As Sure as the Dawn(59)

Atretes’ expression changed markedly. Forgetting her, he began to talk to his son. All the world-worn hardness left his face, and Rizpah glimpsed the man he might have been had circumstances been far different. He spoke softly, German words she couldn’t understand. But the tone was easily understood.

Atretes lifted Caleb above his head and jiggled him, drawing a delighted sound from the little boy. Rizpah stood by, watching, pierced.

Someone ran into her from behind, and she uttered a sharp gasp of pain and fell forward against Atretes. Atretes lowered Caleb quickly, holding him secure in one arm as he steadied her with the other. Barnabas tried to dart around the side of her, but Peter was too fast.

“Caught you!” Peter shouted triumphantly, giving his younger brother a hard shove.

“Not fair! Not fair!” Barnabas complained and the two boys began arguing loudly.

Atretes thrust Caleb into Rizpah’s arms. Making a sweep of his foot, he sent both boys crashing to the deck. “Ouch!” Barnabas cried out. Bending down, Atretes caught each one by an ankle and lifted them high and right over the side of the ship.

“No!” Rizpah cried out in fright, sure he meant to drop them.

Barnabas screamed in terror, arms swinging wildly for some hold and finding none.

“It’s time you two learned a lesson!” Atretes said and shook them hard enough to make their teeth rattle. When he stopped, Barnabas screamed louder, but Peter dangled, shocked into uncharacteristic silence, eyes huge.

Hearing the commotion, everyone turned, Porcia and Timon last of all. When Porcia saw Atretes holding her sons by the ankles and dangling them overboard, she screamed and ran toward them, frantic to reach them before they met a watery death. “Someone stop him!”

“Atretes, please don’t,” Rizpah said, hardly able to breathe.

“No one would miss two worthless, yapping little curs!”

Barnabas went on screaming while Peter hung upside down, limp and, for all appearances, determined to die with more dignity than his younger brother.

“Timon!” Porcia wept. “Do something!” She looked around wildly for her husband, who was hurrying after her, his face ashen.

Atretes gave Barnabas a hard shake again. “Be silent!” Barnabas stopped screaming as though someone had grabbed him by the throat and squeezed off his air.

Everyone stared. No one dared move, not even Porcia who had reached the side of the ship where Atretes held the boys and stood weeping and wringing her hands. “Don’t drop them,” she wept. “Please don’t drop them. They’re only babies. Whatever they did, they didn’t mean to do.”

“Shut up, woman. You are a fool.”

He lowered the boys as though ready to drop them and everyone caught their breath. “You’re going to listen, aren’t you?”

“Yes!”

“You will not run or shout or fight anywhere on this ship. If you do, I’ll feed you to the fish. Do you hear me?”

Hair hanging, eyes huge, they nodded quickly.

“Repeat what I just told you.”

They did.

“I want your word on it.”

Barnabas jabbered it out, while Peter answered solemnly.

Atretes let them dangle a moment longer, and then swung them high and dumped them on the deck at their mother’s feet. Porcia gathered her sons quickly to her.

Two of the soldiers laughed and several members of the ship’s crew cheered. One passenger called out that Atretes should’ve dropped them while he had the chance.

“As for you two,” Atretes said to Porcia and Timon, “tend your children, or the next time I will heave them overboard, and you right after them!”

Porcia drew them up quickly and away from Atretes. “Don’t go near that man again. Stay as far away from him as you can. He’s a barbarian and he’ll kill you.” Her words were loud and clear enough for many to hear.

A muscle jerked in Atretes cheek. He looked around in cold challenge at those staring at him.

Barnabas cried and clung to his mother’s skirts, but Rizpah noticed Peter hung back, gazing up at Atretes with rapt adulation. She glanced up at Atretes and saw he noticed the boy as well. He smiled faintly and jerked his chin for the boy to go.

Timon cupped the nape of his son’s neck and shoved him along the deck behind his mother and brother. “Listen to your mother.”

Turning away from those still looking at him, Atretes put his hands on the ship’s rail. She had never seen him look more grim. She moved to stand close beside him and he looked down at her in surprise. His expression darkened. “What’re you smiling about?”

“You,” she said, the floodgates of her heart opening.