Rebekah's Treasure (39 page)

I lower my eyes, waiting for his command, but all I hear is laughter. When I look up, that double chin is heaving up and down, the baton is on his lap alongside the tablet, and his hands are pressing against his round, quivering belly. Surely, he means to mock my God. But when his laughter subsides, his eyes tell me something altogether different, and I see how desperately he wants to believe.

“I have no wish to offend the gods, not even yours,” he says, with a smirk on his face. “Pray if you like, but make it quick. I’ve business to conduct.”

And so I place my trembling hands on the hem of his toga and ask the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to heal him in the name of Jesus. It’s over before anyone knows what’s happened. I see the Manager move his leg this way and that beneath the folds of his garment, then see the look of disdain on his face. “I am as I always was,” he says, ordering his slaves, with a flick of a hand, to hoist the litter. “It seems your god is as deaf as ours.” He takes up his baton as the slaves carry him away. “You’ll cause no more disturbances in my market,” he shouts back at me. “If you do, I’ll have you arrested.” With that, his bearers carry him back to his curved seat beneath the canopy.

As soon as the Manager is settled in his chair, Argos and his thugs waste no time surrounding Zechariah and me. Two of them hold daggers. Now our predicament is worse than before. The Manager’s disappointment over my seemingly fruitless prayer has embittered him towards me. He’ll surely make good his threat if any trouble begins.

“No one will help you now,” Argos says, grinning like a madman. “We will all go to your house, and there you’ll hand over your cup.”

What happens next occurs to fast I can hardly comprehend it. But suddenly, five Galatians with blond hair and sky-blue eyes, and as quiet as death, appear in our midst; large men, and fierce, too, with bodies like gladiators. Without raising a sweat or their voices, they knock Argos’s three men to the ground. Then two Galatians take Argos by each arm and pull him to the side to make way for an elegant looking woman to enter our midst. Her white muslin
stola
nearly touches the ground and is
richly bordered in red. Over one shoulder is draped a red
palla
, fastened by a large emerald pin. Her wrists and fingers are covered with gold and precious gems. Three necklaces ring her throat: two gold; one, a mix of pearls and emeralds. Her elaborately braided hair is piled high atop her head and covered with a thin gold-spun net. And over that is draped a sheer white silk veil. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen anyone so wonderfully arrayed.

“Come with me,” she says quietly, then turns before I can say a word.

Ethan and my sons are now only a few cubits away, and fearing they’ll do something rash, I turn on my heels and follow the strange woman. Several steps later, I hazard a backward glance, and am relieved to see only Zechariah trudging behind.

“We’ve been searching for you,” the woman says over her shoulder as she leads us down a stone-paved street toward the largest houses in the city. “Ever since Judah came to us we’ve been searching. We were ready to give up, thinking you dead. But praise our Lord and Savior, we’ve found you.”

The woman is agile and slender. She moves quickly along the columned streets, heading south. It’s as if there are wings on her heels. She doesn’t even bother looking back to see if we keep up. I worry about Zechariah. He’s beginning to show the wear of the past several weeks. They’ve sapped his great strength, and he huffs and puffs behind me.

Finally, the woman stops in front of an enormous house, larger even than the other grand houses around it. Its front double door is carved cedar; the doorpost and lintels, carved marble. Before her hand can touch the door, it’s opened by a man, stooped and far past his prime. She says something to him in a low, pleasant voice, then ushers us into a large sunny atrium. The fountain, an imposing marble statue of a girl holding a jug from which water pours into a pool at her feet, dominates the center.

The strange, elegant woman beckons us to sit on a nearby cushioned bench, and Zechariah looks grateful as he lowers his bulky frame
onto the colorful damask pillows. For the first time I wonder what has happened to her Galatians. “Your men? Are they . . . .” I stop in mid sentence for she is laughing. She laughs and laughs, and just as I begin to feel uncomfortable and wonder if it was wise for us to come, she brushes back her veil to reveal her full face.

“Well? Don’t you recognize me?”

I stare at the lovely face with its high cheekbones and almond shaped eyes the color of carob. “Who . . . are you?” I stammer in bewilderment.

When she smiles I see it; the small space between her upper front teeth and the barely noticeable rosette-shaped mark on her cheek, which she points to with her jewel-bedecked finger.

“
Judith?
” I rise, but my legs, which feel like dough, can’t hold me and I drop back onto the pillows. “Judith? Is that you?”

She laughs. Oh, how she laughs. Then she dances around the room, and finally she comes to where I’m still sitting dumbfounded, and scoops me up in her arms.

“Rebekah! My darling sister! It’s so good to see you. I knew you right away. It almost cost us dearly for I nearly gave myself away. How I wanted to hold you and kiss you and tell you who I was. I never dreamed you were the ‘Rebekah’ Judah spoke of—the ‘Rebekah’ brave enough to risk death to save one half-starved young man and an old woman. But I should have known. You were always brave. Always standing up to me and Mama.”

“Then
you
are the rich follower of the Way Hannah spoke of, the one who heads the Gentile Church here in Caesarea?”

“Yes, my husband and I both. We do what we can for the believers. Many are poor, and some, like my Galatians, we have saved from the arena. God has been good to us. And while He has not blessed us with children, He has blessed us with great wealth. Titus’s legions love roast pork with their
garum
. My husband has grown rich selling pigs to his army.” She laughs as she pulls me up off the bench. “You’ll meet him later, and I’ll enjoy getting to know yours better, too,” she smiles at Zechariah. “But first we have over twenty years of catching up to do.”

We’re all sitting here in Judith’s house with her and her husband—Apollonios, my husband and sons, Zechariah, Demas, Hannah, and Judah. We’ve been here all afternoon and most of the evening, laughing, talking, catching up on the missed years as well as eating foods I’ve never eaten before, and which Hannah refused because they were “unclean.”

Judith was kind about it and had the cook make Hannah a special dinner of minced beef soaked in wine. The rest of us, even the normally ritually observant Aaron and Ethan, ate roasted hare stuffed with chicken livers, baked dormice filled with pine nuts, and pork sausages. There were also platters of apples and pears and apricots, almonds drizzled with honey, the best date cakes I’ve ever tasted, as well as the finest Egyptian-wheat pastries filled with fruit and nuts. It was a feast befitting this great reunion of so many formerly disconnected souls. Oh, I tell you, I felt God smile upon us! I felt His pleasure! We were a family again, all of us. And how we laughed over Judith mistaking Zechariah for my husband, though Ethan didn’t seem to think it was funny.

We have all eaten until I fear we’ll burst. All but Judah. Hannah continues to watch him like a hawk, and reminds him at every turn that his stomach is as shriveled as a dried date.

Soon, many followers of the Way will come, both great and small, rich and poor. For all are welcome here in Judith’s and Apollonios’ house. And Judith has promised to ask the believers to pray for Esther. Though Ethan, my sons, and Demas stayed until the last of the slave girls were auctioned, Esther was not among them. Judith says God has done many miracles in Caesarea for His people, and she’s sure He’ll do one for us. That’s when I tell her He already has. After all, wasn’t this reunion a miracle?

My sister is here in Caesarea! I can scarcely take it in. And she and her Gentile husband head the church. Oh, how God’s ways are different from ours! How high they are! The man my parents spurned and
deprived of knowing and loving, the
pig farmer
they called him—and the only name they ever used when speaking of their son-in-law—has turned out to be a kind and generous and mighty man of God—the head and not the tail.

I would feel sad over the waste of it all if I were not so full of joy. I can’t feel sad about anything, not today, tonight, this moment. My head spins like a child’s clay disk. It reels with the knowledge that my husband and two sons sit by my side, that the sister my family mourned as dead is restored to me, that we have good friends in Zechariah, Demas, Hannah and Judah. And that we’re all together.

My head leans on Ethan’s shoulder as I listen to my sister tell of the wondrous things God has been doing in their lives, and I feel incredibly blessed. Oh, yes, weeping endures for a night but joy
does
come in the morning.

“We might have found her,” Judith says three days later. “But don’t get your hopes up. One of my spies claims there’s a young woman named Esther recently brought here with other girls from Jerusalem by a slaver who follows the army. He’s been selling his girls to every brothel along the Via Maris.”

My breath catches. “Oh Judith, a brothel?”

My sister shakes her head. “Though the slave dealer swore she was as healthy as a camel, the brothels wouldn’t take her because they thought she looked diseased. Even with the kohl on her eyes, and the alkanet and ocher on her lips, they said she looked sickly.”

“Then where is she?” I can hardly get the words out.

“In the house of Cassius Plotius Flavillus.”

“Who?”

“The Market Manager.” Judith ignores my groan. “The slave who runs his kitchen purchased her for a few
drachmas
. Said the dealer was happy to be rid of her. She now carries wood for their fires.”

“Oh, this is terrible!”

“Surely it’s better than a brothel,” Judith says, looking puzzled. “And Cassius Flavillus is not unkind to his servants. It could be worse, Rebekah.”

“You don’t understand. The Manager holds me in contempt. He’ll not be disposed to show me any kindness.” I quickly tell her how I prayed for his leg just before she and her Galatians arrived at the marketplace.

When I’m done, Judith tucks one hand under her chin, just like she used to when signaling the matter was settled. “Don’t think about that now. Let’s first determine if she really is
our
Esther. Tomorrow, I’ll send someone to the house to make inquires.”

An aging servant—for none in Judith’s house are slaves but all are free and are paid wages—leads a lanky, middle-aged woman to the atrium where Judith and I sit talking by the fountain. We’ve been expecting her. All morning I’ve torn my nerves to shreds waiting. She is related to the head kitchen slave at the house of the Market Manager, and was once a slave there herself until she purchased her freedom. She’s also a follower of the Way. For these reasons Judith chose her to make the inquiries.

“Come, Joanna,” Judith says, in a pleasant voice. “Sit here.” She pats the cushioned bench where we also sit. “Tell us what you’ve learned.”