The Saint's Mistress (24 page)

He flushed and didn’t respond.

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“So, yes, I guess it is different,” I went on. “You change your philosophy as often as you

change robes. I waited until I found the truth.”

“Are you so sure? So sure that you would willingly give me up? And your son?” He stood and

took me by the shoulders, looking at me through narrowed eyes, testing me, but I finally

understood him now and I knew that he would never be so cruel as to separate me from Adeo.

I shook off his hands and backed away from him. “If I had to, yes. I don’t think I have to.”

“We’ll see. Clearly, you’ve made you choice. Don’t expect me to bother you anymore,” he

snapped, and he rose and left the room. A few minutes later, I heard the front door slam, as if to

add a close to his oration.

Robed in white, I filed towards the baptismal font third in line with my fellow catechumens,

right behind Cornelia. The interior of the cathedral was lit by dim yellow candles belching wisps

of gray smoke that burned my eyes.

“Do you believe in God?” Bishop Ambrose demanded of us in that startlingly powerful voice.

We responded:

“I believe in One God,

The Father Almighty

And in His only Begotten Son

Jesus Christ, our Lord,

And in the Holy spirit,

Giver of new life,

And in the resurrection of the flesh,

And in one only, apostolic, holy Church everywhere,

Which is His Church.”

Nobody made a mistake. We had been memorizing the creed and the Lord’s Prayer

throughout our Lenten instruction. None of us had bathed since starting instruction, and we had

fasted since dawn the previous day, Good Friday.

When my turn came, I handed my robe to acolyte and stepped into the 8-sided font, in water

to my knees. Ambrose quietly asked my name and then dipped the pitcher into the font and

poured cold water over my head. It ran down my face, dripped onto my shoulders, ran icy

streams down my torso.

“Leona, die to sin and be reborn. By sharing in Christ’s death, share in his Resurrection. I

baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” Another rain of

frigid water drenched my head and drew rivulets in the coating of sweat and body oil that caked

my skin. Ambrose’s thumb was firm as he traced the sign of the cross on my forehead.

Through the cross-shaped window above the altar, the rising moon spilled watery light. I had

been light-headed all day, and now I suddenly felt light-hearted, too, as if sin and cares had been

weights that were lifted. Peace came over me and ecstasy, a sense that I could lift my arms to the

heavens and be borne up, to hover over the dim cathedral, bathed in light and impervious to the

choking smoke and the smell of sweat. I felt myself sway and the acolyte righted me and

wrapped me in my robe again, guiding me out of the font.

Thus it was that on Easter Eve of the year 382, my life was made new.

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Aurelius looked up from his scroll and noticed my hungry gaze. He met my eyes, nodding and

snorting, “God give you strength. If your eyes could undress me, I’d be shivering now.”

“I still love you,” I admitted.

“And your God more,” he finished for me.

“Yes.” Since my baptism, Aurelius was polite to me if Adeo was with us, cool and distant

otherwise. Sometimes I looked at him across the table, and remembered the touch of his firm lips

on mine, the feel of his hands owning my breasts and hips, and I felt weak with desire for him.

My confessor had warned me that my baptism would not drown that fire, only give me the means

to keep it banked. I spent many hours praying for strength.

He tossed aside his scroll and stood. “I’m still a normal man with normal desires, you know,

Leona, and I’m barely 30.”

“God provides a remedy for that. It’s called marriage.”

“We’ve already discussed that. You know why it isn’t possible.”

I said nothing, and looked down to at the scroll I had been reading, to avoid further betraying

my body’s longing. As he paced in his short robe, the muscles of his brown thighs and chiseled

calves writhed, and the vigor of his movements put me in mind of another kind of vigor. How

well I knew about his normal desires and his youth. My chest tightened so that I could barely

breathe.

The air between us seemed alive with our desire, as if it were a physical presence like the

elusive substance of evil he used to try to puzzle out. He paced over to me and stood over me.

“You’re torturing me. You know?”

I nodded and looked down, unable to meet his eyes.

“And you know,” he continued, “that I could put you out at any time? You have no rights,

either to your son or to any shelter of any kind from me. You have a home and contact with

Adeo only because I’m good-hearted. I could change my mind any time.” He snapped his

powerful fingers.

Now I looked up at him. His dark eyes were hard, but when they met mine, he crumpled to his

knees in front of me, laying his head in my lap. “Leona,” he whispered, “can’t it be like before?

What God could judge real love between a man and a woman? A man and a woman who have a

son together? I swear I’ll never abandon you. You know that.”

He kneaded my bottom with his strong hands and raised his head to gaze at me pleadingly. I

couldn’t help it. I raked my fingers through his wavy black hair and lowered my face to kiss him,

and he began to sweep me away again, when Calla appeared in the doorway and cleared his

throat.

We swiveled our heads guiltily.

Calla cleared his throat again. “Beg pardon, sir. Guests.”

“Who is it?” Aurelius snapped. It was very late. Adeo had been in bed for hours.

“The lady says she’s your mother, master.”

Calla and Lavinia laid the table with bread and olives and fruit left over from supper.

Monnica’s servants were bedded on makeshift pallets on the covered porch off our kitchen. After

the flurry of arrangements, Aurelius and I settled down in the dining room to hear the reason for

his mother’s visit.

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As soon as she was seated and had a glass of watered-down wine in her hand, she sighed and

visibly relaxed. She closed her eyes for a moment as if gathering her strength and then said, “I

dreamed about you.”

Small muscles around Aurelius’ mouth twitched. I could see him struggling not to roll his

eyes, instead holding them on her patiently.

“In my dream, I wept for your immortal soul, and a voice came to me and said, ‘Where you

are, he will be.’ I spoke to my priest the very next morning and he promised me that my tears

weren’t wasted, and that the dream meant what I thought: that you will one day be baptized into

the Church.”

“It could mean instead that you will someday leave it.”

“No. It said, ‘where you are he will be,’ not ‘where he is you will be.’” She picked at a piece

of fruit and continued, “I was angry when you sneaked out of Carthage. Urbanus and I had to

make excuses to the girl’s family. It was wrong of you. Your brother Navigus is married to the

girl now. She came with land in Thagaste and connections in Carthage. They are expecting a

child finally. She would have been a good match for you.” She paused, but Aurelius reacted to

all of this with the same patient face.

“Your brother’s wife likes to do things her own way,” Monnica went on, and I suspected that

she was leaving out a lot. “I felt strongly that the dream was instructing me to come to you. I

pray every day for you to accept the Church.”

“Then the heavens are beset with prayer,” Aurelius replied wryly. He gestured at me. “Leona

has been recently baptized, and also prays daily for my salvation.”

Monica looked at me for the first time, the obvious question evident in her eyes. I lowered

mine, fearful that they would reveal more of my very recent lust than of my newfound chastity.

“Well,” she said, “your brother has taken over your father’s land and obligations, as well as

what his wife brought. And it seems that you’ve found a good position here, so perhaps it was all

for the best.” She looked around. “We’ll need to find larger quarters, though.”

“You’ll be staying then?”

“I plan on it, yes. Navigus is capable of running the family’s affairs and his wife seems

capable of managing the household.”

My stomach wrung into a knot.

Monnica sighed again and stood. “I’m so very tired. Could your servant show me to my

chamber?”

“You can use mine for tonight, mother,” Aurelius said, “until we can make better

arrangements for you. Calla,” he ordered, “please show my mother to my room. I’ll bunk in with

Adeo for tonight.”

I was just finishing my prayers when I heard a tap on my door and I rose from my knees to

answer. I knew that it could only be Aurelius, and I offered one last silent prayer for chastity

before cracking the door open.

“For the love of your God, let me in, Leona,” he hissed. “I won’t rape you. I only want to talk

to you.”

I pulled the door open the rest of the way and pulled a shawl over my tunic. When I ended our

physical relationship, I’d insisted that he keep the bedroom that we had shared, with its bronze-

footed bed and cushioned chairs. The little chamber that I called my own now was furnished

only with a wooden bedstead, a wooden table and chair beneath a small mirror, and a few hooks

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for my clothing. Aurelius folded his powerful body onto the edge of my bed. I remained standing

in the corner, arms wrapped around my shawl.

“Sit down,” he said. “You’re making me nervous standing there like a terrified hart.”

I lowered myself onto my chair, my eyes not leaving his, waiting to see what he would say.

“It seems we’re stuck with my mother for at least a time,” he began. “We’ll have to look for a

bigger house – unless you’re willing to share my bed again.”

“No.”

He raised his eyes and his arms to the heavens. “Why? Why must I be tortured by women?”

Now he looked at me. “Do you know what I wish? I wish with all my heart that I didn’t feel any

desire at all for you, or for any woman. No man can be a true philosopher while he’s the prisoner

of desire on one hand and of his mother’s manipulations on the other.” He rose and started

pacing the room. “She won’t leave me alone! She just goes on and on with her dreams and her

prayers and her tears and her threats of eternal damnation. And now that she knows that the bond

between us is broken, it will only get worse.”

“I told you what the remedy for that was.”

“Didn’t we just have this conversation a couple of hours ago? You know that’s impossible,

and you also know that I will never desert you. I haven’t yet, though you’ve refused to sleep with

me for months now. Isn’t that proof enough of my love?” He approached me, and gently pushed

aside my shawl. “Leona,” he murmured, “I will always, always love you. Love me back again.”

He ran his hand lightly down my back and sent shivers through me, even through the light wool

of my tunic. With one hand, he cupped my head, and with the other he reached under my tunic,

between my legs, where I was already wet and swollen.

My heart banged against my chest as his fingers began to move. I raised my face to his, closed

my eyes, and prepared to surrender, and then I found my strength.

I twisted away from him, and took hold of his wrist, to pull his hand away from my thighs. He

stiffened his arm. “You can’t tell me you don’t want me as badly as I want you,” he said, and

pulled me towards him again.

I twisted my face away from his. “Stop. You said you wouldn’t do this. Stop it, please,

Aurelius.”

His hand went still and he examined my face. Not liking what he found there, he frowned and

let go of me. “Fine,” he said. He walked towards the door, but then turned. “You’re not helping

me against my mother at all, you know. She wants to run our lives and she wants to run Adeo’s

and you’re not helping me stand against her.”

I felt a dart of panic. “What did she say about Adeo?”

“She’s been here only a few hours and hasn’t even laid eyes on him yet and she’s already got

ideas about his education. She’s got some notion about a school in Rome run by Christian

priests.”

“You can’t let her take him from me!” My legs had suddenly turned weak, and I sank down

on my chair.

“I don’t want him to go, either. I’m an educator. Wouldn’t I know what’s best for my son?

But, you’re not helping me, Leona. Between you and my mother, you both seem determined to

make my life a living hell.” His face was flushed and his eyebrows bore down on his dark eyes.

“You’re threatening me.”

“What on earth are you talking about? Don’t be ridiculous.”

“You are. You’re threatening me. Unless I give in and return to your bed, you claim that

you’re helpless to stop your mother from sending Adeo away.”