Priestess of Avalon

  In all her life she has never known tribulation, I thought, releasing her. She does not know how to survive. Then the nursemaid brought in little Crispa, almost a year and a half old and bright as a sunbeam, and I sat down so that I could take my great-grand-daughter into my arms. What future awaited this child? I wondered as I breathed in the sweet scent of her hair.

  "My Crispus was no traitor," murmured Lena as the child slid from my arms and ran to her. "He could never have done what they say of him. He loved the Emperor."

  "I know it, and I swear to you that I will vindicate his memory," I answered her. Inscriptions and statues to Crispus were being defaced already as men sought to rewrite the past by damnatio memoriae. "In the meantime, you must write to me and tell me how you are getting on. Be brave and take care of yourself for the sake of your child."

  Her eyes filled with tears. "I will try…"

  That evening, the court arrived. I waited for some word from Constantine, but in the morning it was Bishop Ossius who came to me.

  "He is waiting for you." The bishop's gaze flicked to my face and then away. "I know what you have come to say. I have tried, myself, to remonstrate with the Emperor for this… atrocity. But he does not seem to hear me. I think it preys upon his mind, but he will not face it. Come, perhaps a mother's words will reach him where mine cannot."

  "If they do not," I said softly as I picked up the silk-wrapped bundle I had brought so far, "I have something here that may."

  We moved along a corridor which terrified rumour had emptied. They were wise, I thought as I limped after Bishop Ossius, my black robes hissing like the whisper of Nemesis along the tiles. When the gods quarrel, mortals must take cover lest a stray thunderbolt destroy them as well.

  Constantine was sitting in the little dining room, whose ochre-painted walls were frescoed with scenes from the Æneid. Light from the door to the garden lay like a barrier across the mosaic floor, but the Emperor was sitting in shadow. A flagon was on the little inlaid table, and a wine cup in his hand. I paused by the door.

  "Augustus…" the Bishop said softly.

  "Have you come to nag me again, Ossius?" Constantine answered tiredly without looking up. "You speak of the laws of heaven, but I am responsible for the Empire. You have no right to reproach me—"

  Ossius started to object that he was responsible for the Emperor's soul, but my gesture silenced him.

  "Perhaps not, but here is one who does!" Pulling the cloth away, I stepped forwards and thrust Crispus's death-mask into the light.

  "My son!" Constantine recoiled, hands splayed in self-protection, and the table lurched and sent cup and flagon flying. Spilled wine spread like a tide of blood across the tiles.

  Constantine's gaze moved from the mask to the wine and then, finally, to me. His face was pasty and there were dark circles under his eyes as if he had been unwell.

  "I had to do it! I had no choice!" he cried. "God called me to sacrifice the son I loved, just like Abraham, but He provided no substitute, no lamb. So Crispus must have been guilty! God would not be so cruel!"

  His head swung back and forth, eyes bulging, as if he could not see me at all. I wondered suddenly if he ever had seen me, or only an icon that he called "mother", with no more resemblance to the person I really was than a holy image painted on a wall.

  "Did God send you a vision, or was it some mortal who persuaded you, Constantine? What did you think Crispus had done?" Did he even know who was talking to him, or was my voice echoing the accusations of his own soul?

  "He wanted me to abdicate, and when I would not he was going to rebel against me—he had consulted an oracle! He meant to make Fausta his wife to legitimize his rule. Another civil war would have destroyed the Empire. Crispus consorted with sinners. He was an adulterer, and God would have cursed us all. One God, one Emperor—we must have unity, can't you understand?"

  Fausta! Perhaps Constantine did not understand, but for me, a picture was beginning to come clear.

  "Is that what Fausta told you?" I said in a still voice. "Has she given you hard proof of all this—or any proof at all? Did you allow Crispus to defend himself—did you ask him any questions, or were you afraid to see the judgment of God in his clear eyes?"

  Constantine flinched at each question, but he was still shaking his head in denial.

  "You are wrong! You hate her because she is the half-sister of Theodora, who took my father from you! But Fausta's first loyalty has always been to me—she told me when her father was plotting against me, she supported me against her own brother—"

  "She betrayed her own blood for the sake of power—do you think she would hesitate to sacrifice yours?" I spat back at him. "She did this for the sake of her own sons, not for you, intending that one day they would give her the authority you have given me!"

  "Your mother speaks reason, my lord," said Ossius softly. "My investigations have revealed no evidence of treachery."

  "Are you a traitor too?" A vein bulged at the Emperor's temple as he turned. "I had to safeguard the succession," he said then. "Crispus was only a half-brother. There would have been war between him and Constantinus… Fausta kept on and on about it, and I could see how the people loved him…"

  "Did you think she would poison you in a dish of mushrooms as Agrippina poisoned the Emperor Claudius, for the sake of her son?"

  "She said that Crispus had tried to make love to her!" he cried.

  "You are not Abraham—you are Theseus, and a fool!" I raged, waving the mask in his face until he cowered away. "Even if he had tried, which I do not for a moment believe, what kind of sin is a failed seduction compared to the murder of your own child?! Perhaps the Christian god can forgive you—He allowed his own son to die! No pagan deity could forgive such a crime!"

  Like a great tree falling, Constantine sank to his knees. "God has abandoned me…" he whispered.

  "God will forgive you." With a reproachful look at me, Bishop Ossius stepped past and set his hand on the Emperor's head. "But you must repent and make restitution."

  "If it is Fausta who persuaded you to this deed then you must punish her," I echoed. "Do it, or Crispus will forever haunt you, and so will I!"

  "God, have you forsaken me?" whispered Constantine. "Father, forgive me for my most grievous sin…"

  "Leave us," whispered the Bishop, pointing towards the door. "I will deal with him now."

  I nodded, for I was sick and shaking, and had no desire to watch as the master of the Roman world grovelled before his god.

  For the rest of that day I lay in a darkened room, refusing food. Cunoarda thought I was ill, but if so, it was a sickness of the soul. I was waiting, though until I heard the shouting late that afternoon I did not know what I had been waiting for.

  I was already sitting up when Cunoarda hurried into my chamber.

  "Lady! The Empress Fausta is dead!"

  "How did it happen?" I snapped back. "Was it an execution?" I had demanded Fausta's punishment, but I had not expected Constantine to compound one crime by committing another, scarcely less terrible.

  "No one seems to know," Cunoarda replied. "She had gone to the new baths, and guards came to take her to the Emperor, but before they could arrest her they heard screaming. Someone had raised a sluice to let in the scalding water, and Fausta was caught in it, boiled to death in her bath! They are bringing the body back now. They say it is horrible to see." Her voice shook with an awful suppressed glee.

  "Crispus, you are avenged!" I sank back upon the bed, wondering why the knowledge only increased my desolation.

  My son had become a monster, at the mercy of his fears. But was I any better, who had urged him to an equal crime?

  Of course there was an investigation, but no one ever learned how the accident had been arranged. In truth, although the Emperor meant to punish her, I am not certain that the manner of Fausta's death was ordered by Constantine. Crispus had been very popular in this city where he had governed for so long, and it is possible that some servant a
t the baths, hearing that the Empress was condemned, had taken advantage of the opportunity to give her a foretaste of the hell she so richly deserved.

  * * *

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  « ^ »

  AD 327-8

  "I think you should see him," said Bishop Sylvester. "I believe the Emperor to be sincerely repentent, but he is still troubled in mind. They say he has caused a sculptor to make a golden image of his son which he has placed in a kind of oratory. He stands before it, lamenting. Perhaps you can give him ease…"

  I stared at him in amazement. Surely I was the last person to offer Constantine comfort now.

  "I know that you are still grieving, and perhaps you blame the Emperor for what happened, but if Christ could forgive His murderers as He hung on the Cross, can we do less?"

  I might have found it easier, I thought grimly, if my son had sinned against me. I had spent the eight months since the death of Fausta in Rome, but neither in the new chapel that had been made from one of the rooms of my palace nor in the church of Marcellinus and Petrus, had I attended any service of the Christian faith. Nor had I entered any temple of the old religion. I was bereft of both Goddess and God. Indeed, since returning, I had hardly stirred beyond my own doors.

  They say that the old dwell much on the past, as if reliving their lives backwards towards the beginning. Certainly I preferred to remember the days when Constantius and I had been young together, and more and more often, the dreams that filled my nights were of Avalon. I knew that my servants feared I was dying, and with good reason, for I was now in my seventy-seventh year, and life held nothing that I still desired.

  I suspected, also, that while I was away the Syrian girl, Martha, had said more about the manner of her healing than I would have liked. When I did go abroad, people bowed even more deeply than my rank required, and offerings of flowers were often left at my gates.

  In the same period, Constantine had relieved his feelings by directly attacking pagan religion for the first time. He had the prophets of Apollo at Didyma and Antioch killed, and destroyed the shrine of Aesclepius at Aigai. But the greater part of his wrath was directed towards what he called immorality. Increasingly strict laws against seduction, even when it was a willing elopement, were prescribed, and the temples where priestesses served Aphrodite pulled down.

  I heard Sylvester clear his throat and realized that he was still waiting.

  "The Emperor is in the audience chamber, Augusta. It is not good for mother and son to live in estrangement. If you do not feel well enough to rise, may he come to you here?"

  I have no son, I thought bitterly, but I nodded. Constantine was still the Emperor.

  Cunoarda rearranged the folds of my woollen mantle more becomingly. Spring had come to Rome, but I still felt cold. These days I spent most of my time in the small chamber with its British hangings—Constantine had never been here before. The dogs, sensing my tension, got up as he entered, and I motioned them back to their accustomed place at my feet.

  "Are you not happy with your palace, Mother?" he asked, looking around him. "Surely you have somewhere to sit that is more… appropriate…"

  Bishop Sylvester, whose own private chambers were even less luxurious, winced a little, but kept still.

  "The room is comfortable and easy to keep warm. You must forgive an old woman her eccentricities, my lord," I replied.

  "But your health is good—" He looked at me in sudden concern. "You can travel."

  I frowned. "Where would you send me?" Was I about to be exiled?

  Constantine straightened, his expression brightening. "To the Holy Land, mother, to Palestine!"

  I blinked up at him, confused. I knew that Jesus had lived in Palestine, but after all, his own country had rejected him. These days it was one of the poorest of our provinces. Antiochia and Alexandria were the great Christian centres of the Empire.

  "Our Lord once walked that sacred earth! Every stone He touched is holy. But except for Caesarea, there are only a few house-churches in the entire province. The sites of His miracles, which should be thronged with pilgrims, have no shrines!" Constantine's face flushed with excitement.

  "That is unfortunate, but I do not understand—"

  "I will build them! Work at the site of the Holy Sepulchre is progressing. Bishop Macarius has sent me some pieces of the True Cross already—I will give you one for your chapel here. To beautify the places where God manifested Himself will be my penance and my offering. Surely then He will forgive me my great sin!"

  An offering, I thought cynically, but hardly a penance, except perhaps for those whose taxes would support this ambitious programme of construction. I nodded, still wondering why my blessing was required.

  "I want to do it now, but the Visigoths are restless and the Persians will have to be dealt with soon. I cannot take the time to visit Palestine, but you could go as my representative. You would know how to find the sacred places and how to bless them," he drew breath and added ingenuously, "and show the East that the family of the Emperor is still strong!"

  "That would be a difficult journey for a woman of my years," I said, trying to conceal my astonishment.

  "Eusebius of Caesarea will take good care of you. Palestine is a land flowing with milk and honey, and the sun is warm Constantine's voice was cajoling, but his eyes were full of dreams.

  "I will have to pray over this…" That was something to which he could not object.

  "I must go now, but Bishop Sylvester is still here. He will explain." Constantine started to embrace me, his sanguine smile faltering a little as his eyes met mine, and compromised by kissing my outstretched hand.

  "You are still angry," said Sylvester when the Emperor had left us, "and you have good cause. But nonetheless I ask you to make this journey."

  "Why?" I rasped. "What possible interest should I have in visiting the holy places of a religion whose protector is responsible for such deeds as Constantine has done?"

  "God Himself grieved as you grieve when He saw what men did to His Son, but He did not destroy humankind. When you consider how far we Christians are from perfection, is it not a proof of our religion that it has survived at all? Go to Palestine, Helena, not for the Emperor, but for yourself. In the desert, God speaks clearly. If there is any purpose to this tragedy, perhaps you will come to understand it there."

  I made him some neutral answer, and presently he left me alone. I was determined to wait until Constantine had left Rome and then send him my refusal, but that night I dreamed that I stood in a sere land of golden sand and white stone, beside a silver sea. It was a place of terrible beauty, a place of power. And I knew, even as I gazed upon that bleached landscape, that I had seen it before.

  It was only when I woke, perspiring, that I realized that it was not from this life that I recognized it, but from the vision that had come at my initiation into womanhood on Avalon. I understood then that there might still be something left for me to do, and that this journey to the Holy Land was my destiny.

  Constantine, having got his way, spared no expense in transporting me to Caesarea, the port that the infamous Herod had built two centuries before. In the middle of August, I took ship from Ostia with Cunoarda and Martha, for they had sworn not to leave me even though I had freed them both some time before. We made a leisurely progress around the toe of Italia, past the shores of Graecia to Greta, where we took on fresh food, and then straight across to the Asian coast.

  We came in with the setting sun behind us, illuminating the flat strip of tilled land, so rich in orchards and vineyards, and the rising ground beyond it with a rich, golden glow. The fortress loomed over one horn of the little harbour, with the walled town behind it, but more whitewashed buildings showed among the trees to the south, and as we drew closer I could see the smooth crescent of the amphitheatre, its tiered seats facing the sea.

  Since the second Jewish rebellion had left Hierosolyma in ruins Caesarea had been the capital of Palestine. Here the Procurator had his pa
lace, and it was here that Eusebius, the senior bishop for the province, had his church and see. I could see why the Romans liked it—in climate and atmosphere it reminded me strongly of the area around Baiae.

  On the third day after my arrival, when I was sufficiently rested, my bearers carried me from the Procurator's palace to dine with Eusebius at a little house he had among the olive groves above the town. It was now the end of summer, and our couches had been arranged on a terrace where we could watch the sunset and wait for the relief the sudden drop in temperature brought at the end of the day.

  "It is a beautiful country," I said, sipping some of the local wine.

  "The coastal strip is fertile, if it is cared for," anwered Eusebius, "and some of the valley of the Jordan, and around Lake Tiberias in the Galilee. Inland, the country grows arid, fit for grazing, and farther south it is desert, fit only for scorpions."

  Here in his own home he looked more relaxed, but he was the same thin, sallow-skinned intellectual I had met in Nicomedia. It was said that the library he had amassed here was better, especially in relation to the Church, than anything in Rome, and he was noted as an apologist and historian. I estimated his age at about ten years less than my own.

  "My lady is unaccustomed to heat," said Cunoarda. "I hope that she will not be required to spend much time in the wilderness."

  Eusebius cleared his throat. "Augusta, may I speak freely?" I gestured permission, lifting an eyebrow in enquiry, and he went on. "If the decision were mine, you would not be required to travel at all. To identify the places associated with our Lord can be a useful aid to faith, but to make them places of veneration and pilgrimage, as if they were in themselves holy, is to fall into the error of the pagans and the Jews. The religion of Moses was founded upon the Holy City, but even the name of Hierosolyma has been lost. Without the Temple, their religion must die. No Jews live in Aelia Capitolina now."