The Saint's Mistress (17 page)

Urbanus looked at Aurelius and raised his eyebrows.

Aurelius held his eyes, but I noticed his hands fidgeting in his lap. “Yes, sir, that’s true. If…if

possible…”

67

Urbanus stood suddenly and paced to the wall, his back to us. Then he spun around to face us.

“I sent you to Carthage to become educated,” he said to Aurelius, “and you return still a foolish

child.”

Aurelius’ mouth fell open and his face turned pale.

Urbanus continued, “Do you think that because I’m fond of you I will continue to fund you no

matter what you do? Let me explain to you something that I thought you already knew.” He

swept his arm around the room. “Everything we have is dependent on the Empire. Let the

Empire fail and all of our pleasures and comforts would desert us soon after, even assuming that

we survived. And the Empire is dependent on two things.” He held two fingers close to Aurelius’

face.

The Empire is dependent on many thousands of things, I thought: the peasants who grow its

wheat and olives, and its vast army of legionnaires, conscripted in these days from every corner

of the Empire except the Roman elite. But, of course, I kept this thought to myself.

“Those two things,” Urbanus went on, “are discipline and patronage. The army runs on

discipline and maintains order from Britannia to Palestine. What makes you think that no self-

discipline is required of you? We don’t marry whoever takes our fancy, like peasants. We marry

to maintain and advance our own fortunes and that of the Empire. We marry someone who can

advance our interests and the interests of our patrons. In your case, that would be me.”

Aurelius and I sat before him like two statues.

“Your mother will come around,” Urbanus said, with a wave of his hand. “Christians are all

fanatics, but her love for you and her own self-interest will win out in the end. The marriage is

meaningless, and you can still inherit as long as you worship your Mani in secret. But, you are

only half as useful to me if you are unavailable as bait to some wealthy young virgin’s influential

family. Do we understand each other now?”

Aurelius nodded. “Yes, sir.”

Urbanus looked at me for the first time. “You’re as clever as you are pretty. But, you surely

see that you can’t be allowed to ruin your young man’s prospects.”

My heart was pounding, but I had to ask, “But what about our son’s prospects as a bastard?”

“Knowing his parents as I do, I don’t doubt that your boy is extremely bright. Intelligent

bastards often do very well in the Church or the civil service,
if
they have the right patronage.

Without a patron…” He shrugged. “Are we all in agreement now?”

We both nodded.

“Good. Now, we need to talk about how you can best be of use to me.” Urbanus sat across

from us, forearms on his knees, swirling win in the goblet dangling from one hand. “I’ve

postponed some of the plans I had for Thagaste. The Empire is spread thin. It seems dangerous to

invest in a town so close to a border that may not be defensible any longer. I’m expanding my

interest in Carthage. I have a factotum there, but I need a rhetoritician, someone to argue my

cases before the courts when I have a need.”

“But, I wanted to teach,” Aureliue objected.

“Open your school. Go ahead. I’ll send you a monthly stipend. As long as my interests come

first. You will go in front of the judges or governors whenever I need you and I expect you to

make useful contacts for me. Am I understood?”

It was rhetorical question. Urbanus had already made clear that Aurelius would do what was

most useful to him, regardless of how we felt. But, I felt my heart lift. I had dreaded settling into

Thagaste, under Monnica’s disapproving eye, and with Miriam and Numa both gone there was

nothing drawing me here.

68

And so we would return to Carthage where Aurelius would represent Urbanus’ business

interests in the provincial courts, make influential contacts – and be dangled as marriage bait

before every prominent family in the province.

69

A whirligig of flying arms and legs in a cloud of dust burst through the gate. “Mama! Mama!

Look what we caught!” Adeo shouted as he skidded to a halt in front of the chair where I was

taking the sun on this pleasantly cool winter afternoon.

Eight now, Adeo was tall for his age and wiry, all arms and legs and enormous brown eyes.

He was the leader of a pack of energetic boys, most of them a year or two older than he. Two of

these trailed along behind him now.

Adeo held a basket in front of my eyes. “Guess what’s in here.”

“I can’t imagine. Will I like it?”

“No!” he announced proudly. “You’ll hate it! Are you ready?”

I nodded, and Adeo backed away from me a little, peeled the lid halfway off his basket and

peeked into it. The he held the basket in front of my face, still holding the lid partly closed.

I lowered my face to peer into the basket. A bright-green lizard darted towards me. I gasped

and Adeo slammed the lid back down.

“Did you see it? It’s a lizard! We caught it in the wadi.” The winter was yet young and the

rains were late. All the little streambeds outside the city were still dried into wadis, some muddy,

some dry as ancient bones. But water still reached Carthage through the mighty aqueducts that

snaked into the city from the Atlas mountains, a distances of over 100 miles.

“Can we have another basket? We’re going to put this one away and take the basket and try

to catch more.”

“Go up and see what you can find. Not my good willow one!” I called as he sped off towards

our second-floor apartment, taking the steps two at a time, his minions still trailing behind.

“Do you know those children?”

I turned, startled. It was Aurelius, home from school. I shrugged. “Just local kids.”

“He’s getting older,” Aurelius pointed out, frowning. When I failed to respond, he continued,

“We’ll need to start being more careful about his companions. He isn’t too young to start

meeting the kinds of boys who can introduce him to patrons, as opposed to the kind who

introduce him to lizards.”

“He’ll certainly need every advantage he can get in life,” I agreed drily. Aurelius and I had

long since reached a bitter truce on the topic of legitimizing Adeo. He claimed to want to marry

me and legitimize our son, but was constrained by his family’s and his patron’s continued

opposition. He still received no funds from his mother, and only a small stipend from Urbanus

for representing him in Carthage. We were dependent for a living on the tuition from the school

that he ran, and the parents paid only sporadically. We made do without a servant and still lived

in the same two-room second-floor apartment that we had moved into when we first arrived in

Carthage almost a decade ago. I had taken on more scribe work to supplement our income.

When Aurelius failed to rise to my bait about the advantages that he had failed to provide for

our son, I asked, “How was school?”

“Terrible!” he spat, and started pacing in front of me and running his hands through his thick,

wavy hair. He had only grown more handsome now that he was fully a man, heavier and more

muscular, even his face and his large hands firm with manly muscle, his beard so thick and black

that he needed to be shaved at the baths twice in one day.

“How can I expect them to treat me with respect when their parents don’t even respect me

enough to pay me on time?” he said.

70

I began to answer, and then realized that answers weren’t what he was looking for, as he kept

pacing and went on, enumerating sins on his long fingers. “Theo’s parents: Haven’t paid in three

months. The Lupins: wanted to know if they could give me one of their slaves in payment. Oh,

but by the way, the slave’s my mother’s age and looks 100. How clever of them to think of a way

to make the dumb schoolteacher care for her in her old age and at the same time skate out from

paying the teacher! They’re geniuses! I don’t know why they have to pay me to teach their brats

when they’re so brilliant themselves! And are you ready for what those boys did today? Are you

ready?”

I nodded, since it seemed this was the only possible response.

“They slipped senna into the water jug! All of us were running back and forth to the outhouse

all day! I almost didn’t make it once. Oh, wouldn’t they have loved that!”

Once, when I had reminded him that these sorts of pranks were exactly the kind that he had

played as a teenager in Thagaste, and that his friends had often done far worse as young

university students here in Carthage, he hadn’t spoken to me for the rest of the evening. So,

having learned my lesson about that, I chose to soothe him now. “They’re just boys. They’re

probably looking for a firm hand.”

“I know what kind of firm hand I’d like to give them. But, then their parents would accuse me

of brutality and pull them out and send them to a cheaper, gentler teacher, from whom they will

learn nothing.” He sat and sighed. “Oh, who am I fooling? They’re learning nothing from me.

Theo’s a bright boy. I see so much potential in him, but I can’t seem to bring it out. I’m

constantly distracted by keeping the other boys from either killing each other or making a

complete fool out of me.” He looked up at me. “Maybe I’m not cut out to be a teacher.”

I was so startled that I stared at him without replying.

“Amicus is coming back. He’s got a position in the civil service and his betrothed is a

Christian with contacts in the Church. He might make some contacts for me.”

Finally, I found my voice. “All you ever wanted to do was teach.”

“I don’t know what I want. I’m not making enough money, I’m not finding new patrons, I’m

not effective with my boys.” Twice in the five years since we had returned to Carthage, Aurelius

had managed to avoid betrothal to young women whose families could have advanced his career,

and my insides began to twist with the usually-suppressed fear that the next time a rich young

virgin was dangled in front of him he would not be so ready to resist the bait.

And so, even though I also worried about our limited funds and inability, so far, to secure any

kind of future for Adeo, I soothed Aurelius. “You’ve just had a bad day. Here, sit. I’ll run out

and get us a nice fish for supper, and some fruit.”

I decided that the next day I would go to the forum and work harder to earn more clients for

my scribing service.

71

The sky slowly darkened to indigo, and I shivered and wrapped my cloak closer against the

spring evening. Parents from all over the city fidgeted in the seats of the outdoor theater, each

waiting for their own child’s turn in the annual declamation contest at the open-air Mariners’

Theater. Seats rose in arc-shaped tiers surrounding the stage below. Stone masks formed the

backdrop for the stage, and, beyond that, a colonnade of cypress trees led to a small forum

endowed by the same marine traders who had endowed the theater. Around the forum, they kept

offices where they traded goods, accepted payment and booked passage for people and

commodities.

Slave children clambered up and down the tiers selling fruit, nuts and clay cups of watered

wine.

“Will it never be Adeo’s turn?” Aurelius muttered, as we listened to a painful recitation of

Terence by a 10-year-old.

“The youngest go last, and the order is chosen by lottery,” I reminded him. “Adeo must have

been unlucky in the lottery.”

Finally, the torture of Terence was finished and now our own Adeo marched on to the stage,

wearing his first off-white toga and bulla, a pouch on a neck chain the contained good-luck

amulets. Aurelius believed the amulets were nonsense, and I suspected he was right, but an upper

class young citizen should have a bulla for special occasions, and so I had used some of my

savings to purchase the toga and bulla. The money I earned copying the news gave me a feeling

of fullness and comfort. Every night, I reminded myself of my growing pile of coins in the vault

of Piso the money-changer and wriggled with contentment before falling asleep. I knew to the

copper the exact amount that Piso held for me, but seeing Adeo look like such a little man

tonight, I was not a bit sorry to have drawn it down by several denarii. It was an honor for a boy

so young to be included in the competition.

Aurelius tensed as Adeo stopped in the middle of the stage and took his first pose. I felt

twittering in my stomach, too, and took Aurelius’ hand. Adeo had only to recite a few short lines

from Cicero. I knew he had them memorized. We had practiced and practiced in the weeks

leading up to the contest. But, would he freeze and forget once he stood on a stage? Would he

stumble on his words? I wished that I had a god that I believed in. I fingered the cross that