Above the centurion’s curses as they got the animal calmed I heard a soft whining. “Wait,” I called. “There’s something out there.”
“A wild beast,” said the commander, loosening his javelin. “But nothing large enough to hurt us, by the sound of it.” He motioned to a trooper to follow him with the torch.
“It sounds like a dog—” I watched the flickering light move along the side of the road.
“You were right, my lady!” the commander called back. “It is one of the wild dogs that roam the hills, with a broken leg. I’ll put it out of its misery.”
“Don’t harm it!” I cried. “Let one of our men wrap it in a cloak so it can’t bite and we’ll take it back to the city.”
“Augusta, you can’t make a pet of a wild dog!” exclaimed Eusebius.
“Are you presuming to tell the Empress Mother what she cannot do?” Cunoarda asked dangerously.
I ignored them, my attention on the squirming mass of red wool from which emerged a golden, short-furred head with frantic dark eyes. Gently I spoke to the animal until at last it quieted. Only then did I give the order to resume our journey.
That night I dreamed I was once more a girl on Avalon, bending to drink from the sources of the blood spring, where the water trickled out from a cleft in the side of the hill. In the dream, it was somehow the same as the cave in Bethlehem, but now I realized how much the opening looked like the gateway to a woman’s womb.
In my dream, I wept for all that I had lost, until there came a voice that whispered, “You are the child of Earth and starry Heaven. Do not forget the soil from which you have sprung…” and I was comforted.
My foundling proved to be a female dog just past puppyhood. I called her Leviyah, which is “Lioness’ in the Hebrew tongue. She bit two of the troopers before the legion’s horse-doctor could splint her leg, but once I had put her into a small dark room she grew calmer. Perhaps she thought it was a den. From then on I allowed no one else to bring her food or water, and gradually the dog’s panic became acceptance, and acceptance grew to trust, until she was taking food from my hand.
Leviyah remained shy with others, but from then on she followed at my heels, hiding beneath my skirts when there was too much commotion, and springing forth with bared teeth if she thought me threatened. She made some of my entourage nervous, but what was the use of being an empress if I could not indulge my whims?
A few weeks later, we made another expedition, to the Mount of Olives which rose to the east of the city. With age, I had come to wake early, though I often needed a nap in the afternoon. When Eusebius suggested that I should arise in time to see the sun rise upon the city, I agreed, although when I emerged into the chill gloom of the hour just before dawn, I wondered why.
But inside my litter I was wrapped warmly, and Leviyah radiated heat against my thigh. We passed through the silent streets and down into the valley of Kidron, then started up again through the rubble-strewn slopes and past the garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus had wrestled with his mortality and been betrayed.
When we reached the summit the stars were fading, and before us, the dim inchoate mass of the city was assuming shape and meaning, as if this were the morning of Creation and we were watching the first emergence of the world. Like Rome, Hierosolyma took much of its character from its sacred hills. Now I could make out Mount Moriah, on which the Jews had built their temple; and glimpse Mount Sion, just outside the wall on the southern side. More and more buildings became visible, though they still seemed lifeless against the grey sky.
And then, of a sudden, the air was filled with radiance, and my shadow stretched out before me as if reaching for the luminous city beyond the gulf of shadow that lay below. Buildings which a moment before had been lifeless mud and plaster and stone glowed suddenly in a hundred shades of gold.