AD 307-12
In all the years I had travelled about the Empire as Constantius's wife, I had never been to Italia. I had yet to see Rome, but Maximian's new city of Mediolanum, on the north Italian plain, was said to be nearly as magnificent. Today, with the streets newly washed by the spring rains and every archway garlanded with flowers, I could well believe it, as the masters of the Empire attempted to forge yet another alliance by the marriage of Maximian's young daughter Fausta to my son Constantine.
They had been betrothed in the year Constantius became Caesar. At the time, Fausta was only an infant, and in the long years when Constantine was hostage first to Diocletian and then to Galerius, it would have surprised no one if the potential relationship had been forgotten by everyone, including Constantine, except that I was beginning to realize that Constantine never forgot anything he had claimed as his own. I hoped that self-interest would dispose him to affection, and the fact that Fausta had grown up as his intended wife would incline her to respect, though it was asking a great deal to expect much companionship in the mating of a girl of fourteen with a man of thirty-five.
Certainly the past nine months had been bewildering. Although the troops, led by Crocus, had hailed Constantine as Augustus, he had deemed it more politic to claim no more than the rank of Caesar when he informed Galerius that he had a new colleague in rule. Meanwhile, Maximian's son Maxentius had decided to follow his example, and Maximian himself had come out of retirement to help him. They were all calling themselves Augustus now.
I would have been quite content to wait at the palace, but Constantine insisted that all his family, including the half-sisters and brothers, Theodora's children whom we had brought with us from Treveri, should ride in the procession. And so I was seeing Mediolanum from the vantage of a triumphal cart, garlanded and gilded and shaded with pink silk which clashed with the purple palla I wore, though I trusted that it flattered my complexion.
From the sound of the cheers, Maximian and Constantine, riding together, had passed through the triumphal arch leading to the main square. More cheering behind me proclaimed the advent of the bride, riding in a chariot drawn by four milk-white ponies which had been fitted with wings, so that each resembled a miniature Pegasus, her face hidden by the flame-coloured silk of her veil.
I still did not know whether Crocus's acclamation had taken Constantine by surprise, or if he himself had planned it. In retrospect, it was inevitable that Constantius's oldest son should claim the imperium. If he had not done so, I suppose Galerius would have made some pre-emptive strike against him, and why should I blame my son for doing what he had been conceived and born to do?
In fact, Constantine had acted with wisdom and decision, establishing himself in his father's capital, Treveri. So far as anyone knew, to rule his father's territories was the extent of his ambition, and now everyone was courting him.
There were days when it all seemed like some dream. With Constantius I could have enjoyed all this, but I had trouble believing I belonged here, with a son I loved but hardly knew. Still, I had rented out my house in Londinium and brought all the household to Treveri, where Brasilia took charge of my kitchens and Vitellia the management of everything else as if they had been born to live in palaces. I missed my students and Katiya and my other friends in Londinium, but Constantine's enthusiasm was infectious. Constantius had done his duty, but Constantine enjoyed the exercise of power.
My head was beginning to ache from the clamour by the time we reached the palace, and I was more than ready to sit down on something that did not move. I could see Constantine eyeing the marble facings in the hall as if he were considering copying them for his new basilica. They were magnificent—pink and grey polished slabs laid in patterns on the lower walls and the floor. But though the building itself was impressive, a close examination made it clear that it had been put back into use rather hastily. The long tables so beautifully swathed in brocade were plain wood, and the fittings where tapestries should have curtained the windows were still bare.
The richly-dressed guests who sat at those tables did not seem to notice. Crocus was there, with two of his senior officers, and a rotund little man called Ossius who was the Bishop of Corduba. Though the wedding had been a traditional Roman affair, Constantine had asked the bishop to give it his blessing, which had no doubt pleased the Christians here.
Nonetheless, once the sacrifices had been made, the omens read, and the marriage contract signed, the feast to which we sat down was memorable, even if the little bride had not yet lost her puppy fat and was unbecomingly flushed—with excitement, I hoped, not with wine. Fausta had fine reddish hair, to which her maids had given rather too much curl, and grey eyes. When she grew into her looks, she might be handsome, but for now, her cheeks full of sweetmeats, she brought to mind a bright-eyed squirrel.
During one of the breaks in the entertainment when the guests were milling about, Constantine made his way to my couch.
"My darling," I gazed up at him, "you outshine your bride!" Surely no woman had ever been blessed with such a splendid son. On this day, all my sufferings seemed justified.
Constantine grinned. His cream-coloured tunic of Eastern silk was bordered and banded with gold that set off his burnished hair. "She is pretty enough when she is not laden with ornaments like a heifer at a festival. But it is true that she is still very young. Will you rule my household, Mother, until Fausta is old enough for the job?"
I pretended to think about it, but he knew I could not refuse, and he seized my hand and kissed it when I smiled.
"And there is another request I would make of you, even dearer to my heart," he paused, as if searching for words. "When I was in the East, I formed a… connection… with a woman named Minervina, and two years ago she bore me a son."
I lifted one eyebrow, understanding why he might feel unwilling to bring up the subject, when from his point of view this Minervina's story sounded so much like my own.
"And what have you done with her, now that you have a legitimate bride?" I asked tartly, and saw the betraying flush stain his skin.
"She died of a fever a year ago," he replied with some dignity. "I had no choice but to leave the boy with his uncle when I escaped Galerius, but now I have sent for him. His name is Crispus, mother. Will you take charge of him for me?"
"Pater families," I teased him gently. "You are taking all of your relatives under your wing. Did you dislike it so much that I was not able to give you sisters and brothers of your own?"
For a moment he looked confused, then he gave me the sweet smile that I remembered from the days when he was a boy. A grandchild! I was surprised at how that thought excited me.
"Never mind," I said then, "bring your little lad to me. If he smiles at me like that I am sure I will love him well."
"Avia! Avia! See—Boreas will jump for me!"
I turned, smiling, as the golden-haired boy held up the branch. The male greyhound puppy, one of a pair that Constantine had recently sent to me, leapt over it, and the female, Favonia, gambolled around them, barking.
"They are still young, my love—do not make them too excited," I warned, although in truth it was as much the nature of a puppy to live in a state of excitement as it was for a little boy.
Crispus was curious about everything, and charmed everyone. Constantine never spoke of the boy's mother, but it was clear that she had had the raising of the child long enough to give him a certainty that he was loved. Even Fausta, though she was more of an age to be his sister, played with him like a doll and swore that she would adopt him as her own.
In the three years since Crispus had come to Treveri I had become accustomed to the cry of 'Avia!', 'Grandmother!' It seemed to me sometimes during these first years of Constantine's reign that I had lived three lives, and the third was the happiest of all.
In my first, I had been a maiden of Avalon, struggling to survive Ganeda's hostility and come into my own power. The second had given me the joy of a woman's fulfilment and the pain of a woman's passions, but even during the years when we were apart, like a flower forever turning to the sun, my identity had been determined by my relationship to Constantius. But now my body had found a new equilibrium, no longer at the mercy of the moon, and I had a new existence as Empress-mother, the most unexpected identity of all.
Tiring of his play, Crispus came running up to climb into my lap, and the dogs, panting, flopped down beside us. I popped a candied fig from the painted plate on the bench beside me into the boy's mouth, and cuddled him against my breast.
For the first time in my life I had no need to practise economy, and I had servants in plenty to do the actual work of the imperial household. I was free to spend most of my time with Crispus, who had all his father's brilliance, and, as it seemed to me, even more sweetness, though that may have been the partiality of a grandmother, who can afford to love her grandchildren more openly because their success or failure does not so directly reflect upon her own.
"Tell me a story about when Pater was a little boy!" mumbled Crispus through the fig.
"Well—" I thought a moment, "when he was your age, he loved figs, just like you. At that time we lived in Naissus, and we had a neighbour who was very proud of the fig tree in his garden. Now we also had a dog called Hylas who loved fruit, and would even climb trees to get at it. So Constantine made a muzzle for Hylas, and very early one morning he dropped him over the wall into the neighbour's garden and encouraged him to climb the fig tree and knock the ripe figs down. Then he nipped into the garden with a basket and gathered them up and took them into the playhouse he had built in our garden to eat."
"Did he eat them all?" asked Crispus. "Didn't he give the doggie even one?"
"Oh yes, and smeared fig around Hylas's muzzle as well, and when the neighbour discovered his loss and came over, shaking his fist and demanding that we punish our son, Constantine pointed to the dog and swore by Apollo that Hylas had done the deed, which was, of course, true. When the man didn't believe him, he insisted on going to the fig tree and letting Hylas climb it again, and this time of course he was not muzzled, and managed to grab one of the figs he had missed before."
"What did the neighbour say?"
"Well, first he wanted us to destroy the dog, but he settled for a promise that the animal would be prevented from ever getting into his garden again. So we swore by Apollo as well, and paid the man the worth of the figs in silver, and he went home."
"I'm glad the dog was safe," said Crispus. "But didn't Pater get in trouble?"
"Oh yes, because, you see, Hylas had been trained not to climb that wall. Constantine thought he had been very clever, until we explained the difference between being truthful and being honest, and made him help our gardener dig the flowerbeds until he had worked off the price we paid."
I saw the child's eyes grow round as he contemplated the idea that his father had once been less than perfect. In recent years, Constantine had developed a distinct taste for splendour, and I thought it would do Crispus no harm to realize that his father was human too.
If I had a worry, it was the continued political turmoil as Constantine struggled with his competitors for supremacy. I had no real doubts that he would eventually triumph, for was he not the Child of Prophecy? Still, I waited eagerly for my son's letters, and finding in his mother his safest confidante, Constantine wrote to me often.
When Crispus jumped down to go and play with the dogs some more, I took out the latest letter, sent from somewhere near Massilia. After the wedding, Maximian had quarrelled with his son and for a time taken refuge with us. Galerius, having failed to rectify the situation by force, had made another treaty and installed a man called Licinius to replace Severus, whom Maxentius had executed.
And now Maximian, who in my opinion was showing signs of senility, had seized the treasury and dug himself in at Massilia, after first having written a letter to Fausta proclaiming that soon he would be the sole ruler of the West once more.
Constantine was at that point reviewing troops on the Rhenus, and Fausta, who idolized him, had promptly written to inform him of what was going on. By now, Constantine might be fighting his father-in-law. We had received no word since this letter, written from the temple of Apollo at Grannum, where Constantine had stayed three nights before.
"Grannum was on our way, and so I took the opportunity to sleep overnight in the shrine there. And the god gave me a dream. Apollo himself came to me, attended by Victory, and offered me four laurel wreaths. Perhaps you will know how to interpret this portent better than I, but I believe that each one represents a span of years during which I will reign. The Almighty Sun has always favoured our family, and so I claim His protection. If Apollo gives me victory in the coming conflict, I will inscribe "soli invicto comiti" on my next issue of coinage in His name. Pray for me, mother, that I have dreamed true, and will indeed gain the victory…"
A sound, like the distant murmur of trees in a storm, caught my attention, but there was no wind—the sound was coming from the city. The gardens attached to the palace were extensive. If I could hear noise from the street beyond our gates, where the new basilica rose above the trees, it had to be loud. I felt my gut tensing as I rose to my feet, but I folded Constantine's letter carefully and slid it into the bosom of my gown where it bloused over the waist cord.
Crispus and the dogs were still chasing each other around the garden. If it was good news, I told myself, I could wait to hear it, and I had no need to hurry sorrow if it was bad.
Yet it was not some dust-coated military messenger, but Fausta who came running out of the palace as if the furies were at her heels. The cramping in my belly tightened as I saw her face contorted and her cheeks smeared with tears.
"Mater! Mater! He killed himself, and it is my fault!"
Abruptly my own terror eased. My son believed in his destiny too strongly to take his own life whatever disaster might befall. I took the girl in my arms and held her until her sobbing eased.
"Who, Fausta? What has happened?"
"My father—" she wailed. "They caught him at Massilia and now he is dead, and it is all because I told Constantine what he wrote to me!"
"Your duty was to your husband, you know that," I murmured, patting her, "and Constantine would have found out soon in any case, and the end would have been the same." It was a very convenient suicide, I observed silently, wondering if Maximian had been given assistance in expiating his crime. Gradually, Fausta's sniffles ceased.
"Mourn for your father, Fausta, for in his day he was a great man, and he would have hated to live until he was feeble and old. Wear white for him, but do not let your eyes be red and puffy with weeping when Constantine comes home."
She nodded. Constantine liked to have everyone happy around him. I wondered sometimes if the uncertainties of his childhood had given him this desire for a perfect family, or whether he simply believed it necessary if he was properly to fulfil his role as Emperor.
When Constantine was at home, it was his custom to sit with me for an hour at the end of the evening. We would speak sometimes of the family, and sometimes of the Empire. I suppose that I was the only advisor whom he could trust absolutely, but even to me he rarely opened his mind completely. I regretted sometimes the loss of the open-hearted boy he had been before he went to Diocletian's court, but I knew that innocence would never have survived the dangers and intrigues that surrounded an emperor.
I had a small sitting room between my bedchamber and the gardens, with doors that could be opened in the heat of summer, and a hearth in the British fashion for the days of winter and autumnal chill. Now, at the end of summer, I sat by the fire with my spinning. The work was no longer the necessity it had been at Avalon, but I found it focused and calmed the mind.
"How do you make the thread so fine and even, Mother? No matter how long I watch you, when I try the wool always breaks in my clumsy hands!" Constantine sat with his long legs stretched out to the fire, his deep-set eyes half-closed as he watched the spindle turn.
"It is a good thing, then, that you were not born a girl," I answered, catching the spindle with my foot as I paid out more wool from the distaff and adjusted the tension. Then a deft twist set it spinning again.
"Oh yes," he laughed. "But the fates, who have laid out my course from the cradle, would not have erred in so fundamental a matter. I was born to be Emperor."
I raised one eyebrow. There was something a little disturbing about such certainty, but I could not dispute what I also believed to be true.
"And to father a dynasty? Crispus is growing to be a fine lad, but one son is not much of a family. Fausta is nineteen now, and ripe to be bedded. She will get into mischief if you do not give her children."
"Has she been complaining?" He laughed. "You are right, of course, but I will sire no more offspring until I can be sure of being at home often enough to supervise their upbringing. The death of Galerius has upset the balance of power. I have reason to believe that Maximin Daia has made an alliance with Maxentius. I myself have been in communication with Licinius, who also claims the East, and offered him the hand of my sister Constantia."
He gave me a quick glance, as if wondering how I would take this mention of his half-sister, but I had long ago accepted the fact that Constantius had asked Constantine to watch over the children of Theodora. Her birth might have been better than mine, but it was my son who was Emperor.
"So, the lines have been drawn…"
"Maxentius has defaced my statues. He says it is in response to my treatment of the images of his father Maximian, but Maximian died a rebel, whereas I am supposed to be Maxentius's brother-emperor. I will have to go against him, and soon, before snow closes the Alpine passes. It is as good an excuse as any."
"If the rumours that I have heard are true, the Senate will applaud you. He has made free with too many patrician wives and daughters, and imposed too many taxes. But do you have the forces to match the men he has added to the Praetorian Guard, and the troops brought over from Africa?"
"In quality—" he grinned whitely. "In quantity? No, but I am the better general. Superior numbers will not matter if they are not led well."
"May the blessing of all the gods be with you," I said, frowning.
The last of the laughter left his face. "If I knew which god could guarantee me victory I would promise him a temple—I would make his cult first in the Empire. I must fight Maxentius, and it must be done now, but you are right in thinking that the result will hang upon the favour of heaven. Pray for me, Mother—you have the ear of the gods!"
"You are always in my thoughts and in my prayers," I answered when the silence threatened to go on for too long. I loved Constantine. He was the centre of my life. But there were times when he seemed to need more than I understood how to give to him.
The next day he was gone, to gather his faithful troops from the Rhenus, I assumed, though no announcement had been made that might warn his enemy. Later I was to learn that Maxentius, anticipating some move from Constantine, had entrusted the defence of the north to Ruricius Pompeianus, staying in Rome himself in case Lieinius should finish dealing with the Persians in time to attack him. But at the time I was unable to appreciate even what news we had, for Crispus had taken some illness from the gardener's children, and though he recovered quickly, I, who had been nursing him, contracted it myself.
First came the red rash, and then the fever, that seemed to burn in my very bones. If this was a disease we had in Britannia, my upbringing on Avalon had sheltered me from it. And as often happens when an adult catches a childhood disease, I became far more ill than Crispus had been.
I lay in alternating stupor and delirium as the month of October drew to its end. In my moments of clarity I heard the names of cities: Segusio, Taurinorum, Mediolanum, and later, Verona, Brixia, Aquileia, Mutina. Afterward, I was to learn that they were the towns Constantine had taken. By refusing to allow his soldiers to plunder the first of them, he had won the swift surrender of those that followed. But I was fighting my own battle, and as the days passed, I sensed that I was losing.
Events around me passed like a troubled dream, but in that in-between state in which I hovered, neither the world of humankind or the spirit world, I sensed the tides of the seasons swinging onwards towards Samhain, when the Britons hold that the old year ends and the gestation of the new begins. There comes a moment, then, when a doorway opens between the worlds and the dead return.
A good time, I thought dimly, for my own passing. I regretted only that I had no chance to say farewell to Constantine. Yet it was not my life, but an era, that was ending, though it was to be many years before I clearly understood the signficance of that Samhain-tide.
A day came when the fever rose once more, and my spirit, freed from a weakening body, fared forth between the worlds. I seemed to see the land laid out below me, and love carried me eastwards where my son was about to come to grips with his enemy. I saw a great city beside a river which I knew must be Rome. But Maxentius's forces had crossed the Tiber upstream from the city, and were drawn up in formation, facing the smaller number of troops led by Constantine. Winter was coming early, and in the crisp air the sun seemed to shatter, sending a refraction across the horizon that rayed out in a cross of light.
Constantine's forces charged the enemy, his Gallic cavalry evading the more heavily armed Italian horse and overwhelming the lightly-armed Numidians. I could see Constantine in his golden armour, and his bodyguard, all with a Greek Chi Rho painted for luck upon their shields.
Maxentius's Praetorians died where they stood, and the remainder broke and ran. The bridge cracked beneath the sudden weight, spilling men and horses into the swift grey waters. The attackers swarmed after them, repairing the damage, and by sunset they were entering Rome.
As shadow swept across the land I also fell into darkness. The disease had run its course, but I was dreadfully weakened. I would eat and drink when they roused me, but most of the time I slept. Sometimes, half-conscious, I would hear conversation around me.
"She grows no better," came the voice of the Greek physician. "The Emperor must be told."
"We dare not distract him. If Constantine is defeated, none of our lives will be worth a denarius. Maxentius will treat us as Maximian did the wife and daughter of Galerius." That was Vitellia. She sounded as if she had been weeping. I wanted to tell her that Constantine had triumphed, but I could not make my body do my will.
"Even if we sent a message now, my lord could not come in time," said Fausta. She was Maxentius's sister, and might expect to be spared if he triumphed, unless he blamed her for the death of their father. The early emperors had not hesitated to kill their own kin. Why should I fight my way back to life in a world where such things could be?
But by the next morning a messenger had come to confirm my vision, and in the general rejoicing, little Crispus slipped into my chamber, and as he hugged me, laughing for joy at the news and weeping to see me so thin and pale, I felt a pulse of strength leap from his strong young body to mine, and knew that the gods were not going to take me this Samhain after all.
It was past the feast of Saturnalia when Constantine returned to Treveri. By that time I was recovering my strength, with only an occasional shortness of breath to remind me of my fight to breathe, but my hair, which until now had shown only a few strands of grey, had gone white in the course of my illness. I trusted that it would distract him from noting any other changes, for I had not allowed them to tell him how close to death I had come.
I chose to receive him in my sitting room, where the reflected light from my red-painted walls would give me a healthier colour. Even so, I was glad to be sitting when he came to me, for the aura of power that blazed out around him was like the blast of heat from a roaring fire.
"Hail Sol Invictus! You are surely the sun in his splendour now!"
I lifted a hand, in welcome, or perhaps to ward him away, for in that moment he was a giant, dwarfing all else in the room. Later, when I saw the statue that he had commissioned in Rome, whose head alone was the height of a tall man, I realized that the sculptor had sensed the same quality of something beyond the scale of humanity as I.
Constantine grinned, bent to kiss me, and then began to pace around the room, as if the power that filled him would not let him sit still. He did not comment on my appearance; perhaps he was still too transfixed by his visions to really focus on the outer world.
"Oh Mother, I wish you had been there, for surely the God of Light was with me on that day!" He took another turn around the room and came to my side once more.
"I have heard there were many signs and wonders. What happened, Constantine? What did you see?"
"Oh yes, now they are all saying how my victory was foretold, but at the time the prophets on both sides were predicting their sides would win. The Sibylline Books prophesied that an enemy of Rome would perish on the day of the battle, and of course Maxentius said it must be me, and the astrologers were muttering darkly about a conjunction of Mars, Saturn, Jupiter and Venus in Capricorn. But I am the Child of Prophecy, and I knew how to make even my enemies serve me!"
I gazed at him in wonder. Constantine had always been confident, but now he spoke with the fervour of a priest in trance.
"Maxentius had become a tyrant, and Rome was bound to see me as a liberator. He was on the bridge when it collapsed, and the weight of his armour drew him down into the mud and he drowned. As for the stars, the night before the battle I dreamed that a shining figure showed me a scroll with the Greek letters that the scribes use to signify a passage that is good, and told me that was the Sign by which I should conquer. When I woke, I told the fabricators to affix the Chi and Rho to a military standard, and my guard, to draw the Sign on their shields, and then the sun rose and divided in a cross of light, and I knew I would have the victory. Sopater believes that I saw Apollo, but Bishop Ossius assures me that my vision was given by the Christos."
"And what do you believe?" I asked him then.
"The Jewish Jesus, whom we crucified, is a god for slaves," said Constantine. "But the great Father whom the Christians worship, the King and Creator of all the world, is the same as the god of the philosophers, and worthy to be patron to an emperor. I do not think it matters what name folk use for Him, so long as they recognize that One God is supreme in the heavens and on the earth, one Emperor."
"The Senate may have acclaimed you as senior Augustus," I observed gently, "but in the East, Licinius still rules, and is about to become your brother-in-law…'
"That is true," Constantine frowned. "I do not know how the god will arrange matters, but in my heart, I know that what I have said is true. It is my destiny."
"I believe you," I said softly, for in that moment, with the last of the winter sunlight bathing him in a golden glow, he did indeed seem touched by a god. And surely, after the civil disorders of the past years, a single strong hand on the reins of Empire would be welcome.
The prophecies of Avalon had foretold a child who would change the world, and with every year it became clearer that Constantine was the one foretold. My rebellion had been vindicated. I wondered why I still felt that flicker of unease even as I rejoiced in my son's victory.
The spring that followed was one of the most beautiful I could remember, as if the entire world were celebrating Constantine's victory. A goodly mixture of sun and rainfall brought out the flowers and the winter wheat produced an abundant harvest.
I was in the garden, talking with the man who took care of the roses, when Vitellia came running out of the palace, clutching a scroll, her cheeks streaked with tears.
"What is it?" I cried, but as she drew closer I could see that her eyes were shining with joy.
"He has made us safe!" she exclaimed. "Your son, blessed by God, has preserved us!"
"What are you talking about?" I took the piece of papyrus from her hand.
"This comes from Mediolanum—the Emperors have made a policy regarding religion—"
I pulled open the scroll, scanning the words that referred to the earlier edict of toleration of Galerius and adding to it:
"… to no one whomsoever should we deny liberty to follow either the religion of the Christians or any other cult which of his own free choice he has thought to be best adapted for himself, in order that the supreme Divinity, to whose service we render our free obedience, may bestow upon us in all things his wonted favour and benevolence."
The paragraphs that followed restored to Christians the property and freedoms that had been taken in the persecutions, stipulating that all cults should have an equally free and unhindered liberty of religion. No wonder Vitellia was weeping, I thought then. The shadow that had hung over her and her church was lifted, and the Christians might now emerge to stand beside the followers of the traditional religions in the blessed light of a new day.
I had not seen such recognition of a Truth that lay beyond cult or creed in all my years among the Romans, whose gods seemed to vie for the favour of their worshippers like magistrates at the elections, or the philosophers, who denounced other schools as errors, or among the Christians, who simply stated that all other religions were wrong.
This recognition of a Power in whose light all faiths might stand as equals reminded me of the teachings I had learned as a child on Avalon, and at the thought, I found my own eyes filling with grateful tears.
AD 316
To sit on the shore at Baiae was like being in the heart of the sun. Light reflected with blinding intensity from the white sand that bordered a bay whose waters glittered a clear azure only a shade darker than the blue of the sky. To a child of the north, this light was overwhelming, banishing every darkness not only of the body but of the soul. As I lay upon the couch on the terrace, set between the sea and the freshwater bathing pool, I could feel the heat baking out the agues that a winter in Rome had set in my bones.
It seemed to me that the anxieties of the past few years were dissipating as well. There were still those who challenged my son's authority, but he had proven himself a brilliant general, and I no longer doubted that one day he would rule supreme in the Empire.
For several years the imperial household had been settled in Rome. But the great city, which was plagued by a raw chill in the wintertime, was just as bad in the summer, when a damp, sticky heat blanketed the seven hills. Fausta, who was now in the last moon of her first pregnancy, had complained that the heat was stifling her, and so I had brought the imperial household here, to the palace the Emperor Severus had built beside the Bay of Puteoli in the gulf of Neapolis fifty years before.
Fausta lay on a couch beside me, with two slaves to fan her and a sunshade to protect her fair skin. But I had only a hat to shade my eyes. To me, the heat everywhere in Italia was equally intense, but on the coast the air had a purity that invigorated even as it overpowered, and so I spent most of my time in the sun, listening to the sigh of the glittering wavelets on the shore.
An occasional shout of laughter came to me from the bathing pool, where Crispus was playing with the sons of noble Roman families who had come along to bear him company. If I turned I could see the flash of their smooth young bodies, gilded by the sun. Crispus was fourteen now, big-boned as his father, with a voice that was, most of the time, that of a man. By the time my son turned fifteen he had already been at the court of Diocletian for two years. Every year that Crispus remained with me was a blessing, as if the years during which Constantine had been lost to me were being restored.
Of Constantine himself I saw little. The defeat of Maxentius had made him undisputed master of the West. Licinius was now his brother-in-law, but the pact the two emperors had made did not last long. Within two years they began a series of conflicts that was to continue for a decade. Still, my son now felt secure enough to take Fausta to his bed, and at the age of twenty-three she had become pregnant at last. She swore it would make no difference to her affection for Crispus, and indeed, she had adopted him as her own child as well as Constantine's. Still, I could not help but wonder if her attitude might change when she had a child of her own.
The noise from the pool crescendoed as the children began to climb out, glistening in the strong sun. Boreas and Favonia, who lay sleeping in the shade of my couch, lifted their heads to watch, feathered tails beating gently against the flagstones. Slaves hurried forwards with towels to dry the boys, while others brought out trays of fruit and little pastries and pitchers of mint-water chilled with ice brought all the way from the Alpes and stored in a deep cellar, wrapped in straw. Brasilia would have snorted at such extravagance, but she had died the year after Constantine's great victory. I missed her plain cooking, surrounded as I was by all this luxury.
Still laughing, Crispus led the others to the terrace and I sat up, smiling as the dogs fawned at his feet. As he grew, he was coming to resemble his grandfather Constantius more and more, save that where my beloved had been so fair of skin he burned at the slightest touch of the sun, Crispus had inherited his mother's complexion, and the sunshine that bleached his hair only turned his skin a deeper gold. Save for the towel slung over one shoulder, he was as naked as a Greek statue, trained muscles rippling, as beautiful as a young god. But he is only a boy—I told myself, surreptitiously flexing my fingers in a sign against ill-luck, irrationally afraid that one of those deities might hear my thought and resent it.
I have been among the Romans too long, I told myself then, for the gods of my own people were not so prone either to lust for mortals or to jealousy. Nonetheless, Crispus was approaching that age which in these southern lands was held to be the apogee of splendour. Fausta was watching him with an appreciation as great as my own, and I found myself suppressing a shiver.
"Avia, Avia! Gaius says that the lake on the other side of the hill is the place where Aeneas descended into the Underworld. Let's get up a party to go look for it. We can take a lunch, and picnic on the shore, and read passages from the Aeneid. It will be educational."
"Who will read them?" Fausta laughed. "Not Lactantius!" She tried to sit up, but the great round of her belly prevented her, and she held out a hand so that her maid could help her.
I smiled. The eminent rhetorician had in later life become an ardent Christian and had recently been sent by Constantine to become his son's tutor. The Emperor had made it clear that the Christos was now his patron deity, and those who wished to rise at his court had found it in their interest to become Christian too. So far he had not insisted on a formal commitment from his family, though we were expected to attend those parts of the services open to the uninitiated. I missed Vitellia, who had gone back to Londinium to rebuild the church there in honour of her nephew.
"Do not be so sure!" retorted Crispus. "Lactantius is a great admirer of Virgil, and says that he is one of the virtuous pagans who predicted the coming of our Lord."
"Then I suppose he will not forbid the expedition," I put in. "Very well. Let us plan to set out early tomorrow, so as to arrive before the heat of the day."
Somewhat to my surprise, Lactantius not only made no objection, but decided to come along, a scroll of the Aeneid firmly in his hand. Fausta remained at the palace, resting, but the old man and I travelled in litters, while the boys rode little surefooted donkeys from the nearby village up the winding path. A waggon full of picnic gear brought up the rear.
Even in the north of Italia I could find scenes that reminded me of home, but here I knew I was in another land, where the heated air was fragrant with the scent of artemisia and the perfume of the flowers that grew in such profusion in the rich volcanic soil. As we reached the top of the hill above Baiae I called for a halt to rest the bearers and the donkeys and turned to gaze out over the brilliant blue waters of the bay to Neapolis and the perfect cone of Vesuvius beyond. Today no smoke curled from its summit, though the slopes of Vulcan's forum, a half-day's journey away, steamed with a variety of foul smells. They called this place the 'Fields of Fire', and I could sense the earth-fires below the surface, a constant reminder that nothing was eternal, even the solid ground beneath our feet.
Then we were jolting our way down towards the round blue mirror below. The white columns of the healing baths built on the shore by the first emperors gleamed in the summer sunlight, but we halted in a shady grove in the lee of a hill, and the slaves began to lay out our meal. The boys were already running about, dashing down to test the water, daring each other to dive in.
"Are you sure this is really Lake Avernus?" asked Crispus as Lactantius and I settled ourselves in wicker chairs. "Look, birds are flying across it without harm, and though the water smells a little stagnant, it did us no harm."
"Virgil must have known it was all right," said one of the other boys. "They say that Julius Ceasar himself visited those baths."
"Well, perhaps things were different when Rome was founded," I said, smiling. "After all, it was over eight hundred years ago. And this is bright summer, remember. In the winter, with a storm coming on, this place might look much more menacing."
"But where is the 'wide-mouthed cavern' of which Virgil tells us?" asked Crispus.
"Perhaps there was once a chasm which has now closed," answered Lactantius, "for they say that this is a land of changes." He stretched out one arm in the pose of an orator. Even in this heat he wore a I long robe, and with his white beard flowing over his chest, looked the part of an ancient sage as he unrolled the scroll and began to intone:
"There was a wide-mouthed cavern, deep and vast and rugged, sheltered by a shadowed lake and darkened groves; such vapour poured from these black jaws to heaven's vault; no bird could fly above unharmed …"
"And when the ground begins to shake, it was an earthquake and not Hecate coming at all?" asked Crispus.
Lactantius nodded, smiling. "Such evil spirits are no more than dreams and delusions, made demonic by men's fears. When the earth shakes, it is by the will of the Lord God who made it, but it was necessary that Aeneas, who lived long before the light of the Christos came into the world, should be led to found Rome."
"Yet Virgil himself was a pagan," I observed.
"He was," answered Lactantius, "but so noble in soul that the light of God was able to reach him, as it did so many of our greatest poets, men of the highest genius. Seneca and Maro and Cicero, of our own Roman writers, and Plato and Aristotle and Thales and many another among the Greeks, all touch upon the truth at times, and only the custom of their times, which insisted that God was not One, but many, caused them to continue to honour false gods."
"If there was a chasm here, perhaps it closed when Christ was born," said young Gaius, whose father was one of the few senators who had converted wholeheartedly to the new religion.
"Indeed, it might be so," said Lactantius approvingly.
By this time, the food was ready and the boys, who were at that age when a meal was always welcome, were attacking it with their usual gusto. In addition to the hard breads and olives and cheeses, the cooks had included a crock of the seafood stew that was a specialty of Baiae, featuring various shellfish cooked with sea nettles and spices. I eyed it dubiously, but the cooks had packed it with snow from the cellars, and it seemed to be good.
"What is the temple whose dome I see shining above those trees?" I pointed towards the top of the hill behind us.
"It is the Temple of Apollo that crowns the hill of Cumae," answered one of the slaves.
"Cumae!" exclaimed Lactantius, gazing upward with interest. "But of course, it would be, for the Sibyl gave her oracle to Aeneas from her cave and then led him down to the lake to enter the Underworld."
"Is there still a seeress there?" I asked, remembering how Heron had prophesied the coming of Constantius and wondering, with a remnant of professional curiosity, how the oracle was conducted here.
"Oh no," replied Lactantius. "Have you never heard the tale? In the time of Tarquin, the last king of Rome, the seventh seeress of Cumae brought to him nine books of prophecy. When he, considering her mad, refused to pay her price she burned three of them, and then another three, and then at last the king bought the remaining three for the price she had originally asked for all of them. And after that the words of other sibyls were collected from all the cities of Italia and Graecia, expecially those of Erythraea, and the leaders of Rome have been guided by them from that day to this."
"So there is no sibyl resident at the shrine of Cumae?"
"No, Noble One," replied the slave. "Only the priestess who tends the temple of Apollo. But the cave in which the sibyl gave her oracles is there still."
"I should like to see it," I said then, "if the bearers have finished their meal." Cunoarda, the little Alban girl who had become my maid after I freed Hrodlind, went off to the water's edge where the slaves were eating, and returned with the eight strong Germans whom Constantine had given to me. Her red hair reminded me of Dierna, the little cousin I had loved so long ago.
"It should be safe enough," Lactantius said seriously. "There is no wind, and the demon Apollo will be still. And perhaps the spirit of the Sibyl who proclaimed the unity of God will speak to you. I will stay to watch over the boys."
I refrained from raising an eyebrow. After so many years, the crescent of Avalon had nearly faded from my brow, and I had no wish to explain to the old man why I did not fear the voice of the daimon of Cumae, whether it were that of a spirit or a god. Lactantius had never questioned me about my faith, but he knew that I was not a communicant of his church, and Crispus had confided to me that his tutor worried about the state of my soul.
I have never resented the prayers of anyone who wished me well, no matter what god he prayed to, and Lactantius was a kindly soul, as well as a learned one. If my grandson must be tutored by a Christian, he was fortunate to have the old man.
An hour of travel brought us to a bare cliff of golden sandstone, pierced by a shadowed tunnel that was the entrance to Cumae.
"Do not tell them who I am," I cautioned Cunoarda as she helped me to descend from the litter. "Say to the doorkeeper that I am a widow from Gallia called Julia, and will make an offering if they will show me the Sibyl's cave."
I sat down on a bench beneath an oak tree, glad that we were now high enough to catch the sea breeze, and watched the sunlight glisten on the girl's russet braid as she made her way to the gate. When she returned she was smiling.
"They have sent for the priestess of Apollo herself to guide you. I think they no longer get many visitors to the shrine."
A few moments later a middle-aged woman in a white tunica emerged from the tunnel. As she drew closer I could see that her gown was growing threadbare, but it was scrupulously clean.
"Holy One, I will offer this golden bracelet to the god in the name of my husband, who honoured Him, but my deepest interest is in the cave of the Sibyl. Can you take me there?" I had not brought a purse with me, but the heavy cuff bracelet I was wearing had enough gold in it to feed this woman for some time.
"Of course, domina. Come this way." The priestess turned towards the cool shadows of the tunnel and I followed her, Cunoarda at my heels. As we emerged into the light, she pulled the gauze veil up over her head and I did the same.
Before me was a court paved with worn sandstones, and a plinth bearing a statue of the Sibyl, arms uplifted, with wildly waving hair.
"When Aeneas came here, he called upon the oracle. The Sibyl was standing there, before the doors, when the power of the god came upon her suddenly," said the priestess. She pointed to an oddly-shaped door in the side of the hill, like an elongated triangle from which someone had cropped the point.
"She seemed taller," the priestess went on, "and her voice boomed. It is the nature of a human to resist when such power tries to take possession—they say the Sibyl rushed to and fro like a frightened mare, until the god overwhelmed her. And then, they say, His power rushed through the cave like a great wind, and all its doors were flung open, carrying her words to the waiting men."
"A hundred gates, was it not, in Virgil?" I asked.
"There are not so many as that, but there are openings all the way," said the woman, smiling. "Come, and you will see."
She lifted the bar, touched a sliver of wood to the lamp that was kept burning by the entrance, used it to light a torch, and pulled back the door. Now I could see that this was no natural cave, but a passage carved into the solid stone. To the right a series of bays had been cut through to the sloping surface of the hill. A little light filtered through their shuttered openings.
To the left a long trough ran along the side of the passage, through which water flowed. As we moved forwards the flickering torchlight glittered on the water and sent strange shadows dancing along the dusty floor. After the bright heat outside, the air here seemed damp and cool and very still.
Apollo might not be present, I thought as I followed, but I sensed power of another kind waiting within the silent stone. Was it indeed Apollo who had once spoken through the oracle here, I wondered then, or had Virgil, writing five hundred years after the last of the sibyls of Cumae had departed, simply assumed she served the god who had taken over most of the other oracles in the Mediterranean world? I reached out with senses long unused, wondering if the force that had once dwelt here retained enough coherence to respond.
Between one breath and another, I felt the familiar dip and shift of consciousness that signalled the approach of trance. Cunoarda took my elbow as I stumbled, but I shook my head and pointed towards the dark bay at the tunnel's end.
"Yes, that is where the Sibyl is said to have sat when she gave her answers," the priestess said then. "We do not know what sort of a seat she had, but we have always kept a tripod there, as they have at Delphi."
I was moving fowards on feet that scarcely felt the ground, but the three-legged stool at the end of the passage seemed to glow with its own light. The belief of centuries has made it sacred, I thought then.
"I will sit there," I said in a voice that did not sound like my own. I pulled off the bracelet from my other wrist and held it out to the priestess. For a moment she was taken aback, glancing at the tripod nervously, but this was not the temple of her god, which she would have been bound to defend from any possible sacrilege. It was clear that she could not feel the power that was beginning to make my head spin.
Shivering, I sank down upon the three-legged stool, and the veil slipped away, leaving my head bare. The position awakened memories buried in my bones; my trembling became a convulsive twitch as my body tried to adjust to the influx of power.
"Lady, are you unwell?" cried Cunoarda, reaching out to me, but the priestess prevented her, and that part of my mind that was still my own noted with relief that though the woman was no seer, she had enough training to recognize what was happening to me.
"Do not touch her," she cautioned, and then: "This is all highly irregular. She should have told me she had the Gift, so I might take precautions, but there is no help for it now."
But indeed, came a thought that was swiftly being pushed into the background, I myself had not known that the trance skills in which I had been trained long ago would awaken so swiftly here.
"So, daughter, will you let Me in?" came an inner voice, and with a long sigh, I relaxed into that bright darkness as into a mother's gentle arms.
I was distantly aware that my body had straightened, my hair coming loose from its pins. My arms extended, fingers flexing as if Someone were rediscovering the sensations of wearing flesh once more. I was only sorry that this body, which had endured for sixty-seven years, was all I had to offer her.
"Who are you?" whispered the priestess.
"I am the Sibyl…" my lips moved in answer. "I am always the Sibyl. In Erythraea I have spoken, and in Phrygia, in Samos and Libya and many other holy places in the lands of men. But it has been long, so long, since there was anyone to give Me a voice in this shrine."
"Do you speak with the voice of Apollo?" the priestess asked suspiciously.
"Go to your temple that stands upon the heights and open your doors to the wind and the sunlight and He will speak to you. But my power comes from the depths and the darkness of earth, and the perpetually upwelling waters of the sacred spring. I am the Voice of Fate. Would you seek an oracle?"
There was an uncomfortable silence, and then the Sibyl's laughter.
"Woman, you have served the gods your whole life long. Why are you so surprised that a Power should speak to you? Ah well—I read in the mind of this old woman who carries me that many things have changed. Rome still endures, but among her people there are some who have abandoned their ancient gods."
"It is the fault of the Christians!" exclaimed the priestess. "They say that there is only one god—"
I felt my consciousness shift once more, deepening and expanding as the persona that had overshadowed me was itself overwhelmed by a blaze of illumination that swept all mortal awareness away.
"Indeed, the Divine Source is a single deity of pre-eminent power, who made the heavens and sun and stars and moon, the fruitful earth and the waves of the waters of the sea. This is the One, who alone was and is from age to age."
"Are you telling me that the Christians are right?" the voice of the priestess sharpened in horror. "And their god is the only one?"
"No mortal, save in the utmost transports of ecstasy, can touch the ultimate deity. You who live in flesh see with the eyes of the world, one thing at a time, and so you see God in many guises, just as different images are reflected in the many facets of a jewel. To each facet you have given a form and a name—Apollo or Ammon, Cybele or Hera, who once gave oracles at this shrine. Jahweh of the Jews watches over only one people, and this Jesus blesses those who call on his name. They desire to touch the One, but their human limitations allow them to see only a single face, which they identify as the whole. Do you understand?"
In that moment I did comprehend what she was saying, and prayed that I would be allowed to remember these words.
"Then they are wrong!" the priestess exclaimed.
"They do well to serve the Christos, if they will truly follow his teachings, as you do well to serve the radiant Apollo. They are in error only in supposing that there is no truth but the one they see. But I will tell you this—their vision is a powerful one, and I foresee a time when the temple of your Apollo will be a tumbled ruin, his worship as forgotten as that of the goddess who was honoured here before he came.
"Lament, oh ye high gods, and mourn you dwellers on Olympus, for a time is coming when your altars will be cast down and your temples will lie beneath the Cross." Vision extended in a mosaic of scenes as I saw the Cross lifted above buildings of dignity and splendour, or blazoned upon the coats of men who nursed the sick or fell upon each other with bloody swords. Onwards rolled the vision, as the Sibyl spoke words I could no longer hear and the priestess crouched at her feet, weeping.
Eventually the images ceased, and I realized that the Sibyl had turned her gaze towards Cunoarda.
"And you, child—is there nothing that you would ask?"
Cunoarda's gaze fell, then lifted with a blaze of hope that transformed her. "How long will I stay a slave?"
"When your mistress goes free, then you will be free as well, and a distant land shall grant you both a refuge. But before that comes to pass she must endure many sorrows and make a great journey."
"Thank you," whispered the girl. Her head was bowed, but I could see that her cheeks shone with tears.
"There is more that I could say, but this body tires. It is a sorrow to me, for I tell you that it will be many centuries before another comes who will allow me to speak through her."
My head drooped, and for a moment then I was two beings in one body: the immortal Oracle, and an old woman who ached in every bone. I tired to cling to the consciousness of the Sibyl, but it was like attempting to hold back the ebbing tide. And then that vital presence that had upheld me was gone, and I collapsed into Cunoarda's arms.
By the time we returned to the palace at Baiae I was in full possession of my faculties once more, though my body, strained beyond its normal capacity by the power that had filled it, felt as limp as an emptied wineskin. As soon as I could speak I had cautioned Cunoarda to say nothing of what had happened, but to remember what had been said and write it down, for already the details were fading from my memory as a dream fades with the day. As regards the free folk of the palace she obeyed me, but I think now that she must have said something to my German litter-bearers, for from that time on they treated me with a reverence that went beyond duty, and I would hear the whisper, 'Haliruna' when I went by.
Crispus and the others were concerned for me, but they thought my collapse no more than the weakness of an old woman who had overtaxed her strength, and apologized for having dragged me on this journey on such a hot day. But I assured them that I had taken the risk willingly, though they did not know just how great that risk had been. And indeed it was so, for though my body ached, my spirit was soaring with the knowledge that the ability to touch the Otherworld that had been the delight of my youth was not lost to me after all.
We passed through the palace gates as dusk was falling, but the place was full of lights.
"What is it?" I asked, holding open the curtain of the litter. "Has the Emperor arrived? Are we having a feast that I had forgotten?"
"Oh my lady!" exclaimed the eunuch who was our steward. "Not the Emperor, but perhaps a Caesar—the Lady Fausta began her labour this afternoon! She has been calling for you, domina. I beg you—go to her."
I lay back with a sigh, wishing this had not happened now, when I was already so tired.
"I will be no use to her until I have washed and eaten. This is her first child. There will be time."
When I came to the birthing chamber I found Fausta alone, whimpering with each pain.
"Why have you sent your servants away, my child? They only want to help you."
"They fussed and fussed until I could not bear it! Oh Avia, it hurts so much! Am I going to die?"
"You are young and healthy, Fausta," I said bracingly, taking her hand. "I know this is not comfortable, but it will take a while for your womb to open enough to release the child." I had borne only the one child myself, but in later years I had often assisted at the labours of the wives of officers in Constantius's command, and added that experience to what I had learned of the birthing woman's craft at Avalon.
I glanced towards the door where the midwife was hovering and motioned her to come in.
"She is doing very well," said the woman cautiously. I wondered what Fausta had said to her before.
Fausta's fingers tightened painfully on mine as another pang came on. Her auburn hair was dark with perspiration and her face blotched with weeping above the distorted belly. It was just as well, I thought then, that her husband was not here to see her now.
"Talk to me, Avia," she said when she could speak again. "A poem or a joke or a story about Constantine when he was a little boy, anything to distract me from the pain."
"Very well—" I patted her hand. "Has he never told you the story of how he won his first laurels? It was when Probus was Emperor, and we were living in Naissus."
She shook her head. "He talks to me sometimes about what he will do in the future, but he has never spoken of his boyhood."
"Then I suppose it is for me to do, so that you may tell the tales to your children in turn." I waited as a new pang rolled through her, but I think my presence had eased her tension, and her contractions were now not so hard to bear.
"Constantine had just passed his seventh year, though he was always large for his age and looked older, and the Emperor Probus had offered a prize for the foot-races at the feast of Apollo." As I continued, I let my voice deepen, making my words rise and fall with the contractions that were squeezing Fausta's womb.
"Constantine began to practise, running each morning with Hylas, who was the dog we had then. I would have breakfast waiting when they returned, panting, from the run."
Gradually, Fausta was relaxing, riding my rhythms to find her own, even panting a little at the word.
"He won that first race easily, for among the boys of his age he was tall and strong. But the next year he moved to a higher division, and though he was as tall as many, they were stronger and more experienced. He finished respectably, but he was not the winner, and you know my son does not like to lose."
"What did he do?"
"I remember that he grew very silent, with that stubborn frown that we all have come to know. And he practised—morning and night throughout the spring. My son has always been a dreamer, but a practical one, who will make whatever effort is required to make his dreams come true. When summer came once more he was the winner again."
Fausta gave a great sigh, then grimaced, remembering that her race was still going on. "And the next year?"
"The next year we were transferred to Sirmium, and that summer the Emperor was assassinated before the races could be held."
"Tell me something else about Constantine," Fausta said quickly. "What games did he like to play?"
I frowned a little, remembering. They say that the child is father to the man. It occurred to me now that I should not blame Diocletian for what he had made of my son—the signs of his future character were there in his childhood, if one had the eyes to see.
"He liked to gather the children of the other officers and parade down the street, pretending they were holding a Triumph. I remember once he tried to train two of the stable cats to pull a cart. That was one time he failed, and had to use the dog instead. I don't think he ever quite accepted the fact that sometimes you simply cannot gain agreement."
And that, certainly, was a trait he had still. And now he was Emperor, with the power to enforce his will, unable to understand why the quarrelling Christian factions to whom he had granted his favour still clung to their enmities. The Donatists in Africa and the followers of the Egyptian Arius elsewhere, were being slandered by the orthodox with more energy than they spent on the pagans, and giving as good as they got.
"My husband is brave, and persevering and confident," said Fausta, "and his son will be just like him."
"Are you so certain it will be a boy?" I smiled, but in truth I had no right to tease her, having been so certain I was going to bear the Child of Prophecy. I heard the sound of shutters being opened, and turning, saw through the window, the first light of dawn.
As the new day strengthened, Fausta's pains began to come more swiftly, and her whimpers became screams. The midwife tried to encourage her by saying that it would not be long now, but Fausta had reached that point where labouring women call for their mothers and curse their husbands.
"Tell that woman not to lie to me!" gasped Fausta. "I am dying, I know it. Soon I will join my father and my brother among the shades, and I will tell them that Constantine sent me there!" She groaned as her belly clenched again. "But you will stay with me, won't you, Avia?
"I will stay with you, my dear," I leaned to smooth the lank hair from her brow. "And rejoice with you when your child comes into the world. Remember, the pangs you suffer are part of the work of the Great Mother—not pain, but power."
Fausta's eyes closed in exhaustion, but I continued to smooth her hair, and never had I come so close to truly loving her as I did in that hour. I could feel the mighty forces that were working through her, and reached out to the Goddess, seeking Her harmony.
In another moment Fausta's womb was contracting once more, but this time her eyes opened in surprise.
"Avia, I want to push—is something wrong?"
The midwife began to smile, and I patted Fausta's hand. "It means that it is all right," I said. "The baby is almost ready to come. We will set you on the birthing chair, and when you feel the urge to push again, bear down—"
In the next moment the power of the Mother surged through her once more. When it passed, we levered Fausta onto the narrow-seated chair, and the midwife knelt between her knees while I braced her, all my earlier exhaustion disappearing in the exhilaration of the miracle we awaited now.
"Get warm water," I snapped to the hovering maids, "and make sure the swaddling clothes are ready. It will not be long."
Grunting, Fausta writhed against my hands. Now that we were come to the test, she had given up whining and was showing the courage of the soldier stock from which she came. Once, twice, a third time she pushed, and then fell back with a sigh as the wriggling infant, red with blood and already squalling in protest, slid into the midwife's waiting hands.
I continued to hold Fausta as the other women bustled around her, cutting the cord and helping her to deliver the afterbirth while the maids washed and swaddled the child. Then the new mother was lifted into a clean bed, and I could stand, trembling with reaction, at last.
"Where is it?" called Fausta. "I want to see my child!"
"Here he is," answered the midwife. "As fine a boy as I have seen." She handed me the swaddled infant, who was still crying.
My grandson … I thought, gazing down into the contorted face. All newborns resembled their grandfathers, but I could see no trace of Constantius here. Flushed with frustration beneath a cap of dark hair, the child I held resembled his other grandfather, Maximian.
Carefully I transferred the bundled baby into his mother's arms.
"A son?" she asked, "and unblemished?"
The midwife nodded. "He is perfect in every way."
Fausta relaxed with a sigh and the baby quieted, though his features were still creased in a frown.
"My Constantinus…" she kissed the top of the baby's head and held him closer, "the Emperor's first legitimate son."
"There are some who question the validity of my relationship with the Emperor's father," I said drily. "I would advise you against speaking in those terms to Constantine, lest you appear to doubt his own legitimacy. And in any case, the Roman tradition has been that the man best qualified shall wear the purple, not necessarily even a relative, much less the most legitimate son." And surely it is Crispus, with the advantage of maturity and his native brilliance, who will be chosen when the time comes, I thought then.
Lost in contemplation of the wonder she had produced, I do not think that Fausta even heard. It was I, remembering tales I had heard of kin-fights among the Persians when a new Great King came to the throne, who felt the first chill of fear.
AD 321-24
"Domina—there is a letter from Crispus—" Cunoarda paused in the doorway to my sitting room.
"Close the door, please, and let's see it."
The brazier was doing its best to counter the dank chill of a Roman February, and I rested my feet upon the flank of Boreas, son of the first hound to whom I had given that name. But even after the renovations I had ordered when Constantine bestowed the Domus Sessorianum upon me, the place was subject to draughts. I had done my best to keep it home-like, hoping for a restoration of the relative simplicity of the suburban villa this palace had once been, but the architects were infected with the new notions of Constantinian grandeur, and only in this room, whose walls were hung with British weavings, and where striped British rugs covered the cold mosaic floor, did I feel truly warm enough to keep at bay the periodic attacks of shortened breath that plagued me in the winter.
"Mistress, what are you doing?" asked Cunoarda as she held out the cased scroll.
"Spinning…" I flushed a little as I twisted the loose wool around the distaff and set it and the spindle down, well aware that this was peculiar behaviour for an emperor's mother. "When I was a girl the spindle was scarcely ever out of my hand. I wanted to see if I still knew how."
"I used to spin too, when I was a child in Alba," said Cunoarda, her voice softening.
"Then we shall get you your own spindle, and you may sit with me by the fire," I replied. "But first, let us see what my grandson has to say."
The scroll was in Crispus's own careful writing. He was now nineteen, with the title of Caesar, and for the past two years had been residing in Treveri as Constantine's deputy, between campaigns on the German frontier. Only last summer his troops had gained a major victory against the Alamanni. I missed him, for Fausta and her children lived with their mother in Mediolanum, and I rarely saw them. After a late beginning, she had proved exceptionally fertile. A second son, Constantius, had been born the year after Constantinus, and a third, called Constans, just this year.
"Avia Nobilissima," he began. "I have tidings of great happiness. I am to be married to a most charming girl, the daughter of the senior magistrate of Treveri. Her name is Helena too! Is that not a fortunate coincidence? I call her Lena. I learned to love her this past winter, but I did not know if we would be allowed to marry. Now my father has given permission, and we will hold our feast next month, before I leave to rejoin my legion on the Rhenus. I hope that you can be with us for the celebration, but if it is not possible, I ask for your blessing.
"May the most high God keep you in health, dearest Avia. I remain, your loving Crispus."
"Bless the child indeed, and blast him for marrying in such haste. He must know that the roads and the seas alike will be too rough at this season for me to be there!" I exclaimed.
"Well, one can understand his hurry, if he is going off to war. No doubt he will settle his bride in Colonia or Argentoratum while he is with the troops," said Cunoarda, picking up the spindle, which in my excitement I had knocked off the stool.
"How can my little Crispus be getting married?" I shook my head. "It seems only yesterday that he was sitting on my knee."
"Perhaps he will make you a great-grandmother soon," Cunoarda smiled.
I sighed. I found it hard to imagine Crispus a father, but at this season, when all the agues of the marshlands around the city seemed to settle in my bones, I could well believe myself old enough for great-grandchildren. It had been a hard winter, and I had heard that there was a new plague in the poorer quarters of Rome.
"I will gift them with my palace in Treveri," I said then, "and order my bedchamber redecorated for the new bride. And I will send her my long pearl necklace. It will look better against her young skin than it does on me."
"Oh my lady, you must not say so. Don't you know that gossip holds that you have been granted an extension of youth by the gods?"
I raised one eyebrow. "Cunoarda, I would not have believed you to be a flatterer! Bring me my mirror—perhaps there has been some miracle since last I looked upon my image there!"
Flushing a little, she brought me the round of polished silver whose handle was formed in the shape of the Three Graces, their arms entwined. I turned my face into the light and held it up. The face that looked back at me was framed by silver hair, drawn back to a knot in two smooth wings held in place by a woven band. The flesh that once had clung to my strong bones so smoothly was sagging now, my eyes deep set and shadowed beneath my brows.
"What I see, my dear, is the face of a healthy woman of seventy-two. If it is not quite the image of a hag, it is because I am careful of my diet and force myself to take exercise. But just because I live in a palace is no excuse for me to ignore life's realities," I said tartly. "Now take this thing away. The hour in which I am scheduled to give audience is almost upon us. How many people are waiting in the reception room?"
"Not as many as usual, but one of them is Sylvester, the Patriarch-Bishop of The See of Rome."
"Very well, I suppose it is time to put away my spinning and become a Nobilissima Femina, even if I am an old one, once more. I will wear the tunica of forest-green silk, and over it the sea-green pallium."
"Yes, my lady, and the earrings and necklet of emerald and pearl?"
I nodded, reached for my stick, and levered myself upright, sighing as if I were already weighed down by the brocade and jewels.
Since taking possession of the Sessoriana it had been my custom to hear petitioners just before the noon meal. I was always astonished by how many people would make their way across the city to my domus, tucked into the south-eastern angle of the walls the Emperor Aurelian had built to protect the sprawling suburbs of Rome.
Today, despite the foul weather, the hall was full. Above the aromatic scent of the herbs laid on the coals in the brazier I could smell wet wool, and smiled, for it brought back memories of Britannia. Escorted by Cunoarda, my greyhounds padding by my side, I took my place in the carven chair on the dais, and surveyed the crowd.
I recognized Iulius Maximilianus, who was supervising the reconstruction of the baths on the domus grounds. It was my intention to open them to the public once they were completed, as an establishment of such size was hardly required to keep one old woman clean.
Maximilianus was no doubt here to report on the progress of the baths, which had been delayed by the winter rains and sickness among the labourers. Some of the others were my clients, and had come simply out of courtesy. But what was the Christian Patriarch of the city doing here?
Sylvester waited with surprising patience, a wiry little man with a fringe of fading reddish hair around his tonsure, clad in a plain white tunic and cloak. The only mark of rank he bore was the large cross that lay upon his breast, which was fashioned of gold. It was the young priest who had escorted him who fidgeted and muttered at the delay.
If some of the others were unhappy with the speed with which I dealt with their petitions, they did not dare to say so, and by the time an hour had passed, only Sylvester remained to be heard.
"My Lord Bishop, I am certain that only a matter of great moment could have brought you to me on such a day. Yet I am an old woman, and not accustomed to fasting. So that you may have leisure in which to set forth your business will you share my midday meal?"
I could see amusement flickering in his eyes, but he assented with a gravity equal to my own. Bishop Ossius had become one of Constantine's most trusted advisors, but I had never warmed to him. Sylvester seemed different. I found myself curious to know more of this priest who was the heir of the Apostle Petrus and Patriarch of the See of Rome.
After Cunoarda had sent the younger priest off to eat in the kitchens, Sylvester and I were escorted to the triclinium. I saw him gazing around at the marble facings of the lower walls and the paintings above and felt a certain embarassment, even though the scenes portrayed were of nymphs and shepherds from the romance of Daphnis and Chloe, and innocent enough.
"I apologize for the grandeur, and the chill," I said as I motioned him to take the couch on the other side of the brazier. In the large room the two of us seemed like a pair of peas in a large bowl. "I never eat in here when I am alone, but my household would be mortified if I told them to serve us in my little sitting room."
"We are all at the mercy of our servants," answered Sylvester. "My housekeeper bullies me mercilessly."
"If there is anything you may not eat, you must let me know," I said a little nervously, and saw him smile.
"It is not a fast day, and in any case the holy Petrus himself once said that it is not what goes into a man's mouth, but what comes out of it that defiles him."
"Very true," I agreed, but nonetheless I whispered to Cunoarda to instruct the cook to prepare something simple.
I do not know whether it was my order or respect for the Patriarch that compelled him, but in a while we were served with barley broth and a dish of lentils and cow-parsnips along with our eggs and bread and cheese. The Bishop's appetite was good, and I wondered suddenly if this was his first meal of the day.
"So," I said, when we had taken the edge off our hunger and were sipping hot spiced wine, "what is it that you want of me?"
"Are you so certain that I have come as a petitioner?"
"You are too busy a man to make this journey yourself if a mere message or a delegate would do."
"It is true," Sylvester said with a sigh. "The need is great, or I would not have come to you. You may have heard that there is sickness in the city, but perhaps you do not realize how bad it has become. This is not one of the fevers that strikes us every summer, but something new, in which the victim coughts up blood or chokes to death on his own phlegm. Some are saying it is a precursor of the Final Days, and have lain down upon their beds to wait for Our Lord to come, but I think that it is only another trial to test us."
"It sounds horrible," I said. "What can I do?"
"For the sick, not much. I have opened the Lateran Church as a hospital, and we are caring for them as we can. But so many are ill or dead that there is hardship in parts of the city. I have already emptied my own treasury. We need authorization to distribute corn from the city granaries, and to requisition other items from the merchants for the poor."
"And the consuls will not give it?"
He nodded. "I thought that perhaps the mother of the Emperor could persuade more eloquently than I."
"I can try," I said thoughtfully. "I will drape myself in cloth of gold and visit them tomorrow. And perhaps some other ideas for help will come to me after I have seen your hospital."
This was a man, I thought, who was rarely astonished by the vagaries of human nature, whether for good or for ill. But I was pleased to see that my response had surprised him.
My way to the Temple of Saturn, where I was to meet with the consuls, led through the centre of Rome, and it seemed to me that indeed the heart of the city was less crowded than I remembered. As we passed through the streets I saw doors hung with garlic and amulets or worse things in a desperate attempt to ward the spirit of sickness away. Just beyond the Flavian amphitheatre, I parted the curtains and ordered the bearers to pause at the arch Constantine had erected there, on the ancient triumphal route between the Caelian and Palatine hills. I had not been surprised to learn that it was the largest such arch in Rome.
But though its size might excite admiration, its decoration had caused considerable amusement, for only the topmost frieze actually referred to Constantine, celebrating his victory over Maxentius. The rest of the panels, reliefs and medallions had been cannibalized from monuments to earlier emperors such as Hadrian, Trajan and Marcus Aurelius. The architect had justified this thievery by proclaiming Constantine the summation and fulfilment of the imperial genius, but as I inspected the monument I could not deny that the workmanship on Constantine's panels was visibly inferior to the rest.
You were in too great a hurry, my son, I observed silently. You have no need to steal other men's glory.
As Sylvester had expected, the word of the Empress-Mother was a command no magistrate of Rome dared ignore. On the way back to my palace I put on a veil to shield myself from the contagion, and ordered my bearers to make a detour so that I might view the hospital.
Constantine did not spend much time in Rome, but he had been generous in the giving of churches. Rather than seize property from the aristocracy, who were mostly pagan still, he had built most of them on imperial lands outside the old city walls. But in the year of his marriage to Fausta he had presented the imperial palace of the Lateran, where she was born, to the Patriarch of Rome. After razing the barracks of Maxentius's cavalry, he had built his first cathedral beside the palace.
I remembered the little boy who had so enjoyed making fortresses in our garden and realized that for him, one of the attractions of Christianity was the opportunity to build something new—
Something new, and grand in scale. As I entered, I could see the huge row of columns that supported the nave, and the green marble pillars that bore the lower arcades of the aisles. Light streamed in from high windows over the apse, glittering on the silver filigree roodscreen and the statues of the Resurrected Christ and Jesus as Teacher, flanked by angels, watched over the scene within.
But as my eyes adjusted I forgot the splendour. The nave itself and the aisles behind the columns on either side held row upon row of rude pallets, and on each pallet lay a human being, most of them either hawking and choking horribly or ominously still. Some had family to care for them, but for the most part it was the priests and the old women of the Christian community who moved among them, giving water to those who would drink and comforting the dying. The reek of old blood and human wastes assaulted the nostrils.
Sylvester had looked dubious when I spoke of trying to help, and I saw now that until this thing had run its course there was no help to be had, and no miracle but the fact that anyone was willing to nurse these people at all. Surely not all of them were Christians. All Sylvester needed to know was that they were human and in need. I understood then how, despite the gaps and incongruities in its theology, this new faith had become so strong.
I did not stay long. The Patriarch, who had greeted me when I arrived, did not expect it, and was already turning back to his work as I left the basilica. During the short journey back along the walls to the domus I said nothing, and I retired early, but sleep was slow to come.
Like most of the educated classes of Rome I had scorned the simple fervour of Christianity. But these folk had more compassion and more courage than I, who had been trained on Avalon. I realized then that I was ashamed. But even now I do not know whether it was shame or pride that drove me the next morning, when I borrowed a headwrap and tunic from one of the kitchen slaves, and instructing Cunoarda to tell everyone I was resting, set out to make the short walk to the basilica. I had barely rounded the corner, however, when I heard footsteps behind me and saw Cunoarda.
Her features set in a stubborn frown as I started to order her home again.
"Mistress, I must obey, but if you send me back I promise I will tell everyone where you have gone! Please—I saw your face when you returned from visiting the cathedral. I cannot let you go into that horror alone!"
I frowned at her, but I had long ago learned to accept the peculiar tyranny that servants can exercise over those who ostensibly own them, and common sense told me that it might be wise to have someone young and strong at my side.
I thought that if we could avoid Sylvester, I need not fear being recognized, for I had worn a veil when I visited before. And in the event, no one even asked who we were—they were too hard-pressed, and grateful for every pair of hands. And so I, who for ten years had been the most powerful woman in the Empire, worked as I had not since I was a girl on Avalon, carrying water and attempting to keep the patients clean. And Cunoarda laboured at my side.
It surprised me, how swiftly one could become accustomed not only to the smell but to the horror. Blood and feces were something to be cleaned, that was all. But exhaustion sharpens tempers even among the best of men, and it quickly became clear that although they might be selfless, risking their lives by nursing the sick since the authorities would no longer oblige them with martyrdom, not all the Christians were saints.
I was gently washing the chest of an old man who had just tried to cough out his lungs when I heard an exclamation from behind me. The man with the pail had apparently just been bumped by a woman whose arms were piled high with clean rags, and some of the water had slopped onto the floor.
"Will you look where you are going? For someone to slip on this and twist their ankle would be all we need!" His voice was thin with weariness, but the woman looked little better.
"Who are you to reprove me? Everyone knows that during the persecutions you burned incense to the demons the pagans call gods."
"And have I not done penance for that sin?" He gestured at the suffering around us. "Have I not risked my life every day here? If the Lord God wishes to punish me, it will be easy enough to strike me down. But you were so unimportant they never even bothered to persecute you. Beware lest you yourself be damned for the sin of pride!"
"You should be ashamed to squabble in the presence of the dying!" I said in the voice that had ruled a household for fifty years. "You, woman, give me a clean rag, and you, sir, some water to wet it in, that this poor fellow may at least spend his last moments clean!" But by then the sick man's body was arching in a final convulsive fight for breath, before he lay still. Wincing as stiffened muscles complained, I rose to my feet and gestured for the men who carried out the bodies to take him away.
The first few days had been a horror, and in self-defence I erected a psychic shield against the suffering. By day I laboured mindlessly, and each evening I would slip away and make my way home to soak the contagion away in my baths and sleep without dreams until morning. Perhaps because my thoughts were so focused on the needs of others, I had little attention to spare for my own pains.
Gradually we came to realize that not quite all of our patients were dying. Some few, if they could drink enough water, were able to keep their secretions moist enough to cough them up instead of choking. Eventually they recovered, though they were so weak that any other contagion was likely to carry them away. Grimly, we redoubled our efforts, but the priests who were working beside us were still kept busy giving last rites when we failed. Sometimes I saw Sylvester labouring with the others, wearing a stained robe and a cross of simple wood instead of gold, but I managed to stay out of his way. In truth, I doubt he would have recognized me if I had stood before him. Most people's vision is limited to what they expect to see.
It was not until the end of the second week, when the epidemic seemed at last to be faltering, that something occurred to shake my composure. A young girl had been brought in—a Syrian slave called Martha who had nursed her master and mistress until they died and then taken the illness herself, with no one left to help her. She was a Christian, and though she knew what was in store for her, I had not yet encountered anyone who faced it with such serenity.
"Our Lord suffered greater pains to redeem us," she whispered when she was able. "I offer Him this martyrdom."
I had thought myself past all emotion, but when I saw the hope that glowed in her eyes, I found awakening within me a stubborn determination.
"The water of baptism may have saved your soul," I muttered grimly, "but what's in this cup will save your body. Drink it down like a good girl—I am not going to let you die!"
I forced water into Martha until her urine ran clear once more, but I could feel her heart fluttering beneath my hand, and I knew that the battle was going against me. In order to evaluate her condition I had to let down my defences, and through the bond between nurse and patient I touched the pure fervour of her soul.
The life-force within was flickering like a guttering candle flame. They say that for the old, the past is more vivid than the present day, and in that moment it was not a Syrian slave girl I was holding in my arms, but my beloved Aelia, who had died when I was far away. I closed my eyes, and powers so long unused I had thought them forgotten roused within me.
I took a deep breath, and as I exhaled, drew up life-force from my own depths and projected it into hers. Lady! I prayed, grant life to your child! Again and again I did this, as if I were blowing the breath of life into her lungs, but it was something less tangible and more powerful that flowed from my astral body into hers.
And presently the laboured breathing began to ease. For a moment I stilled in the fear that she was leaving me. Then I opened my eyes and stared in wonder, for Martha was sleeping, each breath deep and clear.
My own heart bounding in reaction, I straightened. It was only then that I realized that we were not alone.
Cunoarda was by my side, her eyes wide, but kneeling across from me I saw Sylvester, with the young priest who had apparently summoned him when he saw he would not be required to give the last rites after all.
"Who are you?" he breathed, gripping his wooden cross. Our eyes met, and I saw the simple awe in his gaze give way to astonishment as he recognized me. "Lady, what are you doing here?"
I thought for a moment, searching for a reason he would understand. "I am doing the work of the Most High," I answered, deciding he did not need to know whether I called that Power Goddess or God.
"Christ be praised, you do indeed!" he said warmly.
"Say nothing of this!" I exclaimed. The ceremony that surrounded me as Empress-Mother was constricting enough, without adding superstitious hopes or fears.
The ardour in his gaze chilled as he, too, began to think of the political implications. "I understand, but my lady, you must not stay here! Will you promise to return home and stay there? I could not face… your son… if anything should happen to you."
"Do you not believe that God will preserve me?" I said a little bitterly, for I realized that I would miss this time of being fully used, and useful, now that it had come to an end. "Never mind. I will do as you say. But when this little one is recovered, bring her to me. If her master had heirs, I will give them her price and take her into my household."
I staggered as I got up, for I had spent more strength than I knew, and Sylvester took my arm. The lamps had been lit, and I knew that it was time to go.
"Thank you. If you will assist me to the door, Cunoarda can help me the rest of the way. You know my home is only just down the road."
"I will praise God tonight in my prayers," said Sylvester softly as we went out the door, "for He has shown me a miracle."
I sighed, suspecting that he did not mean Martha's recovery. But the old tattoo upon my brow was throbbing, and I felt that I had experienced a miracle as well, to know that after all these years I was still a priestess.
"I hear great praise of you from the Patriarch," said Constantine. It was now high summer, and the last cases of plague had died or recovered some months before, but Sylvester and I had continued to work together on behalf of the city's poor, and I trusted that this was what my son was referring to.
"But you should not have risked yourself," he went on. "If I had known, I would have forbidden it. You do not realize how important you are."
An old woman, important? I wondered. Then I realized that it was the Emperor's Mother who mattered, not the real Helena. He was not seeing me, but an icon with my name. It was natural enough for a child to think of his mother only in relation to himself, I thought then, but it was a mark of adulthood to be able to see one's parents as people, with lives of their own. These days I was even beginning to understand Ganeda, though I had still not forgiven her. I bit back a retort that might have angered him, thinking I ought to be grateful that Sylvester had said no more.
Constantine had been campaigning on the Dacian border, and in the strong morning light, he looked all of his nearly fifty years. My son had grown more massive with middle age, as if he were striving to equal the heroic dimensions of the statue that was being carved for his basilica. But his fair hair, though fading now to a shade between flax and silver, still grew thick and strong.
"The need was great," I answered him. "I had no choice but to give what help I could."
"You had a choice," he corrected. "How many of the noblewomen of this city were labouring among the sick beside you?"
I thought for a moment, and offered some names.
"They are Christians already, and only needed an example," he replied. "You do not find such self-sacrifice among the pagans. Do you see now why I favour the Christian God?"
I nodded, for among the Romans that was true, but we had tried to give what help we could to all who came to us on Avalon.
"It has been long since we have had a chance to talk together, my mother, and I have much to say to you," Constantine went on. "With each year it becomes more clear that the old ways are without virtue. It is the One True God whose will we must obey if we are to preserve the Empire, and the family of the Emperor is the model for all. That is why I permitted Crispus such an early marriage."
"You must be very proud of him," I answered, thinking of last year's victories against the Germans. In Crispus, I saw Constantine reborn, and even more glorious, without the suspicions that my son had learned from Diocletian.
"Yes. I am naming him and little Constantinus as this year's consuls."
"Licinius will not like that," I observed. "Last year you named yourself and Constantius, with no mention of Licinius or his son. And if you continue to spend most of your time in Serdica, so close to his border, Licinius will think you are planning to attack him."
Constantine shrugged. "Did you really believe that we could share the Empire forever? If the Armenian Christians appeal to me, I will help them, and if the Visigoths attack Thrace, I will repel them. Licinius will no doubt object, and there will be another war."
"I hope you can delay it for a year or two longer, until Crispus has enough experience to be a truly effective commander." I replied.
"Yes, the boy is developing well…'
It seemed to me that his answer came a trifle reluctantly, and in that moment, random memory reminded me of the ritual of the running of the stag that the little people of the marshes near Avalon performed sometimes when there was need. And it seemed to me that I could hear the whispered echo of their cry, "What of the King Stag when the Young Stag is grown?"
But this was Rome, I told myself, and Constantine was a civilized man. With a shiver, I thrust the memory back into the darkness from which it had come.
"… but he is still young," Constantine was continuing, "and subject to the lusts of the flesh, which lead men into sinful entanglements."
I suppressed a smile. "Not all so-called entanglements are unlawful, or he would never have been born. For that matter, your father and I would have been living in sin."
"No!" Constantine exclaimed. "You were my father's true wife! He told me so!"
I sighed, realizing there was no point in trying to explain that our marriage had been valid in the world of the spirit rather than in Roman law. I remembered now that Constantine had always been stubbornly attached to his own version of reality.
"The days of pagan immorality are ending! Soon Christianity will be the only faith, and the imperial family must set an example. I am building a basilica in honour of the martyrs Marcellinus and Petrus on the road adjoining your palace grounds. You will become its patroness."
"Constantine! Not even the Emperor can command another's conscience, as Diocletian and Galerius learned to their cost. Will you deny your own edict, that granted toleration to all?"
"Oh, I will not persecute the pagans—" He gestured dismissively. "When they see the glory of the Church they will beg to come in! But if God is to bless my reign, my family must serve only Him!"
"Indeed…" my voice grew softer. "And when were you baptized? I would like to have been there…"
He stilled suddenly, and I wondered if the shiver I had just felt was a flicker of fear. This was an emperor, and emperors had been known to execute close relations, even their mothers, in times past. In the next moment he smiled, and I told myself I had been insane to entertain such a notion. This was Constantine, the child whom I had borne to change the world. And indeed he was doing so, even if the manner of it was very far from anything we might have imagined on Avalon.
"Baptism is a very sacred rite," he said in a voice as soft as mine. "So sacred it can be performed but once, to wash away all sin and leave the soul cleansed and ready for Paradise. But I am Emperor, and must rule in a very imperfect and sinful world—"
And you suspect you may have some sinning yet to do … I thought wryly, but I did not voice the thought aloud.
"I live in the same world," I said instead. "Until you make that commitment yourself, you cannot require it from me. But I will take your new church under my protection, and receive instruction in the faith as a catechumen."
Inspired by Martha's fervour, Cunoarda was already doing so. I had freed both women when I took Martha into my household, for I could not treat the Alban girl as a slave when we had laboured together like fellow priestesses in the hospital.
"Then you are a Christian!" Constantine exclaimed.
"Call me what you like," I said tiredly. "The Truth does not change." I did not tell him that it was not his example that had inspired me, but the simple faith of a Syrian slave.
"Praise be to Christ, by whose Name we shall be saved!"
Constantine's deep-set eyes blazed with conviction and I found myself recoiling, trying to remember where I had seen such a look before. It was not until evening, as I was preparing for bed, that it came to me. In that mood, Constantine had been the image of Ganeda, laying down the law with self-righteous certainty.