The eastern porcelain platter flew from my hands, smashing against the wall into a thousand shards. My lemons and nuts rolled gently on the ground, surrounded by its fragments, before they too stopped and laid still. I stood frozen. The horrible noise of her scream and the smash echoed through our absolute silence, and the distant music probed for some living thing, some flicker of response from our stunned hearts.

My father rushed in, followed by Flatunus and Cleo, breaking our suspension.

“Claudia! What happened?”

I looked at her and slowly backed against the wall. Grandmother’s tapestry seemed warm behind me. Mother was trembling.

“I couldn’t have it,” she shook harder. “I can’t see it. Not in my home. Not in my child.” She wept and Father pulled her close, patting her back like a baby. He looked at me, with my arms wrapped tightly around my own body, pressed against the wall and speechless.

“Perpetua,” his head shook in confusion, “what is she talking about?”

“I was, I, I was offering a gift to the gods, to Tanit, in the triclinium here, like we often do, Father,” I stuttered, “and she smashed it like that …” I nodded at the mess. He angrily moved to hold my mother at arm’s distance, grasping her shoulders with his two hands.

“What have you done?” He shook her. “What are you doing to my home?” He was yelling. She cried harder.

“I cannot watch in silence,” a sob shook her body. “You want me to be silent, but, but I know,” she faltered a moment when she glanced into his angry eyes, but suddenly became bold. “I know the true God. I cannot sacrifice,” her voice grew louder until it thundered in my ears, “I cannot sacrifice my own child to a false god!” The words spun like lighting through my heart, through my soul, searing my body. They left an image on my mind brighter than daylight. Sacrifice my own child. It echoed and re-echoed, until my mother and father and the little crowd of slaves now gathered seemed almost non-existent, so lost and small against the immensity of this encroaching darkness. My mind raced, fragments and sentences meshing together, becoming knowledge.

… but Julia, molchomor? … quite a few new stele in the tophet … The tophet, the old grounds where human sacrifices to Ba’al Hammon and Tanit were buried … the lutes, the drums, the wailing … and those soldiers … shut themselves up … Lespia had to be there tonight … “she’ll never want to come here again “ … the price of wheat … Jocundus sells … The stele, the stele in their house! … between the temple and the tophet …

The phrases repeated themselves in my mind, till I cried out with the sounds. Lespia was sacrificing Tumi. I was sure. I knew Lespia, and I was sure.

“Mother!” I screamed. My breath was found again. Their fighting stopped short, they looked in wonder at me. I rushed to her. “Where did Lespia say she had to be tonight? Where?” My sentences were pushing, insistent. I grabbed her arm, her dress, “Where?”

“She didn’t say where. She just kept saying something about the small room.” I was panting, grasping for her words. They came slow, too slow. “Wouldn’t that be their room there? … no, no, that’s not ‘under.’”

“Under?”

“Yes,” she brightened with memory, “the ‘small room under.’”

“Under where?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where, where did the shopkeeper say? He was between the temple and the tophet. Which temple?”

“I assumed Ba’al and Tanit’s. The large one halfway up Bysra hill.” She held my sweating face between her hands and searched it. “My Perpetua. What is it?”

“I have to go!” I shook off her hands and ran toward the door. “Don’t tell Selina,” I yelled.

“Perpetua. Come back here!” Father was never disobeyed so easily. Mother hurried after me.

“Where are you going? It’s a terrible night. Tonight is Tanit’s festival; the streets will be mad.” I was ordering the litter. She grabbed my arm. “Tell me.”

“Mother. The moonlight,” I gasped for air still, “the tophet, the stele, the festival …”

“No.” She understood. “No.” She whispered.

“I cannot wait for the litter. I must go.”

She kept her hold on me.

“You cannot go. Oh, where is Saturninus?”

I pulled away forcibly.

“I must go.” The litter arrived that very moment, and as I threw myself into it I felt her shove a robe into my hands. I ordered them to run, and laid myself on its floor to hold on, shouting every moment for more speed. Although I could see nothing, I knew every turn we took. I seemed able to count even the cobblestones as they passed. Can I find them? The bearers’ feet pounded on the street. Will I be in time? The moonlight shone brightly through the curtain’s crack. Will I feel that baby again? Fear flaunted its flight through my open heart, and two eternities passed before the litter slowed. I crouched up, peeking out of the curtains. The crowd, the noise, the drunken humanity that filled the street and square—I hadn’t even noticed as we flew. The litter could go no further. I threw the robe around me as I jumped down. Without a word to the bearers, I began pushing my way through the people, stepping over the ones who had already succumbed and circling impromptu dancing rings. The torchlight flickering across the square was hardly needed—the moonlight was strong. I was the only one hurrying, the only one sober, and I pulled the cloak’s deep hood up over my head. I thanked God for my mother’s instinct. In the bright green silk amictus underneath, I would never have gotten through that crowd unaccosted. I glided along for what seemed like hours, slipping and twisting my way around the people, finally reaching the temple itself. Now, where was the largest crowd?

I could see an official ceremony on the main steps and in the great room. It looked normal. But on the side, where the street following the temple dipped downward toward the bay, toward the tophet by the sea, a darker, more silent mass was standing.

Suddenly, a torch shone right into my eyes, pushing almost up touching my hood. I reeled backward, gasping.

“Eh, Giril!” He grasped my cloaked arm and bent his foul breath toward my face. “Girl, ‘n come … dancing wi’ mee.” Lunging unsteadily he wrapped both arms around me, his torch arcing wildly about behind my head.

“Uggh,” I grunted with effort as I managed to squirm and push him from me. What a drunk disgusting fool. Time was wasting. I ran into the shadow of the temple, toward the group’s outskirts. These people were not drunk. I was in the right place. Pausing a moment to gather my wits and breath, I reasoned with myself. Be calm. Do not run.

I knew from legend that when a child sacrifice is given, the givers must be absolutely stoic. If the mother cried out, the entire death would be of no effect. Parents even played with their children, coaxing them to laughter for the moment of slaughter. Any disturbance I made would be instantly noticed. I would most likely be removed. I began slowly twining my way around bodies, headed for the focal point of the crowd—a small door. It led under the temple. From inside I could hear lutes and drums. It masks the sound of their cries. Were these people all sacrificers? I wondered as I glided past them. The youngest or favorite child must be given … were these relatives? They did not seem as ignorant or young as I’d expected. Some were even nobles.

I finally reached the door and flattened myself against its open surface, sliding slowly in behind the man whose bulk blocked the opening. My petite stature was to my advantage at last. Still, I had to go carefully. My eyes adjusted easily from the night outside to the darkness within. Torches lit the low ceiling, their lights flickering evil over the patterned texture, and the air was heavy with a foul odor. I pulled my hood around my mouth. At the far end of the room stood a huge statue of Ba’al Hammon, his arms outstretched. Underneath the image waited a large brazier, filled with fire. The god was bronze, and the light of the red flames passed continually over its face and chest. The motion was as if he were alive, breathing deeply the air of burned flesh that threatened to overwhelm me. I scanned the backs of the crowd’s heads, hoping to locate Jocundus or Lespia. The area immediately surrounding the idol was filled with musicians. A priest, in rich ceremonial robes with flashing gems and gold thread glistening in the firelight, stood before it, offering chants I couldn’t hear. It was almost too crowded to move, and I dreaded coming any closer to the god. Surely he can see me. In antiquity, before being outlawed by the Romans, this ceremony was performed in public, at the tophet itself, but here, at least two hundred people were crowded into an area fit for half that number. My heart pounded uncontrollably. Where was Tumi? Where was his sweet baby body, his little hands, his little face, his true little soul peeking out of those trusting eyes?

The music’s tempo changed and quickened. It pulsed as I watched in horror the priest turn and bend over something on a low table. The crowd was in my way; the table was hidden. What was on it? I pressed past the thin man in front of me. His midnight blue pallium caught on my fingers. I jerked them away, and he turned at my tug, but I began to force my way close, not caring if people noticed. What was on the table? The crowd was too deep, too hard. Before I was halfway there, it shifted and moved with a deep sigh. The moment was almost imperceptible, but my heart was struck as if with a dagger’s final blow, and I stopped. A cold dread filled me, for the priest turned back toward the idol, something in his arms. The musicians were frenzied, exploding the room with the drum’s beat, increasing, faster, louder. The priest slowly raised above his head what had been carried in his arms. The body of a baby, a young child. Its dark outline was black against Ba’al’s glowing bronze face and fiery eyes. Blood poured dark from its freshly cut throat. The molten liquid flowed along the sorcerer’s hand where it held the back of that baby’s neck, and down his upraised arm, streaming into a widening red stain on the white sleeve of his ceremonial robe.

The people seemed to sway, and strain toward the body, all that was evil and bloodthirsty in their nature gasping on a current almost sexually charged with their thirst for the sight. They were coiled with passion, eager with grasping eyes, as the brilliant red stain grew larger, the lutes faster, the fire brighter, and the priest moved closer to the breathing demon of a god, clad in bronze and hate and blood. He slowly turned, and for a brief torturous moment held the baby toward the mass, so they might see his bloodless body and agree.

My heart was gone. It was Tumi. His curly hair, his little arms were flung out helplessly in mid-air. I saw Jocundus then. He stood behind Lespia, and as the priest lowered Tumi’s body into the outstretched arms of Ba’al, he covered her mouth to keep her from crying out. I was amazed he could even move. When I tried, it seemed there was no body to me. No legs, that I could walk; no hands, that I could feel; no mouth, that I could breathe. The priest stepped back, and the whole crowd groaned in waiting as the flames licked up toward the boy. I no longer existed. There is a poisonous plant from Sardenia that causes convulsions resembling laughter when it is eaten. As the heat from the flames in the brazier reached Tumi, his limbs contracted, and his mouth opened in a grimace. Although he was already dead, I watched his murder over again as his body convulsed in sardonic laughter.

From the depth of my soul, I screamed. Tumi’s limbs contracted more, and he fell through the statue’s arms, down into the fire. The people sighed with release and pleasure. Lespia’s body slumped down in a faint. Again, I screamed. Ba’al’s face was alive, confronting me. A path opened through the crowd, and I stood alone before him. He knew me. I flung my head back, letting the hood fall, and slowly raised my arm, pointing steadily at his image. I could see the life there. It was real; no trick of dancing shadows or reflected flames. His fire fed on Tumi, and his eyes challenged me.

“You,” I cried aloud, “are not God!”

The music had hushed, and my words rang in the low room. My arm fell.

“You are not good. You are not God.” I said lowly to Ba’al, to Tanit, to the myriad other images that raised their heads with rage. I knew. Yet they were real, yes, certainly real. They shrieked and woke and gathered. I saw them all there, felt their hatred. Then was I terrified, and though dead already, I turned and fled.

A path had opened behind me as well, so I flew through the stunned crowd, finding no resistance. If they touch me, I will be consumed. The demons screamed and tore behind me, and a small group of men followed them. I ran down the cobblestone street, away from the square and forum, toward the bay. My steps echoed too loudly off the buildings. My robe flew behind me, and the light green silk shone in the bright moonlight like a beacon. With each step, I felt it brush softly against my body as if I were dancing. This was a dance of death in the moonlight of a suddenly strange and sharp city, each corner reaching out to impale me, each wall to enclose as I rushed past. And its demons, its gods, incited it. This was not a dead street, lending way to my desperate flight from the knowledge of evil. It swayed and swung beneath me, tripping my feet and heaving its angry waves against my heels, to tumble my soul into that pit of misery and fire that had lain for centuries underneath its beautifully cobbled walks and heroic actors. I saw it as it was, as I was running, and seeing my last visions.

The gods massed behind me, their men just a distant echo under their fury. They were right there as I twisted and turned. I could hear them rushing, gaining; I could almost feel their burning breath. I stumbled and fell to the ground, ripping the silk and tearing my hands. What was the good? Demons hissed and reached for my soul. My heaving body flew up again in terror, only to fall on the uneven stone. I lay in horror; sweat dripped over my forehead, and my hair, long ago loosed from any bonds, fell wet around me. I couldn’t move, though my pursuers were seconds away. One moment of life…

Suddenly I was lifted off the ground. Two strong arms cradled me like a child.

“Perpetua, I’ve got you.” Andrew’s kind voice reached through death, and I wrapped my arms around his neck.

“Run, I choked. “Run. He turned with me in his arms and ran. I could hear the swift footsteps of my enemies on the dark stone way, and I could feel the gods in their anger, almost near enough to touch.

“Almost there,” he gasped as we rounded a corner and began heading uphill, toward a small door cut into the tall stone wall of an old building. I pressed my face into his shoulder, the blood of my hands mingling with the sweat on his neck. Shadowy forms were waiting for us in the doorway, but we would not make it. Even through Andrew’s strong frame I felt the rage of darkness, coming steps ahead of the men, slam into my body. My back arched, and I screamed in agony.