Free Secrets of the Dead by Tom Harper

surprise. It doesn’t look like the histories of Pliny or Tacitus that we studied in school. It looks like a ledger. Parallel columns line the page, haphazardly filled with short paragraphs. Greek and Roman numerals weave through the margins and run into the text.
    I lean over, struggling to decipher it. I’ve never been good with Greek – and this is filled with barbarous names and exotic places.
    ‘Alexander designed it to reconcile the histories of the Jews, the Greeks, the Romans and the Persians from the beginning of the world,’ Simeon explains. ‘The whole unfolding of God’s creation. A map of time, laid out to reveal its mysteries.
    But I don’t hear him. It’s a book of time, and every page is a door. To read it is to step through.
    In the sixteenth year of his reign, the Emperor Constantius died in Britain, at York .
    York – July 306 – Thirty-one years ago …
    There’s blood in the air when we ride into York. It’s accompanied us every step of our journey, a thousand miles across the empire. Blood in the stables the night we left, our long knives wet from the horses we’d lamed. Blood on our knees, our thighs and our hands where the saddles chafed us raw. Thirty-seven days’ hard riding, always peering over our shoulders. It wasn’t until we caught sight of Britain’s dirty-white cliffs that I believed we’d make it.
    Constantine’s been living on borrowed time for a year now. The politics are complicated but reduce to this: he’s after another man’s job. Two emperors share the empire at the moment. Galerius rules the eastern half, while Constantius, Constantine’s father, rules the west. Constantine stays at Galerius’s court in Sirmium as a hostage to their bargain. Galerius knows there’s nothing more dangerous than an imperial heir at a loose end, but he can’t kill Constantine while Constantius reigns as his colleague. Instead, he encourages Constantine to occupy himself hunting dangerous animals in remote places, or picking fights with barbarian tribes noted for their savagery.
    But now Constantius is dying. The news arrived at dinnertime thirty-eight days ago. If it had come in the morning we’d be dead by now. But Galerius is an insensible drunkard: anything that happens after noon might as well not happen until next morning. By then, we were already a hundred miles away, leaving behind only a stable full of hamstrung horses.
    And now we’re here in York. The fortress stands on a hill between two rivers, with the square tower of the Principia, the headquarters, crowning its highest point. On the far bank, the civilian town sprawls up the slope from the jetties and warehouses where sea cargoes are unloaded.
    The guards at the gate stiffen as they see us approach, then go ramrod straight when they hear Constantine’s name. That’s a good sign.
    ‘Is my father alive?’ he demands. ‘Are we in time?’
    The guard nods. Constantine lifts his eyes to the sun and touches his forehead, giving thanks.
    The moment we reach the Principia, ready hands pluck Constantine away from me to some inner chamber. I loiter in a corridor and watch. Guards are moving heavy strongboxes towards the portico at the front of the parade ground, while officials keep count on wax tablets. Everyone seems to know exactly what they’re doing.
    The heavy tramp of footsteps rises above the noise as Constantine comes around the corner. A knot of generals and aides in full uniform surround him: somewhere in the last hour he’s found time to scrub his face and put on a gilded cuirass. It’s jarring to see him like this, reclaimed by his old life. We’ve lived in each other’s pockets for months now, first in the palace and then on the road. I wasn’t prepared for how suddenly it would change.
    As he comes level with me, I call out, ‘How’s your father? Will he –?’
    ‘He died two days ago.’ Constantine doesn’t look at me, doesn’t break stride. His entourage brush past, walling him off. ‘The