As Sure as the Dawn (11 page)

He stood and glared down at her. “It wasn’t by my choice that I became what I am!”

“But by your choice you continue in it.” She watched him move away into the shadows again. Everything about him revealed his bitter rage and frustration. Did he think his anguish and sense of hopelessness were no less obvious? She knew more about what he felt than he could ever guess.

O Lord, why was it
his
child you gave to me? Why did you send me here to this man so that I remember the things done to me? Shimei interceded and brought me to you, and you healed me. Now, I see Atretes and feel the old wounds reopened. Hold me fast, Father. Don’t let me slip; don’t let me fall. Don’t let me think as I used to think or live as I used to live.

“Life
is
cruel, Atretes, but you have a choice. Choose forgiveness and be free.”

“Forgiveness!” The word came out of the dark shadows like a curse. “There are some things in this world that can never be forgiven.”

Her eyes burned with tears. “I once felt the same way, but it turns back on you and eats you alive. When Christ saved me, everything changed. The world didn’t look the same.”

“The world doesn’t change.”

“No. The world didn’t.
I
did.”

He said nothing for a moment and then spoke heavily, “You know nothing of pain, woman.”

“I know all I ever want to know.” She wished she could see his face and look into his eyes as she spoke to him. “We’re all walking wounded, Atretes. Some wounds are physical and obvious. Other wounds are secret and hidden so deep that no one but God sees them.”

“What wounds do you bear?” he said sardonically.

She didn’t answer. She would not open herself to his mockery or disdain.

Atretes frowned. He could see her face in the moonlight, and it wasn’t defiance that held her silent. “What wounds?” he said more gently, wanting to know.

“Private
wounds,” she said doggedly.

Her stubbornness infuriated him. “There’s nothing private between us. You’re here because I suffer your presence for the sake of the boy. Now tell me of what you speak.”

She shook her head. “Perhaps one day I will, Atretes, but not because you command me to do so. It’ll be when we can
both
trust one another and not until then.”

“That day will never come.”

“Then we will never speak of it.”

Atretes stepped from the shadows. Rizpah felt instinctive fear of him. She knew this was the look countless men had seen just before they died. She went cold inside, waiting for the blow.

Atretes looked into her dark eyes. She said nothing. She just sat, waiting. As others had waited.

Tightening his fist, he remembered the young Chatti gladiator, standing before him with his arms outstretched, waiting for the final thrust through the heart. He remembered so many more. . . .

And still, Rizpah sat, afraid, but making no protest or appeal.

The calm resignation on her face stirred him—and suddenly an image filled his mind: Caleb on his knees, head tipped back slightly, exposing his neck as the mob screamed,
“Jugula!”

The Jewish gladiator’s words echoed in Atretes’ mind once again: “Free me, my friend.” As Caleb had placed his hands on Atretes’ thighs and tipped his head back, the German had been overwhelmed by his friend’s courage . . . and by the strange peace that had seemed to settle over Caleb as he prepared for death. Atretes had given his friend his wish. He had set him free. And as he did so, he had been filled with a deep hunger for whatever it was that made a man so strong, so courageous.

What gave you such peace, my friend?
he wondered now as he had wondered many times before. And he was met with the same silence. The same emptiness deep within.

Atretes took a step closer to Rizpah, seeing how she shivered in response to his nearness. “Caleb is a strong name, a warrior’s name,” he said, his voice low with an emotion she did not understand. “Keep it.”

With that he picked up the blanket that lay by the mat, dropped it beside her, and went out.

Rizpah obeyed Atretes and stayed within the walls of the villa. She offered to help the servants, but they said the master wouldn’t like it. It seemed she was relegated to some position between slave and free, a nebulous, undefined place within the household. Atretes avoided her and the others had resolved to be safe and do the same.

She found herself wandering around the huge villa in much the same way Atretes wandered about at night. When Caleb wasn’t sleeping or nursing, she’d find a place in the sunlight and place him on her shawl. Smiling, she would watch him kick, play, and make noises.

One afternoon, she entered a room on the second floor. It appealed to her, for sunlight streamed in from its balcony. It was empty of furnishings except for a big brass urn with a palm in it. She put Caleb on her shawl in a beam of sunlight. He rocked back and forth on his stomach, kicking his strong chubby legs. She sat down to watch him.

“You’re a little frog,” she laughed.

He gave a gurgling squeal and kicked faster. She saw what interested him and took hold of the edges of the blanket, pulling it across the smooth marble surface. “You always want what you can’t reach,” she said, patting his bottom.

Caleb stretched out his hand toward the shiny curve of the large brass urn. His legs kicked again, toes catching in the shawl and pushing him an inch closer. His tiny fingers brushed the brass; he kicked harder, rocking and reaching. Her smile softening, Rizpah took hold of her shawl again and turned it so that Caleb was alongside the big urn. He turned his head, staring curiously at the other baby in the brass.

“That’s you, Caleb.”

He left fingerprints on the shiny golden surface.

Loneliness engulfed her unexpectedly as she watched him reaching out to his own reflection. Were they always to be alone like this, cut off from the rest of the household? She stood and went out onto the balcony, looking down into the barren yard. Two guards passed the time near a gate, talking and laughing together. Other servants were tending the vegetable garden inside the walls.

“Lord,” Rizpah whispered, “you know how much I love Caleb. I thank you with all my heart for him. Don’t think I’m ungrateful, Father, but I miss Shimei and John and all the rest. I know I didn’t talk to them very much when I had the opportunity, but I miss being among them. I miss standing beside the river and singing and hearing your Word.”

The road that led back to Ephesus was just beyond the gate. As it dipped down and turned west, there was an old terebinth tree. She could see men and women beneath it, some sleeping, some talking, others looking toward the villa. Were they weary travelers resting in the shade? Or were they the amoratae Atretes so despised, waiting for a glimpse of their idol?

The hills, green from a recent rain, were a more welcome sight. What pleasure it would be to walk up there, to sit on a hillside and let Caleb feel the grass between his toes.

She glanced back at him and saw he had fallen asleep beside the urn. Smiling, she went and knelt beside him. She gazed down at him for a long time, thinking how beautiful and perfect he was. She touched his palm. He grasped hold of her finger, his mouth working as though he nursed even in his dreams.

“What a miracle you are,” she said and lifted him tenderly. She laid him softly against her shoulder and lightly kissed his cheek. Closing her eyes, she breathed in deeply the scent of him. Sweet innocence. New beginnings.

“What are you doing in here?”

The hard deep voice startled her. Glancing back, she rose, facing Atretes in the doorway. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know I wasn’t allowed in this chamber.”

Atretes entered the room and looked at her shawl still lying on the floor beside the shiny urn. “Do as you like.”

She retrieved her shawl and shook it, draping it over her other shoulder, out of the way of Caleb. She smiled at him in appeal. “What I would like is to take Caleb for a walk in the hills.”

“No,” he said, angry that he was struck again by her beauty.

“Under guard?”

“No.”
He came toward her and stopped a few feet away. His eyes narrowed. “And you will not stand out on the balcony where you can be seen again either.”

She glanced toward the balcony with a frown. “Where were you that you could see me?”

Atretes stepped by her and went out into the sunlight. “You can be sure Sertes’ spy saw you.”

“Spy? Where?”

He leaned against the balcony wall and nodded toward the road. “He’s sitting under that tree down there.”

“They look like travelers.”

“I recognized him from the ludus.”

“Oh.” She let out her breath softly. “Perhaps he’ll assume I’m a servant cleaning the upstairs chambers.”

“Standing idle and gazing out into the hills?”

She blushed. “Are you sure
he’s
the one spying on me?”

Atretes pushed away from the wall and walked back inside. “Yes, I have you watched. I know exactly where you are and what you’re doing every minute of the day.” He stopped in front of her. “And night.”

She forced a smile, her heart drumming. “I’m thankful to know Caleb is so well guarded.”

A muscle jerked in Atretes’ cheek. His gaze flickered over her. He stepped past her again. She felt as though she was being circled by a hungry lion.

“This was once my room,” he said without inflection.

“Pilia told me.”

He came around the other side of her, his eyes hard. “Did Pilia tell you anything else?”

“She said you don’t like to come in here.” She glanced around, admiring the marble walls and muraled floor. “It’s a lovely room, full of sunlight.”

“The largest and best in the house,” he said, his tone acrid.

Troubled, she glanced up at him. Questions flooded her mind, but she held her silence.

He cast a cursory glance around the empty room, his face hard. “A bedchamber fit for a queen.”

“I apologize for intruding where I shouldn’t have. I won’t come in here again.” Excusing herself, she left the chamber, breathing a sigh of relief when she was in the outer corridor and out from under that cold, blue stare.

Rizpah spent the rest of the afternoon in the atrium. She held Caleb on the edge of the pond and let him kick his feet in the water. When he became hungry, she adjourned to an alcove and nursed him.

When Caleb was replete, she went to the kitchen and asked for something to eat. The cook put bread, fruit, and thin slices of meat on a platter. He carried it, along with a small pitcher of wine, into a room with a long table where the slaves ate. Setting the meal down, he left her. Sitting at the bench, Rizpah gave thanks to God and ate alone. The silence was oppressive.

Pilia came in with baskets of bread. Rizpah smiled and greeted her, but the girl plunked a basket down and walked quickly away from the table. Her eyes were red and puffy from crying, and when she glanced back at Rizpah, her expression was one of unveiled resentment. Frowning in confusion, Rizpah watched her set the remaining baskets of bread on the table and leave.

Sighing, Rizpah rose. When she went out into the corridor, she saw the girl coming back with a tray of fruit. Pilia marched past her, pointedly ignoring her. Annoyed, Rizpah followed her into the small hall. “What’s wrong, Pilia?”

“Nothing.”

“You appear very upset about something.”

“Upset?”
She banged the tray down. “What right have I to be upset?” She marched out of the room again.

Rizpah shifted Caleb and waited. Pilia entered again with a stack of wooden plates. Rizpah watched her slam them one by one into place along the opposite side of the table. “Have I offended you in some way?”

Pilia stopped at the end of the table, clutching the remaining wooden plates against her. Her angry eyes filled with tears. “It would seem I’m no longer to be called to Atretes’ bed.”

Rizpah hadn’t known of their relationship and was dismayed by the pang she felt upon hearing of it. “What has that to do with me?”

“Don’t pretend you don’t know,” Pilia said and began laying out the rest of the plates.

“I
don’t
know,” she said uneasily.

Finishing her task, Pilia swept out of the room again.

Troubled, Rizpah lifted Caleb, secured him to her with her shawl, and went to her room. When she opened the door, she found the room bare. The blood drained from her face. She went in search of Lagos and found him in the
bibliotheca,
the large library, going over household accounts.

“Where are my things?”

“The master ordered them moved to the bedchamber on the second floor.”

She thought of Pilia and her face went hot. “Why?”

“He didn’t say.”

“Where is he?”

He glanced up in clear warning. “If I were you, I wouldn’t—”

“Where is he?”

“In the gymnasium, but—”

She swung around and left.

When she entered the gymnasium, she found Atretes, stripped down to a loincloth, his arms draped across a beam on his shoulders as he did knee bends. His eyes were fixed on her as though he had heard her coming along the outer corridor and had been expecting her.