Perpetua: A Bride, A Martyr, A Passion

“And now this! I will not allow it!” His hand crashed down in a fist on the carefully placed table. I flinched and burrowed a little farther behind Saturus’ shoulder. Optatus glared across the room, burning dear Aspasius with the look. “You act like a bunch of drunkards,” he growled, “you wave your hands and sway like you’re a pagan procession in the filthy streets,” Aspasius looked placid, but his eyes were down, hid, “your women dance. Dance!” he spit out the word as if it was dirty.

“We must love the Lord with all our heart and soul and strength. Not just our mind, Optatus.” Aspasius was flushed, but calm.

“Come, Aspasius,” Posix put out an entreating hand, “do not throw Scripture around as if it were your own private tool.”

I caught a look of contempt on Tertullian’s face, tucked away near the southernmost column, half in the shadow, half in the light, before he wiped it away and consternation filled the space instead. It had taken me only a few moments to notice his presence here was a matter for toleration by the rest of the presbyters, excepting Aspasius. To see the great man relegated to lingering in corners, his face as gray sometimes as his wily beard, was an ache to my heart.

Optatus’ bitter glance swept across my teacher. “I will not have you delegating authority based on some woman’s ecstatic prophecy.”

I flushed. He was twisting Aspasius’ words, singling out Sophie’s prophecy over Saturus, when it was just one of many reasons Aspasius had listed for my husband’s ordination. What she had spoken were sweet confirmations from the Lord—that He had called Saturus to lead His people. No specifics were given, and both he and I had treasured that word, particularly through the process of releasing Pomponius into shepherding an even younger group of catechumens. Jocundus and his eager friends, newly saved, had stretched our number to the bursting point. When Revocatus had brought his fellow slave, Rusticus …

Aspasius had protested the reference. Pomponius had merely frowned.

“Perhaps not this time, but you allow the women to speak, and those who are not elders, if they are ‘prophesying.’ Admit it, Aspasius!” Optatus would not release the point, but my tension was easing. The friction between them did not seem to bother the gathered presbyters, whose calm facades were taking it in stride, nor cast shadow on their view of Saturus. And I had heard stories. The long-standing friendship between Aspasius and Optatus was legendary. As was the recent divergence of their views.

“With pleasure. If the Holy Spirit speaks to a woman, who am I to silence her, and through her, Him?” He gestured to me, tucked into my husband’s side as I was. “If the Lady Perpetua stood and told me she had a word from the Lord, I would give the floor to her in an instant.”

Heat crossed over my face, along with every pair of eyes in the room. I was a hypothetical case, but it was none too pleasant. Long before the evening had begun, months ago in fact, I had known that the Bishop’s Council was never one of complete unity. The greatest division among them? The Holy Spirit. I thought I knew the root of it all, and Tertullian had agreed. I could see him agreeing even now from his silence.

“Pride.” I said it aloud! All eyes, which had moved across me to Optatus, swayed back to my face as one. The Rubicon had been crossed. “Pride,” somehow rang out of my mouth, “brings each one of us to grasp after position.” Am I really doing this? “Pride makes us blush before the man in the street when he says, ‘I hear you act like madmen, prophesy like soothsayers, and speak languages that don’t exist.’” They were incredulous, even Aspasius, but the Lord had one more thing for me to say. “Pride separates us from God.”

The silence was palpable. My heart rhythmically quickened, beating so each swish of blood fell like a liquid hammer, and my senses returned. Saturus had stiffened beside me, but his hand grasping mine did not loosen.

“Well, well,” round, shortsighted Justinian beamed indiscriminately at the silent room, “a little debate is always good, yes, always good.”

“Just so,” Aspasius finally spoke in a low clear tone, saving me from the eyes of Optatus, which were just beginning to wonder if I had been speaking directly to him. “What I needed to hear.” He refocused on the Bishop. “And pride brings contention, which is not what I want between us, dear brother.”

“We have always disagreed on this subject, Aspasius. And as your Bishop, I cannot give you free rein to make what I see as a mistake.” But his voice was lower as well, softer.

“We are bound to the scriptures.” Aspasius’ forehead dipped. “What the Holy Spirit does in them, He will have free rein to do in my congregation as well.”

Muttering erupted from most of the presbyters. Several jumped to speak, and Optatus shouted for attention. I was forgotten. The aftermath, however, was beginning to overwhelm me. I started to shake. It was imperceptible to the eye, but Tertullian’s spirit and Saturus’ hand picked up on it, and both looked at me with concern. I had spoken to myself. Why am I suddenly longing to watch Saturus being ordained, becoming a presbyter, sitting as Bishop of Carthage? Is this the fellowship Christ has called us to? Position? Honor?

When Marcellus slipped up behind Saturus and asked for his presence, but Saturus indicated I should go, I was happy to comply. I did wonder at Marcellus’ judgment for a moment, though. What could be so pressing as to warrant …?

“Rusticus is here, my lady.” He explained as soon as we were out of the room.

I looked at him sharply and followed his move toward the atrium. The young friend of Felicitas and Revocatus, their former fellow slave, had never been to our home.

“You are sure he did not want Revocatus?” Since the slave’s recent conversion, Marcellus had met Rusticus at many a congregational gathering and knew his connection with Julia’s household.

“He asked for m’Lord particularly.”

Marcellus’ nod directed me toward the smallest sitting room off the atrium. I entered. Rusticus had not rested. He was pacing the floor, leaving a wet trail of drops. He must have had no cloak, for his clothing was soaked with the rain that had followed this morning’s high winds, and his hair was stringy and damp across the flushed forehead.

“Rusticus,” I held out my hands and greeted him kindly. “Welcome. What brings you here?”

“Perpetua,” he breathed, “I had hoped to see Saturus.”

“He is occupied in a meeting, but he has sent me. I speak for him.”

Rusticus nodded, his eyes passing over the room without focus. “You look ill; please sit down.” Marcellus caught my worried glance and slipped away. He would send a slave with hot wine. As if he hadn’t heard me, Rusticus released my hands and paced again, moving from side to side like a lion caged for the amphitheater.

“I know Revocatus is here, but I can’t tell him. Oh sister, I am afraid! It would have been better if she had not been sold. I know she was being whipped for defying Aelius, but death is worse, isn’t it?” He appealed to me.

She was being whipped? She had not told me. “Rusticus, please tell me what is wrong.”

“Lady Julia had a party tonight. I served at the master’s table. The proconsul is back from Rome, and the whole Senate came to celebrate.” I nodded, but he wasn’t even looking in my direction. His voice was hurried, chopped, as if reliving the scene while he relayed it. “Marius, the actor, is back too, from Spain. He brought an old freedman with him. A Greek. A physician. The Greek claimed acquaintance with the household. Said he had attended the Lady Julia during childbirth twenty-three winters ago. ‘Autumns, you mean’ is what Master Aelius said. They repeated themselves, I don’t know how many times.” Rusticus stopped pacing and sat, his shoulders falling helplessly. “All I know is that the Master began bellowing for Felicitas. We told him,” sweat stood out among the raindrops on his forehead, “she was sold. Gone. He became a madman. ‘I will have her back! I will have her back …’” his voice trailed off. “Perpetua, the whole company heard what he screamed. ‘She may be a Christian, but I will have her son! I will have a son!’” His head went into his hands. “They all know—Scipio, Scaurus …” he groaned the words. “Her life is forfeit!”

“But Rusticus, many people know that others are Christians, and do not pursue them.” I comforted him instinctively, though my own heart had dropped.

“Not the Lady Julia. If the Lady Julia knows, she kills.”

A gust of cold wind blew the lamplights into a flickering dance, and footsteps rang in the atrium. I heard a high voice, a woman’s voice.

“Perpetua,” Rusticus jerked his head up and pled, “the master is going to take them back from you. And the mistress will kill them. Please do something. They should flee. Tonight!”

“The Lord will have His will. We need not fear them, Rusticus.”

“But it will happen, I know! He saved my life, and she saved his. Please help them escape.”

“Aelius cannot take her back, Rusticus. Saturus has bought them legally.” But a thousand other possibilities existed, and I knew each one of them.

Aelius will win. He will claim she withheld the knowledge of the child. The baby is his property, and should have been sold separately. He will force us to hand it over. One sob shook my chest, my hand at my mouth, before I controlled the swell of emotion … she released the child. “You are God’s,” she whispered …

“Now! I must see her now!” The feminine voice was louder, crescendoeing over the low tones of our gatekeeper and intruding between Rusticus and me.

I placed my hand on his. “Take refreshment, Rusticus, then return to your master’s house. I will talk to Saturus about it.”

I think he followed me with his eyes as I moved out the door toward the commotion, for my back felt weighed by a hopeless gaze. Ahead of me was another wall to climb, this one crowned with battlements blazing in all their glory, for I found Paulina, disheveled as I’d never seen her, out of breath, and contending loudly with my poor servant who shushed to no avail and threw anxious glances toward the far council. If her voice rose again, they would be able to hear her even down the long passage and several turns. “Paulina!”

She turned like a cat, springing, almost, to my outstretched arm.

“Perpetua!” It was a hiss, a rebuke, a cry for help all at once.

“Come with me,” I pulled her into Saturus’ library. The wood-lined walls and scrolled parchment made a better barrier against her wild-eyed noise. Even before the door closed behind us, she was clutching my hand and whispering. Her searching face covered me from head to toe, both overjoyed and repulsed by the sight. “What is it, Paulina? What has happened?”

She was dressed for a banquet. A particularly lavish one. The pouty red mouth, her most alluring feature, trembled. “Tell me it isn’t true. It’s not true, is it Perpetua?”

There was no slow dread, building forward from the recesses of my mind, as is often described by those at revelation’s door. No, for I knew in one instant, like a dam broken and loosed with a great rush down every available course, what it was she begged me to refute.

“Please, before the gods,” she seized my arms, “tell me you are not a Christian!”

I could not move from her grasp, I did not even want to try, but lowered my head. My eyes grazed past her thin bosom, pinched and pushed to appear voluptuous but failing; her wider waist, graced with silk dyed scarlet; her broad hips, ever her regret; and rested upon her toes, peeking deliciously out from fine leather sandals, ringed with small golden circlets and tipped with scarlet paint.

“I cannot swear to you by any of the gods you worship, Paulina. But I can tell you of the One True God. Whom I love.”

“You love a god.” She whispered, fainthearted. My arms were released. Her eyes cast down. “Like Psyche, and Cupid.” She was mourning for me, for my lost mind. “Those are tales, Perpetua. Fables.”

“You’re right,” I surprised her. “There is only one God. It is He I love.”

“Love!” she exploded. “Why are we talking of love? It is death you are speaking. Perpetua, don’t you know? You could be killed.” She caught my chin and forced my eyes back to hers. “You, you’re just a sweet child, a playmate, my friend. The good girl. You’re beautiful,” her hands pressed my cheeks, “your soul is here, talking to me, not wandering about in the infernal regions. Good god, you’re alive! Don’t you see? If you stay a Christian, you might be killed. Now. Tomorrow!” Terror leapt in and out of her eyes. I have never seen a woman so fearful. I couldn’t speak aloud before I spoke to Him, for my soul had moved and bowed to Spirit.

Your son will lose his mother.

“Killed, Perpetua! Dead!” She shook me.

Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies…

“You have a son,” she pled, growing frantic.

“I choose Jesus.”

“Where is your heart? You are brainwashed!”

A servant is not greater than his master.

“I remember. I still choose You.” I’d said it aloud.

She stared as if I were mad.

If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you.

“The world hated Jesus, Paulina,” I knew my eyes were clear, and I turned them on her, “without a cause. They will hate me too.”

“But you don’t have to die, Perpetua. You don’t have to.” Great tears pooled into her hot eyes.

I knew I didn’t have to. The choice was mine.

Lord? It was fear. It was faith.

I said to them, “No one can come to Me unless it is granted to him by My Father.” From that time, many of my disciples went back and walked with Me no longer. Do you also want to go away?

Lord, to whom shall I go? You have the words of eternal life.

Know this, then. You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit. Now, unless the grain dies, it remains alone, but if it dies, it produces much grain. Die, daughter, and bear fruit.

And I was safe, for the decision had been His all along.

Paulina’s head rested in my lap. Her eyes were closed, her tears finally stilled. I talked to her in a low tone, explaining my love for this amazing God-Man, Jesus. The frightful, passionate sorrow in which she had cried out, torn the earrings from her lobes, wrenched the mother-of-pearl and brilliant carbuncle red circlet from her neck, was a grief new to me. It was seeing death without knowing the life beyond. It was feeling separation without experiencing the peace of a just cause. It was sheer pain without a comfort. And so I comforted, and she raged, until we were as Saturus found us.

His face burst around the door, urgent words silenced on his lips to find us so situated. My hand rested on her loosed hair. Her arm wrapped around my knees. Behind him rustled the subdued togas of presbyters departing. A finger to my lips, I slipped out from under Paulina, laying her head gently down to the low couch she curled upon.

“I will be back,” I whispered, and drew Saturus out of the room, closing the door softly behind us. Tertullian, gray mantle fading into the shadows, stood with him. Our gatekeeper shut the street door behind the last of the elders, and we were alone in the atrium.

“Perpetua,” why did he speak in whispers too? “I have had a message,” a scroll was clutched in his hand, “and must leave you for a few days.”

“Why?” Out of all I could have said—Julia’s eyes, Rusticus’ warning, Paulina’s knowledge—I managed only a weak question. He didn’t answer immediately, and I regained some presence of mind. “Tertullian, doesn’t the council usually meet longer than this?”

His assent was motioned, like a creaky wheel coming to its final stop. “Saturus gave his answer,” his eyes matched the shadows in the high-ceilinged room, and I could not read them. They had lost their piercing power, and he could not read me either. “And this …” he gestured absently to the crumpled letter, closed in my husband’s fist. His mind was elsewhere, turning, ruminating, retreating.

“Darling,” Saturus took my hand in front of Tertullian, “I already told you my agent has been looking for Lespia ever since she left Jocundus a few months ago. He wanted to speak to her one last time.” My breasts ached, full of milk. I need my baby. “There is another I have been looking for, although I did not tell you.”

“Ederatus,” I whispered. His eyes widened slightly, and he nodded.

“They have been found. Together. On Cap Bon. He has more than suspicion now; he has Lespia’s knowledge of our faith. He is in the open and challenging me to meet him!”

“To meet him?” I gasped. The man’s frightful face flashed in front of me again, lit by lightning and blinding.

“I must. He’ll want to make a deal. My silence for his.”

His hands crept around my waist, the parchment crumpling behind my back. His arms drew me in, his lips moved to my neck, my ear, my cheek. We stood together, simply breathing, until he tasted my salty tear. His slow release was agony. All the noise and revelation and fears of the day came down to this moment, this waiting, this looking at each other.

“I will know when I see him. Do you trust me?”

Horses, creaking with tack, laden with provisions, sounded in the street. The door opened. Philip led the dark-mantled slaves, all of them breathless on their mounts, prepared in twenty minutes’ notice for a trip to decide life or death. An empty saddle stood among them. Saturus moved, and Marcellus was instantly behind him, throwing my husband’s familiar thick, hooded cloak around the broad shoulders.

“Saturus!” I choked and threw myself into his arms again, clutching his head. “Do not die without me. Do not.” His perfect jaw quivered between my palms. “I look strong, but I am weak.”

A slow smile finally spread across his face, lightening his eyes until there was nothing else of color in the room beside their clear blue. “You look weak,” his hands cradled my head, small within them, “but you are strong.”

He pulled away and left, striding across the threshold, mounting with one smooth motion. Tertullian was back in the present and easing me to his side like my missing father. “Have faith, little one, and trust in the Lord …”

“…with all my heart.” I finished his prompting with a sigh. “Oh, Tertullian,” we turned after a moment and walked slowly toward the brighter interior, “I didn’t even tell him about Rusticus, and Felicitas—she might lose her baby—and Paulina knows, and,” he cut me off with an aged finger across my lips.

“It is the Lord Jesus who knows. I think you were preaching the Gospel to your young friend, no?”

“I think you must continue. I take my leave. No,” he stopped my turn, “our friend Marcellus will see me out. You, little one, are to trust in the Lord. Worse may yet come.”

I stood for a moment before letting him kiss my forehead and push me through the door to the library. He closed it gently behind him, and I found myself back in the cozy, learned room, staring at a calm Paulina who sat still, awaiting me.

Where had the spirit of prophesy gone? I, who usually understood beforehand the outcome of an action and always identified the working of the Spirit in any situation, could see only what stood in front of me. Nothing was left but blind faith, and I decided then, it was what the Lord knew I needed.

“You must count the cost. Do not decide before you look it squarely in the face, and can choose Jesus above everything else.”

“I see the cost, Perpetua. It’s sitting here, in front of me.” My hand was stroked, “Alive one day, dead the next. Oh Father, Father,” she moaned. “It might be my own father who will prosecute you!” A moment of contemplation paled her cheeks considerably. “You are right, though. It is my death, not yours, I must agree to.”

“For many it is not ended in a physical passion. Some live a whole lifetime, and every day is a dying—a giving up of self and self-pleasing. A counting Jesus Christ worth every sacrifice.”

“From what you have told me,” her answer was distant and hazy, “I almost believe He is.”

The conversation broke. My watering time was over. God would bring His harvest sickle to her root at the ripe moment. I prayed I’d live to see it.

“Paulina,” I said lowly, “your father will wonder why you’ve been crying. You must not tell him.” I clutched her arms. “You must not tell him I’m a Christian.”

“Oh, I won’t, dear! I am the best secret-keeper.”

I almost laughed. “What brought you here in the first place? How did you know I’m a Christian?”

She looked at me sharply. “Did I not say? It was Julia, and Lupus. I learned from them.”

“From Julia and Lupus?” I repeated their names wonderingly. “I didn’t think they knew.”

“They found out. Just today. I’ve discovered what she was so preoccupied with. Julia has gotten a steward. She never had one before, you know. She thinks Aelius might divorce her.” Her voice dropped to confide. “Lupus is not his son. We should have guessed; they’re as different as Caesar and Brutus!”

And yet shockingly similar, I thought. “I knew.”

Now she looked at me wonderingly. “From one of your ‘visions’?”

“No,” I laughed, patting her hand. “I was told. Julia even slipped herself. Born in winter, not in autumn …” Steward …

“That’s funny, Lupus said the same thing. I don’t think he knew. At least, not until recently. He’ll lose any inheritance, you know, if Aelius decides so.”

“So Julia has gotten a steward …”

“She’ll protect her dowry from now on, I’ll bet. Lupus might need it. I’ve never seen her so angry, Perpet. She was almost green …”

“Who is Julia’s steward?”

“Why, I don’t know, some man named Edertamus or something. He’s been handling the Cap Bon estate for a short time already.” My heart turned and began again. “He’s ugly, you know.” She shivered. “I don’t know why she trusts him!”

“Who is ugly?” My fingers ached.

“You’ve seen him? When?”

She responded to my incredulity with the same. “I’ve told you. Tonight. Lupus and I followed Julia from the triclinium. She was so drunk and angry … Julia told him this Felicitas was at your house. He said, ‘I know her. She’s a Christian.’” Her hand waved in the direction of the proconsul’s spectacular hilltop palace.

A trap. It’s a trap. “How long has he been here?”

“He came here with his mistress two days ago. I was at Charites when he arrived.”

“It’s a trap,” I moaned, dropping my head to trembling hands.

“I don’t think it was a trap,” she prattled on, unaware. “Aelius found out Lupus wasn’t his. How odd, to think I saw the whole thing. Lupus will lose his inheritance to this Felicitas’ child—she is a Christian by the way. And Julia is determined not to let it happen.” Her head shook with the whirling complexity of it all. “Is this Felicitas here?” she asked on sudden thought, reaching up out of habit to flick her earrings, but they were gone. “All I paid attention to was his claim that you were … I tried to defend you, but no one listened to me. Julia seemed sure, the instant she heard it. And I thought she liked you! I left, Perpetua. I had to see you.”

“Of course.” I wasn’t listening.

“Who really cares about their family riffs? I suppose Lupus might, he’ll have so much less money. But they’re always drunk and fighting over one thing or another! Aelius was still in the triclinium when I left, toasting this Felicitas woman and wondering where all the Christians had gone. And I …”

I lost her voice in my thoughts. It was a trap. Ederatus was no more on Cap Bon than I was. Why would he lure Saturus there if no one waited at the other end? But perhaps someone did. Someone like Raxis. Soldiers … My breasts were hard by now, painful with milk, and beginning to leak wet spots through my amictus.

I’d sent a rider after him with the news. Would he be reached in time? I suppose I could have spent the night awake, ruminating over every twist of event and each possible outcome. But the Lord had cleared those thoughts and left me overfull with peace and waiting.