by Tessa Afshar
This time, my father could not hold on. He toppled from the saddle, flying backward, somersaulting in the air like a Minoan acrobat. He landed on the ground with a bone-crushing thud. I stopped breathing. My mother screamed. Next to me, Joanna slumped forward in a faint. Our driver brought the cart to a tooth-shattering stop, trying to calm the donkey that had been spooked by the violence of Perseus’s movements.
Relief washed over me when my father raised himself up on his elbows. With trembling fingers, he rubbed his ribs as though they ached. But he was all right. I could see by the way he moved that he was not too badly hurt. God had preserved him!
He will be sore and bruised tomorrow, I realized with relief. My father was a grumpy patient. We would have a difficult week tending to his needs. I grinned at the thought.
Then the unthinkable happened.
Once again, Calvus’s horse rose up on his haunches. My father looked up. His eyes widened and he cried out, his voice rough with alarm. He had no time to roll over. To crawl out of the way. Perseus brought his hoof down with intentional violence. It caught my father in the head with a knock so hard we heard it all the way in the cart.
Ethan arrived by their side at that very moment. He leaned so far out of his saddle that only his toes held him fast to his mount. With an agility that defied ordinary human strength, he reached out and grabbed Perseus’s bridle, which was now hanging uselessly by the horse’s side. Ethan pulled on the leather with a vicious tug. For a moment I thought the horse would unseat him with the force of his resistance. But Ethan proved too powerful and Perseus grew tame under his guidance.
I jumped out of the cart and ran to my father.
“Have a care, Elianna!” Ethan shouted. “I don’t have Perseus fully in hand.”
I ignored him and knelt by my father’s prone body. My stomach turned as I saw the side of his head. Blood caked his face and soaked the dirt beneath him. It even trickled out of his nose and ears. To my great relief, I saw that he still breathed. As gently as I could, I swept his hair aside; what I saw made me retch. His skull had been fractured, and a small sliver of bone stuck out of the wound.
I could hear my mother wailing in the cart. A great commotion made me look up. “Elianna, move!” Ethan cried.
Perseus had pulled the leather bridle out of Ethan’s hold. The horse’s big brown eyes were rolling and wild, and he screamed as though in pain before flying toward me. Ethan threw himself in the savage creature’s path, trying to impede Perseus’s trampling speed as he headed straight for me. Perseus knocked Ethan down, but Ethan’s heroic lunge had slowed the horse’s imminent arrival. It gave me time to throw myself to one side and avoid the deadly hooves by a mere breath of space.
The horse galloped past me, back into the dark street from which we had come. I could only hope he would injure no one else in his mad scamper. “Ethan! Ethan!” I cried, choked by the tears that were running down my face. If he had been hurt trying to save me . . . I could not finish the thought.
FOURTEEN
You keep track of all my sorrows.
You have collected all my tears in your bottle.
You have recorded each one in your book.
PSALM 56:8, NLT
ETHAN COUGHED. “I’m all right, Elianna. He just knocked the wind out of me.” To my relief, I saw him rise and limp toward me. “How is your father?”
“Oh, Ethan.” Words failed me.
He dropped to his knees next to me and examined my father with care. “This wound is grave. But there is always hope while he lives.”
“What should we do?” My mind had grown numb with shock. I could not think of the simplest practical measures in that moment. Thank the Lord Ethan had kept his presence of mind. He ran to the cart and helped my mother and Joanna down. My mother, holding on to Ethan’s arm, made her way to my father’s side. Quickly I covered his wound with my scarf, knowing the sight of his injury would be her undoing.
I put my arm around her shoulder. “He breathes. You see?” She slumped against me with a whimper.
Ethan and the servant brought the cart as close as they could. To my astonishment, Calvus ran into our midst. “What’s happened? Perseus returned foaming and riderless. I feared an accident.”
“Your horse threw Benjamin and kicked him for good measure,” Ethan said, his voice clipped. “Now you are here, help me get him into the cart.”
Calvus knelt next to me. He reached his hand to remove my scarf from around my father’s head. I grabbed his arm to prevent him from exposing my father’s awful state to my mother’s eyes. Calvus looked at me for a moment. “Why don’t you take your mother to where your sister is reclining? Ethan and I will care for your father.”
“No.”
“Elianna, he is right,” Ethan said. “Come, Elizabeth. Give us room to move him.” He grabbed my mother’s hands and pulled her up.
“Thank you,” I said, but refused to budge. I intended to stay with the men and help my father. Ethan sighed and hurried my mother to the other side of the street where Joanna sat, leaning against a wall.
“I am sorry my horse harmed your father,” Calvus said. His voice was low and heavy.
“Why did you insist that he ride that infernal creature?” I hissed at him, fear and shock rolling into anger. “That horse has the very devil’s temper.”
“I am sorry,” he repeated, his voice calm. “Perseus is rambunctious, but he is rarely vicious without reason.”
“Not vicious? He is a war horse, trained to kill alongside his master! What were you thinking, pressing him on my father?”
“Elianna, this will not help,” Ethan said as he rejoined us. “We need to get him to a physician quickly. You can hold on to your recriminations a while longer.” He bent down and slid his hands under my father’s torso. “Help me get him up, Calvus. Gently. Elianna, you keep his head as steady as you can.”
I sat next to my father in the cart to hold his head immobile. Joanna and my mother squatted at his feet, clutching his hands, begging him not to die, weeping noisily. I wanted to scream at them to be quiet. Their words drilled into my heart like fiery darts.
“There was something wrong with that horse, Calvus,” I heard Ethan say. He had thrown our servant on the back of his own horse and sent him to fetch a physician, while he drove the cart as fast as he dared.
Calvus, sitting next to him, shrugged. “Animals can be unpredictable.”
“No. I tell you, he acted as though he was in pain. Check under his saddle. Perhaps he has developed a sore or a cut.”
“I saddled him myself this afternoon. Nothing wrong. This was a tragic accident, no more. I am deeply sorry for it. Poor Benjamin. I fear he is done for.”
I gasped. Ethan threw Calvus a filthy look. “One more word out of your mouth, and I promise to hit you so hard, you will swallow your teeth along with your words. I care not if you are a Roman soldier.”
I could not observe Calvus’s expression from where I sat. I only saw his hand tighten on the hilt of his sword for a moment before relaxing. “Calm yourself, Jew. I said nothing she hasn’t already worked out for herself.”
The physician came and did what he could. Ethan slipped out at his arrival without telling me his destination. I remained with the physician as he examined my father, anxious to hear his prognosis.
“I am amazed he lives,” the man said, mopping his brow. “I don’t know if he will survive the night.”
We stayed with him, keeping vigil, helpless to do anything for him. A few hours later, Ethan returned, oddly silent and distracted.
“Where did you go?” I asked. We had already sent a servant to inform Jerusha and Ezer of my father’s accident, and they had come to be with us in our trial. To my surprise, they had told me Ethan had not returned home after leaving us.
He took a deep breath. “The fortress of Antonia. I wanted to examine Perseus for myself.”
My eyes widened. “How did you get near that creature in a fort full of Roman soldiers?”
“A generous bribe can soften a hard heart, Roman or otherwise. The guard remained by my side to ensure I caused no mischief while I examined the horse, but he allowed me to do what I needed once I gave him a fat purse of silver.”
“What did you find?”
“Something odd. On his back, where the saddle sat, there was a narrow but deep wound. It wasn’t a sore or anything natural. It seemed like a puncture, as if someone had placed a sharp nail under the saddle. With the pressure of a body’s weight, it would have been pressed into the poor horse, causing him pain and terror.”
“You mean someone did this on purpose?”
“I am almost sure of it. There was nothing under the saddle, so whoever set the trap had removed the sharp object by the time I got to it.”
“Why would anyone want to kill my father?”
“Not your father. Calvus, I think. No one could have guessed that the Roman would offer his horse to someone else at the last moment. Whoever set up this trap wanted to harm Calvus. Your father had the misfortune of riding that horse at the wrong time.”
I gasped. “Did you tell Calvus?”
“I had to. If someone is trying to murder him, he has a right to know.”
“Did he dispute your claim?”
“Not when he saw that deep puncture wound on Perseus’s back. He didn’t say anything. But for once that arrogant smile was wiped from his face.”
Rabbi Zakkai came to visit my father. We Jews believe more in the Lord’s healing power than we do in a physician’s arts. At first, I felt encouraged by the rabbi’s presence and grateful that he had taken the time to come. Perhaps his prayers would succeed where the physician’s herbs had failed. Then he opened his mouth.
“God is punishing him,” he said. “Benjamin must have done a grave wrong in the sight of the Lord to be so stricken.”
Ethan was in the chamber with us. He bolted upright. “Surely, Rabbi Zakkai, not every calamity is due to God’s displeasure.”
The rabbi snorted. “The Lord himself declares, If your soul abhors my rules, so that you will not do all my commandments, but break my covenant, then I will do this to you: I will visit you with panic, with wasting disease and fever that consume the eyes and make the heart ache. It is the words of the Law that accuse Benjamin, not I, young man.”
“Have a care, Rabbi Zakkai, for you begin to sound like the friends of Job. I know this teaching has gained popularity amongst many of you Pharisees. I know you preach the conviction that our sufferings are always a result of our sins. But as I recall, when Job’s friends accused Job in the same way, the Lord said to them, My anger burns against you . . . for you have not spoken of me what is right. Be mindful that in your zeal you do not malign our God, lest he say the same of you.”
To my relief, the Pharisee never returned to our home. And yet his words left a bitter taste in my mouth that his absence would not cure. Were we cursed by God because we were evil? Was every stripe of our sorrow a punishment from his hand?
For seven days the physician came and went, bringing his herbs and potions. Nothing helped. My father never awoke. There were bruises behind one ear and under his eyes, turning his skin into a quilt of washed-out white, stained with purple and blue and yellow. Other than the change in the color of those bruises and the odd way his eyes sometimes flickered, nothing altered in his appearance or condition.
“I do not know what keeps him alive. I doubt it is my ministrations,” the physician said on the eighth day.
“Will he get better?” I asked, out of my mother’s earshot.
“I expect not. He needs a prophet armed with miracles now, not a physician with a bag of medicinal herbs. I will keep coming if you wish and do what I can for him. But I am an honorable man. I will not give you false hope or take false credit.”
A day would come when I would learn to appreciate such honesty. For the moment, I only felt numb with the horror of our hopelessness. I returned to my father’s side after seeing the physician out. Both Joanna and my mother had been sent to bed to sleep and I was left alone with my father.
I had managed to hold a tight rein on my emotions until then. I had stayed strong so Joanna and my mother could have the freedom to fall apart. The physician’s words proved too much for me. My tenuous grasp on self-control slipped away. I fell on my father’s chest and wept.
“Please, please wake up!” I wailed. “Please, Abba. I love you so much. I need you. Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me without forgiving me. I am sorry about Joseph. I am more sorry than you can know. Abba, Abba. How will I go on? How will I take care of Mother and Joanna without you?”
His eyes flickered. Nothing more. No signal to show me that he had heard. I beat softly against his chest. “Come back to us! I miss you. I need you. I need my father!”
A pair of strong arms wrapped around me from behind and physically lifted me off.
“Elianna, hush now.” Ethan pulled me closer and held me in his arms as I sobbed like an inconsolable child.
“I’m sorry,” I said when my tears were spent. I had no business clinging to Ethan this way. We weren’t even married yet. I gasped as awareness sank in. This was to have been our wedding day. “Oh, Ethan, the wedding!”
He gave a lopsided smile. “Don’t concern yourself. I cancelled that days ago, when the accident first occurred.”
“Forgive me.” I knew he must be disappointed. He had waited so long, and once again, I had frustrated his wishes.
He pulled me out of the room. “This is not your fault, Elianna. I am disappointed, of course. But the world does not always go as we plan.”
“How can you be so accepting? How is it that you are not screaming with frustration?”
“I’ve been spending more time in prayer. I am learning that obedience to God means that you do not put your eyes on your longings, but instead, you simply place one foot ahead of the other into the space that the Lord opens. Tired, wounded, overwhelmed. It does not matter. You merely keep moving where God directs and stop focusing on what you wish you had. It’s teaching me patience.”
“I wish I were as close to the Lord as you are.”
“You could be.”
“Maybe one day,” I said, without a grain of hope.
Ethan rubbed a finger against his temple. “God is mindful of your sufferings, Elianna. He knows every tear you shed. He has not abandoned you. You must try not to abandon him.”
“I have not.” I shook my head for emphasis. “I have not lost my faith. It’s that . . . I cannot draw near to him.” I crossed my arms over my chest until my hands were tucked under my armpits. “Ethan, we must discuss practical considerations.”
He nodded. “The physician told me his prognosis just now, on his way out. We should make arrangements to take care of your family.”
We had stopped by the olive tree in the garden. I sank to the ground and leaned my back against its narrow trunk. “I have no strength left, Ethan. How am I to run this household? How am I to provide for my sister’s dowry and my father’s business?” Tears sprang fresh from my eyes again. “I am overcome.”
Ethan squatted in front of me. “Remember the prophet Isaiah’s words? He promised that the Lord gives power to the faint. And to the one who has no might, he increases strength. You can trust him, Elianna. He will care for you and your family.”
I sniffed as a tear rolled down my face. With an impatient hand I dashed it away. What did God have to do with such a one as me? My own father had rejected me. How could the God of earth and heaven not do the same? Why would he help me?
“I want to suggest something,” Ethan said as I remained mute. “Don’t refuse me before you think it through. I want us to be married, simply and quietly, in respect to Benjamin’s illness. I will move here and take care of your family’s business.”
“There is nothing to think through. It would be out of the question, Ethan. Master Ezer told me just this past month that he has stepped away from running his business and leaves most of
it in your hands. I know Daniel takes care of the accounts, but he has no interest in the rest of your work. He rarely travels or deals with your customers. It’s all on your shoulders now, Ethan. Your father cannot do without you.”
“I will not abandon him. Our trade will continue to receive my attention. And I will look after your family’s interests as well.”
“You know that is impossible. You cannot manage both the businesses. I won’t ask it of you.”
Ethan’s eyes narrowed. “Why can’t you trust me, Elianna? I know it will be hard, especially at the start. But I can manage.”
“I am not saying you aren’t capable. But the cost of such a sacrifice is too high. I will not ask it of you.”
“We could do it together, you and I.”
I shook my head.
“Sell your father’s business, then, and bring your family to live with us.”
I hid my face in my hands. “I cannot! It would be the end of my mother to lose her home as well as her husband. And Chuza’s father will not take an impoverished girl as bride. He is not like you and your father, Ethan. He thinks very highly of his dignity and position in society. No matter how Chuza feels about Joanna, his parents will not consent to their wedding if I cannot meet their full demands for a large dowry.”
Ethan rose to his feet and rubbed the back of his neck. He looked exhausted, and for good reason. He worked long hours during the day and then came to spend every spare moment at our home, helping with the workshop and offering support to three needy women.
My heart brimmed over with love for him. I felt no man on earth could compare to his goodness. For a moment, I weakened. The thought of moving into his home, of placing myself in his care and allowing him to take responsibility for the tangle of our family’s affairs tugged at my soul with such a force that I had to shove my hand over my mouth to keep from speaking out. What kind of love would that be? How could I selfishly take so much and give so little in return? How could I burden him with my mountain of problems?
