The Saint's Mistress (19 page)

seek Him.”

He was just starting to pace the room, when a young priest in a long black tunic came in. He

was so comically ugly that even Quintus was handsome beside him: bulbous nose, bulging fish-

like eyes of a muddy hazel shade, and a row of teeth that looked meant for some much larger

mouth.

“Brother, thank you for coming,” Quintus said.

The priest quickly embraced Quintus and then lost no time in hurrying to Amicus’ bedside

and removing from the pouch at his waist vials of oil and water. “Can you confess your sins?” he

whispered to the sick man.

Amicus raised his head from his couch and opened his mouth to speak, but only gasped and

was overcome by a fit of coughing.

The priest waited for the coughing to subside, and then took Amicus’ hand. “Never mind,

then, brother, don’t speak. Only confess your sins to your Father in your mind, and squeeze my

hand when you’ve finished your confession.”

Amicus lay back and closed his eyes. I felt tears stinging my own again. Oh, Amicus, of all

our friends your confession would be the shortest, I thought. I recalled that he alone had stood

against Quintus and Nebridius and their
eversore
pranks, when even Aurelius had one foot in

their cruel and petty way of life. I remembered his courage on the day when I first met him and

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Aurelius, and his reassuring presence on the awful day when Adeo had his fall, and I began to

sob aloud.

Now the priest began his baptismal rite. “Do you believe in God the Almighty Father?” he

whispered. “Only squeeze my hand for yes, friend.”

“Do you believe in the Messiah Jesus?”

Quintus intoned, “I believed in the Messiah Jesus, His only begotten Son, Who is ruler over

us, Who was born of the Holy spirit and of Mary, the virgin, who was crucified under Pontius

Pilate and was buried, and on the third day rose from the dead, Who ascended into the realms of

Heaven and sits at the right hand of the Father, from where He will come to judge the living and

the dead.”

“Do you believe in the Spirit?”

“I believe in the spirit, who is Holy, one holy Church, forgiveness of sins and the resurrection

of the flesh,” Quintus said.

The priest shook one of the vials, sprinkling water first on Amicus’ forehead and then down

the length of his body. “I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son and the Spirit,” he said.

He dipped his thumb into the vial of oil and made a sign of the cross on Amicus’ forehead.

I saw Amicus turn grateful eyes to the priest, and hoped that the Christians were right, that we

would see him again with the Messiah in some far off heaven. The room was silent for a moment

except for the scraping rasp of Amicus’ breath and the smaller sound of my own weeping. I saw

Quintus’s shoulders shaking soundlessly.

“I see that you’re a Christian,” the priest said to me, nodding to the cross that Miriam had

given me almost ten years ago.

I felt embarrassed. “No, I… This was just a gift from a friend.”

“Oh,” he said. “I was hoping we could all pray together.” He nodded towards Quintus. “Let’s

you and I pray as Christ taught us.”

The cross had never left my neck since Miriam had placed it there, and I occasionally fingered

it when I had some kind of trouble in case it had some kind of special power, and only rarely did

I guiltily remember my promise to become a believer if only the Christian god would heal Adeo

from his fall. Now I felt sorry that I didn’t know the Christian prayer to offer for Amicus, who

had always been my friend. I stood sobbing as Quintus and the priest said their prayer.

“Our Father, Thou who are in the Heavens

Thy Name be honored;

They kingdom come,

Thy will be done,

As in Heaven so on earth;

Give us this day our daily bread,

And forgive us our debts,

As we also forgive our debtors,

And do not lead us into temptation,

But deliver us from the evil one,

For to Thee belong the power and the glory into the ages.”

As they ended their prayer, I moved closer to Amicus’ bedside and began to bathe his face

with cool water. He opened his eyes and his face flickered into a blue-lipped smile. His eyes

urged me to come closer, and I leaned towards him.

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“Tell Aurelius,” he rasped, and then paused to gather his strength for the rest. “Seek the One

True God,” he finished, and collapsed into a weak, rattling cough.

Time seemed to stop in the room now. At some unnoticed point Nebridius had arrived, and I

don’t know how long the four of us stood vigil listening to the soft rasp of Amicus’ breathing.

Every third or fourth breath, he would labor to take a deeper inhale, and his chest would jerk

slightly and then collapse. His breath slowed and softened, until finally he took one of his jerky

inhales and then we no longer heard his hoarse breath.

We stood for a minute, no one wanting to be the first to admit that he was gone. It was the

priest who finally approached the bedside, felt for a pulse and announced, “He’s gone from us.”

Nebridius and Quintus embraced and sobbed like little boys. I sat on a couch and held my

face in my hands. Now, finally, Aurelius swept into the room. When he saw us crying, he

stopped and the question appeared in his face.

I nodded.

Aurelius hurried to Amicus’ couch and lifted one of his arms. Then he held Amicus’

shoulders and gazed at him intently as if to verify that the corpse was really his friend’s. And

finally, he knelt with his face on his friend’s shoulder and cried with the rest of us.

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Before Faustus could deliver his lecture, he had to break out of prison.

The ban on non-Christian religious gatherings was enforced erratically, depending on which

generals and imperial officials were currently in residence in the city, whom they owed favors to,

and what level or target of persecution might serve their own political ends. Within Christianity

itself, one sect or another might find themselves persecuted one year and favored the next.

Arians, Donatists, Caecelians and Gnostics found their fortunes changing depending on who was

in power.

Faustus had the misfortune to arrive in Carthage while the intolerant Bishop Parmenianus still

held power, but he was fortunate in that the bishop was also in need of money to build a new

basilica and many of Carthage’s Manichees were wealthy merchants with the means to pay

several substantial bribes – which ultimately persuaded a guard to look the other way while

Faustus left his cell with some followers who had arrived to bring him a light meal of almonds

and melon.

The agreement with the bishop included a stipulation that Faustus would leave Carthage

immediately, without delivering any lectures or holding audiences with any of his followers, but,

within hours of his jail break, word went out to the most prominent Manichees in the city that the

great man would deliver one lecture before his escape from the city, with an audience afterward.

Aurelius was one of those who received the invitation.

He put on his new cloak for his meeting with Faustus: saffron-colored, trimmed with dark-red

lozenges around the border. I had ordered one made exactly the same for Adeo and it delighted

me to see them walk together wearing their matching cloaks, two dark heads, two determined

strides, Adeo’s legs pumping faster to keep up with his father’s long ones.

He fastened the cloak at his shoulder with a carnelian brooch made to look like a bunch of

grapes.

“How do I look?” he asked me.

“Like you should be the emperor,” I answered, and it was no exaggeration. To me, still, he

looked like he should rule the world, with his firm gaze, his prominent nose and his commanding

height.

He laughed and kissed me, running his hands lightly down my hips and making me shiver.

“The truth means more to me than empires. This will be a great day for me – and for my

students. I can feel it, Leona. I’ll have answers. I wish I could have persuaded Nebridius and

Quintus to come with me. Even more, how I wish Amicus …” He shook his head and stopped.

“Nebridius and Quintus are new converts. They don’t want to hear anything that might feed

them new doubts.”

“The truth should never be feared.”

I shrugged. I had been surprised by how the Christian priest himself had handled Amicus’

lifeless body; every priest of every religion I had ever heard of considered it a defilement to

touch a corpse, but the ugly young Christian brother had treated Amicus’ body with reverence

and a kind of tenderness, tending to it himself instead of leaving the task to a slave. I had been

astonished, too, that rich and poor alike were buried in the Christian burial grounds, regardless of

ability to pay. True, the poor were simply wrapped in a shroud and put in the ground with a

wooden marker, whereas Amicus lay in a brick sarcophagus, but I had never known the corpses

of the poor to be treated any way except to be burned or to be tossed into a dump far out of town

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where they were subject to rot and raptors along with the animal carcasses and other garbage.

But, Aurelius responded to any favorable remark about Christian practices with the same

disparagement about mysteries and miracles. His response to any questioning of his own beliefs

was also always the same: that Faustus could explain everything scientifically. I was excited, too,

about his meeting today with the great man. It was an honor, and signified the respect that the

Manichean elect of Carthage must have for Aurelius as one of their most eloquent apologists.

He kissed me again, quickly. “All right, then, I’m off. Don’t expect me until late.”

From our window, I watched him march down the street, always confident and purposeful,

always in a hurry.

It was very late when he returned. Adeo had pleaded to be allowed to stay awake until his

father got home, but had long since fallen asleep sitting at our table over a book. He was too big

now for me to carry him. I had to lift under his shoulders to get him to his feet and then drag him

along to his bed. He was almost as tall as me now, lean and muscular like his father.

My eyelids felt gritty and heavy and I was just getting ready to give up myself and go to bed,

when I heard Aurelius’ tread on the stairs, slower and heavier than usual.

I stood when he entered the room, eager to hear about his meeting, but something stopped me

from asking. He shuffled into the room, head down, shoulders hunched, and he closed the door

quietly, as if the room held a sick person who might be disturbed by the noise of a door against a

jamb.

I sat back down at the table. Aurelius sat across from me, hands folded on the table, head

down at first. Finally, he raised his eyes to me.

“How did it go?” I asked.

He didn’t answer for a few seconds, only stared into space with wounded brown eyes. “Not as

I expected.”

I waited for him to continue. He looked at me again and went on. “At first, I let myself be

convinced that Faustus was all that I had been led to believe. When he began repeating the same

stories that I already knew, I told myself that he was just setting the background. And then,

finally, later in his lecture, he got to the part that interested me: the scientific explanations – and

at first I tried to convince myself that it sounded implausible because I didn’t have the mental

powers to understand.”

He paused. “But, then … Cicero has a better explanation of eclipses than Faustus. And I knew

that Faustus’s explanation made no sense, and I thought, well, it’s just that, anybody can be

wrong about one thing, but it made me listen more carefully. And I saw then that he wasn’t really

proving anything. He was just telling the same stories, only he was telling them more

beautifully.” Aurelius paused again and smiled wryly. “I don’t know much, but I know good

oratory when I hear it. He’s a master of that, but…Well, I still wanted to believe that he was all

that he claimed and so I took advantage after the lecture of the opportunity to question him. I

asked him how some of his claims were proven. I asked specifically about the eclipses, and cited

Cicero. And do you know what he said?”

I shook my head.

“He said we just had to take it on faith!” He leaned back in his chair and spread his hands.

“Well, that’s exactly what my mother says about Christ’s resurrection and the miraculous

healings. That’s not science!” He snorted a bitter laugh. “Anyway, he was impressed with me.

He told me my questions were good, and flattered me with all he’d heard about my skills as a

teacher and a speaker, and spent a long time with me, explaining his views further.”