The Saint's Mistress (40 page)

O Lord, open my lips,

and my mouth will declare your praise.

For you have no delight in sacrifice;

if I were to give a burnt offering, you would not be pleased.

The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit;

a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.”

I managed then to slip a few spoonfuls of porridge between his white, cracked lips.

I sat with him through the rest of the morning, reading to him from the Bible when he seemed

to wake. Dust motes spun suspended in the yellow light that streamed in the window like a river

of honey. One could almost think the world was still in order.

After checking on his sleeping form, I took myself to the kitchen, determined to search out

some morsel of food that I could offer to him besides porridge. I rummaged on the shelves of the

larder, tipping wooden boxes to search them for any contents, standing tip-toe on empty boxes to

examine the higher shelves, and came up with nothing but mouse droppings and dust. I sighed

and looked around the room, and noticed a short door. Opening it, I saw that it led to a cellar, so

I lit a candle and descended the steep stone stairs.

The dirt walls and floor were cool and dry, but the cellar had a musty odor of past dampness.

Scattered about were more wooden boxes and these I searched methodically. At last, I found a

box that I could feel contained a few rounded shapes, and I drew one out and saw that it was a

pear: small and mottled with brown, but nevertheless an overlooked piece of fruit in this starving

town. Reaching back into the box, I found two more. One was so brown and rotted that it turned

to pulp in my hand, but the other was no worse than the first. Two pears in a whole city of

hungry people. I set my candle on the cellar floor and sat on the bottom step for a moment, my

bones creaking against each other painfully. A small corner of my conscience admonished me

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that some mother of small children should receive this little bounty, but how would we ever

choose among the starving throngs that filled the forum and the church courtyard every day?

The two small pears were cool and knuckled in my hands. I placed them in my pocket, picked

up my candle, and ascended the stone stairs.

Aurelius’ eyes were closed when I entered his room, his chin slack and receding. I could hear

his shallow breath passing between his cracked lips.

I set down the plate of diced pear that I had brought with me, and dipped a clean napkin in

precious water and brought it to his lips, squeezing gently to drip the water into his mouth. His

lips were so dry that when he brought them together they stuck and he was too weak to open his

mouth again, so I gently rubbed his lips with the damp napkin and then repeated the process.

His eyes fluttered open and he turned them to me gratefully. The irises were a pale, milky

brown and the whites were yellow and delicately veined with red. How pale his skin was, I

thought, so that every brown spot and web of broken veins stood out against the chalky flesh.

“I brought you some fruit,” I whispered.

The fresh, pale morning sunlight shone on the pieces of pear, so that their white flesh

glistened and each little grain in the softer flesh shone like a tiny teardrop. I picked up a piece

between my fingers and a thin, cool trail of juice ran down my hand.

Outside, the thin song of a single sparrow broke the silence.

“Try this,” I said, and moved the bit of pear towards his lips.

His lips clamped shut.

“Aurelius, open your mouth,” I said. “Taste this. I brought you some pear.”

His fading eyes went fierce and pierced mine, then moved towards the window.

“What?” I insisted. “You need to eat. Please open your mouth.”

Once again, he turned his eyes toward the window and this time I thought I saw a small

gesture of his head in the same direction.

“Oh, Aurelius,” I argued. “Who would I give it to? How can one piece of fruit save all those

multitudes? When it might save your life. Please.”

His lips remained closed and his eyes met mine again, in an unspoken command.

I lowered my hand and felt my shoulders sag.

I sat in his chamber through the long afternoon that followed, while the square of yellow

sunlight crept across the floor and grew longer again, and the softening bits of pear released their

sweetness and drew hovering bees.

Aurelius’ eyes flickered open more seldom as the sun advanced across the stone floor. His

breathing slowed, and I began to periodically lean my face towards his to make sure he was still

breathing at all. Late in the afternoon, Eraclius and the physician, Timothy, joined me in my

vigil. Timothy knelt beside Augustine’s bed and measured his pulse with his fingertips.

“He’s fading,” the physician told us. “He won’t last the night.”

Eraclius put his face in his hands and I saw his shoulders trembling.

“Send for me if his condition changes or when…” Timothy didn’t need to finish his sentence.

I nodded, and, with a pitying look at Eraclius, the physician left the room.

I put my arms around Eraclius and eased him into a chair. He raised his wet face to me, eyes

hollow with grief. “If only we hadn’t attempted to show the relic. It was the strain of that evening

and the grief of losing Bishop Quintus that’s killing him.”

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“He’s more than 70 years old,” I reminded Eraclius. “He’s a very old man and would die soon

regardless.”

Eraclius’s tears stopped, but his shoulders sagged, and he turned his sorrowing eyes to his

bishop. “He’s a great man. He’ll be sainted. We all thought so when he stamped out the

Manichean and Donatist heresies and after last night…That really was a miracle.” He turned to

me. “What was he like as a young man? Did you know that he would be great?” His voice held a

hushed reverence, as if he expected that the bishop had emerged great from the womb.

I thought for a moment before I answered. “What do you think he would say he was like when

he was young?”

“Oh, he always claims to be all too human and to have been a terrible sinner, but that’s part of

his greatness, isn’t it? His lack of pride.”

“He was truthful if he said that,” I said. “He was very human and a sinner, though I think not

a terrible one.”

Eraclius shook his head. “I find that hard to believe.”

“It disappoints you.”

“Well – yes.”

I put my hand on his shoulder. “It shouldn’t. It should give you hope. It shows that God can

make glorious use of any of us in building His kingdom, even if we are flawed material.”

“Well, maybe you’re right,” Eraclius said, and I saw that he had no intention of giving up his

notion of Aurelius as a saint, and who was I to deny a saint to a darkening world so deeply in

need of one?

We sat together in silent prayer into the evening, until pink sunset blazed into the room, the

birds’ lullabies crescendoed, and Aurelius gasped a tortured inhale. Eraclius and I leapt to our

feet and bent over him, to hear his last breath leave him in a weak shudder. Eraclius lifted his

Aurelius’ gaunt, ashen arm to feel for a pulse, looking at me and finally shaking his head and

dropping the bishop’s arm. “He’s gone,” he whispered.

Eraclius made the sign of the cross over Aurelius’ body. Outside, the humid curtain of

darkness fell on starving Hippo, and Genseric’s army sharpened their swords and raised their

siege towers.

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