Giselle
- solidfoodpress
- Mar 20
- 16 min read
By Jill Charles
My name is Giselle, but no one in this house knows it.
“Anna, did I tell you the story of how I got my name?” Cornelia asks.
I shake my head, although she tells me the story almost every day. Her mind clings to happier times, when her husband was alive and her eight children surrounded her. Now only her daughter Julia remains, a silent matron married to a cruel official named Junius. I hate Junius for keeping Cornelia up in the attic all day with only me, a silent slave, to tend her and keep her company.
Every morning I make her bed and wash her body and hair in her washtub while she tells me the story. It makes us both less embarrassed when she tells me a story. I have learned many Latin words from her. She lets me wash in the tub after she finishes.
“Cornelia means ‘little horn.’ My mother named me Cornelia after the mother of the famous Gracchi brothers, Tiberius and Gaius, who were statesmen. When her boys were young, Cornelia was widowed and raised her children, Tiberius, Gaius, and Sempronia, all alone. Her rich friend visited her house. She showed Cornelia the emeralds, pearls, and sapphires her husband had given her. Her gold bracelets and necklaces glittered and she wore big hoop earrings and a little gold coronet as if she were the empress.”
Cornelia mimics the act of putting a crown on her gray hair.
“The vain woman asked Cornelia, ‘Where are your jewels?’ Cornelia called her two sons and her daughter into the room and put her arms around them. She said, ‘These are my jewels.’”
I like that story. I miss the stories my mother, father and grandmother told me around our firepit in our hut in Germania, the story of Loki dressed as a bride, Freya’s lost sons, Baldur and Odin, the king of the gods in Valhalla.
I help Cornelia out of the tub and she dries herself and puts on her dress and shawl. Below us in the courtyard, Marcus and Lucretia argue again. The young couple shouts so loudly at each other that we hear every stinging word.
“I want you to sell her, Marcus! I cannot bear the sight of her!”
“My father will not allow it.”
“Anna is your slave! You captured her in Germania. Why not make some money off her now?”
I peer out through a slat in the closed wooden shutters and see them sitting on the stone bench shaded by the orange tree next to the fountain. Lucretia is twelve years old, with curly black hair, a pouting mouth, and burning coal-black eyes. Marcus is twenty-two, towering over her in his red army cape. She looks more like a spoiled daughter than his new bride. In my village, my husband and I had chosen each other and married at fifteen, old enough to conceive our son.
Marcus picks an underripe orange and bites right through the bitter peel, gritting his teeth. Lucretia holds his thick arm with her small white hands.
“I hate the sight of Anna!” she hisses. “She walks right by me and ignores me when I give her an order. I need a lady’s maid of my own to wash my clothes and arrange my hair. I am a lady now.”
“She’s a spoiled baby,” Cornelia whispers. “And so is he.”
I stifle a laugh. We sit side by side on her chaise lounge, listening together.
Marcus spits orange pits on the ground. “My father decides when and if we sell a slave. I asked him if we could trade Anna for a lady’s maid for you. He said, ‘We need Anna to take care of Julia’s mother until she dies.’ When Cornelia dies, you can have your maid.”
“Why does that old hen get her own lady’s maid and I get nothing? I am the daughter of a consul!” Lucretia stands up and stomps her little feet, balling up her fists. “You will go away to Germania again this spring and I will be here all alone!”
“With my mother and father and siblings,” Marcus cuts in.
Cornelia holds my hand and says, “You are a good servant and I will never let them sell you. When I die, you will be free.”
Her soft old skin feels like wrinkled silk. She would free us both from this house now if she could. Cornelia is the only Roman I trust, but I know her son-in-law Junius rules the family as the paterfamilias. He controls everyone and everything in this house, and he would sell me if the price was high enough.
I go down to the kitchen to set the table. Adhana, the Ethiopian cook, bakes delicious bread and folds two tiny loaves every day for Cornelia and me. I put them on a plate with figs and grapes and take them upstairs. The house slaves—Adhana, Carlo, and I—eat hot porridge, tasteless but filling, in the kitchen after the family eats in the dining room. Junius sits at the head of the table with Julia beside him, and his three sons with their wives and children, and the maiden sister Paulina. Twelve relatives in all.
Today I wash laundry in the courtyard and hang it on a line between the clay oven and the stable. Old Carlo brings the horses food and water, and cares for all the trees and plants in the garden. Carlo is Junius’s slave, but he also works in the gardens and stables of three other families. These families pay him wages, and he saves them to buy his freedom from Junius. Junius’s sons call him “Carlo,” which means “freed man” as a joke. Carlo has raised enough to pay his original price, but Junius has raised the price three times.
Carlo is old, at least forty, half-bald with graying hair and wiry limbs. He moves fast and never complains like Adhana. He came from Germania as a captive and still speaks German to me. After seven years of silence, he still hopes I might answer him one day.
In German he asks me, “How are you this fine morning?”
I smile and nod. I stopped speaking after Marcus captured me to keep all my thoughts and feelings mine alone.
“How is Lady Cornelia?” Carlo asks.
I smile and nod and wring out a wet sheet.
Then I hear Cornelia calling me, louder than ever, frightened. “Anna!”
I drop the sheet on the dusty flagstones and dash up the stairs.
Cornelia lies on her chaise lounge, her breath loud and rasping, one hand on her heart. She hands me the iron anchor with the crossbar on top that usually hangs on her wall.
“Give this to Carlo,” she says.
Carlo and I know what the anchor means. Cornelia must go to Priscilla’s house.
I run back downstairs. As I pass the second floor Lucretia screams, “Stop running! You track dirt on my stairs!” as if she’s ever cleaned anything in this house.
I reach the stable, but Carlo has gone. The white horses look up at me, startled. I open the back gate and find Carlo taking his usual shortcut through the alley to the Flavias family home. I catch him by the arm and slip the anchor into his hand.
“Now? Why now?” he snaps, then drops his voice to a pitch no one can hear and speaks in German. “It is the middle of the day and anyone could see us.”
I hold my hands to my heart and throat and act out choking like a dying person.
Now Carlo understands, and runs back up to Cornelia’s room even faster than me. Carlo lifts her in his arms. She has managed to wrap her veil neatly around her head and shoulders as always when she leaves home. It shows her modesty and hides her identity. I obscure myself in her old brown shawl and race downstairs after them. I help lift Cornelia onto the seat of the carpentum and sit beside her, drawing its curtains. Carlo hitches up Junius’s fast horses, Phobos and Deimos, named for Mars’s sons, Fear and Terror.
We burst out of the stable and hurry through the cobblestone streets, passing the fountains where slaves and poor women fill their water jugs. We inhale the lavender smell of the women’s baths. I used to take Cornelia there with her daughter and granddaughters when she was still well enough to walk and climb into the heated mosaic pools full of floating petals. She taught me to bathe every day and wash my hair with olive oil soap. We pass the market where chicken legs roast beside garlic bread baking and the smells of roses and marigolds compete with fresh anchovies and new leather sandals. Through the gap in the curtains I see the slave auction block, blessedly empty today.
Cornelia leans against me, breathing slowly and closing her eyes. How much longer does she have? Carlo curses at the other drivers and pedestrians in his hurry and they curse back.
We turn north and ride past homes and temples to Juno and Mercury and a park with oak trees and a duck pond. I hold Cornelia's hand and feel her weak pulse, praying that she will reach her friend Priscilla’s house alive.
Julia should be with her, her daughter and sole surviving child of eight, holding her mother and praying with her in her last hour. Their family's bond is broken because Julia now prays only to Jupiter, Junius’s god. But Cornelia asked for Priscilla, not Julia, and I respect her wishes.
We approach Priscilla’s home and Carlo stops at the front door, afraid to circle it and creep through the garden as we usually do at night. Cornelia might not last another minute. I am lifting her out of the carriage on my back as he ties the horses’ reins to the hitching post. She holds on tightly, not fainting now. Carlo pounds on the front door.
Priscilla herself opens the door and gasps.
“Cornelia! Follow me.”
Her keys rattle on her belt as she leads us through her parlor and down a hall. Lifting a tapestry, she unlocks a hidden door. Carlo sees me struggle and carries Cornelia again on his back.
The hidden cellar exhales cold breath like a tomb. It is not a pantry of red wine and dried beans, like every other Roman cellar. We hurry down the stone steps in darkness until Priscilla finds a flint and lights a rush lantern to guide us.
She lights the candles on the altar. Cornelia kneels beside me. On the wall behind us, a painted woman lifts her hands in prayer above a table with bread and wine. Priscilla opens a cabinet and brings out flat discs of unleavened bread, a bottle, and a chalice of red wine. She blesses them and holds first bread, then the wine chalice up to Cornelia's lips. She has the strength to eat and drink. I am ready to catch her if she should fall.
“Lord, give your servant Cornelia your body and your blood and forgive her any trespass she may have committed. Receive your servant Cornelia into your kingdom.”
When I first came here with Cornelia and Carlo, I feared the strange cross symbol, like the cross atop Cornelia’s innocent-looking anchor. Romans nail convicts to these wooden crosses and leave them to die in slow agony, much more cruel than a hanging or beheading.
Priscilla has always been kind to me, and I trust her as Cornelia’s friend. Carlo and I attended masses in the catacomb with Cornelia. Priscilla and two elder men led the prayers. The group all sang and prayed together, men, women and children, nobles, commoners and some slaves. All are equal here, in the eyes of their Good Lord.
In the wall are rectangular stones, each covering a tomb marked with a cross. The first Christian, Jesus of Nazareth, died on a Roman cross. Now the Christians have turned the instrument of his death into their resurrection symbol. They call the bread “his body,” and the wine “his blood,” as he did in his last supper with his disciples. I have never met a kinder or braver person than Cornelia and I have accepted her God after mine failed to save me and my family. Cornelia passes the bread and wine to me and after I take some, I pass them to Carlo. He is a Christian too, because of Cornelia.
“You will both see me again in Heaven when your time comes,” Cornelia says to us. “You will both soon be free. Always pray for my daughter Julia and my grandchildren.”
She names her grandchildren and her great-grandchildren; all selfish, spoiled people I despise, especially Marcus. I try to feel some sympathy for Julia, usually so gentle, losing her mother. I ask God to open the hearts of Cornelia’s family, but I cannot love them.
Priscilla opens a round gold box of holy chrism and makes the sign of the cross on Cornelia's forehead with the white wax.
“May the Lord forgive you for any sin you may have committed with your eyes, in your thoughts, in your speech, with your hands, or your feet, in your heart or in any part of your body.”
I could not imagine that Cornelia had ever greatly wronged anyone. I had often wished Marcus dead and imagined killing him and the other soldiers who burned my village.
My husband and baby son had both died of a fever the winter before my capture. I gave them willow tea and prayed for them constantly, but they sweated through their blankets and never healed. I loved them so much and thought nothing else could hurt me after losing them.
Then the Romans came. We had heard of them raiding German villages for slaves but had never seen their shining armor and spears, their red crested helmets and capes, their huge fierce horses. They set fire to our homes and murdered the men who fought them with axes and swords. They lined up the remaining villagers and speared them to death one by one, leaving only a few to be marched to Rome in chains. Marcus’s legion had killed my parents and sisters, my grandmother. Why had I been spared? Maybe it was because Cornelia needed me.
When I began taking care of Cornelia, she would pray silently with me every day, long before she brought me to the catacombs. Cornelia prayed with me and loved me like a daughter. I became a Christian because of her. Carlo and I came to the masses with her and heard the Gospels about Jesus. He healed the sick and told the rich to give all their goods to the poor. Priscilla read us letters of Paul to Christians in other catacombs hiding under other Roman cities. We heard of a Heaven where there was neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, man nor woman. I had always known I was the equal of Cornelia or Marcus or Junius or anyone, and now I loved a God who had created us all in equality. I knew the evil in the world came from the selfish hearts of men and women who kill and steal and sell one another. I could not blame God for my capture, only Marcus and his legion. I’ve prayed for my freedom and Cornelia’s happiness.
When Priscilla called for new Christians, I lined up behind the candidates for baptism. I bowed to her, but she gently raised my shoulders and looked me in the eyes. For the first time in years, I felt peace. She made the sign of the cross on me with water and said, “Anna, I baptize you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
I knew I could be killed for being a Christian. Anyone could, even a government official like Priscilla’s husband, who was executed by order of the emperor. Romans persecuted the Jews in Palestine for praying to one God and for not believing that the emperor was divine, but they hated Christians the most. I had never believed the Emperor was divine. I had served him wine at one of Junius’s parties and seen a drunken, leering mortal Roman, no better than any man. I knew the God who created the universe, who knew everything and loved everyone.
“I am cold,” says Cornelia.
I take the brown shawl off my head and shoulders and wrap it around her.
“Hold my hand, Anna,” she says. “You have been like a daughter to me. Thank you for taking such good care of me in my last days. Bring me home to Julia. It makes no difference where they bury me now. My soul is free.”
I kiss her hand and whisper in her ear. “So is mine, and my real name is Giselle. I love you, Cornelia. I will see you in Heaven.”
Her old blue eyes stare up at me in surprise. She holds hands with me and Carlo and says, “God bless you both. I will see you again.”
Carlo kneels beside us now. Has he heard me speaking to Cornelia? Priscilla kisses Cornelia’s cheek and holds her head. Her breathing slows, and we wait until we hear the low rattle of her last breath.
“I must go with you to take her home,” Priscilla says.
“Junius and Julia will be so angry that she died here and not with her family,” Carlo says.
“We were her family,” Priscilla replies.
The three of us carry Cornelia upstairs. Priscilla sits holding her in the carpentum as Carlo drives us home.
Julia is waiting for us. As soon as Priscilla and I emerge from the carriage, holding Cornelia, Julia rushes to her mother’s body, sobbing and pushing us away. She holds her mother in her arms and cries out that she misses her, as she never did when her mother was alive, just up the stairs. Junius’s sister Paulina cries too, softly. Marcus and his brothers tell their mother to collect herself and stop grieving because her mother Cornelia is safe in the bright pastures of Elsyium. They carry Cornelia’s chaise lounge downstairs and lay her out in the parlor. The grandchildren and great-grandchildren pick flowers and surround her with lilies, irises, roses, and pansies.
Late in the evening, Junius returns home from the Senate.
“Dead at last,” is all he says.
“You should sell Anna now,” Lucretia tells him. She has been waiting to say it all day.
“Never tell me what I should do, woman,” Junius warns her.
He calls Marcus into his room and shuts the door.
That night I sleep between the warm hearth and Cornelia’s cold body. I do not look forward to the Roman funeral. Relatives who never climbed the stairs to speak with Cornelia while she still lived will pile flowers on her corpse and divide up her jewelry. Adhana and I will roast meat and pour wine all day in the hot kitchen. Junius and Marcus will sing off-key hymns to their uncaring gods: bloodthirsty Mars, vain Venus, brutal goat-like Jupiter.
Adhana looks down at me and gently says, “Like a dog who will not leave her mistress.” She tucks a quilt over me.
I toss and turn all night, terrified of being sold the next day to a family that may be more cruel. When Adhana wakes me at dawn, I feel like I have only slept a few minutes.
“Come into the kitchen and wash up, Anna. They are selling you today.”
Adhana has filled a washtub for me and washes my hair as I scrub all my skin with lavender and olive oil soap. The Romans are such a clean people, and I miss Cornelia’s lavender smell. Adhana hands me a clean towel and a clean, new dress. I veil myself in Cornelia’s brown shawl and step into my old sandals.
“Good luck to you, Anna,” Adhana says. “May Isis bless you and may you find a better master than Marcus. You could not find a better mistress than Cornelia.”
I hug Adhana and will always pray for her too, to my God. Knowing that I never speak, she has told me about Isis, the all-powerful Egyptian goddess she worships, wiser than Minerva and stronger than Juno. Junius has never owned Adhana’s spirit either, and that gives me hope for her.
I walk out to the stable, bracing myself for a trip to the auction block. Only Carlo waits there. I expect Junius or Marcus or one of the brothers to go to market and negotiate my price. Junius loves to get the highest price on anything he sells, from a villa to a ripe orange from his garden.
Carlo takes my hand and helps me into the carriage.
“Have you said goodbye to everyone?”
I nod.
“Speak to me,” he says.
I look up toward Cornelia’s window one final time. On the second floor a shutter opens and Marcus looks out. We look each other in the eye and I spit on the ground as hard as I can. Lucretia pulls him away from the window. Carlo chuckles.
Carlo drives out of the courtyard, past the fountain to the marketplace. My heart sinks when I see the auction block and hear the children crying. There are Africans like Adhana, Germans like Carlo and me, dark-haired Iberians and red-haired Celts, men, women and children, some barely dressed, all in chains.
Then we pass the market without stopping.
I turn to Carlo and ask in German, “Where are we going?”
Carlo laughs and says, “Anna, I knew you had a tongue in your head. I would have told you my plan long ago if you had only spoken to me.”
“I thank you for your friendship, but where are we going?”
“Fiesole.”
It is a hilltop town in northern Italia, where Roman soldiers go to retire, with oak trees, vineyards, and beautiful villas.
“Will I be sold there?”
“You will never be sold again, Anna. I have bought your freedom.”
I gasp.
“I wanted to tell you, so many times. I bought my own freedom three years ago and have stayed and worked for Junius all this time to save money to buy a wife. Junius never told anyone I was free, but I made an agreement with the Flavius family to become the housekeeper of their villa in Fiesole. I will live in it year-round and keep the orchard, the vegetables and the hens. They only come to the villa in the hot summer. I ask you to come with me, to marry me. But if you refuse, I have no regrets about buying your freedom. You can go anywhere you want, even back to Germania if you wish. I wanted to save you.”
“I will go with you,” I say firmly.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. I can never go home to Germania; my village was burned and my family were all killed.”
“Mine too,” Carlo says. “That is why I promised myself I would save someone.”
“Why me?”
“Because I saw how you loved Cornelia and fought Marcus. I admired your courage and I knew you were not really mute.”
I climb up on the driver’s seat beside him and say, “My real name is Giselle.”
He keeps his hands on the reins, but turns his head and looks me in the eye. I lean forward and we kiss.
“My real name is Carlo,” he says. “And now we are both free.”
He reaches into his leather bag and hands me Cornelia’s anchor cross.
“She would have wanted you to have it.”
We look out toward the city gate and to the hills beyond them, where cypress trees grow along the horizon.