrow. Thalius was urged to say more, but he felt Tarcho touch his arm, and he stayed silent. Cornelius seemed to notice this interplay, and looked at Tarcho with new interest. He stepped closer to Thalius and spoke more quietly. 'Listen to me. Things are changing. The empire is not as our grandfathers would have recognised it, and soon it will change again, one way or another. The question is how it will change. If your Prophecy has any validity at all it may be a very powerful weapon in this time of great historical flux.'

Thalius heard only one word. ' "Weapon"?'

Cornelius studied him. 'In your muddled way you want to deal with Constantine, don't you? You want to alter the course he has set himself on.'

'I'm not sure I'd put it like that-'

'You'll find you're not alone. There are many of us who have reservations about the Emperor, reservations which have nothing to do with Christ but with the traditions of Rome-and their survival, and the survival of city and empire, into the future. Do you see?'

'I think so. But I-'

'And,' Cornelius said almost wistfully, 'is it true that your Prophecy speaks of freedom? Was that truly the subject of the enigmatic final lines of which Claudius wrote? Was the unknown seer writing of a return to the freedoms of the Republic, the lifting of the heavy hand of the Caesars?'

'I wouldn't know,' Thalius said.

'Well, now I've met you I can see you aren't ready to meet the Emperor today. I will arrange another audience. In the meantime perhaps we will find time to talk. Now go.' He turned away.

Thalius, dismissed, felt crushingly disappointed he would not after all confront Constantine today; but already the processes of the court were moving on.

Tarcho snorted. 'These Romans and their foretelling-always have been a superstitious bunch!'

'But I didn't come here to conspire against Constantine.'

'Didn't you? Perhaps that stuck-up Roman saw your soul better than you see it yourself.' He pulled Thalius's sleeve. 'Let's get out of here. We've already lost our place in the line, and it doesn't do to hang around an emperor's court.'

Thalius let himself be led away. Tarcho held Audax firmly by the hand. The boy, wide-eyed, hadn't spoken through the entire exchange.