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.”