He would have torn his son from her arms were the boy not wound into her shawl.
He tossed the pouch of coins at her feet. “Two hundred denarii,” he snarled.
Rizpah’s lips parted in shock at the gesture. She stepped back. She’d never seen such a hard, cold, implacable face.
“Not enough?” he said coldly.
“You think to buy the boy back from me?”
“No! I’m paying you for services rendered.”
The hurtful words roused a fierce anger within her. “Money? What recompense is that for tearing a child she loves from a woman’s arms? You don’t seem to understand. I love Caleb.”
“Caleb?” he said, remembering a Jewish gladiator long ago in Rome, a man he’d respected—and killed.
“His given name.”
“Not a name I gave him.”
“You were not there to name him!”
“I was told he was dead,” Atretes said coldly, cursing himself for offering any explanation. It was none of her business. “The child is mine, woman. Untie him and give him to me.”
Rizpah tried to fight back the tears, but they overflowed her. “No.”
“No?”
“Please. We must talk.”
Atretes was unmoved. Julia had used tears against him to get whatever she wanted, too. “Nothing you can say will make a difference.”
“Perhaps there’s been a mistake. Caleb has dark hair and eyes. . . .” Her voice trailed off when his eyes darkened with an anger she did not understand.
“His mother had dark hair and eyes,” he said curtly. He took a step closer, and she drew back an equal distance. “Though I may have doubted the word of his mother,” he said cynically, “I have no cause to doubt the word of her handmaiden, Hadassah. The child is mine!”
“You speak of him as though he were a possession! He isn’t a horse to be traded or a villa to be sold.” She looked around. “This isn’t a home. It’s a fortress. What sort of life can you offer him?”
“That doesn’t concern you.”
“It concerns me greatly. He’s my son.”
“He was never your son, woman. Just because a child is placed in your arms doesn’t make him yours.”
“He became part of me the moment John placed him in my arms,” she said.
“All women have the heart of a harlot, and I will not leave my son in the hands of one!”
Tears filling her eyes again. “You’re wrong to judge all women because of what one did to you.”
“Your opinion matters little when weighed against my legal right to him.” He nodded at the babe, and her back stiffened.
“You speak of legal rights. What of love? Where were you when his mother was commanding that he be abandoned? Why didn’t she send him to you? You didn’t want him either, did you? You turned your back on him. And you speak of womankind? Where would Caleb be now had Hadassah not rescued him? Why do you want him back now when you cared nothing about him before?”
He wanted to throttle her for such questions, for they roused guilt and pain. They also roused a fierce possessiveness. “He is flesh of my flesh,” he said coldly.
“Just because you spent a few hours in a woman’s bed doesn’t make you his father!”
A muscle locked in his jaw.
“You’ve scarcely looked at him,” she said, struggling against anger and grief. “Why do you want him, Atretes? What do you intend to do with him?”
“I intend to take him back with me to Germania.”
She let out a soft gasp. “Germania!” she said in anguish. “How will you, a man alone, tend a four-month-old nursing baby on such a long and arduous journey? Have you no thought of his welfare? He won’t survive!”
“He will survive,” he said with fierce determination. “Now, give him to me.”
“He’s too young—”
“Give him to me, or by the gods, I will take him from you by force!”
Caleb awakened and began to cry softly. Rizpah felt his small fists pressing against her breasts. Eyes filled with tears, she looked up at Atretes and knew he would do exactly as he threatened. She could not risk Caleb being harmed. Loosening her shawl, she held Caleb out to him. The baby cried harder, his small arms flailing. Her milk came, increasing her anguish. “He’s hungry.”
Atretes hesitated. His son looked small and fragile. He looked at Rizpah and saw her anguish. Tears poured silently down her cheeks. Face rigid, he reached out and took his son. The infant cried harder.
Rizpah crossed her arms over her heart. She looked up at him. “Please, Atretes, don’t do this.” Never had he seen such a look of anguish on a woman’s face.
“Get out,” he said hoarsely.
“Please—”
“Get out!” he shouted, and the baby began to scream.
Uttering a sob, Rizpah turned away.
“Don’t forget this,” he said and kicked the pouch of money after her.
She swung around at the door. Picking up the pouch, she flung it into the fountain, glaring at him through her tears. “May God forgive you, for I cannot!” With one last look at the child, she fled, sobbing.
Atretes strode over and watched her run down the steps and across the courtyard. He kicked the door shut before she reached the gate.
Discomforted, he looked down at his son’s reddening face and felt a moment’s doubt. He touched the black hair and smooth cheek. The baby stiffened in his arms and screamed louder. “Scream all you want. You’re mine,” he said gruffly. “Not hers. You’re mine!” He held his son closer, rocking him and pacing the floor. The child didn’t cease crying.
“Lagos!”
The servant appeared almost immediately. “Yes, my lord.” Atretes wondered if he had been lurking around the corner, listening to every word.
“Summon the wet nurse.”
“Yes, my lord.” Lagos had never seen his master look ill at ease, but now, with a squalling baby in his arms, he looked almost comically devoid of confidence.
When the servant brought the woman to the atrium, Atretes was all too eager to hand the wailing infant to her. “Take him. The woman said he’s hungry.” She took him from the chamber, and Atretes breathed a sigh of relief as the sound of his screaming son receded.
Lagos saw the pouch of coins in the water. “She would not take them, my lord?”
“Obviously not.”
Lagos moved to fish the pouch out, but jerked his hand back quickly when Atretes barked at him, “Leave it!” The servant knew by the dark look on Atretes’ face as he turned and strode away that his master would spend the day in the gymnasium.
3
A servant awakened Lagos late that night. “It’s Atretes’ son. The nurse is worried.” He rose groggily and followed the serving girl down the corridor. As he came nearer the kitchen he could hear the baby crying. He entered and saw the wet nurse pacing with a bundle in her arms.
“He will not nurse,” she said, her face filled with anxiety.
“What do you want me to do about it?” he retorted, testy from being awakened in the middle of night.
“You must tell the master, Lagos.”
“Oh no. Not I,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s enough that you’ve awakened me in the middle of the night. I won’t knowingly put my head in the lion’s mouth.” Yawning, he scratched his head. “The babe will nurse when he gets hungry enough.” He turned away.
The baby was her responsibility now.
“You don’t understand. He’s been crying since the master gave him to me!”
Lagos paused in the doorway and turned around. “So long?”
“Yes, and I tell you, I can feel him growing weaker in my arms. If he goes on like this, he could die.”
“Then you had better do something!”
“That’s what I’ve been telling you! I’ve done everything I know how to do. An infant this small needs milk.”
“Has yours gone sour, woman?” he said angrily, knowing nothing of these matters. How was h
e going to tell the master the wet nurse was dry?
Vexed, the woman responded testily. “There’s nothing wrong with my milk. He’s pining for his mother.”
“Oh,” he said grimly. “His mother doesn’t want him.”
“Pilia said she was waiting outside the gate.”
“The woman who brought the child to Atretes is not his mother,” he said, having overheard the conversation in the atrium. “And the master wants her to have nothing to do with the child.”
“Oh,” she said and then gave a sad sigh. She placed the baby in a box-bed near the cookfire. “Then perhaps it’s the will of the gods that he die. A pity. He’s beautiful.”
Lagos felt a cold chill. “Do you mean to leave him there?”
“I’ve done everything I can.”
Considering the efforts and risks Atretes had taken to reclaim his son, Lagos doubted he would accept the babe’s death in so calm a manner. “I’ll tell the master of the situation as soon as he awakens. As for you, woman, if you value your life, I suggest in earnest that you keep trying to get that baby to eat.”
* * *
Atretes couldn’t sleep. He stood on his balcony looking out at the moonlit hills.
It had been ten long years since he led the Chatti in a rebellion against Rome. Defeated, he’d been taken prisoner and sold to a ludus in Capua, then to the Great Ludus of Rome. Ten years! Another lifetime.
Were any of his people still alive? Had his brother, Varus, survived the battle? What of Marta, his sister, and her husband, Usipi? What had happened to his mother? He ached to go home to Germania and find out if any of his loved ones were still alive. Reclining on a couch, he stared up at the star-studded sky, hardly feeling the still of the night air. He wanted to breathe in the pungent scent of pine, drink sweet honeyed ale and beer. He wanted to sit with the warriors around a council fire in the sacred grove. He wanted to be at peace with himself again.
Sighing, he closed his eyes, wondering how that would ever be possible. He wanted to sleep, to forget, to go back, far back to when he was a child running with his father through the black forests of Germania. Life had been so full and rich then, stretching out before him, ready for the taking. He wanted his son to grow up in the forest, wild and free as he had been, untainted by Rome.
Frowning, he listened intently. He swore he could still hear his son crying as he had when he’d taken him from the widow’s arms. But that had been hours ago.
Letting out his breath slowly, he tried to turn his mind to the future and away from the past. Yet what came to him was a vivid image of Rizpah’s face, tears streaming down smooth cheeks, eyes dark with anguish.
“May God forgive you, for I cannot!”
He shut his eyes tightly, remembering the night Hadassah had come to him in the hills and said similar words to him. “May God have mercy on you.”
He swore, his head spinning with wild thoughts that tangled like arms and legs in combat. “May God forgive you.” The sound that came from his throat was a growl of pain. He came off the couch with the swiftness of a powerful animal and gripped the wall as though he would leap over it to the dirt compound below. His heart was pounding heavily, his breath rasping in his throat.
He heard the baby crying again.
Turning away from the balcony, he went back inside his bedroom. Silence.
Stretching out on his bed, he lay wide awake. Still, he heard nothing.
Tension filled him until he lunged off the bed and strode to the door. Banging it back against a wall, he went along the corridor and stopped above the inner courtyard. Head cocked, he listened intently, trying to hear anything amiss. The fountain in the atrium was running. Other than that, no other sound was discernible in the large villa.
It was the middle of the night. Babies in his village had often awakened hungry and needed to be suckled. Perhaps that was all it was.
Yet the uneasy feeling persisted. Something was wrong. He didn’t know what it was, but sensed it. He’d learned to trust his instincts while fighting in the arena and he couldn’t ignore them now.
Muttering a curse, he went along the upper corridor and down the steps. He would see his son and set his mind at rest. Where had Lagos put the wet nurse?
He opened doors and peered into empty rooms, heading toward the back of the villa. Hearing footsteps, he turned a corner and saw Lagos with a small clay lamp in his hand. The servant jumped in surprise, then came quickly toward him. “My lord, I was just coming—”
“Where’s my son?”
“In the kitchen. I was just coming to see if you were awake.”
“Where’s the kitchen?”
“This way, my lord,” Lagos said, going ahead of him with the lamp.
“What’s wrong?” Atretes demanded, wanting to push the man into a faster pace.
“He won’t nurse. He’s been crying since . . . since this morning.”
Atretes said nothing. He could hear the child now, and the sound pierced his heart. He followed Lagos into the kitchen and was immediately struck by the stench of a latrine. The baby was in a box-bed near it. As it was near dawn, the cook was working bread dough.
He walked over to the baby and peered down at him. “Is he sick?”
“I don’t think so, my lord,” the wet nurse said nervously, standing nearby wringing her hands.
“What do you think?” he demanded angrily.
She was trembling with fear. Her master looked even more fierce than his reputation had painted him. She remembered Lagos’ warning to her and was afraid he’d lay the blame for the child’s decline solely upon her. She didn’t dare tell him that the child might die because he’d taken him from his foster mother.
“Babies are very fragile, my lord. Sometimes they sicken and die for no reason.”
“He was well this morning.”
When he turned toward her, she drew back in fear. “He hasn’t stopped crying since Lagos put him in my arms, my lord. I’ve done everything I can, and still he won’t suckle.”
He frowned and looked down at his son again. Bending, he picked him up. The soft, pathetic cries turned to wails that cut him worse than any sword ever had.
Lagos had never seen his master look more vulnerable.
“What do we do?” Atretes said, holding the babe in the crook of his arm as he began to pace. “I won’t let him die.”
“We could send for his mother,” Lagos said and immediately regretted the words at the look Atretes gave him. “I mean the woman who brought him to you, my lord,” he amended quickly.
Atretes continued to pace. He brushed his son’s cheek, and the baby’s head turned sharply, mouth open. “Here,” he said harshly. “He’s hungry now. Feed him.”
The wet nurse saw there was no other way to convince him. She took the child, sat down, and bared her ample breast. The baby grasped the nipple and then drew back sharply, crying louder, milk running unwanted from his mouth. She looked up at Atretes. “You see, my lord?”
Atretes ran a hand back through his hair. He was responsible for the deaths of over a hundred and fifty men. Would he be responsible for the death of his infant son as well? He shut his eyes and turned away, rubbing the back of his neck. There was only one thing he could think to do. “Awaken Silus,” he commanded grimly.
The wet nurse covered herself and put the baby back to bed. “Give him to me,” Atretes said angrily, seeing how quick she was to dispense with her duties. “Perhaps you’ve bound him too tightly.” He sat down and laid the baby on his thighs, untying the swaddling clothes that were wound around him, making him look like a mummy. The baby’s skin was pale and blotchy. The cool air brought a stream of urine that splattered against Atretes’ chest. Drawing back in surprise, he cursed.
“It happens all the time, my lord,” the wet nurse said quickly. “Do you wish me to take him?”
Atretes gazed down at his son. “No,” he said with a wry smile. “I think he’s telling me what he thinks of me.”
Silus entered
the room looking bleary-eyed from drink and lack of sleep. “Lagos said you sent for me, my lord.”
“Go to Ephesus. Southeast of the Artemision and library is a street with insulae on both sides,” Atretes said. “Enter the one on the west. Second floor, fourth door on the right is the widow, Rizpah.”
“The woman who brought the baby this morning?”
“Yes. Bring her back here as quickly as possible.”
“She never left, my lord.”
“What?” Atretes’ face darkened. “What do you mean she never left? I ordered her out!”
“She left the villa, my lord. She went outside the gate and sat by the side of the road. She’s been there ever since.”
Atretes frowned, annoyed and relieved at the same time. “Get her.”
Silus left quickly.
The baby’s crying made his nerves raw. Atretes paced and then sat down, the child in his lap. “What’s taking so long?” he muttered, feeling like he had a hot coal in his hands. Light footsteps hurried along the outer corridor, and the widow appeared in the doorway.
Face pale with cold and puffy from crying, she entered the kitchen. Atretes waited for her to rail at him with accusations. She didn’t. She said nothing except “Caleb” in a broken whisper as she came across the room. Grim-lipped, Atretes took his hands from his son, and she lifted the baby from his lap. As she cradled the infant close, he continued to cry, but the sound was different. Turning away, she shifted her shawl and untied the right shoulder of her tunic. Atretes saw her shoulders jerk once as his son began to nurse.
The kitchen fell silent.
The wet nurse gave a deep sigh, echoing his own relief. “A babe knows his mother.”
Atretes rose sharply. “Get out!”
With a frightened gasp, the wet nurse fled the room. Atretes turned his angry glare on Lagos and Silus, dismissing both with a jerk of his head.