Jewel of the Nile

by Tessa Afshar

  She ignored the slight nausea born of fatigue and allowed herself a tremulous smile of triumph. She was not dead. She was not in Caesarea. She was more or less clean, on a ship bound for Rome. And perhaps, just perhaps, in spite of the endless trouble she had caused him, Theo had started to look upon her as a friend.

  Her new friend knocked on the door much too soon for her liking, a certain sign that he had not taken time to rest. He had accepted her advice to bathe, however, and now stood in a white tunic that made his bronzed skin shimmer like a polished shield, his hair combed carefully to hide its tuft of silver.

  “You changed,” he said, sounding surprised.

  She drew a hand down the light-blue linen of her garment. “I had been wearing that tunic since Caesarea. You could have grown a flower patch in its dirt.”

  Theo drew the stool near the bed and sat. This close, she could smell cypress with a hint of sweet styrax on his skin. Inexplicably, she felt blood rushing to her cheeks.

  For four days, the man had fed her one spoonful at a time, held her as she drank, wiped her sweat. For four days, he had sat closer than this. But she had been too sick to appreciate the intimacy of their position.

  Now she was well enough to take note of it. Her insides twisted, as if they, too, were blushing.

  Theo shifted. Closer. For a moment, she squeezed her eyes shut.

  “I have a surprise for you,” Theo said, his deep voice sounding pleased.

  “We are about to arrive in Rome?” she croaked hopefully.

  He chuckled. “Not even close. This time of year, a bigger ship might get us to Rome’s harbor at Puteoli in two weeks. But Parmys will need five. Six, if the winds prove ornery.”

  Her mouth turned dry. She leaned away until her back hit the wall. Six weeks! That did not leave her much time to find Vitruvia, discover the identity of her father, and deal with Sesen’s plot against the queen. Her hand fisted against her belly. “What surprise?”

  “You are coming out on the deck today. To sit in the sun. Teretius told me that once the fever became less acute, fresh air would do you good.”

  “Truly?” She grinned.

  He grinned back. “Taharqa and Sophocles have made a nice chair for you. Come and see.”

  Chariline hung her legs over the bed. Holding on to the rough wooden edge, she pushed herself up. A deep cough rattled at the bottom of her lungs and made its way out, leaving her gasping. Without warning, her knees buckled.

  Before she could collapse, Theo’s hand snaked out to wrap around her waist, pulling her to him. For a moment they stood, chest to chest, Theo holding her up.

  Her heart raced. He shifted his hold and, grasping her under the knees, swung her up into his arms.

  She gulped a startled breath.

  “Allow me to be your chariot,” he said with perfect courtesy, but his voice emerged husky.

  He was only being kind she reminded herself. But her galloping pulse had no interest in courtesy or kindness. Tucking her runaway feelings out of sight, she lay against his chest like an unyielding timber pole.

  As they emerged onto the deck, she worried the men would ogle her with curiosity, if not outright animosity. But they remained busy at their tasks, ignoring her presence. She suspected that either Theo or Taharqa had warned them to leave her in peace.

  Theo carried her to a low chair, which had been set up at the stern of the ship, and deposited her gently into the downy folds of a thick cushion. As his hands withdrew, she felt at once relieved and disconsolate, as if she had lost something precious.

  From her seat, she could see Taharqa at one of the steering oars. The ship had two tillers on opposite sides of the stern, but it did not always require two pilots. Depending on the wind, it could be manned by means of only one of the rudders.

  She drew a mouthful of sea air into her chest and felt life return to her veins. “What a beautiful day,” she whispered.

  Someone had erected a wide canopy made of canvas and rope over her chair, protecting her from the harsh rays of the sun. Theo adjusted the angle, throwing more shade over her. “We will start slow. Just a few minutes today.”

  “Theo.” She held his gaze, something she could do now that she was out of his arms. “I can never repay your goodness.”

  He yawned and stretched. “Don’t want repayment. Besides, I need to keep you alive. Clearly, you like my soap, and devoted customers are hard to come by.”

  The fever broke after eight days. But it wasn’t until the third week of her convalescence that the painful coughs and the exhausting dyspnea finally ceased. Not until then did Theo consider Chariline well enough to be in the company of Sophocles.

  After that, the old mariner fell into the habit of seeking her out every day, doing his chores while sprawled next to her so they could converse. One afternoon, as she slouched in her comfortable chair, working on a new design, Sophocles dropped by her side, a large spread of sailing canvas on his lap.

  “Can you sew?” he asked hopefully, holding up the unraveling leather patches in the corners of the stiff linen.

  “Not a stich. Can you draw?”

  “Not a stroke.” He pulled a large needle out of a leather pouch and set to repairing his canvas with dexterous fingers.

  “Why is the ship called Parmys?” she asked, turning her attention back to her scroll, another drawing of Theo’s beloved ship.

  “It was named after the master’s mother.”

  She frowned. “What kind of name is Parmys? It isn’t Greek or Latin.”

  Taharqa, who stood within earshot manning the steering oar, said, “It’s Persian. Theo’s mother was a freed slave.”

  Chariline set the drawing aside. Finally, someone willing to shed light on Theo’s mysterious background. “Who freed her?”

  Sophocles tightened an unraveled cord of leather. “Master Justus’s father, wasn’t it? Before he married her?”

  Taharqa made a sound of assent in his throat but did not expand any further.

  Recognizing the name of Theo’s brother, she asked, “Their father, you mean? He freed their mother?”

  “They have the same mother, but different fathers,” Sophocles explained.

  Taharqa gave the old sailor a quelling look. Sophocles shrugged. “It’s all I know, anyway. No need to beat me up with your menacing stares.”

  Chariline considered Sophocles’s answer. Theo’s mother must have been widowed, or divorced, and then remarried. She had a vague recollection of Theo mentioning an adoptive father. What was he called? Something Greek. Galenos! That was it. Was Galenos Justus’s father? Perhaps after having Theo, Parmys had been widowed, and Galenos had married her and adopted Theo.

  No. That could not be. Slaves were forbidden to marry. If Justus’s father had been the one who freed Parmys, that meant she could not have been married before him.

  She leaned forward. Theo may have been born to a slave woman. An unmarried slave woman. “Sophocles, who is older? Theo or Justus?” she asked.

  “Justus.”

  So Parmys had been freed by Justus’s father, married him, and had Justus. She must have married Theo’s father after that. Obviously, Theo’s father had died, and Galenos had adopted him. Adoptions were common enough in Roman society.

  “How long have you known Theo?” she asked Sophocles curiously.

  “Three years now.” Another unraveled cord tightened under the nimble fingers. “Found me in a heap at the port of Alexandria, he did. Unwanted flotsam, that’s what I was. Too old to be of proper use on a sailing vessel. My last master dumped me there and said I wasn’t worth the food I consumed.

  “I sat on the jetty not knowing what to do with myself. Been a sailor since before I turned twelve. Sixty years I been sailing, and of a sudden, I am not fit for the sea.

  “A dozen men and women walked past me by the hour. Not one offered a hand. Master Theo, he stopped. Asked my name. Asked me where I used to work and if I had any skills. Hired me on the spot.”

  She smiled.
“Sounds like Theo, all right.”

  Sophocles set to tackling another tear in the canvas. “I can’t do what these louts do, anymore.” He pointed his chin at two sailors adjusting the spars in the square sail. “Too old to climb up and down or pull on oars or haul rigging. But I know how to cook . . . some. And the master isn’t particular. Pays me the same as he pays the other men.” Sophocles grinned. “I’m wiser now and don’t spend it all on cheap wine. Got me a little nest egg.” He stretched his back and gazed into the sea.

  “Almost didn’t get to spend it, though. Nearly drowned in that storm.”

  “I am sorry, Sophocles! Thank God you survived.”

  “Thank Master Theo. He jumped into the water to pull me out. Just about drowned his own fool self, so a useless sailor wouldn’t die.”

  “I told you, old man,” Theo said, appearing on silent, bare feet, his shadow falling over them. “Saved you, because Yeshua saved me. He is the one you should thank. If not for his help, we would both have drowned that day.”

  Sophocles looked up. “Haven’t believed in a god since I was a boy. But I like yours. If he is a made-up story, he is a sweet one.”

  “He’s no story, Sophocles.”

  Sophocles nodded. Under his breath he said, so only Chariline could hear, “When I look into his eyes, I almost believe it.”

  CHAPTER 17

  And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.

  MATTHEW 28:20

  “Are you going to tell me what you’ve been writing in that scroll?” Chariline held up her own sheet of papyrus and examined the outline of the house she had been drawing. She had decided she would design a garden for Vitruvia as a gift.

  “No,” Theo said without looking up.

  They were sitting next to each other on the deck, Chariline on her chair, where she spent several hours each day, and Theo stretched out on his side. In the sun, his gray eyes turned into a peculiar shade of silver, ringed by black. Chariline realized she was staring and looked away.

  “I show you all my drawings,” she pointed out.

  “And they are very good. You still owe me several, by the way.”

  “I gave you three!”

  “I would like a villa next.”

  “Would you, now?”

  “Not a drawing. But a proper architectural design. With construction plans.”

  “And what would you do with the plans of a villa?”

  “Build it.”

  “Where?”

  “On my land.”

  “And where is that?”

  “Aren’t you full of questions.”

  “I can’t design a villa for the shores of heaven. I need to know about the land. Is it flat? What kind of soil does it have? Does it enjoy a mild climate? Does it have access to water?”

  “It’s an olive grove just outside Corinth with soft, rolling hills. One day, I would like to build a villa in it. And I am commissioning you to design it.”

  Chariline sat up. “Do you mean it?”

  “Perhaps.” Theo shrugged. “I would have to check your calculations, first. Make certain you have made no grievous errors that would bring the walls down over my head the first time there is a strong wind.”

  She laughed. Theo had an abhorrence for sums and calculations. As soon as he had discovered her dexterity for geometry was matched by her talent for arithmetic, he had dumped reels of his accounts on her lap and asked her help for his dealings with the officials at Rome.

  She had embraced the work with enthusiasm. Never mind her passage to Rome. She owed the man for the hefty physician’s fees. For the big bag of curative herbs. For her food. And likely, she owed him her very life. No physician could have provided better care for her as she battled fever than Theo’s quiet, capable ministrations. He had pulled her through the darkest days of her infirmity.

  “Do you truly own an olive grove?” she asked.

  “I do. A gift from my brother.”

  “If I owned my own olive grove, you couldn’t convince me to leave it. Justus sounds like an exceptional man.”

  “I could not ask for a better brother,” Theo said, his voice grave. But Chariline saw something flicker in the gray eyes, like an old specter, present, yet invisible.

  She sighed. “I wish I had a brother. Or a sister. Besides Aunt Blandina and my grandparents, the closest person I have to family is Natemahar.”

  “The Cushite treasurer?”

  She nodded. “I’ve known him longer than I’ve known my grandparents. But living on different continents means I don’t see him often.” She shrugged. “It can grow lonely.”

  Theo rolled up his papyrus and placed it in the wooden box where he kept his writing implements. “My friend Aquila once told me that the Lord made a special promise to his followers. After his resurrection, he told them, I am with you always.” Theo’s gaze bored into her. “Always. To the end of the age.”

  “I know,” she said.

  “You do here.” He pointed to his temple. “But not yet here, I think.” He pressed his hand over his heart. “I tell you this because I understand the difference. There was a time when I needed to hold on to that promise tightly. Needed it to pierce my heart.”

  She slid closer. “You were lonely?”

  “I felt forsaken.”

  He stared into the distance. “Day after day, the world went on around me as before. But I had come to the end of the age in my life. The age of dreams. The age of hopes. The age of belonging. It had all come tumbling around me. And I needed the always of God in the midst of those endings.

  “I needed to learn that Yeshua does not abandon. He does not walk away. He does not leave and forsake. His always is trustworthy. Even when the people you love fail you, he does not. He does not leave you. He is with you. Always.

  “This is what I learned in that dark time, Chariline. Though I had no mother and no father, though I did not have the desire of my heart, I was never alone.

  “You may have no brother or sister. I don’t know if you will ever find your father. But I do know this. As one who calls God Abba, Father, you are never alone. Your earthly father may have abandoned you. Knowingly left you, even. But your heavenly Father will not. He will remain with you always. And in his presence, there is fullness of joy. Soul-deep calm. Favor and grace.”

  He dropped his head, as if in thought. “Don’t bank your life on finding Vitruvia. Or your father. Don’t bank your life on besting your grandfather.” He looked up. “Those things may come to pass, or they may not. You may find your father and feel lonely in spite of it. Feel the sting of his abandonment worse than you do now. But whatever happens, you can bet your whole life on this: God is not an abandoner. Yeshua will not leave you or forsake you.”

  He grabbed his wooden casket and rose to his feet. “Lecture finished.” Flashing a smile, he bowed like a courtier at the Kandake’s court. “Now, I must attend to my duties.”

  Chariline followed him with her eyes as he disappeared into the hold. He had revealed more of himself to her in the past hour than he had in all the days she had known him. And yet, thinking over his words, his confession of pain and loneliness, she realized that she still knew as little about this enigmatic man as she had known before. He was, she decided, a true paradox, at once candid and secretive.

  With a start, it dawned upon Chariline that she longed to know Theo. Know him to his core with no secrets between them. She sensed in this man a goodness, a depth, both of faith and emotion, that she had rarely encountered in anyone. Everything in her was drawn to him.

  With creeping dread, she began to suspect that Theo’s decision to withhold a part of himself from her would one day prove as painful as the worst agony she had suffered during her infirmity.

  In spite of the prevailing westerly winds, the currents of the northern Mediterranean allowed the Parmys to swallow up the leagues on the open sea at a steady pace. Encountering few obstacles, in the fifth week of their journey, they arrived at the port of Syracuse, w
here they dropped anchor for the night.

  Tucked into the southeastern corner of Sicily, Syracuse offered all the lavish charm of a prosperous Roman city. As well as two theaters, the city boasted an amphitheater, temples, altars, and aqueducts, not to mention numerous taverns offering a bottomless fountain of wine and fermented barley. Not that Chariline got to see any of it. She had promised to remain on board until they arrived at Puteoli.

  After interminable days on the sea, Parmys’s men abandoned ship as soon as they anchored in the early afternoon, ready for some entertainment. At Theo’s behest, Chariline wrote new letters for her aunt and Mariamne, which he entrusted to couriers at the harbor.

  Gazing longingly at the pretty port from the confines of her chair, Chariline smiled in welcome when Sophocles returned from his jaunt early, carrying a hefty satchel. He dropped next to her, tucking his legs under him in a tight fold. From his satchel, he extracted a fresh pomegranate and delicate almond cakes, still warm from the ovens.

  “A gift for you,” he said.

  “Sophocles! You shouldn’t spend your money on me.”

  “Well.” The old man started fiddling with the strings hanging from his satchel, looking cagey.

  “Well, what?”

  “I only have the money because of you.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “When you got sick, we made a bet, see? The boys and I. The boys all said the gods had cursed you for sneaking on our ship without permission. They were sure you would die. I bet them you wouldn’t. I knew you were too stubborn.”

  Chariline smirked.

  “Besides, the master was praying for you. Day and night. In between fluffing your pillows and wiping your brow, he prayed. His god had to cure you, didn’t he? Or he would never hear the end of it.”

  Chariline cuffed Sophocles on the shoulder. “Some respect, if you please.”