Shades of Surrender

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1

I
NSISTENT POUNDING RATTLED THE
warped door of the rug shop. Ruth woke with a start and sat straight up on the woven reed mat she and her mother shared. Heart hammering in her chest, she slowly reached for the large stick she kept handy.

Moving to the slums of Carthage had been an adjustment, one she’d not yet fully made. Even with the added iron bolt and their only stool propped against the door, the disconcerting noises of supply carts rumbling down the narrow streets, jeering men seeking the comfort of prostitutes, and the continual marital conflict from the apartment above the store kept her nerves on high alert.

The pounding grew louder. Clutching her weapon, she rose and peered through the broken window slats.

“Not him,” she muttered.

Sunlight glinted off the purple draperies of the litter waiting on the cobblestone street. Her eyes darted to the incomplete tapestry on her loom. Cyprianus Thascius had been sent to fetch the weaving her father had promised they would deliver months ago.

“Give me a minute, will you?” She quickly plaited her hair into a thick, golden braid. The knocks grew louder. “I said I’m coming.”

Ruth hurried to the door, slid the bolt, and peeked around the frame. “My lord, we’re not open—”

Cyprian pushed against the door. Sunlight ushered in the confident son of the most powerful senator in Carthage. “I’ve come for the tapestry.” His white toga hung in crisp folds from his bronzed shoulder. The expensive frankincense nard that made his skin glisten clashed with the earthy scents of the low-rent district tanning shops and bakeries. His eyes raked the room, then landed squarely upon her loom. “When will my father’s atrium boast the new tapestry your shop promised?”

Ruth hesitated, choosing her words carefully. “My father’s word was his stock in trade. I am doing my best to keep his obligations, my lord.” Laying her long list of excuses before this blue-eyed patrician who looked straight through her as if she were no more than a cup of water would change nothing. His kind was used to having what they wanted, when they wanted.

“My father was gracious to grant you extra time after your father’s sudden passing, but he has reached the limit of his mercy.” Cyprian strode to the loom and inspected her work. Then he turned and looked down his perfectly formed patrician nose, acting as if he were not merely an eighteen-year-old boy but a man who had already assumed his father’s seat in the Senate. Which would not be happening until he was at least thirty, if everything in his life turned out as he no doubt planned.

She wanted to scream,
A lot could happen in twelve years!
A lot could happen in the blink of an eye.

Cyprian cleared his throat and waited for the return of her full attention. “You give me no choice, weaver girl. Three days and I’ll come to collect either my father’s tapestry or the large advance we paid months ago.” In a swirl of white and purple, he exited.

Legs trembling, Ruth went to the door and watched the golden litter disappear down the road. Three days? What was she going to do? She had neither a finished product nor the generous deposit her
patronus
had paid
.
She would be stoned or taken to the arena if Cyprian reported to his father that the weaver’s daughter had failed to honor their contract.

A flash of brown drew Ruth’s attention to a dog lurking in the shadows. Cyprian’s brash arrival must have scared off the mutt, who’d taken to spending his nights on her threshold. She dug the crusty piece of bread from her pocket that she’d been saving for her breakfast and held it out. “Are you going to bite my hand off, too?”

He bared his teeth with a low growl. She tossed him the bread. He gulped it down, waited to see if there was more, then scampered off. Strays and scraps were the ways of her life now, and the sooner she accepted it, the better.

She flipped the wooden
CLOSED
sign to
OPEN
and placed one of her best doormats out in the hopes that today she would welcome her first real customer.

“It’s going to be another beautiful day, Mother.” The cheer Ruth added to her voice did not really affect her mother as she hoped, but she prayed the habit would eventually change her own perspective of their new reality. She opened the window, placed the stool in the sunlight, then went to the mat and lifted her mother upright. “Let’s try sitting in a chair this morning.” She hoisted her mother to a standing position. “Steady as she goes.” With Ruth’s hand gripping her mother’s elbow, they slowly shuffled across the tiny room. “Once you’re settled, I’ll go see if the baker has any day-old bread.”

Her mother didn’t say anything. But her silence was nothing new. Mother hadn’t spoken a word in six months. Ruth found the quiet harder to bear than the grief and shame that had accompanied her father’s death. But she refused to give up hope. One day the dark cloud would lift, and her mother would come to appreciate the life Ruth had made for them in the meantime. A life without the warm laughter in her father’s eyes and the luxury of his sought-after skills at the loom, but a life nonetheless.

“Let’s comb your hair.” Ruth reached for the brush near the little oil lamp, but before her fingers closed around the handle, a large black dog burst through the open doorway.

“Brutus, no!” A tall man, winded from running, scrambled inside. He launched himself headlong in pursuit of the mutt with a notched ear. “Brutus, come!”

The dog ignored Caecilianus. The lanky dye merchant had dark hair as woolly and disorganized as the skeins of multicolored yarns hanging from the rafters of his dye shop in Ruth’s old neighborhood. His nose was far too big for his face, but if he’d just press his tunic once in a while, his kind eyes and quick smile could make some girl forget his lack of symmetry and coordination.

“Brutus!”

The horse of a dog galloped around the shop. His tail knocked over the empty water jug, whacked the loom, and then the small tool table Ruth had managed to keep from the tax collector’s hands. Her father’s packing forks and trimming knives clattered upon the floor.

Caecilianus raced after him. “Brutus, come back!” He lunged for the rope leash. Missed. Then slipped upon Ruth’s weaving hook and went down face-first. His long body lay sprawled on the floor.

Ruth couldn’t help but laugh as the dog circled her and her mother for the second time. “Here, Brutus.” She reached out and grabbed the hemp collar. “Sit.” The dog’s unclipped nails scratched the tiles as he skidded to an obedient stop and parked himself before her, tail wagging. “Good sit, Brutus.”

Caecilianus struggled to his feet. “How did you get him to do that, Ruth?” He brushed bits of yarn from his wrinkled tunic and clamped his warm, calloused hand over her hold on the dog’s collar. “He doesn’t listen to a word I say.”

At the jolt of Caecilianus’s touch, Ruth released the collar and returned her trembling fingers safely to her mother’s hair. “He needs a firm hand, Caecilianus. Discipline and order.”
As do you
, she thought but did not say out loud as she took in his disheveled appearance. Whenever the church gathered to worship in Caecilianus’s dye shop, it was all she could do not to take a broom to the clutter or scissors to the splatters of red, yellow, and green stuck in his untamed beard.

“When did you grow up to be so wise, little one?” He winked at her.

Heat flushed her cheeks. “Good of you to finally notice, Caecilianus.”

She hadn’t meant her response to sound so forward. Caecilianus was nearly double her age. Thirty-one to her sixteen years. Perfect ages for a respectable marriage contract, were either of them so inclined. Which they were not. She had her responsibilities, and Caecilianus had always been more of the doting older brother type. Shy but quick to tease the stick-straight child who thrived on the attention. But it had been years since she’d peppered him with questions while he hammered sea snails and boiled the soft, juicy glands into a purple brew that stank up the whole neighborhood. Even if by some small chance he did realize she’d reached a marriageable age, she had already used up every bit of her dowry to take care of her mother. Love and marriage were luxuries she could no longer afford.

“I’ve brought you a surprise, Ruth.” Caecilianus gripped Brutus’s leash firmly with one hand and reached inside his cloak with the other. He pulled out an orange kitten whose feet were splotched with gray. “A good mouser.”

Every Tuesday morning Caecilianus appeared at her rug shop with some sort of small gift. Sometimes he brought cheese or a crock of wine. Sometimes it was a skein of yarn he’d cleared from his drying racks to make room for new inventory. Caecilianus was a good-hearted man and he’d been a wonderful next-door neighbor to her family for years, but Ruth knew he ventured into her new neighborhood every week out of a sense of duty. He was the deacon tasked to check on the widows.

The stigma attached to her father’s lack of provision was difficult, especially when there were others in their little church in far worse need of the kindness and generosity that would doubtless get Caecilianus elected to the office of bishop one day. The only way she knew to free him of his obligation was to do the honorable thing and get on her feet as quickly as possible. Once she completed her father’s final tapestry, Cyprian’s father would pay the rest of its handsome price. She could then pay Metras the back rent she owed and have more than enough left over to purchase yarn to start a new piece. But how could she accomplish this task? She had inherited her father’s artistic ability to create unusual designs, and her long, slender fingers were perfect for tying the tiny knots, but she didn’t have her father’s speed with the weaving hook . . . or any more yarn.

Ruth held out her hands, and Caecilianus dropped the kitten into her grasp. “Did you pull her from your potash pile?” She rubbed at the gray smudges on the kitten’s silky feet.

“Brutus found her out behind my shop.” The dog tugged at the leash, sniffing at the kitten. “This mutt always has his nose buried in something he shouldn’t. I searched behind your old place but couldn’t find the poor little thing’s mother.” Caecilianus stopped short, pulled the dog close, and nervously rubbed his ears. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to bring up painful memories—”

“Don’t apologize, Caecilianus. This smaller place is easier to keep organized.” She brushed the kitten against her cheek. Contentment purred beneath the soft fur. “Besides, you can’t take her back. I’m already in love.”

“It
is
another mouth to feed, and I didn’t know if—”

“You were right to bring her to me. She will be good for Mother.” She nodded toward the woman staring at nothing. Her mother was only two years older than Caecilianus, but after she’d discovered Ruth’s father dead at his loom, she’d shriveled like a grape left too long in the sun. She ate just enough to stay alive. In some ways, Ruth felt she’d buried her father
and
her mother in their family tomb.

“Look, Mother. Something for you to love.” Ruth gently lifted her mother’s hand and dragged her fingers over the fur. “Soft, isn’t she?” Her mother tried to smile. Not with her lips, but with one of those rare flickers of her former self that occasionally flashed in her eyes. Ruth placed the kitten in her mother’s lap. “Something living to hold on to.”

Caecilianus whispered into Ruth’s ear, “Good to see her out of bed.”

Ruth swallowed. “I can only pray she’s in there somewhere. Buried beneath the grief, but still there.”

“She’ll find her way back.”

His words were meant to be a comfort, but his pity was harder to stomach than his charity. “Thanks for the kitten.”

Caecilianus studied her intently, chewing on his upper lip like he had something else to say. He must have changed his mind, because he lowered his eyes and quickly moved to the loom where her father’s final tapestry was taking form among the warps and wefts. “I see you’ve made progress.”

“I hope to have it complete in three days.” She stooped to gather the strewn tools upon the ground to keep Caecilianus from detecting her worry.

“Or Thascius will have you stoned?” He touched her arm. “I saw his litter leaving.”

She fingered the green knots she’d added yesterday. “Just because my parents sometimes saddled you with my care when I was younger, it doesn’t mean you have to watch me now.”