Jewel of the Nile

by Tessa Afshar

  It was enough to drown her, that realization. Until she saw Theo. Theo who had no doubt drunk from the same well. Reached the same putrid bottom. He had offered her the comfort of understanding. Soothed her with his knowledge of her pain.

  Then he had given her something more. Something beyond the pain they both knew too well. He had smiled at her, and in that broken smile, she had received his acceptance.

  Sesen was her father!

  As the shattering emotional dust of the day settled, this resounding conclusion returned to tantalize and torment Chariline. That day at the palace in Cush, she had truly found her father. Spoken to him. Now the reality of his plot against the queen came crashing upon her with a fresh intensity. She had to find a way to stop him! However evil the Kandake, she could not let her father become a murderer.

  A soft knock sent Chariline to her feet. She opened her door a crack and found Theo standing beyond.

  “Did I wake you?”

  She shook her head. After returning from Vitruvia’s home an hour earlier, she had plopped on her bed, unutterably weary but unable to sleep.

  “Will you come to the courtyard with me?”

  Chariline nodded, curious. She padded after him, following the wavering light of his lamp as he descended the steps. He had left his writing box on the bench and, pulling it toward him, made room for her to sit.

  After she had settled down, he drew out a thin scroll of papyrus. She recognized it as the one he wrote in sometimes. The one he guarded with jealous secrecy.

  He swallowed. “You want to know what I have been writing?” Without explanation, he handed her the papyrus.

  Her brows rose.

  Wetting her lips, Chariline unfurled the sheet. For a moment, she stared without comprehension. Then it finally dawned on her.

  Theo, the man who had won the hearts of the people of Corinth with his wild chariot racing, the merchant who had attained enviable success, the ship owner adored by his sailors, the adventurer who had helped save the life of Paul—that Theo had also written this.

  A poem.

  On the stained, worn sheet of papyrus, where his fingers had left numerous ink smudges, he had composed a poem entitled “Angel Scars.”

  “You are a poet!”

  He winced. “Not a good one.” Stretching a hand, he furled the scroll closed. “Before you read it . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s a poem about scars. The scars we bear. In our souls. In our bodies.”

  He pulled his fingers through his hair, drawing the dark, silky strands away from his forehead, displaying the silver streak he usually hid. “This is my scar.”

  “The silver in your hair?” she asked, confused.

  He gripped the edge of the stone bench, his fingers turning pale. “I was a foundling, you see. An abandoned babe.”

  She gasped, shocked. For all the hours she had spent trying to guess at his past, trying to unearth his secret, she had never thought of this possibility. “Oh, Theo!”

  “My adoptive father, Galenos, found me on the steps of the bema on the day of his daughter’s birth. He had gone to offer libations to the gods for the safe delivery of his child. On the way, he found me, forsaken.”

  “Who could ever abandon you?” she asked, her eyes big and shocked.

  It seemed impossible. Knowing him. Knowing his goodness, his kindness, his loyalty. Who could not have wanted Theo? Was the world mad?

  Then a fresh possibility occurred to her. “Were you sickly?” Families sometimes exposed ill or deformed children to the elements. Undesirable babies were left in the hands of the gods to save or to kill.

  He dropped his head. “There was nothing wrong with me except for this clump of silver hair.”

  “But . . .” Chariline angled closer toward him. “You think they abandoned you because of that?” She pointed to his forehead. It made no sense. A tuft of pale hair could hardly count as a malformation.

  Theo breathed. Again and again and again. “I always suspected this was the deformity that caused my parents to reject me. And I discovered that I was right. But that is a story for another day.”

  He touched the silver streak. “This is my scar. The reminder that I was unwanted. The mark of my neglect. The proof that something was very wrong with me.”

  He licked dry lips. “Most of us have them. Scars from unhealed wounds. Some visible, like a poorly healed cut. Some invisible, always aching.

  “The problem with scars is that they tell their own twisted story. They make you see yourself through their distorted mirror.”

  He pulled his fingers through his hair. “This mark that marred me at my birth, for example. It made me see not only a man who was abandoned, but one who should be abandoned. A man who deserved to be unwanted.”

  “But Theo!” Chariline stared at him wide-eyed. She had never known a man more worthy. Worthy to be claimed. Worthy to belong. Worthy to be held onto. Whoever walked away from Theo had to be a brainless fool!

  He flicked her an enigmatic glance. “I had a worse problem. This scar made me see a God who would leave me in my time of trouble. A God who would always allow terrible things to happen to me. If God allowed a baby to be thrown out like garbage, what worse nightmares could he have in store for me? It took a long time for Yeshua to teach me differently. To help me see God rightly. To trust him with my future. To trust him with my scar.”

  Theo looked at his hands, his smile painful. “I tell you this because tonight, you touched your own scar. Touched the lies it tells.”

  Her throat turned into a desert creek.

  The wrong person had survived that day. The wrong person had been taken.

  This was her lie? Did he think her conclusion as faulty as she thought his?

  Theo leaned toward her. “Now your battle begins in earnest. You have to allow Yeshua to tell you the truth. Stop listening to your scars. You are not God’s mistake, Chariline. You are his glory.”

  Chariline’s eyes filled with tears. As hard as she tried to repress them, repress the heat in her cheeks and the tremble in her lips, she could not.

  “My words will not heal you,” Theo said. “Neither will my poem. But they are . . . an invitation. The creaking sound of a door opening. A door to hope. To truth.”

  Chariline clutched the papyrus to her chest. “You want me to read your poem?”

  “I want you to have my poem. It’s a present.” He looked away. “A present from a man not yet fully healed. I know God will not abandon me.” His throat worked. “I’m not so certain about people.” He shrugged. “I’m still learning, you see. I only wanted you to know that I understand. That I have fought this battle.”

  She watched him rise, her eyes glued to his retreating back, his steps sure as he melted into the darkness.

  He had ripped off a great scab in order to bring comfort to her bleeding wound. Had revealed a secret he would rather have kept hidden. Theo, a foundling! She shook her head. And yet as much as he had exposed of his history, she realized, he had kept more hidden.

  What had he said? I know God will not abandon me. I’m not so certain about people.

  She understood now why he kept her at arm’s length. Why he refused to share his past. Shame hides. Shame separates.

  It dawned on her, with a shiver of fear, that Theo might never trust her with his past. That he might never fully open his heart to her.

  Sitting in the dark, Theo’s poem clutched in one fist, Chariline accepted that more than her father, more than her mother, more than all the joys that architecture and design could give her, she had come, over the past weeks, to want what she might never have.

  Theo’s heart.

  The whole of his heart, without conditions, without partitions, without walls.

  Because somewhere on the calm waves of the Mediterranean, as he had tended her broken body, Theo had come to fill her own heart with more love than she had ever known.

  She took a strangled breath. Then, drawing close the lamp that he h
ad left for her, she unfurled his scroll and peered into his soul.

  Angel Scars

  I met an angel, fierce and bold,

  battle-scarred and mangled from the wars of old.

  His face had once been lovely, pure, fiery light,

  but an ancient wound had marked it, like a livid blight.

  I asked him to tell the story of that terrible scar.

  Recount the tragic glory of every gash and mar.

  His eyes told me a tale of many brutal stings,

  but his joy was boundless, and I could not fathom its wings.

  “I faced a demon, once, faithless, and sly,

  on one prayerless morn, when the battle went awry.

  He brought me down and maimed me, his talons ice and frost.

  For one final blow he held me, and I knew myself lost.

  “Then the Master reached out, extending his hand,

  grasping the demon’s sword like a burning brand,

  thus, he dispatched the foul one to its native land.

  Now, here you see me, scarred, and yet I stand.”

  I was confounded,

  my mind astounded.

  “Why do you not tremble as you remember that day?

  Why do you not mourn—lament your loss?” I say.

  “You mortals are blinded, bound by the Fall,

  chained as you are, to corruption’s call.

  We Burning Ones know, on good days or ill,

  whether war rages on, or all is still.

  Above every din and the force of every pain,

  we seek the Master’s touch and count all else vain.”

  This I can’t grasp.

  I can only gasp:

  “You have salvation; indeed, you have life.

  But has God saved you from even worse strife?

  Recalling that day, won’t you weep and fear?

  Is this scar not a sign you’ll lose all you hold dear?”

  “How strange,” he said, “is the memory of your heart.

  You retain all darkness—but with grace, you part.

  The threats of yesteryear cast shadows on the morrow

  until fear becomes your tomb, and joy is consumed by sorrow.

  “You cannot see the Hand that saved you before

  has yet more love and grace, more strength in store.

  Your scars don’t point only to the enemy’s power.

  Much more are they reminders that God is your strong tower.

  He did love you then, and treasures you still;

  one day your soul will know this; it will drink its fill.

  “With every hideous pain, you fear much more;

  but we angels know suffering as a holy door.

  “The road that leads to valleys will in the end impart,

  God’s hope and his glory: the start of a new heart.”

  CHAPTER 24

  Deliver me from those who work evil,

  and save me from bloodthirsty men.

  PSALM 59:2

  Chariline read through the poem twice. The third reading made her weep so hard, she had to stuff her face into her hands lest she awaken the household. She thought of her scars. The ones she bore from her mother’s death. The ones she carried from her father’s absence. The ones that lingered from Aunt Blandina’s distance. The ones that were left from her grandparents’ constant rebuff.

  Scars more terrible than the ones that flared out of Sesen’s blind eye.

  She thought of Theo’s angel, who saw his scar not as a reminder of all the harm done to him or as a signpost of more suffering still to come, a finger of indictment against a God who had allowed the battle. Who had failed to protect him.

  Instead the angel saw his scar as a reminder of God’s protection. As an invitation to a new heart.

  Theo had given her this poem, this glance into his soul, this revelation of his past, because he wanted her to become more like his angel. He wanted her to know that God had not made a mistake when he gave her life.

  Rolling up the papyrus carefully, she pulled the ribbon holding her hair and used it to tie up the scroll. Back in her room, she placed the poem with her mother’s drawings and, tenderly, laid it all safely in her box.

  Theo was eating breakfast in the courtyard when Chariline tiptoed down the stairs. Wordlessly, she approached him. He was nonplussed when she removed the warm bread from his hand and placed it on his plate and drew him to his feet. Without warning, she enveloped him in a tight embrace, arms wrapped around his waist, her head against his heart. She squeezed him so hard, he gasped.

  Her touch felt pure, like a sister’s. Like a mother’s.

  But when she stepped away, he saw with satisfaction that there was nothing sisterly in her shy gaze or the heat of her skin.

  “Thank you,” she whispered.

  He had worried, through a sleepless night, that the revelation of his origins might turn her from him. That today he might see pity in her eyes. The kind of pity that makes its object feel lessened somehow. He had wondered if telling her that he was an abandoned child might cause her to want to abandon him herself.

  Instead, he found a strange admiration in her regard. As if knowing his past had given her a new appreciation for him.

  “For what?” he said, finding his tongue. “The poem?”

  “That. And your trust.”

  His muscles clenched. He had trusted her with little. Given her the tiniest taste of the feast of his burdens. He was not ready to reveal anything more than that. Practically all of Corinth knew that much. But he’d rarely had to say the words. Explain that part of his history, given that it was common knowledge. And he had stayed up sleepless just because he had said those words.

  I am a foundling.

  How could he ever say the rest? To her?

  He did not think himself capable of it.

  Scratching the back of his neck, he cleared his throat. “Any news from Vitruvia?” Their hostess had promised to send a message as soon as she discovered Gemina’s letters.

  “Not yet.” Chariline went still. “I forgot to say, in all the excitement, that I am quite certain Sesen is my father.”

  “Vitruvia said that your father was training to be a treasurer at the court. I caught that, too, and wondered.”

  She exhaled. “Even if Vitruvia does not find my mother’s letters, I think I have my answer.”

  “What will you do next?” It hit him then, with the force of a kick from a cart horse, that they would have to part company, soon. Chariline would want to return to Cush. Perhaps to move there permanently. To live with Sesen. Theo sat down slowly.

  She twined her arms behind her back. “I hope to stay in Rome another week or two. Spend more time with Vitruvia and Galerius. Last night, before we left, she invited me to remain with them as their guest. But after that, I must find my way to Cush.”

  “I see.” Theo felt something unravel in his heart. She was leaving already! He nodded, his head moving up and down like a great melon, unable to think of a single word that might dissuade her from leaving. That might persuade her to stay.

  There was a loud knock on the door, and Ferox began to bark in the workshop where he sat tethered next to Aquila. From the street, a man stepped inside the dark passageway.

  “Greetings!” His deep voice held an accent, which sounded familiar to Theo. He peered into the shadows of the passageway but could only make out the vague outline of a tall form. Instinctively he stepped in front of Chariline.

  “I look for Chariline Gemina, granddaughter of Quintus Blandinus.” He stretched the word looook so that it required an extra syllable. Theo’s mouth ran dry. He recognized that accent. Heard it every day, spoken by his friend and captain, Taharqa. It was Cushite.

  Cushite!

  The assassin had walked brazenly into the house to finish what he had started.

  He tried to shove Chariline all the way behind him. To his horror, she evaded his searching fingers and ran toward the dark passageway.

  “Yeshu
a!” he breathed, horror briefly immobilizing him, before springing after her.

  She did not slow her steps until she came to a stop in front of the stranger. Theo reached her side a fraction later, his frame tense and ready for a fight.

  To his shock, she launched herself at the man. Theo’s heart stopped.

  It took him a moment to understand the single word she had cried. “Natemahar!”

  Long arms stretched wide and wrapped around her, holding her gently, cradling her.

  Theo staggered with relief. Natemahar? What on earth was the eunuch doing in Rome?

  “Thank the Lord you are safe and well.” Natemahar exhaled a long breath.

  Chariline enfolded him in another embrace. She could not wipe the grin off her face. “How in the world did you find me?”

  “It’s a long tale. Can we sit?”

  “Of course!” Chariline drew him into the courtyard. Only then, under the blazing light of the morning sun, did she notice the dark circles under his eyes, the pinched look about the lips, the sunken cheeks. Her steps faltered.

  “Come and rest,” she said, unable to hide the quaver in her voice. “You have exhausted yourself.” Natemahar looked more than tired. He seemed unwell.

  She led him to the stone bench near the fountain. “I will fetch you breakfast.”

  He nodded and smiled at her, his eyes alight with affection. And something wilder. Relief. Her heart squeezed with guilt. She had caused him great anxiety by leaving without a word of explanation. She promised herself to make up for the hours and days of apprehension she had caused him.

  Trying to swallow past the fist of worry that had lodged itself in her throat, she heaped a plate with hot wheat porridge. Fetching a cup, she filled it with posca, watered vinegar with spice, and after adding a dollop of honey, set them on the bench before Natemahar.

  He pressed folded hands to his belly. “I feared I may never see you again, Chariline.”

  She threw herself at him, holding him tight, kissing his ashen face. “Forgive me for worrying you, Natemahar! I came to Rome to find Vitruvia. I have sent several letters to Mariamne and Hermione. They knew I arrived in Rome safely. I did not send you a letter because it did not occur to me that you might find out I was gone. I planned to return to Caesarea before you heard of my absence.”