Page 64 of Of Love and Treason
“Aren’t we all?”
She tilted her head, waiting for him to explain.
He shook his slowly. “I cannot pretend to know the mind of God or tell you what He plans. All I know is that He does not see the world as we do—only seeing what concerns us right now.” Valens spread his hands wide. “He sees all of it, the now and the future. Because of that, He can make sense of all that seems senseless in the world.”
He told her the story of Joseph, sold into slavery by his brothers, wrongfully accused and thrown into prison. How God had not forgotten him even when Joseph perhaps felt He had. And how in the end, Joseph not only saved his family from starvation and death, but all of Egypt.
“So God threw you into prison?” Iris looked more confused now than she had when he’d started explaining.
Valens shook his head but knew what questions she was trying to untangle. “No.” He thought of the demons of fear and doubt that had pummeled him in the darkness of the Tullianum. “I don’t believeHedid that.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “There are still evil forces in the world that try to destroy our faith in God. To make us doubt His goodness and His love. God knew Joseph could—and would—save His family and the world when the time was right. God saw all that Joseph could not. The forces of evil sought to destroy a man—a family—yet God turned what was meant to destroy into something that saved them all.”
Iris nodded, her face smoothing with understanding. “Joseph wouldn’t have known that in prison.” Her eyes flickered to meet his. “Neither did you know that you would bring salvation to my father and me.”
“No.” Valens’s throat constricted at the thought that God would use his trial for something so great. They fell into thoughtful silence.
“Can I ask you a question now?” Valens asked after a moment.
“Yes.”
“Did Titus say anything about me?”
“Nothing to do with the reason you’re here. He and Pater made me leave when they spoke.” She collected the empty olive jar and crumb-covered cloths and nestled them back in the basket. “He’s going to help Pater get you out. It would be very unlike him not to.”
Valens was less certain of this than she seemed to be, but he didn’t mention the bargain he and Titus had struck. Titus had come to him alone.
He pushed himself to his feet as Iris rose, hooking the basket over her elbow.
“Before you leave...” Valens took a deep breath. He needed to make sure Iris and her father would be connected to the church before he escaped Rome.Ifhe escaped. “There is a gathering of believers tomorrow night. They are my friends. Tell them what God has done for you and they will welcome you and your father.” He gave her the address.
“Thank you.” She left him, face full of unspoken questions.
Loneliness cloaked him as the door shut behind her—which, of course, was only because he’d been in prison for days and hers was the first friendly face he’d seen. He glanced around in the guttering lantern light to see if she’d left anything behind and might return. False hope. He sighed and settled back in his spot against the wall as Titus’s bargain came to mind and buried all thoughts of Iris.
XXVII
TITUS MARCHED THROUGH THE CITY,headed back toward the Praetorian Fortress. His mind reeled.
Iris could see.
See.
No matter how many times he repeated the words, they seemed just that. Words. Three times as he walked away, he’d wanted to turn back just to make sure he hadn’t made it up. This kind of thing didn’t happen in anything other than myths, or perhaps in a traveling “healer’s” show. His legs took on the shake of new recruits who’d completed their first twenty-mile run.
He was not alone in his rote rituals to the gods of Rome. He believed in upholding tradition, not that the gods wielded actual power. The priests, priestesses, and augurs carried political control from their positions rather than from the deities they served. Wars were won by feats of strength and manpower. Not because Mars sat on Olympus.
Even as a young boy, Titus had played his part out of Roman duty rather than any true hope or belief in the gods. After all, what kind of gods would allow his father to die and refuse to heal Iris? And for that matter, what kind ofonegod would heal her after years of worship toothergods? He struggled to make sense of such a response from a god at the behest of a treasonous public notarius. Of all people!
He swerved around a gaggle of teenage girls gathered around astreet vendor selling purses of all colors and sizes. It made no sense. Even if Titus believed in such things, Valentine was no priest or magician. According to Iris and Quintus, he’d spoken no incantation, offered no sacrifice, no libation, hadn’t given Iris any potion—just prayed simple words. “Like one would speak to a friend,” Quintus had said. An unfamiliar feeling quavered in the bottom of his gut.
Something like fear—which was, of course, ridiculous.
His father’s memory was the closest thing Titus had to a god. Acius Didius Liberare, fallen hero at the civilian siege of the Castra Praetoria, was renowned in life and near worshiped in death, and not only by his son. Titus had no memory of his father but hearing the tales of his bravery and courage lifted his chin with pride and pricked his heart with fear of failure. He was the son of Acius Didius Liberare—“the liberator.” A hero’s blood flowed in his veins. Would his efforts bring pride to his father’s name? Or shame?
As he left the heart of the city and marched past the Servian Walls, the road turned to a slopping mess of manure, rotting garbage, and broken pottery—all that remained from the hurried evacuation of delivery carts the previous night. The cleanup crews were slacking. His boots were caked with something that looked like mud but wasn’t.
I will not shame my pater.He clenched his fists. His father and Quintus had been blood-oath brothers. Quintus had proven his loyalty to Acius by taking in his son and getting him placed into the guard. Titus had repaid him with unquestioned loyalty of his own. Until now.
Titus’s loyalty to Quintus had, for the first time, come into conflict with his oath of allegiance to the emperor. Were it only friendship between him and the jailor, Titus could have gladly dragged Valentine before Trecenarius Faustus. Had Valentine healed Iris of a common cold or even nursed her to health after a bout of Tiber fever, Titus would have done his duty and removed him that moment. But restoring her sight? Impossible.
