Godless
A few days later, my mother was unwell and unable to travel to Publius’s house. The Empress herself said she would act as chaperone for me. She brought her secretary with her, and sat dictating letters to him as Publius and I strolled in the gardens.
At the end of the gardens was a grotto, overhung with cool plants and with the trickle of water. As we reached it, Publius turned to me, a serious look on his face.
“I have something for you,” he said under his breath. And then, to my surprise, “Don’t tell your mother.”
I looked at the flash of gold in his outstretched hand. It was a golden seal ring. It did not show a god, or the Emperor’s head. Instead, cut into the amber stone was the Greek letter chi crossed with the letter rho. I knew as soon as I saw it that this piece of jewellery could put me in danger.
“You’re a Christian,” I breathed.
He nodded.
I’d heard plenty of stories about Christians. They were a Jewish sect, but their ideas had spread to others too. They were traitors to the Empire, traitors to the gods. They didn’t pray in the natural way, proudly in public to the holy gods of Rome, but in private, like thieves. And worse stories, too.
“Do you eat human flesh?” I blurted out.
“Of course not!” He looked shocked. “Is that what they say about us?”
It was one of the things they said about them. I had never quite believed it, and looking at Publius, I was sure he did not. But even so, Christians were not just like worshippers of Mithras or Heliogabalus. They refused to worship the gods at all. My father called Christians átheos, which meant godless in Greek. He usually treated all sects and religions equally, but the Christians: those he did not like. I did not know why, but I guessed it was because they did not worship the gods. I understood, because not worshipping the gods was dangerous. It could only lead to destruction, when the gods grew angry at being disrespected and sent down some terrible force. Cities were destroyed by the Earth-shaker Neptune, Jupiter struck with lightning – all these things killed not just Christians but everyone else, too.
Publius was looking at the amulet on my wrist, the one my nurse had given me. I had seen him looking at it before, and now I had a sinking feeling. Christians did not like what they called idols.
“What is that?”
My other hand closed protectively over it.
“My nurse gave it to me. It’s a good-luck charm.”
“If we are to marry,” he said, “you must, like me, abandon false gods and idols.”
I clutched my amulet. I didn’t know what to say. I had no desire to give up my religion. To abandon Diana, Isis, Asclepius, Hygeia and Salus? To throw away my Lares and Penates? I had not realised how important they were to me, until now.
“I can’t do that!”
“I cannot marry a woman who does not share my faith.” He sounded sad. “And I’d like to marry you.”
I remained silent. I wanted to marry him too. But not if it meant giving up everything that meant most to me.
“Do you truly believe there can be any power in this thing?” He caught my wrist gently. “Don’t be afraid. If I throw it in the water, do you think that any of your gods will strike me down?”
I realised I did believe that, because terror hit me like a wave. I liked Publius. I didn’t want him to be destroyed by the furious gods. And I was terrified of losing the amulet, the only thing I had left of Nurse and her love for me, and home itself.
“Let go!” I pulled away from him, turned and went towards the Empress. I heard his footsteps behind me and broke into a run in a blind panic.
The Empress rose to meet me and I ran, sobbing, full tilt into her. It was like running into a steel bar. She grabbed my shoulders and gave me a quick, sharp shake that knocked the tears out of me.
“What has happened?” she asked, seeing my face.
“I want to go home,” I managed to say.
She tutted.
“Young men,” she said with annoyance. She cast a cold look at Publius, who looked terrified. She nodded to the secretary who had come up behind us. “Call the carriage.”
I was shaking, wondering what I could say to explain matters. To be a Christian was a shameful thing for the son of a senator. If I could hide the ring, I thought, then perhaps I could make up some story. But she was not the Empress for nothing. As soon as we sat in the carriage she reached out for my hand that was grasping the ring.
“Dear, what’s that?” she asked. “Let me see your treasure.”
I could not refuse. I handed her the ring. She turned it over and over with some curiosity.
“Are you a Christian?” she said.
I shook my head hard.
“It was a. . . gift from someone,” I muttered, blushing. Then, my tongue lying faster than I knew it could: “I wanted to show Publius. So that there would be no secrets in our marriage.”
“Ah, a gift from some old boyfriend. I see now. But you worship the gods too, I see by this amulet.”
I hastily assured her that my devotion to the gods and ancestors of Rome was total. She did not seem overly concerned by the ring, however. Having the amulet – something normal – on me as well as the ring, seemed to reassure her that I was no Christian. If Publius had been asked before the courts if he was a Christian he would not have been able to deny it, and then he would have been executed.
“Have you heard of Apollonius of Tyana?” she said, handing the ring back to me. “Now he is the one you should be following, not Jesus. He is a true mystic, not a charlatan. He did everything that Jesus claimed to have done, but there are better witnesses to his miracles.”
“I would be happy to read more of him,” I said, eager to please her.
“Good, then I will find some writings for you. There is nothing wrong with seeking for truth in many different places. Only don’t forget: gods are important not because they tell us what to do, but because they tell us who we are.” She handed the ring back to me. “And this?” She pointed to the amulet.
“My old nurse gave it to me. She was from the tribe of the Garamantes.”
“The desert people,” Julia Domna said. “Did she come with you to Rome?”
“I think she died of grief rather than leave her home,” I said quietly.
It was the first time I had ever admitted my thoughts, even to myself. You hide things from yourself because they are too painful to see. Nurse had been the only mother I had really known, closer than my own mother. But she was enslaved. She had become my wet nurse because she had breasts full of milk, for a baby who was not me. Who did she secretly think of when she fed me? Was there a small grave that she did not want to leave behind her? Every so often, in Leptis Magna as well as in other cities, the bodies of those too old and weak and poor to live were pulled from the sea. An old woman, penniless and hunted by the law, could only disappear into death.
Julia Domna looked at me, her head on one side. I wondered what she hid from herself. I thought of Caracalla and Geta, twitching their tails and muttering curses like rival tomcats.
“A brave woman then,” she said. “Who died with honour despite being a slave.”
She must have made up her mind on that carriage ride, because when we stepped out at the palace, she announced it as a fact.
“Your daughter is too young to marry,” she said to my mother. “She can come to Britain with us, and when we return to Rome I will arrange a husband for her. She can do better than Publius.”
My mother opened her mouth, then closed it again. There was nothing she could say. It was not a question, it was a statement by the most powerful woman in the world.
“You are favoured,” she said to me when we were alone. “The Empress herself takes an interest in you.”
Yes, I thought, as the eagle takes an interest in the chicken!
I told my father the truth about what had happened.
“You did the right thing,” he said with a frown. “I am disappointed in Publius.”
“You won’t tell anyone, will you?” I begged him. “They would kill him – and Christians don’t eat human flesh. He said they don’t, and I believe him!”
He smiled sadly. “No, they don’t eat human flesh. But they are required to believe through faith, not through the arguments of philosophy. And that is a dangerous path, which leads far from Rome.”
That night, I went to my apartments and removed my rich clothes and my jewels. I undid my tight, uncomfortable hairstyle. Outside my window, I could see one of the many pools filled with fish, flicking their tails, swimming back and forth, without ever being able to find a way out of their prison. Water and light rippled on white marble.
When I had changed into simpler clothes, I sat down at the window. In the light of the setting sun, I took off Nurse’s amulet. I had only ever taken it off to change the string before. The prayer itself was contained inside a hollow reed, sealed with red wax.
I dug my nail into the wax. The reed cracked open. There was no going back now, although my chest felt tight and painful. I broke open the reed and a thin scrap of papyrus came curling out. There was faded writing on it. I hadn’t been sure I would understand it, for the priests of Isis used strange symbols sometimes, but I was lucky: this prayer was written in Greek. I read it carefully.
It was what Nurse had said it was – a prayer to keep a baby safe from harm. But it was not a prayer for me.
It was not my name written on the papyrus. It was a stranger’s.
Now I knew the truth. It had never been meant for me at all. I was second-best. All my life, I had been wearing a good-luck charm that Nurse had bought not for me but for her own baby, who had died just before I was born. The dead child had left me an inheritance of her mother’s milk – and this amulet.
We must treat bad news and good news exactly the same, I said to myself silently. I looked up and out of the window at the sun setting over the Palatine Hill. Tears pricked behind my eyes, but I thought of all the Stoic philosophers I had ever read. What would Marcus Aurelius say? After all, we are all going to die soon, so what is the sense of weeping? It helped, in that it made everything seem so miserable that I couldn’t decide what to cry about first, so in the end I didn’t cry at all. Instead, I watched blankly through the window as a slave came out of the shadows, carrying a long net, which he dipped unhurriedly into the gilded water to snare a fish for the Emperor’s dinner.