The Saint's Mistress (20 page)

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“Well, that’s flattering.” I poured him a glass of watered wine.

He scowled at me, and pushed the cup away. “It means nothing. The man is a fraud. I’m

interested in the truth, Leona, a truth that can be demonstrated logically and understood by any

honest man with a good mind. I’m starting to think that there is no such thing.” His shoulders

sagged. “I’m almost thirty. I’ve dedicated my whole life to the search for truth and ended up

wasting ten years on a belief that turns out to be just another form of magic. My school is failing.

Your news writing contributes almost as much to the household as my teaching – more, if I’m

having a bad month and more than one student decides not to pay. I can’t provide any kind of

future for our son. My best friend is dead and my other friends abandon truth for mystery and a

chance at power. My life is a failure.”

I had no encouragement to provide, because everything he had said was true. “Come to bed,”

I said finally. “It will look better in the morning.”

He shook his head. “You go ahead. I can’t sleep yet.”

I left him bent over the table, deep in thought. Many hours later, when the earliest light began

to crack the eastern horizon, I dimly woke when he finally joined me in our bed, but he did not

caress me into wakefulness and lovemaking as he usually would. As I drifted back to sleep I felt

his stiff back facing me and knew that he would not sleep at all that night.

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Adeo and the little Hebrew boy ran at each other with their sticks and then stopped a few feet

apart.

“You’ll pay the reckoning in full for all the pain my men have borne who met death by your

spear,” Adeo declaimed. Now they began to parry and thrust at each other with the sticks.

All summer, Adeo had been directing the neighborhood children in an enactment of Homer’s

Iliad, and on this Kalends of September, they had reached the climactic battle between Hektor

and Akhilleus, with Adeo playing the role of Akhilleus. Our neighborhood was poor, and most of

the children Adeo’s age did not attend school. Adeo, the only literate child in our apartment

block and a passionate fan of Homer, had begun entertaining his friends with war stories from

the Iliad, and the stories had morphed into a play that had boys and girls playing, at various

times, gods and goddesses, kings and warriors, in the pidgin of Berber and Latin that passed for

language in the poor sections of Carthage. When they felt that they had a particularly good scene

to portray, they pleaded with parents and neighbors to watch in the small courtyard of the

apartment block.

“War for the Trojans would be eased if you were blotted out, bane that you are,” the little

Hebrew Hektor cried, and he thrust at Adeo.

My mind was only half on the play that meant so much to Adeo. Since his failed meeting with

Faustus, Aurelius had been like a man recovering from a serious illness. He came home after

school and laid his books carefully on the table, instead of slamming them down and ranting

about his pupils as he had virtually every single day since our return to Carthage. He was quiet

during meals, responding mildly if Adeo spoke to him, and usually pushing his plate away before

he had eaten half of what was on it. After supper, he retired to our bedchamber with a pile of

books – Plato, the Christian Bible, his old friend Cicero – and read himself to sleep. For that

whole month, we did not make love a single time, and I had reached a state of barely-suppressed

panic.

What hold did I have on him if he no longer desired me? Finally, his mother’s words came

back to me in full force. I could be abandoned at any time. The tenuous hold of Manichean

marriage ceremony was irrelevant now that he had abandoned that sect. Legally, he owned Adeo

and could forbid me to see him. If our physical passion disappeared, then I had only friendly

affection, and our son’s attachment to me, in my favor. I suddenly felt very vulnerable, and the

money that I had slowly saved from my scribe work was little comfort.

Adeo and the Hebrew boy thrust and parried with their sticks and their words until Hektor lay

in dramatically-feigned death throes at Akhilleus’s feet, and Adeo declaimed, “Die; make an end.

I shall accept my own whenever Zeus and the other gods desire.”

The scene ended with the wailing of Hektor’s father and wife, and the enthusiastic applause of

the small audience of parents and neighbors.

Adeo ran off with his friends, and Aurelius and I trudged up the stairs to our apartment. The

evening was hot and dry, and I poured us some watered-down wine.

“I had a letter today,” he said, “delivered to the school.”

“From Thagaste?”

He nodded. “From my mother.”

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Most of the news we received from Thagaste came from Urbanus, when he occasionally

wrote to direct Aurelius to conduct some business in Carthage on his behalf. We heard rarely

from the still-disapproving Monnica. “What’s the news?” I asked.

“She and Urbanus are both coming to Carthage.”

Unease squirmed in my belly. I sat down. “When? Do they say?”

“They say at Kalends, so they should be here any day. She says Urbanus has business here.

And she says they want to talk to me about my future.”

Unease turned to panic. “They have a bride in mind for you again.”

He held up his hands in a calming gesture. “Maybe not. Maybe Urbanus knows of a better

position for me.” But I could tell that he wasn’t convincing himself either.

“They can’t take Adeo away from me. I’ll run away with him.” My heart churned with a dark

combination of mother love and wild panic.

“Leona, nobody is going to separate you from Adeo. I promise. I will not let that happen.”

I mentally calculated how much money I had saved. There was enough hidden to last me and

Adeo a few months if I ran away with him. After that, I could surely find some kind of work, but

where would I go? Why hadn’t I thought about any of this before?

“I will, Aurelius. You see if I don’t. I will go as far as I need to go to prevent them from

finding us. I will not be separated from my son.”

Aurelius’ eyes softened sadly. “Leona, do you think that little of me and of my feelings for

you? And for our son? I know it would break his heart to be separated from you. And as for

you…You’re the queen of my heart. Do you think I could bear to be apart from you? Why do

you think I’ve turned down the other noble young ‘virgins’ they’ve dangled in front of me?

Because I would rather be with you and Adeo in these two rooms, teaching in my shabby little

school. I care about only three things: knowledge, our son and you. That is all to me. I thought

you knew that.”

I started to cry, and he pulled me to sit on his lap. “I’d kill myself.” I sobbed. “Really. It

would be like ripping out my heart to be without him.”

Aurelius patted and shushed me as if I were his child. “I know. I know. That will not happen.

You have my word on it.”

In the years since we had last seen her, Monnica seemed to have faded more so than aged. Her

face was still only lightly lined and her brown hair had bleached to tan. She had grown paler,

thinner, more luminous, as if she would not die but was instead slowly being transformed into a

spirit

Urbanus, by contrast, had gained weight and did not look well. His hair and fierce eyebrows

were frosted mostly silver now, and his skin hung coarse and loose like damaged leather.

There was no question of their staying in our two rooms. Urbanus and his knob-kneed teenage

son, Licentius, had taken a vacant apartment in a building that he owned, and Monnica had a cell

in a nunnery nearby.

Monnica’ eyes filled with tears upon meeting her grandson for the first time in six years. She

held him by the shoulders at arm’s length. “A gift from God indeed,” she admitted, “so like your

father. I understand you’re a scholar of Homer and a winner of prizes for your oratory. Tell me.”

And in the easy way that he had with almost everyone, Adeo sat down with his grandmother,

who five minutes ago had been a stranger to him, and described to her the oratory contest and the

summer’s performance of the Iliad. I felt, all at the same time, jealous, threatened, tender and

proud.

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I ordered a light lunch and some wine to be brought in, and we spent the afternoon catching

up on Adeo’s development and events in Thagaste, Carthage and the Empire. An observer who

didn’t know any better might have thought that I was Aurelius’ legal wife, Licentius his

awkward younger brother, and Monnica and Urbanus both doting grandparents to Adeo.

But, when evening came, Monnica and Urbanus took Aurelius and Licentius to Jupiter’s

Palace for dinner, leaving me and Adeo. The look that Aurelius gave me as he left our apartment

was meant to be reassuring, but looked pleading and helpless to me.

He returned very late, closing the door quietly and tiptoeing past Adeo’s pallet to our bed.

“I’m awake,” I said as he crept into bed. “How could you think that I could sleep?”

He took off his cloak and sat on the bed to remove his sandals.

I sat up. “Well?”

“As we expected, they have found another likely wife.”

“And?”

“And…” He pressed his lips together and looked away from me. “And, a minor position with

the Imperial civil service … back in Thagaste.”

“You’ve told them no before.”

“They haven’t threatened to cut off all my funds before.”

“You mean Urbanus will no longer fund you either?”

“Will no longer help fund my school. Will no longer give me commissions for arguing his

cases in Carthage. That’s right. Cut off.”

My heart started to pound and a storm whirled in my brain. “We can get by without his

money. I can take on more clients.”

“Leona, my school is barely profitable now. Without the backing from Urbanus, it will lose

money. You’d be supporting us.”

“I’ll do that. You can find something else.”

He was silent.

I rose from the bed and stood. “You can’t be considering this.”

Aurelius still failed to answer, staring towards the window, one sandal in his hand.

“You can’t take Adeo! I told you I wouldn’t let you take him from me! I’ll run away with

him. Do you hear me? You will not take my son!” I bent to look him in the eye.

“Leona, please calm down. You’ll wake him. Listen to me. Nobody is trying to separate you

from Adeo.” He paused. “They’ve found you a husband, too.”

“What?” The storm in my head gathered violence.

“In Thagaste, so you could be nearby and see Adeo regularly.”

My eyes widened. “You cannot possibly be serious.”

“According to Urbanus, the man remembers you from when you lived in Thagaste and is

interested enough in your charms and in the dowry that Urbanus is willing to put up for you that

he will allow you a continued relationship with Adeo.”

“Allow me,” I said quietly, then more loudly, “Allow me? And for how long? And for how

long will you and your mother and your patron continue to ‘allow’ me? Do you think I’m

stupid?” I leaned towards him again, so that my face was right in front of his. “Listen to me. I

will never agree to this. Never. I will not be married off to some ancient pig that your mother

chose for me.”

Aurelius continued to stare down at the sandal in his hand, and didn’t answer me.

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I started pacing. “Oh, and how are you feeling about this? You seem perfectly fine to me.

Looks to me like it’s okay with you if I’m gotten out of the way by being married off to some

filthy old goat that your mother picked for me, while you get the rich young virgin with the

honeyed thighs. Is that it? Maybe you’re tired of me and this is just a good excuse to get rid of

me.” I started to cry. “Your mother said this would happen.”

“There is another way,” he said.

I raised my face, waiting.

Aurelius stood and finally looked me in the eye. “I had a letter a couple of weeks ago from

some friends of Faustus, offering me a chair at a small university if I want it.” He shrugged and

one side of his mouth folded into a wry smile. “Faustus himself recommended me. Apparently,

he liked me more than I liked him. ”

I looked at him without answering and he went on. “I would not have considered it, and was

ready to send a reply turning down the position, but now… I feel false accepting help from the

Manichees, and I suppose they expect that I will teach their philosophy in addition to rhetoric

and oratory, but I guess I can’t afford my principles now.” He ran one of his big hands over his

weary face. “And, too… The position is in Rome.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “Leona,

I’ve always been afraid of travel by sea.”

It felt to me that the storm inside me had ended suddenly, but left devastation in its wake. I

stared at him. “Rome.” The word was lead.