The following day in the scriptorium in Haran’s house, I listened to Lavi read from the Iliad in starts and stops, finding it difficult to stay focused. My mind wandered to Diodora and to the things spoken in the birth house. I kept seeing her walk away from us.
“What will we do?” I’d asked Yaltha during the long walk from Isis Medica back to Haran’s.
“We’ll wait,” she’d replied.
With effort I turned my attention back to Lavi as he faltered over a word. When I attempted to prompt him, he held up his hand. “It will come to me.” It took an entire minute. “Ship!” he cried, beaming.
He was in a happy, though somewhat nervous mood. Earlier that morning a courier had arrived with news that he’d been granted the position at the library. His apprenticeship would begin on the first day of the following week.
“I’ve made a vow to finish reading Achilles’s adventures before my employment,” he said, lowering the codex. “My Greek is not yet perfected.”
“Don’t be concerned, Lavi. You read Greek quite well. But yes, finish the poem—you must find out who prevails, Achilles or Hector.”
He seemed to bask in my praise, sitting up taller. “Tomorrow I will go to Pamphile’s father to ask for a settlement of marriage.”
“Oh, Lavi, I’m glad for you.” His nervousness, I realized, was not merely about his reading skill. “When do you hope to wed?”
“There’s no betrothal period here as there is in Galilee. Once her father and I draw up the settlement and sign it before witnesses, Pamphile and I are considered married. She gave me a portion of her wages and I purchased a shabti box as a gift for him. I will not ask for a bride price. I hope these things will be enough to conclude the contract tomorrow.”
I walked to Thaddeus’s desk and gathered up a stack of papyrus sheets, the costliest and finest in Egypt. “You may offer him these as well. It seems an appropriate gift from a librarian of the great library.”
He hesitated. “Are you sure? Will they be missed?”
“Haran has more papyrus than exists in all of Sepphoris and Jerusalem combined. He won’t miss these few sheets.”
As I thrust them into his arms, there was a shuffling at the door. The servant who did Haran’s bidding was standing there.
“Our master has just returned,” he said, his eyes traveling to the papyri.
“Does he have need of me?” I asked, more haughtily than I should have.
“He asked me to inform the household of his return, that is all.”
Once again we were in captivity.
* * *
? ? ?
WAITING WAS AN INSUFFERABLE ENDEAVOR. One sat, one dithered, one stirred a pot of questions. I fretted over whether we should accept Diodora’s rejection or find a way to return to Isis Medica. I pressed Yaltha to set a course, but she persisted in her waiting, saying if the pot was tended long enough, the answer would bubble to the surface. A week passed, however, and we seemed no closer to resolving the matter.
Then one day with the sun dangling low above the rooftops, Pamphile broke in upon Yaltha and me in the sitting room, breathless from hurrying. “A visitor has arrived asking for you,” she said. I imagined it was the long-awaited courier bearing a letter from Judas—Come home, Ana. Jesus bids you to come home—and my heart began to thump.
“She waits for you both in the atrium,” Pamphile added.
I knew then who it was. Yaltha nodded at me. She knew, as well.
“Where’s Haran?” Yaltha asked.
“He has been away all afternoon,” Pamphile answered. “He hasn’t yet returned.”
“Bring the visitor to us here and say nothing of her presence to anyone but Lavi.”
“My husband hasn’t returned either.” She let the word husband slide slowly from her tongue. The marriage settlement had been signed as Lavi had hoped.
“Be certain to alert him when he arrives. Ask him to wait in the garden out of sight. When our visitor leaves, we’ll need him to slip