“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 palace, 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.”