The Saint's Mistress (35 page)

too much.”

“Loved him too much?” It seemed a nonsensical statement to me. He was our child.

“The Lord demands that our love be all for Him, Leona, and that we love each other as an

expression of that, unselfishly. I loved Adeo egotistically. I was proud of him.”

“And you think that’s why God took him from us? To punish us for that?” This same notion

that had so tortured me in the first months after Adeo’s death now sounded childish and

simplistic, and I observed dimly that Aurelius could still manage to annoy me with his

theorizing, even at our advanced ages.

Auurelius’ long face creased into a gentle smile. “No. To be merciful to us. To remove the

one obstacle to our loving Him first and foremost.”

And how could he still do that to me as well, after so many years: confuse me with a

completely unexpected statement that I would have to ponder for days to even begin to

understand?

He sighed. “How strange that we have all lived this long, you and I and Quintus, when all my

longing is for heaven and my body is shriveled and broken.”

“Mine, too.”

He shook his head. “When I look at you, I see you as you are today, shrunken and dark and

wrinkled. We’re raisins, Leona, and soon we’ll be dust. But, I also see you as the beautiful young

girl you were, and I think that is how our Lord can see us, now I think about it. He sees our sinful

selves and at the same time He can see us as he meant us to be: beautiful not in our bodies but in

holiness. I think you’ve just inspired next week’s sermon. Always my muse.” He smiled faintly,

but then turned serious again.

“Leona, I’m glad to see you this last time before we both leave

this earth. I pray every day for God’s forgiveness for leading you to sin when you were a girl.

My life’s work is to save souls, and I led yours into sin and I am as grievously sorry as it is

possible to be.”

I couldn’t find it in myself to claim to be sorry, although I knew I should be. I said nothing.

“Well, as you can see,” he said, “I’m no danger to you now, nor to anyone in that regard. Old

age has finally done for me what all my good intentions could never do: I am completely chaste,

both in body and in mind. And so you and your party are welcome to stay here as long as needed,

and your virtue will be in no danger.” His ancient eyes sparkled with amusement at his own

infirmity. “May I ask you to do me a favor?” he asked.

“Certainly.”

“I must meet now with your bishop and with General Boniface, who is responsible for the

defense of the city. Will you come with me and make notes of the meeting discussion? In all

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these years, I’ve never met anyone whose notes are better or whose hand is clearer. You got me

through university, remember?”

“I think you’re remembering wrong, but I’ll be glad to help you. My eyes are still clear and

my hand is still steady.”

As we walked down the narrow hallway I felt at relaxed and at ease until we entered the

bishop’s office and I saw Quintus and Marius sitting at the meeting table, looking clean and well

fed. Beside them sat the priest Eraclius and a square-shouldered, scar-faced man, with his long

hair caught back in a tail in the fashion of the barbarians. I thought this must be General

Boniface.

Quintus reached for my hand and squeezed it. “You’ve arrived,” he said fervently. “Thank

God.”

I was startled by his concern. “Yes. We made it in just behind the army.”

“Yes, yes.” He grasped my hand harder and looked into my eyes. “Did you bring the relic?”

“The what?”

“The relic. Saint Perpetua’s milk. You brought it?”

“No. I thought you took it when you left.”

“You were to bring it,” Marius argued.

“I?” I lowered myself into the chair beside Quintus.

“Yes, you,” Marius replied. “When we were in the bishop’s office and you were so insistent

on staying behind, you said you would bring the relic.”

“Why would I bring it? You were the ones who took the other treasures from the church. The

bishop was the one who cared about it so much. Why leave it behind for last with me?” I

suspected that Marius had just forgotten it and then convinced Quintus that I had agreed to be in

charge of the vial.

Quintus’ face crumpled. “The people believe the relic will save us.”

“What people?” I asked.

“Every church in Hippo is packed with refugees,” Marius replied. “The bishop and I have

travelled around the city and brought comfort to them. The bishop has shared with many the

hope of Saint Perpetua.” He looked away from me.

I felt myself flush. “These people don’t need 200-year-old dried up breast milk. They need

food and some kind of work to do to keep their minds off their terror.”

“Are you questioning that the relic can work miracles?” Marius snapped.

“I’m saying that it is irrelevant, since we don’t have it here with us.”

Marius rolled his eyes. “Thanks to you.”

We all looked at Bishop Augustine. His eyes rested on me with amused pride, and I felt like

his young pupil again. “We should think,” he said, “about what will bring the lambs to the

Shepherd.”

We waited while he paused to gather his thoughts. “Our goal should be the eternal salvation

of the souls under our care,” he went on. “We must do everything we can to keep Hippo from

falling under the control of the heretics. And so I think we had better hear from the General on

the topic of the defense of the city.”

“Pardon me, Bishop,” Eraclius put in, “but should the woman be here while we discuss these

matters?”

“Sister Leona is my scribe from many years back and I asked her to join us to take the notes

of the meeting,” Bishop Augustine explained.

Eraclius flushed as if he’d been slapped.

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“You’ll be useful in other ways,” his bishop assured him, and turned to Boniface. “Tell us

what we must do to defend our city, my old friend.”

Boniface still wore his dusty, blood-stained battle tunic. He stood to speak. “The horde is over

80,000, but not all of them are fighting men and not all of them will besiege Hippo. We went up

against about 20,000, and I estimate that that is the number they will send to besiege us. They

can last a long time. The winter wheat is ripening in the fields, and in the fall they will have our

fruit and our olives. We have the port, but they can still be resupplied by sea if needed.”

“And we can as well, no?” Bishop Augustine pointed out.

“As long as we continue to control the port –
and
if we can get word to Rome or Carthage
and

if they choose to help us. We shouldn’t count on that. Food should be rationed immediately.

Hoarding should be punishable by death.”

Bishop Augustine looked around the room. “Agreed?” When no one objected, he said to

Boniface, “Make it so right away. What else must we do?”

“During our retreat, we burned as many fields as we could, and I’m sending out details today

to burn what’s closest to the city walls,” Boniface continued.

“But why not bring it in for food for the city?” I cried.

The General glanced at me, but then spoke to the men. “Because there isn’t time, and burning

is a quick way to deny it to our enemies. What’s more, it clears some of the area so that we can

watch their movements. I’ll schedule watches on the city walls 24 hours a day. When they try to

build their siege works, they’ll have to be out in the open and then we can start picking some of

them off. I’ve brought catapults. We can bathe them in fire if they try to attack. If we have

enough food we can probably hold out for quite some time unless…How much water is in the

cisterns?”

“As much as usual after the winter rains,” Eraclius replied. “Enough to last the summer if the

aqueduct keeps flowing.”

Boniface rubbed his chin. “And how long if not?”

Nobody responded. Eraclius blanched and looked down at his hands.

Boniface strode to the window, where the aqueduct was barely visible in the distance. “Our

greatest danger will come when Genseric severs our aqueduct – as he surely will. We’ll be

completely dependent on the cisterns then until next winter’s rain.”

“Then water must be rationed also,” Bishop Augustine said.

“Yes,” Boniface agreed. “The baths should be closed right away. I’ll put my engineers to

work diverting as much water as possible from the aqueduct directly to the cisterns, so that

they’re filled to capacity.”

“How much time do we have?” Augustine asked.

“We were two days march from here when they routed my army and we marched hard to get

here. Their vanguard can’t be more than a day behind us.”

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The first thing that Vandals did was torture their captives. Some of the soldiers that Boniface

had sent to burn the fields, along with a few farmers and their families, had been caught outside

the city walls and taken captive, and were made examples of what might befall all of us if we

failed to immediately surrender the city. These people were staked out in the fields directly

outside the city walls and left to die of starvation and exposure in full view of anyone who dared

to climb to one of the parapets.

The bodies were returned to us, in pieces, via catapult. Lucy and I were witnesses to one such

horror, one day early in the siege as we walked uphill towards the forum to take a little precious

bread and cheese to Rufus and his sons for lunch. I caught it first out of the corner of my eyes: a

dark object hurtling through the sky overheard, plummeting to the ground at the feet of a woman

and her small child, landing with a heavy squish like a ripe melon.

The woman screamed and her child started to cry. At their feet lay the rotting head of one of

the tortured captives, darkened by exposure and decay, tattered from the attentions of the birds

and now flattened and oozing from its sudden contact with the stone street. The child stood

crying, and the rest of us stared in horror for long minutes until someone had the presence of

mind to fetch a slave to remove the mess. Only then did I think to say a prayer for the soul that

had once inhabited the remains.

When we reached the forum atop the higher of Hippo’s two hills, we had a view of the

Vandals, swarming over the blackened fields that Boniface had burned, hammering on their

siege engines.

The forum was busy, too, ringing with the sound of heavy mallets on marble. By the time we

found Rufus, dust coated our skin and clogged our throats.

Rufus set down his mallet and wiped sweat from his forehead with one sleeve. “The General

wants all the pagan statues turned to rubble,” he told us, taking the lunch from our hands and

sharing with his boys. “He’s using it to reinforce the city walls. They say we’ll start tearing down

buildings next. Sure will be easier than breaking up this marble. Although we keep hearing

rumors that we’ll soon surrender.”

I shook my head. “Don’t believe it. The General and the Bishop are determined to hold out

through any length of a siege.”

He glanced around and lowered his voice. “There’s a lot of complaining that maybe the

General and the Bishop don’t always hear.”

I waited for him to go on.

“A lot of people aren’t happy about the General taking control of the all the warehouses and

livestock. They think that he just wants to make a profit for himself on it.”

“The guilds were already doing that,” I replied. “The General and the Bishop seized the food

supply to put a stop to it and make sure that there would be enough for everyone.”

Rufus wiped sweat from his face with a dusty hand. “I’m just telling you what people are

saying. And I can tell you, too, that lots of the common folk listen when they hear talk that we’d

be better off to just hand the city over to Genseric.”

“You can be sure that Bishop Augustine will never allow the city to be handed over to

heretics. And, remember, Rufus, Genseric surely sent spies into the city ahead of his army. The

whisperings about surrender could be coming from them.”

“I know, I know. I’m just telling you what I hear – since you have the bishop’s ear.”

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“If we all keep our heads and we ration food and water, we can last out a siege,” I said. “Pass

that around, if you would.”

“I surely will, Mother.” He popped a last bite of cheese into his mouth. “Well, back to the

work of destroying the old gods.”

“Is it true?” Lucy asked me as we left Rufus to his work. “Will the food and water really

last?”

“The water should last until the next fall rains, if we’re careful, and as for food … General

Boniface is hoping for resupply by sea by then.”

“Someone should organize the food distribution to make sure it’s fair,” she pointed out.

“Yes, someone should, and I already have someone in mind to suggest to the bishop.”