Chasing the Lion

by Nancy Kimball

  “I try.” She smiled and slid her leg atop his knee beneath the blanket.

  “I think you want to kiss me,” he said, his cheeks hurting from how big his smile became.

  “See, I was right. I knew you hadn’t been hit in the head too many times like Quintus said.”

  Jonathan laughed, a vision of the heavyset and bald doctor laying waste the passion Nessa had stirred a moment ago. “Please don’t ever mention Quintus while we’re in bed, ever again.” He laughed more, and Nessa joined him, her cheeks puffing as she reddened.

  “I won’t. I promise.” She propped her head in her hand while her elbow dug into the mattress beside him and her expression turned serious. “But he will stay here, now that Torren Gallego employs him. Will we stay as well?”

  Jonathan thought of his scroll and the bag of gold on the table. “I don’t know.”

  “It’s strange, isn’t it?”

  “What?”

  “Deciding where you want to go. Who you want to see. All the things you can do without having to ask permission.” Her eyes were filled with possibilities and Jonathan wanted nothing more than to give them all to her. But there were several things he needed to attend to first.

  “Would you mind if we spent some time in the city? There’s someone I need to try to find.”

  “Your father?”

  “No.” Jonathan swallowed and the sadness must have shown on his face, because Nessa absorbed it immediately.

  She touched his cheek, then placed her palm against his jaw. “What’s wrong?”

  “My father is dead.”

  “Beloved, I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault.” It was Manius’ fault. His fault Jonathan had not been at his father’s side. And of course, he had unfinished matters in Capua with Caius Pullus and Valentina, but that could wait. “I want to try to find the woman who helped raise me, if I can. She’s probably dead also, but I’d like to try.”

  “Of course. Anything you wish.”

  The love in her eyes told him she would follow him anywhere. He caressed the smooth skin of her shoulder and felt the corner of his mouth rise, along with his brow. “Anything?”

  She looked him full in the face before raising two fingers between them. The last thing he saw before her lips claimed his again. Jonathan smiled against her kiss. That King Solomon knew what he was talking about. He who finds a wife finds a good thing.

  Chapter 42 – Free

  The temples, baths, insulae buildings, street booths, all were the same. Yet the city looked different through a free man’s eyes. It smelled different. Everything was different. A light rain fell but Jonathan didn’t mind. The thick wool of Nessa’s cloak would keep her dry, and if the rain picked up, he would cover her with his. When they passed through the shadow of the amphitheater, her grip on his hand tightened.

  He pulled her hand to his lips and kissed the back. Though there were no games and no shouts of the crowd, and wouldn’t be for weeks, this place would always affect him. As she always did, his wife could sense his unspoken need. She released his hand and slid her arm around his waist, pressing close to his side as they walked.

  He slowed his pace when they reached the insulae he’d been looking for.

  “Is this the building?” she asked.

  He nodded, and stopped. Nessa didn’t rush him, or ask more questions as he stared at the entry for a long time. Was it better not to know? To imagine her as he remembered?

  A young woman passed him, carrying a basket laden with blackberries and a dark loaf of bread. She glanced at them, and he summoned the courage to begin. “I seek a woman named Deborah who once lived here.”

  The woman smiled. “I am Deborah. Should I know you?”

  “No. The woman I seek would be many years older than you. She was from Jerusalem, in the Judean province, and—”

  “You seek YaYa Deborah.”

  Grandmother? She’d been too old to have children when she’d taken in his mother.

  The young woman’s smile slipped and she clutched her basket close. “Who are you?”

  “It’s best if I tell her myself. Would that be permitted?” The sweat was already beading high on his back. What if it was her? What if it wasn’t?

  The woman’s gaze cut to Nessa, and that seemed to ease her mind. Nessa had that effect on everyone. “Wait here.” She disappeared into the insulae with her basket.

  Nessa tugged him out of the doorway toward the plaster wall. Broken pottery and other trash littered the edges of the alcove. “Careful not to cut your feet,” he told her.

  She smiled and cupped his cheek in her hand. “Always taking care of me.” She stroked his hair back from his forehead. It was becoming long enough he’d have to see a cutter or she would take his dagger to it soon.

  “Don’t be afraid,” she whispered.

  Easy for her to say. His heart was ready to ram its way free of his chest. If it was Deborah—his Deborah—he would have so much to tell her. The lives he’d taken. The bitter, broken man he’d become after the death of his mother. The reason he’d never returned to visit. So much of his life would disappoint her.

  “Stranger,” a woman called from behind him. He turned and found the young woman from earlier watching them in the doorway. “Yaya says to come inside. You and your companion.”

  “Don’t be afraid,” Nessa whispered one more time as she fell into step beside him and squeezed his hand. Perhaps they shouldn’t have worn their best clothing. Perhaps he should have sent a scroll, but the likelihood of anyone here being able to read it was as small as a mustard seed. Perhaps he should have never come. The sweat gathering beneath his tunic agreed.

  The woman stopped at a door he didn’t remember, opened it, and beckoned them inside. This was the wrong room. It wasn’t the one he and his mother had shared with Deborah. Nessa entered first, tugging him in with her. It was two rooms. The front area held a large table and four stools, shelves with jars and lamps and various cooking tools. And a boy about ten with wheat-colored hair staring at them with his arms crossed.

  Another woman, older than the first, in a plain black tunic, came from the back room. Her gaze swept both Jonathan and Nessa before landing on the boy between them. “Jonathan, don’t stare. It’s unwelcoming. Offer our guests a cup of water.”

  The boy had his name? Nessa looked to him in question, but he had no answer for her.

  “Would you like a cup of water?” the child asked, mistrust clear in his voice.

  “No,” Jonathan answered.

  “No, thank you.” Nessa squeezed Jonathan’s hand again, and smiled at the boy.

  “Deborah, will you take Jonathan for a walk to the fountain to refill the pitchers?”

  “Yes.” She took the boy’s hand and slipped between Jonathan and the wall toward the door. “Come, Jonathan. The elders are going to discuss things they don’t want us to hear,” she mumbled.

  Nessa chuckled beside him, and Jonathan would have grinned were he not so nervous. When the pair departed, the woman glanced over her shoulder behind her, and then approached them. “Can I ask how you know Deborah? I mean, the eldest Deborah?”

  Jonathan did his best to match her hushed tone. “She helped raise me. My mother and I lived with her a long time ago.”

  The woman’s ash-gray eyes searched his face a long moment and her hand crept to her mouth. “Jonathan? Is it really you?”

  He tightened his thoughts, trying to place the face before him. “Do you know of me?”

  “You gave me a denarius and sent me here, before my son was born. Deborah took me in also. My son is named for you.” Her eyes shined with welling tears. “They told us you were dead. Your father came and he said—” She swallowed. “Is it really you?”

  “It is.” He could hear the huskiness in his own voice.

  So could Nessa, for she slipped her hand from his to hold his upper arm. “Would you like me to wait here?”

  “No.” He couldn’t do this without her. Witho
ut being able to draw from her strength.

  “Yaya Deborah is blind. She has been for a few years now. She can hear, but you must speak loudly. Come.”

  His heart pounded faster as they followed the woman through the low doorway. Jonathan had to duck and be careful not to tangle Nessa. Blanket-covered straw pallets, five of them, lined one wall. A low couch rested in the corner, and on it, Deborah.

  Her hair was the white of strong leather, still braided in a single strand at her neck. Her eyes were also white, where they had once been deep brown like his wife’s. Dark spots of age covered her narrow face, and thin shoulders poked through a simple tunic. A wool blanket covered her lap and her hands were folded in prayer as he remembered.

  “Deborah?” After their quiet conversation, the woman’s loud voice jolted him.

  “Yes.” Her voice was the same. Jonathan closed his eyes a moment and let it wash through him.

  “Who’s there?” she asked, as demanding as he remembered. Age hadn’t affected that.

  “It’s me. Jonathan.” He watched her face, but it didn’t move.

  “Which one?”

  “No, Yaya,” the woman with them answered. She gave him and Nessa an apologetic smile and knelt by the woman’s knee. “Not my Jonathan, or Julia’s Jonathan. This man says that he is the Jonathan that sent us.”

  The woman scowled and leaned back against the plaster wall. “That Jonathan is dead.”

  “I was.” The words fell from his mouth. “Manius meant to take my life and in many ways he did. But it is me.” He turned to Nessa and put his fingers to his chest.

  She cocked her head and he reached for the necklace inside her tunic. When she understood, she rushed to pull the leather cord over her head and hand him the small bone horse head. He knelt beside the woman at Deborah’s feet.

  “The first time you swatted me was for stealing two eggs from the market. You told my mother and she made me walk them back. Many nights she and I sat beside you much like this and listened to the stories of your people. Of King David and the prophets and the Messiah. My mother named me for your husband. The husband you lost in Jerusalem when Titus destroyed the city.”

  Deborah’s milky eyes began to shine. “Jonathan? Livia’s boy?”

  “It’s me.” Jonathan placed the small carving in her frail hand.

  Her bony fingers traced the horse head as the first of her tears fell. “Your father carved this for Livia when she was a little girl. I remember she always wore it around her neck, and that you would chew on it when your teeth were coming in.” The tears fell faster now. “Where have you been?”

  “Many places. Few of them my choosing, until now. I have a wife. She is here with me.”

  “A wife?”

  “Yes. This is Nessa. She has a faith as deep as yours. As deep as you gave my mother.”

  Nessa touched his back, kneeling beside him. “It’s an honor to know you, my lady.”

  “Nessa means miracle in the tongue of my people,” Deborah said. “And the Lord has worked a great miracle, that you are here, my boy.” She reached toward his face.

  Jonathan took her hand and placed it on his cheek, hoping the stubble of his beard wouldn’t hurt her silk-thin skin. Her fingers were frail, but these hands had held his mother’s, stroked his back when the other boys mocked his lack of a father, and they touched him the same way now.

  “The scroll,” Deborah said. She pulled her hand from his face. “Octavia, on the tallest shelf there should be an alabaster box. Inside it is a scroll. Bring it to me.”

  The woman beside him rose and went into the other room. Nessa took Jonathan’s hand again and settled beside him, tucking her legs beneath her and smiling reassuringly.

  “Oh, my dear girl.” Deborah held the carving out. “For Jonathan to have given it to you I know he must love you a great deal. I will also.”

  “Thank you.” Nessa took it and slipped it back over her head.

  The woman returned and settled on the couch beside Deborah. “I found it.”

  “Give it to Jonathan,” Deborah said.

  He took the small scroll. A thin leather cord held it closed.

  “Can you read?” she asked.

  “Yes. I learned in my father’s house.”

  Deborah smiled. A smile so full of wisdom and beauty Jonathan wanted to carve it into his mind forever. “Then later, when you are alone, open it. Not now. I know now why the Lord had me keep it all these years.”

  She couldn’t see, and he wanted to know what the scroll was. So did the younger Deborah and Nessa, the way they gazed intently at it. He pushed the cord to the end of the roll of parchment but Nessa stayed his hand with hers. She shook her head, admonishing him with her eyes. He slipped it into his belt and put his arm around her, breathing deep of her honey scent.

  “Do you remember the feast we had your last day with me?” Deborah asked.

  “Of course.” He would never forget it. Back then a feast had been a piece of cheese the size of his fist and three honeyed raisin cakes.

  “Tonight we feast again.” Deborah shifted on the couch and spread her hands over her knees. “Octavia, gather the others. Tell them the news. I know they will want to meet Jonathan, especially Julia’s boy.”

  “Nessa and I would enjoy that very much.” He reached in his coin pouch and pulled out two gold aureii. He handed them to younger Deborah, who took them, mouth agape. “Please let us help. If you can find green grapes for my wife, they are her favorite. Whatever else you, your son and the others enjoy best, think nothing of the cost.”

  “Spoken like a Tarquinius.” Deborah chuckled. “Your father was always so generous. We mourned him, you know.”

  “Thank you.”

  In the other room, a door flew open and the boy from earlier came running in, a taller, darker boy behind him. Both were out of breath.

  “Is it true,” the shorter one rasped, “that you were a gladiator?”

  “And that you’re the gladiator that defeated the Final Shadow?” the older one asked. “And you fight with your sword in your left hand? And that we’re named after you? And—”

  “Boys,” Octavia snapped.

  Jonathan laughed, and pulled Nessa into his side. “Yes. All true.”

  Their young eyes widened and they dropped to the floor. “Tell us about the arena. I heard they have lions and elephants and spotted goats with necks as tall as the city walls.”

  “They’re not goats, they’re called giraffes. They come from the land of Carthage.” Had he been this eager when Dionysius first began teaching him?

  “Who cares about the goats? I want to know about the lions,” the smaller one said.

  “My Jonathan once killed a lion in the arena with only a stick,” Nessa said, casting him a proud stare.

  “Really?” the boys said in unison, each sitting up taller.

  “Really. And he’ll tell you all about it, won’t you, Beloved?” She grinned at him and patted his knee as if he were one of the young boys sitting across from them.

  “Tell us, Jonathan,” Deborah said. “I want to know everything.”

  So he did. He left out the darker parts of his years as a slave, and over honeyed wine and food as fine as he’d known at his father’s table, eaten from simple clay dishes on the floor, they talked well into the evening. He met Julia, whom he didn’t remember sending to Deborah, and learned that younger Deborah’s mother had died shortly after she’d been born. Julia and Octavia had raised her together with their sons. Nessa figured out before he did the older of the boys went by Jon so they could be told apart if called. Seeing her with the children and the women brought out such a different side of her, one that made him love her even more, though he would have sworn it impossible.

  She’d been as reluctant to return to their inn as he was. They only escaped the boys by promising to visit again tomorrow. He’d visit the markets first with Nessa. She would be able to tell better than he what sizes of sandals and tunics the children wore. With
the list of gifts and provisions he’d been making as they walked, they’d probably need a cart. The innkeeper could tell him where to hire one in the morning.

  They’d entered their room and he set their coin pouch and cloaks beside their wineskins. Nessa watched as he took the scroll from his belt and set it on the small table with the basin and pitcher of water.

  “Will you read it now?” she asked, sitting down on the edge of the sleeping couch.

  “Not yet.” It was an exercise in discipline, but more so an opportunity to show favor to his wife. “Take your sandals off.”

  She did, giving him a sheepish grin as she removed her tunic as well. But instead of following her leadings he filled the basin with water, took a towel from beneath the table, and knelt on the floor at her feet.

  “Jonathan?”

  He met her gaze but didn’t answer her in words. Instead, he washed her feet.

  She remained quiet, pensive as she watched him work. He’d meant it as a gift, though the adoration in her eyes when he finished felt like a gift in return. As did her kiss.

  The scroll.

  In the fervor of shared passion that intimacy with his wife always brought, he’d forgotten it. Jonathan slipped his arm from beneath Nessa’s neck and kissed her forehead. She stirred beneath the blankets but didn’t rouse. She was never more beautiful than when she slept beside him, trusting him completely. A trust he would spend a lifetime honoring.

  The floor was cold on his bare feet as he picked up the small lamp from the table by the bed and moved to the far corner of the room. He found the scroll among his clothes, set the lamp down, and unrolled the parchment in the flickering light.

  My son, there is much I would tell you, but scribes charge by the word. I know you will have grown to be a man as upright and honorable as your father. You are and will always be the very best part of my life.

  When you find a woman who loves our God and loves you, treasure her and find delight in her alone as long as you both live. Be generous with the needy. Forgive those who wrong you. Let their transgressions be between them and our God. Knowing you will want for nothing in your father’s house gives me great peace. It is a peace I want for you, always. So if sorrow should come, remember this.