The Saint's Mistress (15 page)

seen them dance and balance balls on their trunks at the command of their painted and bejeweled

keepers. Elephants were as common to me now as dogs, but Adeo adored them. We had a small

slate at home, on which I would sometimes draw pictures to amuse him, and he almost always

insisted that I draw an elephant.

I squeezed myself between more sweating bodies and found a space by a railing where I could

breathe and scan for Adeo.

Normally, animal fights took place in an enclosed pen in the middle of the oval, but the Circus

masters must have wanted to give the crowd a special thrill today. The animals were released

right on to the racetrack. A slave unlocked and opened the door to the wolves’ cage and then the

slaves scurried away.

The elephant shuffled its feet and shook its massive head, looking bewildered. The wolves

crouched in their cage for a few seconds, eyes narrowed, ears back. The oily, earthy smell of

their matted gray fur reached my nose on the hot breeze. The outcome of this was inevitable, and

I pivoted my head to one side then the other, frowning against the blasting sun, searching for my

baby.

And then I saw him, about twenty feet from me, leaning over a lower railing to get a better

view of the elephant.

He seemed to fall in slow motion, leaning forward, forward, and then toppling head first,

tumbling over as light as a falling leaf and landing on his back.

My heart stopped and then burst into wild hammering. I elbowed elbowing people aside in a

panic to get to a stairway. “My baby!” I choked. It was a fall of only about six feet, but he lay

motionless at the edge of the oval, where he could be trampled to death or torn to pieces at any

second.

Now others in the audience noticed the child down on the oval and a murmur rose. It wasn’t

hard for those near me to tell that the panicked, thrashing woman was the child’s mother, and

they began to make way for me, as I fought my way closer to Adeo, never taking my eyes off

him. The harsh noises of the crowd subsided into a background hiss, like ocean waves, and the

stifling day seemed to slow to a crawl: me swimming through the sea of people, Adeo lying in

the shade on the race track, the shuffling elephant lit by glassy white sunlight, the wolves now

circling in their cage, snarling and assessing the elephant from the corners of their yellow eyes.

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I could find no stairway that led to the oval, and was prepared to leap over the railing onto the

racetrack to rescue him, when the wolves shot from their cage as one.

They crouched in front of the elephant, in a staggered row. The elephant now sensed danger

and let out a trumpeting cry. I choked out a cry of panic.

But now I saw Aurelius leap the railing and run for our baby. Hope exploded in me, but now

time seemed to slow even more, all sound and scent disappeared and the world was reduced to

the sight of the running man, the limp baby and the circling animals.

Two of the wolves split off to either side of the elephant, and the beast swung its head to one

side and then the other. The calculated cunning in the eyes of the wolves looked almost human.

Then the third wolf struck, leaping for the elephant’s neck and taking one snarling bite. The

elephant swung its head wildly now, trying to shake off the attacking wolf.

Aurelius picked up Adeo and ran to the railing with him, lifting him towards me. I leaned

forward, sobbing, and took my baby’s limp body in my arms. His eyes were closed and his moist

mouth hung limp, but he was breathing, and when I placed my ear to his chest, I heard the

tapping of his little heart. I hugged him to me, sobbing and wailing, and suddenly Aurelius and

Amicus were at my side.

“Is he all right? Is he all right?” Aurelius demanded, prodding at my arms, trying to get a look

at our son.

“Let’s get him home,” Amicus suggested. “Quintus and Nebridius will find us later.”

Aurelius wrapped his arms around me and Adeo, and Amicus cut a way through the crowd in

front of us. The sea of people parted as we passed through, but our contribution to the day’s

drama was already being forgotten.

By the time we made our way to an exit, the carcasses of one crushed wolf and one torn,

bloody elephant had been carted away, the surviving wolves had been whipped back into a cage,

and slaves were circling the track flinging perfumed water to mask the animal smell of the blood

before the next race.

Adeo came briefly conscious once, vomited, and then slipped back into limp unconsciousness.

I sat in our apartment clutching him on my lap, rocking back and forth and crying, uncaring of

the sour milk-smelling vomit dripping down my legs. Aurelius tried once to pry him from me,

and was rebuffed by a swinging arm and an animal cry. After that, he receded into the

background, pacing the room and checking the window every few seconds for Amicus and the

doctor.

In desperation, I fingered the cross that Miriam had placed around my neck before I came to

Carthage, and sent a prayer to her god:
I’ll believe in you if you let him be all right, just let him

be all right, just let him be all right.

“Here they come,” he said finally.

I heard feet taking the steps two at a time, and Amicus burst in, flushed and panting. “He’s

right behind me,” he announced. “How is he?” He came over to me and bent over my limp child.

Amicus could calm and persuade me when even Aurelius could not. I sniffed back my tears

and held Adeo so that Amicus could have a look at him. “He vomited once and then went right

back to sleep.” Then I bent over my little boy and started to sob again.

“Here’s the doctor,” Amicus soothed.

The doctor inspired no confidence in me. He was not much older than Aurelius and Amicus,

and had let his beard grow. I noticed this because it was a very uncommon thing. All men except

the Hebrews had their facial hair shaved each day at the baths, in the Roman fashion.

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“I need to examine the child,” the young doctor said, bending over me.

Amicus took Adeo from me and handed him to the doctor. We crowded around him as he laid

Adeo on our dining table and spread his eyelids to examine his eyes. Aurelius placed an arm

around my waist and I didn’t shake him off.

“Did the child vomit?” the doctor asked.

“Yes, once,” I answered. “Will he be all right?”

The doctor ignored me, put his ear to Adeo’s chest, and felt his cheeks and forehead, then

squeezed each of his limbs and probed his round little belly. Finally, he very gingerly prodded

the swelling at the back of Adeo’s head. Adeo frowned and stirred, and then went still again.

“Willl he live?” Aurelius demanded.

The doctor smiled for the first time. “He will live.” He slapped Adeo’s face gently and our

baby’s eyes fluttered open. The doctor pried open each eyelid again and peered intently at

Adeo’s black eyes. “Try to keep him conscious for the next few hours,” he said.

“But he’ll live?” I pleaded.

“No bones are broken and he doesn’t seem to be bleeding inside. He just had a bad bump on

the head and had the wind knocked out of him when he fell. He’ll live. Keep him still for a few

days, until the swelling on the back of his head goes away – and keep him away from the circus.

It’s not a place for children.” He shook his head as if wondering what could have possessed us,

and a knife of guilt sliced at my heart, as I remembered that Aurelius and I had been arguing

about who had to tend to our little boy when he wandered off and fell. I made a quick, fervent

promise to any gods who might be listening to never, never neglect him again, even for a second.

In the days that followed, Adeo slowly recovered. The severe young doctor had offered no

instructions on how to enforce stillness on a two-year-old boy who, by the next day, felt ready to

gallop around the apartment like a pony and fold himself in half trying to do a somersault. My

only desire was to hold his sweet flesh to mine and kiss his face and the top of his head over and

over, but he twisted out of my lap and pointed to the door, demanding, “Outside!”

I left our apartment not at all in those days, and Aurelius left only to bring food to us. We

amused Adeo with his wooden blocks, and with endless drawing on the little slate.

Aurelius watched intently as Adeo once again began to build a tower with the little wooden

blocks. “Look at how he learns, Leona. He tries different things, more often than not they fail,

and then he tries something else. He learns by doing the same thing over and over, each time a

different way, until he has it right. He hardly ever makes the same mistake twice.”

“I think that’s how all children learn.” I spoke with some authority, having watched the other

children at the baths and in our neighborhood.

“But how do they know what to try first? And how do they know to try a different way when

the first way fails?” That was Aurelius, still: always wondering about things that just were, that

people had no business wondering about, always wanting to know the “why” of everything.

“I don’t know,” I admitted.

“Look at the joy he takes in learning.” He smiled when he said this, but then his forehead

creased and he seemed to turn his gaze inward. “What changes a child into a reluctant scholar?”

he mused. “Why does this small child learn so easily and with so much joy, while a bigger boy

puts in his hours grudgingly?” He sighed. “I have to conclude that it’s fear of punishment. Adeo

knows that we won’t beat him if he confuses a square with a circle, where the 10-year-old

scholar knows that he will face a beating if he fails in his arithmetic or grammar, and that fear

makes him hate his lessons.”

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I could see him already preparing for our return to Thagaste, and his teaching post there, but I

had also seen in these days a new tenderness for our little boy, whom we could have lost.

Aurelius had hardly known what to do with Adeo when he was an infant, but now as a child he

had become more interesting to his father, and the days of his recovery had strengthened the

bonds of our little family. I had completely forgotten my promise to Miriam’s god that I would

become a believer if only our little boy would recover.

Finally, the swelling subsided and the bruising faded, and Adeo looked like himself again –

except for a slight crescent-shaped indentation at the back of his head. The bearded young doctor

visited again, and frowned and prodded the dent very gently. “His skull was cracked,” he said.

“In such a young child, it will probably heal completely. He’ll always have this dent.”

“Probably heal completely? Why do you say probably?” Aurelius argued. “He’s as healthy

and energetic as a young colt.”

“Later in life, a shard of bone perhaps, a brain fever…” The doctor shrugged. “Probably not.

Anyway, there’s no way to tell, and nothing to be done for it. Call him healed and thank God for

it.”

Aurelius and I both stood over Adeo’s bed that night long after he had fallen asleep. Aurelius

put his arm around my waist. I snuggled into his shoulder and now, for the first time since the

day of the accident, I let myself cry. He wrapped his other arm around me and rested his cheek

on the top of my head.

“I should have been watching him every second,” I sobbed.

“I should have, too. I’m always having a good time with my friends and assuming that you’re

watching him, as if he were only your child. I’ve thought a lot these days: I was only starting to

get to know him. I didn’t know what to do with him when he was a baby, but now…He’s a

whole separate and interesting small person and my son and I almost lost my chance to know

him. I’m going to change, Leona. I’m almost finished with school and I’ll be going back to

Thagaste to teach. I’ll be a man and I want to start acting more like a man and a father.”

I clung to him and wept harder, and he tightened his arms around me. “Shhh,” he crooned.

“It’s all right now. He’s all right.”

I raised my wet face to him. His full lips and large brown eyes were soft as he took my face in

his hands, but then his gaze grew sharp and he bent to kiss me hard on the lips. Wild with the

relief and joy of our child’s survival, I threw my arms around Aurelius’ neck and kissed him

back. His beard, unshaven these many days, was rough against my cheek, and his muscular

thighs were hard pressed against mine. He placed his hands on my buttocks and lifted me, and I

wrapped my legs around his waist, still kissing him as he carried me to our bed. Urgently,

wordlessly, without removing our tunics, we became lovers again.

Afterward, he laid gazing at me and stroking my cheek. “If only we could be married,” he

sighed.

I smiled. “We can,” I said.

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Faced with the prospect of confronting Monnica in just a few minutes, my courage wavered.