The man standing beside him cringed. “Please, my lord. The boy has just lost his mother.”
Not lost. She was right here. Jonathan squeezed her cold hand and touched her cheek. This time he expected the cold but was still stabbed by it. She was gone. His mother was gone. His father entered the room and stopped at the end of his mother’s couch.
A man approached him. “Apologies, old friend. Your servant summoned me as soon as she fell in the atrium. By the time I reached her, she’d passed into the afterlife.”
Not the afterlife, eternal life with Jesus, but the words stuck in Jonathan’s throat. God had ignored his pleas and taken her from him anyway. His father moved to kneel on her opposite side and took her other hand in his. Jonathan tried to force back the emotion still building inside.
The man in blue and white stepped forward. “Father, I—”
“All of you out.”
Silence fell over the room as everyone stilled. “Master, shall I—”
“Everyone out except my son.” His father’s gaze held Jonathan’s for a long moment. “Now.”
One by one the people filed out, last of all the man in blue and white. His half-brother. Someone closed the door to the chamber. His father kissed the back of his mother’s hand, and when he looked at Jonathan, his eyes were wet. When his father reached across his mother and put his hand on Jonathan’s shoulder, the last of Jonathan’s restraint shattered. He collapsed on his mother’s chest and surrendered to the pain.
Chapter 3 – Worthy
The warm garden with its fragrant blooms and tranquil fountain spray failed to soothe Jonathan as they normally did. Nothing would make this day better. He made his way to the bench he and his father shared the day they first met and sat down. The pair of crested larks he’d come to think of as pets weren’t in their flowering bush beside the fountain. He scattered the bread crumbs he’d brought for them anyway.
Father believed Jonathan spent so much time in this garden because he preferred being outdoors. The truth was Jonathan preferred being anywhere his half-brother Manius was not. In the absence of their father, he’d proven himself capable of far worse than the boys in the alley.
“You look deep in thought, my son. What troubles you?”
Jonathan’s gaze flew from his sandaled feet to his father. “Nothing.”
His father frowned and sat beside him, shifting a roll of green cloth from under his arm to his lap. “I will respect your privacy, but you look just like your mother when you try to lie.”
Jonathan touched the carved bone horse head resting between the fabric of his tunic and his chest. The day after his mother’s death, he’d taken her most treasured possession, tied it with a leather cord, and hung it from his neck. It never left him, not to sleep or to bathe. “I was remembering her.”
His father looked out over the statues. “I know what today is. Four years has not dulled my memory of her either. A thousand years could not. My only comfort is she lives on in you.”
Jonathan’s chest tightened. His father so rarely spoke of her. When he did his eyes always misted as they did now. “Thank you, Father.”
The carving above his heart meant more now that Jonathan knew its origin. How his mother had been born a slave into his grandfather’s house. How his father had carved it from the leg bone of an ox for her as a girl, and loved her when she’d become a young woman. His grandfather had sold her, his father unable to find her, until their reunion at a feast years later. His father hadn’t recognized her, even in the intimacy given as a gift to him by her master. Why she never told him who she was until she’d brought Jonathan to him was a question that would forever linger for him and his father both.
“I brought you something for the feast tonight.” His father unrolled the fabric in his lap and held up an emerald tunic trimmed in intricate patterns of gold thread. “When Dionysius told Deborah it was for you, she tried to refuse payment again. He left the coin and ran. She wishes you to visit.”
Manius would be furious when he saw Jonathan clothed in this. He fought the frown with a swallow.
His father sighed and lowered the tunic to his lap. “I know you have the economy and modesty you were reared with. But you are also a Tarquinius, and the son of a senator. ”
Jonathan took the tunic and let the fine nap of the wool slide between his fingers. “Forgive me, Father. I am grateful.”
“I know. You always are. And you can show me by granting my next request.”
“Name it and see it done.”
“I wish you to meet the daughter of my colleague this evening.”
Jonathan slew the frown before it reached his mouth. Not another one.
“I have long desired an alliance with that family to put to rest some tensions that have remained for two generations.” His father grinned. “Try to like her, Jonathan. I’ve given you time to form a bond on your own and now must exercise my power for your own good. Your brother cannot marry until his service in the army is complete, and I cannot place the future of our line with him for reasons I suspect you already know.”
Father had never spoken so honestly about Manius before. His half-brother’s debauchery and exploits were whispered in hushed tones out of respect for their father. That he openly acknowledged them at last saddened Jonathan. He’d wanted so much to shield him from the worst of truths regarding his other son. “If he comes tonight…”
His father sighed and turned to face him. “Do your best to appear as if you do not loathe one another.”
Father knew. Jonathan couldn’t believe how thoroughly he’d failed to hide his true feelings. The crested larks swooped down into their bush, calling loudly. How he longed to fly away himself rather than face the disappointment in his father’s gaze. “Father, I—”
“He is my son, as are you. Therefore I know he is more to blame than you for the distance between you both. As am I. In trying to right my many failings as a father with both of you, I only succeeded in making more.”
Jonathan rose from the bench to stand before his father. He refused to tell him the truth about Manius, but he could speak the truth from his own heart. “I could have no better father than you. I am grateful for the life and the proud name you have given me. Manius seeks only to make certain I am worthy to be called a Tarquinius, Father—as do I.”
His father rose, setting the tunic aside. “You already are, my son.” His hands rose and he gripped Jonathan’s shoulders tight enough to be uncomfortable as he stared into him. “If any royalty remains in the Tarquinius blood, it all resides in you. Only in you do I see the shadows of the Etruscan kings of our ancestors. Only in you does my hope for our future rest.”
Jonathan could not bear his father’s gaze and looked away. If Manius thought too little of his half-brother’s worth, his father thought too much of it.
His father bent to retrieve the tunic and placed it in Jonathan’s hands. “Please take this inside now. I should like to be alone for a while.”
“Father.” Jonathan dipped his chin in respect before departing, grateful to retreat to solitude himself. He’d accepted long ago that he would never again know the simplicity of a life with no expectations to fulfill or fall short of, nothing to be proven or disproven. For the love he bore his father, he couldn’t allow himself to fail.
Chapter 4 – Rescue
Jonathan trudged through the street toward the forum, properly attired in his new tunic. Though it was early evening, a cold mist had settled over the city. He used a fold of his toga to wipe at the droplets gathered on his face. “This dark mist is a portent, Dionysius. We shouldn’t be going.”
Dionysius didn’t respond, and when Jonathan looked left to see if he’d fallen behind, he saw her. A soiled tunic stretched taut over the swollen belly—leaning against the corner pillar of the temple of Saturn. Her eyes begged for the bread her mouth did not, and Jonathan’s heart ached for her and the unborn child. If she or the little one survived the birth, both faced a future as bleak as this
day—one he’d lived for twelve of his sixteen years.
A path opened to her on the stone-paved street, but Dionysius appeared in front of him with crossed arms. His gaze turned as hard as the steel he wore at his side. “I swore an oath to your father you would not be late.”
“Father will understand.” He would disapprove, but he would understand.
Nearing the woman, he found her older than he’d expected. When he stopped an arm’s length from her, practiced seduction replaced the honest need in her eyes. The scents of street and sweat clung to her like the remnants of her garment, and her cold fingers slid up his arm. “The young girls inside don’t yet know half of what I do. Let me prove it to you for a denarius.”
He pulled his arm from her grasp and held her cold, damp hand in his. Rubbing the skin firmly would bring some heat, as he’d learned as a boy when there had been no coin to buy coal or wood for the brazier. She frowned and tried to tug her hand away, but he held on. Her eyes were the brown of young tree bark. Nothing like the green his mother’s had been, but that didn’t matter.
She carried a child. One he could save. “Why did you not rid yourself of the child?”
She blinked and withdrew her hand.
If she’d been a temple prostitute, as her sleeveless tunic and short hem suggested, or part of the brothels he’d never visited, her masters would have insisted on it. So she’d either fought to keep the child, as his mother had, or would leave the child to die once born. He searched her eyes, trying to pull the truth from them. He had to be certain. “Why?”
She turned away, and a rip in her tunic revealed dark scratches across the skin of her back—too shallow and narrow to have been a whip. She’d quickened her pace and would be lost in the crowd any moment.
He took a step to follow, but Dio moved between them again. “My lord, I beg you to let her go and—”
“I have a denarius,” he yelled.
She turned to stare at him, along with several other men and women. Let them stare. He held a hand out to Dio but kept the woman in his line of sight. “I have a denarius.”
Dio pressed the silver coin into Jonathan’s palm. He held it out to her and waited. Finally she came to him, her gaze flicking from the coin to his face.
“What happened to your back?”
“A man with a denarius.” Her throat rippled in a swallow. “I will do whatever I must for yours.”
With his free hand, he reached forward to take hers. She allowed him to, her eyes wary, and he folded the coin into her palm. He let go and took a step back. “It’s already yours.”
She waited, but he stood still, reassuring her it was a gift. When she pulled the coin tight to her chest, the seed of a smile broke the corners of her thin lips. “May Jupiter favor you for your kindness, my lord.”
He may no longer embrace the God of his youth, but he hadn’t adopted the idols of his father either. “You can favor me. Tell me why you keep the child.”
Could the child inside her feel the hands she splayed over her belly? “I want someone to love. Someone to love me.” She stroked her belly again, still gripping the coin tight, and met his gaze. “Is that selfish?”
“No.” He held his hand out to Dio for another coin, blinking against the moisture in his eyes. It was the stench of the street, nothing more. Not the way she’d rent his heart with her words. “And I promise you this. No matter how much you love your child, he will always love you more.”
“Even when he’s cold and hungry?” Her eyes implored him, but she hadn’t even glanced at the new coin in his hand.
“Especially then.”
She took the coin and bowed her head toward her feet. They were as caked with filth as the cobblestones beneath them. “Thank you, my lord.”
Dio cleared his throat—a gentle reminder they needed to be on their way. Jonathan touched her chin and invited her to look at him again. She did, and the gratitude in her eyes was enough to make her beautiful in a way she hadn’t been before.
“If you know the insulae closest to the river near the Temple of Diana, go there. Ask after a woman named Deborah and when you find her, tell her Jonathan sent you.”
“Why?”
“It will be a place of refuge for you and the child you carry. But you must tell her Jonathan sent you. Will you remember?”
“Yes, my lord.” She blinked, but not before the sheen in her eyes became a teardrop that streaked her pale cheek.
Dionysius touched his elbow. “We must go.”
“Remember what I’ve told you. The insulae nearest the river, in the shadow of the Temple of Diana. Ask for Deborah. Tell her Jonathan has sent you.”
“I will, my lord.”
Jonathan turned from her toward the north part of the city and this feast he would rather not attend. Dio closed the distance between them until he all but prodded Jonathan along. He glanced back over his shoulder but couldn’t see the woman. The streams of people were too thick. A loose pig scurried past with a rope around its neck. The squeals it made rivaled that of the young boy chasing it. If someone cut the animal off, cornered it without getting bit, then the boy could—
“The feast, my lord.” Dio’s tone matched his scowl as he marched on, shouldering Jonathan in the process.
Someone else would have to help the boy. “Remind me, which of us is the servant?”
Dio surprised him with a rare grin. They wove through the narrow street, between carts and booths peddling everything from a bowl of vegetable stew to amulets sworn to protect against any poison and across the forum, poisons sworn to never fail. The rattle of chain and throng of people gathered around a platform tightened his empty stomach. A slave market—where many a man, woman, or child would be sold to masters without his father’s benevolent nature. Through the linen of his toga and tunic, he touched the horse head carving hanging from the leather cord around his neck. Always hidden but always with him, like the memory of his mother.
Dio noticed, and as sure as the sun and moon would never share the sky, he was about to say something to try to cheer him up. “If a thief were foolish enough to attack me for your money pouch, he’d be disappointed when he opened it.”
This time Jonathan grinned. Dio could sense his moods the way cattle could a coming storm. Other than his father, there was no one he was closer to. “Any chance I could give you the rest and we go to the races instead?”
“Now who jests?”
True. Dio would never acquiesce unless Jonathan commanded him. If they missed the feast, Father would be disappointed in them both. No matter how much he’d rather take off the toga, climb to the upper tiers of the Circus Maximus with the peasants where he felt most at home and cheer for the blue chariot, he would never knowingly disappoint his father. Not when the man had risked so much in his political standing to publicly and legally claim Jonathan as a son.
“What must I do to make you look as if you’re going to a feast and not a funeral?”
“Forgive me, Dio.” He plastered his best fake smile in place.
From his frown, Dio wasn’t fooled but seemed content to let it go. He moved right as they walked, opening a better path. After traveling a few more pedes, the stone walls and iron gate of the villa they sought appeared.
Dio stopped at the gate and turned toward Jonathan. “How long will you try to honor her memory at the expense of your own peace?”
The question rocked him to his core as his entire body went rigid.
“You can’t rescue them all,” Dio continued. “Even if you controlled the wealth of your father, you still could not. Your mother lived a hard life as a slave, a harder one once free, and the greatest gift she ever gave you and my master was to bring you home. You are allowed to enjoy the life of privilege the gods have given you. You deserve this life, and I pray to the gods I live long enough to see the day you believe that too.”
He’d heard that so many times, dressed in different words, from his father. But never from Dio. “How long have you wanted to sa
y that to me?”
“Since you ordered me to carry the lifeless infant you found abandoned on the bank of the river to Deborah.”
“Four years?”
“Yes.”
“The child lived.”
“So can you.”
Pounding feet announced the approach of a litter. The four slaves who bore the curtained platform stopped in unison and lowered the poles. Jonathan glanced back to Dio. His gaze was now trained on his feet, and his sword hand held his other wrist at his waist—a servant once again.
“You there. Who are you?” The newcomer stood still while one of his slaves straightened his toga to ensure the crimson trim showed above the folds at his elbow. Even without the trim, Jonathan couldn’t have mistaken this man for anything other than a senator. With a girth that size, rings on every finger, and a wife as young as Jonathan, no one could. But which one was this? Decimus… something. No, that one had a mole the size of an olive pit on his cheek.
The senator turned to Dio. “Is he mute?”
“No, my lord.”
If he were, he could tolerate these gatherings better, because no one would attempt to engage him in meaningless chatter. “Forgive me. I am Jonathan Tarquinius, younger son of Poetelius Tarquinius Cornelius.”
“Jonathan, you say. I was beginning to think you were an invention of your father. Like his ideals for reform.” The man chuckled, but would sober in an instant if he turned and saw the way his wife was eyeing Jonathan. Yet another reason he hated these gatherings.
“How is your father?”
“Well, and looking forward to seeing you I’m certain.”
“You have no idea who I am, or you would know he is not looking forward to seeing me. No matter. I was young once and cared for nothing but wine and women.”
And likely still did, like so many of his kind. While all around them, thousands of people suffered. “After you, Senator.”
He followed the man in, with Dio three steps behind.
Dio was right. He couldn’t save them all. He couldn’t save himself from the betrothal he feared was coming. How was he supposed to celebrate surrounded by men of indifference who lived for their own wealth and pleasures at the expense of others?
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