Bread of Angels

by Tessa Afshar

  “It was my own decision, Lydia. If you blame yourself for this, then all my sacrifices will have been in vain. I want you to know joy. Start afresh. Find a new life. Prove the magistrate’s predictions of your future wrong. Create the purple I have taught you, and make it even better.”

  “We will do it together, Father. Leave Thyatira and start over.”

  Eumenes’s smile was sad. “Do you remember that old Roman general from Philippi, Varus? The one who wanted to buy you from me?”

  “As a favor to you, he said, because I was too much to handle for any father and would require the discipline of a highly trained military man to take me in hand.”

  Her father laughed. “You were ten, and he already had the measure of you.”

  Lydia slumped against the wall. “You should have sold me. You would have avoided the conundrum in which we now find ourselves.”

  “It’s not too late. If you continue to speak like that, I could still sell you. But that was not why I brought up the subject of the old general. Philippi has a strong dyers’ guild, you know. And as I have mentioned before, Macedonia is more accepting of women in business.”

  “Jason’s mother has no problem conducting her trade here in Thyatira,” Lydia said bitterly.

  “Dione is a widow. She has always worked in conjunction with either her husband or her son. Besides, she never participates in the business. Instead, she hides behind crooked managers like Eryx who do her bidding without question. In Philippi, you could have a greater measure of freedom. We could start again there and ask the general for help.”

  Lydia shrugged. “I will follow you anywhere. You are my home now. As long as we are together, we have all we need.”

  A part of her truly believed that. With her father beside her, they would recover from this deep wound that Jason and Dione had dealt them. But another part of her, deeper and older, plunged into fear. What would happen to them? How could they start in a new country? What would they do when their money ran out? How would they survive? If she was so foolish as to trust a man like Jason, how could she survive in a world filled with dishonest men who would plunder your soul for a tarnished copper coin?

  The next morning when she awoke, she found her father already sitting up in bed, drinking warm milk that Atreus must have brought him.

  “Happy birthday!” Eumenes said with a grin.

  “What?” She winced as she massaged her neck. Her bones creaked from tossing and turning too much.

  “It’s your birthday today, you dolt. You are seventeen.”

  “Oh. I had forgotten.” She pulled a hand through sleep-tangled hair.

  “I had not. I dispatched Atreus to pick up a special gift for you. I made arrangements before I knew I would be arrested. But I did not have a chance to retrieve it from the man who sold it to me. Fortunately, or we might have lost it in the scramble of our move.” He lifted up several scrolls tied with a leather strip. She noticed that his hands were not steady.

  “I bought you a book! Now when you can’t sleep, instead of twisting and turning in your bed and thinking dark thoughts, you can read.”

  Lydia came up on her knees. “Where did you find a book? That must have cost you a fortune.”

  “Not so much as all that. I know a Roman nobleman whose daughter is getting married. His funds are smaller than his consequence. That is not a fact that he wishes to publicize. He gave me this book out of his personal collection in exchange for a piece of purple linen.”

  “That’s a terrible transaction. The linen was worth more.” In spite of the chiding words, Lydia felt flooded with warmth.

  Eumenes grinned, undeterred by his daughter’s censure. “It’s a copy of Homer’s Odyssey.” He leaned forward to untie the leather strip around the first scroll and unfurled it a little for Lydia to see. The top of the parchment was yellowed with age. Greek characters, painstakingly written by the hand of some nameless scribe, ran in fascinating order across the page.

  Lydia knew how to read and write, thanks to her father; through the years, she had read several epic poems and histories and plays borrowed from wealthy colleagues and patrons. But she had never owned her own book. Her fingers caressed the pliable surface.

  “It tells the story of a man named Odysseus, who was away from home for twenty years, having adventures,” Eumenes said. “He did manage to return home eventually. And when he did, he felt it wise to conceal his identity at first. After two decades, he did not know what awaited him at home. Was his wife still faithful? Had his enemies taken over his land? So he dressed himself as a beggar. His disguise was so effective that no one recognized him. Not even his wife or son.”

  “You can’t really blame them after so many years.”

  “Ah, but even after the passing of decades, there was one thing about Odysseus that had not changed. He had a distinctive scar.

  “When Odysseus was a boy, he went hunting with his uncles. During the hunt, a wild boar attacked him, and its tusk ripped a big piece of flesh right above his knee. A horrific wound that almost killed him. He survived the attack, but the boar left its mark on him. That scar is what gave Odysseus away when he went home so many years later. His childhood nurse happened to see the mark and recognized him because of it.

  “I tell you this because like Odysseus, you bear a scar from a boar.”

  Lydia frowned in confusion. “I do?”

  “No one can see it. Your scar is here.” Eumenes placed his hand on his chest. “Deep in your heart, where it is hidden from view. Still, you cannot disguise it. You cannot wipe it away. Those closest to you see it and recognize it. It still hurts.” He reached for her hand and held it. “I do not know how to heal it.”

  “Father . . .” Lydia shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

  “Months ago, you asked me about your mother. Remember? You asked how she died. I did not tell you then. It is time that I speak of that day.”

  TWENTY

  For the enemy has pursued my soul;

  he has crushed my life to the ground;

  he has made me sit in darkness like those long dead.

  PSALM 143:3

  “ALL YOUR LIFE, I have tried to keep you safe. To protect you from harm.” Eumenes’s voice shook. “It is an impossible task, I have discovered, keeping your loved ones shielded from suffering. Pain has a way of finding you, no matter where you hide. It found you when you were still very young. And it ushered an unbearable weight of fear into your heart.”

  “When my mother died?”

  Her father nodded. “We were traveling to visit your mother’s cousin at the time, a week’s journey from Thyatira.” He sucked in a shuddering breath. “We were a close family, the three of us. You were your mother’s joy, and mine. To lose her would have been bad enough, but to lose her in such a savage manner!” He shook his head.

  Lydia turned pale. Images of her recurring dream rose up clearer than ever. Her mother screaming in anguish, blood everywhere, a growing crimson lake on her clothes, her face, her hair.

  Eumenes squeezed his eyes shut. Tears turned his lashes into a sticky web. “On the third day of our journey, we came to a field of lilies. They were her weakness, flowers. She insisted on leaving the carriage to walk through the field. The road we traveled on was riddled with holes the size of a giant’s head, and the caravan was moving as slowly as a wounded turtle. So we left you in the caravan with an acquaintance and disembarked to stroll, cutting our way into the field, still keeping up with the caravan. I was several steps ahead of her. Neither of us saw the boar until it was too late.”

  “The boar?” Lydia had a flash of memory. One she had never seen before. Next to her mother’s collapsed form lay a pile of quivering flesh, spilling out of her, still half-attached. Her bowels. Lydia pressed the back of her hand against her mouth.

  “I watched in horror as that beast charged her. I tried to pull her behind me, to become a shield against that enraged animal. It was no use. The boar moved much faster than I did.

/>   “The men in our company rushed at it with sticks and spears. I only had my bare hands, though I tried to help. By then the beast had done its worst. As we carried your mother’s mangled body into the carriage, you ran from the woman who was trying to protect you from that sight. Your horror was so deep, you could not make a sound. Your mother was still conscious, you see, but her injuries were grievous.”

  “She was screaming, ‘Help me, help me!’” Lydia remembered, doubling over. It was with a child’s eyes that she saw, a child’s heart that she felt.

  “Gods, Lydia. How I prayed you had been spared that sight.” Eumenes clutched at the sheets. “We took her to the nearest inn. There was no hope of making it to her kinsman’s house. How she survived the journey I cannot say. For three days she lingered in this world. Three days of anguish, her screams battering my mind, until I thought I might go mad. The physician could not help. His potions were useless.

  “We forbade you from coming to her. Still, several times you managed to slip in and see her, though of course by then we had covered her under a pile of sheets and blankets so that only her face remained visible.

  “She burned with fever. Her wounds turned putrid until her flesh grew black. I loved her more than my own life, but by the end, I begged Hades to come and take her. Surely his realm would be more merciful than what she suffered.”

  Lydia wept, racking sobs that hurt her throat. She wept for her father, for her mother, and for the little girl who had witnessed too much. She wept until she ran out of tears, spent from the torrent of ancient pain.

  Eumenes ran a shaking hand over his stubble-coarsened cheeks. “The boar dealt your mother an incurable wound. But you received your own wound from that wild animal.

  “A child so young should feel safe in this world. We had done everything to make our journey well guarded. We hired an expensive caravan and took every precaution. Still, the worst came to pass. Our world fell apart. I think your little soul learned that at any given moment, your dreams can be ripped from your hands, and the ground under your feet can cave in and leave you spiraling into an abyss of pain for which there is no cure.

  “Now fear has made a home in you. You worry about everything. The boar marked you like Odysseus’s boar marked him. But it has not won. Though you suffer the pain of that scar, you prevail.

  “Because in spite of so much fear, Lydia, you are still the bravest person I know. You press on, press through your anxieties and face the challenges before you. Like a rock, you stay by my side, and no wind of terror overcomes you.”

  Lydia shook her head in denial.

  “It is true,” her father insisted. “You must believe me. Because the worst has come to pass again. You have been betrayed. You have lost your home. You have lost everything that brought you security. And I am afraid—” Eumenes patted her on the head, his touch gentle as a whisper—“I am very much afraid, my precious daughter, that your suffering is not yet done.”

  Her father’s wounds improved and began to scab over, though he remained weak and unable to travel. Left without the distraction of nursing him and the busyness of work, she found herself at the mercy of her thoughts.

  The conversations were the worst part—conversations Lydia succumbed to in her own mind. What she said to Jason and Dione in her imagination: words to vindicate herself; searing pronouncements of their guilt. Words of revenge, where with cruel precision she explained their violation and condemned them with such persuasion that they repented. In her thoughts they always repented. And she won. She found vindication.

  Then the cycle began again, and the arguments started once more. She could not sleep. Her mind would not rest.

  “Betrayal works like leaven,” her father told her one late evening.

  “Leaven?”

  Eumenes shifted on the mattress, which he rarely left these days. “It gives rise to bigger things so that by the time it has done its damage, it isn’t merely the act of betrayal from which you need healing. It infests the mind with resentment and bitterness. And those are much harder blights to overcome than mere betrayal.

  “Have a care, my Lydia. Jason and Dione have stolen the land that came to you from your ancestors. It is a small thing to lose, though it seems so grave to you now. One day you will find another land. Another home. Another place to set down your roots.”

  Lydia snorted, wordlessly denying his reassurance. As if any place in the world could replace the land her forefathers had bequeathed her. As if any other corner of the earth could be home.

  “There are much worse things you could lose. Don’t allow Jason to take your joy—your peace—or he will have truly robbed you. For such things, there is no replacement.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  The LORD watches over the sojourners;

  he upholds the widow and the fatherless.

  PSALM 146:9

  PHILIPPI WOULD HAVE TO WAIT. Eumenes’s health grew worse. The chill he had contracted while in prison settled in his lungs. His body, weakened by shock and the blood loss brought on by flogging, hadn’t the strength to fight illness as well.

  “Inflammation of the lungs,” the physician pronounced and doused her father in infusions of fenugreek and willow.

  All the fenugreek in the world was not enough to save him. Eumenes’s breathing grew labored.

  “You can’t die!” Lydia said to him. “You can’t leave me all alone. What would Mother say? Pull yourself together.”

  “I fear Charon awaits to ferry me across the river Styx and into Hades.”

  “Well, tell him to find another passenger,” Lydia wailed. “We are going to Philippi. The river Styx and its ferryman will have to wait.”

  Eumenes laughed weakly. The laughter turned into an ugly cough. “My beautiful daughter, how I shall miss you. Never forget how much I love you. How proud I am of you.”

  “Please, Father. I can’t lose you, too! I have nothing left.”

  Eumenes took a broken breath. “Remember that even Pandora’s box, with all its host of plagues and mischief for humanity, held one good thing.”

  “Hope.”

  “Hope.” Eumenes gave a faint nod. “There is never so much sorrow in a life that it should become devoid of hope. Hope may grow fragile as a thread of silk; it may get stuck inside the box of your misfortunes. But it is there. Don’t misplace your hope, my sweet child, not even when all of Pandora’s monsters chase you. You must hold on to that treasure after I am gone.”

  “What shall I do without you?”

  “Go to Philippi. Live your dream.”

  Death, Lydia learned, could not be reasoned with. Could not be delayed. Could not be cheated. It took whom it wished. No man or woman was a match for its power.

  Death was the enemy she was helpless to overcome.

  One day, even Dione and Jason would be caught in its snares, all their schemes turned to impotent dust. First, though, it beckoned to her father. And Eumenes went, powerless as all mankind against its inexorable call.

  In seven short days he was gone, and no force in the world of men could bring him back.

  Weeping, Atreus quoted Euripides over the body of his friend:

  After his mighty labors he has rest.

  His choicest prize eternal peace

  within the homes of blessedness.

  Lydia was not sure she believed in any kind of peace, eternal or otherwise. If there had ever been any gods on Mount Olympus, they had either vanished, too disgusted with humans to bear with them longer, or lost all ability to care. Yet she had to believe that if indeed there were homes of blessedness somewhere, her father had made his way there.

  Grief. Betrayal. Shame. Fear. Grief. Betrayal. Shame. Fear. Grief. Betrayal. Shame. . . .

  The unrelenting monsters in her box. The waves that pounded relentlessly against the shores of her mind in an endless cycle until Lydia almost collapsed.

  Atreus, like a gentle battering ram, started to bang on her door one afternoon. She had not left her chamber since her father�
��s funeral.

  She ignored him at first, hoping he would grow tired and leave in time. She had no patience for his compassion. To her annoyance, he would not go away. The banging continued until she thought her head might burst. Lydia opened the door a crack and looked out cautiously.

  “Do you want to read your father’s letter or are you still too busy wallowing in self-pity?”

  “What?”

  “Eumenes left you a letter. Some instruction. Do you want it?”

  “Yes. Yes, of course.” She felt ravenous for any word from him, some faint trace of him lingering in the world.

  “Come below and have something to eat and drink. I may consider giving it to you then.” Atreus turned on his heel and tramped down the shallow stairs.

  Lydia forced food and weak wine down her throat as Atreus watched. Only when he was satisfied that she had eaten enough did he give her the scroll. She spread the parchment open with shaking hands and frowned with disappointment.

  “This is not my father’s hand.”

  “No. It’s mine. He dictated it to me one day when you had left on an errand. He did not have the strength to hold a stylus by then.”

  Lydia gulped and nodded. There was no greeting. Just an abrupt start:

  I told you not to lose hope. I said you should go to Philippi and live. If Atreus is giving you this letter, it means you have not listened to me. Now stop being stubborn and arrange for passage to Philippi.

  Atreus tells me that he will not charge us for our room. This leaves you sufficient silver to purchase a place on a reliable boat and still have enough funds to start a modest workshop of your own when you arrive in Philippi. You will be the most magnificent dyer of purple they have ever seen!

  You will find I have written a letter to General Varus. He always did admire my dye. I have assured him you know all my secrets. He will buy a few pieces from you and introduce you to his friends. And perhaps, if he feels generous, he may set you up in your own workshop. A humble life, but good.