Part 19 (2/2)
”Perhaps not quite like Sappho,” I replied, smiling, for when we lived in Drepanum I had read some of her poems that my tutor had never shown me. ”But tell the women, and we shall see.”
Corinthius kept his word, and by the time the carving of thematronae was finished and installed in a shrine, a group of mothers and daughters were coining to my home at the new moon and the full, and if what I taught them owed more to Avalon than it did to Athens, it was no one's business but our own. But not even to these, the first sisters in spirit I had had since I left the Holy Isle, did I confide whose wife I had been.
The third meeting took place at the baths, where one was a.s.sured of eventually meeting everyone in the city, during the hours reserved for women. Seen through clouds of billowing steam, everyone looks mysterious, but it seemed to me that the voice that was so loudly complaining about the price of wheat was familiar, and the long-boned, dark face as well.
”Vitellia, is it you?” I asked when she drew breath at last. Through the steam I could see that the golden fish still hung from its chain about her neck.
”By Heaven's blessings, it is Helena! When I heard about-the marriage-I wondered-”
”Hus.h.!.+” I held up one hand, ”I do not speak of that here. I was well provided for, and people think me a rich widow with a son serving abroad.”
”Well then, let us be widows together! Come, let us eat a bite, and you shall tell me all that has happened since your son was born!”
We dried and dressed ourselves and went out through the marble portico. As we pa.s.sed the statue of Venus I saw Vitellia glance at it nervously, but there was nothing there to account for the disgust with which she hurried past, only a garland of flowers that someone had draped across the pedestal.
”I am sure that people would not do that if they knew how difficult it is for us,” she muttered as we pa.s.sed out into the road. ”I know that you are not of the true faith, but in the days when our husbands were serving together, all the officers paid honour to the Highest G.o.d, so perhaps you can understand.
We are commanded to avoid idolatry, you see, and yet we are surrounded by graven images and sacrifices.”
She gestured down the street, and I saw, as I had seen a hundred times without thinking anything of it, that we were surrounded by G.o.ds. An image of Neptune rose from a fountain, nymphs and fauns grinned from the corbels of houses, and the crossroads was marked by a shrine to some local spirit who had recently received a plateful of food and a bunch of flowers as an offering. I remembered being struck by the lavish display when first I came from Avalon, where we knew that all the earth was holy, but saw no reason to emphasize the point with all these decorations, but I had become accustomed to it, after more than twenty years.
”But no one asks you to honour them,” I said slowly-for it had been years since any emperor had tried to enforce that requirement.
”Even to touch them, to see them, is a pollution,” Vitellia sighed. ”Only in the church we have built in the woods outside the walls can we feel truly free.”
I lifted one eyebrow. I had walked out along the north road at Beltane, when even the fields inside Londinium were too confined for me. I thought now that I remembered the building, a modest daub-and-wattle structure with a simple cross over the door. But the woodland that surrounded it had hummed with the power of the spirits that were abroad that day, and patches of flattened gra.s.s showed where young couples had honoured the Lord and the Lady in their own way the preceding eve. How could the Christians imagine they would avoid the old G.o.ds by moving outside the town?
Still, it was not for me to open their eyes to what they so manifestly did not desire to see. Vitellia was still talking: ”And one of our older members donated a building near the wharves that we have made into a refuge for the poor. Our Lord commanded us to care for the widow and the orphan, and so we do, nor do we ask what faith they hold, so long as they speak no demon's names within our walls.”
”That seems a worthy work,” I told her. Certainly it was more than any of the magistrates were likely to do.
”We can always use helpers, to treat their ills, and serve out the food,” said Vitellia. ”I remember hearing that you knew something of herb-lore, when we were in Dalmatia.”
I suppressed a smile. Teaching had blessed, but did not quite fill, my days. It might prove interesting, I thought, to work with these Christians for a while.
And so it proved, and for the next seven years, my life was both rich and full, and more useful, I suppose, than it had been when my only responsibilities were to keep Constantius's house and share his bed.
It was at the end of February in the third year of the new century that the news that was to change everything arrived. I was on my way home from my weekly visit to the priestess of Bast, when I heard a tumult from the market-place. When I turned in that direction, Philip, who had been my escort that day, stopped me.
”If there is a riot, Mistress, I may not be able to protect you. Stay here-” He grimaced as he realized we were in front of the Mithraeum. ”Here you will be safe, and I will go and see what the excitement is all about!”
I smiled a little as I watched him stride down the road, remembering the scrawny boy he had been when he first joined our household. He was still lightly built, but he had a very solid presence now. I tried to remember whether that change had come when he became a Christian, or when Constantius freed him. I rather thought it was the former, that had liberated his spirit even before his legal status was altered.
Perhaps that was why, given his freedom, he had chosen to stay with me.
It seemed a long time before he returned. I seated myself on a bench in front of the Mithraeum, contemplating the relief of the G.o.d slaying the bull. I wondered if Constantius had visited this place when he was in Britannia. I knew that he had continued to rise in rank in the cult, for I remembered times when he had been absent for additional initiations, but of course the wors.h.i.+p of Mithras had no place for women and he was forbidden to tell me what went on. Still, to sit here was almost like being under his protection. I was glad to find that the thought made my heart ache only a little, now.
Then I heard quick footsteps and saw Philip coming, his face white with shock and anger.
”What has happened?” I rose to meet him.
”A new edict! Diocletian, may G.o.d curse him, has begun the persecutions again!”
I frowned, hurrying to catch up as he started down the street again, for the murmur of the crowd was beginning to sound ugly. I remembered hearing rumours of trouble a few years before when the presence of Christians was said to have spoiled the Emperor's ritual. A few officers in the army had been executed for refusing to join in the sacrifices, and some others expelled, but nothing more had come of it. In most places, the Christians, though considered peculiar, got along well enough with their neighbours.
How could Diocletian be so stupid? I had been around Christians long enough by now to know that far from fearing martyrdom, they welcomed it as an easy way to cancel out all sins and win the favour of their gloomy G.o.d. The blood of the martyrs, they said, was the nourishment of the Church. Killing them only reinforced their belief in their own importance and made the cult stronger.
”What does the edictsay ?” I repeated as I caught up with Philip.
”Christianity is outlawed. All copies of the scriptures are to be turned in and burnt, all churches to be seized and destroyed.” He spat out the words.
”But what about the people?”
”So far, only the priests and bishops are mentioned. They are required to offer sacrifice in the presence of a magistrate or be jailed. I must get you home, Lady-the garrison is coming out, and the streets will not be safe.”
”And what about you?” I asked, between breaths.
”With your leave, I will go out to the church and offer my help. Perhaps something can be saved if we are in time.”
”You are a free man, Philip,” I said, ”and I do not presume to command your conscience. But I beg you in the name of your G.o.d, take care!”
”If you will also do so!” He managed a smile as we neared my door. ”Keep the rest of the household indoors. Though you are still a wors.h.i.+pper of demons, the High G.o.d loves you well!”
”Thank you! I think!” I watched him hurry off down the road. Still, blessings should be welcomed, from whatever quarter. Shaking my head, I went in.
For a day and a night, the detachment from the fortress tramped through the streets, searching out Christian leaders and property. By the time it was over, the bishop of Vitellia's church was in custody, and the little church in the woods by the north road had burned to the ground. The holy books, however, had been hidden safely, and a pile of church accounts given to the authorities to destroy.
The smoke of the burning was carried away by the wind, but the stench, both physical and metaphoric, lingered longer. Diocletian had ruled wisely for almost twenty years, but in his attempts to preserve our society, the Emperor was effectively dividing it. As I had predicted, persecution only made the Christians more stubborn, and there were more of them than most of us had realized.
These days the Christians met in secret in their houses. Philip reported to me that letters from the eastern part of the Empire told of arrests and executions. But to my relief, Constantius did no more than enforce the letter of the new law in those portions of the Empire under his control. And once the first excitement was over, the general population showed little enthusiasm for persecuting their neighbours. How those Christian neighbours might view the rest of us was not a question which at that moment applied.
Still, it seemed to me that in times such as these, I ought to offer the maidens I was teaching something more relevant than Homer and Virgil, and so, from time to time, I would turn our discussions to the issues that divided men today.
”It is necessary,” I said one morning, ”that the educated person understand not only what she believes, but why she believes it. And so I ask you, who is the Supreme G.o.d?”
For a long moment the girls looked at each other, as if not quite certain I really meant what I was asking, much less that it applied to them. Finally, Lucretia, whose family exported wool, raised her hand.
”Jupiter is the king of the G.o.ds, that's why the Emperor puts his image on his coins.”
”But the Christians say that all deities except the G.o.d of the Jews are demons,” offered Tertia, the sandal-maker's daughter.
”That is very true, and so I ask you, how many G.o.ds are there?”
This elicited a babble of discussion, until I held up a hand for silence once more. ”You are all correct, according to our way of thinking. Every land and district has its own deities, and in the Empire, our practice has been to honour them all. But consider this, the greatest of our own philosophers and poets speak of a supreme divinity. Some call this Power ”Nature”, and others ”Aether”, and still others, ”the High G.o.d”. The poet Maro tells us, ”Know first, the heaven, the earth, the main, The moon's pale orb, the starry train, Are nourished by a Soul, A Spirit, whose celestial flame Glows in each member of the frame, And stirs the mighty whole.”
”But what about the G.o.ddess?” asked little Portia, pointing towards the altar in the corner of the sunny chamber we used as a cla.s.sroom, where a lamp was always kept burning before the relief of the Mothers. Sometimes, when no one else was present, I would pat the head of the dog in the fourth Mother's lap, and feel it warm and smooth beneath my hand as if Hylas had come back to me.
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