by Barbara Wood
Some in the garden began to weep, a soft whispering sound, more anguished in its suppression than all the loudly wailing mourners of the earth. Others were too shocked to even breathe. Amelia found herself profoundly moved. Not any of Peter’s preachings nor Paul’s exhortations, nor reading of scrolls and letters and gospels had achieved what the softly spoken words of the elderly Mary had done: brought Jesus to life.
Amelia pressed her hand to her chest for the breath was caught in her lungs. When she felt the necklace beneath the fabric, she wondered what it was. Then, remembering, drew the pendant out and looked at the blue crystal in the diffracted light of Rachel’s garden. As she gazed into the crystal, she saw the poor creature who had been tortured by Roman soldiers, his body emaciated from months of self-denial and sacrifice, his face streaming with blood, his tender skin bruised and torn, his feet slipping and staggering on the rough stones of a Jerusalem street. So many crucified criminals Amelia had seen, yet she had never seen the man, she had never stopped to think about the mind and heart beneath the tortured flesh. How many of them, those poor creatures hanging on beams along the Via Appia, had been innocent of crimes? How many had had families, women they loved, children they had dreams for? How many had hung on their undeserved crosses while their families wept at their feet?
“Yes,” Mary repeated, her voice strained with the memory of that tragedy thirty years ago, “after all he suffered, our Lord asked God to forgive those who had tortured him.”
Amelia felt her throat tighten. She saw the blue crystal through tears; it seemed to turn liquid in her hands. Jesus, after all that had been done to him, with his dying breath had asked his god to forgive the men who had so ill-treated him. And suddenly she saw clearly the heart of the crystal. It was not the ghost of an Egyptian queen after all, nor Simon Peter in prayer, but Jesus, hanging on the cross, his arms open in welcome, ready to embrace her. As the Bird Reader had prophesied!
Amelia cried out. She had been carrying him with her all these weeks against her breast and had not known it—the man with welcoming arms.
She was baptized.
Everyone attended, all her new friends, and they feasted afterward, and prayed and cried and laughed together. Rachel had the honor of performing the ceremony in her fountain pool, with tears of joy streaming down her cheeks as the water streamed over Amelia’s head. It didn’t matter to Amelia that her family knew nothing of her religious conversion. They wouldn’t understand and so she would not try to explain. Perhaps in time, she told herself, she would start to speak of her personal experience, and perhaps she could bring one or all of her children into the new faith. That was her secret hope: to see Cornelia and the others kneel in joy in Rachel’s baptismal fountain.
“What is this?” she heard Cornelius say as he came into the garden. As was his habit, he spoke without greeting or introduction.
Amelia was tending her flowers and wondering if summer roses had always smelled so exquisite. She felt as if she were seeing the world through new eyes, as the evangelist Paul was said to have done when the scales fell from his eyes. Everything around her took on new color, new vibrancy. Like these roses. She decided she would cut a bouquet for Phoebe, who was down with a summer cold, and pay her a visit. It was one of the duties of house-church members to perform the Bikur Cholim—the great mitzvah, or praiseworthy deed, of visiting the sick—but Amelia didn’t think of it as a duty. She had come to regard Phoebe as a sister.
Amelia’s faith wasn’t firm yet, like Rachel’s. Although she felt empowered, she was still baffled. It wasn’t anything she could explain to anyone, there were no words sufficient. Total acceptance was not instantaneous. There was still much to think about. The concept of an all-seeing yet unseen god, for instance. He had no statues, no images. Amelia had never prayed to a spirit before. Her blue crystal helped, for she could see the image of the crucified Redeemer in it. Others in the house-church employed imagery as well, for people loved their familiar and comforting symbols and saw no reason to give them up: Gaspar prayed to his statue of Dionysus, who himself had been a crucified savior-god; Japheth continued to wear his old cross of Hermes; and a newcomer from Babylon, who had once worshipped Tammuz the Shepherd, had painted a small mural in Rachel’s garden depicting Jesus as a shepherd with a lamb on his shoulders. The concept of there being only God and no Goddess was also difficult for Amelia to accept, for was not all of nature made up of male and female? Therefore, like Christians who still prayed to Isis, Amelia retained her belief in Juno, the Blessed Virgin. Other tenets of the new faith were also new to her and a struggle to accept, but one thing she had no doubt about, that she had been forgiven by Jesus for her sins and weaknesses and that a new life awaited her.
“Amelia,” Cornelius repeated impatiently, “what is this?”
“Good morning, Cornelius.” She did not turn around.
“I want to know what this is.”
“It’s an interesting thing about summer roses,” she said, gazing at the fragile blossoms in her hands. “I was always taught to remove any spent blossoms to encourage the plant to rebloom. But not all roses rebloom. Did you know that? Some are spring-blooming only and for that type of rose, even if you cut the old flowers away, it doesn’t help. But for those that rebloom, such as these yellow tea roses, removing what is left of dead flowers will definitely encourage the next wave of bloom.”
“Amelia,” he said in exasperation, “turn around when I am speaking to you.”
She turned, and his eye caught the glint of blue sunlight on her bosom. She was wearing the necklace outside her clothing. “Don’t you find that interesting, Cornelius?” she said. “That by removing dead flowers you prompt the growth of new ones?”
“Tell me what this is.”
She glanced at the object in his hand. “It looks like a scroll, Cornelius.”
“It’s an accounting of the rents collected at the tenement block in the Tenth district. Or rather, the rents not collected. You have not pressed for these tenants to pay. Why?”
“Because they cannot. There are mothers with children and no one to provide. There are freed men with no employment. There are sick and elderly. They cannot afford the rent.”
“That is not our concern. I want these rents collected at once.”
“The building is mine, Cornelius. I shall decide on the rents.”
Her words, her tone, silenced him for a moment. Then he said, “You never did have any business sense, Amelia. I shall send Philo with the city guard to collect those rents.”
“The building is mine,” she said again, gently but firmly. “My father left it to me. I am the legal owner. And I say who pays rent and who does not.”
“Do you realize how much money we are losing?”
She looked him up and down, taking in the fine white toga with the purple edging draped in precise folds over his body. “You do not look any the less fed for it.”
His eyes flickered. “Very well,” he said, slapping his palm with the scroll, as if to punctuate his words. “I shall collect the rents myself.”
It took Cornelius a month with big strong guards to squeeze the exorbitant rent out of the frightened tenants; it took Amelia an afternoon to give it all back.
“All our friends are talking about it, Amelia. You have made me a laughingstock.” They were in the garden again. Cornelius wore a stormy expression.
“Cornelius,” she said, using the tone she often did with ten-year-old Lucius, “I told you I would not collect rent from those people. Not until their circumstances improve.”
He narrowed his eyes at the necklace, again worn outside her dress. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you, but I think you need to stay at home for a while. You will not be seeing the Jewess.” He turned to walk out. Then he stopped. “Amelia? Did you hear me?”
“Yes, Cornelius, I heard you.”
“Very well then. It is understood. You will not visit the Jewess.”
As she looked at Cornelius she thought of
Rachel’s belief that the world was coming to an end. Most Christians shared the belief and therefore many debates during Sabbath meetings revolved around the nature of that final end. Was the world going to go up in a ball of fire? Were there to be earthquakes and floods? Would nations rise and fight until only the saved were left? Many saw angels with trumpets on the way, others saw plagues and death. Whichever of these took place, Amelia wondered how Cornelius would react. She pictured him strutting about, as he did in the law courts, and shouting, “Now just a minute, you can’t do that!” It almost made her smile.
“Amelia? Did you hear me?”
“Yes, Cornelius, I heard you.”
“Very well then. You will not go to the house of the Jewess any more.” He started to turn away once again, then stopped. “Amelia?”
“Yes, Cornelius?”
His eyes flickered down to her bosom, where the Egyptian necklace was boldly displayed, the blue crystal casting sharp reflections in the sunlight. “Do you think that’s appropriate?” he said, pointing to it.
She looked down. “It was a gift from you, Cornelius. Don’t you want me to show it off?”
After the apostle named Mary had left, on that remarkable day of Amelia’s epiphany, she had asked Rachel how she could obtain this forgiveness that Jesus had asked for his torturers and she was stunned to learn that one did not have to pay fees to a temple or sacrifice an animal. Nor did one have to go through an intermediary such as a priest or a priestess. Simply speak directly to God, Rachel had said, ask His forgiveness, mean it in your heart, and you will be forgiven.
She had come away from Rachel’s in a maelstrom of emotions. Thankful that there had been no one home when she returned, she had gone straight to her private sanctuary, a small garden with a fountain and a statue of Isis, and had thought far into the evening and night about what had happened. For hours she had been filled with rage at men who torture innocent beings. And then her anger had grown more focused and closer to home: Cornelius, refusing to forgive her. But by the time she had slept and woken to a fresh sunrise, her passions had distilled to one singular element: a new power. No longer filled with fury, no longer in pain or confusion, no longer feeling weak and helpless, Amelia had wakened to a new dawn and a new self. She had slipped the hated necklace over her head and let it lie there exposed outside her dress. And she had thought: if I am to be branded, then let all the world see.
Cornelius narrowed his eyes. It wasn’t like Amelia to play games. He would drop the matter of the necklace for now. “So it is understood then,” he said. “You will not see the Jewess again.” He waited. “Did you hear me?”
“I heard you.”
“Then you will obey.”
“No, Cornelius. I will continue to visit my friend Rachel.”
“Amelia!”
“Yes, Cornelius?”
She noticed for the first time that he had started to comb his hair forward from the back. Baldness was not admired in Rome, it was in fact considered a sign of weakness. Men therefore went to great pains to compensate, the same men who ridiculed their wives for spending so much time with their hairdressers. This observation startled Amelia, all the more because it aroused in her not a feeling of contempt for her husband but pity. Busts of Julius Caesar showed him to be a man of very thin hair, yet he was a hero, a god, no one thought of his scalp when they admired the man. She wanted to say to Cornelius, who spent hours with his comb and oils: polish your scalp, make it gleam, and then go on to greatness.
“I forbid you to go there anymore.”
She examined her roses.
“Amelia, did you hear me?”
“I am not deaf, Cornelius.”
“Then you will not go to Rachel’s house anymore.”
Again she kept snipping blossoms and placing them in a basket.
He frowned. “Are you unwell?”
“Why do you say that, Cornelius?”
“You’re feverish.”
“I am not.”
“Then why are you acting so strange?”
“Am I?”
“What is the matter with you!” he boomed, and instantly regretted it. Cornelius prided himself on never losing his composure. Skilled orators and crafty lawyers had tried as much and had never caused so much as a fracture in his composure. Now his wife, of all people, was discomfiting him. He would not have it. “You heard me,” he said in a final tone. Then he turned on his heel and walked out.
The perplexing exchange stayed with him all that afternoon and into the evening, but he refused to be drawn into whatever game she was up to. He knew he had nothing to fear. Not in a thousand years would Amelia disobey him.
And yet, the very next morning, she did just that.
“Where is Lady Amelia?” he asked of Philo, the majordomo.
“The Lady is gone, Lord.”
“Where to?”
“Where she always goes on Saturday, Lord. To the house of the Jewess.”
Cornelius saw red. She had dared to disobey him. There would not be a second time.
That evening, when she returned, he was waiting. “Remove that necklace.”
“But I’ve grown to like it.”
“I know this is some sort of ploy to force me to forgive you—”
“Why Cornelius, I don’t need you to forgive me. I have already been forgiven by someone greater than you.”
“Who?” he said with a dry laugh. “The Jewess? Take it off, Amelia.”
“If I am to be branded an adulteress, Cornelius, then let all the world know of my shame.”
“I want you to remove it.”
“You wish me to be reminded of my sin, do you not?”
“This is about that damn baby, isn’t it?”
Her eyebrows arched. “ ‘Damn baby’? Do you mean our daughter, our last child? Yes, I suppose this moment has its roots in that other moment, six years ago. I tried to be obedient when you threw away my daughter, but I went into a depression. And you did not care, Cornelius. So I sought solace in another man’s arms. Perhaps this was wrong, I do not know. But I do know that what you did to my child was wrong.”
“The law says—”
She lifted her chin. “I do not care what the law says. Laws are written by men. A baby belongs to a woman and to no one else. You had no right to send my child away to be exposed and die.”
“I had every right under the law,” he said dismissively.
“No. That is man’s law, a fabricated law. The birth of a child to a woman is nature’s law, and no mere man can subsume that.”
When she turned to leave, he said, “Stay, Amelia, I have not finished talking to you,” but she kept walking, right out of the room.
Amelia’s blatant wearing of the blue crystal became the talk of their social set and sparked not a few jokes about Cornelius—again. He finally demanded she give the necklace to him and she refused. To be safe, she placed it under her bedding each night so that should he try to take it, she would waken and catch him. But he never tried.
The next time they spoke Cornelius was going through the house and barking orders at the slaves to start packing for a move to the country. Amelia assumed he was punishing her again, but when he said, “There has been an outbreak of malaria. Until the Campus Martius has been drained, we are not safe,” she heard a ring of truth in his words.
Malaria had plagued the city for centuries and while no one knew of a solution to eradicate the disease altogether, it had been noted that when the marshes in Campus Martius were drained, the disease abated. Rachel’s physician husband Solomon had suggested that the disease was not in fact caused by bad air—the mal aria that gave it its name—but rather by the mosquitoes that bred in the marshes. However, as Solomon was a Jew, the city magistrates hadn’t listened to him.
What ultimately convinced Amelia that this move had nothing to do with her recent defiance was that Cornelius was insisting the rest of the family move to the country as well—Cornelia with her baby and young husband, Amelia�
�s twenty-year-old twins and their spouses and babies, twenty-two-year old Cornelius Minor with his wife and two children, thirteen-year-old Gaius, and Lucius, the adopted son, with Fido at his heels. Accompanied by nannies and tutors, personal servants and a huge retinue of slaves and guards, the Vitellius clan set out from the city of Rome on an early July morning, the majority of them looking forward to getting away from the heat and stench and noise of the city for a while.
Only Amelia had misgivings.
Although the Vitellius estate, like that of all wealthy Roman families, had slaves who did nothing but spin yarn, weave cloth, and make the family’s clothes, Amelia believed, as most Roman matrons did, in the old-fashioned virtue of performing such labors herself.
And so she sat beneath the shade of a sycamore tree in their country garden, a bag of wool at her feet, carding the fibers in preparation for turning them into yarn. She was not alone. Her two daughters and two daughters-in-law, each rocking a cradle or holding a squirming infant, her young sons Gaius and Lucius, and assorted little boys and girls, the children of slaves, were gathered around her to listen to a story she was telling of a man named Jesus and the three magi who brought gifts to him when he was born.
It was another of the new faith’s divisions that, while the Jewish Christians emphasized obedience to God and to God’s law, the gentile Christians craved stories of their redeemer. And since little was known of the life of the Lord prior to his final years of ministry, and since few who actually knew him were still alive, the gaps were happily filled in by followers who provided stories they felt suited Jesus. Other savior-gods such as Dionysus, Mithras, and Krishna had been visited by magi and shepherds at their birth, so then must Jesus have been, for it only made sense. And what did it matter anyway if the stories were historically true or not? They served, in their universal familiarity, to make it easier for the newcomer to accept Jesus.