Bread of Angels

by Tessa Afshar

  “I will not keep quiet out of fear this time. We will do what we can to preserve more people from being hurt by him. How many others will fill the shoes of Chloris and Epaphroditus and Demetrius and Appollonia if we do nothing? He will continue harming people. Even if we cannot manage to land him in a prison cell, at least the scandal might cause the people of Philippi to treat him with more caution.”

  In the dark, Marcus found her hand. “Would you let me help? Would you allow me to remain by your side as you fight this battle?”

  SIXTY-THREE

  I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine.

  SONG OF SOLOMON 6:3

  LYDIA GREW STILL. “You are generous, Marcus. I would appreciate your wisdom and prayers.”

  “You mistake me. My prayers you will have all the days of my life. As to wisdom, such as I have, I lay at your feet. But I am asking for more.” His arms wrapped around her in the dark, and he drew her to him. “I am asking for a life together. I want you to be my wife.”

  Lydia grew rigid with shock. Marcus pulled her closer, as if the warmth of his body could melt the fear out of her.

  “I have lived without a family for thirty years,” he said, head bent against her cheek. “I liked living alone, without ties, free from complications. My parents’ marriage was not happy. I never had a desire to repeat their lives. Then I met you. In the course of one week, my convictions shriveled to dust. I spent one day in your company and realized that being an unmarried man is tiresome. It is tedious and mundane and devoid of joy. You, Lydia of Thyatira, made me wish for marriage as I have never wished for anything.

  “If your father lived, I would ask him first. Or, if Paul were still here, I would go to him as your spiritual father. I thought of approaching the general, but I was uncertain you would want that. Surely at our age it is acceptable for me to ask you directly. So I am asking, beloved Lydia, dear Lydia, excellent Lydia, will you be my wife?”

  Lydia managed to pull herself out of his arms. Without a word, she ran inside.

  “You told him no?” Rebekah asked.

  “Not precisely.”

  “You told him yes?” Elianna prompted.

  “Well, no.”

  “What exactly did you say?” Rebekah said.

  “As I recall, nothing voluminous.”

  “By voluminous, you mean . . . ?” Elianna prompted.

  Lydia chewed on a fingernail and examined the beads on her shoes.

  Rebekah clapped her hands on her hips. “You mean to tell me that the man proposed marriage, and you did not say a single word?”

  Lydia squirmed. “I might have gasped. Or perhaps it was a groan. I can’t remember.”

  “Lydia, finally a man is valiant enough to ask you to be his wife, and you leave him without one word of encouragement?” Rebekah threw up her hands. “I despair of you.”

  “What do you mean valiant enough? I don’t bite.”

  “Please. What man can measure up to you? You run a more successful trade than most of them. You are clever, resourceful, respected, beautiful. It’s enough to make a man want to run in any direction but yours. I never thought a man would have the courage to overlook all that. He is going to have to live with you if he marries you, you know? Live with that long list every day and go to bed with it at night. It requires a strong man not to be overshadowed by all your accomplishments. Finally God has sent you a good man, a man your equal in strength and character and, most of all, in faith. And what do you do? You leave him standing like a broom plant in the dark.”

  Elianna giggled. Seeing Lydia’s face, she covered her mouth.

  “Lydia, do you care for the man?” Rebekah asked.

  “That is a stupid question.”

  “Why is it stupid?” Rebekah looked mystified.

  “Because the last time I cared for a man, as you so delicately phrase it, he turned out to be a swindling, defrauding, miserable toad and proceeded to destroy my father and me. If I do care for Marcus, then it is a sign of his unsuitability.”

  “You were young and inexperienced,” Elianna said. “A lot of time has passed since then. You are not that girl. You have the Lord to guide your heart. You have years of godly counsel to shore up your mind.”

  Lydia pressed her hands against her belly. “I don’t trust my own judgment.”

  Rebekah reached for her hand. “I do. I trust it implicitly. Trust it with my life.” She patted Lydia’s shoulder. “Now gather yourself together, and go and speak to that poor man who has had the temerity to fall in love with you.”

  “What am I to say to him?”

  “You need not give him an answer one way or the other. What you have shared with Elianna and me belongs to his ears. He deserves to understand why you feel as you do. Your mistrust is not directed at him. It is directed at you. He should know that.”

  Marcus was, in fact, standing precisely where she had left him, leaning against the doorpost. She brought a lamp with her, remembering how dark it had grown.

  “I am sorry, Marcus.”

  He gave a little smile. “No apology needed. I presumed too much.” He shrugged. “You do not return my feelings. Forgive me. I did not mean to embarrass you.”

  “That is not true!” she cried.

  “I did not embarrass you?”

  He turned, and in the light of the lamp she saw that he looked . . . broken. Her heart shrank at the thought that she had put that look on his face.

  Lydia set the lamp down. She wiped her perspiring hands against her mantle. “It’s not true that I do not return your feelings.”

  Marcus straightened and went to stand near her. He did not touch her this time. “But?”

  “The only man I loved was Jason.”

  “You still love him?”

  “God be merciful, I am not that foolish! No. It’s only that . . . well, I think we established that I have better taste in fabrics than I do in men.”

  It took Marcus a few moments to grasp her meaning. “You are worried that you cannot trust your feelings?”

  “I know you are nothing like Jason. Still, I cannot move beyond this terror. What if you are not all that you seem?”

  Marcus smiled. “Truth will out, dear Lydia. No man can hide his true self forever. In the course of a month or a year, you will see the best and the worst in him. If you want, I will wait out your fears.”

  Lydia stepped forward until they were a breath apart. “You would do that for me?”

  “I am tougher than fear, you will find, beloved. I will wait.”

  Lydia brought her suit against Antiochus to the courts at the start of winter. The mason, fed up with Antiochus’s refusal to pay for several jobs, gave testimony not only on behalf of Lydia but also concerning two other cases where a competitor’s building had been damaged.

  To her amazement, once Lydia brought her complaint to the courts, others stepped forward, bringing their own cases. A father whose daughter he had violated. A man whose dogs he had tortured. Several customers who accused him of cheating them. None had felt prepared to face Antiochus’s venom alone. Lydia’s formal grievance, however, opened the door for others to gain enough courage to confront him. In the end, there were simply too many witnesses, too many accusations of impropriety for even Antiochus to deny.

  It was a bitter trial that culminated in Antiochus’s banishment. He left Philippi still a relatively wealthy man. But he left with his reputation in tatters.

  Marcus stood by her like an immovable wall as she brought charges against Antiochus. He gave her strength when fear threatened to drown her resolve. If Antiochus sent anyone to try to harm her, his man could come nowhere near her, not with Marcus, Rebekah, Epaphroditus, General Varus, and Luke surrounding her like a shield wall.

  Marcus was proven right. Within nine months, Lydia had learned to trust her own heart, because he had shown himself more trustworthy than any man she had known since her father’s death.

  Lydia wore purple for her wedding and, like all good wives, covered her
hair with a mantle, as she would for the rest of her life when in public. Most of Philippi came to celebrate the event. The general insisted on paying for the wedding, though his nephew was none too pleased about it.

  “Ignore his complaints,” the general said. “He has no sense of family. Will that pretty Syntyche come?” he asked with twinkling eyes.

  “She has changed her ways, General.” Lydia narrowed her eyes at him. “Don’t you go tempting her to change back.”

  Marcus sold his property in Ephesus and moved his faithful servants and belongings to Philippi. “We will need an addition,” he said thoughtfully. “You are outgrowing your shop.”

  “Why do you think I am marrying you? This house is getting older and will soon need the attentions of an architect. I will save myself a lot of money if I wed you.”

  Marcus kissed her then as he kissed her on their wedding day, with an almost-dazed delight, both of them half-unbelieving that at their age, they had found lasting love.

  Their home remained one of the central meeting places in Philippi where Christians gathered for decades. Marcus’s addition to the house allowed the ekklesia to come together in comfort and security, setting deep roots in the Lord and growing both in number and in faith. Undergirding their community was always the love of Marcus and Lydia and the warm welcome of Rebekah. Through the years, they were encouraged by letters from Paul, who bore a special love for the church he had planted on one Sabbath morning by the banks of the river.

  ONE

  I have been forgotten like one who is dead;

  I have become like a broken vessel.

  PSALM 31:12

  WHEN I THINK OF THE RUIN my life has become, the slow wrecking of my dreams, the destruction of every love, I always return to the bee. That one tiny sting, which robbed my place of favor in my father’s heart and changed the course of my destiny.

  Sorrow came to me on a beautiful afternoon, with the sun shining and just enough heat in the day to warm the skin without scorching it. Wildflowers were abundant that year, and the hillside where Joseph and I had come to pass the hours was covered in a blanket of yellow and pink. I remember the scent of them tickling my nose and filling my lungs, making me laugh for the sheer beauty of the world.

  Joseph ran amongst the soft stalks, piercing the leaves with his make-believe sword, playing Roman soldier. He knew better than to play the game with our parents around. They were staunch Jews whose lineage in Jerusalem went as far back as the days of Ezra. Romans may have been generous patrons of my father’s wares, but they were still dangerous enemies. My parents certainly did not consider them a matter for fun and games. But Joseph was four, and he loved the Roman horses, their uniforms, their rectangular painted shields. He wanted to be one of them. And I let him, seeing no harm in a little boy running wild and pretending to be something he could never become.

  “Elianna, come and play,” Joseph called over his shoulder and thrust his invisible sword in my direction.

  “Hold a moment,” I said. “I will come soon.”

  I was distracted, sitting on the coarse felt blanket I had brought, twirling a pink flower, trying to fathom a way to leach out its color and use it for dye on linen. A large shipment of flax had just been delivered to our workshop and we would have plenty of fibers for weaving. My father traded in luxurious fabrics. He even had a small but brisk business in purple, the lavish dye that was derived painstakingly from sea snails and remained more expensive to produce than any other color. It was a measure of his success that he could afford this particular trade.

  Joseph had been left in my care that afternoon because everyone in the household was busy working on the flax. Even my mother, who rarely participated in my father’s business, had been drafted to help.

  My father bought his flax already steeped and dried, with the seeds separated from the stems and discarded, and the stalks beaten to pull out the fibers. His workers were left with the task of combing out the fibers, making them ready for spinning. The stalks of this particular harvest were thick, which produced coarse linen, and would be used for weaving towels. With Romans and the new Jewish aristocracy so fond of their baths, towels were in high demand throughout the main cities of Judea.

  I was twelve years older than Joseph and more than capable of caring for him. My mother, suspicious of my passion for my father’s trade, and looking for ways to distract me from my fascination, had given me charge over Joseph for the afternoon. Her plan worked to double advantage: it got my exuberant brother out from under the busy feet of the adults while at the same time withdrawing me from direct contact with my father’s work, lest it feed my obsession with the secrets of his trade.

  “Leave that to the men,” she always told me, thrusting some feminine task into my lap before I grew too enraptured with the mysteries of creating a better grade of dyed fabric.

  “Elianna!” Joseph’s voice bellowed from farther down the hill. “Come. Now! You promised when you brought me here that you’d play with me.”

  I grinned. My little brother could be imperious. No one had expected the birth of another child to my parents at their advanced age. When Joseph was born, we were all a little dazzled with his mere presence in the world and became instant slaves to his charm. Add to that the reality that he was a boy—the son of my father’s dreams—and, well . . . even a burning seraph could be excused for being a little spoilt under the circumstances. If he seemed bossy, the fault belonged to us. By nature, Joseph was so sweet that the overindulgence of a hundred adults could not render him tyrannical.

  “You better hope I don’t catch you,” I said as I rose to my feet. “My sword is a lot sharper than yours.”

  “No, it’s not. I’ll defeat you.” He let loose a fearsome bellow and began to run up the hill, his short legs pumping under his hitched-up tunic at a speed that made me flinch. I needed my whole strength to keep up with that boy.

  “Hold fast,” I cried, catching up with him at the top of the hill, thrusting my pink flower forward as if it were a deadly weapon. Joseph doubled over, giggling.

  “That’s not a sword! That can’t even cut thread. You’re such a girl, Elianna.”

  “You dare insult me, Roman dog? I shall have your head for that.”

  Joseph rushed toward me, his imaginary sword pointed at my abdomen. “No, you won’t. My horse will eat you for breakfast.” He did a fair imitation of a parry and then followed with a quick thrust, his little fist hitting my ribs. I grabbed my side as if in pain.

  “You will pay for that, young man.” With a quick motion, I reached forward to untuck his tunic from his belt. Distracted, he looked down, and I shoved my flower in his face, leaving a powdery yellow stain on his nose and forehead.

  I laughed. “You still need some practice, Roman.” Just behind him, I noticed a lone sheep chomping on a bush. I looked around, trying to locate the shepherd or herd to which it belonged. It seemed to be alone. I walked over to examine it for any hurts. A shepherd somewhere must be missing the fat fellow.

  “Elianna!” Joseph called. “Come back. I am not finished. . . .” And then, inexplicably, he swung his arm in a wide arc. “Go away. Go away!” His voice emerged high-pitched and shaken. He made a half circle around himself, his hands flapping about him in frantic motion.

  The sheep had my attention, though, and I ignored Joseph’s cry. Up close, I could see that it was well cared for, its wool healthy and clean. I knelt down and ran my hand over its back. “Where did you come from, little fellow?”

  From the corner of my eye I could still see Joseph flapping around. Then he cried out, “Make it go away, Elianna!”

  I thought it was a fly at first until I saw the flash of yellow, heard the angry buzz. “Don’t fret so. Stay calm, and it will go away of its own accord.” I didn’t want to leave the lost sheep, in case it wandered away and became even more lost. Joseph was old enough to deal with a buzzing bee. Really, we had overindulged him. I tried to make my voice soothing. “Calm yourself, brother.” />
  My words had no effect on Joseph. The creature was buzzing with fierce intention around his head, and he panicked. He flapped his arms harder and started to run. “No! No!”

  I threw my hands up in the air and came to my feet reluctantly. “Joseph, it’s just a bee.”

  I understood the source of his unreasoning fear. The year before, he had been stung on the ankle. He had broken out in hives and his entire leg had swollen to the size of a young tree trunk, and he had been in terrible pain. He had never forgotten the experience. But in my mind, that had been an anomaly. We all had to contend with bees. It was part of life. I watched in frustration as he ran himself ragged for a few moments.

  Finally, I caught up to him and reached out my hands to flick at the bee, although I could no longer see it. Without warning, Joseph let out a piercing wail that made my belly lurch. He rubbed at the side of his head, and then I spotted the insect caught in the hair near his temple. I grabbed the bee in my palm and squeezed. Half-drunk from having released its venom, it was easy prey in my violent, clenching fist. I dropped it to the ground and knelt before Joseph.

  Fat tears squeezed out of his eyes. He was crying so hard that he began to wheeze. I cuddled him in my arms. “I am so sorry, Joseph. It will be well. I’ve gotten rid of the little monster. You can stomp on him, if you wish.”

  “Hurts.” He took a breath that shook his chest.

  “Where, dear heart? Where do you hurt?”

  He pointed to his temple, and I saw that it was already swelling. I gave it a light kiss. “Is that better?”

  His gaze brimmed over with accusation. “No.” He pushed me from him. I noted a red welt on the back of his still-chubby hand. “Did it sting you twice?” I frowned as I stared at the raised mark, spreading like spilled dye on his baby skin. Joseph shook his head. Hives, I realized with a wince. Just like last year.