by Tessa Afshar
The speaker stepped forward until the diminutive lamp at Athena’s feet revealed his face.
My back melted against the wall as I made out Dionysius’s familiar face. “You scared the heart out of me,” I accused.
“What are you doing?” he asked again, his gaze taking in our bundles and my unusual garments—his own cloak wrapped loosely about my figure, hiding my gender.
I swallowed hard, struck mute. I was running away from my mother and grandfather. But in escaping, I was leaving behind a beloved brother. Dionysius was Grandfather’s pet, the son he had never had. I think the old man truly loved him. He certainly treated him with a tenderness he had never once demonstrated toward Theo or me. Grandfather would not stand for Dionysius leaving. He would follow us like a hound into the bowels of Hades to get him back.
My escape could only work if my brother remained behind.
I told myself Dionysius loved Athens. He fit perfectly into the mold of the old city with its rigorous intellectual pursuits and appreciation for philosophy. Athens suited Dionysius much better than the wildness of Corinth. I was like a scribe who added one and one and tallied three. I lied to myself, twisting the truth into something I could bear.
Dionysius had a more brilliant mind even than my grandfather, a mind that prospered in the academic atmosphere of Athens. But he had inherited our father’s soft heart. The abrupt separation from Father had wounded him. To lose Theo and me as well would cut him in ways I could not bear to think about. Not all the glories of Athens or Grandfather’s affection could make up for such a void.
I had not told him of my plan to run away, convincing myself that Dionysius might cave and betray us to the old man. In truth, I was too much of a coward to bear the look on his face once I confessed I meant to leave him behind. The look he was giving me now.
Theo stepped forward. “She has to leave, Dionysius. You know that. Or the old wolf will force her to marry Draco.”
My brother shifted from one foot to the other. “He is angry. He will cool.”
I ground my teeth. Where Grandfather was concerned, Dionysius was blind. He could not see the evil that coiled through the old man. “He threatened to have Theo flogged if I refuse to marry the weasel. One stripe for every hour I refuse.”
“What?” Theo and Dionysius said together. I had not even told Theo, worried that he might think I was running away for his sake more than my own, and refuse to help me.
“He has no scruples when it comes to Theo. Or me.”
“Mother—”
“Will take his side as she always does. When has she ever defended me?”
I rubbed the side of my face, where the imprint of her hand had left a faint bruise, and winced as I remembered her iron-hard expression as she hit me.
Two days ago, Draco and his father, Evandos, had come to visit Grandfather. After drinking buckets of strong wine, the men had crawled to bed. The wind had pelted the city hard that evening, screaming through the trees, making the house groan in protest. The rains came then, sudden and violent.
I had risen from my pallet and slid softly into the courtyard. I loved storms, the unfettered deluge that washed the world clean. Within moments, I stood soaked through and grinning with exultation, enjoying the rare moment of freedom.
An odd sound caught my attention. At first I dismissed it as the noise of the wind. It came again, making me go still. The hair on my arms rose when it came a third time, a tortured wail, broken and sharp. No storm made that sound. My heart pounded as I followed that unearthly wail to a narrow shed on the other side of the courtyard. I slammed the door open.
He had brought a lamp with him, and it burned in the confines of the shed, casting its yellowish light into every corner. My eyes were drawn to the whimpering form on the dirt floor, lying spread-eagle. In the lamplight, blood glimmered, slick like oil, staining her thighs, her face, her stomach.
“Alcmena?” I gasped, barely recognizing the slave girl.
“Mistress!” She coughed. “Help me. Help me, I beg!”
I turned to the man standing over the slave, his face devoid of expression. “You did this?”
He smiled as if I had paid him a compliment. “A foretaste for you, beautiful Ariadne. I look forward to teaching you many lessons when you are my wife.”
“Your wife? Get out of here, you madman!”
“Your grandfather promised me your hand in marriage. We drank on it earlier this evening.” He stepped toward me. His gait was long and the space narrow. In a moment, Draco towered over me. He twined his fingers into my loose hair and pulled me toward him. The smell of the blood covering his knuckles made me gag. Without thinking, I fisted my hand and shoved it into his face. To my satisfaction, he staggered and screeched like a delicate woman. “My nose!”
“I beg your pardon, Draco. I was aiming for your mouth.”
He rushed at me, hands clenched. I screamed as I stepped to the side, missing his bulk with ease. I had good lungs, and my voice carried with eerie clarity above the howling gale.
He faltered. “Shut your mouth.”
I screamed louder.
The muscles in his neck corded as he hesitated for a moment. Then he lunged again, and I braced myself for a shattering assault. It never came.
Dionysius and Theo burst through the door, causing Draco to skid to a stop. My brothers seemed frozen with shock as they surveyed the state of Alcmena. Relief washed through me at the sight of them, and I sank to my knees next to the slave.
“What have you done?” my brother rasped, staring at the broken girl who could not even sit up in spite of my arm behind her back. “You brutal maggot. You’ve almost killed her.”
Theo placed a warm hand on my shoulder. “Are you all right?”
I nodded, crossing my arms and trying to hide how badly my fingers shook.
Grandfather sauntered in, my mother in tow. “What is all this yelling? Can’t a man sleep in peace?” He wiped his bristly jaw.
“Draco hurt Alcmena,” I said.
My mother had the grace to gasp when she saw the slave girl, though she said nothing.
“He asked my permission to take the girl, and I gave it.” Grandfather tightened his mouth when Alcmena doubled over and retched painfully. “You must have drunk too much, boy. Go back to your father.”
Draco bowed his head and left without offering an explanation.
“He is crazed,” I said. “He claims he will marry me. That you made an agreement with him earlier this evening.”
“What of it?” Grandfather said, his voice hardening.
I expelled a wheezing breath. “You can’t be serious! Look at what he did to the girl.”
“The boy is a little hotheaded. Too much wine. Things got out of hand. Nothing to do with you. I have made the arrangement with my friend Evandos. It is done.”
“Grandfather!” Dionysius cleared his throat. “I think we should ask Draco to leave the house.”
“We shall do no such thing. If an honored guest wants to abuse your furniture, you must allow him,” Grandfather said. “She is my slave, and the damage is to my property. I say it is of no consequence.”
“She’s hardly a woman. Younger than I am,” I cried. “What do you think Draco will do to me if he gets his hands on me? You should be ashamed of yourself for even entertaining the notion of my marriage to such a man.”
Calmly, my mother raised her arm and slapped me with the flat of her hand, putting the strength of her shoulder into that strike. I tottered backward and would have fallen if Theo had not caught me.
“Don’t be rude to your grandfather. Now go to bed.”
Furniture. That’s what the poor girl amounted to in the old man’s estimation. And I was not far above her in his classification of the world. In the morning, Grandfather insisted that my betrothal to Draco would stand. He expected me to honor his precious word by marrying Evandos’s brutal son. My mother watched this tirade, eyes flat, as her father bullied me. She expected me to obey without
demur as any good Athenian girl would.
With effort, I pushed away the memories and returned my attention to my brother. “Mother informed me yesterday afternoon that she had started to work on my wedding garments.”
Dionysius blinked. In the flickering light of the lamp his eyes began to shimmer as they welled with tears. I knew, then, that he would not hinder us. Knew he would cover our departure for as long as he could, regardless of the pain it caused him.
I encircled my arms around him. Grief shivered out of us as we tried to make the moment last, make it count for endless days when we wouldn’t have each other to hold. I stepped away, mindful of time slipping, mindful that we were far from safe. Theo and Dionysius bid a hurried farewell, locking forearms and slamming chests in manly embraces that could not hide their trembling lips.
Grabbing my bundle, I threw one last agonized glance over my shoulder at my brother. He stood alone, blanketed by shadows save for a luminous halo of lamplight that brought his face into high relief. I swallowed something that tasted bitter and salty and entirely too large for my throat and stumbled forward.
A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
WHO WERE PRISCILLA AND AQUILA? We don’t know much about this extraordinary couple who saved Paul’s life, set up house churches in three different cities, and became influential spiritual leaders through some of the most harrowing years of the church’s history. The fact that Priscilla served alongside her husband cannot be disputed. The unusual mention of her name before his in several passages suggests that, indeed, on certain occasions, she might have been considered the more knowledgeable teacher and a respected leader in her own right.
Priscilla is a diminutive for Prisca, a name that might give us a clue to this remarkable woman’s identity. The male version of Prisca’s name, Priscus, was a well-known Roman appellation, belonging to a noble Roman family. Prominent Roman households had a habit of naming their slaves after the patriarch. As such, Prisca (female for Priscus) could be a slave name. However, Priscilla was married, which means that she could not have been a slave, as slaves were not allowed to marry. Hence, she was either a member of the Priscus family or a freed slave. The latter option is not likely since the Romans rarely freed their female slaves. To me, the most plausible option points to Priscilla being a scion of the Priscus family. The story line deals with this heritage.
According to the book of Acts, Emperor Claudius commanded “all the Jews to leave Rome” (Acts 18:2). Such a wholesale banishment of the Jewish population seems problematic to most scholars. At the time, Rome had a substantial Jewish population, and the sudden expulsion of such a great number of the citizenry would have been noted in several archives—something we lack. However, most of the Jews in Rome were citizens. This made me think that perhaps all the Jews who were not citizens had been expelled. The Bible is rarely interested in mentioning such distinctions, and the generalized comment in Acts would make sense since its only purpose is to explain Aquila and Priscilla’s presence in Corinth, not to give an exact historical recitation. Hence, I believe “all the Jews” in the passage refers to all the Jews who were not citizens, an explanation which perfectly aligns the historical and biblical accounts.
Aquila, a Jew, was originally from Pontus (Acts 18:2). We know that the church had been well established in Pontus by the early 60s (1 Peter 1:1-2), about ten years after the events in Daughter of Rome. Certainly during this period, there would have been Christians in Pontus. Yet even with Priscilla and Aquila’s extensive travels, Pontus is never mentioned as one of their destinations. The plot takes this curious absence into account.
How, precisely, did our indomitable couple risk their necks to save Paul’s life (Romans 16:4)? This remains another unsolved biblical mystery, which makes for fun fiction. Some scholars believe the occasion is related to the events in Corinth; others feel that it might have occurred later, in Ephesus. In either case, we only know that the apostle felt that he owed his life to Priscilla and Aquila.
Some of the descriptions of the synagogue in Rome, which has not survived the ravages of time, are based on the third-century synagogue discovered in Dura Europos, where men and women sat together during worship.
The Hill of Amphorae, made entirely of broken pottery shards, would have been more of a molehill in this period and not fully developed for another ninety years. However, I was so enchanted by the concept that I cheated on the timeline and included it in the novel.
Besides Priscilla, Aquila, and Paul, several other characters in Daughter of Rome are based on historical figures. Rufus and his mother are mentioned in Romans 16:13 among those whom Paul greets with affection. We know that Simon of Cyrene (present-day Libya) had two sons, one of whom was named Rufus (Mark 15:21). It is not unlikely that these are one and the same man. Pudens is mentioned in 2 Timothy 4:21. According to church tradition, Pudens was a senator in Rome who welcomed Peter and Paul into his house and was baptized by one of them. Later he was martyred under Nero. Both his daughters went on to be recognized as saints of the church, opening their homes for the work of God and ministering to the needs of the poor. Stephanas was a respected member of the church at Corinth, whose family became the first converts in Greece (1 Corinthians 16:15-18). He and his household were among those few that Paul baptized personally (1 Corinthians 1:16). Other biblical figures in the novel include Justus (Acts 18:7), Crispus (Acts 18:8); and Sosthenes (Acts 18:17).
Antonia is a fictional character. But the Emperor Claudius’s tendency to be fooled by women of a certain character is well documented by history.
As usual, I used a few quotes in the context of the book for the sheer fun of it. Aquila’s words at the end of chapter 8, “The only way to peace is by learning to accept, day by day, the circumstances and tests permitted by God. By the repeated laying down of our own will and the accepting of his as it is presented in the things which happen to us” are a paraphrase based on the preface to Hinds’ Feet on High Places by Hannah Hurnard. Mary’s words to Priscilla in chapter 19, “The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts such as yours. That things are not so ill with these folks as they might have been . . . is half-owing to you for living faithfully a hidden life” are a paraphrase of the closing scene in George Eliot’s Middlemarch. At the end of chapter 25, Aquila describes what Priscilla means to him, borrowing several phrases from C. S. Lewis’s description of his own wife, Joy, in A Grief Observed. The minor adjustments I made to these quotes were in order to make the flow more seamless.
The more I studied this couple, the more they amazed and inspired me. They were iconoclasts, intrepid warriors for the Kingdom of God who broke the rules and helped change the world. Their marriage must have been an incredible partnership. Priscilla, especially, sheds some light on the crucial and extraordinary role of women in the early church.
As always, no novel can begin to capture the sheer depth of the Word of God. The best way to study the Scriptures is not through a work of fiction, but simply by reading the original. This story can in no way replace the transformative power that the reader will encounter in the Bible. To learn more about Priscilla and Aquila, please refer to Acts 18:1-28; 1 Corinthians 16:19; Romans 16:3-5; and 2 Timothy 4:19.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
THANKS, FIRST OF ALL, to my husband, my greatest strength, my deepest blessing. I don’t know how I used to write books without your help! Seriously! How did I?
What a marvelous treasure I found in my agent, Wendy Lawton, who continues to bless me with her friendship, her protective vigilance, and her vast knowledge.
I remain profoundly thankful for the incredible fiction team at Tyndale, who have become like a beloved writing family. They even sent me chicken soup and cookies when I most needed a touch of comfort. What more can a girl ask? What a joy to work with Stephanie Broene and Kathy Olson again: their astute insights and patient counsel has transformed Daughter of Rome into one of my favorite books. Karen Watson, Jan Stob (thanks for the extra time you spent with me in Char
leston), the precious sales team, and the hardworking marketing experts—I owe every one of you so much thanks. And chocolate. Tons of chocolate.
Inexpressible thanks to Rebecca Rhee for her priceless friendship and her insightful edit of this story, which helped to create a much better read. Thanks also to Kim Hill, whose encouragement, prayers, and sheer belief in my calling helped me keep going. I remain indebted to Lucinda Secrest McDowell, who read the early chapters of the story and told me it was good before I had figured out what the story was really going to be about. Now that’s enthusiasm.
I have to dedicate a whole sentence to my mama here, who without fail, genuinely feels I am the best writer in the world. Can’t ask for a more loving or committed fan.
A special thanks to my super assistant, Amanda Geaney, who graciously puts up with me, helps me in countless ways, and leaves me free to actually write a little.
I owe a special debt to Peter Habyarimana, who candidly shared his memories of life as a street kid in Uganda. Some of Marcus’s experiences as a homeless child in Rome were based on Peter’s true-life stories. A staff member at World Vision today, Peter’s harrowing childhood accounts made me laugh and cry and wonder at the incandescent soul that could survive so much neglect and go on to love with such abundance.
To every single one of my readers who keeps coming back for more stories and shares in these amazing adventures: thank you. You are the very best any writer could ask for. It is an incredible privilege to write for you. Keep those letters and emails coming! They are fuel during the weary, brain-dead hours.
And finally, words fail when I think of God’s grace. Gratitude hardly seems enough.
I will open my mouth in a parable;
I will utter dark sayings from of old,
things that we have heard and known,
that our fathers have told us.
We will not hide them from their children,
