‘You must not judge him too harshly.’ The soft voice came from above and behind him. Ruth sat like a serious-faced meadow sprite on a hillock of grass overlooking the road. To his surprise, he found he was glad to see her, but he wondered how she had known to be there.
‘You have not had time to water your horse.’ She rose to her feet and skipped down to a path that led through the trees. ‘Come, I will show you a place.’
He hesitated, puzzled at the change from their previous encounter, but she smiled and he followed her, out of curiosity and for other reasons he would have found difficult to explain. The path was one he had used many times as a boy and he knew where it led. She slowed to allow him to walk at her side.
‘He was lost, but now he is found,’ she said cryptically.
‘I don’t understand,’ he replied, knowing as he said it that it wasn’t quite true. He found her presence disturbing; it provoked a kind of asthmatic breathlessness he hadn’t experienced for a long time. She wore the same blue dress as the day in the olive grove. It was loose and unflattering, but the generous curves that lay beneath made themselves known in various subtle ways. She really was quite beautiful. Smaller than Valerius by a head, but lithe and athletic, her dark hair hanging long to her waist. Ruth’s skin glowed the colour of golden cinnamon and when she smiled her nose wrinkled like a little girl’s. The next words she spoke were an admission of treason, but she spoke them without fear in a way that made her very naive, very trusting or very brave.
‘There is but one God, and Jesus is his son,’ she said with simple faith. ‘When I came here Lucius had nothing. No family. No friends. No love. He was empty. We talked of our fears and I told him about my God, who is a loving God, and how I was never alone, because I believed.’
The talk of love reminded Valerius that she belonged to his father. ‘He had me. He has Olivia.’
‘You were lost to him.’ She said it quietly, making no accusation.
They came to the pool, as he had known they would. He tethered the horse to a tree with enough play on the reins to allow it to drink. For a time there was nothing but silence and the song of the river. They stood a little apart. Ruth was entirely at ease, but Valerius found himself trying to untangle the knot of conflicting feelings she awoke in him. Desire was one, mixed up with the beginnings of a deep, almost brotherly affection, but it was not the strongest. No, the most powerful feeling she inspired in him was a sense of his own inadequacy. She had an almost mystical quality; a disturbing ability to reach deep into his soul. When he was with her he felt ashamed of what he was and what he had done. He wanted to tell her everything: about Nero, Torquatus and Petrus, Maeve and Cearan and the bloody field of Colonia; but somehow the words wouldn’t come.
Ruth saw his confusion, but affected not to notice. Instead, she continued her story. ‘One day we went to the city and he heard a man speak of goodness and love and of another man who sacrificed himself so that all men could be blessed with them. The man came to us and spoke to your father. I do not know what he said but your father wept and asked the man to pray for him.’
‘The man was Petrus?’
‘Yes, Petrus the healer. He who was chosen by Christus and made holy by him.’
‘And was my father healed?’
‘Later, he asked me to take him to meetings and after a time he took the blood and the body of Christus. Then he was healed.’ Valerius felt his gorge rise as he remembered Nero’s chilling warning about drinking the blood of children. She saw his look and her face turned serious. ‘It is not what you think. We only take watered wine and thin bread. But God is pleased to consider it the blood and body of Christus.’
‘Why are you telling me this? You do not know me at all. I may be your enemy and I am certainly a danger to you. I need to find Petrus and I must save my father from the enemies who will hurt him if they can.’
‘Your father has already been saved; that is why I am telling you. When you meet Petrus you will be faced with a choice and only by understanding will you make the correct decision. You think of us as the enemies of Rome and your first instinct is to strike out against us. But what are you defending Rome against? We seek only to spread the word of God and bring peace and harmony to all men, Jew and Gentile. Is that so terrible? Rome can be a hard mistress for a man with a conscience, and many a true Roman has listened to the word of the true God and been converted.’
He listened to her voice and imagined he heard the sound of another speaking. Was this some trick of Petrus to win him over to the cause of Christus? Yet there was an obvious transparency and honesty to Ruth, an inner quality he thought must be what men called goodness, that convinced him she was sincere. He still couldn’t afford to trust her, but surely he could afford to listen to her?
‘It seems I do not know my own father.’
‘Your father is a fine man. When I came, he was stern, but now he knows peace.’
‘You have been good to him,’ Valerius said.
‘I have been as a daughter to him,’ she replied, answering his unspoken question.
‘I don’t understand. I thought you hated me. In the street after the boy spoke-’
‘We are taught not to feel hatred,’ she interrupted gently. ‘Only love, but I feared you would betray your father. I was confused. Then I saw that you, too, were a good man beneath the armour you wear to protect yourself along the path God has chosen for you.’
He opened his mouth to deny it, but before he could speak she glanced across to where the fast water entered the pool. ‘I was baptized in a place like this. But I was young and I have only a slight memory of it.’
Valerius frowned. ‘Baptized? It is not a word I know.’
‘It is one of our rituals. Your father has not yet experienced it. I do not truly understand its purpose, only that to enter the kingdom of God one must have been first immersed in water, and that to be baptized is to be saved. Jesus was baptized by John beneath a waterfall. Some say it is enough to pour water over the supplicant’s head, but Petrus believes that only by covering the entire body is the ceremony complete. Wherever he goes, he seeks out a waterfall.’
‘Can you help me reach Petrus?’
She hesitated, studying his face intently before coming to a decision. ‘I will do what I can, but the final choice must be his,’ she said. ‘When I receive word of our next meeting I will contact you.’ She touched his hand and then she was gone, the blue dress disappearing among the trees by the river. Valerius stood for the time it took to recognize the sensation that threatened to overwhelm him. Loneliness.
Later, on the road back to Rome, he was conscious of a curious mixture of elation and confusion. He was lost, but now he is found. He understood now what she had meant by it, but not in the way she meant it. A miracle had happened. He’d found something he believed he had lost for ever.
But would he be allowed to keep it?
XVIII
Nero’s invitation couldn’t have been more inconvenient. At best, it would be an evening of excruciating performances by the Emperor and his latest artist friends, the braying actors and falsetto-voiced singers who jostled each other to inform him how talented he was. At worst? Well, Valerius would find out. The memory of their last meeting was still fresh and the thought of the questing tongue and rank breath turned his stomach. He had spent the last hour with Fabia, in a vain attempt to unravel the mystery of Cornelius Sulla’s disappearance, and had looked forward to an evening at home. The venue, the circus Caligula had built on the Vatican meadows on the far side of the city, could hardly be worse placed. It made a theatrical or musical performance less likely, but with Nero it was impossible to tell. The arena was mainly used for the horse and chariot races the Emperor loved. Perhaps he was planning to hold a chariot race in the dark.