“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 grass 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 gods 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 god 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 God curse him, has begun the persecutions again!”