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

half a Roman now, but I’m also still a barbarian. Or, you know, people think I am. I mean – that’s what makes it so weird. In Rome, they think I’m a barbarian because I’m from Prydain. And here, they think I’m a barbarian because I’m, like, half a Roman, with my clothes and my accent and my hairstyle and stuff.
    And I don’t know what I am.
    I don’t even know if I want to stay here or not. I get really homesick for Rome sometimes.
    Yes, I know that I said that it can be really horrible there, and there’s lots of things wrong with it, and the Romans aren’t always that great... but there are people from all over the empire in Rome, loads of different sorts of foreigners; I like that. And all sorts of religions – like Marianism. And for example, we have a woman prophet, and priestesses. They’re independent. Free. They do what they like. That’s unusual.
    Well – in Rome, they have different ideas about women. Very strange ideas. Like, they have an emperor and an empress, but it’s only the emperor who has the power.
    I don’t know. She just sits there and looks pretty. I think empresses do a lot of secret scheming though, you know? I heard some stories about an empress who had her husband poisoned and then had her little son crowned emperor. And then while the son is small, she is the real ruler; only officially it’s him, even if he’s only a baby.
    No, I’m not making this up! They were so rude to Mother! Even after they’d set us free, they only ever addressed Father as Ruler, never Mother! She was so cross. She nearly beheaded a couple of guards from the imperial palace. Do you know, they found us peculiar, because we always paid homage to the emperor and the empress.
    But now, most of my friends there are Marians, and they’re different. We’re all different. Junia, and Nesmut and me. And Tryphaena and Tryphosa – they’re missioners. They go about and preach the gospel to people who don’t know about it yet. In between their trips, we all meet up. There aren’t any Marian temples in Rome or anywhere else; nothing like that. We meet in people’s houses. Junia has a flat in a tenement, so we often met there.
    Oh, Arddun, I miss those evenings. We’d be all sitting there in the big room, with the shutters open and the noise and the food smells from the street coming in. Junia can read, so she would be reading out letters from other sisters in the church; or people would come with questions and then we’d have a discussion.
    Oh, you know – about the sayings of Mary and Jesus and what they meant. For example, Jesus said that the best thing you can do is to give away all your things and money to the poor and be free to travel about the country like he did. And Mary says that having a free spirit and striving for wisdom is the best thing. So we’d discuss that – can you own things and be free in spirit? Can you give away everything but still have a spirit that’s not free? And what do you do if you have to look after children or your old parents and can’t just give it all up and go away? Or when you’re a slave?
    Stuff like that. Philosophical questions. Junia said that talking like that was a way of achieving wisdom. Other times people would come and tell us about their problems, like when someone was ill or they were worried about something, and then we’d all talk about that and try to help. Or sometimes sisters would come from other parts of the empire and tell us what it was like there...
    Do you know what I’d really like to do, more than anything else in the world? Be a missioner with Nesmut, like Tryphaena and Tryphosa are. I’d love us to travel all through the empire together, see all the different countries and people and learn their languages and tell them about the message of Mary and Jesus. I want to tell people who own slaves why I don’t think