Two for Joy

Chapter Nine

Senator Aurelius beamed with satisfaction as he strolled through his atrium with Anatolius. The banquet was underway. Around the central impluvium sat graceful vases holding huge bunches of the white roses sacred to Venus. The splendid garments of his guests captured the sweet scent of juniper garlands woven with leaves of ivy and grapevines, those ancient symbols of hospitality, looped around the doorways. The happy sound of his well-fed guests’ conversation and laughter swirled around them. Yes, the scene was perfect. How could it not be? That morning the senator had finally passed his painful bladder stone.

“Anatolius, I am well pleased with your efforts,” Aurelius commented, nodding benignly at a cluster of senators discussing the yields of their vineyards. “The menu was completely appropriate, restrained but with a hint of exotica. I was especially impressed by the various wildfowl in plum sauce, not to mention the braised lamb. And the entertainments the same, no dwarfs dancing on the table knocking jugs flying or stepping into the platters, for example.”

For the first time in days the senator was seeing the world through eyes unclouded by pain. “The roast venison was particularly well received, I noticed,” he continued. “Did you steal away imperial cooks and do I thus face financial ruin for the honor of benefiting from their labors?” He gave his son a paternal smile, intended to remove any sting from his words.

Anatolius reddened. “I borrowed the services of John’s cook to oversee the kitchen for this occasion, father. He was more than happy to oblige. John prefers the plainest of foods, but Peter does enjoy the occasional challenge to his culinary skills.”

Father and son had paused by the impluvium. Glancing into it, Aurelius was startled to see golden fish swimming in the clear water.

Anatolius followed his gaze and smiled proudly. “A little surprise for later. Toward the end of the evening, your guests can try to catch them and the person who succeeds in capturing the one with the black spotted tail will be presented with a small golden fish suitable for wearing on a chain.”

His father regarded him with affection. “It appears that the poet can imagine something other than mooning over lost maidens,” he said. “It will certainly be more than interesting to see Senator Epirus, for one, trying to land a fish, especially after one too many cups of wine. Or better yet, Gaius. He’s already intoxicated enough to pay the fee for one of those imperial cooks you didn’t hire.”

Anatolius reminded his father of the strange fortune-telling rhyme that John had once mentioned, something about one meaning sorrow and two, joy.

“Could it not equally apply to wine?” he continued. “For certainly two cups bring merriment but not enough to provoke the uninhibited sort that leaves the Furies in the head and scandalous stories circulating around the court next day.”

They continued their tour of the crowded house. The noise was intense, but it was the sound of voices loud with enthusiasm rather than raised in anger. The senator smiled when he saw that now the house slaves had cleared away the remains of the banquet there was, in fact, a dwarf dancing on the long dining room table, tumbling and tripping for an enthusiastic audience. Nearby, a group of acrobats twisted themselves into impossible positions for knots of amazed guests.

Aurelius noted with approval that his son had sensibly employed Felix and several excubitors in the event of any sort of unpleasantness, but had instructed them to circulate quietly, dressed as guests. He complimented Anatolius on his arrangements, and, again, upon the carefully chosen floral decorations.

“About those tubs of linden trees. I was just explaining to Senator Epirus that they represent the legend of the hospitable Philemon and Baucis. Ever the cynic, he said that he doubted we are acting as unwitting hosts to Zeus and Hermes, however powerful many of our guests may be. But surely the palace gardeners needed some persuasion to loan such choice items?”

“Oh,” Anatolius shrugged, “I happen to know one of them, and she was happy to assist. Her name’s Hypatia and she also provided the very choice pears Peter baked for us, not to mention the excellent vegetables. She’s an accomplished herbalist as well, and indeed I had asked her about a potion for your infirmity. Fortunately now I shall be able to tell her that it will not be required.”

“Send her to me tomorrow, Anatolius. I can inform her myself and I’d also like to reward her suitably for the aid she has rendered in making this such a wonderfully successful evening.”

As they circulated, sparing a word for this or that courtier, Senator Aurelius smiled with pride. Perhaps Anatolius would not disgrace the family name after all, despite the concerns his, Anatolius’, mother had often expressed during the boy’s somewhat turbulent youth. Thinking of Penelope, gone these ten years, brought unexpected moisture to Aurelius’ eyes. Such emotion was not for public display, and he was happy to see John enter the atrium because it gave him an opportunity furtively to wipe his brimming eyes as he turned away from Anatolius to greet the new arrival.

John apologized for his late arrival. “Unless I am ordered otherwise, I must assume the emperor still intends the Great Church to be officially dedicated in a few weeks. I am to arrange all the secular ceremonies and I fear I have been much occupied with other matters.”

“Let us not speak of those other matters tonight,” Aurelius replied.

Anatolius grinned widely. “And do enjoy some wine now that you’re here, John, although I’m afraid there’s none of that dreadful Egyptian vintage you insist on serving at your house.”

John accepted a cup from the servant who appeared at a gesture from Aurelius, commenting on the latter’s cheerful appearance.

“I’m a new man, John.” He explained the amazing improvement in his health. “Were I a credulous sort I would probably be barefoot and on my way to prostrate myself before Michael at this very moment. I’ve been regaling my friends with my cure. It makes an amusing story, don’t you think? An old pagan healed by a Christian holy man. A cosmic jest indeed! Not that I really believe it is, of course.”

“Gaius thinks you do,” John told him. “On my way in, I heard him complaining bitterly, saying you are trying to ruin him by telling people that weeks of his treatments aren’t as effective as a single touch from a charlatan.”

Aurelius was charitable. “Gaius imbibes too much upon occasion, and when he does his appreciation of humor deserts him. But if he continues to worship Bacchus so ardently, would he blame his patients for preferring to find their cures by sleeping in shrines? He will be in better spirits tomorrow and no doubt regret what he has said tonight, if he even remembers it, which personally I doubt.”

John agreed that going by past experience such would certainly be the case.

“Let’s not concern ourselves with Gaius, then. And don’t worry about your crotchety old house guest either, John,” Aurelius went on. “He’s having a marvelous time eating dried apricots and demonstrating this peculiar new game of his to some of the soberer guests in my sitting room. That was another excellent notion, Anatolius,” he added. “Not that I would actually employ someone to tutor me in such a frivolous pursuit, as I made plain to him, but I’m pleased with the interesting diversion he’s offering. Although I must admit, I wouldn’t have engaged those girls we were talking about at table.”

“They’re here to offer livelier entertainment than a board game, are they?” wondered John, giving a quick smile.

“On this occasion, no,” Anatolius grinned. “Now, John, you may have missed the prawns and partridges by arriving so late, but there are still delicacies to be admired. But only from a distance, you understand. As I was saying to my father, these ladies are as pure as Vestal virgins.”

Aurelius laughed. “Remember, my boy, I know the nature of the temple where our lady visitors reside.”

Anatolius grinned again. “Ah, but these particular handmaidens have many talents.”

“And they may need them soon. One of my colleagues mentioned to me earlier that there is some thought of proposing to Justinian that he immediately shut down all those storehouses of talent wherein such ladies as we are discussing dwell. Apparently the thought is that it might be one of the easiest ways to appease the religious zealots camped by the Bosporos.”

“Is the Senate really considering making such a recommendation?” John’s tone was thoughtful.

Aurelius said that it might well be just rumor.

“Well, be that as it may,” Anatolius said, “tonight the ladies will be showing off talents which, in their usual employment, are probably the only things they keep hidden! They will be dressed as the Muses, attributes and all, and each will give a recitation from the classics, to musical accompaniment provided by Euterpe, muse of music and joy. That is to say, by our friend Isis.”

John laughed at the very thought. “Isis? Playing on that hydra of hers?”

Anatolius shook his head. “Oh, no. No, I would have needed to engage a carter to drag that contraption over here. She has taken up playing the flute. It’s her newest pastime, apparently. Don’t worry, father,” he added quickly. “She will be veiled most modestly. No-one will recognize her, or if anyone does, they won’t be too eager to admit it.”

“My son has even had the foresight to protect the reputation of my house. I never thought to see the day!”

“If you are so pleased, perhaps you will think again about this matter of my laboring with the quaestor?”

Aurelius chuckled. “Now how could I disappoint all my guests? Your poetic imagination will be treating us to some remarkable sights and sounds this evening, but I wager that tomorrow no one will be talking about your earthy Muses, your flute-playing Euterpe, your prize-awarding pisceans or even Philo’s exotic game. No, I predict the chatterers will talk only of how an old senator’s stubborn and wayward son was transformed, as if by magick, into a man of substance by his new appointment!”

They had emerged into the peristyle surrounding the inner garden. Clusters of men strolled along graveled pathways winding around and between flower beds filled with more vases of roses whose heavy perfume sweetened the cooling air. Here and there, deep emerald sprays of ferns soberly emphasized the flaring trumpets of the pale pillars of lilies gleaming in terracotta pots. Shallow bowls of violets glowed purple against the clipped yews forming a somber background for the marble statues and busts set about the garden.

“I will address my guests shortly,” said Aurelius, “but first I must retrieve the notes for my speech. John, after Euterpe and her companions have entertained, if you would be good enough to say a preliminary word of introduction? And then after I announce your august new position, Anatolius, my guests can begin fishing.”

Aurelius made his way down the hall, glancing in as he passed by the sitting room where Philo was still entertaining several guests. The senator’s study was deserted but only because, he supposed as he picked up his notes, it offered neither entertainment nor a convenient couch upon which to rest.

The painted cupids on the walls reminded him of happier times when Anatolius was a baby and Penelope was still alive. This room was where their only child had taken his first unaided, tottering steps. Here, he still hoped, one day he would see a grandson take his first steps across the same mosaic floor on which Anatolius had played under Penelope’s fond care. How quickly the years had marched inexorably along, lately seemingly attended as much by sorrows as by joys.

Now, as the sun fell behind the rooftops of the city, the cupids were illuminated by lamplight. Some of the chubby godlings were playing musical instruments, others drove chariots pulled by donkeys. Penelope’s artistic taste had not favored the classical school of painting. Perhaps it was her influence that had made their only child so tender-hearted, so flighty, Aurelius thought. And this being so, she had spent her last years agonizing over how a poet would survive life in the palace.

This room, so full of memories tonight, was the warmest in the house except the kitchen, and since he had become an old man he had grown to detest the cold. But, although he would admit it to no man, that was not the only reason he had made it his study.

Tears began to sting his eyes and he could not read the words on the parchment. It was not a seemly thing to weep, he knew; he was reacting as Penelope would have reacted. The thought brought her closer, as if she had momentarily come back to him from the shadowy land beyond the Styx.

He filled a cup from the jug of wine on the side table. A few days ago he had not been certain he would see this day, given the agony he had been suffering and those damnable Michaelites. Now the pain at least had vanished.

Aurelius raised his cup toward the cupids. He could feel Penelope’s presence as strongly as if she stood behind him. “This is our proudest night, my dearest wife,” he whispered.

Let the Michaelites fulminate outside the city walls, he thought. On this glorious evening, he would banish them from his thoughts.

Standing under the portico of the shrine beside the Bosporos, Michael was preaching a sermon. The sun, its rusty red light no longer finding its way to bless the festivities in the garden of Senator Aurelius’ home, was still visible. Unimpeded by Constantinople’s walls and buildings it cast a ruddy glow across the rapt faces of Michael’s audience.

“What do you witness today within the great walls of the city?” Michael was asking. Despite not possessing the booming voice of an orator, his words carried easily out from the steps of the shrine into the attentive crowd gathered at their foot and on the grassy incline leading up to the road.

“Everywhere demons holding their orgies, everywhere citadels of the evil one, everywhere fornication decked with wreaths of honor,” Michael continued. “Even as I speak, the powerful and the godless are gathering to celebrate their own iniquity. But I say to you that these offenses against heaven will draw unto themselves a fiery wrath.”

A woman scanned the faces of the people pressing around the shrine steps. All classes and conditions were represented, a cross section of society-and the dregs of society for that matter.

“We light our lamps and praise the heat and the light cast by the flame. We praise the oil from which the flame draws sustenance. But what of the humble clay vessel which is necessary to hold the oil?”

As the words flowed on, fear nagged at the woman’s vitals. Could her husband have followed her, found her despite all the care she had taken to obscure her path once she had fled their country estate, taking only her jewelry and a few coins? Again she felt a pang of pity for the slaves. They would doubtless have been interrogated mercilessly as to her whereabouts. Although a gentle man in many ways, her husband had always been very conscious of his social position and it would certainly not be enhanced by his wife running away while he was in the city. She glanced at the wound of the sunset, welcoming the approaching darkness that would help her hide her face more securely for another night.

“Those wealthy men in fine robes who measure the Lord’s riches by the weight of gold on their altars declare me to be a heretic,” Michael continued, “and because I say to you who are gathered here by the roadside that we should venerate not only the Father and the Son and the Spirit but also the Vessel of the Spirit, they accuse me of blasphemously worshipping mere flesh.”

The woman looked up into the fast-darkening sky above the crowd of pilgrims milling around the shrine, reminding herself that she must be ceaselessly vigilant. Discovery was possible at any time, one slip, one error, a careless word, and she would be caught.

What, she wondered, had brought the sturdy peasant family clustered nearby to the shrine? They looked healthy enough, brown skinned from laboring in vineyards or fields. A farmer, perhaps even freed slaves? The man was tall, bearded, his face as bony as the hand that rested on his wife’s shoulder. She was short, with child and very near her time. Looking at the high swell of the stomach under a dusty gray tunic and the small chubby-faced boy sucking on a dirty thumb as he peeked at her from between his parents, his eyes mirrors of a blue summer sky, she felt a familiar stab of pain.

The poor, it seemed, bred as easily as brute animals. In the country there was room for all the little ones. But in Constantinople, did they never pause to consider that here was another mouth to feed, another dweller in a city already bursting with humanity, swarming with people crammed into tiny rooms and spilling out into the raucous streets? Children needed light and air and space, not dirty hovels and cramped rooms, scrabbling for food and growing old before their time.

She found herself wondering what the grubby little boy would look like, playing happily in the garden of her husband’s villa. If only she had not lost the child she was carrying just a few short months after her marriage. Her husband had been overjoyed when she returned from the physician with confirmation of their happy suspicions. “Now I have two reasons for joy,” he had said, stroking her still flat stomach fondly. “A wife and a child. I am a rich man indeed!”

Still Michael’s words flowed on as the crowd murmured to each other, some nodding, others looking around them as they listened. Were their thoughts wandering as much as hers?

“Yet how can there be anything, even mere flesh, which does not proceed from God, who created all?” Michael asked. “And how can that which is created by Him not partake of His own being? Now still there are those of you who may not be fully convinced. But consider the woman who brings forth a child. Is it argued that the babe arrived by cart from another place, or that it is somehow different in substance and in nature from its mother although arising from her?”

The words brought a pang to the woman. She was not meant to be a mother. She felt gnawing pain again, a lamentation in the dark space that dwelt in her heart. She had lost their child and they had turned away from each other. Her husband became distant, not acknowledging or apparently even realizing how much she needed his comfort. Oh, he did not begin to drink too much wine to drown his sorrow and he was always icily courteous. But he became a stony-faced stranger who said little and spent less and less time with her, pleading the polite fiction that official business kept him in the city.

And then one night he had arrived home intoxicated and cursed her as barren, screaming his rage, taking pleasure in revealing in obscene detail that he had consorted with women from the gutter and enjoyed it. Yes, and enjoyed it more than anything he had had with her.

In the morning, when he was sober, he had tried to apologize. But it was too late. The drunken words that had flowed like poisoned wine had done their work too well.

“They believe they are safe,” Michael was saying, “like beasts in their dark dens, yet the sacred fire will reach inside their luxurious houses with their beautiful furniture and painted walls.”

Painted walls. Yes, she had taken to spending most of her time sitting in her room, staring at the frescoes. The finest craftsmen had come from Constantinople to decorate her husband’s villa and their handiwork was exquisite. A meticulously painted window deceived the eyes into believing that it opened out into a classical landscape graced by a temple to Venus, whose symbols were seamlessly blended into the tranquil scene.

Here was a serenely flowing river, clear enough to see the rounded stones over which it gurgled and sang, dancing between grassy banks graced by willows and fringed with violets and roses. There, two stately swans swam in the shallows and on the far side of the water, a young couple walked hand in hand up the slight incline of a hill toward a small temple to the goddess. Two doves hovered over its tiled rotunda, pomegranate trees bloomed outside its open door. Beyond, wooded hills rolled into a misty distance.

It was a beautiful scene, or at least she had thought so when she arrived as a new bride. In the mornings they would lie in bed and spin each other stories about the young couple and what had happened to them and all the other supplicants who visited the temple to offer a sacrifice to Venus or perhaps to ask for divine assistance on the field of love.

And they had discussed the names that their first child would be given. But the child had died before he was born and now there would be no more chances.

Was it not strange that here she was, standing beside another shrine? Perhaps someone outside this world was lying on their bed looking in through a window painted upon their wall, seeing her and all the others and spinning romantic stories about their lives.

“I tell you that each human being is a part of God,” Michael went on, “so that the murderer offends not merely flesh but also God. And so too the jurist offends who sentences an innocent to the axe and the husband who beats his wife and those who administer all manner of injustices. Look into the palaces and churches and the houses of the wealthy. They are filled with vessels of gold. But the flame burning in a vessel of clay burns no less brightly. It burns no less hotly.”

The words seemed oddly distant.

The little boy hid his face in the folds of his mother’s rough tunic. The woman became aware that she had been staring at him. She looked away, then glanced back quickly. He was peeking at her, a smile wreathing what could be seen of his face. She felt an answering smile begin to form.

Yet what was Michael saying? “On this very night, God’s holy fire will once again consume those who offend Him.”