Selene of Alexandria (39 page)

"I know you will miss her." Calistus patted her hand. "You have given unsparingly. Now is the time to think of yourself. You are a beautiful girl and I'm not without influence. We can find you a suitable match. With a husband and children of your own, those peahens won't dare snub you."

Selene thought of Antonius. Would his father require a large dowry from his next bride? "Father, I do not want you to bankrupt the family for my dowry. I know we are doing poorly and have been for the past few years." This time her father turned pale. "It doesn't matter. I chose this life and I'm grateful to you for allowing my choice."

"But I feel I've failed you." Calistus bowed his head into his hands and mumbled, "What kind of man can't provide for his family or arrange for a suitable husband for his only daughter?"

Selene moved behind his chair, reached down and hugged his thin shoulders. "You are a kind, loving man who has provided quite well for me and my brothers. Many Christian women give their portions to the church and devote their lives to contemplation and good works. I'm no worse off than they; in many ways, much better."

"Fatherless widows!" he snorted. "If they had a man to look out for them, they wouldn't be reduced to such circumstances."

"Father, those women have a true calling, just as I do. Besides, there are a few virgins among the penitent – if they have their father's approval. Please don't regret your decision to let me study medicine. I certainly don't." She kissed his cheek. "You should be more worried about marrying off Phillip. Has he said anything to you about a prospective match? We could use some children around here to liven up the place."

Before he could retort, a male servant entered with a message. Calistus unfolded the missive and read. "It's from Antonius. Honoria's funeral is in two days."

Selene's sorrow settled like a shroud on her soul. "Of course. I'll send word of our appearance."

Selene prepared for the funeral with listless attention. Rebecca picked out her clothes and jewelry and dressed her hair in the tiny rows of curls and braids that were the current fashion. Selene's thoughts were colored by guilt and despair; her emotions a downward spiral.

She regretted letting Rebecca talk her into staying at home. It gave her too much time to think and feel. The last two days had been as emotionally exhausting as the previous two had been physically. Antonius' last kiss seemed to burn her cheek, and his dark sorrowful eyes haunted her asleep and awake. When Selene thought of his hands on her, her breath quickened and a wonderful tingling throbbed from deep in her groin. How could she feel this way, with Honoria lying cold in her sarcophagus?

Did she mean what she had told her father? Did she really want to spend the rest of her life a virgin, in service to medicine? Most girls her age were safely espoused, some with their first child.

Even if she wanted to marry Antonius, could she? Their families were no better off than before. She had little she could expect as a dowry. Selene chewed her lower lip. She could live with Antonius as his concubine. Some girls of respectable families with no dowries resorted to that, but the church frowned on it. She knew how to keep from getting pregnant, so no children would suffer her shame.

She shook her head. She couldn't do that to her father.

"Selene! Will you keep still? How am I to finish your hair if you're bobbing like a duck?"

"I'm sorry. I can't seem to concentrate on anything." She looked at Rebecca in the mirror. "Will you marry Phillip?"

Selene's shoulders slumped. "I had hoped you and my brother, at least, could manage some happiness." She grabbed Rebecca's hand and pulled it against her cheek. "I think of you as a sister. You know that, don't you?"

"I do." Rebecca's eyes filled with tears. "In a different time or another place, it might be possible, but not now, not here."

"Why?"

"I will not convert to the religion that persecuted my family, and this city will not tolerate a councilor's son with a Jewess for a wife – much less a former servant, a penniless dependent. Phillip would be shamed and shunned, unable to take his rightful place in society."

"There might be a way. Orestes is his patron. Phillip could have an imperial appointment if he gave up his intrigues and settled down to a real occupation."

Rebecca smiled.

Selene realized the incongruity of her talking about Phillip's wild ways and blushed. "What I say is true. There's no reason for you not to marry Phillip if you truly want that grinning monkey."

"It's not that simple." Rebecca shook her head. "I feel unsafe in this city. Every time I go into the street, I feel eyes on me; hate dogs my step. What I saw in the camps haunts my sleep. If I had any other recourse, I would pack up Aaron and leave for Judea. Only you and Phillip keep me here."

Selene rose and hugged her friend. "I didn't know. But surely, as Phillip's wife...?"

"No. I've already refused Phillip." Rebecca dashed tears from her eyes. "He left this morning to visit your father's outlying farms. He said when he returns in a fortnight he will ask me again to marry him. I won't accept. He needs to look elsewhere for a wife. On his betrothal day, I will ask you for money to travel to Jerusalem."

Selene suppressed a flicker of bitterness at the prospect of desertion by yet another friend. Rebecca deserved her affection, not recrimination. Besides, she had a fortnight to change Rebecca's mind.

Selene entered Ision's house with trepidation. After Antonius' kiss, she felt unready to deal with him or Honoria's family. She stumbled on the low step from the peristyle to the garden. Her father put out his own unsteady hand to lend her support. Selene met his soft brown eyes and her own welled with tears, which she let trickle down her face. A servant led them to the viewing room.

Honoria lay in a splendid marble sarcophagus. The lid standing on end next to the coffin was covered with Christian symbols – an ankh, a lamb in a meadow – mixed with traditional Egyptian death scenes. The Sky Goddess spread her wings over the world in protection while an ibis speared fish in the Mother Nile.

Arete stood weeping beside the casket. Ision greeted the guests. A troop of professional mourners wailed softly in the background. They would ululate more passionately during the procession to the necropolis.

Selene approached the casket with her father and looked in. Honoria was smaller in death than in life, her body tightly wound in linen smelling of cloves and camphor to mask the scent of decaying flesh. A lapis-lazuli encrusted necklace rested on her chest, matching earrings adorned her ears, and an elaborate black wig covered her own hair. The mortician had been clever with the cosmetics. Her normally ruddy skin seemed the complexion of white peaches, her lips and cheeks rouged the palest red, as if she would at any moment open those lips and breathe.

Selene searched the face for some sign of the friend who had stood by her through all her wild escapades. Nothing. No hint of past laughter. No portent of future bliss. The presbyter would tell them Honoria went to a better, more perfect world; they should not mourn her passing, but rejoice in her salvation. Those thoughts didn't fill the emptiness in Selene's soul or soothe the bitterness of her failure to save her friend's life.

A touch on her shoulder brought her head up. "Selene, thank you for coming." Antonius stood so near, she could smell the cedar fumes on his best clothes.

She stepped back and offered her hand. "I'm so very sorry. I wish I could have done more."

His eyes begged for some response beyond the mundane, ordinary utterances of neighbors and friends. She averted her gaze, unprepared to give him what he most wanted.

"Murder was not enough?" Arete hissed, eyes blazing. "If not for you, my daughter would be alive, suckling her babe."

Antonius grabbed his mother-in-law's upper arm in a vise-like grip, spinning her to face him. He said, in low angry tones, "Enough. If not for Selene we would have lost the babe too, and you would be without a grandson as well as a daughter. I won't have you speak so to the woman I...the woman who saved my son!"

Arete jerked free with a startled glance. She searched Antonius' face. Her mouth twisted into a bitter smile. "So that's the way of it. Out of respect for my daughter, I say no more today. But keep this, this...butcher out of my sight!"

Selene retreated to her father's side in shock. He put his arm around her shoulders. Arete had been there. She had seen the lengths to which Selene had gone to save the baby. Had not Melania explained what had gone wrong? Selene whispered to her father, "We should go. Lady Arete is distraught and seems to believe me culpable in Honoria's death."

Antonius turned and addressed her father. "You must ignore Lady Arete. Honoria's unexpected death came as a shock. When she has had time to mourn, she will come to her senses. To leave now would give credence to her wild accusations."

He put his hand under Calistus' elbow and ushered them from the room. "Come have some refreshment." Antonius escorted them to a table laden with food and wine, where mourners mingled and chatted in low tones appropriate to the occasion. "I must attend the other guests, but will be back shortly."

Selene, alarmed at the prospect, detained him with a hand on his arm. "We will be fine, Antonius. It is not seemly that you escort us. This day you should be with your family and Honoria's."

A hurt look flickered over his face, quickly replaced with a stoic smile. "Of course."

Within an hour the last of the guests arrived and the crowd assembled for the funeral procession. Two burly servants covered the sarcophagus with the heavy lid, and eight more lifted it on poles. At the head of the procession, Ision's resident monk chanted a dirge and carried a palm leaf. One of Honoria's younger sisters carried a basket of flowers, strewing petals in the path. The scent of crushed roses wafted to Selene's nostrils, reminding her of Honoria's wedding. Had it been only a year ago?

Antonius, Arete and Ision walked after the casket. Ision supported his wife, who wailed incessantly, sometimes drowning out the professionals. Honoria's sisters, Antonius' brothers, more distant family and, finally, friends and neighbors followed. Only royalty could be buried within the city walls, so the procession took a straight path down the broad avenues toward the western necropolis. People stopped in the street and bowed their heads in respect.

Ision had bought into a particularly fine crypt, built before the Christian era. The procession stopped at the underground entrance, which resembled a miniature Greek temple. The bearers lowered the sarcophagus by ropes down a deep well encircled by a spiral staircase. The mourners descended the steep stairs through flickering torchlight into a vestibule flanked with two semi-circular niches, each containing a stone bench. The niche ceiling was carved to resemble a shell. Selene and Calistus rested on the benches while he caught his breath.

Selene shuddered at the weight of earth and stone above her. Her breath came quick. Cool sweat broke out on her skin. She recalled herself following her mother's sarcophagus into a dark room; feeling lost and trapped forever underground. She took several deep breaths to steady her heart.

"Come, Father, let us pay our last respects." Selene stood and held out a hand. Calistus rose with a grunt and took her arm. They moved into a central rotunda covered by a domed kiosk and supported by eight pillars. Rooms containing burial chambers radiated behind the pillars. Selene smelled food from the banqueting hall on the left, and spied another staircase, decorated with the shell motif, leading to an upper story and more burial chambers.

They made their way past Honoria's resting-place, a niche cut deep into the living rock, big enough for the sarcophagus. A stone carved with her name, dates of birth and death and the epitaph "Beloved daughter, loving wife and mother. Go with God" stood to one side, ready to seal the opening. Hundreds of sealed niches, stacked ten or more high, stretched into the gloom. Selene ran her fingers over names and dates, wiping dust onto her dark blue robe. Most that lived beyond childhood had died in their thirties and forties. Only a few had more years than her father.

She clutched his arm tighter. "Let's leave this place."

They left the burial chamber and entered a chapel. Relief carvings on either side of the door showed bearded serpents next to the staff of Hermes and the pinecone of Dionysius. Inside, Christianity held sway. The monk presided at an altar adorned with a beautiful embroidered silk cloth. A wooden cross hung on the wall. The floor mosaics of an intricate geometric design sported no mythological characters to compete with Christ and his Holy Mother.

Selene's father spied Lysis standing next to the monk. They approached and Calistus clasped his old friend by the arm.

Lysis smiled. "It's good to see you both looking so well." Selene accepted the polite lie, thinking Lysis looked particularly hale.

"We are sorry for your loss." Calistus looked sober. "You spoke well of Honoria as a daughter. I'm sure you will miss her."

"She was a good girl and I'm sure she has gone to a just reward." Lysis sighed. "Will you join us at the banquet after the services?"

The idea of enduring several more hours in this place of death tightened a band around Selene's heart. She spoke quickly. "I fear not, sir. My father still needs his rest and it's been a tiring day."

Calistus turned to protest, saw the pleading look on his daughter's face and subsided. He patted her hand in understanding. "Yes, my friend. We cannot stay more than a few minutes. I have strict orders to nap every afternoon, and it is time I attend to my physician's wishes." They clasped forearms in a farewell grip and Selene escorted her father out of the chapel.

"Thank you, Father. I could not take much more public mourning."

"That's what fathers are for, my dear, to rescue their daughters – if only from unwanted social obligations."