The Saint's Mistress (16 page)

My stomach fluttered and my hand on Aurelius’ arm felt cold and sweaty.

We had arrived back in Thagaste that morning and were in the entrance hall of Aurelius’

childhood home, waiting for his mother to return from a trip into town. Adeo had been laid down

for a nap in Aurelius’ old room.

“Slave market today,” the servant who greeted us explained. “Your mother goes when she has

a few extra denarii and buys girls who would be sold and frees them. Then she finds a place for

them with the Christians. Your mother’s a very great lady.”

The home in which Aurelius had grown up was as small and simple as I remembered it. The

furniture was luxurious but sparse and the only ornaments were the large bronze cross on one

wall and the sunlight and birdsong that streamed in the windows.

The minutes dragged. Dust motes swirled in the buttery morning sunlight. Aurelius patted my

hand, but I could tell that he was nervous, too, because he was uncharacteristically quiet. And

then there she was.

Monnica’s face broke with joy at the sight of Aurelius, and she opened her arms. He rose to

embrace her, but I could see how stiff and awkward he felt. “Mother,” he said.

She leaned away from him and assessed the changes in him. “I didn’t think you could grow

any taller,” she remarked. Monnica was a small woman, only an inch or so taller than me, and

her son towered over her. “Safe trip?” she asked.

He nodded, and shifted his feet on the floor. Then his mother cast a sharp glance at me, but

returned her gaze immediately to her son. “Where’s the child?”

“Sleeping,” Aurelius told her.

She pressed her lips together and frowned, glancing at me again. “I hoped that we might

speak alone.”

Aurelius squared his shoulders. “Leona can be a party to anything that we have to say to each

other. She is my wife.”

Monnica’s face paled as she looked me in the eye for the first time. Then her eyes narrowed,

and she said, “It surely can’t be a legal marriage.”

“It’s legal enough for us,” Aurelius said, not meeting her eyes. I twisted the carnelian ring on

the third finger of my right hand.

“And who married you, if I might know?”

Aurelius squared himself again, as if preparing for a blow. “A priest in the Manichean rite.”

“A Manichean priest,” his mother repeated slowly, pouring herself a cup of water from a

sweating clay jug. “Not a marriage in law. And you’re not even a Manichean. This can easily be

nullified when you come to your senses, Aurelius.” She glanced at me, as if I were a mouse that

had crept into her pantry and must be swept out. “You may think you’ve tied him to you, but you

haven’t. This is completely meaningless.”

“In fact, I am a Manichean, mother.”

Monnica’s face turned pale again, and I could see her muscles tense. “Surely not,” she said

slowly.

Aurelius nodded, looking straight ahead, stiff as if waiting for a blow to fall. “Yes, mother.”

Monnica glanced at me again, as if considering placing the blame on me and then thinking the

better of it. She set down her cup and paced closer to her son. “Look me in the eye,” she said.

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Aurelius inhaled sharply and met his mother’s eyes.

“The Manichees… ” She spat the word as if it were poison. “… are worse than heretics. They

claim association with the Church to win the gullible, but they deny the Holy Spirit, they deny

the Holy Trinity, they make Satan equal to the Lord in power and they create fantastic stories

about how the world came to be. You know that this heresy is illegal?”

Aurelius stood before her, chin out. “The truth is no less the truth whether it’s legal or not.”

“The truth! You’re still a boy. You don’t know truth.”

Aurelius’ face softened, and he met his mother’s eyes again. “Christianity is a religion of

magic and miracles, mother, no less than the old Roman religion or the cults of Ammon or

Mithras.” He was going into patient teacher mode now. “The state can outlaw our way, but the

truth can never be outlawed. Our way is scientific. We can explain everything.”

Monnica was silent for a second. I saw sorrow in her face and for a moment felt sorry for her.

“Aurelius, speak with my priest, Father Bartholomew. I think he’ll very quickly demonstrate to

you the errors in your so-called explanations of everything.”

“I doubt it.” Aurelius folded his arms, then let them drop to his sides, as if not sure what to do

with them.

Monnica closed her eyes and stood for a moment with her hands folded. When she opened her

eyes, she said, “You can inherit nothing as long as you declare yourself Manichean. Heretics

cannot inherit by law. And you will have nothing from me as long as you cling to this evil. You

will not live under my roof and you will receive no stipend from me. I will pray every day for

your soul to be saved. Now fetch me my grandchild so that I can see him before you leave this

house.”

We went looking for Miriam next, but when I tried the door of her workshop, it was locked. I

ran back down the dusty stairway and into her brother-in-law’s grocery. “Xanthos, it’s Leona.

Do you remember me? I used to work for Miriam.”

“The cheese girl.” He nodded, unsmiling.

“What happened to Miriam?”

“Found a new husband,” Xanthos said. “Gone to live in the borderlands with him.” To the

south of Thagaste, nearer the mountains, lay the undefined border with the Aitheopian lands,

where trade in ivory and exotic skins took place, and where the Roman governors placed small

forts at intervals to defend against raids by Aitheopian war parties looking for slaves or gold.

“I see. Thank you,” I said. I felt a stab of disappointment not only because I had looked

forward to seeing my friend, but because I had hoped that she would have news of Numa. Now I

would have to face my father if I wanted to hear about my sister.

Aurelius sat in the forum, where Urbanus and the other town fathers had recently donated a

small outdoor bath. Adeo, naked, ran through the pool with another small child, in one of those

pointless toddler games where it’s hard to know who’s chasing whom. Everywhere he went, he

immediately made a new friend. Glistening beads of water scattered from his wet head, and his

face shined with delight as he glanced back to make sure that his new friend was still running

after him.

“Any luck?” Aurelius asked me.

I shook my head. “I have to decide if I want to know about Numa badly enough to face my

father. He might not even speak to us. Or he might want to know how many goats you’ve

brought him to pay him back for stealing his daughter.”

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Aurelius barked a short laugh. “Well, we know the answer to that now that I’m disinherited.

You’ve married a poorer man than he could have chosen for you after all.”

“There’s still Urbanus.”

Aurelius nodded. Then he shook his head once, sighed, and looked at me. “Well, what are we

doing?”

“Oh, he’s had almost three years to calm down, so I don’t think he’ll actually kill us. Let’s

go.”

As we approached the hut where I had grown up, I could see that the years of my absence had

not been kind to my family. Father had always carefully maintained our poor little home,

replacing the thatch roof yearly and rebuilding the mud walls every few years. Now, the thatch

was dried out and crumbling, and holes scarred the mud walls, exposing the twig frame.

Two figures sat in front of the hut, playing a game of nuts.

“Hello, Tito,” I said.

My brother looked up and frowned for a second, and then his face bloomed into a smile.

“Leona!” He rose and wrapped his arms around me, then presented me to his companion. “Pala,

this is my sister, Leona. My wife,” he explained to me, beaming.

Tito’s wife rose from the dirt. She was my size, barely more than a girl, and heavily pregnant.

“Welcome,” she whispered.

“And this is your man, and, oh! Two men!” Tito enthused, bending solemnly to Adeo. “How

do you do, young sir? I’m your Uncle Tito.”

Adeo giggled and slipped behind his father’s leg, peering out and giggling again.

“Where’s father?” I asked, determined to get it overwith.

Tito’s smile faded. “Oh, sister,” he said. “Oh, I’m so sorry. Our father died last harvest.”

I forced myself to feel a small stab of grief. “How?”

Tito shrugged. “One morning I woke up and he didn’t.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, as if I were comforting a stranger and not my own brother on the death of

our father.

“I’m sorry, too,” Tito said. “But, you’re here and you’ll have dinner with us. Pala, go fix us a

meal,” he ordered, waving her inside. Like father, like son, I thought. The girl lumbered into the

hut, a melon on a stick.

“Numa,” I said. “What do you hear of her?”

“Oh, Numa,” he replied, as if he had forgotten all about her until this very moment. “I heard

of her one time, right after our father died. She was well then, the mother of two boys. Twins,

can you imagine! Bad luck, the Romans say, like their Romulus and Remus, but who knows?”

Our meal was poor, just thin porridge and cheese. I noticed that Pala had a gaunt, unhealthy

look and wondered if she and the child would survive. Tito explained that the work day had been

expanded to eight hours, and the number of days owed to the landlords by the plebs had steadily

grown. The old public grazing lands had all been turned to wheat, so father’s goats had long ago

been slaughtered. Tito and Pala lived on what they grew on the small plot left to them, and

whatever the lords saw fit to share. But, they seemed not unhappy. Tito had never been dark and

dour like our father, nor angry like Maron. He had always been content with whatever came to

him, and this seemed to me a good approach under their conditions.

I noticed a twig cross hanging on one wall of the hut. “Tito? Are you and Pala Christians

now?”

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“Sure, we’re following the Way. Pala brought me over. You join the right church, you get a

little alms sometimes, too. Even if you have work, the priests sometimes help you out if you help

them.”

“What help could a priest need from you?” I spooned up a little porridge, but it was tasteless

to me. I’d become used to finer food in Carthage.

“Oh, you know, sometimes they need some big guys in the crowd when they get in an

argument with some other church. You know how that goes.”

I certainly did. “Tito, that’s how our brother died.”

“Don’t worry, sister. I’m baptized now. I’ll go to heaven and be with Jesus when I die, plenty

to eat, no work. You ought to come over. Jesus is coming back any time, real soon. You want to

be on the right side when he comes.”

We parted with hugs, and I was surprised to find myself feeling real affection for this brother

whom I had hardly missed and almost forgotten. I had associated Tito with angry Maron and our

dark, bitter father, and had forgotten his carefree warmth.

“It was good to see him,” I said to Aurelius as we walked the dusty path back to town. Adeo

rode on Aurelius’ shoulders, his head resting on his father’s black curls.

“They’re certainly in a bad way,” Aurelius answered.

“They can’t help it! The lords keep demanding more and giving less!” I tried not to remember

that one of those demanding ever more was Aurelius’ own patron, who was our next stop.

“Don’t get mad at me. I wasn’t criticizing your brother. I know it’s the demands of the Empire

that put the plebs in that state. That’s what I’m saying: how much further can it go?”

I snorted. “As far as they want it to.”

“But isn’t there some limit? Amicus thinks the Empire’s in trouble. How can they continue to

feed their city and their army if there’s some kind of famine or rebellion? Their borders stretch

across Europa in the north. Rome’s already been sacked from that direction. And look at the

southern border. The Aitheopes raid pretty much at will now. The only reason they don’t cause

more trouble is because there aren’t as many of them as the Saxons.” I thought of Miriam, living

now in that wild borderland.

I found myself echoing my father. “They’re the Romans, Aurelius. They don’t get in trouble.

They’re everyone else’s trouble.”

The contrast between my brother’s mud hut and Urbanus’ palace was disorienting, like first

waking and wondering which world was the dream and which real.

A slave brought us wine and a dish of honeyed nuts for dessert after our humble dinner with

Tito. Adeo stuffed his cheeks with the nuts until Aurelius scolded him, at which time he retreated

to a couch and fell instantly asleep, sticky flecks of nut skin clinging to his round cheeks.

Urbanus heard our story of our marriage, and Monnica’s reaction, without comment. When

we finished, he frowned and toyed with his wine glass, rings glinting on his broad hands.

“The Manichean marriage is a minor problem,” he said finally. “No one has to know about

it.”

I had grown bolder in my years in Carthage. “You don’t understand us, sir,” I said. “Since

Aurelius is disinherited anyway, we would like to be legally married as well.”