Bickering together, we walked through the city, but in fact Claudia was pleased when I told her that no one had seduced me yet and that I had remembered the promise I had made to her on the way home from the Moon temple the day I had received the man-toga.
In the Plautius courtyard there was a long row of busts of ancestors, death masks and war souvenirs. Paulina Plautia proved to be an old woman with large eyes which seemed to be looking straight through me. One could see from her eyes that she had been weeping. When she heard my name and errand, she was surprised and brushed my cheek with her thin hand.
“This is strange,” she said. “Like an unbelievable sign from the only God. Perhaps you don’t know, Minutus Manilianus, that your father and I became friends and exchanged a holy kiss when we had broken bread and drunk wine together at the love-feast. But something very evil has happened. Tullia had spies put on your father. When she had sufficient evidence she denounced me quite recently for having partaken in shameful Eastern mysteries.”
I realized at once from where Claudia had acquired her knowledge of the heresies of the Jews.
“By all the gods of Rome,” I cried in horror, “has my father really become involved in the conspiracies of the Christians as well? I thought he’d left all those fads behind in Antioch.”
The old woman looked at me with strangely brilliant eyes.
“Minutus,” she said. “It is not a fad but the only way to the truth and an eternal life. I’m not afraid to believe that the Jew and Nazarene Jesus was and is the son of God. He appeared to your father in Galilee and your father has more to tell about him than many a man here. He considers his marriage to the domineering Tullia to be God’s punishment for his sins. So he has said farewell to his former pride and received the holy Christian baptism, as I have. Neither of us is ashamed of it, even if there are not many rich or noble people among the Christians.”
This fearful news left me speechless. Claudia noticed my expression and said, “I’m not baptized into their faith, but on the other side of the Tiber, in the Jewish part of the city, I’ve listened to their teachings. Their mysteries and holy meals absolve them from all their sins.”
“Rowdies,” I said angrily, “eternal squabblers, troublemakers and rabble-rousers. I’ve seen it all in Antioch. The real Jews hate them worse than the plague.”
“One doesn’t have to be a Jew to believe that Jesus of Nazareth is the son-of God,” said Paulina.
But I was not in the mood for theological discussion. In fact I saw red at the thought of my father sinking so low as to become a follower of the despicable Christians.
“My father must have been drunk again and hence full of compassion,” I said sternly. “So he will make any excuse to escape Tullia’s reign of terror. But he might have told his troubles to his own son.”
The woman with the large eyes shook her head when she heard me speaking disrespectfully of my father.
“Just before you came,” she said, “I heard that the Emperor, to save my husband’s reputation, will not agree to a public trial as a result of the denouncement. Aulus Plautius and I were married according to the longer form. So the Emperor is handing me over to be judged by my husband before the family court as soon as Aulus comes back from Britain. When you came here, I was wondering how I could get a message to my husband before he somehow happened to hear any exaggerated charges elsewhere and was shocked because of me. My conscience is clear, for I have done nothing shameful or wicked. Would you go to Britain immediately, Minutus, and bear a letter to my husband?”
I did not have the slightest desire to take this cheerless news to a famous soldier. All I could think of was that this was no way to win his favor. But the old woman’s mild eyes bewitched me. I did think that perhaps I owed her something, as she had got into difficulties because of my father. Otherwise Aulus Plautius might simply have had her killed, according to the old longer marriage form and family laws.
“This appears to be my fate,” I said. “I’m ready to go tomorrow, if you promise me that in your letter you do not involve me in your superstitions.”
She promised this and soon began to write the letter. Then I realized that if I took my own horse, Arminia, the journey would be a very long one, for she would have to rest now and then. So Paulina promised to get me a first-class courier’s plaque which gave me the right to use the Emperor’s own post-horses and wagons in the same way as a traveling senator. Paulina was, after all, the wife of the Commantler-in-Chief in Britain. But in return she demantled one thing more of me.
“On the slope of Aventine,” she said, “there lives a tentmaker called Aquila. Go to him after dark and tell him or his wife Prisca that I have been denounced. Then they’ll know to be on their guard. But if a stranger questions you, you can say I sent you to order tents for my husband in Britain. I daren’t send my own servants there, for my house is being watched because of the denouncement.”
I swore inwardly at being dragged into the Christians’ loathsome machinations in this way, but Paulina blessed me in the name of Jesus of Nazareth, touching my forehead and chest gently with the tips of her fingers, so I could say nothing. I promised to do as she asked and to return the next day, ready for the journey.
As we parted from her, Claudia sighed, but I was excited by this unexpected decision and the thought of the long journey which would solve all my problems. Despite Claudia’s hesitation, I wanted her to come into our house so that I could present her as my friend to Aunt Laelia.
“Now that my father has become a shameful Christian,” I said, “you have nothing to be ashamed of in our house. You are de jure the daughter of the Emperor and of noble birth.”
Aunt Laelia made the best of the situation. When she had collected herself after the first surprise, she took Claudia in her arms and looked at her carefully.
“You’ve grown into a lively, healthy young woman,” she said. “I used to see a great deal of you when you were a child and I remember well that dear Emperor Gaius always called you cousin. Your father behaved shamefully towards you, but how is Paulina Plautia? Do you really shear sheep with your own hands on her farm outside the walls, as I’ve been told?”
“Stay and talk together for a while,” I suggested. “I know women are never at a loss for anything to talk about. I must go and see my lawyer and my father, for early tomorrow morning I am going to Britain.”
Aunt Laelia burst into tears and wailed that Britain was a wet and misty island where the fearful climate permanently ruined the health of those who survived the fighting against the blue-painted Britons. At the time of Emperor Gaius’ triumph, she had been to the amphitheater and seen Britons cruelly fighting each other in the arena. On Mars field they had built, plundered and destroyed a whole British town, but in Britain itself there was presumably little chance of plunder, if the town in the victory performance had been like the home towns of the Britons themselves.
I left Claudia with her to console her, fetched money from my lawyer and then went to Tullia’s house to find my father. Tullia received me reluctantly.
“Your father,” she said, “has shut himself up in his room in his usual state of dejection and doesn’t want to see anyone. He hasn’t spoken to me for several days. He gives the servants orders by nods and gestures. Try to get him to speak before he turns quite dumb.”
I consoled Tullia and told her my father had had the same kind of attacks at home in Antioch. When she heard that I was going to Britain to fight in the army there, she nodded in approval.
“That’s a good idea,” she said. “I hope you will honor your father there. I have tried in vain to get him to interest himself in the affairs of the city. In his youth he studied law, although of course he has forgotten all that now. Your father is much too lazy and unenterprising to acquire a position which is worthy of him.”
I went in to see my father. He was sitting in his room with his head in his hands. He was drinking wine from his beloved wooden goblet and he stared at me with bloodshot eyes. I shut the door carefully behind me.
“Greetings from your friend Paulina Plautia,” I said. “Because of your holy kiss, she’s in trouble and has been denounced for superstition. I must go quickly to Britain with a message about the matter for her husband. I’ve come to ask you to wish me well on my journey in case I do not return. In Britain I shall probably join the army to complete my military service there.”
“I have never wanted you to be a soldier,” stammered my father, “but perhaps even that is better than living here in this Babylon of whores. I know my wife Tullia has brought unhappiness to Paulina by her jealousy, but it should have been I who was denounced. I have been baptized in their baptismal bath and they laid their hands on my head, but the spirit did not enter me. I shall never again speak to Tullia.”
“Father,” I asked, “what exactly does Tullia want from you?”
“That I become a senator,” my father replied. “That is what that monstrous woman has got into her head. I
