Sparkling gems, silks, and unimaginable finery surrounded us. A troop of golden-haired dancing girls; trios of musicians playing as for kings; slaves arrayed in a quality of cloth the average shopkeeper couldn’t touch. Luscious, extravagant, the whispered tinkling of water stolen from all the surrounding hills and fields lulled the air into liquid beauty and comfort. This was a banquet the likes of which I hadn’t seen since before my conversion. Tonight it became new, as if the time with our Lord had erased my memory and I looked with eyes unused. The wine flowed as smoothly as the fountains poured out water, and disappeared even faster. Hundreds of steady yellow lamplights lit the huge, marble-lined triclinium, glowing against what would have been a cold and hard image if not for the sumptuous couches and pillows and garments that tossed every hue of exotic color into the space. Saturus could barely hear my whispered exclamations above the laughter and music, so I became silent, a watcher. And one watched. Far more guests than just my old playmates occupied our host and hostess. All the nobility—or the simply wealthy—from Cape Bon’s closest villas and holdings were in attendance, reclining according to ages of Roman precedent, in order of rank and importance. The further a table from our host’s, the less wealth and power was found at it, until the outer tables, the ones holding small-time, small-town officials, became almost a banquet unto themselves, complete with the kitchen’s leftovers and wines not so heady nor perfectly aged as those enjoyed by the head table. Saturus and I, on the other hand, tasted only the most perfect liquids and exotic foods of the evening. It was to my surprise that we were led to the procurator’s own table and reclined among the most influential men of the hour. The fathers of my old friends were here, the most powerful men in the Carthaginian Senate. I was consciously aware of our precarious position. For those below our rank to know we were Christians was one thing—they would have to find the courage to approach the right official and bring a formal charge against us. But for these men, our apprehension would be as simple as a snapped finger and a whisper to the Roman soldiers who accompanied them. And they were certainly accompanied. The house of the procurator went not unguarded on a night he feted the movers and shakers of North Africa. I soon lost my wonder at the debauchery surrounding us. The orchestra of slaves, some of the most highly trained musicians in the province, and the scantily clad dancing troupes swaying to their rhythms became simply an ill-staged background to the undercurrent of intrigue that ripped around our table of nine.
Why are we reclining to eat here? I’d thought we were still being punished for the elopement. I found my old friends, Paulina, Lupus, Claudia, reclining around a close table, and watched their studied indifference to my husband and me … pretending they had not noticed us. Why aren’t we with them? I don’t want to be here, Lord. I could not control the unease that pushed up harder, breaking my former concentration. Saturus’ hand moved lightly to my back and lingered there, infusing a strength I didn’t know he had. As I began to listen to the conversation floating around our own group, I saw my husband anew. He was a maestro, a master playing these men in their own words and tongue. I relaxed. He knew what he was doing, and his crisp Roman accent didn’t hurt matters.
“Now darling,” Julia’s studied voice hung low under the senators’ avid discussion, and she turned intimately toward me, “do tell me all! Where did you find him? Why did you elope? I want all the delicious details, dear, no puny tidbits for your Julia.” Her wine had honeyed the mood even more, if possible, but her eyes were clear and probing. I could not forget our last encounter and the subsequent months of silence. Hadn’t she called me base, devoid of noble blood? Hadn’t I since spurned her son? And yet here we were, I eating of her house, she demanding my secrets. Jewelry tinkled on her neck and wrists; even her ankles wore a profusion of gold. The deep purple sheer she was wrapped in gave little concession to the modest, and boasted of her husband’s position. If the emperor himself were here to be entertained, I believed she would have still worn the color of the kings. I decided to let her feel herself my confidant, for such a woman maked a far better ally than enemy; and so I spoke softly, as if for her ears alone. The men’s conversation continued over us, and snatches came unbidden to my ears. I became glad I wasn’t following its flow more closely, for then fear would have followed me.
“… and how long will you stay in the province, Saturus?” They are too interested. Too many questions. My mind whirled back to Julia and the tale I’d started not at the very beginning, with a rescue, but at the tamer understandable point.
“So we really only met the next morning, for I’d been isolated within the carriage all the day traveling.”
“Ah, now you are blessing this abominable thirst for the hunt our men have! If your brother hadn’t invited him to your villa, why, you might never have met!” She threw up her hands in mock worship. “Oh, thank the gods.”
No, thank my God. Thank you, dear One. “I believe I’d actually met him, briefly, at the Odeon one night. Paulina asked him a question, but did not introduce us.”
She leaned even closer, if possible, until I could taste wine and perfume mingled. “That spoiled girl wanted to keep him to herself,” she whispered, nodding secretively toward Paulina.
I struggled to keep rebuke out of my tone. “I don’t think so. He dismissed himself abruptly.”
Her forehead creased in an effort to understand. I could see her mind snaking this way and that, conjuring up and discarding as quickly all the possible explanations for his behavior. Before she could settle on one, I jumped back into the story. She still leaned close, waiting eagerly for something more than the tale of the gentle drawing we felt toward each other. But the problem I encountered at each turn was not easily overcome. To tell her the true story, or almost any part of the true story, I had to include God. His arm was twined irrevocably through every interaction we’d had. She was still hanging, sure my narrative would have some momentous culmination, give some substantial reason for the choice of Saturus over Lupus. The room was too hot, her eyes too eager. I had to. Leaving Ederatus out of it, I told of a night I rode. An unexpected storm. Lightning and a spooked mount. Saturus. His arm clutching me. Safety found in the rock embrace of a man on a horse, while ground shot beneath my feet at a deathly pace. Watching my own death ship sail out over the cliff, but without me on it. Her hand was grasping her bosom’s sheer veil, her eyes wide. “How could I not fall in love with him?” I summed up what bore pitiful resemblance to the meat of our true story.
“Oh,” she gasped, “oh, my dear Perpetua. How romantic!” Her sweaty hand grasped my cheek. “I forgive you twice now, my dear, not once. Lupus must hear this story.” A sharp twinkle rode out of her eye. “And have you found him all he promised to be?”
“And more, Julia. He is too good for me.”
“That I doubt.” Somehow her voice didn’t make it a complimentary objection. “Well, you look good enough.” She surveyed my simple gown with raised eyebrows and a glance that found too little breast and too few gems in view.
“He is very wealthy, Julia. He will give me anything.” As soon as I’d said it I cringed. Speaking Julia’s language didn’t bring her closer to me, it lent my own voice her sharp, depthless quality. Still, her eyebrows didn’t join the red downturned mouth. “I chose this style myself. Lupus once called me a goddess for it.”
Saturus’ back stiffened while my own heart dropped. Had I really said that? I didn’t want him to turn to me … don’t turn around, don’t look at me. I know when I turn bright red, and saw she misinterpreted that too. She was my ally again.
I relaxed, and let my fingers steal to his hand, apologizing. He squeezed them.
“But surely you spent enough time there to give us some feel for the true currents.” The voice was whiney, insistent, and powerful. I was glad to turn my attention back to the table’s other conversation, but trepidation soon overcame that emotion. Some dark and ominous threat was moving among us, and it was far more than Julia’s curiosity that brought my new husband and I to this particular table and these feast fellows.
“In Rome I was concentrating on my studies. I could tell you all about the political spirit of Augustus, and Virgil, and our ancient laws, but of today’s climate,” my husband shook his head ruefully, “I am ignorant.”
“Surely you have not been deaf and dumb to the world these six years!” Romulus’ hand slammed down on the low table. Saturus was losing his edge.
“No, Senator, not if it is the fortunate rise of Lucius Septimius Severus to the throne to which you are referring.” His eyes flashed, and Romulus quieted. “I was as thankful as the rest of Rome when he deposed that imposter.”
Julianus bought the throne from the greedy Praetorian guard. Septimius took it by the power of his army. Where is the difference? I shook to think I might have slipped and spoken aloud. Then where would be my life and my husband’s? Aelius’ eyes narrowed, and he spoke.
“So is every other provincial in the empire. But you, you are not from Africa Proconsularis, but Rome. I have heard that there are some, few I hope,” he snorted, knowing it to be more, “who still desire another, one born in the great city itself instead of in her progeny.” The statement was a challenge. Saturus met it.
“Perhaps there are. The Senate is proud and old. But my heart is here,” he touched my arm and smiled, “and was long before I knew it.”
“Then you are staying in Carthage.”
“We have no plans to move.”
“You have holdings near Rome.”
“Yes.”
I wanted him to say more. In the city, in Antium, on Sicily … and others I could not remember, not the least of them my father’s gift, Venetiae. It was his as much as mine. I did not hold the ownership to my heart as Julia would have, for Saturus and I would never separate, and I would never reclaim my dowry.
“You have seen the divine emperor since his return from Egypt last year?” Aelius persisted.
“I am not a regular guest at the imperial court, but yes, I have attended a banquet or two.”
“Is it true he wears the style of Serapis?”
These men already knew it true. They had seen him. Why ask my husband?
“Indeed, it is. His beard is forked, and long locks lay upon his forehead. He has begun a new fashion. The city is full of small Serapises.”
One, the senator with the deepest goblet and most attentive slave, loosed his tongue.
“And how does our Lady Julia Domna like his choice of Isis’ husband instead of her own father’s Ba’al?”
Romulus looked sharply at him. “Serapis is Osiris to the Greeks. Is not their pantheon strong enough to unite us all?”
I felt Saturus’ repulsion to the conversation’s bent, but it did not show on his face. At least they had stopped probing for his loyalties. The rest of the evening was politics—of the bitter, cunning sort. All the reasons I’d originally dreaded this night, this invitation, were lost behind a new and harder one, but one buried so deeply I could not put my finger on it, not even much later in the privacy of our own rooms.
“But there was something there. They were searching for something, Saturus.” His fingers were always clumsy with my gowns.
“Couldn’t you hear what it was?”
“I stopped listening,” I admitted. “I didn’t want to know.”
“But you have the intelligence and learning to understand these things perfectly,” his rebuke was slight, possibly only imagined.
“Can’t I decide not to? Can’t I choose to leave that to you? To Father?”
He pulled me down to sit beside him on the lectuli, giving up on my stubborn knots and laces. Humor barely hid the grim consideration he was giving this evening’s conversation. I could see it under his eyes and feel it in the half-hearted tugs aimed at my amictus. His mind was miles away, in Alexandria, and Rome and Carthage … on their Senate floors, in their forum squares … listening to their orators and probing under their words for the roots.
“Saturus?” He came back to the present, back to me.
“My Heart, Scripture enjoins us to be wise as serpents and harmless as doves. I don’t want you to be the dove and I the serpent. We must act in love, but understand the whole, even the dark things.”
I didn’t want to talk about it anymore. A small queasy feeling grew from my stomach, and I knew it would turn into a political intrigue with Saturus’ demise at its center if I didn’t corral my imagination.
“We didn’t even talk with my old friends. They barely met you.”
“And you thought we’d be their primary target,” he teased. “Well, you’re not theirs, but,” his voice lowered to a whisper, and his lithe fingers resumed their attempts at my delicate lacings, “you’re mine. If,” he paused, suddenly worried, “it’s all right.” It was more than all right.