A strange hush settled on the Palatine after the double executions, like frost creeping over a field that once rang with harvest songs. Senators postponed audiences, scribes delivered reports at arm's length, and courtiers developed the habit of staring at the floor as they spoke. No official proclamation explained why the Caesar Crispus and the Empress Fausta had vanished; yet every soul in the palace knew whose hand had removed them. The Emperor strode the marble corridors without escort, a tall shadow in purple, and the very clack of his boots sounded like a verdict.
Outwardly Constantine altered nothing in his routine. He rose before dawn, reviewed troop dispositions from Britain to Armenia, drafted edicts on tax reform, and spent the afternoon with architects refining the sea walls of his New Rome.
