And then Constantius left Britannia, and I learned the true meaning of despair. Lying with curtains drawn in my bedchamber I refused to rise and dress myself, and neither Drusilla's most delicate recipes nor Hrodlind's pleading could persuade me to eat. For most of a week I lay, accepting no company but that of Hylas, who was now grown so old that he spent his days dozing by the brazier, though when I was in the house he still insisted on following me from room to room. I rejoiced in my growing weakness, for though I had promised Constantius I would not take my life, this gentle slide into oblivion seemed a welcome surcease to my suffering.

And as weakness loosed the fetters of my mind, a vision came.

It seemed to me that I was wandering in a misty landscape like the borders of Avalon. I had come to confront the G.o.ddess, to learn the next step in my own pa.s.sage, to go beyond the Mother and meet the Crone. Before, I could never see beyond the Mother, who must be the central face of the G.o.ddess, and the two on either side, Nymph and Crone, only Her handmaidens.

But what I was enduring now was the ultimate childbirth, the ultimate test of strength and courage. Now, confronting my own transition from the status of motherhood, I was forced to see the world-tragedy of mothers. Even Jesus, according to the Christians, had a mother, and again and again and again I saw him leaning on her arm, and when life deserted and defeated him he cried out to her too. I said, "Just like a man; he went on and died bravely and left the women to put his work together again afterwards." Fear for my own son overwhelmed me and I cried bitterly, "Does the Mother have to let her children go just to be crucified?"

I asked what was beyond. Again and again I received only the sense of being a ship's figurehead cleaving water towards the unknown.

Then I seemed to perceive woman's central tragedy. I had lost my own mother before I could even know her, and was left alone, lost, desperate, crying out for comfort. It was a situation in which we women continue to find ourselves lifelong. We are forced to lend strength to men, to bear and feed our own children. Outsiders saw me as strong, but I was a child crying in the dark for comfort and my mother had gone away and would never be there for me again.

And then the twist of the knife. Before I was barely old enough to stand alone, before I had had time or strength to know who I was, a smaller hand had been tucked into mine and the Voice had said, "Here.

This is your little cousin. Look after her."

And this is the confrontation with Life, the first awareness that perhaps we should cry out, "No," and strike down that little form and batter it until it lies dead and cold and no longer demanding, and run on free, untrammelled, shouting, "Mother, wait, there's only me."

Or else we must make the other choice, being deprived of the Mother, tobecome the mother, and pick up the little one when she falls down, and wipe away her tears, and rock her to sleep, clinging together against the dark because she is as much in need of comfort as you, and you are the stronger so it is yours to give...

And that, I realized as the bright images misted away, was what I had done, first for Becca and Dierna, and later for a succession of maidservants and soldiers' wives and junior officers in my husband's command. And for Teleri, though I had failed her, at the last.

And then I realized that someone was with me in the room. I had left strict orders that I was not to be disturbed, but I was too weak now even for anger. I opened my eyes.

Teleri was sitting beside my bed, slumped a little in the chair, as if she had been there for some time. In her lap she held a bowl of porridge. It still steamed, and the scent brought back memories of the Hall of the Priestesses on a frosty morning, when we had all gathered to eat our daymeal around the central fire.

It was this scent, I realized, that had brought me back from my vision, the fragrance of porridge with honey and dried apples as they made it in Aval on.

"Your servants dared not trouble you," she said softly, "but I will not add to the sins I already bear that of letting you die when there is something I can do."

I reached out for the bleak security of despair, but my stomach was growling. Apparently my body had decided to live, and it was no use arguing. With a sigh, I held out my hand for the bowl.

"When you are well," said Teleri, "I will leave you. I am going back to Avalon. I should never have left it, and if Dierna casts me out, I will wander until death takes me in the Mist between the worlds."

That was what I had been doing, I thought grimly, and without the trouble of travelling to the Summer Country, but it seemed to me that I had lost the right to criticize.

"Come with me, Helena. I do not know your story, but it is clear that you are a priestess of Avalon."

I swallowed a bite of porridge, considering. Had I been forgotten already? Ganeda might well have been bitter enough to erase my name from the rolls of priestesses. But perhaps the explanation was simpler.

"When I dwelt on the Holy Isle I was called Eilan," I said slowly, and saw her eyes widen.

"You are the one who ran away with a Roman officer! Not since the days of the first Eilan who was High Priestess at Vernemeton has there been such a scandal. But Dierna said that you were kind to her when she was a little child, and always spoke well of you. Is your Roman dead, then? Your servants do not speak about him."

"Not dead, except to me," I said through stiff lips. "He is Constantius Chlorus, the father of my son Constantine."

Teleri's eyes filled with tears. "I was married to Carausius, who was a good man though I could never love him, and to Allectus, whom I did love, though he was good neither for Britannia nor for me."

"This was Dierna's will?" In the end, it would seem that Ganeda had trained her grand-daughter well.

"She wanted to bind the Defender of Britannia to Avalon."

I nodded, understanding that this was the same hope that had originally sent me out to seek Constantius.

"Dierna is a great priestess, however badly things turned out for me," Teleri said earnestly. "I am sure that she would welcome you-"

And then attempt to use me, all for the good of Avalon, I thought bitterly. Once, I might have had as good a claim to be Lady of the Holy Isle as she, but I had been away too long, and though Constantius had abandoned me, his son, whose last letter lay even now on the table beside my bed, had more need of my counsel than the priestesses of Avalon.

"To Dierna, and to her only, you may say that I still live, and that I send my love to her. But I think that the G.o.ddess may still have work for me in the world."

A week later, when I came down to breakfast, they told me that Teleri had gone. She had what was left from the money I had given her to buy clothing, and all I could do for her now was to ask the blessing of the Lady upon her journeying.

Spring had come to Londinium. The Tamesis ran high with rainfall and new leaves were springing from every branch, welcoming the returning birds. Life returned to my limbs, and suddenly I needed to be outside, walking through the pastures and along the stream that divided the city. At other times I would go past the forum and over to the baths, or farther still, to the Temple of Isis that had been built near the western gates to the town. With each day I grew stronger, and less content to sulk at home, brooding on my misery. I missed the patter of paws at my heels, but as soon as I began to recover, Hylas had died, as if he felt his duty was now done. He had lived a long time for a dog, but I could not bring myself to get another.

A stone-carver had his workshop between the Isaeum and the Temple of Diana, and I conceived the idea of commissioning from him a relief of thematronae , the trio of ancestral mothers who were honoured all over the Empire. But it had come to me that my carving should be different, and so in addition to the usual three figures, two of them holding baskets of fruit and the third a child, I asked the sculptor to carve a fourth Mother, this one holding in her lap a dog.

Perhaps the Mothers were grateful, for within a moon, I met three people who were to make a profound difference in my life during the remaining years I spent in Londinium.

I encountered the first immediately after finishing negotiations over the carving. I had set out in search of a cookshop where I could have a bit of bread and sausage before starting home. But as I turned the comer, I nearly tripped over something furry, and looking down, found myself surrounded by cats. If this was an omen, I did not understand it. There must have been two dozen, of all shapes and colours, waiting impatiently in front of a rather ramshackle building that had been added on to the back of the Temple of Isis.

I heard a ripple of words in some foreign tongue, turned and saw a small, round woman draped in several tunicas and a palla of brightly clashing colours, and leaning on a cane. Dark hair was partly covered by windings of purple, and she was carrying a basket that smelled strongly of fish even from here.

She looked up and saw me. "Oh I am sorry," she said in Latin. "They get very insistent, the greedy p.u.s.s.es, but I am the only one who will feed them, you see."

As she opened the bag and began to dole out fish heads I could see that her dark eyes had been elongated with kohl, and her skin had a warm glow that had never come from a British sun. Around her neck hung a pendant of a cat in the Egyptian style.

"Are you a priestess?" I asked.

"I am Katiya, and I serve the Lady Bast-" She started to touch one hand to her forehead in homage, realized that she was holding a piece of fish, laughed, and cast it to a big orange tomcat who waited to one side.

"Eastward we gaze upon Bast, the Queen-Cat," she chanted softly. "In the east we seek for the soul of Isis, Light-bearer, Moon-mother, gentle protectress. To the shrine of Per-Bast we direct our prayers...

But I am the only one in Londinium who does so," she added, shaking her head. "In Egypt all people know that the cat is sacred to the G.o.ddess, but merchants bring cats to Britannia and leave them, and no one seems to care. Only the priests of Isis let me stay here because they know that Bast and Isis are sisters. I do what I can."

"My G.o.ddess favours dogs," I told her, "but I suppose that Bast isher sister as well. Will you accept an offering?"

"In my Lady's name," she answered, and from amongst her draperies fetched out a net bag, somewhat less redolent of fish than the basket, into which I could drop a few coins. "I feed my little ones, and I make songs. Come to me when you are sad, n.o.ble lady, and I will cheer you."

"I think it very likely you will!" I answered, laughing in spite of myself. And thereafter, for as long as I lived in Londinium, I would visit Katiya every week or so and make my offering. Just to keep the scales balanced, however, I made a donation to the Temple of Diana, who loves hounds, for the care of the city's stray dogs. From time to time I would take one of these foundlings home with me, but though I enjoyed the patter of paws about the house, with none of them did I find the bond I had had with Hylas and Eldri.

The second meeting occurred one day when I noticed the name "Corinthius" on a sign above a door and paused, remembering the old Greek who had been my tutor when I was a child. From inside I could hear the sound of young voices declining Greek verbs. Corinthius had told me he intended to set up a school. I asked Philip, who was with me, to knock and enquire, and soon I was taking wine with a young man who told me he was the son of my old tutor, who had married when he got to Londinium, and begotten this son to eventually inherit his school.

"Oh yes, my lady, my father often spoke of you," said Corinthius the Younger. Crooked teeth showed as he grinned. "He used to say that you were brighter than any boy he ever taught, especially when I had not done well at my lessons."

I could not help smiling in answer. "He was a good teacher. I wish I could have studied with him longer, but I was lucky my father believed a girl-child should be educated at all." I did not tell him that my studies with the old Greek had been followed by a much more extensive education at Avalon.

"Oh indeed," Corinthius nodded. "I am so sorry sometimes, when I see my lads with their sisters, that I am not able to teach the girls as well. I think that some of their parents would be willing, but they do not like to send their girls to a male teacher, and of course there are not so many educated women here as in Rome or Alexandria..." He poured more wine.

"Do you know," I said eventually. "I have always wished that I had a daughter, to whom I could pa.s.s on some of the things I know. You might suggest to the mothers of some of these hoys who have sisters that they pay a call on me. My husband left me with enough to live on, but I find myself a little lonely, and would welcome a... circle... of friends."

"You will be like Sappho in the meadows of Lesbos," exclaimed Corinthius, "beloved of the G.o.ds!"

"Perhaps not quite like Sappho," I replied, smiling, for when we lived in Drepanum I had read some of her poems that my tutor had never shown me. "But tell the women, and we shall see."

Corinthius kept his word, and by the time the carving of thematronae was finished and installed in a shrine, a group of mothers and daughters were coining to my home at the new moon and the full, and if what I taught them owed more to Avalon than it did to Athens, it was no one's business but our own. But not even to these, the first sisters in spirit I had had since I left the Holy Isle, did I confide whose wife I had been.

The third meeting took place at the baths, where one was a.s.sured of eventually meeting everyone in the city, during the hours reserved for women. Seen through clouds of billowing steam, everyone looks mysterious, but it seemed to me that the voice that was so loudly complaining about the price of wheat was familiar, and the long-boned, dark face as well.

"Vitellia, is it you?" I asked when she drew breath at last. Through the steam I could see that the golden fish still hung from its chain about her neck.

"By Heaven's blessings, it is Helena! When I heard about-the marriage-I wondered-"

"Hush!" I held up one hand, "I do not speak of that here. I was well provided for, and people think me a rich widow with a son serving abroad."

"Well then, let us be widows together! Come, let us eat a bite, and you shall tell me all that has happened since your son was born!"

We dried and dressed ourselves and went out through the marble portico. As we pa.s.sed the statue of Venus I saw Vitellia glance at it nervously, but there was nothing there to account for the disgust with which she hurried past, only a garland of flowers that someone had draped across the pedestal.

"I am sure that people would not do that if they knew how difficult it is for us," she muttered as we pa.s.sed out into the road. "I know that you are not of the true faith, but in the days when our husbands were serving together, all the officers paid honour to the Highest G.o.d, so perhaps you can understand.

We are commanded to avoid idolatry, you see, and yet we are surrounded by graven images and sacrifices."

She gestured down the street, and I saw, as I had seen a hundred times without thinking anything of it, that we were surrounded by G.o.ds. An image of Neptune rose from a fountain, nymphs and fauns grinned from the corbels of houses, and the crossroads was marked by a shrine to some local spirit who had recently received a plateful of food and a bunch of flowers as an offering. I remembered being struck by the lavish display when first I came from Avalon, where we knew that all the earth was holy, but saw no reason to emphasize the point with all these decorations, but I had become accustomed to it, after more than twenty years.

"But no one asks you to honour them," I said slowly-for it had been years since any emperor had tried to enforce that requirement.

"Even to touch them, to see them, is a pollution," Vitellia sighed. "Only in the church we have built in the woods outside the walls can we feel truly free."

I lifted one eyebrow. I had walked out along the north road at Beltane, when even the fields inside Londinium were too confined for me. I thought now that I remembered the building, a modest daub-and-wattle structure with a simple cross over the door. But the woodland that surrounded it had hummed with the power of the spirits that were abroad that day, and patches of flattened gra.s.s showed where young couples had honoured the Lord and the Lady in their own way the preceding eve. How could the Christians imagine they would avoid the old G.o.ds by moving outside the town?

Still, it was not for me to open their eyes to what they so manifestly did not desire to see. Vitellia was still talking: "And one of our older members donated a building near the wharves that we have made into a refuge for the poor. Our Lord commanded us to care for the widow and the orphan, and so we do, nor do we ask what faith they hold, so long as they speak no demon's names within our walls."

"That seems a worthy work," I told her. Certainly it was more than any of the magistrates were likely to do.

"We can always use helpers, to treat their ills, and serve out the food," said Vitellia. "I remember hearing that you knew something of herb-lore, when we were in Dalmatia."

I suppressed a smile. Teaching had blessed, but did not quite fill, my days. It might prove interesting, I thought, to work with these Christians for a while.

And so it proved, and for the next seven years, my life was both rich and full, and more useful, I suppose, than it had been when my only responsibilities were to keep Constantius's house and share his bed.

It was at the end of February in the third year of the new century that the news that was to change everything arrived. I was on my way home from my weekly visit to the priestess of Bast, when I heard a tumult from the market-place. When I turned in that direction, Philip, who had been my escort that day, stopped me.

"If there is a riot, Mistress, I may not be able to protect you. Stay here-" He grimaced as he realized we were in front of the Mithraeum. "Here you will be safe, and I will go and see what the excitement is all about!"

I smiled a little as I watched him stride down the road, remembering the scrawny boy he had been when he first joined our household. He was still lightly built, but he had a very solid presence now. I tried to remember whether that change had come when he became a Christian, or when Constantius freed him. I rather thought it was the former, that had liberated his spirit even before his legal status was altered.

Perhaps that was why, given his freedom, he had chosen to stay with me.

It seemed a long time before he returned. I seated myself on a bench in front of the Mithraeum, contemplating the relief of the G.o.d slaying the bull. I wondered if Constantius had visited this place when he was in Britannia. I knew that he had continued to rise in rank in the cult, for I remembered times when he had been absent for additional initiations, but of course the worship of Mithras had no place for women and he was forbidden to tell me what went on. Still, to sit here was almost like being under his protection. I was glad to find that the thought made my heart ache only a little, now.

Then I heard quick footsteps and saw Philip coming, his face white with shock and anger.

"What has happened?" I rose to meet him.

"A new edict! Diocletian, may G.o.d curse him, has begun the persecutions again!"

I frowned, hurrying to catch up as he started down the street again, for the murmur of the crowd was beginning to sound ugly. I remembered hearing rumours of trouble a few years before when the presence of Christians was said to have spoiled the Emperor's ritual. A few officers in the army had been executed for refusing to join in the sacrifices, and some others expelled, but nothing more had come of it. In most places, the Christians, though considered peculiar, got along well enough with their neighbours.

How could Diocletian be so stupid? I had been around Christians long enough by now to know that far from fearing martyrdom, they welcomed it as an easy way to cancel out all sins and win the favour of their gloomy G.o.d. The blood of the martyrs, they said, was the nourishment of the Church. Killing them only reinforced their belief in their own importance and made the cult stronger.

"What does the edictsay ?" I repeated as I caught up with Philip.

"Christianity is outlawed. All copies of the scriptures are to be turned in and burnt, all churches to be seized and destroyed." He spat out the words.

"But what about the people?"

"So far, only the priests and bishops are mentioned. They are required to offer sacrifice in the presence of a magistrate or be jailed. I must get you home, Lady-the garrison is coming out, and the streets will not be safe."

"And what about you?" I asked, between breaths.

"With your leave, I will go out to the church and offer my help. Perhaps something can be saved if we are in time."

"You are a free man, Philip," I said, "and I do not presume to command your conscience. But I beg you in the name of your G.o.d, take care!"

"If you will also do so!" He managed a smile as we neared my door. "Keep the rest of the household indoors. Though you are still a worshipper of demons, the High G.o.d loves you well!"

"Thank you! I think!" I watched him hurry off down the road. Still, blessings should be welcomed, from whatever quarter. Shaking my head, I went in.

For a day and a night, the detachment from the fortress tramped through the streets, searching out Christian leaders and property. By the time it was over, the bishop of Vitellia's church was in custody, and the little church in the woods by the north road had burned to the ground. The holy books, however, had been hidden safely, and a pile of church accounts given to the authorities to destroy.

The smoke of the burning was carried away by the wind, but the stench, both physical and metaphoric, lingered longer. Diocletian had ruled wisely for almost twenty years, but in his attempts to preserve our society, the Emperor was effectively dividing it. As I had predicted, persecution only made the Christians more stubborn, and there were more of them than most of us had realized.

These days the Christians met in secret in their houses. Philip reported to me that letters from the eastern part of the Empire told of arrests and executions. But to my relief, Constantius did no more than enforce the letter of the new law in those portions of the Empire under his control. And once the first excitement was over, the general population showed little enthusiasm for persecuting their neighbours. How those Christian neighbours might view the rest of us was not a question which at that moment applied.

Still, it seemed to me that in times such as these, I ought to offer the maidens I was teaching something more relevant than Homer and Virgil, and so, from time to time, I would turn our discussions to the issues that divided men today.

"It is necessary," I said one morning, "that the educated person understand not only what she believes, but why she believes it. And so I ask you, who is the Supreme G.o.d?"

For a long moment the girls looked at each other, as if not quite certain I really meant what I was asking, much less that it applied to them. Finally, Lucretia, whose family exported wool, raised her hand.

"Jupiter is the king of the G.o.ds, that's why the Emperor puts his image on his coins."

"But the Christians say that all deities except the G.o.d of the Jews are demons," offered Tertia, the sandal-maker's daughter.

"That is very true, and so I ask you, how many G.o.ds are there?"

This elicited a babble of discussion, until I held up a hand for silence once more. "You are all correct, according to our way of thinking. Every land and district has its own deities, and in the Empire, our practice has been to honour them all. But consider this, the greatest of our own philosophers and poets speak of a supreme divinity. Some call this Power "Nature", and others "Aether", and still others, "the High G.o.d". The poet Maro tells us, "Know first, the heaven, the earth, the main, The moon's pale orb, the starry train, Are nourished by a Soul, A Spirit, whose celestial flame Glows in each member of the frame, And stirs the mighty whole."

"But what about the G.o.ddess?" asked little Portia, pointing towards the altar in the corner of the sunny chamber we used as a cla.s.sroom, where a lamp was always kept burning before the relief of the Mothers. Sometimes, when no one else was present, I would pat the head of the dog in the fourth Mother's lap, and feel it warm and smooth beneath my hand as if Hylas had come back to me.