The Saint's Mistress (25 page)

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“I haven’t said that at all. I only said you make it hard. Can’t you show any sympathy at all

for my position?”

“Get out!” I screamed. I whirled, looking for something to throw at him, and my eyes lit on an

alabaster jar of perfume. I flung it, and it flew within inches of his temple and shattered against

the wall, spilling its musky scent through the room. “Get out of here!”

“No man should have to endure this much misery,” Aurelius muttered, right before he

slammed the door behind him.

I prayed until it was no longer night, but my snarled feelings of panic, rage and lust would not

leave me.

101

The November wind blew through fish alley like a broom, sweeping before it the dried leaves

and bits of bone and broken amphorae that littered the corners and carrying a decaying, salty

smell that reminded me of Carthage.

The last time I sent Calla into town to shop for food for the household, he had spent every

coin that I sent him with and still come back almost empty-handed. He whined that the shops

were nearly empty and prices had gone up on what little was available, but Monnica implied that

I allowed the servants to take advantage of me, and goaded me into coming to market to see for

myself.

In the weeks since Monnica’s arrival in Milan, we had reached a tense peace. She was warily

pleased by my acceptance of Christ, and we attended church together on Wednesdays and

Sundays, but she was constantly interfering in my management of the household, and Aurelius

spent as much time as possible away from the house, so that he and I seldom even spoke to each

other. Nothing more had been said about Adeo’s education. The subject lurked at the back of my

mind, dark and heavy.

I had done no better today at the market than Calla had done. Only salted fish was to be had,

or tough mutton, and at prices that amounted to robbery. At every shop, the muddy-eyed

Milanese clerks shrugged and blamed the shortages on the Barbarians camped 100 miles north of

Milan at the foot of the Alpine Mountains. They had arrived during the harvest, just in time to

drive up the price of bread and firewood and everything else, by carting off what they could steal

and burning what they couldn’t. And they had skulked there ever since, like a cloud hovering

over the city threatening deluge.

I drew my cloak around me and put my head down into the wind. Never would I get used to

the Italian winter. I thought longingly of the cool, damp African winter. The winter months in

Milan felt as hard and dry as iron, all the moisture sucked into the snow-capped mountains. The

cold settled like a weight or sent blades of wind that cut through the dark, winding alleys,

whipping faces and slashing at legs.

I was grateful to see my front door, and delivered my meager harvest to the kitchen without

comment, then went to the sitting room. Aurelius sat on a couch, chewing his lip over a scroll,

and glanced up when I entered the room.

“Come and sit by me,” he said.

I hesitated, and he said, “You don’t need to be afraid of me. You’re not that irresistible.”

I sat next to him.

“Leona,” he began, “we need to talk about Adeo’s future. We’re thinking of sending him to

Rome to school.”

I leapt from the couch. “By ‘we,’ you mean your mother, of course. I knew it! There’s no

reason for him to go to Rome. Milan is the capital now, and he already has good teachers right

here! And he has you!”

He spread his hands. “Leona, you and I both know that I’m not a good teacher for Adeo. I

love him too much. I become emotionally involved and press him too hard when patience is

needed, or I pity him too much when I should press him. I can never get it right. It will do him

good to leave the womb of his family. You and my mother both indulge him too much. He’ll

grow soft.”

“And speaking of your mother…” I spat.

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“She and I have talked about this, yes.”

“Oh, what a surprise.” I rubbed my hands together. The northern chill easily permeated the

stone walls of our house and our slaves had laid only a small fire, to conserve wood.

“Leona, she loves him, too.”

“And she hates me. She’d do anything to separate us. Sending her grandson away to a strange

city must not seem too high a price to her.”

“You’re not being fair. My mother is a thorn in my foot, too, but she loves Adeo, and she’s

had only this little bit of time with him. If she wanted to be selfish, she’d keep him here, just as

you would. But he is at the age when he should be educated away from home. I was sent to

school in Madaura when I was his age. And my mother doesn’t hate you.”

I snorted and walked to the fire to warm my hands.

“Think of what’s best for our son,” he urged.

“He’s only 11.”

“That’s not too young to start making the right connections. Bishop Ambrose knows

influential people in Rome. He can open doors for him. He’s already spoken with the master of

one of the best schools in the city and Adeo can have a place.”

“So, it’s already been decided, and all wrapped up like an eel from the fishmonger and tied

with twine. Why even consult me? Why not just send him away in the middle of the night some

time?” It was especially bitter to me that Monnica had swept into town, befriended the very

bishop who had baptized me, and conspired with him to remove my son.

“Because you are his mother. I watched you bring him into the world, remember? I watched

you nurse him through the plague. I know he’s all the world to you. I wouldn’t let him leave

without giving you your chance to say goodbye. You know this is right for him, though. Look

into your heart.” He stood and joined me by the fire.

I glanced into my heart and didn’t like what I saw, so I quickly slammed it shut again. “So,

it’s all decided?”

“He leaves as soon as the roads are safe.”

I knew what he meant: when the Barbarians retreated back behind the Alpine Mountains. As

long as they lurked in the surrounding countryside, it was too dangerous for anyone to travel. I

began to cry into my hands, and Aurelius wrapped his arms around me, kissed the top of my

head, let me weep into his shoulder.

Milan waited and waited, like a host dreading a demanding dinner guest, but the Barbarians

never came. They melted back over the jagged mountains that separated sunny, civilized Italy

from their own cold, wet, savage lands. Nobody expected that they would fail to return. They

would spend the winter wrapped in their filthy animal skins huddled around the open fires in

their damp, miserable huts, eating our grain and olives and plotting what they could steal from us

as soon as the weather improved again. They were hardened to suffering, where the Italians were

softened by luxury. The Roman legions were drafted now almost exclusively from the lower

classes and the conquered lands.

With the roads safe, Aurelius determined that the time had come for Adeo to be sent to school

in Rome.

The trees still held a few golden leaves, wrapped in cold, translucent cloaks of fog on the

morning when I bid my boy goodbye.

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Monnica rose early, too, to see her grandson off, wrapped in a woolen cloak and still

shivering. “How does anything survive in Italy?” she complained. “This horrible cold! It seeps

into your bones.”

“This isn’t even cold yet,” I warned her. “It’s only November. January and February are the

worst.”

She widened her sleepy eyes for second, then turned away, waving a cloak-shrouded hand as

if I must surely be joking.

Adeo was to travel with a group of priests on their way to Rome. Four bodyguards traveled

with them. The trip to Rome would take five days, over stone-paved, relatively safe roads. Still, I

knew that I wouldn’t sleep until I knew that he had arrived safely.

How handsome he looked on that misty morning, already taller than I, still slender at 11 but

showing every indication of becoming a large, physically powerful man like his father. He had

Aurelius’ big, long-fingered hands, too big right now for his slender adolescent body so that they

looked like paws and constantly bumped into things. I had been impatient sometimes with his

clumsiness and coltish energy. Now tears came to my eyes at being parted from him. His dark

eyes stared eagerly ahead under his heavy black brows. He wanted to be off.

Monnica tucked something wrapped in cloth into his saddle bag. “A treat for you for on the

way,” she said, patting it. “I can’t believe I found one in the market. I saved it for you.” She

reached her arms up to receive his goodbye, and he hugged her and pecked her forehead. I hung

back, waiting my turn, suddenly shy with my own son.

He stepped away from his horse through the mist, arms open to me, smiling patiently as if he

were already a man. I flung myself into his arms, my tears soaking the front of his robe. I inhaled

his smell of apples and wood smoke and clean young skin. My fingers dug into the muscles of

his back.

He patted my back. “Mother, don’t cry,” he pleaded. “I’ll be back. And I’ll write you letters.”

I nodded, unable to speak through my tears.

“Mother, I have to go.”

I pulled myself away from him and tossed my head to shake away the tears. Holding him at

arm’s length, lips compressed against my sobs, I drank in my last sight of him for I knew not

how long. “I love you,” I quavered.

“I love you, Mother. I’ll be back,” he said firmly, as if to a child.

He turned to his father and they kissed ceremonially, one cheek and then the other, gripping

each other’s shoulders. How alike they looked, one just a larger and more powerful version of

the other. “Safe trip,” Aurelius said, clapping Adeo on the shoulder.

Adeo stepped up on the block and swung his leg over his horse’s back as if he’d been born to

it. “Goodbye,” he called to us in general and he turned with his party and they began to clop

down the road south out of Milan. The fog muted the sound of the horses’ feet on the

cobblestones. Aurelius, Monnica and I stood and watched them, waving, until the mist closed

around them.

104

Monnica settled with a deep sigh in front of the sitting room fire. “No wonder these people

took over the world,” she remarked. “It gave them the chance to live elsewhere than in this

godforsaken place. I can’t remember the last time I saw the sun. When does it come back?”

“We’ll start seeing it a little in a few weeks, but it will be April before it’s sunny every day

again,” I told her.

We had taken a house on a hill, which had seemed a good idea in the summer, when the sun

was a bronze shield and even the buzzing of the bees was lazy. Now, in February, we had come

to regret our location. July’s gentle breeze was January’s icy blade, slicing through every crack

and cranny of our stone villa.

Monnica suffered the most. Nearly 50, she retained much of her pale beauty. Her brown hair

was frosted here and there with strands of gray, but her lips were still full, her teeth still whole.

Her ivory skin was only faintly lined and freckled, where many women her age were as brown

and wrinkled as raisins.

She was thin, though, from fasting, and her bones ached from the cold. She spent mornings in

her bed chamber, praying for an hour and then calling her personal servant to bring her a

breakfast of bread, milk and, when it was available, fruit. It was near noon most days before she

ventured into the family rooms, feet buried in sheepskin slippers, a wool cloak wrapped around

her shoulders.

She sighed again, and patted the couch beside her. “Sit down.”

I sat warily.

Monnica gazed into the fire, not at me, as she spoke. “I have a proposition, and I don’t want

you to answer right away. I want you to think first, and I want you to know before I say my piece

that I love you as a fellow Christian and the mother of my grandson.” She sighed a third time and

now she looked at me. “I have found Aurelius a wife. Now, don’t say anything, just listen. This

is a marriage that can be extremely advantageous to him. The young lady’s family are very large

property owners in the north of Italy. Aurelius has nothing. I maintain some acres of my own that

I can leave for Aurelius if he ever accepts the Church, but his brother has inherited their father’s

land in Thagaste, and Aurelius is completely dependent upon his own labors for a living. He’s in

favor right now with the current powers, but these Romans…Someone else could be in power

overnight. He needs land, he needs some independent means of support, and Adeo will need the

same in his turn. I thought he was meant for the Church. I still think so, and I pray for it every

day, but … He’s not practical. He claims to be so stubborn about the truth, when the truth has