The Jews hadn’t needed to punish her physically; his father had seen to that aspect of her life. Many a day Lucius had come home to find his mother with a face bruised by his father’s hand. She always had an excuse, but he knew. Too often he had experienced his father’s wrath himself.
When he was old enough, he had been sent to Rome to learn Roman ways. He had fought tooth and nail to stay with his mother, but his father had been adamant. Shortly after he had been sent away, his father had gone to Germania and been killed. In truth, he had been relieved to hear it. He had never understood why his mother had stayed with such an abusive man.
Seeing the woman across the way had brought back old feelings of anger and pain. Memories that had long been buried were suddenly brought into the light once more. Even if the girl was a slave and had been beaten by her master, the similarities were too striking to ignore. But what if she was escaping an abusive husband? It could cause complications that Roman leaders were trying to avoid.
A distant roar came from the darkness beyond their campsite.
Antigonus lifted himself from the woman’s side and crossed to Lucius. Their eyes met.
“A lion,” Antigonus suggested. “Probably following the woman’s blood trail.”
Lucius pressed his lips together into a grim line. “Where there is one, there are probably others, and other predators, as well.”
Lucius motioned to the nearest soldier. “Take some men and gather more brush for the fire.”
The soldier slapped his right fist against his chest. Lucius stopped him as he was about to turn away.
“And Democidus, bring the watches in closer to the fire. Make certain everyone understands the situation.”
“Aye, Tribune.”
Lucius once again returned his attention to Antigonus.
“How is she?”
He shook his head. “Hard to say. Her irregular breathing tells me that she probably has fractured ribs. She is going to be incapacitated for quite some time.” He squatted down, using the amphora of water sitting close by to wash his hands. “What will you do with her?”
“What can I do?” Lucius shrugged. “We can’t very well leave her here. We’ll reach Jerusalem tomorrow. I’ll take her to my mother.”
Antigonus met his look. “Someone is bound to be looking for her.”
Lucius’s chin settled into hard lines, but he said nothing.
Antigonus wisely left the tribune to his thoughts.
Chapter 2
Lucius strode into his mother’s home, the coolness of the surrounding marble and tile a relief from the oppressive Palestinian heat outside. Business had kept him from visiting his mother since he had dropped the mystery woman with her two days before, and he was anxious to find out how she had fared. The past two days had been filled with his duties, but his nights had been filled with dreams wherein the aforementioned woman had figured highly.
He handed his uniform cape to the servant waiting at the door and impatiently waved away her apparent intent to wash his sandaled feet. She placed the washbasin aside and waited for any further instructions.
“Where is my mother?”
“In the sick room, m’lord.”
He hurriedly mounted the stairs to the upper balcony. Leah met him at the top of the stairs, a finger to her lips to silence him.
As usual, he marveled at his mother’s delicate beauty even after almost six decades. Her gray hair was loosely knotted on top of her head, not a wayward tress out of place. Even after his father’s death, she preferred keeping to the Roman style. It had always confused him that she would do so when it so marked her as a Roman and not a Jew. Had she returned to her Jewish roots, she no doubt would have had an easier time among the people of Jerusalem, but then again, she had never chosen an easy life. He glanced past her to the open door.
“How is she?”
At his mother’s protracted sigh, Lucius knew the news would not be good.
“She’s burning with fever,” she told him worriedly. She took him by the arm and moved him toward the stairs again. “Let us go into the triclinium where we can talk in comfort.”
He reluctantly allowed her to lead him down the stairs and into the area used for dining. The table was set and Lucius realized that his mother had been preparing to eat her noon meal.
“I’m interrupting your lunch.” He started to pull back. “I can come back later.”
“Nonsense,” she argued. “You can join me. Are you hungry?”
Lucius realized that he was indeed famished. His stomach growled a protest at the fragrances drifting from the food on the table. His mother laughed.
“I thought as much.” She grinned. “You need someone to take care of you.”
He smiled wryly in return. His mother had been saying that for years. “That’s what I have soldiers for,” he told her, kissing her cheek. “And a mother.”
Her soft laughter brought a faint smile to Lucius’s face. Motioning one of the servants to bring another plate, she then directed Lucius to the reclining couch across from hers.
The triclinium was one of his favorite rooms in this house. The wall murals of the Tiber River and its surrounding countryside always made him feel as though he was back in Rome, and he felt the tension slide from his body. No doubt the paintings were done at his father’s instigation and probably had had the same effect on him.
Lucius waited until they were seated before resuming their conversation.
“The woman, you say she is burning with fever. How bad do you think it is? Do you think she will survive?”
It was something he had worried about for the past two days. For some reason, he just could not get the woman off his mind no matter how hard he tried. The thought of her dying left him feeling oddly depressed.
“She needs more help than I can give her,” Leah told him, her soft voice an indicator of her feelings on the matter. It would seem that the mystery woman had affected her, as well.
The serving girl who had met him at the door placed a silver plate in front of him. He glanced up to thank her and met the sultry invitation in her eyes. It wasn’t the first time this particular servant had shown interest in him. Unlike some men who would have been pleased with the inducement, he preferred to do his own hunting. Frowning, he turned away, his dismissal evident. The smile fled from her face and, turning her nose up, she flounced from the room.
Leah looked from one to the other before reaching for the sliced pheasant. It wasn’t just a mother’s pride that told her that her son was one of the finest specimens of manhood that Elohim had created. Like many soldiers of Rome, his physique was toned, the muscles evident even through the chest plate of his uniform. His face could easily have graced a Roman statue.
“So, that’s the way it is.”
Lucius didn’t like the way his mother was smiling. “No, that’s not the way it is,” he refuted. “Believe me, I have never dallied with any of your servants.”
He gave her a look that would have quelled one of his troops; it had no effect whatsoever on his mother.
“But not from lack of invitation, I suspect,” she retorted.
Ignoring the statement, Lucius returned to the subject uppermost in his mind. “If you need help I will send for Phlegon.”
His mother made a rude sound with her lips. “That old goat? I will not have him step foot in my house!”
Lucius was surprised at her vehemence. “He is one of Rome’s finest physicians,” he argued.
“If he is such a fine physician, then why is he here in Jerusalem instead of Rome? A man who uses insects to suck the life out of someone is one of Rome’s finest? Rome can keep her finest then. No wonder Rome loses so many of her soldiers if they have physicians like that!”
Lucius frowned. Part of him agreed with what she said,
but the more logical part of his mind, which realized that Phlegon had studied medicine under one of the wisest and most respected surgeons in the world, disagreed.
“Mother, if she has a fever, she needs to be bled.”
The enigmatic look she threw him puzzled him, having never seen it before. It was mysterious, and that coming from his mother astounded him. She was one of the most honest and forthright people he had ever known, and there weren’t many.
“The scriptures teach us that life is in the blood,” she told him firmly, rolling a sliver of pheasant in a flat bread. “If you remove the blood, you remove the life. It’s as simple as that.”
Surprised at her reference to the Hebrew writings, it took him a moment to decipher the direction of their conversation. He settled back against the cushions, one eyebrow winging upward.
“Ah. The scriptures.” Many things about his mother had changed when she married a Roman, but rejecting the Jewish scriptures hadn’t been one of them. Periodically she would throw out some tidbit of wisdom from the scriptures that usually left him flummoxed. He knew better than to argue because there would be no swaying her. It was obvious that she now had her mind set on a particular course of action. He decided to play the game her way.
“Well, Mother. What would you suggest then?”
The sunlight spilling in from the open doors to the balcony revealed lines in her face that he hadn’t noticed before. Although still lovely, her age was definitely beginning to tell on her. Concern furrowed his brow.
She began pulling grapes from the cluster on the table and adding them to her plate.
“There is a Jewish rapha in Bethany. He would know what to do.”
Lucius stared in surprise at this pronouncement. Bethany? That was at least six miles from Jerusalem.
“Are you by any chance suggesting that I go to Bethany and retrieve this...this rapha? And what is a rapha?”
She continued filling her plate. “A rapha is a healer. This one is old, but he has forgotten more about healing than your old Phlegon will ever know. The Jews have been ministers of healing for many ages.”
Smiling wryly, Lucius shook his head. Where had this sudden desire to defend her people come from, especially when they had been so unkind to her? She was sounding more like a Jew every minute.
“Does this healer have a name?”
Recognizing the question for the capitulation it was, she gave him a smile that made the years disappear from her face. It left him strangely unsettled. His instincts told him that there was something more going on here than was apparent on the surface.
“His name is Levi. He lives on the outskirts of Bethany as you come into the village.”
“And how on this earth do you happen to know that?”
In all the years he could remember, his mother had never traveled farther than the lower city in Jerusalem.
She quickly lowered her eyes to her plate and Lucius’s suspicions grew.
“Remember, I am from Bethany.”
That was certainly true, but it had been years since she had even mentioned it. He continued to study her, questions tumbling through his mind that he was reluctant to bring forth. He had a sudden foreshadowing of something about to happen that would change his world forever.
He opened his mouth to speak but was interrupted by a servant hurrying into the room.
“My lady, come quickly. The woman will do herself an injury!”
Both Lucius and his mother came to their feet, Lucius swiftly passing his mother and taking the steps two at a time. He made his way to the bed where the woman was thrashing wildly about. He sat on the side of the bed and pinned her by her arms, talking to her in a soothing tone of voice.
Her dark, matted hair spread across the pillow in wild abandon as she thrashed about. More bruises had darkened on her face and he ground his teeth together in anger.
She continued squirming, her head turning from side to side.
“No, Father! Please!”
Her husky, pleading voice settled coldly in his midsection. The word father tumbled through him like an avalanche of lava, bringing forth a dark anger that had simmered inside him for many a year. Her whimpering voice filled with terror sent a prism of pure rage through Lucius. He continued talking to her, trying to soothe her, but her thrashing only intensified.
His mother reached around him, placing her hand against the woman’s forehead.
“She’s still burning up with fever! Bring me some cool water.”
The servant who had followed them into the room ran to do her bidding.
“Lucius, let me try. Your voice seems only to make matters worse.”
Reluctantly, Lucius moved from the bed and allowed his mother to take his place. She pulled the woman up into her arms as she would an infant and began rocking her and humming a tune she had often used with him as a child.
Ever so slowly the Jewess relaxed in his mother’s arms. Lucius met his mother’s look and knew that she was remembering, as he was, the many times she had held him thus as a child after one of his father’s beatings. As it had then, so now her singsong voice managed to calm the rage flowing through him.
“Go quickly, Lucius,” she whispered. “Find Levi the healer and bring him here.”
Lucius had his doubts about whether a Jew would enter the home of a Roman, but he was not beyond a threat or two if it came to that. He quickly left to do her bidding, his mind suddenly filled with images of his past.
Anna clawed her way through a cloying labyrinth of darkness. Unknown voices moved in and out of her consciousness, voices calling her to the light she could see through the obsidian depths.
At times a soft feminine voice brought a soothing calm to her. In her world of half wakefulness, she could believe her mother was still alive. Soft, gentle hands soothed her brow and brought forth the peace she had known years before.
One voice in particular, strong and vibrant, pulled at her, drawing her forth; a voice she somehow recognized. She could no more resist that voice than she could stop breathing, for to do either would mean certain death.
“Anna, come back to us,” that voice commanded again and she tried harder to respond, but her eyelids were so heavy.
“She seems to be coming round.”
That voice, too, was a familiar one, one that brought sudden fear to her heart.
Anna struggled against the darkness trying to suck her into oblivion. But, why? Would it not be better to let go and find that peace she had found in the darkness?
“Woman! Come back to the land of the living. Fight him. Do not give in to Pluto!”
Pluto? Was he not the supposed god of the Roman underworld? Why would she give in to some imagined god when she had the great God of the universe as her master?
“Open your eyes!”
The command in the voice succeeded in reaching past the fog in her mind. Dragging open her eyes, Anna saw through the semidarkness a face close to her own. She could make out no features, but it was a man she had never seen before. Surprised, she pushed back against the pillow that was cradling her head. The move made shock waves of pain thunder through her head.
“Where...where am I?” she groaned.
The dryness in her throat brought on a fit of coughing, pain racking her chest and adding to her already extreme discomfort.
“Bring me some water!”
Again, that commanding voice. Large, gentle hands lifted her head and a cup was placed against her lips. “Drink.”
Gratefully, she did as she was told. She would have gulped the whole cup but he pulled it away.
“Easy. Not too much at one time.”
The water had relieved some of the dryness in her throat and she sighed with relief. Her world was coming into focus once again. She began to take note of her surroundings.
She was in the most comfortable bed she had ever known. The texture of silk sheets slid against her skin. Soothing. Calming.
The room she was in was large, larger than her entire house. The walls were of plaster with frescoes adorning their surfaces. She couldn’t make out the pictures in the dim lamplight. Where on Elohim’s great earth was she? And for that matter, how did she get here?
Another man moved into position behind the one sitting beside her on the bed.
“Hello, Anna.”
Levi. A cold prism of fear shivered through her. What was Levi doing here? And who was this other man?
A clean-shaven face told her he was no Jew. Her look wandered over his lean, muscular body. She recognized the uniform of Rome and her heart sank. What evil plan had her father instigated now that included a Roman?
She started to rise, but gasped as excruciating pain in her side ripped through her. The Roman gently but firmly pushed her back against the bed. His brown eyes flashed fire.
“Be still, woman. Do you want to undo everything we’ve done for you?” he snapped in evident irritation.
“Where am I?” she asked again. Her voice was barely a whisper as she struggled to comprehend what was happening. Nothing here was familiar. What was she doing here? Panic began to swell through her.
Seeing her distress, the other man tried to calm her.
“You are in my mother’s home. We found you in the desert. You were severely beaten. Do you remember anything?”
Murky images began to flash through her mind. She had been running away from her father’s forced marriage. Her look of panic flew to Levi’s face.
Levi knew her, and knew her well. Indeed, they came from the same village. Had he already told her father of her whereabouts? Levi’s gentle smile almost succeeded in calming her. Almost.
“Tell me what happened, child,” Levi asked.
If he hadn’t already, Levi would tell her father where she was and she would be hauled back and forced into an abominable marriage with a man who was even more wicked than her own father.
Love's Pardon Page 2
