Thief of Corinth

by Tessa Afshar

  “What did she write?” Justus asked.

  “That she had his scrolls, and that she intended to return them to their owners.”

  “He will come back here,” Justus said. “Once he finds his box is empty.”

  I nodded. “He will return a serpent defanged, with no power to harm us. If he makes himself too much of a nuisance, we shall call the magistrate. But I suspect he will want to leave Corinth soon. All those people he has pushed about for years will now be free of him. Free and enraged, looking for revenge. He will not find this a pleasant place to remain. I suspect that is why he left Rome. He must have outlived his welcome there as well.”

  Justus grinned. “You are a cold, cold woman, and I love you.”

  I pivoted toward the stairs. “We have unfinished business.”

  Father had managed to push himself out of the bed and was sitting in his chair, staring blindly out the window. He still looked pale, clutching at the scroll that had had such a devastating effect on him.

  “What is it? What have you read?”

  “Shall I leave you to speak privately?” Justus asked.

  “No.” Father looked into his lap. “This concerns you most of all.” He made a vague gesture toward his bed and Justus and I sat side by side, stiff with alarm and burning with curiosity.

  “I considered destroying this. To spare you, Justus,” Father said. “But it is impossible. You must know, hard as the knowledge will be for you to bear. Justus, this letter concerns your mother. Your mother and your father. And . . . and one other. That is why you must read it.”

  We looked at the sheet listing Felonius’s account first. The payments had started twenty-one years ago and continued with regularity for nineteen years. Two years ago, they came to an abrupt halt. Whatever the case concerned, it was now over.

  The parchment was blotchy with age. Justus unfurled the letter. We began to read, our heads bent together, touching.

  Parmys, your adoring and ever-faithful wife, to my beloved husband and master, Servius.

  Justus took in a gulping breath. The letter was from his mother. We read on.

  Not a day has gone by that I have not thanked Ahura Mazda for bringing you to me. Your love has been my home, my country, my happiness. You and Justus have brought me more joy than I thought possible.

  “Who is Ahura Mazda?” I asked.

  “Persian god.” Father twirled his wrist. “Read on.”

  I flinched when I saw the next paragraph.

  When that brute violated me, my world shattered. But your love remained unshaken. You gave me hope to go on, go on for you and for my son. I may have survived that single atrocity if it had not been for the child. I hoped, how desperately I hoped as I carried that babe, that it would be yours.

  I choked, reading those words. How she must have suffered! Hand covering my mouth, I read the rest of her letter.

  One look at him, and I knew that he was not, for he carried the mark of his father. Looking at him was an arrow to my heart. A constant reminder of the horror I had borne. But I loved the child, Servius! He was bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh. My own son as much as Justus ever was.

  I do not blame you, you understand? I could never blame you for what you did. You meant to protect me from the pain. You saw my tears and worried that I would break, trying to raise him. I know why you abandoned him, and I forgive you.

  Now you must forgive me. I cannot bear this sorrow. Having him and losing him, both daggers in my heart.

  For when I love Justus, I am overcome with guilt, knowing my younger son is abandoned somewhere, with nothing but a soft blanket and his lion rattle to keep him safe. No mother to care for my boy, who must be dead by now.

  I cannot bear the burden, my love. You would not have taken him if I had been stronger. His loss is my own fault. I am taking the coward’s road. Fare thee well. Love our son twice—once for me, and once for you.

  My mind was in a whirl as I grappled with the ramifications of her words. Justus clutched the parchment, a glazed look on his face, trying to come to terms with his mother’s agony, with the knowledge that her death had come at her own hand.

  My heart ached for him, for the horror he must feel at the brutal assault on the woman he adored. I reached out to touch his arm. Shaking his head as if to awaken himself from a nightmare, he scrabbled about on the bed, looking for the accounting sheet that had come with the letter.

  “He extorted money from my father!” he cried when he had found it. “As if he had not suffered enough. All those years, Felonius squeezed my father, getting rich on his guilt and pain,” he spat, his eyes wild. “I will kill that man with my bare hands!”

  “Sit down!” My father’s voice was hard, compelling.

  Justus sat down.

  “I cannot imagine your pain, Justus. But I told you that letter concerned one other. It is of him we must think. This is no time for revenge.” He tried to rise, forgetting the splints on his leg, and collapsed back on the chair with a faint cry. “Blast this shattered leg!” he roared. “Ariadne, inside the wooden cabinet by the window you will find a carved silver chest. Bring it to me if you please.”

  For once I asked no questions but sprang to action, my mind reacting to the undercurrent of urgency that ran through Father’s command. I placed the chest on his lap. He moistened dry lips and opened the silver lid. From inside, he pulled out an exquisitely woven blanket and a golden rattle. It looked like a lion.

  I felt dazed, as if I had smashed my head against a mountain. I had seen those things years before when I was a little girl. Standing in this very room. With Theo. “These are yours,” Father had said to Theo. “I found you wrapped in this blanket, with this rattle tucked inside.”

  “Lord God in heaven!” I said, trembling. “Theo. Theo!”

  Justus leaned forward and took the blanket and rattle out of Father’s hands. His eyes filled, overflowed. In a strangled voice, he whispered, “Theo?”

  Sometimes silence booms like thunder, carrying too many revelations for the mind to absorb. Shock had rendered us immobile.

  Father recovered first. He had had twenty-one years to think on this puzzle, after all. “Your mother gave birth a week or so before Ariadne was born. Everyone was told that the child died, and your mother, too, of childbirth fever. This timing is important, as you shall see.

  “You may have noticed that Theo has a silver streak in his hair, though he tries to hide it. He has had that streak since I found him. It is hereditary, I am told. Having seen it, Parmys would have recognized it, if his father had had the same mark. It would be how she would have known that the child did not belong to Servius.

  “All this and the blanket and lion rattle point to one undeniable fact. Theo is your half brother, Justus.”

  Justus scrubbed his face with his hands. “I . . . I have a brother!” His voice broke. His frame shook as tears dribbled down his cheeks.

  “You have a brother,” Father confirmed. He placed a bracing hand on Justus’s shoulder. “And he needs you.”

  “Theodotus!” Justus cried gruffly. “You named him Theodotus. ‘Given of God’! Surely God himself led you to find him, Galenos. To raise him so close to his own blood brother. I loved him as a friend. Always. But now, he is so much more. He is the son of my mother. The only family left to me!”

  “Do we tell him?” I asked. Nausea rose up like a storm in my belly. I was catching up with Father’s thinking, catching up with why he had considered destroying this letter before Justus and I ever saw it.

  “What do you mean? Of course we will tell him,” Justus said, too caught up in his own emotions to understand. “He has a brother who loves him. He will want to know that.”

  “Think, Justus! Think of your mother’s words. Of the man who fathered him. The manner of his conception.”

  Justus froze. “Ah.”

  “His father raped his mother. She took her own life, partly because she could not face him. Your father abandoned him like a sack of refuse. An
d now, you, his own brother, are marrying the woman he loves.”

  Speaking the stark reality out loud shook me. I bowed my head and wept, my voice strangled. It was too much, the pain Theo would have to endure. Surely it would splinter him.

  Justus stared at me through bruised eyes. “To protect him from those hard realities, we would have to rob him of the best things in his life, Ariadne. Rob him of a brother who cherishes him. Rob him of a mother who loved him, loved him in spite of the circumstances of his conception. She called him bone of her bone.”

  We were startled when Dionysius came in. “Why the glum faces?” he asked cheerfully.

  We told him. Theo was his brother too. “This is a matter for prayer,” Dionysius said gravely when we finished. “You would never have seen that letter, or discovered the mystery of Theo’s parentage, if God had not aligned a hundred different things. He has led you to uncover this old secret. Uncover it for his own divine purpose. Now we must ask him for wisdom that we may complete the good work he has begun in us, and in Theo.”

  I prayed that night as I had never prayed before, because my supplications were not for me. They were poured out on behalf of one whose heart was already bruised. Merciful heavens, but how it hurt to love so much!

  We did not sleep or eat, but stayed up through the watches of the night, asking God for strength to do right. At dawn, Paul joined us. “The Lord told me to come,” he said simply. And when he heard our tale, he added his supplications to ours.

  I sent for Papirius the following day. My body was weak for hunger and lack of sleep, but my soul had grown stout from the hours of prayer. This time, Justus joined me. Papirius’s nasty smile slipped a little when he saw Justus next to me.

  “I have your letter,” I said.

  “Letters, I think you mean.”

  I shook my head. “You can have yours in exchange for mine. That is all.”

  Papirius stood, putting a hand to his hip. “You grow fond of jail, I see.”

  I leaned into his face. “You can have your freedom, or you can have my incarceration. But you cannot have both. In either case, you shall never see the other documents. Now choose. I have no time to waste.”

  He fetched my letter in under an hour. When we had made our exchange, Justus grabbed the front of his tunic and hauled him up until Papirius’s body stood on tiptoes. “You know me?” he asked.

  Papirius nodded.

  “Then you know this is no empty threat. I have spies watching you. Cheat again, and you will go to prison. Speak a whisper against my future wife or father-in-law, and you will find yourself crushed. Do we understand one another?”

  Papirius nodded. Without the Honorable Thief’s letter he had nothing but his loose tongue. If Justus had not been on our side, he might have been tempted to wag it, for the sake of revenge if nothing else. Justus posed too great a threat to his well-being, however. He had many powerful connections at the harbor. Either Papirius went straight in his dealings, or he better find a new post at a different port.

  “Papirius!” I called as he reached the door. He turned and waited.

  “I am praying for you.” It was no empty promise. I had finally determined how to love such a man. He was not safe to befriend. He would twist honest compassion into his own ends and try to take advantage of it. But I could intercede for him with God. Bless him even. One day, that prayer might melt his heart enough to make him approachable.

  He flinched. Spitting on the ground, he looked at me to make sure I knew what he thought of my offer and stormed off. Some men had no appreciation for love.

  CHAPTER 33

  JUSTUS INVITED MY FAMILY to his house for dinner. Theo, who had returned from his trip two days before, came with Paul, even though he knew I would be there. Paul had told him that we had important news to share with him.

  He looked thinner, his longish face all angles and cheekbones, the silver streak in his hair well hidden. He would have reason to loathe that streak even more by the time the evening was done. I sat to one side, where he would not have to look at me.

  When the first course was cleared, Justus dismissed the servants and told them not to return. He looked feverish, his color high, his hands shaking. “Theo,” he said, “Paul has told you that I have news for you?”

  “He has.”

  “Theo. I . . . I am your brother,” Justus blurted.

  “I appreciate that. I feel the same.”

  Justus slashed the air with his hand. “No. I mean—Theo, listen. My mother was your mother. We are half brothers.”

  Theo went still. “Your mother?”

  “She . . . Our fathers are different. But we were born to the same mother. I never knew, until yesterday.”

  Theo pulled a hand through his hair, making it stand on end, revealing the silver mark. “I don’t understand.”

  Justus leaned toward him, hand extended, like a plea. “Before I tell you more, I want you to hear me. Until yesterday, I thought I had no family. Now, I have discovered that I have a brother. It’s like being given the world. You are a treasure to me, Theo.”

  “You are my brother?” Theo stood up and abruptly sat down again. “If this is true, I am the most blessed man in the world.”

  “It is true.”

  “How do you know? How did you suddenly come by this knowledge?”

  To pave the way for the hard news, Justus and Dionysius took turns telling him about Felonius and Papirius. As they explained how I had stolen the box of letters, Theo’s eyes sought mine for a brief moment and slid away again.

  “Among those scrolls we found a letter from our mother,” Justus said. “In it, she spoke of you. She loved you, Theo. My father abandoned you at the bema without her knowledge.”

  He shook his head, confused. “Why? Did your mother have a lover? Am I the result of her infidelity?”

  “Our mother. And no. Not . . . exactly,” Justus said, and gulped. We had agonized over this part, wondering if we should tell him the truth or soften the blow by telling him a gentler version of his conception. Paul had warned us that God was not the father of lies, not even well-intentioned ones.

  We knew, in any case, that Theo would insist on seeing the letter. He would not lightly let go of that one evidence that shone a light on his parentage.

  “Theo, we don’t know who your father is. We probably shall never find out. Our mother’s letter does not give a name. What it intimates is that your father forced himself on her. We don’t know the circumstances.”

  Theo had grown rigid. “He raped her?”

  “It makes no difference, Theo. What happened is no fault of yours. I could not love you more if we shared the same father.”

  Theo tried to stand, and collapsed. “Are you mad?” His words slurred with emotion. “Of course it makes a difference. I am worse than a by-blow. I am the result of violence and violation. God in heaven! I am a monster!”

  Paul came to his feet. “Be still, Theo. Listen to me. What happened to your mother was an unspeakable horror. But God reached into that brutal moment and planted one good thing. That was you, Theo.

  “You have come to know the Lord Jesus. You know that he died to call you his own. To claim you. To restore you. Would he pour such a sacrifice at the feet of a monster? No, Theo. You are his prize, his treasure.

  “The man who fathered you sinned gravely against your mother. One day, he will stand before God and answer for his crime. But you are not responsible for his shame. The Lord has set his affections on you, Theo, and that imparts more value to you than all the stars in the heavens.”

  Justus stepped forward. Without a word, he pulled Theo into his arms. “Please, Theo. Please. Now that I have found you, I cannot bear to lose you.” Theo stood rigid, a wooden beam, an iron post in Justus’s embrace. His eyes were wide, unseeing.

  It pierced Justus, that resistance. He broke. His tears didn’t come silently, with dignity. They burst out of him like a crack born out of an earthquake; they came with heaving and wails. We all w
ept, witnessing this thundercloud of sorrow. My chest ached, my head ached, my throat burned. My heart was about to split in two.

  Theo’s mouth softened. Justus’s desolation pierced the fog of horror that had choked him. He pressed a hand on Justus’s back and swallowed convulsively. Swallowed again, and melted. The two men came together like one statue carved out of the same piece of marble. They fused together with tears and sorrow and love.

  When the storm passed, they sank onto a couch, next to each other. If they had been women, they would have held hands. Men are not so blessed. Their shoulders touched. That seemed enough.

  We all needed a bit of silence, a slice of peace to recover. When some time had passed, Theo said, “Can I see this letter?”

  Justus retrieved his mother’s scroll. Theo had lost every scrap of color by the time he finished reading it. Then it was Father’s turn to fill the gaps. He had brought his silver box. “These are yours,” he said, handing him the blanket and rattle.

  When Theo leaned to take them, my father captured his wrist, drawing his attention. “I have ever been proud to have you for a son. Will you let me adopt you as my own? A little late, I own. But no less heartfelt in spite of it.”

  Theo’s eyes filled with tears again. “I will think on it.”

  “That is all I ask.”

  As Theo resumed his seat, I stared at the two brothers, trying to find traces of the mother they shared. There was a vague resemblance about the shape of the eyes, the curve of their chins, the way they smiled. Easy to miss unless you knew to look for it.

  Two men who possessed my heart in such different ways. My eyes rested on Theo for a moment, lingering on that achingly familiar face, so far from me now. They moved to Justus, who had captivated my heart. Love and grief welled up in me. We had all lost so much to our parents’ disasters.

  I felt the weight of his stare. Theo had been watching me as I gazed at his brother. And he had seen. Known how I felt about Justus. As always, he had read me without words. We looked at each other for a moment. A moment of farewell, of regret, of ending. Theo came to his feet. “I had better go.”