3
A servant awakened Lagos late that night. “It’s Atretes’ son. The nurse is worried.” He rose groggily and followed the serving girl down the corridor. As he came nearer the kitchen he could hear the baby crying. He entered and saw the wet nurse pacing with a bundle in her arms.
“He will not nurse,” she said, her face filled with anxiety.
“What do you want me to do about it?” he retorted, testy from being awakened in the middle of night.
“You must tell the master, Lagos.”
“Oh no. Not I,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s enough that you’ve awakened me in the middle of the night. I won’t knowingly put my head in the lion’s mouth.” Yawning, he scratched his head. “The babe will nurse when he gets hungry enough.” He turned away.
The baby was her responsibility now.
“You don’t understand. He’s been crying since the master gave him to me!”
Lagos paused in the doorway and turned around. “So long?”
“Yes, and I tell you, I can feel him growing weaker in my arms. If he goes on like this, he could die.”
“Then you had better do something!”
“That’s what I’ve been telling you! I’ve done everything I know how to do. An infant this small needs milk.”
“Has yours gone sour, woman?” he said angrily, knowing nothing of these matters. How was he going to tell the master the wet nurse was dry?
Vexed, the woman responded testily. “There’s nothing wrong with my milk. He’s pining for his mother.”
“Oh,” he said grimly. “His mother doesn’t want him.”
“Pilia said she was waiting outside the gate.”
“The woman who brought the child to Atretes is not his mother,” he said, having overheard the conversation in the atrium. “And the master wants her to have nothing to do with the child.”
“Oh,” she said and then gave a sad sigh. She placed the baby in a box-bed near the cookfire. “Then perhaps it’s the will of the gods that he die. A pity. He’s beautiful.”
Lagos felt a cold chill. “Do you mean to leave him there?”
“I’ve done everything I can.”
Considering the efforts and risks Atretes had taken to reclaim his son, Lagos doubted he would accept the babe’s death in so calm a manner. “I’ll tell the master of the situation as soon as he awakens. As for you, woman, if you value your life, I suggest in earnest that you keep trying to get that baby to eat.”
* * *
Atretes couldn’t sleep. He stood on his balcony looking out at the moonlit hills.
It had been ten long years since he led the Chatti in a rebellion against Rome. Defeated, he’d been taken prisoner and sold to a ludus in Capua, then to the Great Ludus of Rome. Ten years! Another lifetime.
Were any of his people still alive? Had his brother, Varus, survived the battle? What of Marta, his sister, and her husband, Usipi? What had happened to his mother? He ached to go home to Germania and find out if any of his loved ones were still alive. Reclining on a couch, he stared up at the star-studded sky, hardly feeling the still of the night air. He wanted to breathe in the pungent scent of pine, drink sweet honeyed ale and beer. He wanted to sit with the warriors around a council fire in the sacred grove. He wanted to be at peace with himself again.
Sighing, he closed his eyes, wondering how that would ever be possible. He wanted to sleep, to forget, to go back, far back to when he was a child running with his father through the black forests of Germania. Life had been so full and rich then, stretching out before him, ready for the taking. He wanted his son to grow up in the forest, wild and free as he had been, untainted by Rome.
Frowning, he listened intently. He swore he could still hear his son crying as he had when he’d taken him from the widow’s arms. But that had been hours ago.
Letting out his breath slowly, he tried to turn his mind to the future and away from the past. Yet what came to him was a vivid image of Rizpah’s face, tears streaming down smooth cheeks, eyes dark with anguish.
“May God forgive you, for I cannot!”
He shut his eyes tightly, remembering the night Hadassah had come to him in the hills and said similar words to him. “May God have mercy on you.”
He swore, his head spinning with wild thoughts that tangled like arms and legs in combat. “May God forgive you.” The sound that came from his throat was a growl of pain. He came off the couch with the swiftness of a powerful animal and gripped the wall as though he would leap over it to the dirt compound below. His heart was pounding heavily, his breath rasping in his throat.