As Sure as the Dawn (21 page)

Rizpah turned Caleb onto his stomach and watched him try to crawl. “Atretes rejects Christ.”

“For now.”

Rizpah looked at her. “If you can lead him to Christ, please do so. With my blessing.”

Camella’s smile disappeared. “I don’t think so. I wouldn’t dare get so close.” She gave Rizpah a self-deprecating smile. “I know myself. I succumb too easily to fleshly passions. Lysia is evidence of that, though I’d rather give up my life than not have had her. And most of the others have their own struggles, too. I know you’ve noticed the way Eunice looks at Mnason, how she always seems to end up near him, oblivious to how it looks to anyone. Even Parmenas.” She shook her head sadly. “No, we have too much already to face. I think Atretes is going to be up to you.”

Peter and Barnabas ran in front of their shelter, playing a lively game of some sort, as they usually did each day. “Can’t catch me! Can’t catch me!” Peter shouted. Barnabas, following, caught his foot in the rope that held their shelter secure and almost brought it down.

“Boys!” Camella said in irritation.

Sometimes their youthful zest was extremely annoying, as it was now, when their ruckus frightened Caleb and started him crying again. Rizpah picked him up and comforted him. Something fell over not far away, and she wondered what destruction the boys had caused this time. Yesterday, when the weather was clear, they had annoyed the sailors with their racing back and forth and getting in the way. When Timon had finally interceded and told them to play something else, Peter had worked at the knots holding several crates.

“Atretes reminds me in some ways of Lysia’s father,” Camella said when the boys had run back toward the others. “Handsome, commanding, virile. Am I embarrassing you? I won’t speak of him, if you’d rather I didn’t.”

Rizpah wasn’t sure if she meant Lysia’s father or Atretes. “Somewhat,” she admitted ruefully. “Though not for the reasons you might think. I’m no stronger than you, Camella.”

Camella recognized the acceptance offered, as well as the confession. “Good.” She put her hand over Rizpah’s. “We’ll keep one another accountable and ward off temptation when it comes.”

Rizpah laughed. Caleb had scooted as far as he could go. She picked him up and set him back down near her, so he could try again.

“He’ll be crawling before you reach Rome,” Camella said, watching him.

“And walking by the time we reach Germania.”

“You’re not eager to be going, are you?”

“Would you be?”

“Very. More than anything else, I long for a new beginning.”

“You can begin anew wherever you are, Camella.”

“Not when you have someone reminding you of your past every step of the way or expecting you to fall prey to the same failings.”

Something struck their tent, startling them both. A ball of material rolled in front of Caleb. “Those boys, again,” Camella said, picking it up as Peter appeared around the corner.

“That’s our ball,” he said, out of breath.

“Yes, we know. Please play elsewhere,” she said tossing it to him.

He darted away, out of sight but not out of hearing.

The weather changed for the better. Peter and Barnabas were running along the deck, weaving around people and sometimes bumping into them in their exuberance. Capeo and Philomen joined them for one round on the deck before their father, Parmenas, stopped their wild play and settled them at more peaceful games. For a little while, the children settled down, and then Peter and Barnabas began to shout and laugh and race about again, annoying every member of the crew as well as passengers too polite to do anything. Timon and Porcia made no effort to curb their offspring’s activity, even when Peter knocked Antonia down.

“For heaven’s sake, Porcia!” Eunice said, obviously frustrated at having the conversation she’d been having with Mnason interrupted. She bent to pick up her daughter.

“He didn’t mean to do it,” Porcia said in quick defense, sending Peter off again while Eunice wiped her young daughter’s tears away. “Besides, you have little room to judge! Your attention has hardly been focused on your family!”

A dull red filled Eunice’s face and she glanced uncomfortably toward Mnason, then fell silent.

Atretes came to stand beside Rizpah. Camella looked up at him and then glanced at her. “I think Lysia and I will take a walk around the deck,” she said, taking her daughter’s hand.

“You needn’t leave.”

“Yes, leave,” Atretes said coldly.

Sorry she had said anything, Rizpah turned to look out at the sea, mortified by his rudeness. She could feel Atretes watching her and wondered what he was thinking. “Did you want to talk to me about something?” she said when the silence began to wear on her nerves. He didn’t answer. “Would you like to hold Caleb?”

“Are you so desperate to distract me?”

“Yes!”

Grinning, Atretes took him. “In all things honest, aren’t you?”

“I said I would be.”

His mouth flattened into a hard line. “Even with yourself?” She refused to rise to his baiting. She watched her son, troubled that she had handed him over to a man who could take men’s lives without the least remorse. Sometimes she struggled with it, wanting to withhold Caleb from his father. This was the first time since the dreadful night they had left the villa that Atretes had held him, other than when he had carried Caleb onboard the ship. Why had she handed him over so eagerly? Just to distract Atretes’ interest in her? She half expected, half hoped, Caleb would put up a fuss. He didn’t. Instead, he grabbed the ivory chip around his father’s neck and chewed on it. He looked at the interesting object and then pounded it on his father’s chest. “Da . . . da . . . da . . .”

Atretes’ expression changed markedly. Forgetting her, he began to talk to his son. All the world-worn hardness left his face, and Rizpah glimpsed the man he might have been had circumstances been far different. He spoke softly, German words she couldn’t understand. But the tone was easily understood.

Atretes lifted Caleb above his head and jiggled him, drawing a delighted sound from the little boy. Rizpah stood by, watching, pierced.

Someone ran into her from behind, and she uttered a sharp gasp of pain and fell forward against Atretes. Atretes lowered Caleb quickly, holding him secure in one arm as he steadied her with the other. Barnabas tried to dart around the side of her, but Peter was too fast.

“Caught you!” Peter shouted triumphantly, giving his younger brother a hard shove.

“Not fair! Not fair!” Barnabas complained and the two boys began arguing loudly.

Atretes thrust Caleb into Rizpah’s arms. Making a sweep of his foot, he sent both boys crashing to the deck. “Ouch!” Barnabas cried out. Bending down, Atretes caught each one by an ankle and lifted them high and right over the side of the ship.

“No!” Rizpah cried out in fright, sure he meant to drop them.

Barnabas screamed in terror, arms swinging wildly for some hold and finding none.

“It’s time you two learned a lesson!” Atretes said and shook them hard enough to make their teeth rattle. When he stopped, Barnabas screamed louder, but Peter dangled, shocked into uncharacteristic silence, eyes huge.

Hearing the commotion, everyone turned, Porcia and Timon last of all. When Porcia saw Atretes holding her sons by the ankles and dangling them overboard, she screamed and ran toward them, frantic to reach them before they met a watery death. “Someone stop him!”

“Atretes, please don’t,” Rizpah said, hardly able to breath.

“No one would miss two worthless, yapping little curs!”

Barnabas went on screaming while Peter hung upside down, limp and, for all appearances, determined to die with more dignity than his younger brother.

“Timon!” Porcia wept. “Do something!” She looked around wildly for her husband, who was hurrying after her, his face ashen.

Atretes gave Barnabas a hard shake again.
“Be silent!”
Barnabas stopped screaming as though someone had grabbed him by the throat and squeezed off his air.

Everyone stared. No one dared move, not even Porcia who had reached the side of the ship where Atretes held the boys and stood weeping and wringing her hands. “Don’t drop them,” she wept. “Please don’t drop them. They’re only babies. Whatever they did, they didn’t mean to do.”

“Shut up, woman. You are a fool.”

He lowered the boys as though ready to drop them and everyone caught their breath. “You’re going to listen, aren’t you?”

“Yes!”

“You will not run or shout or fight anywhere on this ship. If you do, I’ll feed you to the fish. Do you hear me?”

Hair hanging, eyes huge, they nodded quickly.

“Repeat what I just told you.”

They did.

“I want your word on it.”

Barnabas jabbered it out, while Peter answered solemnly.

Atretes let them dangle a moment longer, and then swung them high and dumped them on the deck at their mother’s feet. Porcia gathered her sons quickly to her.

Two of the soldiers laughed and several members of the ship’s crew cheered. One passenger called out that Atretes should’ve dropped them while he had the chance.

“As for you two,” Atretes said to Porcia and Timon, “tend your children, or the next time I will heave them overboard, and you right after them!”

Porcia drew them up quickly and away from Atretes. “Don’t go near that man again. Stay as far away from him as you can. He’s a barbarian and he’ll kill you.” Her words were loud and clear enough for many to hear.

A muscle jerked in Atretes cheek. He looked around in cold challenge at those staring at him.

Barnabas cried and clung to his mother’s skirts, but Rizpah noticed Peter hung back, gazing up at Atretes with rapt adulation. She glanced up at Atretes and saw he noticed the boy as well. He smiled faintly and jerked his chin for the boy to go.

Timon cupped the nape of his son’s neck and shoved him along the deck behind his mother and brother. “Listen to your mother.”

Turning away from those still looking at him, Atretes put his hands on the ship’s rail. She had never seen him look more grim. She moved to stand close beside him and he looked down at her in surprise. His expression darkened. “What’re you smiling about?”

“You,” she said, the floodgates of her heart opening.

His eyes narrowed, distrustful of the warm glow in her brown eyes, even more wary of the hunger he felt for her acceptance. “They deserved it.”

“You wouldn’t have dropped them.”

“No?” He almost reminded her that only a few nights before he had killed two men in cold blood.

“No.”

“So you think you understand me?”

“No. I don’t understand you at all,” she said frankly. “But I know enough about you to make a new beginning.”

She put Caleb back in his arms.

The ship reached Corinth without incident. Theophilus and the soldiers removed the trunk being sent to the emperor while the slaves, who had manned the oars from Ephesus to Corinth, unloaded rugs, aromatic spices, and amphorae of wine, and loaded them into wagons for the journey over the isthmus.
Sburarii
unloaded the sand ballast for the Corinth arena. It would be replaced on the other side of the hill with grain destined for Rome.

Once stripped, the ship would be dragged from the water. It would take days to haul the
corbita
the few miles to the Savonic Gulf where it would be launched in order to continue the voyage to Italy. Nero had begun work on a canal through the faulted limestone of the isthmus, but the work had stopped upon his death, making the arduous overland trek still necessary.

The slaves strained at the ropes of a ship nearby. Sweat glistened on their brown bodies as they labored to pull the ship up a ramp. Weeks of travel south and west into the Mediterranean would be saved by taking the ship overland. September had come and gone and the sea was notoriously dangerous by November. Crossing the windswept plateau might be bothersome and difficult, but it was safer than challenging the elements.

Atretes was little interested in the details of unloading and moving ships. He had been restless, confined on board one. Now he was tense from the level of activity on the docks and nearby city streets. Corinth was too much like Ephesus. Marbled temples rose grandly, piercingly white in the sunlight. Wandering auctioneers and town criers advertised goods and rewards for lost slaves. Wholesalers jammed the ports, and ships captains traded spices for honey, drugs, and perfumes to take to Rome.

While everyone gathered their belongings, Bartimaeus, Niger, Tibullus, and Agabus told the others they had letters from John to deliver to members of the Corinthian church. Mnason left in their company.

“Atretes is waiting for you,” Camella said as they walked together.

Rizpah raised her head and saw him far ahead. His manner toward her had changed subtly, giving her cause for caution. She knew she would be faced with her own temptations. Would she be wise in her choices, heeding the quiet voice of God? Or would she be like Eunice, hankering after sin?

The wind rippled Atretes’ clothing and tossed his blonde hair. He stood for a long moment, looking at her. Turning away, he went on. Even at this distance, she could sense his annoyance. Did he expect her to run and catch up to him? She was saddened that he was so determined to remain aloof from the others, yet thankful as well. She did not think he had overheard the grim news about the church in Corinth, or witnessed Eunice’s struggles. She hoped not, anyway. He would judge the Christian woman faithless. Eunice was a weak and foolish woman who toyed with sin without even realizing it.