The Poet Prince

A
LSO BY
K
ATHLEEN
M
C
G
OWAN

The Source of Miracles

The Book of Love

The Expected One

THE

Book III of The Magdalene Line

K
ATHLEEN
M
C
G
OWAN

A Touchstone Book
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First Touchstone hardcover edition May 2010

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Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available.

ISBN 978-0-7432-9998-5
ISBN 978-1-4391-7003-8 (ebook)

For Lorenzo,
to fulfill a promise
five hundred years in the keeping.

And for all of you
who recognize your own promise
and are committed to bringing about
the Golden Age of a new Renaissance.

The Time Returns

We honor God while praying for a time
when these teachings will be welcomed
in peace by all people
and there will be no more martyrs.

T
HE PRAYER OF THE
O
RDER OF THE
H
OLY
S
EPULCHER

Rome, AD 161

The Roman Emperor Antoninus Pius was not a butcher.

A scholar and philosopher, Pius did not want to be remembered by history as one of Rome’s cruel and intolerant tyrants. Yet here he stood, literally up to his ankles in the blood of Christians. While alive, the four brothers had been exceptionally beautiful young men. But after their terrible deaths brought about by beatings and torture, they were unrecognizable masses of blood and flesh. The sight made him want to retch, but he could not appear to be weak before his citizens.

Pius was, for the most part, tolerant of the irksome minority who called themselves Christians. He even found it stimulating to participate in debates with those who were educated and reasonable. However odd he personally found their beliefs—about the single messiah who rose from the dead and would come again—their ideas did appear to be spreading at an unnervingly steady pace throughout Rome. A number of Roman nobles had converted to Christianity openly, and their participation in Christian rituals was tolerated by his government. This growing sect was also finding particular popularity with highborn females; women were included as equals in all its rites and ceremonies. They could even be priests in this strange new world of Christian thought and practice.

The Roman priests who held court in the temples of Jupiter and Saturn were up in arms that these Christians were allowed to offend the gods with their ridiculous concept of a single deity. Emperor Pius generally ignored the priests’ wailings, and thus life in Rome went on in relative peace during much of his reign. It was only when some aberration developed to endanger lives in the Roman republic, some tragedy or natural disaster, that the Christians found themselves mortally threatened. The Roman priests, and their followers, were quick to blame the Christians for any and all misfortunes that might befall Rome. Surely it was their monotheistic insult to the true gods of the republic that caused divine retribution to fall on the other innocent and obedient citizens?

Emperor Pius had himself discovered in his debates that there were two types of Christians: the wild-eyed fanatics who often seemed anxious to die to prove their great piety, and the truly reasonable and compassionate adherents who were more devoted to helping the poor and healing the sick than they were to preaching and converting. Pius definitely preferred the latter type; they were making a positive contribution to their communities and were valuable citizens. These Christians, whom he called the Compassionates, were fond of telling stories of their messiah and his great healing ability and of quoting his very wise words about the need for charity. Most often, they spoke passionately about the power of love and its many forms. Indeed there were even some Christians here in Rome who claimed direct descent from their messiah himself, through his children who had settled in Europe. These claimants were the same Compassionates who worked tirelessly to help the suffering and the poor. Their undisputed leader was a stunning and charismatic noblewoman called Lady Petronella. The flame-haired Petronella was beloved by the people of Rome, despite her openly Christian practices, as she was the daughter and heiress of one of Rome’s oldest families. She used her wealth generously for the highest good of the republic and preached only of the need for love and tolerance. If Petronella and her Compassionates, had been the only kind of Christian in Rome, this onslaught of terrible bloodshed would likely never have begun.

But the group of Christians that Pius referred to as the Fanatics were another story altogether. In contrast to the Compassionates, who spoke of their messiah in warm and devoted tones as the great teacher of a spiritual path they called the Way of Love, the Fanatics screeched of the one true God who would eliminate all others and bring about a reign of terror for the unbelievers at a time of final judgment. The Romans were deeply offended by this perspective, and the Fanatics compounded
the offense by insisting that life on earth did not matter and that only the afterlife was of importance. Such a philosophy, such a craven disregard for the gift of life that the gods bestowed upon mortals, was absolute sacrilege to the Roman priests and their followers. It was incomprehensible to a culture of people who celebrated the experience of the physical senses in their countless spiritual and civic festivals. To most Romans, the Fanatics were an enigma born out of madness, a group to be shunned if not feared.

Thus it was the Fanatics who raised the ire of the Roman people, even when there were no natural disasters to contend with. But when
a deadly influenza outbreak struck an affluent Roman suburb, the priests of Saturn began to cry for the blood of Christians to appease their god.

In the center of this growing drama was a wealthy Roman widow, the Lady Felicita. Felicita had converted to Christianity when, overcome by grief following the sudden death of her noble and beloved husband, she had turned her back on the Roman gods. It was said that, left alone to raise seven sons without a father, she went mad with the anguish of her loss. Felicita was visited by Christians who offered her comfort in her mourning, and she ultimately found strength and so-
lace in the Fanatics’ extreme perspective on the absolute importance of the afterlife. In this ideal, Felicita was consoled that her husband was in a better place where she would join him one day, and they would be together with their children as a family in heaven.

While Felicita burned with the passion of the newly converted, most of the nobles in her community were not overly upset by her behavior. Felicita would spend hours each day on her knees in prayer, but most felt that this was her own business. In addition, Felicita was charita
ble and generous, donating portions of her dead husband’s fortune to the building of a hospital and compelling her older sons to contribute physical labor to help the infirm. As a result, Felicita’s strong and beautiful children were very popular with the people of the Roman suburb in which they dwelled. The boys ranged in age from the golden-haired youngest, called Martial, who was in his seventh summer, to the tall and athletic eldest, Januarius, who was twenty years on earth.

The world in which Felicita and her sons lived remained relatively peaceful until the influenza swept into their town. It struck intermittently and at random, but those who were afflicted by it rarely survived the extreme fevers that accompanied the retching and convulsions. When the firstborn son of a Saturnian priest succumbed to the illness, the distraught man rallied the population to join him in accusing Felicita and her sons of bringing down the wrath of the gods upon them. Clearly, Saturn had punished his own priest to make his point clear: the Romans would need to be strong in their opposition to these Christian people who dared to regard their true gods as obsolete. The gods would not stand for it, and certainly not a god such as Saturn, who was the domineering and ruthless patriarch of the Roman pantheon. Hadn’t Saturn even devoured his own son when he found him to be disobedient?

Felicita and all seven of her children were subsequently brought before the regional magistrate, Publius. Because of Felicita’s noble status, they were not shackled by chains or tied but were allowed to enter the court of their own volition. Felicita was a handsome woman, tall and well built, with flowing dark hair and the walk of a queen. She stood straight and proud before the court, never wavering and showing no fear.

The proceedings began calmly and were carried out with due order. While Magistrate Publius was known to have a harsh streak when provoked, he was not as monstrous as some of the local jurists were known to be. He read out the charges against Felicita and her sons in measured tones.