My father took me by surprise. He was much thinner and less breath-less and moody than before I had gone to Britain. Tullia had bought him a Greek physician educated in Alexandria whom my father had, of course, soon freed. The physician had ordered baths and massage for him, persuaded him to drink less and do ball exercises for a short time every day, so that now he wore his purple band with considerable dignity. His reputation for wealth and good humor had spread throughout Rome, so that groups of clients and people seeking help crowded into his hall every morning. He helped many people, but he refused to recommend anyone for citizenship, although as a senator he had a right to.
But it is about Claudia I must relate, however reluctantly and guiltily I went to see her. Outwardly she had not changed a bit. Nevertheless, I seemed at first to be looking at a stranger. She gave me a delighted smile to begin with and then her mouth narrowed and her eyes darkened.
“I’ve had bad dreams about you,” she said. “I see they were true. You are not the same as before, Minutus.”
“How could I be the same,” I cried, “after spending two years in Britain, writing a book, killing barbarians and earning my red plumes? You live in the country as if on a duck pond. You can’t expect the same of me.”
But Claudia looked in my eyes and raised her hand to touch my cheek. “You know perfectly well what I mean, Minutus,” she said. “But I was stupid to have expected you to keep a promise which no man could keep.” I should have been wiser if I had been angry at her words, broken off with her there and then and gone my way. It is much easier to be angry when one is in the wrong. But instead, when I saw her deep disappointment I took her in my arms, kissed her and caressed her, and was seized by the need to tell at least one person in the world about Lugunda and my experiences.
We sat by her spring on a stone bench under her old tree and I told her about how Lugunda had come into my life, how I had taught her to read and how useful she had been on my journeys among the Britons. Then I began to falter a little and look down at the ground. Claudia seized me by the arm with both hands and shook me, telling me to go on. So I told her what my self-respect allowed me to, but in the end I did not have the courage to tell her that Lugunda had borne me a son. In the vanity of my youth, however, I boasted of my manhood and Lugunda’s virginity.
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To my surprise, Claudia was most hurt by the fact that Lugunda was a hare-priestess.
“I’m tired of the birds flying from Vatican,” she said. “I no longer believe in omens. The gods of Rome have become to me just statues with no power and I’m not surprised that in a foreign country you were bewitched, you with your lack of experience. But if you honestly regret your sins, then I can show you a new way. People need more than magic, omens and stone statues. While you were away, I’ve experienced things I’d never have believed possible.”
Unsuspecting, I asked her to tell me about it, but my heart sank when I realized her uncle’s wife, Paulina, had begun to use her as an intermediary between her and her friends, thus involving Claudia much more deeply in the infamous machinations of the Christians.
“They have the power to cure the sick and forgive us our sins,” Claudia said fervently. “A slave or the poorest of tradesmen is equal to the wealthiest and most important person at their holy meals. We greet each other with a kiss as a sign of our mutual love. When the spirit comes to the congregation, they are seized with holy ecstasy so that simple people begin to speak foreign languages and the faces of the holy glow in the darkness.”
I looked at her with the same horror as one regards a very sick person, but Claudia seized both my hands in hers.
“Don’t condemn them until you’ve got to know them,” she said. “Yesterday was Saturn’s day and the Jewish Sabbath. Today is the Chris- tians’ holy day because it was the day after the Sabbath that their king rose from the dead. But the heavens may open any day and he will return to earth and found the kingdom of a thousand years in which the last will be first and the first last.”
Claudia was frighteningly beautiful, like a seer, as she spoke. I can only believe that there really was some irresistible force speaking through her, paralyzing my will and dulling my mind, for when she said, “Come, let’s go and see them at once,” I rose helplessly and went with her. Thinking I was afraid, she assured me that I would not have to do anything I did not want to do, only watch and listen. I justified my actions to myself by saying that I had reason to learn something about these new beliefs in Rome, as I had also tried to learn about the Druids in Britain.
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