Free The Woman who Loved an Octopus and other Saint's Tales by Imogen Rhia Herrad Page A

her.
    Every time.
    After that, I became a Marian. It’s a new religion from the East. Mary is a great prophet. She is travelling and preaching all over the Roman empire. She used to travel with another prophet called Jesus, but he was killed. Like Abra.
    He hadn’t done anything. He was just a good man. A carpenter.
    Some of the slaves in Nesmut’s house were Marians; they told me about it first. Marianism is about justice and wisdom.
    Well, for example, Marians say that all people have a spirit. The spirit is the most important part of you. It’s the light of Sophia in every one of us that goes back to the sun after we die. Sophia means wisdom. So if everybody has a spirit, it’s not fair to keep slaves, right? Because they’re the same as you. That’s what Junia says, only she puts it better than that. Junia’s a sort of friend of me and Nesmut – she’s an apostle and a preacher in Rome. An apostle is somebody who follows the path of Mary and Jesus. I want to be like her, and like Mary.
    Mary’s not from Rome. She’s from a place called Magdala in the province of Syria. Look, I’ll draw a map in the sand for you. This is Britannia, and Germania and Gallia and Hispania over there, and Italia here. The sea is called the Mare Internum . Syria’s right at the other end of that, there. That’s where Mary comes from. She is from a people called Jews, and most of those who believe in her and Jesus’s religion are Jews too, but you don’t have to be one to be a Marian.
    Well – me and Nesmut and Junia for example – we call ourselves ‘Marians’, after Mary. And others call themselves Christians, after Jesus. Because he is also called Christ. Some believe that he was a god.
    No, I don’t think so. I think he was the same as Mary – a prophet. She wants to change things, and so did he. To make the world better for everybody.
    Well, for example, I think if Abra hadn’t been a slave she could have become something other than a gladiator.
    Yes, I know, she did want to become one, but gladiators are mostly slaves. There are very few free ones, and even fewer free women gladiators. So if she’d been free, she could have done something else. She could have been a bodyguard or a farmer or a market trader. Something else!
    She wouldn’t have needed to die like that.
    So what if she was a slave? She was a person ! She was my friend.
    I was a slave when we first came to Rome. Me and Gwladus and Einir and Gwyn and Mother and Father and Grandfather – we were all slaves. We were paraded round Rome in our chains to show that the emperor’d defeated the barbarians.
    Oh, don’t be so dense, Arddun. What do you think? We were the barbarians! To the Romans, we’re barbarians.
    They could have killed us at any moment. Sold us. Raped us. Anything. We were lucky that nothing happened. And then we were really lucky when the emperor and empress set us free after a few years. We didn’t know they were going to let us go. One moment, Einir and me were being the empress’s little pets – she showed us off to guests the same as she did her monkeys and that leopard she kept. And then the next minute it was: you’re free! We didn’t know what to do. We were so used to obeying commands. That was about three years ago, and I’m sort of beginning to believe that I’m really free now – you know, forever?
    It’s just so weird, all of it.
    I mean, to begin with, I’m a princess in Prydain, right. You know, with my own slaves and clothes and jewellery and stuff. Then suddenly, I’m a captive and I get carted off halfway across the world and become a foreigner and a barbarian. And then I’m a slave. A nobody with nothing. No past, no future. And finally, the most gracious emperor and empress set us free and then I’m a freedwoman, get that, and a foreign princess again. And I’m sort of like