The Saint's Mistress (11 page)

He followed my finger. “How can you tell?”

“I remember the sun carving at the peak of the roof.”

“Come on,” he said. “I’m sorry. Let’s go home and get you to bed.” He tried to put an arm

around my waist but I shrugged him off and walked a little ahead of him the rest of the way

home through the salt-smelling Carthaginian night.

42

Everything felt different after a night’s sleep. A breeze tickled us awake in the early morning,

and Aurelius went out and bought us breakfast: bread, dates and a fruit I’d never had before

which he told me was an apple from Gaul. It had a thin, tough, rosy skin and a crunchy white

inside which was tart at first and then released sweet juices upon chewing. It pleased me so

much, and I felt so rested, that when he fitted his hand around my swelling breast and teased at

my ear with his tongue, I didn’t resist and we made love in Carthage for the first time, lying

afterwards skimmed with sweat and filled with the sweetness. The previous night’s quarrel and

the miserable trip from Thagaste were forgotten. We decided to go and look for the seashore.

The sun-faded houses and shops along our street looked like steps descending the Byrsa hill

as it wound its way down to the shore. We walked hand in hand in the morning sun, looking

around us as Carthage wakened and began its bustle.

Aurelius pointed. “Look, there’s the aqueduct.”

From our vantage point near the top of the hill, we could see the aqueduct snaking through the

city to provide water to the baths and public fountains. It looked like a high wall pierced with

multiple arches.

“It’s 23 miles long,” Aurelius boasted, as if he’d built it himself. “It brings water all the way

from the Atlas mountains.”

Slaves in short tunics hurried past us, bearing burdens: baskets of fruit, bolts of cloth, a brace

of complaining live chickens. Carts clattered by carrying clay amphorae of wine and oil. Here

and there, fishwives set up their stalls along the crowded street and called gossip to each other,

while their barefoot children chased each other around their skirts.

I couldn’t help staring at the matrons starting their morning shopping, slaves walking behind

to carry their purchases. Nearly all of them wore red lip paste and elaborately twisted and coiled

hairstyles. Their faces were so coated heavily with white paste that to me they looked like

corpses. On the older women, the paste melted and sank into the folds of their skin. I nudged

Aurelius and nodded to one of them. “What’s wrong with them?” I whispered.

“Oh, that’s the Roman fashion. All of the Roman women paint their faces so their skin looks

younger and smoother.”

We turned a corner and suddenly we saw the harbor with its jutting piers of stone and graying

wood, the ships rocking in their moorings, men of all colors swarming over the ships and docks,

loading and unloading treasures from every port in the Mediterranean. And beyond the bustle

rolled the Middle Sea itself, dark blue, alive with rows of foam ruffling to shore one after another

like a relentless army. We stood and stared for several minutes, both of us speechless. Sea met

horizon in a crisp line dividing sapphire blue from the softer, cloud-strewn blue of the autumn

sky. Gulls and pelicans soared and wheeled above the waves, warning each other in harsh tones.

“Let’s see if we can get closer to it,” Aurelius said. We zigzagged through more narrow

streets and down a flight of stone steps and found a narrow beach, away from the harbor, strewn

with gray boulders and the cracked and ground shells of sea creatures.

“The Middle Sea,” Aurelius announced with a dramatic hand gesture.

I laughed. I thought I had never seen anything so magnificent. The waves roared softly when

they approached the shore, and then hissed on retreat, leaving behind a sparkling mist that

smelled of salt and fish and clean autumn air. Yellow shards of sunlight skipped on the dark blue

surface.

43

I took off my sandals and ventured into the sea a little way, liking how the waves lapped and

pulled at my ankles. I wished I knew how to swim, so I could throw myself into the waves and

glide through them like a fish. Instead, I just raised my arms to the sky and laughed again. To

entertain and outdo me, Aurelius ran into the sea up to his waist, and was instantly knocked

down by a wave. When I laughed, he dragged me in, and we both emerged soaked and coated

with salt. He drew me to him and we kissed with salt water running down our faces.

We played like this for almost an hour, running in and out of the water, chasing the waves and

letting them chase us back, getting bolder and learning to let the breakers lift us, liking the

weightless, bobbing feeling.

Finally, exhausted, we emerged and collapsed on the sand. I lay on my back, looking up at the

sky, thinking I had never been so happy in my life.

Aurelius raised himself on one elbow to look down at me. “So, how do you like Carthage so

far?” he asked, smiling.

“I love it!”

He laid back down and spread his arms. “This is the start of our real lives, Leona. I just feel

that this is the right place for me.” He stood again and raised his arms. “I love this!” he shouted.

I was content to be still. Aurelius started pacing in front of me. “I feel already like I belong

here,” he said. “This is the place where I will find truth; I feel it. Like, what makes these waves

in the sea?”

“The wind, of course.”

“But what makes the wind, see?”

“The gods, I guess.” A prickle of annoyance disturbed my contentment. Why did he have to

wonder about things that nobody could understand?

“The gods are superstitions,” he said, waving a hand. “I want to know the real reason.” He sat

beside me again and sighed. “I feel today like it will all really happen. I’ll discover things and be

a great teacher who shares them with my students.” He looked down at me. “And then come

home to the prettiest girl in Carthage.”

“Always?”

“Always,” he agreed, and I believed that it might happen.

“And our baby.”

He blinked. “And our baby, of course.”

He bent to kiss me. His lips tasted of salt. I ran my hands through his wet curls and over his

warm, drying shoulders. He took my face in his hands and I felt his long fingers press gently into

my scalp. Then he picked me up and carried me behind a boulder, where we made love by the

sea on our first day in Carthage.

44

Two days later, Aurelius began his classes. I was restless and lonely in our apartment all day,

and as the afternoon advanced I started looking out the window every five minutes, watching for

him. I went out to a stall and bought some peaches and roasted goat meat and a bread-and-

cucumber salad for our supper, and still he didn’t arrive. I was scrolling through one of his books

when he finally came up the stairs and into our apartment. I leapt to my feet. “Well? How was

it?”

“Everything I could have dreamed,” he enthused. “I have so much to tell you, I hardly know

where to begin.”

I uncovered our supper, and he dove into both his meal and his story, talking with his mouth

full as the words tumbled out. “This is the kind of place I’ve always wanted to be,” he

expounded, “with people who
think
. There’s one fellow in my recitation who comes all the way

from Hibernia, if you can imagine that, and yet speaks perfect Latin and orates like Cicero. I

found Amicus.”

Aurelius’ friend Amicus, the same one who had spoken up for Numa and me that day in the

pear orchard, had preceded us to Carthage by three weeks. He, too, was studying rhetoric and

philosophy.

“Oh!” Aurelius added. “And I met up with our friends again!”

“What friends?” I didn’t know we had any other friends in Carthage. I closed my eyes as I bit

into my second peach, letting the juice run down my chin and between my fingers.

“You know. Nebridius and Quintus.”

I could feel the blood rising to my face at the mention of their names. “Our friends? When did

they become our friends?”

He waved his hand, then swallowed and wiped his mouth. “It was all in good fun.”

“Did you get our money back?”

“No. Don’t worry about it.”

“They cheated us!”

“It’s just something they do. You might not understand. I’ve already learned so much, just

this first day. See, Cicero only talks about how people should interact with each other in the

political arena, but real philosophers talk about why people are the way they are. Did you ever

wonder about that?”

“The only thing I wonder is when we’re getting our money back.” I stood and started clearing

the table.

“Think about God, Leona. See, if God is completely good he couldn’t make anything evil,

right?”

I was still thinking about this, but he went on. “Okay, so, where do our wrong actions come

from then? They come from something separate, a separate substance if you will, which lives

inside us, and over which we have no control. So, it isn’t really Nebridius or Quintus – or

Aurelius or Leona, for that matter – who cheats or fornicates or steals; it’s the badness within.”

“Then anybody can do anything and it’s not their fault.” I tossed the cheap clay takeout

containers out the back window into the midden pile, and started stacking our own dishes for

washing.

“I knew you wouldn’t understand at first,” he said. “I’ll be able to explain it as I learn more

about it. We’re all going to a hearing tonight.”

45

I shook my head. “A hearing?”

“See, the Christians have it wrong. The real Trinity isn’t Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the way

my mother would have it. The Manichees have the Trinity as Father, Son and Mani, and Mani

speaks through their Elect and you can go and hear him.”

“Uh-huh. And it costs how much to hear him?” I thought I was beginning to understand all

too well.

“It isn’t like that,” he argued. “Hearers give what they can.”

“Uh-huh,” I repeated.

“Women can be hearers. It’s very democratic. You can come if you want.”

I didn’t want to at all, but I was lonely, so if he was going, I was going.

“I have known my soul and the body that lies upon it.

That they have been enemies since the creation of the worlds.”

The gaunt priest chanted a psalm as we entered the darkened room.

I had firmly avoided any conversation or eye contact with those devils, Quintus and

Nebridius, on our way here, speaking only to Aurelius and Amicus.

The chamber we entered was a back room of someone’s home, the shutters drawn closed so

the room was veiled in shadow. Although seldom prosecuted, Manicheism was an illegal

religion, and had no temples. Well-to-do adherents offered their homes for worship. Already,

several other hearers were seated in front of the priest, swathed in swirls of smoke from the

incense burners to either side of him. Bread, cheese and fruit lay in front of him, and we added

our own offerings to the pile before sitting on the floor with the others.

“I call the spirit of light out of the darkness of matter. I call the spirit of the Christ out of the

darkness of matter. I call the soul out of the darkness of matter,” the priest intoned.

“Tell us a story,” one of the hearers urged.

The priest slowly opened his eyes and gazed around the room. “A parable,” he began. “Once a

shepherd saw a lion stalking his flock. What should he do?” He gazed around the room, but he

clearly expected no answer, so he went on, holding up three fingers. “The shepherd worried

about this for three days, and on the third day he made a plan. He dug a pit and placed in it a new

young lamb to tempt the lion. But he tied a rope around the lamb and left the long end in his own

hand. Having already secreted the rest of his flock on the hill behind, he waited for the lion. And

the lion came and leapt into the pit to devour the lamb. But the shepherd quickly drew the kid up

by the rope before it could be eaten. So the lamb was safe, but the lion was trapped in the pit and

perished.” He paused. “Who can tell me what this means?”

Quintus ventured, “The shepherd is the spirit and the lion is matter. The lamb is a human soul.

The story tells how good and evil battle for the fate of our souls.”

“Just so,” the priest agreed. I glanced at Aurelius, knowing he was accustomed to being the

brightest student in every class, and wondering how he reacted to being out-thought for once. I

saw a little twitch in his cheek, and it amused me in a mean way. For myself, I wondered: what if

the shepherd hadn’t been quick enough? What if the lamb had been devoured before the

shepherd could manage to put it out of the pit? What if the rope had broken? What if the lion had

attacked the flock on the hillside instead, while the shepherd was digging the pit? But, not being