by Tessa Afshar
“It is my sincere hope, though we intend to leave Philippi in two days.”
Lydia’s gaze swiveled from Paul to Ethan and landed on Elianna. “You are disciples of the Christ?”
“We are indeed. But, Lydia, is this true of you, also?”
Lydia grinned. “God brought Master Paul all the way to Philippi to tell me the Good News! At least that is what I tell him.”
Elianna covered her cheeks with her hands. “I have seen enough of God’s hand at work to cease being surprised by his plans. And yet he still astounds me.”
“And you? How came you to follow Jesus, Elianna?”
“Remember how I wrote to tell you that I was sick for many years? The Lord healed me with one touch.”
Lydia shook her head. “I see that we have much to speak of. I hope you plan to stay for many days.”
“We would not wish to inconvenience you.”
“What inconvenience? I shall put you all to work.”
Viriato rolled his eyes. “Sounds familiar.”
Paul turned to Ethan. “What news of Jerusalem?”
Ethan shook his head. “Matters with Rome grow hot and shall come to a head soon, I fear. Jerusalem has no future. Our Lord predicted its destruction, and we are concerned that such a day may not tarry long. As to the church, you will have heard the persecutions we have suffered.
“We travel now partly to ascertain if we can move our workshop to a different part of the world. As much as we shall miss our home, we have two daughters and grandchildren to consider. My oldest granddaughter will soon be pestering us for a husband. What future can she expect in our nation? What would it benefit our family if we leave them a great inheritance, only to have it razed to the ground by war and famine?”
Lydia thought of Elianna as grandmother to a child almost grown. Her friend was only seven years her senior! Lydia wondered if she had missed out on the best of life by never marrying. Missed out on being a wife and a mother. Purple had its joys. But it was not the equal of a family.
Then she thought of Rebekah and smiled. She did have a family, though it did not look like Elianna’s.
Chloris pulled on her tunic to grab her attention. “Mistress, your friend is very pretty for such an old lady.”
“Glory to God, Chloris. Please refrain from telling her so.”
FIFTY-NINE
The heart is deceitful above all things,
and desperately sick; who can understand it?
JEREMIAH 17:9
THE NEXT MORNING, her guests from Jerusalem left to meet with a landowner in order to confer over property that might serve as a workshop. Lydia found herself serving patrons in the shop since they were shorthanded. One of her servants had fallen ill with a severe chill, and the rest were kept busy with the large company she now housed from different parts of the empire. She loved the noise, the conversations, even the disarray of their presence. These were not empty acquaintances. Each one had become a part of her family, bound by ties of blood shed for them on a cross far away.
She had remained awake with Elianna and Rebekah, speaking late into the night, swapping life stories. They had each waded through tempests of hardship. Seasons of poverty. They had struggled with shame and come away bearing its scars. Elianna was perhaps the most healed, having left the past truly behind. Lydia thought it was her age, not in natural years but in God. She had walked with Jesus the longest, and it had left its mark on her, a deep reliance on his faithfulness that nothing could shake.
Now, after too few hours of sleep, Lydia waited on customers with heavy-lidded torpor, barely awake. Her heart picked up its tempo when Antiochus walked in, another man in tow. She spared a short glance for his companion and, not recognizing him, returned her gaze to Antiochus.
Sleepiness fled. His presence always dragged in trouble behind it. “How may I help you, Antiochus?”
“I ran into an old friend of yours and, spurred by kindness, brought him here to see you.” He pointed to the man standing next to him.
Lydia stared at the toga-clad man blankly. He had thinning blond hair, showing a red scalp burned too often by the sun. His flesh, a little on the corpulent side, was soft and sagged under his chin. His eyes almost disappeared into the folds of skin above and below them. In the tiny slits left, she saw their color. Green.
Lydia staggered. She recognized the eyes. Beneath the added flesh, beneath the wrinkles and sags, this was Jason, the man she had once loved.
“We ran into each other at a tavern,” Antiochus said, drinking up the moment of her recognition. “He told me he was from Thyatira. The mention of that city nudged my memory. I recalled that once, many years ago, my father told me he believed you were a native of Thyatira before you came to Philippi. So I asked him if he knew you. Lydia with hair the color of dark wheat and turquoise eyes, with veins that bleed purple.
“Imagine my delight when he told me that he knew you well. You and your father. Eumenes, was it?”
“Greetings, Lydia,” Jason said.
The world rocked. She had lived through an earthquake only days before, and the ground had not shaken so much as it did now. Her tongue seemed stuck to the roof of her mouth. She felt like a sixteen-year-old girl again, bereft and without help.
An arm bumped against her side. She turned to find Marcus smiling down at her. She felt another presence to her other side, and to her astonishment discovered Epaphroditus, his face devoid of color and wet with perspiration. But he did not budge and stood beside her like a stone column.
“Hail, Antiochus!” Marcus said in cheerful tones. “What brings you to the competition? Are the prices better here than at your shop? The quality certainly beats anything you produce.”
A few customers tittered. Antiochus turned a dark shade of crimson. “I have no business with you, Roman.”
“That’s uncivil. I have business with you. Epaphroditus here tells me that you know of an excellent stonemason.” Marcus pointed outside. “Lydia’s lintel smashed to the ground the other day; did you notice? Her mason had promised it would last a century. As an engineer, I found a few oddities to the accident.”
Antiochus shrugged. “Shoddy work. She probably didn’t pay well.”
“The thing is, according to Epaphroditus, your man can put marble up and he can bring it down with the same ease. Whichever direction you want it to go, he is your man. Now that is a mason I would like to speak to in person.”
Antiochus, aware of the sharp ears that listened to this conversation, threw his cousin a filthy look. “I wouldn’t trust anything he has to say.”
Epaphroditus stepped forward. Lydia could feel him shaking. “Hadn’t you better leave, Antiochus? You and your friend?”
“Yes, leave.” Marcus crossed his arms. “Unless you want to share the name of your mason with everyone here.”
Antiochus shoved the tip of his finger into his cousin’s chest. “You will regret this betrayal. I hope your bag is packed. You are not long for Philippi. As for you—” he nodded toward Lydia—“you have not heard the last of me. Or your old friend Jason.”
“Must we leave so soon?” Jason said. “I was just starting to enjoy myself.”
Lydia forced herself to smile. “Jason, you should tell your new friend Antiochus who you think kicks hardest: me or Drakon. Personally, I would bet on me.”
Her old nemesis turned puce. She remembered his tendency toward that color when he was in distress. It made her smirk. “Shall I show you the way out? It’s through the door. That rectangular thing that leads outside.”
Jason glared at her. “We will meet later. You can count on it.” Lydia felt the promise land with the power of a gladiator’s blow.
After her unwanted visitors departed, Marcus grinned at the silent customers who had stopped pretending to look at the merchandise and were openly ogling the exchange. “The entertainment was free. The purple is not. But it is the best value you can find for your money anywhere in the empire. Please enjoy at your leisure.”
Lydia was too shaken to protest. Marcus ushered them to a corner of the courtyard and watched as Lydia sank onto a bench. She hoped she had made a convincing pretense of serenity while speaking to Antiochus. Inside, she was a mangled mess. She had started to shiver and could not stop. Marcus laid his cloak around her shoulders. It smelled of eucalyptus and mint. The warmth of his body still lingered in the wool, and she huddled inside the folds, finally starting to come unfrozen.
“You came to my aid,” she said to Epaphroditus. “Do you really know the mason Antiochus hired to destroy my lintel?”
He dropped his head. “We knew him from the time we were boys. A lot of mischief, that one. He is in Antiochus’s pocket.”
“Antiochus won’t appreciate your coming to my defense. He will avenge himself on you for certain.”
Epaphroditus wiped the sweat from the back of his neck. “I would rather be an outcast in this world than cast out of the Kingdom of God. Guilt is a terrible companion at night. I’ve had enough of it; let my cousin do what he will.”
“I think with the threat of exposure, Antiochus will think twice before endangering your life again,” Marcus said. “I will search for this mason. I may be able to press him into a confession. Epaphroditus has done you a great service by divulging his name.”
“I thank you for your assistance, Epaphroditus.”
“Mistress.” He bowed and returned to the shop to help Rebekah.
“Who was that man, may I ask?” Marcus adjusted the pin on his tunic. “Jason?”
“He and his mother accused my father of theft. It was a false charge. But they bribed the authorities and my father was declared guilty.”
“So that is the secret Antiochus wishes to reveal.”
“It would be enough to ruin my reputation as a merchant. In the eyes of Roman society, the daughter of a thief might as well be a thief.” She huddled deeper into Marcus’s cloak. “Once I believed myself in love with him.”
Marcus’s eyes widened. “With Jason?”
“I have better taste in textiles.”
Marcus started to laugh. “‘The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?’” he quoted. “Textiles are a little easier to discern than men.” He reached over to caress Lydia’s cheek with a fleeting touch. “I could not help overhearing your comment about a kick. I must confess that I burn with curiosity.”
Lydia stared at the ceiling. In halting tones, she told him the story of Jason and Dione, culminating with the infamous kick. Marcus’s laughter rang so loud, several people drifted into the courtyard to discover the source of his hilarity.
The laughter washed over her like healing balm from heaven. Far from judging her, far from thinking her tainted and stupid, Marcus seemed to admire her.
Not since her father had been alive had she entrusted all her secrets to a man. Marcus had entered that hidden world, which was filled with her flaws and shortcomings, and come away still liking her.
It came to her with devastating clarity that this was not enough. Not from Marcus. From him, she wanted love.
She settled in that thought for a moment, stewed in it until it sank in. Until she realized it was not quite true. Mere love was not enough either. If she were honest, she would admit that from Marcus, she wanted a love that came with an assurance. An assurance that his affections would never fail, or let her down, or hurt her, or cause her harm. If she had such certainty, perhaps she might be able to open her own heart to him.
But she knew this was not the way of love. It was the way of flesh and the demand of reason. The desire to keep oneself from ever being hurt again.
The way of Jesus worked in an opposite direction. It gave without asking for impossible assurances. It gave the way Jesus had, loving to death, knowing he might not be loved back.
She wanted what she could not have. Marcus on her terms, not God’s.
SIXTY
Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
PHILIPPIANS 4:6-7
HER SECOND-FLOOR APARTMENT was full to bursting. Slaves and masters mingled, highborn and low eating at the same table. Lydia had never seen a gathering quite like it. Valerius’s whole household had come, even his two-year-old son, and with him he had brought several friends, members of Caesar’s household who were part of the imperial civil service.
Leonidas, drawn to Paul and Silas’s frayed reputation in Philippi, had sauntered in, bringing a female actress of questionable reputation named Syntyche. She had been loud and coarse when she first arrived. Then Silas welcomed her with a warm smile, as if her thick face paint and fake blonde hair, marks of a prostitute to anyone with eyes, meant nothing. He treated her like a highborn lady, a dear sister, clean and upright. Lydia noticed the woman’s loud speech growing quieter and eventually ceasing altogether.
Elianna and Ethan sat in a corner, speaking to Epaphroditus in somber tones. Rebekah had persuaded Viriato to help her bring up the heavier trays, though judging by his large grin, it had not required much persuasion.
The general had sent a note of regret, saying he could not leave his home. Lydia would have to take Marcus to meet him when he received his honorary plaque the next day. How she wished Aemilia could have met Paul. He would have been one of the few people to manage her strong temper without giving in to slavish obedience. And he would have shown her the way to God.
Lydia sat near Marcus, listening to Paul as he spoke to Timothy, encouraging him to grow in his faith. What a good father he was, though he had no children of his own.
The sound of footsteps on the stairs drew her attention. To her delight Agnodice walked in, followed by a dark-haired girl she did not recognize. She rose to greet her friend. “Agnodice! I never thought Luke would convince you to come.”
“He didn’t.” Agnodice thumped the dark-haired girl on the back. “She did.”
“Damalis!” Paul cried. Lydia realized it was true. She had not recognized the girl without her excessive face paint and the wild expression.
“I rejoice to see you,” Paul said. “I am astounded your masters allowed you to join us.”
Damalis’s cheeks turned pink. “They don’t know I am here. I told them I was going to visit Agnodice for a sleeping draft. Which I did. She told me about this gathering, and, well, I could not resist coming.”
“Let your minds be at rest,” Agnodice said, grabbing a chalice of watered wine from a silver tray. “If they hear about it, I will merely say it was a medical experiment to determine whether your powers were real or cheap trickery.
“I have tried to draw that thing out of her for twelve months with no success. Tell me how you did it. Before you, the poor child suffered from terrible nightmares and could not sleep. I gave her my strongest potions, and they afforded her an hour or two of peace. She had headaches that made her shriek in pain, and I was helpless to treat them. Now she sleeps through the night and has not suffered a single headache. This cure I would like to learn about.”
Paul extended his hands in invitation. “I have no power to give you. No potion or balm. But I know of a man who has power over all things.”
Paul addressed the whole gathering. “Brothers and sisters, allow me to ask a simple question. Do you live in peace, within and without? Is your heart contented?”
Leonidas shrugged. “‘Each of us bears his own hell,’” he said, quoting Virgil. “Peace is not a common companion for most.”
“What if I told you it could be? What if I showed you a way out of that hell? You know Virgil. Let me introduce you to a greater philosopher, and a better man. For he is the Son of God, able to
give you what Virgil never could.”
With slow deliberation, Paul spoke, Silas jumping in with stories that supported Paul’s teaching. Silas had a gift of speaking to the heart, as if knowing with razor-sharp accuracy what each one needed to hear. The hour had grown late when they finished, though no one seemed restless to leave.
“Remember,” Paul said in the end. “Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.”
Syntyche rose to her feet. “I believe in what you say. I will follow this man. Come, Leonidas. Let us join these good people. Let us surrender our lives to this peace, which exceeds our understanding.”
Leonidas scratched his jaw. “Now, dear Syntyche, do not jump into Paul’s fiery invitation too hastily or you might find yourself burned. Consider hard this decision. Paul is asking you to change your life, don’t you see?”
Syntyche pulled up the neckline of her diaphanous tunic. “My life never made me happy, and that’s the truth. So why should I cling to it?”
“And I will follow your Lord with my whole heart, Master Paul,” Damalis cried.
Leonidas sipped from his cup. “Too much right living for me, my friends. I wish you well.”
Lydia noticed that although Agnodice said nothing, she was in deep thought. Paul’s words had touched her. She might not be ready to move beyond consideration. But with Agnodice, thought would always lead the way. Luke would know how to answer her many questions and counter her endless arguments. It might take years, but Luke seemed a patient man.
Elianna came to sit near Lydia. Chloris had fallen asleep, her head on Lydia’s lap. Absently, Elianna stroked the silky hair. “Did I tell you why we arrived in Philippi so early? The captain of our ship decided to leave days before the initial plan, fearing storms if he left at the appointed time. I was beyond vexed, thinking of the inconvenience we would cause you, arriving a week too soon at your doorstep. But we were not early. We were in God’s time.