The Blessing Stone (34 page)

The games opened with great pomp and fanfare and religious ceremonies, for the games had their roots in ritual propitiation of the gods centuries ago. Priests and priestesses slaughtered lambs and doves and offered them to Jupiter and Mars, Apollo and Venus. Incense floated on the air, holy water was sprinkled on the sand. Every single one of the spectators knew that there was a solemn side to the arena entertainments, that such blood sport was necessary for the health and continued prosperity of the empire.

Nero arrived, crossing the sand with great ceremony, sending the mob wild. Once situated in the imperial box, he ordered the games to begin. A fanfare of trumpets introduced a rough-and-tumble pantomime show, followed by conjurers and magicians, acrobats and clowns, dancing bears and daredevil horseback riders, troupes of dancing girls in lavish costumes, marching bands and parades of elephants, giraffes, and camels. A jolly show with ostriches, held in captivity for so long that when released they literally frolicked around the arena, was a great crowd pleaser for archers suddenly appeared and chased the frightened, comical birds with arrows until they were slaughtered to the very last. Then the bloody games began: gladiatorial combats, beast hunts, mock battles, all turning the sand crimson. In between shows, slaves came out with hooks and chains to drag corpses and carcasses away and to spread fresh sand, while the spectators ate and drank and relieved themselves.

The day wore on and grew hot. The overflowing latrines began to stink and the stench of blood, no matter how covered by sand, began to fill the air. Just as the mob was growing restless, trumpets blared and Nero announced that by will of the gods, he had found the perpetrators of the fire that had destroyed their beloved city and killed and injured so many of their loved ones. Gates opened and a ragtag group of people staggered out blinking in the sunlight. Amelia looked at them in surprise. She had expected to see surly brigands, army deserters, the sort one always saw at these criminal executions. But this group seemed comprised of—

Women! Old men! Children!

“Cornelius,” Amelia said sharply, but quietly so that no one heard, “surely Nero does not believe these people are responsible for the Great Fire?”

“He has proof.”

“But look at them,” she said. “They are hardly—”

She frowned. Did she see familiar faces among them? She leaned forward and shaded her eyes. That old man…he bore a strong resemblance to Peter, the fisherman, who had been a guest at Rachel’s church-house.

She gasped. It
was
Peter! Being whipped along by a soldier until he fell to his knees and the crowd roared with approval. And there was Priscilla! And Flavius, and old Saul. “Blessed Mother Juno!” Amelia whispered. “Cornelius, I know these people!”

When he said nothing she looked at him and was stunned to see the smug smile on his face. He did not meet her eye but kept his gaze forward on the entertainment he had taken part in organizing. The execution of the so-called perpetrators of the Great Fire.

And then Amelia saw something that made her stomach rise and her throat tighten. Her hands flew to her mouth. She gave a cry. Rachel, down on the bloodied sand, being prodded along by the tip of a spear. Her hair was loose and streaming over her shoulders. Even from up here, Amelia could see the cuts and bruises. Her friend had been tortured.

She sat frozen and speechless as she watched the group stumble to where crosses had been laid on the sand; as the guards knocked the old men and women and children to their knees; as they were forced to crawl onto the wooden crossbeams and lie on their backs while two hundred and fifty thousand spectators laughed and jeered, and cried, “Death to the Jews!”

Amelia found her voice. “Cornelius, you must stop this.”

“Hush! The emperor.”

Amelia looked up at Nero who at that moment happened to be looking her way. When he gave a friendly wave and she saw no malice in his smile, no spite in his eyes, she realized the emperor had no idea of her connection to the people about to die.

She looked again at Cornelius, his handsome profile presented to her like that on a coin. “Stop this,” she said again, more firmly. “You cannot allow this. Those people are innocent. They are my friends.”

He finally turned to her with a look that chilled her to the marrow. “Why should I do as you ask? Have
I
not made requests of you which you chose to ignore?” His gaze flickered significantly to the blue crystal on her chest.

Amelia was suddenly sick. “Are you doing this to punish me? You are killing innocent people because…” Nausea swept over her. “Because of your anger with
me
? By all that is holy, Cornelius, what sort of monster are you?”

“The kind, dear Amelia,” he said with a smile, “that knows how to please a mob.” He waved an arm over the spectators. Their roar of approval was deafening.

The deaths of Rachel and the others were made farcical. Those not sentenced to be crucified were dressed in wild animals’ skins and torn to pieces by dogs or lions. The crucifixions were saved for last, for sunset, so that the effect of the burning bodies was all the more spectacular. Amelia sat in shock as she watched the crosses rise into the air on ropes pulled by other condemned Christians. She heard the singing and praying and wailing of the pitiful creatures hanging from the crosses as one by one they were set afire. The audience cheered its approval as the victims screamed and writhed beneath the flames. “Die!” they shouted. “Die, you burners of our city!” Amelia saw vengeance-lust in their faces, for many had lost their homes or loved ones in the Great Fire. After this they would go home appeased, a little less grievous, a little less miserable about their lot, and rumors that Nero himself had torched Rome would gradually fade away.

“I have to stop this!” Amelia started to bolt from her seat, but Cornelius took her arm in a tight grip.

“Are you mad?” he hissed. “Think of your family!”

She looked over her shoulder at Cornelia and her sister, their heads together as they pointed at someone in a magistrate’s box. The two boys, Lucius and Gaius, having gotten bored, were up on the top tier, spitting on people below. Her grown sons and sons-in-law were lounging with arms hooked over the backs of their chairs, half-watching the spectacle with wine cups in their hands.

Amelia began to sob. As the smoke and stench of burning flesh reached her nostrils, she felt the fire from the crucifixes fly down her throat and sear her heart. She felt her soul catch flame and burn as her friends burned on the sand below. Sickness rose up in her, and pain raced along every nerve and fiber in her body. Rachel was already unrecognizable, and though her charred body still moved, Amelia prayed that it was only reflex and not because her friend was still alive.

No one questioned the slaughter. No one stopped to think that, to put an end to the rumors of his complicity in the Great Fire, Nero had decided to blame someone else. No one questioned his choice of a group of renegade Jews called Christians, who already had a bad reputation in the city. Of the areas that had escaped the fire, one was the region across the Tiber River where a large Jewish population lived. And everyone still remembered when, only fifteen years before, Emperor Claudius had banished some upstart Jews from Rome for causing near-riots in the synagogues with their disputes about Christ.

Her pain fading to shock and numbness, Amelia looked at Cornelius’s face while her Christian friends burned. His features held a look of such pure, undiluted hatred that it shocked her. And then she realized it was not the first time she had seen such a look on her husband’s face. It had surfaced once before, also at the arena, when they had been guests in the imperial box and the crowd had cheered for Amelia. Cornelius had raised his arms, mistakenly thinking the adulation was for him, and Nero’s mother had set him straight, calling him an idiot, and for an instant Cornelius had turned this same dark poisonous look upon Amelia—

Suddenly she knew the truth.

Amelia wept as she had never wept before. Not even when Cornelius had discarded her baby had she shed such anguished tears. While the household slept and all was silent, she lay prone on her bed, her face buried in her pillow, her lungs heaving great sobs, pain racking her body. For as long as she lived she would never get the image of Rachel’s death out of her mind. Nor did she want to. It would be her private memorial to her dear friend, the daily reminder of Rachel’s martyrdom.

Other emotions flooded her besides the grief: fury, bitterness, hatred. They came out with her tears like poisons, soaking her pillow until, well past the midnight hour, her crying finally began to abate and she sat up on the bed feeling a strange new hostility in her heart. It was not directed toward Emperor Nero, nor the mob at the arena, but toward one man: a monster named Cornelius.

She crept to his bedchamber and stood over him as he slept, questions whispering in her mind:
Why did Nero punish the Christians? How had he even heard of us? There are as many religious sects in Rome as there are street corners. And we are but an offshoot of the Jews. News of our group would not have reached such lofty ears as Nero’s…unless someone named us to him. Someone who wanted to see us destroyed. Was it you, Cornelius? Was this another of your ways of punishing me? What a monster you are. Jesus, hanging on the cross, was able to forgive his tormentors. But I cannot forgive you, Cornelius.

It occurred to her then that she could kill him in that moment, as he slept at this midnight hour. She could stab him where he lay, and then raise the alarm, rip her gown and tell the house guards that an intruder had done it. She would get away with it and be free. But she knew she would never kill Cornelius. Freedom would not come from his death, because she was already free.

She lifted the blue crystal in the moonlight and saw the benevolent spirit housed in its bosom. The ghost of the Egyptian queen was gone. A savior was in its place.

She had come with only one slave, a large African who was a Christian. He lighted her way with a lantern and was big enough to deter any would-be thieves and attackers in the night streets. When they reached the noisy tenement house, one of the few untouched by the Great Fire, the African led the way up narrow stone stairs filled with rank smells, scurrying rats, walls covered with angry graffiti. There were no doors in the doorways, just ragged hangings for a bit of privacy.

Amelia was unafraid. She was a changed woman. And she had come seeking answers.

Coming to the doorway that she had been directed to, she parted the cloth and peered in. The occupant, an old crone, looked up, startled. She was eating gruel from a wooden bowl, her only light coming from the moon.

Amelia drew her veil back from her face and head and brought her lantern close to her face so that the woman might clearly see her. “Do you know me, mother?” she said, using the respectful title for elderly women.

The woman stared in fear and shock.

“Do not be afraid. I have not come to harm you.” Amelia drew out some coins and laid them on the table. “Tell me, do you recognize me?”

The midwife looked at the coins, then at her astonishing visitor. She lowered her bowl, wiped her fingers down her dress and said, “I remember you.”

“You delivered me of a child, seven years ago. A girl child.”

The old woman nodded.

“Was the child deformed?”

The woman bent her head. “No…”

And so much fell into place then. Her daughter’s anger. Crying: “It’s all your fault. The baby—everything.” Cornelia had been eleven years old when the baby was born and laid at Cornelius’s feet. She had come running back into the bedchamber, fear in her eyes, demanding to know why her papa had rejected the infant. Now Amelia understood. The child had been perfect and little Cornelia, blind worshipper of her father, had not understood how her father could have done such a thing.

Now Amelia knew the truth: it was not her mother whom Cornelia hated.

As Cornelius arrived at his house on the Aventine Hill, he felt good about life. He had just won a court case and the crowd had cheered. His home was peaceful again and Amelia was behaving herself. Ever since witnessing the punishment of the Christians in the arena she had become quiet and docile once more. She had even stopped wearing that damned necklace for all to see.