AD 325-6
"In Christ's holy name, why can they not agree?" exclaimed Constantine. "I called this council so that the bishops might resolve their differences."
"Yes, Augustus," said Bishop Ossius, his face reddening, "but these matters are both subtle and important. A single syllable may make the difference between salvation and damnation. We must proceed carefully."
Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea, who had come with him to report on the deliberations, was frowning. The pagans in the room looked confused, and my old tutor Sopater, who had become a noted teacher of rhetoric and a member of Constantine's court, was suppressing a smile. The two thousand bishops who had come to the Council at Nicaea at the beginning of May were already arguing about the nature and relationship of God and His Son.
My hip-bones had begun to ache, and I tried to shift position unobtrusively on my ivory chair. The first time I had seen the Emperor's audience chamber in the palace at Nicomedia I had felt overwhelmed by its splendour. But that had been over fifty years ago. Now that I was accustomed to Constantine's ideas of the state befitting an emperor, Aurelian's throne room seemed classic and restrained. Only its human ornaments showed the taste of the Constantinian age.
Where Aurelian had allowed the vivid purple of his toga to proclaim him Emperor, and contented himself with a simple curule chair, Constantine's gilded throne was raised on a dais, and his robes, which were of cloth of gold over purple and adorned with precious stones, outshone it. And where Aurelian had presided alone, Constantine was flanked by his two empresses, for he had given both me and Fausta the title of Augusta the preceding year, when he finally defeated Licinius.
I had been placed at the Emperor's right hand, resplendent in amethysts and cloth of silver, and at his left was Fausta, glittering in emeralds and bronze. Imprisoned in the heavy robes, we sat like the images of Jupiter flanked by Juno and Minerva in the temple at Rome, though I knew better than to say so to Constantine.
"Do they not understand that the unity of the Church is essential to the unity of the Empire?" he exclaimed.
It did no good to point out that the Empire had flourished for more than two centuries while tolerating a wide variety of cults and creeds. The bishops who had come to the council were representing the people who had let themselves be slain rather than throw a pinch of incense on an altar fire. I wondered sometimes if they had become so accustomed to persecution that now that they were the Emperor's favourites they were compelled to attack each other.
Even after several years of Christian instruction, I, like Constantine, found it hard to understand the fine distinctions over which the bishops were arguing. What ought to matter was what Jesus had said, not whether he was God or Man.
"Indeed," objected Ossius, sweating, "but if the Empire is not founded upon truth, it will fall. If the Son and the Father are not one and the same, equally God, then we are no better than the polytheists."
"We are no better than fools if we deny logic!" exclaimed Eusebius, a flush animating the intellectual serenity of his features. A high forehead merged into his tonsure and he wore his beard long, like a philosopher. "If the Father begot the Son, then there must have been a time when the Son did not exist."
"But they were of the same substance!" Ossius replied, "Homoousios," he added the Greek term, "Light from Light, True God from True God!"
"Could we not say Homoiousios? Of like substance?" offered Eusebius rather desperately. I had heard that he was noted for his writings on Church history, a scholar who would care about every shade of meaning.
Constantine shook his head. "Consubstantialis— "of the same substance", has been good enough for us in Rome. Let men interpret it as they will. Then we can address ourselves to objects more within our power. All these fine words are distracting us from reality, and we become no better than the philosophers who reason about a thing without looking at it at all.
"If the bishops, who are the pastors of the people, attack each other, the people will fight as well," he went on. "You should never have raised such questions, and if they were raised, they should not have been answered! This is philosophical frivolity! With the Persians on our eastern borders and the Germans to the north, I have enough to worry about without these squabbles. I beg you—give me back peaceful nights so that I can live in the pure light of the Spirit and use my energy for the protection of the Empire!"
During this speech both bishops had gone a little pale.
"Consubstantialis?" said Eusebius weakly. "Well, perhaps we can get them to agree on that. My lord, I will bear your word to my brethren."
"No—I will come myself," answered the Emperor. "Perhaps if I plead with them in person they will understand!"
The two bishops abased themselves, foreheads touching the marble floor, and backed away from the imperial presence. Constantine smiled as if he had persuaded them, and I suppose he had, for though he might not be their master in logic, he was surely their superior in power.
At least my son did not require me to bow down before him. I shifted my weight to the other hip and addressed a prayer to the Son, whatever His relationship to the Father might be, that the imperial audience would not last too long.
No part of the palace at Nicomedia could be called home-like, but the red dining salon was small enough that our voices did not echo when a dozen people were gathered there. Fausta was reclining on a couch upholstered in crimson brocade which clashed with the purple tunica she wore. Neither colour suited her complexion, but perhaps the flush was due to wine. After giving Constantine three sons, she had borne him two daughters, Constantina, and a new baby whom they had named after me. Her figure had suffered, and palace gossip said that she no longer shared a bed with the Emperor. On the other hand, Constantine was not sleeping with anyone else, but whether this was the result of morality or because he was incapable no one dared surmise.
It occurred to me that in my old age I was becoming cynical, and I gestured to the servant to bring me some wine as well. These days I found getting up and down from a dining couch more trouble than it was worth, and had claimed a comfortably padded chair, but all of us rose as the Emperor came in.
His couch groaned a little as he stretched himself upon it, but his bulk was more muscle than fat, even now. Swiftly the servants set tables before us and began to bring in the food.
"Do you think that the bishops will be able to agree on the wording of the creed?" I asked. These days I had little appetite, and a few bites of the cuttle-fish croquettes in liquamen had been enough for me.
"It is necessary that they do so. I must make that clear," answered Constantine.
"If they know what's good for them, they'll comply!" Fausta giggled. There was an uncomfortable silence, as everyone immediately thought of Licinius and his young son, who despite Constantine's pledge to his half-sister (who was married to Licinius) to spare them, had been executed only a few weeks before.
"I meant, of course, for the sake of their souls," Fausta added, and someone suppressed a snort of laughter, for the Empress, unlike the rest of the imperial family, was still avowedly pagan. Constantine was frowning, but he continued to chew steadily on the stuffed shoulder of wild boar they had just brought in.
"Has there been any new word of the Visigoths?" asked Sopater in an attempt to change the subject. It was not terribly successful, since suspected communication with the barbarians had been one of the reasons given for executing Licinius. Constantine had defeated them in Thrace two years before, going into Licinius's territory to do so and provoking the last civil war.
"Well, if they make any trouble, you can send Crispus to deal with them!" Fausta laughed a little too loudly. "Don't they call him "Invictus", the Unconquered?"
I felt a prickle of unease. During the war against Licinius, Crispus had been put in charge of the Aegean fleet and by defeating the enemy admiral, he had enabled Constantine to take Byzantium. Only last year the Emperor had struck a medallion showing Crispus and young Constantinus together, but since then Crispus had been transferred from Treveri to frontier duty in Dacia. Old Crocus was long dead, but his tribe had continued to send young warriors to serve as Caesar's bodyguard. Perhaps that was what Fausta had been referring to, but there was something I did not quite like in her laugh.
"These bishops are too concerned with words," said Constantine, pushing his plate away. I wondered if he really had not heard, or only pretended not to. "They forget the need for faith. Words divide, but the symbols of religion inspire the soul."
"What do you mean?" asked Ossius.
"The pagans have shrines where they venerate the treasures that they believe were given by their gods. If we are to wean the people away from such delusions, we must offer them something to take their place. How can true believers walk in purity when every grove and crossroad is dedicated to a pagan god?"
"What would you have them worship instead?" asked Fausta.
"The places where our God has shown Himself to men. Why have we no basilica to honour Christ's empty tomb?"
"Does anyone even know for certain where it is?" I asked.
"That is precisely the problem!" exclaimed the Emperor. "It is in my mind to send an expedition to excavate the site. Do you know what stands on the hill of Golgotha now?" he added indignantly, "A temple to Aphrodite the Whore!"
"Abomination!" exclaimed Ossius.
But surely, I thought, it was the place of execution that had been the abomination. I wondered what irony of fate had transformed it into a temple of the Lady of Love.
"Oh indeed," muttered Fausta. "We all know that She has no power any more…"
In July the Council of Nicaea concluded with the creation of a creed to which everyone, even Arius, was willing to subscribe, respecting, if not the will of God, the wishes of their Emperor. At the beginning of the next year, Constantine, euphoric in the conviction that his leadership had brought the quarrelling Christians to a state of unity, moved his court to Rome to celebrate the twentieth year of his reign.
Our entry into the city was, if not a Triumph in the traditional sense, certainly triumphal. Every window was hung with white, and each archway garlanded with spring flowers. Slowly we made our way down the ancient route along the Via Triumphalis, between the pine-crowned Palatine and the Circus Maximus to the Caelian Hill, where we turned towards the Flavian Amphitheatre and the arch that Constantine had set up twenty years before. There the procession paused to allow a delegation of youths and maidens to present a panegyric and song.
Following the procession of senators and a group of flute players came several cohorts of crack troops from various parts of the Empire. The first of the imperial family to appear was Fausta, enthroned with her younger children on a low cart which had been fashioned into a representation of the Empire, bound with a banner proclaiming her the health and hope of the republic, the legend that had appeared on the coin that bore her image the year before. Her eldest son Constantinus, now ten years old, followed on a white pony.
Next was a float depicting the battle of the Hellespont in which the fleet led by Crispus had destroyed the much larger force belonging to Licinius. It was quite effective, I thought, with model ships poised on a silver sea. Crispus himself came after, resplendent as Apollo in full armour, mounted on a flighty Iberian mare who danced and tossed her head at each new wave of cheering.
My own cart looked rather like a shrine, with columns and a gilded pediment, for I had insisted on some kind of shade before I would consent to participate in the procession. Its legend bore the words "Securitas Republicae".
I felt less and less like the Security of the State as the morning wore on, for the jolting of the cart set every bone to aching despite the deep pillows that cushioned my throne. At least, this early in the year, the weather was still cool enough that I did not suffocate in my stiff robes, but it seemed to me that a painted statue would have done as well.
In a traditional Triumph, the floats would have been followed by the animals garlanded for sacrifice, but Constantine had replaced the pagan custom with two ranks of white-clad youths and maidens, singing hymns and waving palm branches, and the senior Christian clergy of the city, led by the Patriarch Sylvester, in their festive robes. The imperial bodyguards who escorted them carried the labarum, the gilded spear with a transverse bar which was at once a religious banner and a military standard. At its top was a jewelled wreath surrounding the Greek letters "Chi" and "Rho", which in the years since Constantine's victory at the Milvian Bridge had come to signify the beginning of Christ's name.
By now, the first part of the procession had made its careful way down the Sacred Way past the basilica Maxentius had begun and Constantine had completed and the old shrines that nestled against the base of the Palatine Hill, and was moving up and around the hill crowned by the temple to the Capitoline Jove. In order to endure the incessant jolt and sway, I found myself retreating into a tranced state in which it seemed to me that it was not I that was moving, but all the fading glories of old Rome that were passing before my eyes.
But even as we curved back to the palace on the Palatine where the feast was being prepared, I could hear a rising tide of sound behind me as the Emperor was borne onward in a chariot drawn by two snowy horses, blazing like the sun-god in cloth of gold.
"Constantinus!" they shouted, "Io Constantine, "
Twenty years … I thought dimly, it has been twenty years since Constantius died. Oh my beloved, look down from among the blessed spirits and rejoice in the triumph of our son!
Summer came early that year, bringing with it a crop of rumours as bountiful as the growing grain. I had declined to accompany Constantine's triumphal progress through the rest of the Empire, and he had left me as his deputy in Rome, with authority to draw upon the Treasury. But even in my palace I heard that people were predicting that the Emperor, having reigned for twenty years, would follow Diocletian's example and abdicate in favour of his glorious eldest son.
But others denied it, and pointed out that Crispus was being kept tethered at his father's side while the government of Gallia went to young Constantinus. A young patrician called Ceionius Rufius Albinus had been arrested for seducing a girl, and Crispus, who was his friend, was held guilty by association.
I found that hard to believe, for I knew my grandson was still in love with his wife, who had given him a son who died and then a little girl. But there were other whispers that were more disturbing. The crime of Crispus was to be too successful, too good. And I could not help remembering that on the day of the procession, the crowd had cheered as loudly for him as it did for Constantine.
And so, it was not so much with surprise as with the shock with which a man who has been ailing hears the physician's sentence that I heard that Crispus had been arrested and taken to the town of Pola, which is in Illyria at the head of the Adriatic sea.
The order for the boy's arrest had been sent from Sirmium, but Constantine could move swiftly when the mood was on him, and no one was quite sure where he was now. My immediate response was to write an impassioned letter pleading with the Emperor to reconsider and send it off with a trusted messenger.
Surely, I thought, Constantine will do no more than keep Crispus under guard for a while. But why should the boy have been arrested at all? Crispus was his own child, but I could not help remembering that his sister Constantina had begged the Emperor to spare the lives of her husband and son. He had promised their safety—and executed them all the same. My stomach knotted when I considered the possibility that my letter would not reach the Emperor, or worse still, might fail to move him.
But if I did not know where to find Constantine, I did know where they were holding Crispus, and I had the imperial Tablet of Authority which the Emperor had given me when he left Rome. My bones ached at the very thought of travel, but by the time the sun rose the next morning I was in a swift carriage with an escort of German guards clattering behind me and Cunoarda at my side, heading north from Rome.
In the heat of summer it was a terrible journey, for our shortest route was the Flaminian Way over the spine of Italia. Changing horses at each post-house, it took us a week of travel, and I was half-dead by the time we reached Ancona on the Adriatic Sea. The sight of the imperial Tablet and the few pieces of gold bought me the services of a swift liburnian galley, and after a day and a night and another day upon the ocean, the rugged coast of the Istrian peninsula came into view.
"I will demand to see my grandson, and get to the bottom of this, I told myself as the litter we had hired in the port swayed up the road. If Crispus has done something that the Emperor misconstrued … I stopped the thought. I had spent a week imagining things that might have made Constantine believe his son was betraying him. Further speculation was pointless now. Pola was a typical provincial town, with a grid of streets built around the crossroads, an amphitheatre and baths on the outskirts and temples, shops and dwellings farther in. We passed through the gate to the forum and pushed through the crowd to the basilica. As I waited for the officer who commanded my guard to find me someone in authority I realized that the people I could see through the curtains of the litter were not ordinary folk gathered for market day.
Men, most of them in the togas of provincial land-owners, stood in frowning groups as if they had been arguing. A tension that could not be attributed to the sudden appearance of a troop of legionaries hung in the air.
"I will not allow fear to overcome me, I told myself, or jump to conclusions. I have come so far, I can wait a little longer now.
In a little while my commander emerged with a sweating magistrate in tow. It is the heat, I thought, but beneath the perspiration the man's face was white with fear. I had put on the pearl diadem with which I was always portrayed on the coinage. I pulled open the curtains to let him see.
"I am Flavia Helena Augusta, and I bear the authority of the Emperor. I wish to see my grandson—I understand you have him here."
"Yes, Augusta, but—" he squeaked.
"Take me to him." I swung my legs over the edge of the litter and prepared to descend.
His face worked. "Yes, Augusta—"
Escorted by the commander and Cunoarda, I followed the magistrate into the shadows of the basilica. I remember how loudly my stick tapped on the tiles as we crossed the large central hall to the row of offices behind it. At such times, the mind fastens upon little things.
A man stood on guard before one of the rooms, but the door was open. The magistrate stood aside to let me go in.
It had been someone's office, converted into a prison by replacing the desk with a military folding bed. Crispus was lying there. Some power beyond volition moved me forwards, noting with an odd detachment how his golden complexion had already gone sallow, the cheeks beginning to hollow as the flesh changed. Seen thus, the fine bone structure of his face was even more beautiful.
He had been dead, I judged, for some hours.
Was that wind I felt in the dawning the passing of your spirit, my beloved? I wondered numbly. Could you not stay long enough to bid me farewell?
Gradually I became aware that the magistrate was speaking.
"The order came from the Emperor, from Sirmium. The young Caesar was to be tried by the magistrates, for treason. Evidence was provided. The Emperor… did not specify how we must impose the penalty, but we were afraid to let him have a weapon, for we knew his deeds in battle. He asked then for the death that was given Socrates. A Christian priest gave him the rites of the Church before he died…"
I do not know what the man saw in my face, but he stepped back, swallowing hard. I wanted to rage like a maenad, to order the men who had condemned my Crispus slain. But they were not to blame.
"What are we to do now, Augusta? There were no orders…"
"Do you have a sculptor in this town? Tell him to bring his wax to make a death-mask. Meanwhile, prepare a funeral pyre."
I would have taken the body to throw at Constantine's feet, but at this season it was not possible. Shock still numbed most of my emotions, but a few thoughts were beginning to stir. I would take the image of Crispus to confront his father, and I would have vengeance, against Constantine himself or against those who had driven him to destroy his child.
When the magistrate had gone off to do my bidding, I made them leave me alone with my dead, and allowed the burning spark of grief to flare into a raging flame at last.
Silently I raged against my own denial of power. I had cried out to God, but now I understood the great secret, which was that beyond my own strength there was nothing. How could I believe in a god who would allow Constantine to do this thing? It seemed to me then that men had invented their male God to comfort them in the dark when Mother wasn't there to hold their hands.
I had been brought up to see the divine with a different face, in Avalon. I thought of the proverb, "God could not be everywhere at once so he invented Mothers," and it seemed to me that it should be the other way around, "Mother did not have enough breasts for everyone, so man invented deities enough so that every man would have a Mother who would never leave him for another…"
Yet the Christians held that their terrible deity was the only one. Sylvester had preached the love of Christ, but I was a woman, and I knew that the only strength and the only god is that strength which is there when we are small and helpless, and it was for that support that I cried out now.
I remembered Hecuba, wailing over the death of Troy, old and stricken with age and powerless, seeing her daughters raped, imprisoned, scattered one by one to the far corners of the earth, destroyed, maddened, their children taken from them… But even Hecuba had not had to endure the sorrow of seeing a beloved grandchild slaughtered by his father, who was her own dear son. This was my punishment, I thought, for denying my gods.
By the time I caught up with Constantine in Treveri, almost two months had passed, and autumn was beginning to tint the leaves with shades of bronze and gold. The town had grown since I had last seen it. Constantine's great basilica had been completed, and so had the baths. As we passed beneath the great arch of the gate and turned down the main thoroughfare towards the palace I noticed the changes with a weary curiosity.
By now our caravan had grown to include a cart for the baggage in which Cunoarda was riding, and a second set of bearers for the litter, for I could no longer endure any other form of transportation. It was only large enough for one person, but I was not alone, for the death-mask of Crispus and the urn that held his ashes were my companions.
During the long journey we had held many conversations, Crispus and I.I knew that the bearers had told the others how they heard me murmuring behind the curtains. I could see how Cunoarda sought for signs of madness when she looked into my eyes. But they could not hear that other voice that answered, as Crispus told me of his love for his Helena and the little daughter who was left to them, of his pride in his victories, and the hopes he had cherished for a future which now would never be.
It was as well, I thought as the gates to the palace swung open, that my journey had been long enough to cool my rage. Now, my purpose was hard as quenched steel. No one was safe, if Constantine could kill his own son, and while the life of an old woman was of little value, I wanted to live long enough to see justice done.
I pretended not to hear the whispers as the servants settled me in my old apartments, or the curious glances at the bundle I cradled in my arms. All of the staff here were new. Drusilla had died long ago, and Vitellia had retired to Londinium, and most of the people who had served Crispus and his Helena had been sold off as well. Constantine and Fausta were still at the summer palace in the hills north of the town. I wondered how long it would take him to get up the nerve to come to me.
The next morning I ordered my bearers to take me to the home of young Helena's parents, where she had been living while Crispus was with the Emperor. Lena was, as my grandson had told me, beautiful, with pale skin and smooth dark hair. But that white skin was almost translucent, and when I embraced her I could feel the fine bones, as if her own grief were gnawing at her from within.
In all her life she has never known tribulation, I thought, releasing her. She does not know how to survive. Then the nursemaid brought in little Crispa, almost a year and a half old and bright as a sunbeam, and I sat down so that I could take my great-grand-daughter into my arms. What future awaited this child? I wondered as I breathed in the sweet scent of her hair.
"My Crispus was no traitor," murmured Lena as the child slid from my arms and ran to her. "He could never have done what they say of him. He loved the Emperor."
"I know it, and I swear to you that I will vindicate his memory," I answered her. Inscriptions and statues to Crispus were being defaced already as men sought to rewrite the past by damnatio memoriae. "In the meantime, you must write to me and tell me how you are getting on. Be brave and take care of yourself for the sake of your child."
Her eyes filled with tears. "I will try…"
That evening, the court arrived. I waited for some word from Constantine, but in the morning it was Bishop Ossius who came to me.
"He is waiting for you." The bishop's gaze flicked to my face and then away. "I know what you have come to say. I have tried, myself, to remonstrate with the Emperor for this… atrocity. But he does not seem to hear me. I think it preys upon his mind, but he will not face it. Come, perhaps a mother's words will reach him where mine cannot."
"If they do not," I said softly as I picked up the silk-wrapped bundle I had brought so far, "I have something here that may."
We moved along a corridor which terrified rumour had emptied. They were wise, I thought as I limped after Bishop Ossius, my black robes hissing like the whisper of Nemesis along the tiles. When the gods quarrel, mortals must take cover lest a stray thunderbolt destroy them as well.
Constantine was sitting in the little dining room, whose ochre-painted walls were frescoed with scenes from the Æneid. Light from the door to the garden lay like a barrier across the mosaic floor, but the Emperor was sitting in shadow. A flagon was on the little inlaid table, and a wine cup in his hand. I paused by the door.
"Augustus…" the Bishop said softly.
"Have you come to nag me again, Ossius?" Constantine answered tiredly without looking up. "You speak of the laws of heaven, but I am responsible for the Empire. You have no right to reproach me—"
Ossius started to object that he was responsible for the Emperor's soul, but my gesture silenced him.
"Perhaps not, but here is one who does!" Pulling the cloth away, I stepped forwards and thrust Crispus's death-mask into the light.
"My son!" Constantine recoiled, hands splayed in self-protection, and the table lurched and sent cup and flagon flying. Spilled wine spread like a tide of blood across the tiles.
Constantine's gaze moved from the mask to the wine and then, finally, to me. His face was pasty and there were dark circles under his eyes as if he had been unwell.
"I had to do it! I had no choice!" he cried. "God called me to sacrifice the son I loved, just like Abraham, but He provided no substitute, no lamb. So Crispus must have been guilty! God would not be so cruel!"
His head swung back and forth, eyes bulging, as if he could not see me at all. I wondered suddenly if he ever had seen me, or only an icon that he called "mother", with no more resemblance to the person I really was than a holy image painted on a wall.
"Did God send you a vision, or was it some mortal who persuaded you, Constantine? What did you think Crispus had done?" Did he even know who was talking to him, or was my voice echoing the accusations of his own soul?
"He wanted me to abdicate, and when I would not he was going to rebel against me—he had consulted an oracle! He meant to make Fausta his wife to legitimize his rule. Another civil war would have destroyed the Empire. Crispus consorted with sinners. He was an adulterer, and God would have cursed us all. One God, one Emperor—we must have unity, can't you understand?"
Fausta! Perhaps Constantine did not understand, but for me, a picture was beginning to come clear.
"Is that what Fausta told you?" I said in a still voice. "Has she given you hard proof of all this—or any proof at all? Did you allow Crispus to defend himself—did you ask him any questions, or were you afraid to see the judgment of God in his clear eyes?"
Constantine flinched at each question, but he was still shaking his head in denial.
"You are wrong! You hate her because she is the half-sister of Theodora, who took my father from you! But Fausta's first loyalty has always been to me—she told me when her father was plotting against me, she supported me against her own brother—"
"She betrayed her own blood for the sake of power—do you think she would hesitate to sacrifice yours?" I spat back at him. "She did this for the sake of her own sons, not for you, intending that one day they would give her the authority you have given me!"
"Your mother speaks reason, my lord," said Ossius softly. "My investigations have revealed no evidence of treachery."
"Are you a traitor too?" A vein bulged at the Emperor's temple as he turned. "I had to safeguard the succession," he said then. "Crispus was only a half-brother. There would have been war between him and Constantinus… Fausta kept on and on about it, and I could see how the people loved him…"
"Did you think she would poison you in a dish of mushrooms as Agrippina poisoned the Emperor Claudius, for the sake of her son?"
"She said that Crispus had tried to make love to her!" he cried.
"You are not Abraham—you are Theseus, and a fool!" I raged, waving the mask in his face until he cowered away. "Even if he had tried, which I do not for a moment believe, what kind of sin is a failed seduction compared to the murder of your own child?! Perhaps the Christian god can forgive you—He allowed his own son to die! No pagan deity could forgive such a crime!"
Like a great tree falling, Constantine sank to his knees. "God has abandoned me…" he whispered.
"God will forgive you." With a reproachful look at me, Bishop Ossius stepped past and set his hand on the Emperor's head. "But you must repent and make restitution."
"If it is Fausta who persuaded you to this deed then you must punish her," I echoed. "Do it, or Crispus will forever haunt you, and so will I!"
"God, have you forsaken me?" whispered Constantine. "Father, forgive me for my most grievous sin…"
"Leave us," whispered the Bishop, pointing towards the door. "I will deal with him now."
I nodded, for I was sick and shaking, and had no desire to watch as the master of the Roman world grovelled before his god.
For the rest of that day I lay in a darkened room, refusing food. Cunoarda thought I was ill, but if so, it was a sickness of the soul. I was waiting, though until I heard the shouting late that afternoon I did not know what I had been waiting for.
I was already sitting up when Cunoarda hurried into my chamber.
"Lady! The Empress Fausta is dead!"
"How did it happen?" I snapped back. "Was it an execution?" I had demanded Fausta's punishment, but I had not expected Constantine to compound one crime by committing another, scarcely less terrible.
"No one seems to know," Cunoarda replied. "She had gone to the new baths, and guards came to take her to the Emperor, but before they could arrest her they heard screaming. Someone had raised a sluice to let in the scalding water, and Fausta was caught in it, boiled to death in her bath! They are bringing the body back now. They say it is horrible to see." Her voice shook with an awful suppressed glee.
"Crispus, you are avenged!" I sank back upon the bed, wondering why the knowledge only increased my desolation.
My son had become a monster, at the mercy of his fears. But was I any better, who had urged him to an equal crime?
Of course there was an investigation, but no one ever learned how the accident had been arranged. In truth, although the Emperor meant to punish her, I am not certain that the manner of Fausta's death was ordered by Constantine. Crispus had been very popular in this city where he had governed for so long, and it is possible that some servant at the baths, hearing that the Empress was condemned, had taken advantage of the opportunity to give her a foretaste of the hell she so richly deserved.
AD 327-8
"I think you should see him," said Bishop Sylvester. "I believe the Emperor to be sincerely repentent, but he is still troubled in mind. They say he has caused a sculptor to make a golden image of his son which he has placed in a kind of oratory. He stands before it, lamenting. Perhaps you can give him ease…"
I stared at him in amazement. Surely I was the last person to offer Constantine comfort now.
"I know that you are still grieving, and perhaps you blame the Emperor for what happened, but if Christ could forgive His murderers as He hung on the Cross, can we do less?"
I might have found it easier, I thought grimly, if my son had sinned against me. I had spent the eight months since the death of Fausta in Rome, but neither in the new chapel that had been made from one of the rooms of my palace nor in the church of Marcellinus and Petrus, had I attended any service of the Christian faith. Nor had I entered any temple of the old religion. I was bereft of both Goddess and God. Indeed, since returning, I had hardly stirred beyond my own doors.
They say that the old dwell much on the past, as if reliving their lives backwards towards the beginning. Certainly I preferred to remember the days when Constantius and I had been young together, and more and more often, the dreams that filled my nights were of Avalon. I knew that my servants feared I was dying, and with good reason, for I was now in my seventy-seventh year, and life held nothing that I still desired.
I suspected, also, that while I was away the Syrian girl, Martha, had said more about the manner of her healing than I would have liked. When I did go abroad, people bowed even more deeply than my rank required, and offerings of flowers were often left at my gates.
In the same period, Constantine had relieved his feelings by directly attacking pagan religion for the first time. He had the prophets of Apollo at Didyma and Antioch killed, and destroyed the shrine of Aesclepius at Aigai. But the greater part of his wrath was directed towards what he called immorality. Increasingly strict laws against seduction, even when it was a willing elopement, were prescribed, and the temples where priestesses served Aphrodite pulled down.
I heard Sylvester clear his throat and realized that he was still waiting.
"The Emperor is in the audience chamber, Augusta. It is not good for mother and son to live in estrangement. If you do not feel well enough to rise, may he come to you here?"
I have no son, I thought bitterly, but I nodded. Constantine was still the Emperor.
Cunoarda rearranged the folds of my woollen mantle more becomingly. Spring had come to Rome, but I still felt cold. These days I spent most of my time in the small chamber with its British hangings—Constantine had never been here before. The dogs, sensing my tension, got up as he entered, and I motioned them back to their accustomed place at my feet.
"Are you not happy with your palace, Mother?" he asked, looking around him. "Surely you have somewhere to sit that is more… appropriate…"
Bishop Sylvester, whose own private chambers were even less luxurious, winced a little, but kept still.
"The room is comfortable and easy to keep warm. You must forgive an old woman her eccentricities, my lord," I replied.
"But your health is good—" He looked at me in sudden concern. "You can travel."
I frowned. "Where would you send me?" Was I about to be exiled?
Constantine straightened, his expression brightening. "To the Holy Land, mother, to Palestine!"
I blinked up at him, confused. I knew that Jesus had lived in Palestine, but after all, his own country had rejected him. These days it was one of the poorest of our provinces. Antiochia and Alexandria were the great Christian centres of the Empire.
"Our Lord once walked that sacred earth! Every stone He touched is holy. But except for Caesarea, there are only a few house-churches in the entire province. The sites of His miracles, which should be thronged with pilgrims, have no shrines!" Constantine's face flushed with excitement.
"That is unfortunate, but I do not understand—"
"I will build them! Work at the site of the Holy Sepulchre is progressing. Bishop Macarius has sent me some pieces of the True Cross already—I will give you one for your chapel here. To beautify the places where God manifested Himself will be my penance and my offering. Surely then He will forgive me my great sin!"
An offering, I thought cynically, but hardly a penance, except perhaps for those whose taxes would support this ambitious programme of construction. I nodded, still wondering why my blessing was required.
"I want to do it now, but the Visigoths are restless and the Persians will have to be dealt with soon. I cannot take the time to visit Palestine, but you could go as my representative. You would know how to find the sacred places and how to bless them," he drew breath and added ingenuously, "and show the East that the family of the Emperor is still strong!"
"That would be a difficult journey for a woman of my years," I said, trying to conceal my astonishment.
"Eusebius of Caesarea will take good care of you. Palestine is a land flowing with milk and honey, and the sun is warm Constantine's voice was cajoling, but his eyes were full of dreams.
"I will have to pray over this…" That was something to which he could not object.
"I must go now, but Bishop Sylvester is still here. He will explain." Constantine started to embrace me, his sanguine smile faltering a little as his eyes met mine, and compromised by kissing my outstretched hand.
"You are still angry," said Sylvester when the Emperor had left us, "and you have good cause. But nonetheless I ask you to make this journey."
"Why?" I rasped. "What possible interest should I have in visiting the holy places of a religion whose protector is responsible for such deeds as Constantine has done?"
"God Himself grieved as you grieve when He saw what men did to His Son, but He did not destroy humankind. When you consider how far we Christians are from perfection, is it not a proof of our religion that it has survived at all? Go to Palestine, Helena, not for the Emperor, but for yourself. In the desert, God speaks clearly. If there is any purpose to this tragedy, perhaps you will come to understand it there."
I made him some neutral answer, and presently he left me alone. I was determined to wait until Constantine had left Rome and then send him my refusal, but that night I dreamed that I stood in a sere land of golden sand and white stone, beside a silver sea. It was a place of terrible beauty, a place of power. And I knew, even as I gazed upon that bleached landscape, that I had seen it before.
It was only when I woke, perspiring, that I realized that it was not from this life that I recognized it, but from the vision that had come at my initiation into womanhood on Avalon. I understood then that there might still be something left for me to do, and that this journey to the Holy Land was my destiny.
Constantine, having got his way, spared no expense in transporting me to Caesarea, the port that the infamous Herod had built two centuries before. In the middle of August, I took ship from Ostia with Cunoarda and Martha, for they had sworn not to leave me even though I had freed them both some time before. We made a leisurely progress around the toe of Italia, past the shores of Graecia to Greta, where we took on fresh food, and then straight across to the Asian coast.
We came in with the setting sun behind us, illuminating the flat strip of tilled land, so rich in orchards and vineyards, and the rising ground beyond it with a rich, golden glow. The fortress loomed over one horn of the little harbour, with the walled town behind it, but more whitewashed buildings showed among the trees to the south, and as we drew closer I could see the smooth crescent of the amphitheatre, its tiered seats facing the sea.
Since the second Jewish rebellion had left Hierosolyma in ruins Caesarea had been the capital of Palestine. Here the Procurator had his palace, and it was here that Eusebius, the senior bishop for the province, had his church and see. I could see why the Romans liked it—in climate and atmosphere it reminded me strongly of the area around Baiae.
On the third day after my arrival, when I was sufficiently rested, my bearers carried me from the Procurator's palace to dine with Eusebius at a little house he had among the olive groves above the town. It was now the end of summer, and our couches had been arranged on a terrace where we could watch the sunset and wait for the relief the sudden drop in temperature brought at the end of the day.
"It is a beautiful country," I said, sipping some of the local wine.
"The coastal strip is fertile, if it is cared for," anwered Eusebius, "and some of the valley of the Jordan, and around Lake Tiberias in the Galilee. Inland, the country grows arid, fit for grazing, and farther south it is desert, fit only for scorpions."
Here in his own home he looked more relaxed, but he was the same thin, sallow-skinned intellectual I had met in Nicomedia. It was said that the library he had amassed here was better, especially in relation to the Church, than anything in Rome, and he was noted as an apologist and historian. I estimated his age at about ten years less than my own.
"My lady is unaccustomed to heat," said Cunoarda. "I hope that she will not be required to spend much time in the wilderness."
Eusebius cleared his throat. "Augusta, may I speak freely?" I gestured permission, lifting an eyebrow in enquiry, and he went on. "If the decision were mine, you would not be required to travel at all. To identify the places associated with our Lord can be a useful aid to faith, but to make them places of veneration and pilgrimage, as if they were in themselves holy, is to fall into the error of the pagans and the Jews. The religion of Moses was founded upon the Holy City, but even the name of Hierosolyma has been lost. Without the Temple, their religion must die. No Jews live in Aelia Capitolina now."
I lifted one eyebrow. There were Jews in every great city in the Empire. The ones I had known in Londinium seemed to be flourishing. Perhaps Hadrian had reinvented Judaea and turned it into Palestine, but the Jews seemed to have reinvented their religion as well. Still, I knew better than to say so.
"But there are Christians—" I probed gently instead. Sylvester had taken care to brief me on the rivalry between Eusebius and Bishop Macarius of Aelia Capitolina.
He shrugged. "A small community. And the locations of some of the sites associated with the incarnation of the Christos are known. Since the Emperor has ordered it, I will be happy to escort you there."
"We must all obey the Emperor," I agreed blandly.
Two days later we began our journey, following the Via Maris southwards in easy stages across the Plain of Sharon. For me there was a litter with two teams of trained bearers, while Cunoarda, Martha and Eusebius rode mules. Through the gauze curtain I could see the flash of sunlight on the helmets of my escort, sent to guard me and the chests of coin with which I, on behalf of the Emperor, would fund the building of churches in those places I deemed worthy. The rhythmic clash and tramp of the rearguard echoed from behind.
In Rome, I had been a dying woman, and when I set out upon this journey the Emperor had forced upon me I had hoped the stress of travel would release me from my pain. And indeed, it was doing so, but instead of death, I drew in life with each breath of the warm, salt-scented air. Was Palestine indeed a Holy Land, or was it only that I was at last returning to the path of my destiny?
The road passed through open woodlands where umbrella pines mingled with oak and hazelnut. Each day, the hills on our left grew taller and more rugged, clothed in grey-green scrub and the last of the golden grass. The heat of the air was relieved by the breeze from the sea. Inland, one found fields of barley, and mud houses whose gardens were planted with pomegranate and fig and vine.
At night I slept on a well-cushioned folding bed in a tent of yellow silk, with warm blankets to keep me from the damp chill as night released the moisture from the air. Martha or Cunoarda lay on a pallet before the door. In this land, which was so close to her homeland, Martha bloomed like a flower. Cunoarda's fair skin burned and peeled, but she did not complain. As I spent more time in his company, I began to realize that Bishop Eusebius was a complex man. He had survived the persecutions without losing either his reputation or his life, and managed to avoid being caught on the losing side of the Arian controversy. Now he faced a greater challenge.
Christians in the West had had almost twenty years to learn how to take advantage of Constantine's enthusiasm, but in the East, although Licinius had granted them toleration, only in the past two years had they begun to deal with the temptations of privilege. Eusebius's theology of a kingdom not of this world must have been perfectly suited to an embattled urban community surrounded by pagan iconography. From all accounts, the Romans had done their best to deprive Palestine of any spiritual significance at all. But Constantine had made it quite plain that he intended to reinvent the Holy Land, replacing the mythology of the older faiths with that of the new, just as he spoke now of founding a new Rome to replace the ancient capital with its weight of history. The notion had an epic grandeur which even in my current state of disillusion I had to admire. Whether it was truly Christian, I did not know. But Eusebius, if he wanted to survive, would have to go along with it.
Past Joppa our road turned inland, following a streambed, bearing only a trickle of water at this time of year, into the hills. The air was drier here, though the people of the country laughed when I said so. This was nothing compared to the land beyond the river Jordan, which flowed into a lake that was even more salt than the sea. Fortunately, as we climbed, we left behind us the damp heat of the coastal plain, and made better time.
As day followed golden day, we wound along the road through the hills until one morning we rounded a slope and saw, on the height across the curving valley, Aelia Capitolina, which had once been called Hierosolyma.
The walls had been built from the local stone, cream and gold with rusty stains as if all the blood that had been shed in this place had soaked into the ground. Huts clung to the slopes below them, with the remains of roads to show that once there had been more dwellings there. The tiled roofs of some of the principal Roman buildings were visible above the wall. This was the town that Hadrian had built after the last Jewish rebellion two hundred years before. Clearly it was the City of David no longer. How, I wondered, would it be changed by becoming the City of Constantine?
Then the bearers lifted my litter, I let the gauze curtains drop and we began the journey's final stage.
These days, Aelia was a military town, existing to serve the Tenth Legion which had been stationed here to guard against invasion from the east or local rebellion. Its commander lived in the fortress, and the house of the bishop, Macarius, was a modest place with no room for visitors, located outside the walls on Mount Sion. However one of the few wealthy merchants in the city had been only too happy to vacate his house for the visit of the mother of the Emperor. He himself had already set out for his other residence in Alexandria, so I need feel no guilt for having dispossessed him.
The next morning, the bishop himself arrived to escort me to the site of the Holy Sepulchre. It seemed to me that he greeted Eusebius with a hint of pious triumph, as if he already had the primacy of Palestine in his grasp. But Macarius was growing frail, while Eusebius was a veteran of Church politics. No matter what relics were found here, I did not think he would be dethroned so easily.
"It may not look as if we have made much progress," said Bishop Macarius apologetically, "but indeed the place looks very different than it did a few months ago. The abomination that was the Temple to Venus is gone, and we are making good progress in removing the rubble with which they covered the sacred ground."
Rubble indeed, I thought as I gazed around me. Several marble columns, which some thrifty architect had saved for re-use elsewhere, lay stacked at one end of the forum, which was littered with ropes and other gear. Workmen were emerging from the excavation beyond it like so many ants, bent beneath wicker baskets of earth and stone, and dumping their loads onto a steadily increasing pile. Women, their wrappings so impregnated with dust they seemed themselves to be creatures of the soil, were picking over the rubble.
"Each night waggons take the sifted earth to the valley to extend the fields," said Macarius. The larger stones are saved for building, and the little ones will be used to repair the roads when the winter rains come. And sometimes they find other things—vessels of pottery or glass, a piece of jewellery, or coins. It is the coins we seek above all."
"To help defray the cost of the work?"
Macarius shook his head. "Not entirely. We allow the workers to keep what they find, or they would try to hide things, and we might miss some relic of our Lord. So long as the coins we find are later than the time of Tiberius, we will know that we must dig deeper."
I nodded, amused, and a little surprised, to find the old man so practical.
"In the gospels," he went on, "we are told that soldiers diced for Christ's clothing at the very foot of the Cross. May we not hope that when the earth shook and the heavens were darkened they might have dropped some of their winnings there?"
At that moment one of the women held up something small, and the Bishop limped over to see.
"This talk of relics is superstition, though his idea about dating the coins shows a sound grasp of history," said Eusebius beside me. "It is the empty tomb, the Sign of the Resurrection, that should concern us here."
Together we moved closer to the excavation. "In the time of the Incarnation," he went on, "this spot was just outside the city walls. But the new wall that was built by Herod Agrippa included it, and when Hadrian refounded the city he placed the forum here, at the crossroads."
One could count on Eusebius to stick to the facts, I thought as I gazed at the gnawed earth below. A knob of rock seemed to be emerging to one side. Still, there was something rather engaging about Macarius's simple enthusiasm.
"I have heard it said that the Emperor placed the Temple of Aphrodite there on purpose, to scandalize the Christians."
Eusebius shrugged. "Perhaps, though he was not one of the great persecutors. It is the Jews who earned his wrath. I suspect that Hadrian put the temple here simply because it was convenient, and the site was covered in an attempt to level it."
I could see his point. The city was set on a plateau surrounded on three sides by canyons, and even the top had irregularities. The earlier wall had ended where a quarry had bitten deeply into the ground, but beyond it the ground rose in a hill. I could see what looked like the beginnings of a deeper ditch at the edge of the forum as well. I knew that the thought of the events that had taken place on this spot ought to move me, but I could find no meaning in the confused scene before me now.
Eusebius frowned. "Until the diggers have finished there will not be much to see here. Perhaps you should look at some of the other sites—the Galilee, or perhaps Bethlehem, which is only a half a day's journey to the south."
"To begin at the beginning?" I nodded. For some, like the Bishop, the proof of his religion was in the elegance of its theology. But I came from a place where power flowed through the earth and gathered in sacred pools. If God had become Man here in Palestine, surely the land itself would bear witness in some way to the miracle.
It was the season of the grape harvest, and in the villages, the people were picking the ripe fruit in the little vineyards that patched the hills. Patient donkeys made their way along the road before us, almost hidden by the great baskets of grapes they bore. On our journey to Aelia, I had been insulated from contact with the people, but even the commander forgot to be suspicious when confronted by laughing girls who offered him frothing cups of freshly-pressed juice along the way.
The village of Bethlehem had not changed much since the time of Jesus. A cluster of flat-roofed mud houses interspersed with stock-pens and clumps of greenery spread over the hilly ground.
"Do you see where some of the structures are built out from the slopes?" asked Eusebius. "There are caves behind them that the people use for stables and storage, because they are cool. They press out the oil of their olives there as well."
"Do you mean that Jesus was born in a cave?"
"A cave that was being used as a stable. There it is, ahead of us. This site has been known for a long time. The clay manger is still there."
He did not sound very excited, but by now I had realized that what mattered to Eusebius was not the place itself but its value as a historical proof of the Incarnation. Any lack of enthusiasm on his part was more than made up for by the villagers who swarmed around us, offering to show the sacred cave.
Somewhat to my surprise, the way was partially blocked by a grove of cedar trees.
"It is the grove of Tammuz," said the little girl who had taken my hand. "The pagans mourn him at the same time as we weep for Jesus in the spring."
I blinked at this easy acceptance, but Eusebius had warned me that some of the Christians in the country district were little better than pagan themselves. It did not seem so bad a thing to me, if it allowed them to live in amity.
The cave seemed very dark after the bright afternoon, but an oil lamp was flickering, and as my eyes adjusted I saw the clay feeding trough where the walls sloped sharply inward to the grotto's end. Inside the manger someone had laid a bunch of flowers. It was very still.
Eusebius had knelt to pray, with Martha beside him, but I stood, eyes closed and feet rooted firmly in the ground, and something that had been tensed since I had first been ordered to make this journey began to relax. Beneath the scents of old incense and lamp oil and a hint of goat there was something else, which after a moment I identified as the clean aroma of damp stone. Stone is eternal, I thought, and moved to the side so that I could lay my hand against the cool surface. Stone holds memories.
I extended my awareness into the rock, searching for impressions of the past. For a time all that came into my mind were the elemental needs of the beasts that had been kept here. Then, for a moment, I sensed a woman's pain, the profound relief of birth, and a flare of ecstasy as the child was put into her arms. Whatever Jesus was, I can believe that he was bom here, I thought then.
When I opened my eyes, Martha and the little girl were both gazing not at the manger but at me, with wonder in their eyes.
"I am thirsty," I said briskly. "Is there water here?"
"A well—among the trees," whispered the girl.
It was late afternoon by now and the light slanted golden through the grove. Strips of cloth and ribbons had been tied to the branches of one of them, that overlooked the little pool.
"Thus they do also in my own land," I laid my hand upon the rough trunk and closed my eyes, allowing awareness to follow the life of the tree down to its roots and upward once more to the leaves that drew in life from the sun.
And then, for a moment it was not a tree but a female body that I was sensing, feet rooted in the soil and arms reaching for the sky. The image transmuted and I saw a tree trunk carved into the image of the goddess. Women whirled around her, garlanded with flowers. "Asherah …" they chanted, "Asherah …"
These were the Asherim that the prophets cut down in the Courts of the Temple! I realized in amazement. They were trying to destroy the Goddess. And it is She, before Tammuz, who was honoured in this holy grove!
As the vision released me I realized that the girl was still speaking—
"Trees are for the Mother, the Virgin who gives birth to the Child of Prophecy. In Mamre, which is just down the road, there is an ancient terebinth tree where Abraham dreamed of his descendents. The family of King David is a tree, and Jesus is at the top of it… I hope they will not cut these trees down."
"When I give orders for the building of the church here I will ask the architects to save them." I replied.
No doubt Eusebius would have disapproved of the child's mixed theology, but it seemed to fit that moment, and I realized that in their own way, the rustling trees were also witnesses to the fact that once more the Mother was being worshipped here.
It was growing dark by the time we got on the road once more. The villagers had begged us to stay the night and join their celebration, but I judged that a journey with my own bed at the end of it would be less taxing than a night on a lumpy mattress with fleas. But as we started to descend the last slope I heard a squeal and one of the soldier's horses reared.
Above the centurion's curses as they got the animal calmed I heard a soft whining. "Wait," I called. "There's something out there."
"A wild beast," said the commander, loosening his javelin. "But nothing large enough to hurt us, by the sound of it." He motioned to a trooper to follow him with the torch.
"It sounds like a dog—" I watched the flickering light move along the side of the road.
"You were right, my lady!" the commander called back. "It is one of the wild dogs that roam the hills, with a broken leg. I'll put it out of its misery."
"Don't harm it!" I cried. "Let one of our men wrap it in a cloak so it can't bite and we'll take it back to the city."
"Augusta, you can't make a pet of a wild dog!" exclaimed Eusebius.
"Are you presuming to tell the Empress Mother what she cannot do?" Cunoarda asked dangerously.
I ignored them, my attention on the squirming mass of red wool from which emerged a golden, short-furred head with frantic dark eyes. Gently I spoke to the animal until at last it quieted. Only then did I give the order to resume our journey.
That night I dreamed I was once more a girl on Avalon, bending to drink from the sources of the blood spring, where the water trickled out from a cleft in the side of the hill. In the dream, it was somehow the same as the cave in Bethlehem, but now I realized how much the opening looked like the gateway to a woman's womb.
In my dream, I wept for all that I had lost, until there came a voice that whispered, "You are the child of Earth and starry Heaven. Do not forget the soil from which you have sprung…" and I was comforted.
My foundling proved to be a female dog just past puppyhood. I called her Leviyah, which is "Lioness' in the Hebrew tongue. She bit two of the troopers before the legion's horse-doctor could splint her leg, but once I had put her into a small dark room she grew calmer. Perhaps she thought it was a den. From then on I allowed no one else to bring her food or water, and gradually the dog's panic became acceptance, and acceptance grew to trust, until she was taking food from my hand.
Leviyah remained shy with others, but from then on she followed at my heels, hiding beneath my skirts when there was too much commotion, and springing forth with bared teeth if she thought me threatened. She made some of my entourage nervous, but what was the use of being an empress if I could not indulge my whims?
A few weeks later, we made another expedition, to the Mount of Olives which rose to the east of the city. With age, I had come to wake early, though I often needed a nap in the afternoon. When Eusebius suggested that I should arise in time to see the sun rise upon the city, I agreed, although when I emerged into the chill gloom of the hour just before dawn, I wondered why.
But inside my litter I was wrapped warmly, and Leviyah radiated heat against my thigh. We passed through the silent streets and down into the valley of Kidron, then started up again through the rubble-strewn slopes and past the garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus had wrestled with his mortality and been betrayed.
When we reached the summit the stars were fading, and before us, the dim inchoate mass of the city was assuming shape and meaning, as if this were the morning of Creation and we were watching the first emergence of the world. Like Rome, Hierosolyma took much of its character from its sacred hills. Now I could make out Mount Moriah, on which the Jews had built their temple; and glimpse Mount Sion, just outside the wall on the southern side. More and more buildings became visible, though they still seemed lifeless against the grey sky.
And then, of a sudden, the air was filled with radiance, and my shadow stretched out before me as if reaching for the luminous city beyond the gulf of shadow that lay below. Buildings which a moment before had been lifeless mud and plaster and stone glowed suddenly in a hundred shades of gold.
"Our Lord stood here," whispered Eusebius, his voice harsh with unwonted emotion. "He taught his disciples in the cave beneath our feet, and He prophesied that not one stone of Hierosolyma should be left upon another. And Titus fulfilled His word."
And yet the city still stands before us, I thought then. I shivered, recognizing the sink and shift of consciousness that was altering my vision. I still saw Hierosolyma, but now I saw it as a series of layers, its outlines continually shifting while its essence remained the same. Words echoed through my awareness.
"The Romans were not the first to destroy this city, nor will the Jews be the last to lose it. It has fallen many times before, and will go down in blood and fire and be rebuilt in clean stone again and again, as one conqueror replaces another upon this land. The followers of Christ will make it their sacred centre, yet men of a faith yet unborn shall rule it until the children of Abraham return to claim it again.
"And again and again the blood shall flow across those stones, until not only the three faiths of Jahweh, but all the cults whose altars have been cast down shall worship here once more. For I tell you that Hierosolyma is indeed a place of power, and it is not men who have made it so, but rather they who have been touched by the force that rises up from the depths of its rock to seek union with the sky…"
Blinking, I came to myself once more. The ghostly outlines of the cities past and yet to come were fading, and the city of the here and now lay revealed with brutal clarity by the hard light of day. And yet I knew that those other Hierosolymas were still present, part of the eternal Holy City that would always be.
"Lady, are you unwell?" whispered Cunoarda. I found that I was leaning against her. Eusebius was still gazing at the view, and I realized with relief that I had not spoken aloud.
"A momentary distraction," I replied, pulling myself upright.
Eusebius gestured towards the hilltop, where an outcrop of bare stone was encircled by olive trees. "And from this point Christ ascended into heaven. Christians have worshipped here ever since that day."
I bowed my head in reverence, but I knew that when I instructed the architects to build the church here, it would not crown the summit, but rise above the cave in the earth where Jesus had revealed to his followers the deepest mysteries.
That night I dreamed I was climbing a mountain. At first I thought I was ascending the Mount of Olives with a company of Christian pilgrims, but this was a smaller hill, and as the light grew I saw that it was the Tor. Below I could see the cluster of beehive huts and the round church that had been built by Joseph of Arimathea, and I realized that this was Inis Witrin of the monks, not Avalon. And yet, as I climbed, my vision altered, and I knew that I was seeing both at once. And still my sight sharpened, until I could look beneath the surface of the Tor to the crystalline structure of caves within.
With December, winter came to the Judaean hills, with violent storms and a perpetual damp chill that bit to the bone. Storms on the Mediterranean made a return to Rome inadvisable, work on the Sepulchre had become almost impossible, and when I developed a racking cough that worsened my usual winter breathing problems, Bishop Eusebius suggested that I move down to Jericho, where it was warmer, while he stayed to watch over the excavation.
As we made our way along the Jericho road, I could see that the terrain was changing, the trees that had clothed the hills around Hierosolyma giving way to scrub, which diminished until it seemed to disappear into the stony hills. At the slow pace my aching joints required it took us three days to reach the palm-girt oasis whose mud buildings huddled below the ancient mound. The palace of Herod was in ruins, but once more, a local merchant was happy to give up his house to an empress.
Eventually I began to feel well enough to explore the surrounding countryside and give Leviyah a chance to run. Compared to the great rivers of Europe I found the Jordan a modest stream, even when swollen by the winter rains, but the greenery that edged it made it pleasant. Venturing farther, we followed the river down to the shores of the Dead Sea.
To the west, the clouds which were no doubt still drenching Hierosolyma hung above the hills, but here, the sky was an intense blue. At this season the folds of the hills sheltered some vegetation, but it seemed impossible that men should live here, until our guide pointed out a brushwood shelter or a hole in the cliffs where one of the Perfect! had come to escape the temptations of the world. We made camp below the ruins of a place called Sekakah, where a community of Jewish holy men had lived in earlier days.
In this bare land I found a curious peace. A messenger was sent to bring back the supplies we would need for a more permanent encampment, and we settled in. I bathed in the saline waters, warm as blood and so thick with minerals that I floated upon the surface like a child in its mother's womb. And I took long walks along the sun-baked shore with Leviyah frisking by my side.
It was during one of these walks, in the middle of the day when the rocks—water-worn or sculpted into fantastic mushroom-shapes—blazed white in the sun, that I encountered the old man. Like me, he had come out to greet the noon, standing with uplifted arms at the edge of the sea.
Surprisingly, Leviyah remained still until he had finished his devotions. As she danced up to him, he turned with a smile. But I held back until he gestured a welcome. Life in this arid land had fined him down to bone and whipcord, his skin too leathery for me even to guess his age, beyond the evidence of his grizzled hair and beard. Save for a bit of goatskin tied around his skinny hips he was unclad.
"I thought you might be one of those who is not permitted to speak to a woman," I said when we had turned to look out over the water again. Its lead-coloured waters shimmered in the sunlight, and I blinked, trying to pin down the sense that I had lived this moment before.
"What is male or female when we stand as spirits before God? In the desert, true opposites are obvious—light opposes darkness, heat battles the cold," he answered. "Truth is easier to see. Men come here now to live as anchorites because they can no longer hope for the martyrdom of blood to wash away their sins. But they are not the first to seek enlightenment in this wilderness. The men of Sekakah lived a life of purity in their caves, and our Lord Himself spent forty days and forty nights wrestling with illusions not so far from here."
"And are you one of those who seek wisdom?" I said, watching Leviyah hunt among the stones and sticks cast up upon the shore.
"Since before His day there has always been a small community here, passing on certain teachings that the established religions have forgotten. In times past, persecution was likely to interrupt traditions. In these days, I fear that certain aspects of the ancient wisdom will become unacceptable to a church that is learning how to live with wealth and power."
"Why do you say such things to me?" I asked, focusing on his face at last. Suddenly I was certain that I had seen him before. "I am the mother of the Emperor."
"Even in this life that is not all you are—" he reached out and touched the spot where once the crescent of Avalon had blessed my brow. How had he known? My forehead was deeply lined and my skin browned by the sun; the old tattoo was no more than a discoloration now.
"By this I recognize you as a sister in a tradition kindred to my own, an initiate of the Mysteries."
I gazed at him in astonishment. From time to time I had met priests of the Mediterranean gods who recognized that behind all their cults lay a greater truth, but I had never expected to hear a Christian speak this way.
"And there is something more. I have had a vision," he said then. "For a time the holy Joseph—he in whose tomb Christ was laid -dwelt among us, before he sailed away across the sea. In my vision, he appeared and told me that you would come. When I saw you, I was to speak these words:
" 'Follow the setting sun to your journey's beginning, and through the mists of morning you shall pass between the worlds…' "
"Does this mean something to you?"
I remembered now—twice, I had dreamed this. I nodded, weeping, though the warm air dried my tears before they could fall.
AD 327-328
We travelled up to the Holy City just before the Feast of the Resurrection. On the lower slopes, the vivid green of spring was already ripening to summer gold, but the heights around Hierosolyma were bright with new leaf and meadows jewelled with red buttercups, with little pinkish-purple orchids and hairy flax and a host of other flowers. It seemed that every migrating bird in this part of the world flew over Palestine, and the air rang with their cries.
"Rejoice! Rejoice in the spring!" they sang, "Kore returns from Hades, and the Son of God arises from the tomb!"
On the slopes around the city dense colonies of rock-rose were covered with snowy white bloom, as were the spiky sprays of desert thorn. Inside the gates, one became suddenly aware of hidden gardens when a trill of birdsong and a whiff of perfume came drifting over a wall.
Bishop Macarius's round face was as bright as the flowers, in the past two months his diggers had made great progress. They had unearthed a hard knob of stone which was clearly the site of the Crucifixion, and laid bare the hillside beyond it, into whose slopes had been dug a number of tombs. But his very success presented a new problem, for none of the openings still held bodies, so how were they to tell from which one the angel had rolled back the stone?
With my stick to steady me on one side and a strong young priest ready to catch me on the other, I crossed the ditch and made my way across the uneven ground. A philosopher would have welcomed the current situation as a way to test the hypothesis that great events can sanctify a location, for this site, though historical, had been inaccessible until now. At Bethlehem and the Mount of Olives, the devotion of two centuries had left an impression, and there, I could not be entirely certain whether the images I was perceiving came from the events that had taken place there or the focused yearnings of the pilgrims who believed in them. To Eusebius, simply identifying the location was a powerful aid to faith, but Macarius, and Constantine, wanted a place of power.
I paused, turning to my left to study the knob of stone.
"We believe this to be the place they called Golgotha, because it looked like a skull. The stone here is more fissured than the rest, and I suppose that is why it was not quarried." Macarius pointed to the uneven surface.
I laid one hand upon the stone, and after a long moment jerked it away, shuddering at the echoes of agony it retained. "Surely this was a place of execution—the very stones still cry out in pain," I whispered, though I could not say with certainty whose it had been.
There was a murmur of awe from behind me and I sighed, realizing the story would be all over the city before night fell.
"Be comforted, my lady," said the young priest when he saw how I had been shaken. "Behold the empty tomb!"
There were in fact two chambers in the side of the hill that were still in good condition, and several others that might have been tombs before the stone crumbled away. Clearly neither Eusebius nor Macarius had dared to make a choice for fear the other would object to it. I, representing the Emperor, was expected to decide.
To those with the skill to sense such things, places retain memories of great deeds that have been done there. But this tomb, unlike all others, was important because the body of Jesus had not remained within.
"We must pray to God to guide us…" I told them. "Celebrate the Divine Services for the holy days on this spot, and perhaps He will communicate His will."
Palm Sunday had already passed, and the town was full of visitors. The air throbbed with tension as the Church, triumphant in the Emperor's favour, launched into the traditional round of ceremonies, and the tide of devotion carried me along. On the eve of Good Friday I went once more to the site, hoping for inspiration.
The tombs gave me no help, but as I returned, I noticed in the ditch a sprig of green. One of the workmen dug it up for me and I took it back to my chamber, where Cunoarda, who was accustomed to my eccentricities, found a pot for me to plant it in. It sat on my windowsill, next to the little clay image of the tree goddess that had been dug up by one of the workmen.
The very air of Hierosolyma seemed to darken with the emotions of Good Friday, and the people gathered at the foot of Golgotha wailed as once they had wept for Tammuz, who also died in the spring. During all the day that followed I lay upon my bed, fasting. And in that half-aware state that can result from deprivation, many thoughts took root in my imagination and flowered there. As I wondered about the tomb chambers, memory brought to mind the other caves that I had seen. It seemed to me then that all three were earthen wombs. From the first cave in Bethlehem, Christ was born into the mortal world, the second, on the Mount of Olives, was a birth of wisdom, and from the third, by Golgotha, he was born into immortality. His followers denied the Goddess, but She was here, in the figure of Mary—Virgin, Mother and sorrowing Crone, and in the female recesses of Earth herself, who receives the dead into her embrace so that new life can arise with the spring.
And I thought then that this was what Eusebius, whose religion was of the mind, did not understand—that if there is only one Divinity to be worshipped, it must be addressed in many ways, as Man and God and Mother, as pure Spirit, and in the physical icons which bear witness to the Divine Presence having made itself manifest in the world. Even superstition could promote faith. In this, Constantine spoke for his people—his heart was still pagan enough to know that outward and visible signs were needed to lead earthly men to inward and invisible grace.
When darkness fell I passed into an uneasy sleep in which I experienced a series of dreams. In the first I thought I was awake, for I was still in my chamber, but the sunlight was shining on my potted plant and I knew it was day. However, the plant had grown, dividing into several twisty branches that sprouted both green leaves and thorns. As I watched, it began to put forth starry white flowers. I recognized it then as the thornbush that the monks of Inis Witrin said had grown from the staff that Joseph of Arimathea had stuck into the ground.
From that recognition I passed, in the way of dreams, to Golgotha, as it was in the days when Tiberius ruled. I stood with a crowd of people before the knob of stone. Three crosses had been set there, but as I watched, the central one began to sprout leaves and branches and starry white flowers. It was not dead wood but a living tree that we honoured, renewal instead of sacrifice.
And again the scene shifted. It was evening, and the city trembled beneath a lowering sky. Two men bore a rude stretcher from Golgotha, while weeping women followed behind. They were carrying the broken body of a man. As they neared the hillside in which the tombs were situated a solider motioned to them to hurry, and they manhandled the corpse into one of the dark openings and laid it upon the clay slab. A great stone was leaning against the hillside beside it, its edges still white where it had been hewn. Grunting, the two men managed to roll it across the entrance.
Then the younger man went back to the women, trying to give comfort. But the older paused for a moment, and seeing that the Roman was watching the others, drew upon the stone with his finger the sigil of an initiate of the highest Mysteries. He was better dressed than the rest of them—a man of middle age with silver in his beard. As he turned, the last light of the sun illuminated his features, and with the certainty of dream I recognized him not only as the anchorite I had met by the Dead Sea, but as the old monk I had spoken with so long ago at Inis Witrin.
In the morning, I was carried out to join in the celebration of the Resurrection in a sedan chair, for I was too exhausted to walk. The day had dawned fine and clear, and above the murmur of the crowd came the triumphant choruses of the birds. The deep singing of the priests made the fine hairs rise on the back of my neck and arms. Gold and jewels flashed in the sunlight from the robes of the priests, and the smoke of incense from the altar they had set up in front of the tombs hung in blue swirls in the still air.
There is power here, I thought as the drama of the Mass came to a conclusion. It may not be the only truth in the world, but this story they are telling is true. I could feel the life returning to my limbs, and as the bishop lifted his hands in dismissal I rose from my chair. In the morning sun the openings to the tombs showed clearly beyond the altar. By one of them lay part of a large stone.
It seemed to me now that if events had happened as the gospels described them they would have left an impression of power within the tomb, a power so great I was afraid even to try to touch it. But the mark upon the stone I might seek after, for I was an initiate of the same Mysteries.
And so I did, and did not even know that the people had grown silent, watching me, for I was staring at the dark opening beyond the stone that I had found.
Upon the rocky floor lay a scattering of white petals from the holy thorn.
I stayed in Hierosolyma throughout that spring and into the summer, conferring with the architects whom Constantine had sent to build churches above the sacred sites that I had found. From my window I could see the foundations of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, with its long nave extending to the east, as was so common in Constantine's churches, so that when the doors were opened, the high altar would blaze in the light of the rising sun. The Rock of Golgotha had been trimmed to fit into the courtyard on the southern side, and the hillside behind the tomb cut away so that it could be covered by a rotunda.
I had been brought up to believe that the eternal powers cannot be contained in temples made by human hands, and sacred space should be honoured, not owned. But if this building, gilded and jewelled with mosaics from ceiling to floor, was more likely to impress pilgrims with the glory of the Church than the wonder of the Resurrection, that was the tradition of the Mediterranean world. I could foresee a time when the pagan shrines that had sanctified the landscape and scandalized the Christians would be replaced by Christian icons. I wondered if by then there would be any pagans left to be upset by the change.
One evening Eusebius arrived for dinner, beaming. The Emperor, he told me, had decided to refound the city of Drepanum as Helenopolis in my honour, and build a church to the martyr Lucian there.
"It is a victory for the Arian way of thinking," he told me over the lamb and barley. "For Lucian was not only the best student of the theologian Origen, but he himself taught Arius."
"I thought he was a priest in the church at Antiochia who published a new edition of the scriptures—"
"That is so, but he was executed in Drepanum by Maximinus. You must visit there on your way home and give it your blessing."
No doubt that would please Constantine, I thought unhappily. My son had taken to calling himself the thirteenth apostle, a status which in practice seemed to demand the adulation formerly reserved for gods. The Roman Emperors had been deified for centuries, but normally they waited for death to assume full godhead. Constantine seemed to be adopting the Eastern fashion of looking upon rulers as living avatars of a god. Obviously no one dared to remind him that the kingdom of Jesus had not been of this world.
"It is time I made plans for my departure," I said aloud. The words of the anchorite echoed in my memory, and images of Avalon haunted my dreams. But my present life of privilege was also a prison—how could I escape it? For now it would be enough to return to Rome. Perhaps from there I would be able to see my way.
By the time I left Palestine a full year had passed. I did not detour to visit Drepanum, preferring to remember it as it had been when I lived there with Constantius. Martha, her fervour undiminished, had remained to serve in the household of Bishop Macarius, but my faithful Cunoarda was still with me, and my Canaanite dog, and the little thorn tree. With us came several chests full of souvenirs, both gifts and things I had somehow ended up buying—Palestinian robes and pottery, Tyrian textiles and glass from Askalon. It was Rome that now seemed strange, a vast labyrinth of decaying splendours which included the Domus Sessorianum.
Constantine was still in the East, supervising the demolition of the old town of Byzantium so that he could create a new Rome that would bear his name. The little boy who had built fortresses in our back garden now had an entire city to play with. Even the Emperor Hadrian's building projects had stopped short of such ambition. When Constantine had finished with Constantinople, would he compel God, I wondered, to let him re-create the world?
Shortly after my return I went to the church of the saints Marcellinus and Petrus to attend services and to donate a golden vessel that had been given to me by the Procurator in Palestine. In one of the courtyards stood a sarcophagus of white marble with reliefs of horsemen. Constantine had ordered it, said the priest, but now the Emperor was planning a great mausoleum in Constantinople, and no one had said what was to be done with the thing.
I suppressed my amusement and assured him that they would no doubt find some use for it, and encouraged him to return to his report on the church's charities. I had had some thought of occupying my days by helping out here, but it was clear that Helena Augusta was far too important a figure to be allowed to dirty her hands in that way. At least I assumed that the reverence with which I was treated was due to my position. But since I returned from the Holy Land the offerings of flowers had begun to appear at my door again, and sometimes people would make me an obeisance that even the Emperor did not demand. It was disquieting, and I realized that I would either have to become a recluse, or go about the city in disguise.
Cunoarda was scandalized, but in Palestine I had grown accustomed to a simpler life. I was now nearly eighty years old, and surely, as I told her, I had earned the right to do as I pleased, or at least as much of what I pleased as my ageing body would allow. Too often the old were thrust into a corner, sent off to some country cottage where they would not get in the way of their descendents, or even put into the street, if they had no children who would, however grudgingly, provide for them. To become a gilded icon, set safely in a niche on the wall and brought out on holidays, was only a more comfortable way of being put aside.
But I had been set aside before, when Constantius left me to marry Theodora, and I had no mind to let it happen again. I might be old, but I was not powerless.
Remembering how I had nursed the sick during the plague, I told Cunoarda to go to a shop that sold used clothing and purchase garments suitable for a poor widow. She came back with two long-sleeved gowns, one of dusty brown, the other a faded blue, and both of them neatly mended, sturdy sandals, and several bleached linen veils. The priests at the Church of Marcellinus and Petrus had only seen me jewelled and scented, my features half-hidden by purple gauze. I doubted they would recognize me with white linen bound across my forehead and wearing a shapeless gown.
And so it proved. I was only one of a covey of old women who helped to distribute food to the hungry and clothes and medicines to the poor. The activity eased my frustration, but after a year in Palestine the Roman winter seemed raw and cold, and I fell ill myself in December, and for some months I went nowhere at all.
As I lay in my bedchamber, alternately shaking with cold and burning with fever, it came to me that my life was drawing to an end. This was the ultimate parable of Age, ancient, powerless, useless. I cried out for strength and God's help, and like an initiate plumbing the depths of the Mysteries, I came to rest at last in an empty shrine. And there the secret was confided to me—there is no God, and no Goddess, only the power of the Mother within, giving what little strength one has.
And then I realized that, as in childbirth I had created my own tormentor who would feed on me and destroy me, at the end of life I must endure the painful process of giving birth to the Self, for myself alone. I had to give up power over my child to become detached and uninvolved and let him build his world. Why was this such a surprise? Had I not always known that what I did was by my own will—to leave Avalon with Constantius, to accept responsibility for my child? When I did that, I became the Goddess, with the same ruthless power.
Now I had renounced my child, and the grandchild I loved had been taken from me. It was for younger women to bear and care for children now. I might lend wisdom and counsel, but it was no longer my part to meddle in the affairs of the world, unless it was to teach the young ones what I had learned.
There was nothing left to me but old age and declining strength, and in the end, death. But I was beginning to see that this might also be an opportunity. As a mother, I had had to deny myself in favour of others. Now, it was given to me to be free again, to be uniquely myself, living for myself, procreativeness giving way to creativity.
By the time I had the strength to get up and around, spring had come once more. The little thorn tree, which I had put into the earth just outside the chapel in my palace, had survived its transplanting and was now putting out strong green shoots, starred with white bloom. When I looked at it, I did not see my well-tended gardens, but mist on the water and the smooth green slope of the holy Tor.
I summoned a magistrate, and with his help and Cunoarda's I began work on my will. Every detail must be covered, from freedom for those members of my household who were still slaves to the disposition of the items I had brought back from Palestine. A man's robe, which the merchant had assured me was the very garment worn by Jesus, was to be sent to the bishop at Treveri, and a set of diadems worthy of the Wise Men to the church at Colonia. To Bishop Sylvester I left the Domus Sessorianum itself, with instructions to use its resources as needed, and to take care of the little thorn tree.
Cunoarda pulled a long face, but I found that even simply planning to give so much away left me feeling lighter. How much freer would I feel if I simply walked away? Though I assured Cunoarda I was feeling better, it was likely enough that death would soon release me. But if it did not, perhaps one day I would abandon all that held me in Rome.
Attached to the Church of Marcellinus and Petrus was a kitchen and a covered area where the poor could come for a meal. There was also a small building, lone survivor of the barracks that had formerly occupied the space, where the sick could be nursed for a while. It was a long time since I had been trained in the use of herbs and simples, but I knew more of such things than the priests did, or most of the other women, and they were happy to have my help when I could come.
I had told them that I served a family that had estates in many places, and must often travel with them, which excused me from becoming too close to the community. Still, it was good to go among ordinary people again. In the spring that followed my return from Palestine, I was spending three afternoons a week at the church, while Cunoarda told any enquirers at the palace that I was resting.
It was on one of those afternoons that the old woman from Gallia collapsed over her soup and was carried into the shelter. She had been coming in for the past several weeks. Her name was Drusa, and she had moved to the city with her son, but now he had died and left her alone. I had noticed her particularly because the other helpers thought she resembled me. Perhaps it was the Celtic bone structure we shared. She did not know her age, but I guessed her to be a few years younger than me.
Drusa died just before the Feast of Pentecost, on the day that a messenger had come to tell me that the Emperor was on his way to Rome. Ever since, my stomach had been acid with anxiety, for I knew that there must be a confrontation, but the old woman's death put my own fears into perspective, and in that moment of clarity, from the depths of my soul emerged a plan.
"Drusa is my sister in Christ," I told the priest, "and I will act the part of a kinswoman and see to her burial. A waggon will come for the body this afternoon."
Constantine made a triumphal entry into the city. I did not attend, though even from my palace I could hear the cheers. He was scheduled to attend services at the Lateran cathedral and on the following day, to address the Senate, and then, no doubt, there would be a banquet. It was not until the third day after his arrival that the messenger came to tell me that the imperial entourage was on its way.
By then the domus was worthy of sheltering the imperial presence, every surface polished and shining. Constantine should have no reason to scorn his mother's surroundings now. I received him in one of the private chambers, more intimate than the audience hall, though no less splendid, since I had added the draperies of Tyrian purple and richly-coloured carpets I had purchased in Palestine.
It suited him well, I thought as I rose to greet him. He had come from some formal reception and was still wearing the purple toga brocaded with flowers. I had decked myself out in the robes of an Empress Mother, my hair confined by the pearl diadem.
Three smaller figures, dressed in similar garments, followed him. For a moment I thought they were dwarfs, intended to make the Emperor look even larger. Then I looked again and realized that they were boys, all three of them dark-haired, with skin that did not get enough sun. They gave a supercilious glance at the room's beauties, then flopped down on two of the large cushions next to the table where I had placed a tray of the fig pastries drenched in honey that Constantine used to love.
"Mother, you look well—"
I look old, I thought as the Emperor took my hands and pressed his cheek to mine. Even if I had desired it, court robes did not permit a more affectionate salutation.
"I have brought my boys to see you—Constantinus, Constantius, Constans, salute your grandmother."
Their names might proclaim their sire, but in features these were Fausta's sons, whom I had not seen since they were very small. The oldest must now be about eleven, and the others a year and three years younger. As they reluctantly relinquished the sweetmeats and got up to make their bows I wondered what they had been told about their mother's passing.
"Do you have horses?" asked Constantinus. "I have a white pony that I rode in the procession."
I repressed the memory of the white stallion that Crispus had ridden in our triumphal entry into Rome. At least this child was trying to be polite. His brothers were already roaming about the room, tugging on the curtains and picking up the alabaster vases and delicate bronze figurines.
"I am too old to ride, but I have dogs. If you wish to go out into my gardens you may play with them." Leviyah would avoid these children with the caution of a wild thing, but my other dogs were friendly. With another pang I pushed away the memory of how Crispus had used to play with my dogs.
"Yes, why don't you boys run outside? It is a fine day!"
Clearly the boys recognized the difference between fatherly indulgence and an imperial command, and made no protest when the servant I summoned arrived to lead them away, especially when I picked up the silver tray of pastries and set it into Constantinus's hand.
"They are fine lads," said Constantine fondly, gazing after them.
They are mannerless brats, I thought, but they were his problem, not mine, and he deserved them.
"I like to keep them with me," he went on. "There are those who would use them against me, you know, young as they are."
I nodded, and seated myself on one of the carved ivory chairs, whose rounded back had been carved with scenes of Penelope and Ulysses. Its mate, which creaked as it took Constantine's weight, portrayed Dido and Aeneas.
How did I come to have a son so old? I wondered then. Since I had last seen him the flesh had begun to sag a little on the big bones, and the skin of his face was deeply scored by lines of anger and suspicion as well as power. He seemed to have bounced back from the tragedy of Crispus and Fausta, but not without scars.
"Your journey to Palestine was a great success—" Constantine poured a goblet of wine from the flagon that had been left with the pastries upon the table. "Even if they can agree on nothing else, both Eusebius and Macarius are unanimous in praise of your virtues."
He grimaced as he remembered his battle to force the bishops to consensus. I had heard that the compromises of Nicaea were already fraying. In the old days, men had served the gods as their temperaments inclined and no one would have seen any point in trying to make them all see things the same way.
"As I hoped, the image of the imperial family is beginning to shine brightly once more. Now I would like you to make a journey to the churches founded by Saint Paulus in the cities of the Greek diaspora."
"No." Though I found great beauty in the words of Jesus, I was becoming increasingly aware of a difference between the truths he taught and the church that Paulus had established in his name.
Constantine was still talking. I cleared my throat. "No—I will make no more journeys for you."
"But why? Are you ill?" The Emperor's eyes opened wide as he realized that I had denied him.
"I am well enough, for now, but I am old. I have served you and the Empire. In the time that is left to me I must care for myself—the true Self that lay so long neglected while I was paying attention to other people's needs."
"Do you wish to retire from the world? Perhaps to a community of holy women, praying for the Empire—"
I could see the beginnings of calculation in his eyes. I could not really blame him—this ability to extract political benefit from everything was, I suppose, one of the things that made him an effective emperor. But in a world that was full of stories of young people rebelling against their parents, I had never considered how hard it might be for an elder to win freedom from her children.
"I will not head your congregation of Christian Vestals, Constantine," I said tartly. "But I am going away…'
"I cannot allow that—" Constantine shook his head. "You are too useful to me here."
"Useful!" I was growing angry at last. "How useful will I be if I begin to call the death of Crispus a murder, or proclaim myself disillusioned with Christianity and go to make offerings at the Temple of Juno Regina on the Capitol?"
"You will not! I can imprison you here—" Constantine was half out of his chair, his face flushing dangerously.
"Do you think I have taken no precautions?" I snapped back at him. "I am your mother! I have distributed letters to be sent out in a week's time unless a word from me recalls them."
"You will say that word—"
"Or you will murder me, as you did Fausta? I am old, Constantine, and death holds no terrors. Neither threats nor pain will bend my will!"
"Are you still a Christian?" This was not self-interest, but a deeper and more superstitious fear.
I sighed. How could I make him understand?
"I have always wondered why a man who can see only one colour is considered disabled, and yet is praised when he will accept only one deity. I believe that Christ bore the power of God, and I honour his teachings, but I know that the Goddess in her many guises loves her children as well. Do not try to define me as Christian or Pagan, Constantine." I took a deep breath, remembering the sigil I had seen Josephus of Arimathea inscribe upon the tomb. "I am a servant of the Light. Let that be enough for you."
There was a long silence, and in the end it was Constantine's gaze that fell.
"I do not understand, Mother—what do you want?"
Even now there was a part of me that longed to take him in my arms and comfort him as I had done so many years ago, but I could not allow it to rule me.
I took a deep breath, and answered gently, "I want my freedom, Constantine…"
At last I understood the error I had made so long ago. We give birth to our children, but we do not create them. In my pride I had believed Constantine to be the justification for my existence, and claimed his sins, as well as his achievements, as my own. I could pray for him, but Constantine was an immortal spirit, and though it was through me that he had come into this world, I must neither take upon myself the fate his deeds had earned, nor blame him for my own.
"But how? What will people say?"
"You may tell them I am dead, for indeed I will be dead to you, and to this world."
"What do you mean? What are you going to do?"
"I will leave the world you know, and make my way to a place where you will never find me. In the chapel of my palace lies the body of a poor woman of this city. You may bury her in that tomb at the Church of Marcellinus and Petrus—one old woman looks much like another, and people will see what they expect to see. Tell whatever tale you like, Constantine, mourn the icon of Helena that you have created to feed your glory. But let me go!"
"You are my mother," he protested, his heavy head turning blindly. "You cannot abandon me…'
"Your mother is dead," I rose to my feet. "You are speaking to a memory."
He reached out, but I had drawn a veil of shadow about me in the way I had learned long ago on Avalon, and his grasping fingers closed on air.
"Mother!" he cried, and then: "My mother is dead, and I am alone!"
Despite my resolution, I felt my own eyes filling with tears. I turned away, shadow into shadow, and hurried from the room. But as I hobbled down the corridor I could still hear the master of the Empire, weeping for the mother he had never really known.
That night, Flavia Helena Augusta passed away.
With the help of Cunoarda and one or two other servants who knew the truth about what had happened to Crispus and Fausta and were willing to assist us, the body of Drusa was placed in my bed, and taken from thence immediately to the embalmers, as word of the death of the Emperor's mother spread through Rome.
It was very strange to assist at my own demise, though it was a necessary prerequisite to my resurrection. I was astonished by the tumult of grief that swept the city, even knowing that the people were not mourning me, but an icon of Saint Helena that was more than half the creation of Constantine's propagandists. Perhaps I had done some good in the city, but I did not recognize this worker of miracles.
The air around the palace grew heavy with perfume from the flowers that people had heaped before the doors, already hung with cypress as a sign of mourning. Indeed, it was said that there was not a flower to be had in Rome, so many had been offered here and at impromptu shrines all over the city.
In all this, Constantine was the chief mourner, exchanging his purple for funeral white, his features gaunt with anguish. No one could have doubted his sorrow, and indeed, I believe that he convinced himself that the shrouded body in the chapel truly was his mother. Even if I changed my mind there was no turning back from my decision. I had hurt Constantine too badly, and he would see me dead in truth if I tried a public resurrection.
Bishop Sylvester was to be my executor, assisted in the distribution of my goods by Cunoarda. I had provided for her generously, and we had planned that I would wait at Ostia until she could join me. But I was seized with a morbid desire to observe my own obsequies, and disguised in my peasant clothes, I took refuge in the modest rooms near the Church of Marcellinus and Petrus that I had rented as a part of my disguise.
On the eighth day after my 'death', Bishop Sylvester celebrated my funeral mass. The great Lateran cathedral was crowded, for all the notables of the city were in attendance, whether or not they were Christian. The poorer folk, myself among them, crowded around the entrance. The tall doors were open, and from within one could hear the echo of singing and catch an occasional whiff of incense. But on the whole, I was relieved not to have to listen to the eulogies.
When it was finally over, the funeral procession emerged to carry the cedarwood coffin the short distance to the sarcophagus waiting at the Church of Marcellinus and Petrus. Constantine walked before the bier, barefoot, with his sons beside him. I could see Cunoarda among the veiled women who followed it. The crowd surged after, weeping, and I was borne along with the rest.
I had never quite understood the Christian attitude towards bones. The pagan Romans had had a horror of pollution, and required that their dead be buried outside the city. The roads that led out of every Roman city were lined with tombs. The tombs of heroes and emperors were separate mausoleums, where the offerings of pilgrims sustained them on their progression towards godhood. Even in Palestine, people honoured the tombs of the patriarchs. The graves of the great rooted their people in the land.
But the Christian dead were buried in the churches, in the midst of the cities. Already, every Christian church with any pretension to grandeur had its martyrium, where the body of some saint who by being murdered had achieved instant holiness was enshrined. But the ending of the persecutions had cut off the supply of martyrs. I wondered if they would be forced to take the bodies apart to make them go further—a finger bone in one place and a foot in some other church miles away? Bishop Macarius was right. People hungered for some physical evidence that their faith existed in this world as well as in heaven. But at some point they would have to learn to do without such tangible links. I suppressed a cackle of hysterical laughter at the image of God attempting to gather up all these scattered bits in order to restore the bodies of the saints at Judgment Day.
Of course the most famous tomb of all was empty, and I had my doubts about the graves of some of the apostles, after so many years. So perhaps I should not trouble myself over the fact that the bones in this sarcophagus would not be mine. What would matter was the fact that people believed my body was there. And if their prayers lifted the poor soul whose corpse had become my substitute more swiftly towards heaven, that was surely no more than I owed her, whose death had set me free.
AD 329
"To be dead is not so terrible. Indeed, I am feeling livelier every day." I gave Cunoarda a reassuring smile.
We had considered passing me off as her mother, but the Empress's freedwoman was well known, and it seemed wiser to say that I was an old British servant called Eilan. It would have been amusing to watch her trying to avoid giving me an order if I had not known how much it troubled her. She was thirty now, and although she was no longer a girl, her red hair and round figure would have been handsome were it not for the anxious frown. My will had provided her with enough money to buy herself a nice little estate anywhere in the Empire and a husband to go with it if she so desired. Each day that she stayed with me I was humbled by her loyalty.
Almost two months had now passed since we took ship from Ostia in the grey dawn of an early summer day. In Massilia we had purchased a modest carriage and begun the long journey north to Britannia.
"You are truly feeling stronger?" asked Cunoarda.
I nodded. I had not realized how the stiff robes and ceremony of my old identity had weighed upon me. Without them I felt lighter in body and spirit, and the shortness of breath that had plagued me in Rome had almost disappeared. I took a deep breath of the hay-scented air, as if I could drink in the sunlight. Soon, I thought, I will become so light I will float away.
To be sure, floating would have been a more comfortable mode of transportation. The route we had chosen led up the valley of the Rhodanus from Arelate to Lugdunum, and from there, through the fields and hills of Gallia. Unfortunately, the condition of the road in any given section was dependent on the dedication of the magistrates responsible for it. A year ago I would have refused to stir without a well-upholstered litter and a team of soft-footed Nubians to carry it, but I was enduring the jolting of the carriage surprisingly well.
If I had known how much I would enjoy my freedom, I thought then, I would have made my escape years ago. But years ago, I reminded myself grimly, I had still been hoping to save the Empire through my son.
Now I began to recognize the hills around Treveri. To stop here was a risk, but I doubted that anyone would look twice at an old woman with a sun-browned face beneath her broad hat, wrapped in a mended shawl.
Even as we crossed the old bridge over the Mosella and wound through the town I could see changes. The palace that I had given to Crispus had been partially demolished, and was being rebuilt as a double cathedral. By now, the frescoes of the imperial women which had decorated his nuptial chambers probably lay in fragments under the new floor.
The woman who kept the inn where we took lodgings was a fount of gossip. From her we learned that the baths where Fausta had died were now the property of the bishop. The exercise hall was being converted into another church, and the rest of the buildings knocked down.
Nobody said so, but clearly they thought that Constantine was trying to buy enough prayers to purge the memory of his crimes. But it was Crispus's memory that was being purged. The people of Treveri had loved their young governor, and resented the fact that the statues and inscriptions that once had honored him had not been restored.
And it had been many months since I had heard from his wife, Helena.
"Remember, until we know the situation you are to let me do the talking—" Cunoarda glanced nervously back down the street. Save for a slave who was sweeping the horse-droppings from in front of his master's door it was empty. It was always possible that someone in the Emperor's service was having Cunoarda followed, but we had seen no signs of it during the long days on the road.
I pulled my veil down to hide my features. "I understand."
The house of Lena's parents was in a quiet street near the outskirts of Treveri, lined by well-kept houses, though the area where we stood had not been swept recently, and there was a chip in the plaster of the wall near the door. It seemed a long time before our knocking was answered, and the door was opened by a girl with her hair tied up in a rag as if she had been cleaning.
Cunoarda and I traded looks. We had been admitted by a doorkeeper when we were here before. But from somewhere deeper in the house I could hear the happy laughter of a child.
"Is your master or your mistress at home?"
"Caecilia Justa is lying down. She has been ill."
"Or the Lady Helena—is she here?"
The girl looked at us with sudden suspicion, and then, evidently deciding that Cunoarda had an honest face, nodded. "She is in the atrium, with the child."
As we passed through the hallway I glimpsed the altar to the ancestral lares with an oil lamp burning before it, and realized that like many in the old aristocracy, the family held to the traditional religion. Though they had clearly fallen on hard times, the household was trying to maintain decent standards. The worn flagstones that paved the atrium were clean, the flowers in the earthenware pots had been watered and pruned.
On the other side of the fountain a small girl was playing, her fair hair flashing from gold to ash as she skipped in and out of the sunlight. By now she must be almost four years old. This, I thought, was a true child of Constantius's line. What would her future be when Fausta's black-browed offspring came to power?
I wanted to scoop her into my arms, but I remained hidden behind my veil. "I am dead, I told myself, I have no right to her now.
As we entered, the woman who had been watching her turned on her bench to greet us. Crispus's wife was even thinner than she had been when I saw her before, but she was still beautiful. Her shadowed gaze fixed on Cunoarda.
"I remember you. You came here with the Empress."
Cunoarda nodded uncomfortably. "My mistress charged me to fulfil certain commissions she did not wish recorded publically in her will. I have brought you a draft for a banker here in Treveri to provide for the little girl."
Lena's eyes rilled with tears. "Blessed be her memory! I am sorry now that I did not reply to her last letter, but I was afraid. Crispus is avenged, but that woman won. Everyone knows that we are in disgrace, and we have been ostracized. My father died last autumn, and we have had to learn to scrape by."
"Then I am glad to bring you the Empress's legacy," said Cunoarda. We sat down on the other bench, and the maidservant brought a tray of preserved fruit and a pitcher of barley-water, very welcome on so warm a day. Though Lena might be thin, she no longer seemed so fragile, as if adversity had brought out a strength she had never needed before.
"I wish money was my only concern," said Lena. "With my father dead, my mother is under the authority of my uncle. He is willing to take her in, but Crispa and I are a liability which even a legacy cannot negate. I fear it will only make me more attractive to one of the farmers to whom he has offered me… I no longer care what happens to me," she added bitterly, "but what about my little girl, when her only choices are safety as a farmer's drudge or death if she tries to claim her heritage in Rome?"
I could bear it no longer. Cunoarda gasped as I leaned forwards, throwing back my veil. "She has another heritage…"
Lena's eyes grew huge, and for a moment I thought she would faint.
"But you died in Rome…"
"I died to Rome," I corrected. "By revealing myself now I place my life in your hands. Listen to me, Lena—you and Crispa are all that is left to me of my grandson, who was the beloved of my heart. I am going where even the Emperor will not follow. Do you have the courage to come with me?"
I could feel Cunoarda radiating disapproval at my side. She had never really believed we could escape together, and no doubt counted our chances even smaller burdened with this fragile woman and a child.
A flush of colour suffused Lena's cheeks and then drained away, leaving her even paler than before. "I always wondered," she whispered, "why Crispus wanted to marry me. He was so glorious and brave, and I was always afraid. But I see that the time has come to prove myself worthy. We will go with you, my lady, whether it be to the Hesperides or Hades!"
"It is to the Hesperides that we shall travel, my dear," I said softly, "to the apple isle of Avalon…'
Crispa, sensing her mother's emotion, came skipping over to stand at Lena's knee, her gaze straying from our faces to the candied figs on the table and back again.
"Crispa," I said softly. "Do you remember me?"
She frowned a little, and then for a moment I saw an ancient soul looking out of her blue eyes.
"You are my mother," she lisped. Lena and Cunoarda exchanged worried glances, but I reached out to take the small warm hand.
"Yes, perhaps I was, but in this life I am your other avia, little one," I said softly. "Would you like to take a journey with me?"
By the time we arrived at Ganuenta, there were new silver threads in Cunoarda's red hair. But if the Emperor's agents were watching us, they had orders not to interfere. When we reached the Rhenus at Mogontiacum we sold the horse and carriage and took passage on a barge carrying timber. It was a pleasant way to travel, and the drama of the gorge just north of the town moved even Cunoarda to wonder. The greatest danger was that Crispa, who clambered all over the barge with the agility of a monkey, would fall overboard.
The Rhenus carried us swiftly past the outposts Rome had built to guard the border. As we drifted by Colonia I gazed at the wall where Constantius had told me we must part, and realized that the old wound to my heart had finally healed. These days I had only to close my eyes to call up his image, and relive the times of our happiness.
Sometimes, when I sat thus, I would hear Lena whispering to her daughter to be quiet, for old people sleep often and should not be disturbed. But these days it was not sleep that claimed me, but the waking dream called memory. Crispus cuddled, warm and golden, in my arms, as real as the little daughter I saw when I opened my eyes. When I lay in my bunk on the barge, Constantius stretched out beside me, telling me what he had been doing during our years apart. Even Constantine came to me at times in the shape of the boy he had been before he became infected with that disease called Empire. And as our journey continued, I was visited more and more often by the folk of Avalon.
Very quickly I learned not to mention these ghostly encounters. At worst, my companions thought my mind was wandering, and at best it made them uncomfortable. Fortunately Lena had improved in health and strength with every mile away from Treveri, and she and Cunoarda had forged an alliance. Anyone who resisted Cunoarda's blunt competence could usually be impressed by Lena's aristocratic manner, and I found that I could leave the ordering of our journey in their hands.
Why had no one ever told me that old age held gifts as well as pains? As a child, I had wondered why the old priestesses looked so content as they dozed in the sun. They knew, I thought, smiling. And sometimes, as I hovered on the threshold between sleep and lucid dreaming, I seemed to glimpse people and scenes that I recognized from some other lifetime. Little Crispa was the only one I could talk to when these far-memories lay heavy upon me, for the very young have just come in over the threshold which the old are about to cross, and at times she remembered the life we had shared before.
Then the moment would pass, and she would be darting away, Leviyah panting at her heels, to hang over the rail and watch the green waters rush by, and I would be abandoned, though not alone.
In Ganuenta I had hoped to visit Nehalennia's shrine, but they said that a flood some years back had damaged it, and the ground was unsafe now that the river's course had changed. My first thought was to endow a new temple. After contributing to so many Christian churches, surely that was the least I could do for the goddess who had guided me for so long. But such an act might have aroused unwelcome questions, and the funds that remained to me were needed to support the two women whom I now spoke of as my daughters, and the child.
If Nehalennia was being forgotten, I alone could not restore her worship. I reminded myself that the Goddess is ever constant and ever changing. When in the slow cycle of years men realized their need for her once more, surely Nehalennia would return. But that night I wept in the darkness, grieving for something lovely and precious that had gone out of the world.
We came to Britannia in the season of harvest, when the air was scented with curing hay and the songs of the reapers rang across the fields of nodding grain. The crossing had been a rough one, and even I found the jolting of a carriage a relief after being tossed about for three days at sea.
"Britannia seems small," said Cunoarda, looking out at the gentle alternations of wood and field beyond the rounded shoulders of the downs.
"I suppose it is, considering how far we have come. No doubt Londinium will seem little, compared to Rome. But I know the scent of that hay, and the way the power flows through the land."
"This is still a very different country from my home," she said with a sigh. "I was taken in a raid by a rival clan when I was not much older than little Crispa. I have memories of slopes purple with heather, and the baaing of the sheep as they came down from the hills. But I cannot see my mother's face. I think perhaps she died when I was small."
"Then I shall be your mother, Cunoarda—"
"Oh, but that was only a part of our disguise, while we are on the road—" She flushed to the roots of her hair. "You are—"
I laid a finger to her lips. "I am only Eilan, now, and I have reason to know that the children of one's body are not always the children of one's heart." Gazing at that familiar strong-boned face, I was amazed that through all those years when I had thought myself destitute of love, I had not noticed the treasure that lay beneath my hand.
"I never imagined… I never dared…" She shook her head, sniffing and wiping her eyes on her sleeve. "Oh my lady—my mother! You gave me my freedom, but I was still empty. Now you have given me a soul!"
I opened my arms then and held her until her sobs had ceased.
In my will, I had bequeathed the house in Londinium to Cunoarda, and she had written from Treveri to tell the tenant she was coming there to live. When we arrived, the place was empty—indeed, it was practically without furnishings, and Cunoarda and Lena spent a busy day in the market-place purchasing bedding and kitchen gear.
I had looked forwards to seeing what more than twenty years had done to the city, but that morning I was having trouble with my breathing, and I thought it best to stay indoors with Crispa to bear me company.
"Avia, who are the pretty ladies?" Crispa pointed at the relief of the four matronae which I had commissioned so long ago. It was one of the few decorations that had survived my absence, perhaps because it was bolted to the wall.
I took a careful breath, then turned. "They are the Mothers."
"Look! One of them has a dog!"
Leviyah stood up, tail wagging, at the word.
"Not you, silly!" exclaimed Crispa, reaching up to pat the carven flank of the hound in the lap of the third figure in the frieze. "And one has a baby, and the other two have fruit and a loaf of bread. Are they goddesses?"
"They are the Goddess—but She has many faces, as many faces as there are mothers in the world, and when they grow old and leave their bodies to pass over to the Otherworld they continue to watch over their children…"
I had tried to keep my voice calm, but Crispa was a sensitive child, and she climbed into my lap and put her arms around my neck.
"Avia, will you always watch over me?"
As I hugged her, I felt an ache in my throat, and knew it was not caused by shortness of breath, but unshed tears.
That night my illness reached a crisis. Gasping for breath, I saw terror in the faces of Cunoarda and Lena, and could not comfort them.
"Shall I send for a priest?" asked Cunoarda anxiously.
I managed a bark of laughter. "What use? I have already been buried! You heard the funeral oration Bishop Sylvester gave!" Then I began to cough again.
At the height of my paroxysms I would have welcomed death gladly, and continued to fight only because the two women begged me not to leave them alone.
A little after midnight, the mint-scented steam with which Cunoarda filled the room began to relieve me, and I was able to drink some comfrey tea. At length I fell into a state halfway between sleep and waking, cradled against Lena's breast.
During the crisis, I had raged against my weakness, unready to go into the night. But now, I realized that in our old age, what we lose in infancy is miraculously given back. Instead of crying in the dark for the mother who abandoned us before we were able to stand alone, now, with children and kindred having come and gone, we are free. In our darker moments we feel ourselves wholly alone, weak, aged. But in the end the Mother is given back to us and we are reborn, going back to infancy, lying in trust on the breasts of our daughters…
Everything is taken from us, even God; we spend ourself to the death. And then the Goddess comes back to us. From becoming the Goddess, the mother, we have created the Goddess in our daughters, our sisters, as we turn to Her, knowing that even if we must die still not knowing anything else, we die in Her arms and on Her breast.
But I did not die. Waking to the clear light of morning in Lena's arms, I took a deep breath and rejoiced as the life-giving air filled my lungs. Nonetheless, I was desperately weak, and I could feel my heart bound in my breast. For the first time I faced the possibility that this body might fail me before I reached my goal.
I remembered times during my illnesses when death would have been a welcome release. At other moments I had called on the teachings of Avalon to counter my panicked fear. I had reason to believe that death was only a passage from one kind of existence to another, but I had still dreaded the moment of transition. Now, however, I realized that my fears were not for myself but for those I would leave behind me.
"You are awake!" Lena exclaimed as she felt me stir. "And you are better, thank the gods!"
"For now, but if I do not recover, I must tell you how to get to Avalon."
Lena's cheeks grew pink with embarrassment. "Do you mean it is a real place? I thought you were speaking as the poets do, to describe the safety we would find in Britannia."
I opened my mouth to correct her, then closed it, realizing how deeply ingrained was the prohibition against telling outsiders of the sacred isle.
"It is real, though… difficult… to attain. It lies in the land called the Summer Country. There is a vale between two lines of hills, so low that when the rivers are in flood or the winter storms back up the tides the water covers it, and any bit of higher ground becomes an island. And there is one such, crowned by a pointed tor, that is called Inis Witrin.
"When you reach it, do not go to the monks who have their little church at the base of the Tor, but stop at the village of the fisherfolk who live in the marshes, and tell them that you are Eilan's grand-daughter, and you wish to be taken to Avalon."
She looked dubious, and I sighed, for in truth, I could not even guarantee that I would be admitted after so many years. And was I justified in taking Lena there? This vital young woman, whose cheeks were glowing despite the shadows a difficult night had painted beneath her eyes, was a very different creature from the fragile and frightened girl I had helped to escape from Treveri almost two months ago.
"The holy isle is a refuge where no king or emperor can follow. But you are not required to go there. If you and Crispa take new names, I think it likely that you will be able to live in perfect safety here in Londinium."
The winged brows drew down. "Don't you want us to come with you?"
"Lena, do you not understand how I have come to love you? That is why the choice must be yours. I only know that I have to go there, or try."
I recovered slowly, and it was October before I was strong enough to attempt the journey. The carriage in which we had travelled from Dubris was fitted with a soft mattress and loaded with provisions. But before departing Londinium there was one last task.
I had seen how swiftly, with Constantine's favour, Christianity was becoming the religion of the Empire. I could foresee a time when its shrines and symbols would displace those of the old religion entirely, reinventing Britannia as a Christian land. In the time that was coming, there would be few to understand that it was possible to honour both the Goddess and the God.
It pained me to think that my carving of the Mothers might one day be mocked by folk who no longer saw it as holy. And so workmen were summoned to remove it from the wall and load it into a barrow, and in the night, when the men had gone home, Lena and Cunoarda pulled it to the stream that ran through the fields behind my dwelling, and tipped the carving in. Hidden in its depths, the Mothers would bless the city through which its waters ran.
"Tell me about when you were a little girl on Avalon…" Crispa had elected to ride for a while inside the carriage with Cunoarda and me, though I knew she would want to sit with Lena, who was driving, before long.
"I had a white dog called Eldri—"
"Like Leviyah?" Crispa pulled back the curtain to point to the dog who was trotting beside us, head up to catch all the scents of this new land.
"Smaller, with curly fur. A boy at the Lake village gave her to me, and said she was a faerie dog, and I think it was true, because she guided me once to a land even farther from this world than Avalon, and brought me safely back again."
Cunoarda's lips quirked, and I could see that she thought I was telling the child a fairy story. I found it strange that she, who had been born in Alba, found it harder to believe in Avalon than Lena, the child of a thoroughly Romanized Gallic aristocracy. But perhaps Cunoarda still needed the walls she had erected to protect her from the pain of her loss, and did not dare. I knew that she had found great comfort in Christianity, and when we were in Londinium, she had attended the rituals at the Church of Saint Pancras which I had long ago endowed.
"Did you have other girls to play with?"
"I lived in the House of Maidens," I answered, remembering the murmur of girls' voices in the darkness with a sudden overwhelming clarity. "I had a little cousin called Dierna, with hair as red as Cunoarda's. I believe that Dierna is the Lady of Avalon now."
I realized with a flutter of anxiety that I did not know. I remembered dreaming Ganeda's funeral—would I not know it if Dierna, whom I had loved, had also died?
If she was gone, there might well be no one left at Avalon who remembered me.
After we left Lindinis we turned north on the Aquae Sulis road. It was now the end of October, the season of Samhain when the spirits of the dead return. A fitting time, I thought, for my own homecoming. The landscape was growing very familiar now. It was I myself who seemed unreal, as if I had died in truth as well as seeming and was being summoned with the other ghosts who walked at this time of year.
For two days it had been raining, and a silver sheen of water lay over the lowlands, but I insisted that we press onward, for I remembered these marshes as a country with little provision for travellers. We were surprised, however, to find a small inn where the track that led towards Inis Witrin turned off from the Sulis road.
"Oh yes, we have been here for nigh on twenty years," said the round-faced woman who brought us our food. "Ever since the good Emperor granted protection to the Christians. My father built this place to serve the travellers who come on pilgrimage to the monks at the Tor."
I blinked at this, for in my day the monks of Inis Witrin had been a tiny community whose safety depended on being overlooked by the authorities. But the Christians were the authorities now, and it remained to be seen if they would use the power given them more wisely than those who had held it before.
In the morning we set out once more, bracing ourselves as the carriage lurched across the log causeways. And as the sun sank we saw the pointed cone of the Tor rising against the golden sky, haloed in light.
"It is real," breathed Lena.
I smiled, for in that moment even the isle that lies in the mortal world was touched with glory, and yet our true destination was a place more wonderful still.
I could see the smoke of the monastery's cookfires as we skirted the isle. From here we had to go on foot, for the Lake village could not be reached by a vehicle. It was almost sunset, and Cunoarda and Lena were growing nervous, but now that we were here, anticipation gave new strength to my limbs. The path, at least, looked the same—I doubt it had changed for a thousand years. Leaning on Cunoarda's arm and feigning a certainty I did not entirely feel, I started down it.
"No, honoured ones—you go back to houses of the shaven heads—" the headman of the village touched his forehead to indicate a tonsure. "No place for you here—"
The little dark people of the village whispered behind him, eyeing us nervously. On this night, the mound on which the round huts huddled was lit by torches whose red flicker seemed kindled from the setting sun. If we had come a little later, they would have thought us spirits and refused to admit us at all.
This was a difficulty I had not anticipated. I stared at the man, frowning. I should have renewed the crescent on my brow with woad, I thought then, as the elder priestesses used to do on festival days. How could I convince him to send word of my coming to Avalon?
"Do your people remember a daughter of the sun people who was brought here long ago to be trained as a priestess? A boy called Otter gave her a faerie dog. Does that boy live still?"
There was a murmur from the crowd, and a woman who looked as old as me pushed forwards. "Otter my father—he like to tell the story. A princess of the tall folk, he said." She gazed at me in wonder.
"I was that little girl, and I became a priestess on the holy isle. But that was many years ago. Will you send word to the Lady of Avalon and tell her that Eilan has returned?"
"If you are priestess, you can call mists and go—" The headman still looked dubious.
"I have been long away, and may not return without the Lady's leave," I answered him, remembering how Ganeda had cut my link to the holy isle when she banished me. "You will be well rewarded—please…"
He gave a snort of laughter. "Is not for gold we serve Avalon. I call the Lady, but this night they have ceremonies. She cannot come before morn."
In my dreams, it was Ganeda who came to me, with Cigfolla and Wren and the other priestesses and Aelia whom I had loved. I knew this must be a dream, because Ganeda was smiling, her arm around the waist of another woman with dark hair whom I recognized, without knowing how, as my own mother, Rian. They were robed in priestess blue, garlanded as if for a festival, and they held out their arms in welcome. I knew then that it was my own belief, not Ganeda's word, which had exiled me from Avalon.
Laughing, I started towards them. But as I was about to touch Aelia's hand, someone called my name. Annoyed, I reached for the dream image, but the call was repeated, in a voice I could not deny.
I opened my eyes to light that streamed through the open door of the roundhouse in which we had been sleeping, glowing in Crispa's bright hair and on Leviyah's golden hide, outlining Lena and Cunoarda as they helped me to sit up, and falling full upon the blue robe of the woman who stood before me.
I do not know why I had expected that Dierna would still be a young girl. The body of the woman who had called me had thickened with time, and her flaming hair was now the colour of sunset on snow. But I, who had known so many emperors, had not encountered anyone with such an aura of authority. Next to her, the man and the woman who attended her looked frail. Did Dierna remember how I had loved and protected her, I wondered then, or had she, like my son, been warped by the temptations of power?
"Eilan…" Her voice trembled, and suddenly I saw looking out of her eyes the little cousin I used to know.
I motioned to Cunoarda to help me up, wincing as stiffened muscles took the strain.
Dierna embraced me, one priestess to another, then her gaze grew stern. "I will use that name, but I know who you were, in that other world. You have been used to position and power, and you are heir to the elder line of Avalon. Have you come to claim rule here?"
I looked at her in amazement. Then I remembered that she had been trained by Ganeda. Had the old woman taught her to fear that I would return to challenge her one day?
"It is true that I have had power, and all the glory the world can bestow," I answered stiffly, "and for that very reason I need them no more. Now it will be enough if I may find peace, and safety for those I love."
"Come," Dierna gestured towards the open door. "Walk with me—"
We all followed her outside into a misty autumn morning that veiled the marshes as if we were already between the worlds.
"Forgive me, but it was my duty to ask," Dierna said as we started along the path around the edge of the mound that kept the village above the floods.
I was still not quite steady, and Lena took my arm.
"I have known the fulfilment of prophecy and its deceptions. Through the child I bore, the world has indeed been changed, and if I do not like the results, I have only my own pride to blame."
"Do not judge yourself too harshly," Dierna replied. "I myself tried to shape the fate of Britannia, and I tell you that though our choices may determine the manner of its working, it is the Goddess who decides our ultimate destiny."
It is not only the Christians who sometimes need absolution, I thought, blinking back tears.
For a little while we walked in silence. The morning sun was burning the fog away. Silver ripples gleamed as a heron stalked among the reeds. Beyond them I saw the green slope of the Tor, and the huts of the monks clustering around Joseph's round church.
A gesture summoned Dierna's companions. "Do you remember Haggaia?" The silver-haired Druid gave me a smile, and I recognized in his face an echo of the laughing boy who had loved to play ball with Eldri so long ago. "And this is Teleri, whom I have been training."
To be your successor, I thought, smiling at the dark-haired woman beside her. "Teleri: I know and give thanks to the Lady for bringing her safely home."
"I bring with me two who have become my daughters, and my own great-grandchild," I said then.
"And do they also wish to cross over to Avalon?"
Lena's eyes were shining. "This is like a dream that turns out to be true! If you will have us, I and my daughter will gladly go."
Dierna's gaze grew wistful as she looked at Crispa. "My own children died," she said then. "It will be good to train another child of our blood for Avalon…"
But I had turned to Cunoarda, and my heart sank as I saw on her cheeks the silver track of tears. "What is it, my dear?"
"I will miss you till my life's end, lady, but I cannot go," she whispered. "I need to learn how to use the freedom you have given me. And it is the Christ, not your Goddess, whom my heart follows, and I cannot do that on your isle."
"Then stay, with my blessing." I kissed her on the brow. It would be no use to tell her that there was a place beyond all such divisions where Truth was One. She still belonged in this world.
"That is settled, then," Dierna said briskly. The barge is waiting. We will breakfast on the holy isle."
"Not quite—" I pointed out over the waters. Tor you to accept me means much, but Ganeda cast me out. I must prove—to myself, if not to you—that I am still a priestess. Let me call the mists, and win my own way back to Avalon."
The barge rocks to the push of the poles as the boatmen move us away from the shore. lean see the silver waters part before the prow. Dierna sits beside me, trying to hide her doubts, and Cunoarda is watching from the village, hoping that I will fail and return with her to Londinium. Perhaps they are right to question, and this vow of mine is no more than a final act of pride.
But since I came to this decision I have been silently rehearsing the words of power. If I have got them wrong, everyone will pity the foolish old woman who thought she was still a priestess. But if I succeed …
It is the gift of age to remember the events of fifty years ago more clearly than what happened yesterday. Suddenly the timing and distances of this journey are clear. My heart is pounding, and when the shifting flow of energy around us peaks, it is hard to breathe. Crispa steadies me as I get to my feet, shoulder-joints protesting as I raise my arms high.
I fight for air, and then, all at once, power surges through me. Words pour from my lips, and now it is easy, so easy to bring down the mists and slip through the chill dark passage between the worlds. I can hear the others calling out in alarm, but I cannot allow them to distract me now, for the silver veils around us are thinning, wisping away in coruscations of rainbow radiance—
Light is everywhere, light all around me, light that grows beyond all the words I have for vision until I see, glowing as if lit from within, the shores of Avalon…