“Go away,” he said in a chill, dead voice.
She sat down beside him and said nothing. He glared at her long and hard, then turned his eyes from her and stared out over the valley, back toward the great city. For hours he sat that way, unspeaking, cold and hard as stone. Hadassah sat beside him in silence.
The sun descended and the valley fell into darkness. Atretes rose, and Hadassah watched him walk along a worn pathway that led into a cave. She followed. Entering, she saw he was laying wood for a fire. She sat down against the wall.
Grabbing up his framea, he pointed it at her. “Get out of here or I’ll kill you!” She looked from the framea up into his eyes. “Get out! Go back to that harlot you serve!” She didn’t move, nor did she seem afraid. She simply looked up at him with those beautiful brown eyes so full of compassion.
Atretes drew back slowly and lowered the framea. Glaring at her, he turned his back and hunkered down before the fire, determined to ignore her.
Hadassah lowered her head and prayed silently for help.
“She expects me to come back, doesn’t she? She still thinks she has a hold over me.”
Hadassah lifted her head. His back was to her, and he was bent over the flickering flames. She was filled with sorrow for him. “Yes,” she answered truthfully.
Atretes came to his feet, his body taut with the power of his rage. “Go back and tell her she’s dead to me! Tell her I swore to Tiwaz and Artemis that I’d never look upon her face again.” He went to the opening of the cave and stood staring out into the darkness.
Hadassah rose. She stood beside him and looked out at the starry night. She remained silent for a long while and then said very softly, “The heavens tell of the glory of God, and their expanse declares the work of his hands . . . ”
Atretes went back inside the cave and sat down. He raked his fingers through his golden hair and held his head. After a moment, he took his hands down and looked at them.
“Do you know how many men I’ve killed? One hundred and forty-seven. Recorded.” He gave a harsh laugh. “I probably killed fifty men before that, Roman legionnaires who marched into Germania thinking they could claim our lands and make us slaves without a fight. I killed them with pleasure, to protect my family, to protect my village.”
He turned his hands over and stared at his palms. “Then I killed for Rome’s pleasure,” he said bitterly and made fists. “I killed to stay alive.” He raked his hands into his hair again. “I can remember the faces of every one of them, Hadassah. Some I killed without the least regret, but there were others. . . .” He closed his eyes tightly and remembered Caleb kneeling and lifting his head for the final death stroke. And his German countryman. Atretes remembered driving the framea through the young clansman’s heart.
He opened his eyes again, wanting to blot out all the faces from his mind, knowing he never could. “I killed them because I had to. I killed them because I wanted to earn my freedom.” He gritted his teeth, and the muscles stood out in the line of his hard jaw.
“Freedom! I have it now, written on an official document. I have it hanging around my neck.” Grasping the ivory pendant in his fist, he broke the gold chain and held his proof of freedom out toward her. “I can walk where I want to walk. I can do as I please. They threw offerings at my feet like I was one of their gods and made me rich enough to live in a villa next to the proconsul of Rome! I’m free!”
He gave a harsh, mirthless laugh and flung the ivory piece and gold chain against the stone wall of the cave. “I’m not free of anything. Their yoke is still around my neck, choking me. I’ll never be free of what Rome has done to me. She used me for her pleasure. She adored me because I set her blood on fire. I fulfilled her lust. She had only to command, and I performed.” He looked up at Hadassah standing at the mouth of the cave, her face so gentle, and smiled bitterly. “Rome. Julia. One and the same.”
Hadassah saw the inner agony etched into Atretes’ hard, handsome face. “‘Out of the depths I have cried to You, O Lord; Lord, hear my voice! Let Your ears be attentive to my cry for mercy. If You, O Lord, keep a record of sins, O Lord, who could stand? But with You there is forgiveness.’”
She saw how he frowned and came inside. She knelt beside him. “Life is a journey, Atretes, not our final destination. You are captive to your bitterness, but you can be set free.”
He stared hopelessly into the fire. “How?”
She told him.
Atretes shook his head. “No,” he said firmly and stood up. “Only a weak god would forgive those who nailed his son to a cross. A god with power would obliterate his enemies. He would wipe them all from the face of the earth.” He went to the mouth of the cave again.
“It’s hatred that keeps you a slave, Atretes. Choose forgiveness and love.”
“Love,” he said contemptuously, his back to her. “As I loved Julia? No. Love doesn’t set you free. It takes hold of you and weakens you. And when you’re most vulnerable, when you feel hope, it betrays you.”
“The Lord won’t betray you, Atretes.”
He glared back at her. “You can have your weakling god. He did Caleb no good. Tiwaz is my god. A god of power!”
“Is he?” she said softly and rose. She walked to the mouth of the cave and looked up into his eyes, which still burned with anger. “Is he powerful enough to give you the peace of mind you need?” She put her hand lightly on his arm. “The child is yours, Atretes.”
He jerked his arm away from her touch. “If Julia laid it at my feet, I’d walk away and never look back.”
Hadassah saw he meant it. Tears filled her eyes. “May God have mercy on you,” she whispered, then she walked out into the night.
Atretes watched her follow the narrow pathway down the hill. His gaze never left her, even after she reached the road that would lead her back to Ephesus.
Julia turned at Marcus’ request and looked at him strangely. “You want to see Hadassah?”
“Yes. It concerns a matter of some importance.”
“What matter?” she said, seeming only curious.
“A personal matter,” he said, annoyed at being questioned. “I’ll answer your questions after I’ve spoken with her. Is she here or have you sent her on an errand?”
“She just returned from an errand,” she said strangely and clapped her hands. The sound was like a violence in the peaceful stillness of the peristyle. “Send Hadassah to us,” she told one of Primus’ servants. She looked at her brother again and smiled. She asked about their mother, but hardly seemed interested as he told her she seemed to be handling her grief with surprising serenity.
At the sound of soft footsteps approaching, Marcus turned and saw Hadassah. She came beneath an archway into the sunlight and walked toward them with a humble grace that made him ache. She didn’t look at him.
“You wanted me, my lady?” she said, her head bowed.
“No. My brother wants you,” Julia said coldly.
Marcus glanced sharply at his sister.
“You’re to go to the bedchamber on the second floor, and wait for him there . . . ”
“Julia,” Marcus said, his temper rising, but she ignored him.
“Wait until he comes to you, then whatever he wants you to do, you will do it. Do you understand?”
Marcus saw Hadassah’s face become a mask of confusion and fear, and he wanted to strike his sister. “Leave us, Hadassah.” She stepped back uncertainly, looking between the two of them as though they’d both gone mad.
“You conniving harlot!” Julia screamed suddenly and came at Hadassah, hand raised to strike her. Marcus caught his sister’s wrist and jerked her around to face him.
“Leave us now!” Marcus commanded Hadassah harshly. When she was gone, he shook Julia once. “What’s the matter with you? Has this pregnancy driven you mad?”
“What Primus told me is true!” Julia said, fighting him.
“What did Primus tell you?” he demanded, his stomach sinking.
“He
said you came to see Hadassah rather than me. I said he was being ridiculous! My brother, in love with a slave? Absurd! I told him you came to see me—me! And he said I should open my eyes and see what’s been going on around me.”
“Nothing’s been going on. You’ve been drinking Primus’ poison,” Marcus said tautly. “Don’t listen to him.”
“If it’s not true, why do you come asking to speak to Hadassah?”
“For personal reasons that have nothing to do with you or Primus or anyone else.”
Her smile was unpleasant. “‘Personal reasons,’” she said with disdain. “You won’t answer, will you? You can’t without admitting that you care more about her than you do about me!”
“Your jealousy is out of place. You’re my sister!”
“Yes. I’m your sister and I deserve your loyalty, but do I have it?”
“You know you have it. You know you’ve always had it.” Recognizing her fragile emotional state, Marcus took her hands. “Julia, look at me. By the gods,” he said and jerked her again. “I said look at me. What I feel for Hadassah has nothing to do with my love for you. I adore you as I’ve always adored you.”
“But you love her.”
He hesitated and then let out his breath. “Yes,” he said softly. “I love her.”
“She’s stealing everyone from me!”
He let her go. “What are you talking about?”
“She stole Claudius.”
He frowned, wondering what was going on in her mind. What dangerous truths had Primus and Calabah twisted into foul lies, playing on Julia’s jealous nature? “You didn’t want Claudius,” he reminded her bluntly. “You sent Hadassah to him, hoping she’d divert him from you.”
“And she did, didn’t she? She diverted his interest completely. Did you know he never once asked for me after I sent Hadassah to him?” She’d never thought about that until Calabah had asked her about it, and then she had realized the truth. “And he spent hours with her, hours she should have been serving me.”
“She was serving you. She did what you demanded of her. You wanted Claudius distracted, and he was. He questioned Hadassah about her religion.”
She looked at him coldly. “How would you know that unless you asked him?”
“Of course, I asked! You’ll remember I was furious with you for sending her in your place.”
“I remember,” she said, eyes blazing. “You were angry that I’d given her to him. I thought it was concern for me, concern for my marriage. But that wasn’t why, was it?” Her voice was thick with bitterness, and she shook her head and turned her back to him.
“I’ve been so blind!” she said with a bleak laugh. “I look back now and see it all so clearly. All those times when I thought you came to be with me because I needed you.” She turned to him. “It wasn’t like that at all, was it, Marcus? You didn’t come to Capua for me. You didn’t move back into the villa in Rome or come to Ephesus for me. You came for her.”
Marcus turned her around. “All those times, I did come to be with you. Don’t let anyone make you think otherwise.” It hadn’t been until later, much later, that he had realized Hadassah mattered to him in ways no other woman ever had. Julia had been his first concern. Until now.
Julia looked away from his wrath. “I wonder what she said to Atretes all those times I sent her for him at the ludus, things that have poisoned him against me.”
“What happened with Atretes has nothing to do with Hadassah,” Marcus said angrily. “You can’t cast the blame on her for your own foolish actions. You drove him away, not Hadassah.”
“If she told him the child is his as I commanded her to, he would have come. And he hasn’t! She probably went to him and sang psalms and wove her stories instead.” She broke down, weeping. “If she’d done what I told her, why hasn’t he come to me? Why this hateful silence?”
“Because you thought you could have him on your own terms,” Marcus said. “And you can’t.” Full of pity for her, Marcus sighed and drew his sister into his arms. “It’s over, Julia. Some things you can’t put back together again.”
Julia leaned against him and gave in completely to tears. When she finally regained her composure, she drew back and sank down onto a cold marble bench in the small alcove. Marcus sat with her. She looked at him bleakly.
“Why is it that love burns so hot you think you’ll be consumed by it, and then, when it’s over, there’s nothing left but the taste of ashes in your mouth?”
“I don’t know, Julia. I used to wonder that myself.”
“With Arria?”
“With Arria and others,” he said.
A small frown flickered across her pale face. “But not with Hadassah. Why?”
“She’s different from any woman I’ve ever met,” he said softly and took his sister’s hands. “How many slaves would give their lives to protect their mistresses? Caius would’ve killed you if not for Hadassah. She’s served you faithfully, not out of a sense of duty like Enoch and Bithia and the others, but out of love. She’s something rare and beautiful.”
“‘Something rare and beautiful,’” Julia repeated dully. “But she’s still a slave.”
“Not if you free her.”
Julia glanced up at him. “I need her,” she said quickly, feeling a sudden, inexplicable sense of panic. “I need her now more than ever.”
Marcus looked down over her swollen abdomen and nodded. “Then I’ll wait,” he said softly, “until after the baby comes.”
Julia didn’t respond. She merely stared at the floor, and Marcus felt a strange chill come over him at the emptiness he glimpsed in his sister’s eyes.
Chapter 35
After a long and difficult labor, Julia gave birth to Atretes’ son. The midwife handed the squalling infant in his womb coat to Hadassah. The child was beautiful and perfect, and Hadassah felt a sweet joy fill her as she washed him carefully and rubbed him with salt. She wrapped him in warm clothes and came to place him beside his mother. “Your son, my lady,” she murmured, and smiled as she bent down to give him to her.
Julia turned her face away. “Take him to the temple steps and leave him there,” she rasped. “I don’t want him.”
Hadassah felt as though Julia had struck her. “My lady! Please don’t say such things,” she whispered pleadingly. “You don’t mean it. He’s your child.”
“He’s Atretes’ son,” she said bitterly. “Let him grow up a temple prostitute, or a slave just like his father.” She glared up at Hadassah. “Even better, put him on the rocks to die. He should never have been born.”
“What did she say?” the midwife asked, her hands pausing as they wrung out a bloody cloth in cold water. Hadassah drew back from Julia, stricken.
“She said to put it on the rocks,” a voice spoke from the darkness.
Hadassah instinctively drew the child closer.
The midwife protested. “But there’s no flaw in this child. He’s perfect.”
“And who are you to say? It’s for the mother to decide what happens to the child, not you.” Calabah came from the shadows of the room, where she had been waiting for the ordeal to end. “If Lady Julia doesn’t want a man’s issue, so be it. It’s hers to discard or keep as she wishes.” The midwife shrank back at her advance. Calabah turned her cold, soulless eyes on Hadassah.
Hadassah bent desperately to Julia. “Please, my lady, don’t do this! He’s your son. Look at him. Please. He’s beautiful.”
“I don’t want to look at him!” Julia cried out, covering her face with her white hands.
“You don’t have to, Julia,” Calabah said soothingly, her gaze still fixed and burning on Hadassah.
“My lady, you will regret—”
“If Atretes didn’t want him, neither do I! What is he to me that I should be made miserable every time I have to look at him? It’s not my fault I got pregnant. Must I suffer forever for a mistake? Get rid of him!”
The child wailed pathetically, tiny arms flailing, his tiny m
outh open and quivering.
“Get him out of here!” Julia screamed hysterically.
Hadassah felt the cold bite of Calabah’s fingers and felt herself thrust toward the door. “Do as you’re commanded,” Calabah said. Frightened by what she saw in Calabah’s eyes, Hadassah left.
She stood outside the door, her heart racing, sickened and horrified, the child crying in her arms. She remembered the other babe buried in a Roman garden, no marker to even tell of his brief existence. “What do I do, little one?” she whispered, holding the child closer. “I can’t keep you here. I can’t take you to your father. Oh, God, what do I do?”
She closed her eyes tightly, searching her mind for words that would instruct her, and the Word came. “Slaves, be obedient to those who are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in the sincerity of your heart, as to Christ; not by way of eye service, as men-pleasers, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart . . .”
But did that mean she must obey Julia? Did that mean she must put Atretes’ son on the rocks to die?
The will of God from the heart. Her mind stayed firmly on that beacon of light. God’s will, not Julia’s. Not the dark will of Calabah Shiva Fontaneus. Not even her own will. God’s will be done.
Hadassah quickly took the baby to her sleeping mat and wrapped him until he was tight and warm in her shawl. Then she took him up in her arms again and left the house.
The night air was cold and the baby cried pitifully. She nestled him closer and spoke softly to comfort him. Her destination was some distance away, but, even in the darkness, she didn’t waver once from her path. When she came to the house, she knocked and the door was opened.
“Cleopas,” she said, recognizing the man from gatherings she had attended. “I must see John.” She knew if anyone learned that she had brought the child to him, John would be in danger. So would anyone else who aided her in disobedience to her mistress. Romans believed they had the right of life and death over their children. But Hadassah answered to God, not to Rome.