“I don’t want to see your face until you’re ready to tell me who it was. When you do, I’ll allow you back in the longhouse. Not until.”
“Atretes—”
“Shut up! Don’t come back unless you’ve had a change of heart, Rizpah, or by God, you’ll live to regret it. If you live at all.” His mouth twisted in bitterness, even as his heart twisted inside him. “You’re no better than a faithless wife, and I’ll treat you as such.”
With those words, he turned his back on her and strode away, Caleb screaming in his arms.
Drawing her knees up against her chest, Rizpah covered her head with her hands and wept.
Not far away, hidden in darkness among the trees, Anomia watched. She had heard every word Atretes uttered. Her heart had swelled with malicious joy when he had struck the Ionian down. Now she listened with heinous relish to the woman’s sobs drifting softly in the still night air.
Eyes glowing, she smiled, triumphant.
49
Rizpah moved into Theophilus’ grubenhaus. She covered herself with his blanket, breathing in the scent of his body, grieving over him as she would an earthly father.
Fears attacked her from all sides; nightmares assailed when she slept. Caleb was screaming, and she couldn’t find him. Though she searched frantically, she found herself deeper and deeper in the forest, darkness closing in around her. She came upon Atretes entangled in the arms of the young priestess and cried out. He didn’t hear her, but Anomia did and exulted.
Rizpah awakened weeping, Anomia’s laughter still ringing in her ears. Her heart was racing, her whole body trembling. She covered her face.
“O Lord, you are a shield about me. Be gracious to me and hear my prayer. Make your way straight before me.”
She sat in the darkness, praying and waiting for dawn, all the while beseeching God. Surely Atretes would have had time to think and relent and take her back with him to the longhouse. He had loved Theophilus. Surely he would honor his friend’s last request. And Caleb would need her. He hadn’t been weaned and would cry in the morning, and Atretes would have no patience with him. Varus would be angry.
“He’s my son, remember? Not yours.”
She held herself and rocked. His eyes, O God . . . open his eyes.
Atretes’ words cut her heart every time she thought about them, resurrecting other hurtful things from the first time she’d met him. How could she have thought there was any gentleness in him? How could she have thought he ever really loved her? She was still Julia to him, still like a hundred others he had been given in his cell.
“Let all bitterness and anger be put away from you, beloved, and be kind to one another,” John the apostle had said so long ago in Ephesus. Was it really only two years since she had left everything she knew to come to this place of desolation? “Be kind and tenderhearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you.”
She knew she had to forgive Atretes for abandoning her. She had to lay the hurtful words aside or bitterness would take root in her and grow. Atretes treated her as though she had killed Theophilus, but she couldn’t think of that. She couldn’t allow his anger and actions to keep her from obeying the Lord.
“Stand firm.”
She thought of Rolf fleeing into the woods with blood on his hands. She wanted to tell Atretes and see justice done, but she knew it wouldn’t be justice that was served if she gave in to her feelings. Theophilus had spoken plainly. She couldn’t pretend she didn’t understand. She couldn’t convince herself it was all right.
Why did life have to be so hard? Shouldn’t believing in a living God make it easier? Did the Lord really expect her to stand against her husband and lose her son in the process? And for what? To protect a murderer?
“Forgive them for they know not what they do.”
Dawn came. Atretes didn’t.
As the first day passed and then the second, Rizpah despaired, her mind and heart in torment. How had things disintegrated so quickly? Was it possible that one act of violence could obliterate faith? She felt as though her own was crumbling. Was she doing the right thing? She wanted to be with Caleb, not alone in this quiet, cold earthen house. She wanted to talk with Atretes, reason with him, make him understand. But could she? Would any amount of reason reach a man who had given himself over to the desire for vengeance?
She knew him so well. He wouldn’t relent, and if she did, he was lost. Rolf would die, and she would have the young warrior’s blood on her hands. She would have to live with the guilt of knowing her weakness had opened the way to Atretes committing a murder no less abominable than what Rolf had done.