The Blessing Stone

by Barbara Wood

  He took her by the shoulders. “I want to, Amelia. By the gods, for all that has been between us, I would never wish this upon you. But Nero has his mind set. Tell them what they want to know and you will walk out of here with me this day.”

  She looked at him with eyes filled with terror. “I…can’t.”

  “Then tell me, and I shall tell the guards. They will allow that. When and where do the Christians next meet? And who are they?”

  Amelia had no way of knowing that Cornelius would do nothing with the names. He would not tell the guards, her friends would go unharmed. She believed they would come to harm and so she remained silent. He tried another tack: “Give up this new faith, Amelia, and we can go back to the way we were, years ago, when we were happy. I’ll take you to Egypt. Would you like that?”

  She searched her husband’s face in the torchlight that flickered through the small grate in the door. He looked genuinely upset. Finally she said, “Nero can kill my body, Cornelius, as he did my friends. But they are not dead. So he has no power over death. In the end, what does he really have?”

  He eyed her sharply. Was she referring to Nero, or was it a veiled reference to himself? No, he saw no guile in her eyes. “If you allow this to happen, you cannot love me or your family. You are not thinking of our children!”

  “But I am!” she cried. “Oh Cornelius, it is for my children that I do this!”

  “If you will not listen to me, Amelia, then there is nothing I can do.” He turned to walk out.

  “No!” she cried. “Don’t leave me here!”

  “It is a simple thing to obtain your freedom, Amelia. Any child could see it.”

  She regarded him in horror. “Are you truly going to leave me here in this horrible place?”

  “As I said, it is out of my hands.”

  Cornelius made sure he looked as powerless and abject as possible when the door to her cell was closed and locked, but as he followed the jailer down the corridor he felt slightly annoyed at her refusal to cooperate. He had hoped for last minute begging and crying and then his victory. So he told the watch commander to keep her for the night, no food, no water. He thought for a moment. “Can you arrange for her to hear sounds of torture?”

  “I can do better, your Lordship,” said the soldier who often relieved the boredom of his job with sadistic diversions. “I can go into her cell with blood on my hands. Works every time.”

  Amelia awoke to the sound of the key in the massive iron lock. She slowly sat up, feeling aches in all her joints for having slept on a stone floor. There were bites on her skin; some itched, some were painful. She had never known such thirst. “Cornelius?” she whispered.

  But it was her daughter. Amelia was surprised at how terrible Cornelia looked.

  “Mother,” the nineteen-year-old said as she gathered Amelia into a tearful embrace. “What a terrible thing!”

  “Have you—” Amelia began. She was shocked at her own physical weakness. “May I have some water?”

  Cornelia banged on the door and shouted her demand. A minute later the jailer—not the same guard as the night before—was back with a jug of water, a lighted torch, and two stools for sitting. He had the look of a man not at all pleased with his job.

  “I heard from Cornelius,” Cornelia said, referring to her brother, not her father. “He was here at the prison visiting a client and heard about your arrest. Oh Mother, I could not believe it! Why are you here?”

  Amelia first had to quench her thirst, gulping directly from the pitcher and relishing the feel of water running down her hands and arms and neck. She thought that a hundred baths would never get her clean. Finally she related the conversation she had had with Cornelius, wondering why he wasn’t there.

  “But,” Cornelia said with a frown, “I have heard of no new persecution. Nero is too worried about his own neck these days to contemplate those of others.”

  And so Amelia knew. What she had really known, deep in her heart—what had visited her in dreams and whispered to her in cadence with the rustling of rats and the endless cries of other prisoners—that this was all Cornelius’s doing. By forcing her to renounce her new faith, he would be triumphant over her again.

  And in the next instant, Cornelia also knew. “It’s Papa, isn’t it?” she whispered. “Why? Why does he hate you?”

  “It’s all because of wounded vanity. I was the cause of a great blow to your father’s pride. I did not do it on purpose. The crowd in the arena—”

  “I remember that! Everyone talked of it for weeks. Papa thought the mob was honoring him, when it was you. Is that why—?”

  “Why what, Cornelia?”

  The young woman bent her head. “I saw the baby. She was perfect. There was no crooked foot. But Papa ordered her to be taken away. I was so horrified. I didn’t know what to think of him.”

  “Your father was your hero and he turned out to be only a man.”

  “And he continues to punish you. Don’t let him, Mother. Give him what he wants and you can be free.”

  Amelia shook her head. “If I give Cornelius what he wants, then I shall never be free.”

  “Yes you will. I’ll help you! He can’t persecute us both. Mother”— Cornelia’s tone grew frantic—“it isn’t as though it’s Nero! It’s only Papa who’s doing this to you.”

  “Daughter, listen to me. It doesn’t matter if it is Nero and a stadium full of people, or just one man. I cannot renounce my faith.”

  Cornelia dropped to her knees and, laying her head in her mother’s lap, sobbed. As Amelia stroked her daughter’s hair, she marveled that a mere two years ago, the day Cornelia gave birth to her first child, Amelia had been a woman without faith. But now she had faith in abundance and wished she could share it with her daughter, handing it to her like a goblet of sparkling hope.

  “Go now, child,” she murmured. “Take care of the family for me. See that they are well. And little Lucius, treat him as your brother, Cornelia, for he is indeed that.”

  They embraced and kissed and said good-bye, with Cornelia protesting that she would see to her mother’s release. But Amelia knew it would not be so, that Cornelius held all the power here.

  Her daughter had been gone only a few moments when Cornelius arrived, so that Amelia suspected he had been outside, waiting.

  “Once and for all, wife, will you renounce this madness?” he asked, and when she shook her head, she saw the genuine bafflement on his face.

  “Cornelius, I think when you took me to the circus it was to frighten me,” Amelia said. “I think you were hoping that my witnessing Rachel’s death would make me give up my new faith. But it had the opposite effect. Because of what I saw, because of what you forced me to witness”—her voice grew in strength—“because you murdered my friends, I am more firm in my resolve than ever. I shall never tell the names of my fellow Christians. And I shall never renounce my faith.”

  He towered over her in his impressive toga of office—a garment that made crowds part before him—and she saw rage seethe in his eyes. But he said not another word, and as he turned on his heel and left, the door shutting behind him, Amelia knew that her cause was lost. Whether or not Nero was involved, whether or not the charges against her were true, she knew that somehow Cornelius was going to exact his final revenge on her. He was going to see her punished in the arena. And she would not be alone: he would crucify Japheth and Chloe and all the others, saving her for last.

  Down the dank corridor and up the slimy stairs that were to have struck such fear into his wife as to make her obedient to him again, Cornelius marched with fury in every step. But already a new idea was beginning to form in his mind, a way to turn this ruined situation into an advantageous one. He would tell Amelia that he had managed to obtain her release by using his political weight and the prestige of his name and reputation. She would then gossip about it to her friends until, within a very short time, Cornelius would come out looking the hero.

  So it was with some impatienc
e that he wanted to give the order to the watch commander to have her released, as the two men had previously arranged. But the commander wasn’t there, but an underling who explained that his officer was away for the moment, and the key ring with him.

  “Go find him then!” Cornelius barked, anxious now to get on with Amelia’s release and the gilding of his reputation.

  Back in the dark cell, Amelia sat sick and terrified. She had broken out in a sweat and was shaking all over. She thought of the years still left to her, her family, the babies that were going to grow up, her house in the city, even the villa in the country was suddenly precious to her. She wanted to attend the toga ceremonies of Gaius and Lucius, to watch their eldest son win his first case in the law courts, to cradle her daughters’ new babies, to grow old and wise and cherish each blazing sunset. How she had taken it all for granted, her life, her family, when she should have praised every sunrise, embraced every day!

  She prayed as she had never prayed before, this woman who had once been without faith but who was now so filled with faith that she prayed not only to her new redeemer but to Blessed Mother Juno as well. She prayed for a sign. What should I do?

  She listened for the answer, but all she heard was the oppressive silence of the massive walls that imprisoned her, and the faint cries of prisoners begging for release, for food, for water. She listened to the beating of her own heart, to the whispered fears of her own conscience. She prayed and listened. And finally, exhausted from fear and hunger and thirst, Amelia lifted the necklace from beneath her dress and gazed into the heart of the blue crystal, the cluster of cosmic diamond dust that had taken the shape of a crucified savior. And just like that, the answer came to her.

  It was this stone that had given her faith in the gods again, and it strengthened her faith now. She knew what she must do.

  With trembling hands she worked at prying the crystal free from its gold casing and when it was free, she held it up to the faint torchlight and nearly cried out at its beauty. Because of the gold backing, she had not seen its beautiful transparency, the utter sharpness and clarity of the image of Jesus within. How strange now to think she had thought this stone cursed, that the image was that of a ghost. But of course, that was what Cornelius had wanted her to think.

  And then she thought of the pain that was to come, the torture and agony, and finally an ignominious death in the arena. She knew she hadn’t the strength to keep from revealing her friends’ names and whereabouts under torture. Her heart thumped. Her spirit wanted to be strong but she knew the flesh could be weak. But perhaps here, now, she would have the strength, before the torture began.

  Suddenly she was thinking back to a day eight years ago when Cornelius, deciding over life and death, had chosen death. Now Amelia faced that same choice. Thinking of the innocent baby left exposed to die, she chose life: eternal life.

  Having made the decision, she felt a strange calm steal over her, and suddenly all mysteries became clear. Perhaps, she thought, when Jesus spoke of the end of the world, he had not meant that the end would come to all people at once, but rather to each in his time, as one dies and a new life begins. For me, tonight, the world comes to an end.

  She held her breath and listened. She heard murmured voices at the far end of the corridor. She had to move quickly, before they came for her.

  Swallowing the stone was not easy. As soon as she placed it on her tongue she broke into a sweat and became sick to her stomach. And she thought of all the life that was yet ahead of her, the beautiful house and her husband now wanting to be loving toward her, wanting to start fresh, to lavish her with gifts. But all she could think of was the man on the cross who had forgiven those who crucified him, and who had cleansed her through spiritual baptism.

  She put the stone farther into her mouth and still could not swallow it. So she pushed it with her finger and when she started to gag she was afraid she would vomit it back up or she would black out and the guards would pull the stone out before it had done its work.

  Gagging and bent over and in excruciating pain, she worked the crystal farther down her throat, mentally praying, “God forgive me for taking my own life but I am made of weak flesh. I cannot bear to lead my beloved friends into the arena with me, though our deaths be those of martyrs.”

  And then the fierce instinct for survival rose up, and she panicked. Her heart raced and her hands clawed at her throat. Though it was her will to die, her body fought. Her lungs struggled for breath, her mouth stretched wide for air. Stabbing pains shot through her chest, and her head felt as if it were about to burst. She fell to the floor and flailed about like a fish pulled from water. She felt fire in her lungs, and bells clanged in her ears. Dear God, end my misery!

  And then finally a strange peace came and life ebbed from her body like the petals of a summer rose, dropping one by one. And thus did the blue crystal, this fragment of the cosmos—marvelous in its mystery and perfection, having long ago directed a girl named Tall One out of Africa, having led a woman named Laliari to lose her fear of the dead, and having shown a young man named Avram his place in the world—lodge firmly in the throat of a woman of tremendous faith. As blackness began to engulf her, as she prepared for death and her reunion with Rachel and cherished friends, and perhaps with the abandoned child who had been born perfect, Amelia did not miss the irony that the object with which her husband had intended to punish her turned out to be the instrument of her redemption.

  Interim

  The guards didn’t know how she had died but her face was engorged with blood, her tongue purple and protruded. The prison physician said that Lady Amelia had the look of someone who had died of a heart attack. The fear of torture in the arena must have been too great for her, he said. Cornelius remembered what she had said about his taking her to the circus backfiring. It was true. He had wanted to put the fear in her, but not to the point of killing her.

  Then he saw something the others did not—the stone missing from the necklace, and he knew in that moment what she had done.

  But not wishing his wife to achieve martyrdom status, preferring people instead to believe she had died of cowardice, he did not point out the missing blue stone and her heroic method of death. He kept his silence and became the model grieving husband.

  Cornelia, on the other hand, went wild with grief, blaming her father for the tragedy. She forbade him to cremate her mother but instead had Amelia laid to rest in a fine tomb that resembled a house, complete with false windows, doors, and a garden, and Cornelia went every week to visit, making a great demonstration of her grief. As private revenge against her father, Cornelia took up her mother’s faith, although she did not believe in it, and practiced Christianity openly, turning her home into a church-house, flaunting it wherever she could until the day came when she realized she really was a Christian. In her new zeal she campaigned to keep her mother’s memory alive and so insisted that Christians commemorate her mother’s martyrdom on the day of her death every year, with Cornelia delivering an annual eulogy on how Amelia had defied the authorities and died for her faith.

  When Cornelia’s first child—the baby that had been born the day Cornelius returned from Egypt, bringing with him the blue-crystal necklace stolen from a queen’s tomb—grew to manhood and he became a passionate Christian and a prominent deacon of the church, he ordered a silver reliquary to be fashioned to house his grandmother’s remains, and on a day of great veneration, before a gathered company of hundreds of Christians, the shroud-wrapped bones were reverently moved from coffin to reliquary and placed in a shrine where all could come and worship.

  In her later years, Cornelia followed her mother and became a Christian martyr under Emperor Domitian who had her tongue ripped out during a spectacle in the circus.

  Cornelius, having suffered no great loss from his wife’s death, was eventually appointed to the office of consul, thus getting a year named after himself and guaranteeing, he smugly believed, his memory in history. Unfortunately, the empi
re eventually passed into a new rule and the roster of consuls faded into oblivion. While his wife Amelia went on to become known for her martyrdom and even to have a church named after her, Cornelius Gaius Vitellius disappeared from history.

  The bones of St. Amelia were moved from the family crypt during the golden era of Emperor Marcus Aurelius and placed in a newly built church where thousands came to venerate her. There she slept peacefully, her descendants commemorating her memory each year on the day of her martyrdom, until the final and most brutal of Christian persecutions broke out under Emperor Diocletian in the year 303 C.E.

  The first edict of Diocletian was that Christian assemblies were forbidden, churches and sacred books were ordered to be destroyed, and all Christians were commanded to deny their religion and sacrifice only to the state gods. The penalty for failure to comply was death. During a secret meeting of bishops and deacons it was agreed that, although death meant instant martyrdom and therefore union with Jesus in heaven, it was also necessary to the faith that certain members survive and carry the word beyond the empire. Lots were drawn to select these missionaries. Relics and books and holy objects, among them the silver casket containing the remains of St. Amelia, were gathered up and spirited out of Rome in the middle of a stormy night, and launched in a ship upon a choppy sea.

  There, upon waves as tall as buildings and in a night as black as ink, Lady Amelia, former wife of Cornelius Gaius Vitellius, was transported to the Roman province of Britain where Christian sympathizers lived in a settlement called Portus, once a Roman military garrison but now a thriving town known for its eels.

  Book Five

  ENGLAND

  1022 C.E.

  Mother Winifred, prioress of St. Amelia’s, looked out the window of the scriptorium and thought: spring!

  Oh, the blessed colors of nature, God’s paintbrush at work: pale pink cherry blossoms, red and black mulberries, scarlet hawthorn berries, and sun-yellow jonquils. Would that her own paint palette were as rich and varied. The illuminations she could create!