Gradually we came to realize that not quite all of our patients were dying. Some few, if they could drink enough water, were able to keep their secretions moist enough to cough them up instead of choking. Eventually they recovered, though they were so weak that any other contagion was likely to carry them away. Grimly, we redoubled our efforts, but the priests who were working beside us were still kept busy giving last rites when we failed. Sometimes I saw Sylvester labouring with the others, wearing a stained robe and a cross of simple wood instead of gold, but I managed to stay out of his way. In truth, I doubt he would have recognized me if I had stood before him. Most people's vision is limited to what they expect to see.
It was not until the end of the second week, when the epidemic seemed at last to be faltering, that something occurred to shake my composure. A young girl had been brought in—a Syrian slave called Martha who had nursed her master and mistress until they died and then taken the illness herself, with no one left to help her. She was a Christian, and though she knew what was in store for her, I had not yet encountered anyone who faced it with such serenity.
"Our Lord suffered greater pains to redeem us," she whispered when she was able. "I offer Him this martyrdom."
I had thought myself past all emotion, but when I saw the hope that glowed in her eyes, I found awakening within me a stubborn determination.
"The water of baptism may have saved your soul," I muttered grimly, "but what's in this cup will save your body. Drink it down like a good girl—I am not going to let you die!"
I forced water into Martha until her urine ran clear once more, but I could feel her heart fluttering beneath my hand, and I knew that the battle was going against me. In order to evaluate her condition I had to let down my defences, and through the bond between nurse and patient I touched the pure fervour of her soul.
The life-force within was flickering like a guttering candle flame. They say that for the old, the past is more vivid than the present day, and in that moment it was not a Syrian slave girl I was holding in my arms, but my beloved Aelia, who had died when I was far away. I closed my eyes, and powers so long unused I had thought them forgotten roused within me.
I took a deep breath, and as I exhaled, drew up life-force from my own depths and projected it into hers. Lady! I prayed, grant life to your child! Again and again I did this, as if I were blowing the breath of life into her lungs, but it was something less tangible and more powerful that flowed from my astral body into hers.
And presently the laboured breathing began to ease. For a moment I stilled in the fear that she was leaving me. Then I opened my eyes and stared in wonder, for Martha was sleeping, each breath deep and clear.
My own heart bounding in reaction, I straightened. It was only then that I realized that we were not alone.
Cunoarda was by my side, her eyes wide, but kneeling across from me I saw Sylvester, with the young priest who had apparently summoned him when he saw he would not be required to give the last rites after all.
"Who are you?" he breathed, gripping his wooden cross. Our eyes met, and I saw the simple awe in his gaze give way to astonishment as he recognized me. "Lady, what are you doing here?"
I thought for a moment, searching for a reason he would understand. "I am doing the work of the Most High," I answered, deciding he did not need to know whether I called that Power Goddess or God.
"Christ be praised, you do indeed!" he said warmly.
"Say nothing of this!" I exclaimed. The ceremony that surrounded me as Empress-Mother was constricting enough, without adding superstitious hopes or fears.
The ardour in his gaze chilled as he, too, began to think of the political implications. "I understand, but my lady, you must not stay here! Will you promise to return home and stay there? I could not face… your son… if anything should happen to you."
"Do you not believe that God will preserve me?" I said a little bitterly, for I realized that I would miss this time of being fully used, and useful, now that it had come to an end. "Never mind. I will do as you say. But when this little one is recovered, bring her to me. If her master had heirs, I will give them her price and take her into my household."
I staggered as I got up, for I had spent more strength than I knew, and Sylvester took my arm. The lamps had been lit, and I knew that it was time to go.
"Thank you. If you will assist me to the door, Cunoarda can help me the rest of the way. You know my home is only just down the road."
"I will praise God tonight in my prayers," said Sylvester softly as we went out the door, "for He has shown me a miracle."
I sighed, suspecting that he did not mean Martha's recovery. But the old tattoo upon my brow was throbbing, and I felt that I had experienced a miracle as well, to know that after all these years I was still a priestess.
"I hear great praise of you from the Patriarch," said Constantine. It was now high summer, and the last cases of plague had died or recovered some months before, but Sylvester and I had continued to work together on behalf of the city's poor, and I trusted that this was what my son was referring to.
"But you should not have risked yourself," he went on. "If I had known, I would have forbidden it. You do not realize how important you are."
An old woman, important? I wondered. Then I realized that it was the Emperor's Mother who mattered, not the real Helena. He was not seeing me, but an icon with my name. It was natural enough for a child to think of his mother only in relation to himself, I thought then, but it was a mark of adulthood to be able to see one's parents as people, with lives of their own. These days I was even beginning to understand Ganeda, though I had still not forgiven her. I bit back a retort that might have angered him, thinking I ought to be grateful that Sylvester had said no more.
Constantine had been campaigning on the Dacian border, and in the strong morning light, he looked all of his nearly fifty years. My son had grown more massive with middle age, as if he were striving to equal the heroic dimensions of the statue that was being carved for his basilica. But his fair hair, though fading now to a shade between flax and silver, still grew thick and strong.
"The need was great," I answered him. "I had no choice but to give what help I could."
"You had a choice," he corrected. "How many of the noblewomen of this city were labouring among the sick beside you?"
I thought for a moment, and offered some names.
"They are Christians already, and only needed an example," he replied. "You do not find such self-sacrifice among the pagans. Do you see now why I favour the Christian God?"
I nodded, for among the Romans that was true, but we had tried to give what help we could to all who came to us on Avalon.
"It has been long since we have had a chance to talk together, my mother, and I have much to say to you," Constantine went on. "With each year it becomes more clear that the old ways are without virtue. It is the One True God whose will we must obey if we are to preserve the Empire, and the family of the Emperor is the model for all. That is why I permitted Crispus such an early marriage."
"You must be very proud of him," I answered, thinking of last year's victories against the Germans. In Crispus, I saw Constantine reborn, and even more glorious, without the suspicions that my son had learned from Diocletian.
"Yes. I am naming him and little Constantinus as this year's consuls."
"Licinius will not like that," I observed. "Last year you named yourself and Constantius, with no mention of Licinius or his son. And if you continue to spend most of your time in Serdica, so close to his border, Licinius will think you are planning to attack him."
Constantine shrugged. "Did you really believe that we could share the Empire forever? If the Armenian Christians appeal to me, I will help them, and if the Visigoths attack Thrace, I will repel them. Licinius will no doubt object, and there will be another war."
"I hope you can delay it for a year or two longer, until Crispus has enough experience to be a truly effective commander." I replied.
>
"Yes, the boy is developing well…'
It seemed to me that his answer came a trifle reluctantly, and in that moment, random memory reminded me of the ritual of the running of the stag that the little people of the marshes near Avalon performed sometimes when there was need. And it seemed to me that I could hear the whispered echo of their cry, "What of the King Stag when the Young Stag is grown?"
But this was Rome, I told myself, and Constantine was a civilized man. With a shiver, I thrust the memory back into the darkness from which it had come.
"… but he is still young," Constantine was continuing, "and subject to the lusts of the flesh, which lead men into sinful entanglements."
I suppressed a smile. "Not all so-called entanglements are unlawful, or he would never have been born. For that matter, your father and I would have been living in sin."
"No!" Constantine exclaimed. "You were my father's true wife! He told me so!"
I sighed, realizing there was no point in trying to explain that our marriage had been valid in the world of the spirit rather than in Roman law. I remembered now that Constantine had always been stubbornly attached to his own version of reality.
"The days of pagan immorality are ending! Soon Christianity will be the only faith, and the imperial family must set an example. I am building a basilica in honour of the martyrs Marcellinus and Petrus on the road adjoining your palace grounds. You will become its patroness."
"Constantine! Not even the Emperor can command another's conscience, as Diocletian and Galerius learned to their cost. Will you deny your own edict, that granted toleration to all?"
"Oh, I will not persecute the pagans—" He gestured dismissively. "When they see the glory of the Church they will beg to come in! But if God is to bless my reign, my family must serve only Him!"
"Indeed…" my voice grew softer. "And when were you baptized? I would like to have been there…"
He stilled suddenly, and I wondered if the shiver I had just felt was a flicker of fear. This was an emperor, and emperors had been known to execute close relations, even their mothers, in times past. In the next moment he smiled, and I told myself I had been insane to entertain such a notion. This was Constantine, the child whom I had borne to change the world. And indeed he was doing so, even if the manner of it was very far from anything we might have imagined on Avalon.
"Baptism is a very sacred rite," he said in a voice as soft as mine. "So sacred it can be performed but once, to wash away all sin and leave the soul cleansed and ready for Paradise. But I am Emperor, and must rule in a very imperfect and sinful world—"
And you suspect you may have some sinning yet to do … I thought wryly, but I did not voice the thought aloud.
"I live in the same world," I said instead. "Until you make that commitment yourself, you cannot require it from me. But I will take your new church under my protection, and receive instruction in the faith as a catechumen."
Inspired by Martha's fervour, Cunoarda was already doing so. I had freed both women when I took Martha into my household, for I could not treat the Alban girl as a slave when we had laboured together like fellow priestesses in the hospital.
"Then you are a Christian!" Constantine exclaimed.
"Call me what you like," I said tiredly. "The Truth does not change." I did not tell him that it was not his example that had inspired me, but the simple faith of a Syrian slave.
"Praise be to Christ, by whose Name we shall be saved!"
Constantine's deep-set eyes blazed with conviction and I found myself recoiling, trying to remember where I had seen such a look before. It was not until evening, as I was preparing for bed, that it came to me. In that mood, Constantine had been the image of Ganeda, laying down the law with self-righteous certainty.
* * *
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
« ^ »
AD 325-6
"In Christ's holy name, why can they not agree?" exclaimed Constantine. "I called this council so that the bishops might resolve their differences."
"Yes, Augustus," said Bishop Ossius, his face reddening, "but these matters are both subtle and important. A single syllable may make the difference between salvation and damnation. We must proceed carefully."
Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea, who had come with him to report on the deliberations, was frowning. The pagans in the room looked confused, and my old tutor Sopater, who had become a noted teacher of rhetoric and a member of Constantine's court, was suppressing a smile. The two thousand bishops who had come to the Council at Nicaea at the beginning of May were already arguing about the nature and relationship of God and His Son.
My hip-bones had begun to ache, and I tried to shift position unobtrusively on my ivory chair. The first time I had seen the Emperor's audience chamber in the palace at Nicomedia I had felt overwhelmed by its splendour. But that had been over fifty years ago. Now that I was accustomed to Constantine's ideas of the state befitting an emperor, Aurelian's throne room seemed classic and restrained. Only its human ornaments showed the taste of the Constantinian age.
Where Aurelian had allowed the vivid purple of his toga to proclaim him Emperor, and contented himself with a simple curule chair, Constantine's gilded throne was raised on a dais, and his robes, which were of cloth of gold over purple and adorned with precious stones, outshone it. And where Aurelian had presided alone, Constantine was flanked by his two empresses, for he had given both me and Fausta the title of Augusta the preceding year, when he finally defeated Licinius.
I had been placed at the Emperor's right hand, resplendent in amethysts and cloth of silver, and at his left was Fausta, glittering in emeralds and bronze. Imprisoned in the heavy robes, we sat like the images of Jupiter flanked by Juno and Minerva in the temple at Rome, though I knew better than to say so to Constantine.
"Do they not understand that the unity of the Church is essential to the unity of the Empire?" he exclaimed.
It did no good to point out that the Empire had flourished for more than two centuries while tolerating a wide variety of cults and creeds. The bishops who had come to the council were representing the people who had let themselves be slain rather than throw a pinch of incense on an altar fire. I wondered sometimes if they had become so accustomed to persecution that now that they were the Emperor's favourites they were compelled to attack each other.
Even after several years of Christian instruction, I, like Constantine, found it hard to understand the fine distinctions over which the bishops were arguing. What ought to matter was what Jesus had said, not whether he was God or Man.
"Indeed," objected Ossius, sweating, "but if the Empire is not founded upon truth, it will fall. If the Son and the Father are not one and the same, equally God, then we are no better than the polytheists."
"We are no better than fools if we deny logic!" exclaimed Eusebius, a flush animating the intellectual serenity of his features. A high forehead merged into his tonsure and he wore his beard long, like a philosopher. "If the Father begot the Son, then there must have been a time when the Son did not exist."
"But they were of the same substance!" Ossius replied, "Homoousios," he added the Greek term, "Light from Light, True God from True God!"
"Could we not say Homoiousios? Of like substance?" offered Eusebius rather desperately. I had heard that he was noted for his writings on Church history, a scholar who would care about every shade of meaning.
Constantine shook his head. "Consubstantialis— "of the same substance", has been good enough for us in Rome. Let men interpret it as they will. Then we can address ourselves to objects more within our power. All these fine words are distracting us from reality, and we become no better than the philosophers who reason about a thing without looking at it at all.
"If the bishops, who are the pastors of the people, attack each other, the people will fight as well," he went on. "You should never have raised such questions, and if they were raised, they should not have been answered! This is philosophical frivolity! With the Persians on
our eastern borders and the Germans to the north, I have enough to worry about without these squabbles. I beg you—give me back peaceful nights so that I can live in the pure light of the Spirit and use my energy for the protection of the Empire!"
During this speech both bishops had gone a little pale.
"Consubstantialis?" said Eusebius weakly. "Well, perhaps we can get them to agree on that. My lord, I will bear your word to my brethren."
"No—I will come myself," answered the Emperor. "Perhaps if I plead with them in person they will understand!"
The two bishops abased themselves, foreheads touching the marble floor, and backed away from the imperial presence. Constantine smiled as if he had persuaded them, and I suppose he had, for though he might not be their master in logic, he was surely their superior in power.
At least my son did not require me to bow down before him. I shifted my weight to the other hip and addressed a prayer to the Son, whatever His relationship to the Father might be, that the imperial audience would not last too long.
No part of the palace at Nicomedia could be called home-like, but the red dining salon was small enough that our voices did not echo when a dozen people were gathered there. Fausta was reclining on a couch upholstered in crimson brocade which clashed with the purple tunica she wore. Neither colour suited her complexion, but perhaps the flush was due to wine. After giving Constantine three sons, she had borne him two daughters, Constantina, and a new baby whom they had named after me. Her figure had suffered, and palace gossip said that she no longer shared a bed with the Emperor. On the other hand, Constantine was not sleeping with anyone else, but whether this was the result of morality or because he was incapable no one dared surmise.