The Saint's Mistress (22 page)

I heard in this echoes of Plato, who was currently much admired by Aurelius and his circle of

mostly-pagan academics, and I wished again that I could persuade him to come and hear the

bishop, but Aurelius scoffed at the miracles of resurrection and redemption, and reserved special

scorn for Ambrose’s convenient discovery of the remains of Gervasius and Protasius just at the

time when he needed relics for his new cathedral.

As the sermon ended, and Cornelia and I shuffled out of the courtyard shoulder-to-shoulder

with the other worshippers, she gave me another tip. “I heard don’t eat any meat,” she advised,

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“just fish and fruits and vegetables and bread. I heard that the animals breathe in the plague ether

and you catch it when you eat them.” She shrugged then, as if to admit that it might be just a silly

rumor. “Anything’s worth trying, right?”

I shrugged back and nodded. She squeezed my hand and we parted at the courtyard exit.

“You should come and just hear Ambrose some time,” I told Aurelius again that night. “He’s

such a compelling speaker.”

“That’s exactly what makes him dangerous,” Aurelius replied. “His listeners are mesmerized

by his oratory and don’t hear that half of what he says is hocus-pocus nonsense.”

“He sounds a lot like Plato to me.”

“Plato never conveniently ‘discovered’ the bones of dead martyrs just at the exact moment

when he happened to need relics for his cathedral. Plato never claimed that anyone came back to

life again after death. Read their Bible some time, Leona, instead of just credulously soaking up

whatever this great bishop concocts. It’s full of contradictions.”

“Only if you read every word of it literally.”

“People should say what they mean,” he shot back, frowning over a letter from a professor in

Saxony. Since rising to his important position in the capital, he was often impatient with me, and

the addition of a hired scribe had made me less useful to him. I often felt lonely and idle. Church,

and my friendship with Cornelia, were my solace.

My thoughts about my own problems were interrupted when Adeo wandered in to our study.

“Mom? I don’t feel good.”

My head jerked up and I rushed towards him. His eyes were glassy and his skin was pale and

sweaty. I put a hand on his forehead: burning. My heart started to pound and my head felt light,

but I kept my voice even. “Come, let’s lay you down on your bed and have Calla bring you some

theriac.” As I led him back to his bedroom, I glanced back at Aurelius and saw in his face the

same panic that I felt washing over me.

I had Calla, our boy slave, bring a pallet to Adeo’s room and I lay there all night, alternately

praying, drifting into a restless sleep, and waking to pierce every inch of his body with my

terrified eyes, willing the signs of plague not to appear.

By morning, he was covered with pink splotches and when I fearfully felt for the telltale

swellings, I found one starting in his armpit, already darkening with poison. The blood drained

from my head so quickly that I nearly fainted.

Anyone who had a country home was fleeing Milan, and many of the doctors went with them,

but Aurelius sent Calla out to search for a doctor anyway, and joined me in my vigil at our son’s

bedside.

I sat in a chair beside Adeo, bathing him with cool water and drinking in the sight of him,

spotted and fevered as he was. Beneath the pink splotches, his face was the gray of pale stone,

and yet his skin was almost too hot for me to touch. He drifted just below consciousness, tossing

occasionally or clawing at some unknown attacker, and then settling back with a moan.

Sometimes his eyes opened and he stared into space as if wondering where he was; other times

he turned his gaze to me and whispered “Mother?”, reassuring himself of my presence and then

fading back. The day advanced. Milan’s frail late-winter sunlight splashed into the room, and my

tears spilled onto my lap. Aurelius stayed with me, now still and as silent as a statue, now

restlessly moving to the window and swearing under his breath at Calla, now pacing and running

his hands through his wavy black hair.

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Finally Calla appeared, flushed and sweating. His eyes were large as he hesitated in the

doorway. “I couldn’t find a doctor, sir. I did look everywhere you told me, I swear. They’ve all

either left the city or were out on other calls. One doctor’s servant said he might be able to come

tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow!” I cried. I raised my hand to slap him, but Aurelius gripped my arm in time to

stop me.

“It’s not the boy’s fault,” he said gently.

Calla cringed, glancing at me over his shoulder.

I pressed my lips together against the tears and frantically gathered my thoughts. “Go to my

friend Cornelia Juliana. She lives on Dolphin Street, right outside the Christian quarter. Tell her

to send a priest here. Don’t come back without speaking to her, do you hear me? Now, repeat

back to me where you’re going and who you’re looking for.”

“Dolphin Street. Cornelia Juliana.”

“Don’t come back without that priest.”

Aurelius looked at me sternly after Calla left.

“What?” I said. “I can tell you’re thinking something.”

“What do you think a Christian priest is going to do?”

“Try to make our son better.”

“How?”

“I don’t know how. That’s for them to know. But I know that, while most of this city’s

doctors are running off to the country like rats, the Christians are staying and taking care of their

sick. Do you have a better idea?”

“No,” he admitted. “But, you know they don’t have any special magic, any more than anyone

else. If they’re surviving in higher numbers than others, it’s because they’re giving each other

better care.”

“I’ll take that,” I snapped. In my heart, though, I was hoping for magic. I would have offered

my soul to Christ, Moloch or any other god who would spare my child’s life.

Calla returned, out of breath, assuring me that he’d spoken to Cornelia and that she was

sending us a priest. Very shortly, the priest appeared, Brother Mark, a tall young man, and

handsome beneath the rings of fatigue around his eyes. He hurried to Adeo’s bedside and

examined him while Aurelius and I hovered.

He lifted Adeo’s armpit, and our son moaned softly. The black swelling was the size of a

small melon now. It hurt even to look at it.

“That swelling…” I fretted.

“It’s a good sign,” Brother Mark explained. “The ones with a swelling sometimes survive. We

think the poison concentrates there instead of infecting the whole body. The best thing to do is to

lance it. If he survives that, he has a chance to recover. Will you consent to this?”

I looked at Aurelius, who nodded, and sent Calla for towels.

Brother Mark gently lifted Adeo’s shoulder and placed the towels under him. “This will be

painful, but it may save his life,” he said. He nodded first at Aurelius, and then at me. “You hold

his chest and you hold his arm above his head to keep him still.”

I bent to our son and whispered in his ear, “Adeo? The priest is going to cut open the

swelling. It will hurt, but it will make you better.” His eyelids didn’t even flicker. I brushed my

hand over his forehead.

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We took our positions, and Brother Mark extracted a knife from the bag at his waist. He

probed at the ugly tumor and Adeo flinched. I turned my head.

Adeo’s body strained and I heard him gasp. Then he began to struggle against our grip. “Hold

him still a minute more,” Brother Mark commanded, but it was unnecessary. Adeo’s struggles

were so weak that it was no job at all to keep him still. I dared a glance back at him, and my

stomach turned at the sight of dark blood and brownish pus staining the towels beneath his

armpit.

Brother Mark held the towels against Adeo’s armpit for several minutes, all the while bathing

our boy in his intense gaze. I stared, too, leaning towards Adeo, willing him to stop bleeding, to

open his eyes and smile.

Finally, the priest straightened and stood. “With God’s help, he may live,” he said. He

extracted a small vial from his pouch and rubbed a little oil on Adeo’s forehead with his thumb.

Then he placed both hands on our boy’s head and prayed silently.

Brother Mark looked up at us at the end of his prayer, and smiled. “His fever’s already down.

Feel.”

I placed my hand on Adeo’s forehead. It felt cooler. I looked up at Aurelius and a smile broke

his face as he saw the relief in mine.

“I’ll come back tomorrow or the next day, if I can,” Brother Mark promised. “It’s in God’s

hands, of course, but I think your son is one of the lucky ones. I think he will survive.”

Adeo flickered in and out of consciousness for the rest of the day, twisting and murmuring in

dreams for a time, and then blinking and fixing me with a vague frown. A few times, he moved

his lips as if to speak, but no sound emerged. Once, he tried to lift his hand to me, but winced at

the pain in his armpit and let his hand flop back down on the bed. I sent Calla away and nursed

my boy myself, dosing him every few hours with theriac, wringing drops of water from a rag

into his parched mouth, and bathing him with rose-scented water.

Aurelius sat in the room with me, Plato unread on his lap. “Remember how he used to pretend

to read?” he said.

I smiled, picturing Adeo at three or so, unrolling a scroll and “reading” aloud in his high-

pitched baby voice, as Aurelius read beside him. “‘A big elephant comed and eated the fishes.

And then a big whale comed and eated the elephant. And then a boat comed and all the men on

the boat eated the whale.’” I quoted Adeo’s first made-up story.

“Always the elephants with him,” Aurelius remembered. “How about the story where the little

boy finds a ring and sells it for 100 denarii and buys his mother a house? And the father’s only

allowed to visit them at the house?”

“Before he ever even heard of Oedipus,” I added, and then we both fell silent again for a

moment.

“I’ve never thanked you for him,” Aurelius said.

“It never occurred to me that you should.”

His eyes began to fill and his voice was wet. “He’ll be brilliant some day. All his teachers say

so. And winning that declamation prize back in Carthage when he was only eight…” He wiped

the tears from his cheeks and quoted Cicero. “’Of all men, he is the only one that I would hope

would surpass me.’ And he will, Leona. Thank God..” He put his face in his big hands and began

to sob. “I thought he would die,” he choked. “I didn’t say it to you this morning, but I thought he

would die before sunset today.”

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I went to him and stood beside his chair, and he wrapped his arms around me and clung to me.

Sitting, he was only a few inches shorter than I was standing, and he buried his head in my breast

and wept. I held his head and let my own tears of relief wet his black hair.

I didn’t expect Brother Mark to return, but the next morning Calla showed him into Adeo’s

room, where Aurelius and I still sat at our boy’s bedside. Adeo was conscious, but weak as a

newborn, speaking little, his arms lying limp at his sides. I spooned thin porridge between his

lips, and saw that it was an effort for him even to open his mouth and swallow. But he lived. Not

trusting a servant, I was hardening myself to change the dressing on his armpit as soon as I

thought he’d eaten enough when Brother Mark arrived.

He smiled gently. “I see our little lamb made it through the night.”

“I can’t thank you enough,” I replied. “Look, Adeo, here’s the priest who saved your life.”

“Not I, the power of God,” the Brother corrected. “Can I have a look at him?”

I would not move an inch from my child, but Aurelius stepped aside to allow the priest access.

He laid a hand on Adeo’s forehead while scanning him with his eyes. “Did he pass a good

night?”

“He slept restlessly but the fever seems to be broken.”

Brother Mark gently lifted Adeo’s arm and cut away the binding on the dressing. As he peeled

away the dressing, Adeo winced and flinched, and I couldn’t help doing the same. The priest

moistened the dressing where it had stuck to Adeo’s skin, and eased it off, so that he could

examine the wound where he had lanced the swelling yesterday. “The danger now is infection,”

he said. “Do you have any rosemary?”

“Yes.”

“Boil rosemary leaves in water, a cup of rosemary to four cups of water, and use this water to

bathe the wound once it cools. Bathe the wound every morning and every night, and dry it

thoroughly before replacing the dressing. The dressing must be clean. Have your servant boil the

rags and dry them in the sunlight.”

I nodded. “Thank you for coming. We didn’t really expect you back.”

Brother Mark lifted his weary face into a wan smile. “It was a little selfish. I thought that your

boy would live, and I needed a shot of hope. So few survive.”