Damascus Page 5

  She bowed her shaved head.

  That noon, taking the meals down to the brickworks, I asked my father for permission to talk with him. He grunted in annoyance. But I had been careful to be respectful and decorous in my request, so as not to shame him in front of his sons, his workers and his slaves. With a nod he agreed and I followed him out of the fiery chamber.

  He took an old urn that lay against the wall and poured water over himself. ‘What is it?’

  The tears came easily. ‘Goodness insulted me, Father. I gave her a task to do and she refused. She said, “Your mother is dead, I’m the mistress of this house now.”’

  My father recoiled. In his proud eyes I saw first confusion, then distaste. ‘Is this true?’

  I banged my chest five times. ‘I swear it on the great Mother, I swear it by all the gods.’

  I could only see his rage now.

  ‘I will punish her.’

  ‘And the bastard?’

  He clicked his tongue in annoyance. ‘What of him?’

  ‘It is he that gives her the confidence to speak such outrage.’

  He looked down at me. ‘This is not your business, daughter.’

  ‘Sell him.’

  ‘He’s just born, girl—we don’t yet know if the gods will take him from us. Let him grow, let him live out his first year, and then we can fetch a good price for him.’

  I shamed myself. I fell to my knees, gripped his legs. I smelled the wood that fired the kilns, the pungent scent of man and work.

  ‘She insulted our mother. May the gods have mercy on her spirit.’ I kissed his foot. ‘Sell him, Father.’

  That very night he beat Goodness; he thrashed her so hard that she limped for a full cycle of the Goddess, her left eye black and closed. Within days of her punishment, the bastard was sold. And for the first time since my mother’s death, I felt joy.

  But I was not destined for happiness. With the approaching winter I had my first blood. My mother had prepared me for it, had told me of how proud she would be to sing the prayers to the great Mother as I offered Her my blood to drink. But my mother was gone. It was Goodness whose sullen voice implored me to sing to the Mother as she forced my hand across my wet sex, shoving it deep into the soil so the earth could be sated. Let my blood be poison, I cursed silently. Let nothing fertile grow from this ground. My rage stemmed my tears.

  After I had submitted to the rites of cleansing and purification, my father gave me a shawl of azure blue to wear as my head cover and veil. It had belonged to my mother and I wore it with pride. Soon after, my breasts grew and I lost my childhood slimness. I didn’t like what was happening to my body, I hated the restrictions placed on me. I could no longer walk through the villages or into the woods without one of my brothers coming with me. Even my duties with the deities now had to be shared with Penelope. It was forbidden for me to perform the rites when I was bleeding.

  Once winter made way for the reborn sun, my father declared that it was time for me to marry. I knew that such a day had to come, but the shock of it was overwhelming. I barely listened as my father explained the good fortune of the match, how the youth was the son of a canvas and leathermaker, that the family owned a small tannery near Philippi, that they too had come from Macedon, that they had not been greedy in the dowry that they had asked for—all of that bode well for my future. To every jubilant utterance I replied obediently, ‘Yes, Father’. But a fear had bored into my body. I was to leave my family, my home. I was to lie with a man.

  It was true, my father had indeed made a good match. My husband, Theodorus, was a mere lad. But he had been made strong by work. Penelope was envious the first time she met him. ‘He’s got a lovely face,’ she whispered as she pinched me. ‘You’re lucky, sister. I hope my husband will be as handsome as he is.’

  Penelope and I cried for hours on the eve and the day of my wedding. When we were ready to leave for Philippi, I could not bring myself to break from her desperate embrace. My brothers too were weeping. Even Goodness dropped to her knees and kissed the ground in front of me. She was heavy with child again and I am ashamed that I did not bid her farewell—my last cruelty to her.

  My father didn’t hug me. He took my shoulders and he looked down at me. ‘Be honourable and do your ancestors proud, girl,’ he said. ‘Be a good wife and raise many sons.’

  And then my new husband helped me onto the mule.

  Heaving with sobs, I turned to wave at my family as the beasts started their way down into the valley. I never saw any of them again.

  As we approached Philippi, I was awed by the immensity of its fortified walls, the vast spread of hamlets and villages that lay outside it. I was dazed by the shining acropolis, the grandeur of the marble palaces and temples. We continued our trek past the city walls, and descended into Neapolis, the port town that was to be my home.

  Neapolis was perched on the edge of the Salonikan Gulf and my first sight of the sea made me gasp. It was more dazzling than the city, it outshone even the canopy of the heavens.

  My husband turned and smiled. ‘The Aegean,’ he called back to me. ‘Witness the birthplace of gods.’

  I could not answer. I was struck dumb by its beauty. And by its power. Then and there I made a vow: if my new life were to prove unbearable, I would go to the water and disappear into its waves; I would seek the release that must surely exist beneath that luminous surface.

  ‘It’s calling you, isn’t it, wife?’

  Shocked, I looked at Theodorus. Had he guessed at my defiance? But it wasn’t that: he was gladdened to see my wonderment. He thought I was grateful to be brought to his city and to be his wife. And for the first time since our betrothal, I smiled at him. I allowed him to think it so.

  And so I was married. I knew I was lucky. It wasn’t just that Theodorus was handsome and kind—all his family were welcoming. Dion, my father-in-law, had been a boy when his own parents were freed by the nobleman who had owned them, and their former master’s generosity and benevolence had become a guide to how he and his family were to treat their own slaves and labourers. Not that they were a rich family. My husband’s mother had died in labour like my own, giving birth to his younger brother. His father had then remarried, a young woman named Calliope, who was not much older than me. She was now carrying their first child together, and worked in the tannery alongside her stepchildren and husband. There were two slaves in the household, Psyche and Fortitude, as well as three bonded men. There was also a skilled leatherworker, a labourer called Daniel, whom the family trusted to trade their tents and canvases all along the Thermaic coast and across the Aegean into Anatolia.

  My son, my brother, my Jesus, you were there, beside me. This Daniel was the first Jew I had ever met. You sent him to me, you placed him on my path.

  My husband was kind and strong and handsome, but he was a man. On the first night in my new home he turned me over, lifted my dress and entered me. I was consumed by the wildness of the furies. I bucked and screamed for him to release me. I had never experienced such pain. I knew that my cries would awaken the household but I was convinced that it wasn’t a man inside me but a malevolent creature sent by the most cruel of the gods. Theodorus kept whispering, ‘Hush, child, hush, this is what it is to be a couple,’ as I struggled to escape from him. In the end, angered by my disobedience, he forced me onto my back, hit me across the face, lifted my legs and pushed into me again. Shocked by the blow, this time I was quiet and compliant. It was blessedly quick and it lasted an eternity. He released himself in me and even in my stupor, with the pain and blood, I was stunned that I could feel his seed slither inside me. From that night on I didn’t cry out, and didn’t refuse him. I remained still and silent. But whenever he was inside me I no longer thought him kind and strong and handsome. I thought him foul, ugly, monstrous. I hated that bestial act. It was sacred to the uncaring gods. It had taken my mother.

  Soon I was with child. And knowing this, he no longer came for me. He now took his pleasures with Psyc
he, and sometimes with Fortitude, though she was old and not at all good-looking. He also made use of the youngest of the slaves, a boy called Salonikos. Calliope was always jealous of her husband’s carnal use of the slaves and apprentices, and often treated them spitefully because of it. I was grateful. To begin with, Salonikos averted his eyes out of shame when passing me. But I would greet him cheerfully and soon he came to trust me. He would drop everything to do what I asked of him, risking the opprobrium and the beatings of my husband.

  ‘He’s in love with you,’ whispered Calliope once as we worked side by side.

  ‘Please, Mother, hush,’ I replied.

  I was annoyed at her reminder that the boy too would grow up to be a man.

  In work, I discovered freedom. Our job was to strip the skins that were purchased from the priests after the sacrifices, or from the butchers that serviced the nobility and the rich of the city. The skins were first boiled in a giant vat. Once they had cooled it was my and Calliope’s task, along with our slave girls, to strip the boiled skins of sinew and gristle, of clotted blood and hair. We did this by tightly gripping a blade and scraping it back and forth across the skin to make it clean. The first days were agony. My wrists cramped at night and the throbbing pain made sleep impossible. But soon I became accustomed to the labour and found peace in the monotony of the work. I became quick and efficient with my blade, and took pride in my efforts. The stink was abominable, from both the boiled skins and also from the guts and boiled meat we were scraping away. We kept our mouths and nostrils covered, but even so the foul odours would rise and sting our eyes. It was only with time and greater skill that I would end the day without bleeding from a slip of the blade. The calluses, the blisters, they have never left.

  And there was always the sharp, intoxicating perfume of the sea air. No matter how difficult our work and no matter the jealousies and grievances within our home, I would smell that potent salt spray and I’d return to peace.

  As the time of my labour approached, my husband ordered me to abandon my work and retire to seclusion. Though we were not sharing a bedchamber, I knew that every morning and every evening Theodorus prayed to Priapus, pleading that his firstborn be a son. Though I had lost any belief in the efficacy of the gods, I took up silently chanting incantations to appease the Mother. A tremendous fear, childlike in its ferocity, had overtaken me. The terrifying visions of my mother’s final hours returned, and I was convinced that the same fate awaited me. Now, surely, the gods would take their vengeance. Calliope, who had given birth to a son and had completed her moon cycle of isolation, tried to allay my fears. ‘You will bear the pain, daughter,’ she promised me. ‘You will give your husband a son.’ She would bring me grains sanctified at the temples of Isis and of Demeter in Philippi. She would light the incense and make offerings to the gods on my behalf. I was not soothed. I was certain that the world of shadows awaited me.

  The labours came. In the vicious racking of my body I was transformed. No longer a child. My first scream pierced the dawn. My final spasms took place at night. So much blood. So much torment, and so much exhaustion. Finally, the midwife pulled the infant free. As she murmured a prayer to the Mother, she cut the cord between my child and myself.

  Her voice was dull. ‘It’s a girl.’

  Psyche, who had been with me through day and through night, muttered, ‘May the gods have mercy on her spirit.’

  I did not have the power to speak. It was all I could do to breathe.

  A wail filled the tiny chamber. At the sound, I found my voice. ‘Give her to me.’

  The midwife laid the child across my breasts. The infant was sheathed in blood. I did not care. Calliope was kneeling next to me. She took the child, wiped it with a cloth and carefully laid her on me again.

  ‘Put her on the nipple,’ the midwife ordered. ‘It will help flush the afterbirth.’ Calliope pushed the infant’s mouth towards my nipple. Another jolt of pain.

  But the child sucked. Even though my milk was not yet ready, my child knew I was her mother.

  My hands were scrabbling in the soiled blanket on which we lay. I had been given a likeness of the Mother but had dropped Her in my struggles. Now I needed Her—I had to beg for Her mercy.

  Calliope found the idol and placed it in my hand.

  My fingers curled around it.

  ‘Thank you, Mother, I am returned to you.’

  The sharp odour of the burning rosemary, the final prayers of the midwife, the contented suckling of my child. I collapsed into blessed sleep.

  I was alone in the chamber. My hands searched the blanket. It was dry; it had been changed in my unmooring from wakefulness. I could not locate my child.

  ‘Where is she?’

  My cry woke the slave sleeping in the corridor and she came in.

  ‘Where is my child?’

  Psyche wouldn’t speak.

  I struggled to rise and a blade tore through me, from my sex to my chest, as if I were being filleted.

  Psyche ran out of the room.

  In my sleep I had lost my grip on the deity and it had fallen to the dirt floor. I groped for it and found Her. I kissed Her, I promised eternal fealty, told Her that I would crawl on my knees to Her great altar in Arcadia, if only She would return the child to me.

  Calliope came in and took my hand. ‘Daughter,’ she whispered, ‘you will have another child. You will have a son—you will have many sons.’

  Her hands were stroking my hair, her lips were on mine. ‘My husband has struggled many years to make a success of our business and our home. We’re nearly there, my love. In a little time we will be wealthy and we can indulge in daughters.’

  My love? How I hated her for such false words. She was not my mother.

  ‘Where is she?’

  But I knew where she was. Already in those icy shadows.

  ‘Sleep,’ she counselled. ‘Sleep, little Lydia.’

  I shut my eyes. I obeyed. I heard her leaving the room.

  I opened my eyes. Twice now the Goddess had betrayed me. Every day without fail I had taken Her our offerings; daily, I had bitten into the bitter fruit to give Her the seeds She needed to bring Her daughter back from Hades. I clasped Her in my palm. My son, my brother, my Jesus, you must have been there with me, you who also died in blood, you who understands our suffering: that is how I must have found the strength. I twisted my body, I endured the agony, as I tightened my grip around the Mother, until my whole body shook from the pain. The clay form shattered. She was nothing, she was dust.

  My child was still here. In the empty chamber drenched in death, I could feel her. I slipped into ill-omened dreams. Whether I was awake or asleep, she was there. Her tiny hands touched my sides, reached for my breasts. I turned to hold her. I called for her.

  She was gone. I heard her cries as she descended into Hades. I will follow you there, I promised her. I will climb down after you. She was my child and she was my mother, returned to me and then maliciously stolen back by the gods. Death would not mean forgetting for me: I would avenge my mother and I would avenge my child. I hurled insults at the gods. At the edge of my vision and at the borders of my hearing, I knew that the slave girls and Calliope were shuddering at my words. I saw Calliope’s mouth hover above me, I saw her lips move, but I was deaf to her pleading. I refused all food and water. How else would I follow my child into the afterlife? But I was broken by the weakness of my body. One morning the heady odour of the freshly risen bread that Psyche was offering me proved my undoing. Like a dog, like the dog I was, I grabbed it from her hands. I mashed it into my mouth.

  I had betrayed my child. I had returned to life. The gods had taken their revenge. This life was my punishment, this world my torture.

  The moon completed its cycle and I was released from the birth chamber. My husband was waiting for me. I was frail and unsteady on my feet. He rushed to hold me.

  ‘Husband,’ I whimpered, ‘our child.’

  I did not finish my sentence. He raised his
palm and slapped me. For mentioning the dead, for naming that which never was, for tempting the cruelty of the gods.

  I did not cry. I bowed my head. ‘I am sorry, husband.’

  I devoted myself to work. My fingers curled in pain, my palm blistered and aching from clutching the blade, from ripping through sinew and bone fragments. In that punishing and unforgiving work I lost memory and feeling. I could forget. Pelt after pelt I scraped and made clean. In the strain of that work I could forget her face, the sensation of her tiny fingers locking with mine, the sight of those curious eyes that first opened to look at me. But when our day’s work was done, when we retired to our bed after supper, as I lay there listening to Theodorus’s coarse snores, she returned to me. Her perfume, her milky smell, I breathed it in. I could hear her defiant crying. My child was calling me. It was impossible to sleep.

  ‘Where are you going, Mistress?’

  It was noonday and Psyche and I were returning from the markets. As we pushed through the crowd, I chanced to look down a winding narrow lane and there lay the sea, that dazzling cloak worn by the God, Poseidon. Theodorus and Calliope had warned me of the dangers of the wharves, of the licentious drunkenness of the sailors and dockworkers. We women and our slaves were forbidden to go there. But the abrasive smell of brine acted as a drug on me, and I turned down the lane to make my way to the water.

  Psyche was calling after me. I furiously demanded that she leave me. The foolish girl was petrified—to abandon me was to risk the wrath of my husband, and to defy my orders was also unthinkable. I heard her crying as I left her.

  I was scared of getting lost in the confusing maze of alleys, also terrified of the crowds; beggars were thronging around me with piteous demands for coin and food. I had enough sense to turn back to the market square, and from there I walked towards the southern gate of the city consecrated to the first Emperor. I ignored the outraged looks of the men who were scandalised to see an unescorted free woman there. I didn’t care—all I knew was that I had to reach the sea. I marched to the Augustan gate. I showed the seal of our tanners’ guild to the young guards there and they let me pass. Did they think me a madwoman, a whore? I didn’t care.