Daughter of Rome

by Tessa Afshar

  Aquila stared at her, eyes hot. “Have you experienced other unusual accidents or attacks recently?”

  “No,” she said, then frowned. “Well . . .”

  Aquila felt chilled. “Well?”

  “An intruder broke into my brother’s house some weeks past. He tried to throttle me just before he escaped over the wall.”

  “I see. But no one is trying to kill you. No one at all.”

  The smooth brow pleated again. “I happened to be standing directly in his path.”

  “He couldn’t go around you or knock you down? He had to strangle you in order to escape?”

  She gave a weak laugh. “In the heat of the moment, he probably was not thinking clearly. Besides, who would want me dead? I am nobody. And I will have you know, my brother’s house is a veritable fortress now. No one can get in unless invited.”

  Aquila did not argue. No sense in frightening her when he had no proof or solution to this dark mystery. One thing for certain: he had to prevent her from wandering all over the streets of the city alone.

  He would ask for Rufus’s and Benyamin’s help. Between the three of them, they would guard her until they could discover what lay behind these perilous attacks. Before they parted ways, Aquila extracted a reluctant promise from Priscilla that she would stop traveling about with only Lollia for company. For now, he would have to be satisfied with that paltry measure.

  Twelve

  SOMEONE DRONED on and on in the background. The words of the Law floated about Aquila’s head, making no sense. From his place in the front row at the synagogue, he turned his head slightly so that he could gaze at Priscilla more freely.

  He had not been able to stop thinking about her since the attack. He drew a hand over his face and swallowed a groan. He had almost lost her. That scene continued replaying in his mind, the tip of the dagger at her back, death breathing against her skin.

  He could not bear the thought. Everything in him wanted to get up this instant, to gather her against him and take her home, where he could look after her. Protect her.

  He tried to remember why that would be an objectionable idea. In the fog of wanting, the clear reasons for drawing a line in the sand between them had grown muddled. Didn’t Boaz marry Ruth? Didn’t God bless that marriage?

  There. He had said it. Marriage!

  That was the desire of his heart. He wanted to marry Priscilla. If Esther walked into the synagogue right now and fell on her knees before him and begged him to take her back, he would have no interest. He wanted one woman. He wanted the daughter of a Roman general.

  Once the notion had insinuated itself into his mind, Aquila found he could not dispel it. Benyamin had the right of it. He did not wish to sleep with a dog for the rest of his life. He wanted Priscilla. The woman who loved God with a complete dedication. The woman who had been baptized in Yeshua’s name, served in his name, prayed in his name.

  They had been born unequal. But God had made them equal in his Son.

  Marriage to Priscilla meant that he put to rest any lingering hope he had for reconciliation with his family. He would have to leave Pontus behind forever to have her. To his astonishment, he found no great loss in that possibility. Whatever the cost, he would pay it willingly.

  She was worth the price.

  He felt calm as soon as he had made that decision. All the sleepless nights and the hours of inner tumult had found their resolution in this one moment. He would marry Priscilla. He would not wait another day. This very afternoon he would settle the matter. He would make her his.

  At the house in Trastevere, Aquila barely tasted Mary’s perfectly prepared soft-boiled eggs, drizzled in some kind of sweet pine nut sauce. Nor could he swallow one morsel of the leek-and-cheese salad, even though Mary flavored it with his favorite herbs, parsley and coriander. As soon as the meal was finished, he took a long swallow from his cup and approached Priscilla. He could not suppress a wide grin as he stood before her, choosing his words. He must look like a carp on a hook, his mouth hanging open, eyes glassy as he stared at the woman. Lord, she was beautiful!

  “Will you come with me to the courtyard, Priscilla?” He had chosen the location because they would have the advantage of being seen for the sake of propriety, without being overheard.

  “The courtyard?”

  “Please. I want to ask you something in private.” He felt a moment of nervous tension. What if she refused him? Then he grinned again, confident that he had not mistaken her feelings toward him. Her head jerked down, indicating her agreement, and she followed him belowstairs.

  The scent of roses and mint filled the small atrium. He guided Priscilla to sit on a stone bench and joined her once she had settled her tunic.

  “Priscilla.” He had not had time to prepare a speech. Forging ahead, he decided the simple truth would serve as well as any well-rehearsed proposal. “If your father were alive, I would seek him first. I thought of approaching your brother, but given his lack of concern for you, I decided it best to ask you directly.”

  She gave him a quizzical look. “Do you want to make an awning for our home, like you did for Senator Pudens? The family enjoys that awning every day, you know. Especially in the persistent heat of the past few months. But I am afraid I have no influence with Volero. You will have to approach him yourself.”

  Aquila slashed a hand in the air. “I do not want to speak of awnings.”

  “Oh.”

  “I wish to speak of us.” He reached for her hand and held it in his own. Everything about that hand was perfect. The way the delicate fingers fit in his palm, the way her work-roughened skin rubbed the calluses in his own. He noticed her fingers were trembling and tightened his hold. “Priscilla, I wish to wed you. My heart aches for you. My thoughts are filled with you. My home is empty for you. Will you be my wife?”

  She stared at him as if he had grown a pair of antelope horns on his head. He took it as a sign that she needed further reassurance and rushed on. “I am not wealthy. But you will not go hungry. We can love the Lord and serve him together. My life is yours, Priscilla.”

  Her skin had turned ivory white. His heart plummeted. He wondered if he had miscalculated her feelings after all. Miscalculated them badly, judging by the way she pulled her hand out of his and scooted backward on the bench until she was sitting at the very edge, as far from him as possible.

  “I cannot wed you!” she gasped.

  He watched her in narrow-eyed silence and considered her reply. When he had held her hand, he had felt the softening in her, the unintentional response. Nor had he mistaken the initial flush of joy when she first heard his intention to wed her. Her lips had opened with wonder before she had pressed them into a stiff line as if reasoning with herself. “You cannot marry an impoverished Jew?” he asked, his voice hard.

  “No! I mean, that is not the reason I cannot wed you.”

  “Why, then?”

  She dropped her eyes and remained frustratingly silent.

  Aquila sprang to his feet. “I know you care for me. You love me as I love you. Yet you refuse me. At least have the decency to tell me why.”

  Still she refused to speak.

  His lip curled with disdain. He turned to leave.

  “No, wait! Aquila!”

  He whirled back. Something flickered over her face that brought him short. Fear? He felt the hard edge of anger melting inside him, giving way to patience. To hope. He sat next to her again and took her hand in his once more. “What is it? Tell me.”

  “Aquila, I cannot marry you, because . . . because you deserve a better wife.”

  He gave her an uncertain smile. “Then I am doomed to loneliness, for I cannot conceive of a woman better than you.”

  She drew in a gasp of air as if she were drowning. “You deserve a . . . a pure woman.”

  It took him a moment to comprehend her meaning. Something inside him shattered as he realized what she had intended him to understand. She had given herself to another man. His skin turned
cold.

  It was his turn to withdraw his hand from hers and lean back on the bench. “You love another?”

  “No.” She shook her head in emphasis. “I was young. My life had grown desolate, isolated, after my father’s death. I thought I loved a man. The attentions he heaped upon me turned my head. In my foolishness, I believed his empty promises and thought we would marry.”

  Aquila’s heart could not catch up with this new barrage of revelations. He felt cheated somehow. “When?”

  “Four years ago. I was sixteen.”

  A long time, then, though the passing of years did not change the reality that she had given her innocence away in a cheap affair. Part of him felt a sick need to hear every detail, and another part wanted to run out of the courtyard, out of Trastevere, out of Rome, out of his own skin. Run until he left this awful revelation far behind him.

  He remembered, with sudden and overwhelming clarity, her kindness to him when he had divulged his own struggle with shame. He gulped in a breath. Out of his depths, past the disappointment and grief that sat like a stone in his gut, he dredged up a few words of grace. “The Lord forgives,” he said, though he could not say the same for himself.

  “It is worse, you see.”

  “Worse?” He could not imagine. Worse than this?

  She pressed the back of her hand to trembling lips. For a moment he wondered if she would be sick. But she removed her hand and forced herself to go on. “I discovered I was with child.”

  He sat, frozen, unable to move a muscle. Unable to draw breath.

  “When he refused to marry me, I feared my brother would kill me should he discover my shame. So . . . I went to a physician.”

  Aquila almost toppled off the bench. “A physician?” His voice emerged strained, faint. There was no mistaking her meaning. “Oh, God, help me!” he cried. “My people would stone you for less.”

  She came to her feet. “And you would pick up the first rock.” She was shivering so badly, he thought she might collapse. Placing a hand against the wall, she held herself up. “You should know, Aquila, that I did not go through with it. I left the physician still bearing my child in my womb. But God took the babe from me anyway. I suppose I did not deserve to have him.”

  A keening sound escaped her. She shoved a fist into her mouth to stop the sobs he knew were desperate for release. Her knees buckled, and time slowed down as he saw her tumble toward the ground. He leapt, capturing her in his arms before she collapsed on the stone floor. He stood uncertain, shifting her against him.

  Her head moved fitfully on his arm. “I am sorry,” she whispered. “It’s all right. You can set me down.”

  He drew her closer. “You will only collapse again.”

  Neither spoke as he carried her abovestairs. He could feel the heat of her skin, like a fever. Her limbs trembled with a violence she could not seem to control. He tightened his arms around her. His feet lagged on the steps. Squeezing his eyes shut, he hefted her weight higher against his chest. The air felt heavy and wet. For a moment he could not breathe. He forced his feet to climb again. One, two, three, four . . . every step bringing him closer to the end.

  At the landing, Mary noticed them and cried in alarm. “What has happened?”

  “She does not feel well,” Aquila said, keeping his voice neutral. It was not his place to reveal her secret.

  He laid Priscilla on the carpet, her head cushioned on a pillow. Against his will, his fingers lingered on her back for a moment. He had bent close as he laid her down, and their faces almost touched before he jerked back, putting as much distance between them as he could.

  “You will care for her?” he asked Mary. “I must go home.”

  “Home?” Benyamin asked with a frown.

  “Home,” he said, and unable to force another word out of his frozen lips, he trudged down the stairs and out of the house. Ferox shadowed his steps, his exuberance dampened for once, as though sensing his master’s black mood.

  He had been willing to give up so much for her. His family, life in Pontus, his intention to marry a woman from among his own people, his desire to live by the letter of the Law. But this he could not bear. The weight of her past crushed him and, with it, his dreams.

  He felt robbed.

  His face flamed as he remembered her words. “You would pick up the first rock.” He had picked up a rock. He hurled it now, bitter with disappointment and determined to put the woman behind him. She was not worthy.

  Thirteen

  IN THE GLOAMING, the nightmares came, shapeless, nameless, and deadly. Priscilla coiled through the horrors of her dreams, visiting endless visions of terror until, gasping for air, she finally came awake. Soaked in sweat and misery, she sat up. She had no clear memory of the visions that had chased her in her sleep. She only knew that she felt filthy, a polluted and polluting swamp, undeserving of the air she breathed.

  She fought the acid taste of vomit rising into her throat as a wave of guilt overwhelmed her. Blindly, Aquila had plunged into that swamp, seeking sweet, clean love, and had instead found himself engulfed by the slime of her past.

  Priscilla swallowed as the memory took shape, and her mind threw up an image of Aquila’s face the moment he had discovered her secret. His look of horror. Of disgust.

  She had been unprepared for his proposal. Her own feelings had grown and deepened, but she had never considered the possibility that Aquila might feel more than a passing attraction for her. Even if she had had a thousand days to prepare her answer, what else could she have said? He deserved no less than the truth. And the truth had revolted him.

  It occurred to her as she sat in the unrelenting dark, listening to Lollia’s even breathing in sleep, that she owed the same truth to others.

  For months Mary, Rufus, and Benyamin had thought they knew her. They had offered her hospitality, friendship, acceptance. As she had begun to grow in her faith, they had showered her with encouragement, offered her an unending well of admiration.

  How she had enjoyed their esteem!

  But even as she had reveled in that esteem over the passing weeks, a more honest corner of her heart had felt like a fraud. They admired her because they did not know her. Did not know who she really was or what she had done. She had won their approbation at the cost of the truth.

  Time to put an end to false things. To reveal her secrets to these people whom she had grown to love. Her heart cringed at the thought of such exposure, and for a moment, she considered remaining silent. She would lose their precious friendship, she had no doubt. They would abandon her in disgust as Aquila had. His words reverberated in her mind. “My people would stone you for less.” Her stomach roiled, and she leaned her head back to gather strength. Strength for the truth. She would do what was right in the sight of the Lord.

  She had held tight to this part of her life for years, held it in a sealed tomb, never to be opened. She must roll away that dusty stone once more to reveal the skeleton of her past.

  With Lollia’s help, she planned the time of their final meeting with exquisite care, ensuring Aquila would not be present. Her friends had not seen her since the day Aquila had carried her into the house, dizzy and weak with anguish.

  Now she asked her friends to sit in Mary’s cheerful living room with its red carpet and soft cushions, explaining that she had something important to share with them.

  Before she could start, Benyamin blurted, “I confess, this is a far different outcome from what I expected when my nephew took you belowstairs.”

  Priscilla gulped. “Outcome?”

  “You may think me foolish. I was sure Aquila intended on asking you an important question.” He studied Priscilla. “Was I right? Did he ask you a question?”

  “He asked,” she said softly.

  “And you refused him?” His voice rose, indignant. Three faces stared at her, their wide, dark eyes filled with confusion.

  “For his own sake, I did.” She fought the waves of nausea that never seemed too far away
these days and forced herself to speak. Forced herself to confess, leaving nothing out. It was a brutal disclosure, without conceding a hint of mercy.

  Lollia wept silently as Priscilla, having gasped out the sorry account of her affair with Appius, reached the part of her tale that she had never even shared with her faithful companion. Her visit to the physician. She avoided any mention of Antonia, finding the weight of her own secrets to be burden enough.

  “I quit the physician’s house that day, determined to tell my brother the truth and face the consequences.” Her voice had grown hoarse, coming out strangled. “If he killed me, I thought, then at least I would die with my babe. One good thing had emerged from my trip to the physician. Having come so close to destroying him, I had learned how much I loved my child.

  “Before then, I only saw him as a calamity. The scourge that would lead to my destruction. Afterward, he became real to me. My child. My own to love.”

  Surely the air had left this room, she thought, gasping. Still, she forced herself to go on. “When I returned home, I found, once again, that I lacked the courage to face Volero’s wrath. Every day I delayed the inevitable, knowing my changing body would soon reveal my degradation.

  “In my agony, I stopped eating, stopped sleeping. If I had been able to bring myself to confess, I would have borne his punishment once and been done. But fear kept me enslaved. My body began to fall apart under my neglect.”

  A sob racked through her. Three sets of eyes never shifted from her face. She felt the weight of their regard, a millstone that ground her down. She rushed to finish, to put an end to the pain.

  “I lost the babe. It was my own fault. If I had had the sense to take better care of myself, he might have lived. But I lacked the courage to confess my sin to my brother; he might have shown us mercy in the end. Now I shall never know. My child is gone and my innocence with him.”

  She took a shuddering breath. “That, Benyamin, is why Aquila and I cannot wed. He deserves better than I.”