The Saint's Mistress (39 page)

“Brothers! Sisters!” Marius cried. “These are the spies that I warned you about! Don’t listen!”

The noise from the forum below us grew into a confused roar. Marius dodged a rock and then

ducked to the floor.

As if it were happening in a dream, I saw Bishop Augustine rise to his feet, first supporting

himself by leaning on the arms on his chair, and then raising his bishop’s staff over his head.

“Get him down!” I called to Eraclius.

“Bishop, please,” Eraclius urged, “get down before you’re hurt.” Rocks were still flying

towards us, most of them missing the portico altogether, others whizzing just past our ears.

Augustine turned on him a gaze so fierce that I admit it would have daunted me also, and

Eraclius backed away, glancing helplessly me at me. A well-aimed stone grazed Eraclius’s

temple, and he staggered and raised a hand to the side of his head. I tried to rise to go to him, but

Lucy held me down in a crouch.

Augustine stood silently for a full minute, staff raised. The minute seemed long, and the rain

of rocks abated. Finally, he roared, “Be at peace and go home! Trust in God to care for the city

of Hippo in accordance with His Will!”

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The rain of rocks had ceased, but I could still hear the crowd buzzing and barking. I wrenched

free of Lucy and rose to see one of Boniface’s legionnaires knocked down and trampled by a

small mob.

Another mob of roughnecks in the middle of the crowd raised their fists and began a chant of,

“Surrender! Surrender! Surrender!” The chant fanned through the crowd, and now the rough

men who had started it spread out and attacked the rest of the legionnaires.

Horrified, I saw Augustine head down the narrow stairway that led to the street level of the

forum. I started after him, but found myself held fast again by Lucy. “You just stay here!” she

hissed, wrapping me in her work-hardened arms.

“Stop him!” I screamed at Eraclius.

Augustine was already halfway down the stairs. Bent double with his hand to his bleeding

head, Eraclius followed him.

The legionnaires were fighting back against the mob, and one sliced a woman’s head from her

body as he frantically swiped with his sword while stepping backwards to escape. He lost his

footing, and the mob attacked, one man stabbing him over and over with his own sword.

Although he himself had predicted the violence, Boniface had failed to provide enough

legionnaires to control the crowd. The small, well-disciplined contingent began to coalesce into

three knots, one on each open side of the forum. Flailing their short swords, they slowly backed

towards the forum exits. From my vantage point, it was clear that they were retreating to save

their own lives, and had no intention of attempting to put a stop to the violence that was boiling

in the crowd.

At the back of the forum, the more timid citizens escaped towards their homes, some at a run,

but the crowd in the front heaved like a stormy ocean, between the bullies spoiling for a fight and

other frantic people trying to follow the sensible souls to safety.

Augustine reached the level of the forum and slid into the crowd like a knife. Every second, I

was sure that he would be knocked to the ground and trampled to death, but with every second

that passed, he penetrated deeper into the mob, staff raised, Eraclius at his side.

The cocooning heat, the incoherent roar of the mob, and the sheer improbability of what I was

seeing, made the scene seem like a dream. Across the open space of the forum, I could see that

one small crowd had already broken into the shops at the back of the complex, and were running

off with what little loot was left in the besieged city: an alabaster jar of scent, a few pairs of

sandals, a tin pot. Some of the young roughnecks had lit torches and were already marching

down the hill chanting “Surrender! Surrender!” gathering more marchers as they went.

But as Augustine moved through the crowd, he left a wake of stillness behind him. One

ancient arm held up the staff, and with the other he made the sign of the cross on one forehead

after another, and as he did this, the crowd behind him began to melt away, first leaking and then

flooding, out the side exits of the forum. I thought this must be what it must have looked like

when Moses parted the seas. Lucy and I watched in stillness and silence.

I’d forgotten about Marius until he yanked open the door behind us and cried, “Someone help

me get the bishop inside!”

As if waking from a dream, I looked down at Quintus, unconscious and bleeding on the floor

of the portico. Marius had forgotten the hideously blinded man that he’d shown to the crowd.

The man had squeezed himself into a corner and crouched with his hands over his head. I took

him by the elbow and guided him into the church. Lucy bent to help Marius drag Quintus.

Quintus had shrunken to almost nothing in his old age, but, unconscious, he was a dead

weight, and Marius was also a small man. Lucy lifted the old bishop’s shoulders and Marius took

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his feet and they staggered into the stuffy darkness of the old temple. I slammed the door behind

us and we stood for a few seconds, dazed and panting. Just as my eyes adjusted to the darkness

and I was able to make out her face, I saw Lucy’s eyes widen. She grimaced, clutched at her

chest, and collapsed into a heap at my feet.

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My beloved friend and my oldest enemy died within a few hours of each other, as we waited

out the night inside the Mithran Temple, until we felt assured that it would be safe to travel

through the city. Augustine’s walk had calmed the crowd in the forum, but none of us knew what

might be happening elsewhere in the city and Eraclius thought it wise to wait until morning to

venture out.

Lucy died instantly, her heart stopped, I supposed, by the effort of dragging Quintus into the

church. Quintus himself faded slowly as the night passed. The stone that felled him had been

well-aimed, hitting him in the center of his forehead. Even in the dim light of the church, the

bloody depression in his forehead was clearly visible.

Augustine spent the night prostrate before the altar, and none of us dared disturb him. Eraclius

kept glancing over at his bishop, and finally whispered to me once, “He should rest. This surely

can’t be good for him.”

I agreed, but I also knew the bishop’s personality from his youth. He was stubborn and

extreme and passionately loyal to his friends. If he thought that prostrating his ancient body in

prayer through a long night was going to save the life of his oldest friend, nothing would

persuade him to do other than exactly that.

“Leave him alone,” I advised.

The blood from Eraclius’s wound had flattened the black curls on that side of his head to a

tangled mat.

“You should clean your head,” I said.

He lifted a hand to the side of his head and patted at it, as if he hadn’t even realized he’d been

hurt. He winced. “It would be a sin to waste the water,” he replied. He looked at me. “I’m so

very sorry about Lucy. I know how dear she was to you, and I had come to admire her in our

short acquaintance.”

“Thank you,” I replied. I was too weary to say more. I hurt all over from the exertions of the

siege weeks, and the night spent trying to sleep in the church. The physical pain was welcome, in

a way, because it kept my mind from the sorrow of losing Lucy.

“May I ask you something?” Eraclius said.

I nodded, but I felt wary, wondering what he would ask.

“Is it true that you were once the wife of Bishop Augustine?”

“No, I wasn’t his wife. We lived together in a state of sin for many years.” I paused, searching

my heart to know if I wanted to say more, and finding the answer. “We had a child together who

died as a young man.”

Eraclius nodded, holding my eyes. “Pardon me for asking, but there have been whispers of it

among all the clergy since soon after you arrived. You know that he wrote in his Confessions

about a woman and a son who died, and somehow it became rumored that you were the woman.

I’m very sorry about your child.”

“I still think of him every day. You resemble him. This may be one reason why your bishop

loves you so.”

“I love him.”

I smiled and nodded. “I see that you do.”

“I was jealous of you when you came. He seemed to reject me in favor of you.”

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“He doesn’t love you any less. He was used to me from when we were young. The habits that

we form in our youth are the ones that stay with us, and I think I’ve been a comfort to him in this

crisis.”

“I’m glad now that you came. I’m glad to know you.”

“And I you. When things are darkest, God always sends us the comfort of each other if we

can only see it. When I lost my son, Lucy and my old friend Miriam were restored to me. Now, I

have lost Lucy and gained you as a friend.”

A few candles that Eraclius and Marius had found flickered in the musty darkness of the

temple.

Eraclius was quiet for a moment. “In a way, we got our miracle.”

“I guess we did.”

“It was amazing how he silenced the mob and how they parted before him.” Eraclius smiled

slightly and gazed into the distance, as if he were seeing a vision.

I thought of how the young Aurelius had longed to be a leader of men, and how he had

struggled even to control a small classroom of unruly boys. “The power was God’s, not his,” I

said.

By the time the morning’s blinding sun scorched through the narrow windows of the church

and Boniface sent soldiers to escort us back to the bishop’s quarters, Quintus had taken his last

breath.

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Augustine took to his bed when we got back to the basilica complex, and Eraclius came to me

the next morning to report to me that he was no better. “He can’t move one side of his body and

he has difficulty speaking,” he fretted. “The physician thinks it’s a brain fever of some kind. Can

you come? He might respond to you.”

I knelt by his bed and spoke close to his ear. “Aurelius, can you hear me?”

He turned his face to me and fixed his eyes on mine. I saw in them fear and helplessness, as if

he would speak but had forgotten all the words he ever knew. He nodded slowly.

“Can you speak?” I asked.

“Psalm 51,” he whispered.

Eraclius and I frowned at each other in puzzlement. “Can anything be done for him?” I asked.

“The physician says he knows of nothing,” Eraclius said. “He doesn’t seem to be in pain.”

“He hasn’t been eating,” I reported. “Did you know that? He should eat.”

Eraclius shook his head, and covered his face with his hands.

“I’ll get him to eat,” I announced.

Aurelius shook his head. “Psalm 51,” he rasped. “On the wall.” He lifted one trembling finger

and pointed to the wall in front of him.

Eraclius raised his face. “I think I understand,” he said.

I copied the psalm as Aurelius had requested and Eraclius had a boy nail it to the wall in the

Bishop’s line of sight.

“Read it to me,” he whispered.

“If I read to you, will you eat?” I had brought with me a bowl of thin porridge. He turned his

fading brown eyes to me and nodded. “Read.”

I read it to him. The psalm was the 51st, King David’s tortured self-confession after Nathan

confronts him with his sinfulness with Bathsheba.

“Have mercy on me, O God,

according to your steadfast love;

according to your abundant mercy

blot out my transgressions.

Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,

and cleanse me from my sin.

For I know my transgressions,

and my sin is ever before me.

Against you, you alone, have I sinned,

and done what is evil in your sight.

So that you are justified in your sentence

and blameless when you pass judgment.

Indeed, I was born guilty,

a sinner when my mother conceived me.

You desire truth in the inward being;

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therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart.

Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;

wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

Let me hear joy and gladness;

let the bones that you have crushed rejoice.

Hide your face from my sins,

and blot out my iniquities.

Create in me a clean heart, O God,

and put a new and right spirit within me.

Do not cast me away from your presence,

and do not take your holy spirit from me.

Restore to me the joy of your salvation,

and sustain in me a willing spirit.

Then will I teach transgressors your ways,

and sinners will return to you.

Deliver me from bloodshed, O god,

O God of my salvation,

and my tongue will sing aloud of your deliverance.