To Love Again - Bertrice Small [81]
Cailin had been assigned a charming little room with a mosaic floor whose center decoration was of Jupiter seducing Europa. About the walls, frescoes showed young lovers being encouraged and bedeviled by a host of amusing winged cupids. There was a single bed, a lovely decorated wooden chest, and a small round table to furnish the space, which had but one window looking out over the hills of the city to the sea beyond. The room was sunny most of the day, and the light gave it a cheerful outlook that made Cailin feel comfortable for the first time in almost a year. It was not a bad place to begin her new life.
For almost two weeks that life was uncomplicated and pampered. She was fed more food than she had ever before eaten. She was bathed and massaged three times daily. Her feet and her hands were attended to, the nails pared, her skin creamed to soften it. She was made to rest continuously, until she thought she would die of boredom, for Cailin was not used to being idle. She saw no one but Jovian and the few servants who attended to her. In the evenings she could hear laughter, music, and merriment from elsewhere in Villa Maxima, but her chamber was very isolated from the rest of the house.
One day Jovian came and took her in a highly decorated—and to Cailin’s taste—flamboyant litter to tour the city. He was a font of fascinating facts and general information. A town had been founded a thousand years before by the Greeks on this very site, Cailin learned. Located at the junction of the east-west trade routes, the town had always flourished, even if it was not particularly distinguished. Then, just over a hundred years ago, the emperor Constantine the Great had decided to leave Rome, and chose for his new capital the town of Byzantium. Constantine, the first emperor to embrace Christianity, consecrated the city on the fourth day of November in the year A.D. 328. The city, renamed Constantinople in his honor, was formally dedicated on May 11, 330, with much pomp and ceremony. Already building and renovation was then in progress.
Constantine and his successors were always building, and little remained now of the original Greek town. Constantinople currently had a university of higher learning; its own circus; eight public and one hundred fifty-three private baths; fifty-two porticos; five granaries; four large public halls for the government, the senate, and the courts of justice; eight aqueducts that conveyed the city’s water; fourteen churches, including the magnificent St. Sophia; and fourteen palaces for the nobility. There were close to five thousand wealthy and upper-middle-class homes, not to mention several thousand houses and apartments sheltering the plebian classes, the shopkeepers, the artisans, the humble.
The city had been built on trade, and trade prospered there. Since it was set where the land routes from Asia and Europe met, Constantinople’s markets were filled with goods of all kinds. There was porcelain from Cathay, ivory from Africa, amber from the Baltic, precious stones of every kind found on the earth; silks, damask, aloes, balsam, cinnamon and ginger, sugar, musk, salt, oil, grains, wax, furs, wood, wines, and of course, slaves.
That afternoon, they traveled the length of the city to the Golden Gate, and then back along the Mese past the forums of Constantine and of Theodosius. They skirted the Hippodrome and moved on past the Great Palace. As they were carried by the great church of St. Erine, Jovian said, “I have not yet chosen a priest for you, Cailin. I must remember to do so.”
“Do not bother,” she told him. “I do not think I could be a Christian. It seems a difficult faith, I fear.