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Chasing the Lion (Sword of Redemption) (Volume 1)

By Nancy Kimball

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Chapter 1 - Running

City of Rome
August 10, AD 82

My mother is a liar. Jonathan’s tears added shame to his anger as he ran through the crowded streets. No man of twelve should be fleeing and weeping like a child. The faster he ran through the throng of people and animals, the more the words of his mother’s confession snarled behind him.
In his haste to turn from the street corner into the alley, a low stool caught his shin. He tripped onto the poultry seller’s table and knocked a plucked chicken to the ground. A dog snatched it and ran amidst the ensuing clamor.
Plucked geese swung overhead. Their cleaved necks dripped blood, the profane rain falling red and wet on Jonathan’s arms. Angry shouts from the merchant and a growling dog defending its prize added to Jonathan’s ragged heaves. He regained his footing and made a final sprint to his place of solitude. In the alley, he slowed to allow his vision to adjust to the shadows. Instead of the empty oxcart where he could be alone to think and pray, the forms of his tormentors came into focus.
The big one crossed his arms. “Look. It’s Jonathan. And he’s crying.” The sneer brought chuckles from the other two boys standing on either side of their leader. “Why are you crying, trash?”
Jonathan stopped and remained silent. He would let them add a hundred bruises to the one now forming on his shin before admitting the reason for his tears.
The skinny one pulled a flint and striker from his tunic. “Let’s burn the oxcart. Without his little cave, he’ll have to find a new place to hide from everybody who doesn’t want him around.”
The shorter boy stepped closer. “Maybe they finally told him who he has to thank for those elephant ears.” He put his hands on the sides of his head and flapped them while he laughed.
They were just words. Like always. Jonathan would ignore them. Like always. He’d heard them all before. If he left now, they wouldn’t make it to the ones that hurt most.
The big one in the center uncrossed his arms, his amused expression turning serious. “Is that why you’re crying? You finally found out who your father is, and he’s a nothing, just like you?”
Today they’d skipped Jonathan’s peasant clothes and skinny legs and gone straight for his deepest wound. A wound their taunts deepened, because today they held truth.
Moments ago, his mother plunged him into the waters of the only taboo subject that existed between them. She knew who his father was. She’d always known. He’d asked why she’d kept it a secret, and why she was telling him now. Her answer had sent him running.
The laughter still spewing from the older boys salted his open wounds.
He punched the skinny one first. The others fell silent. Jonathan whirled and kicked the big one in the knee. Before he could put a blow into the last boy, the coward fled.
Burly arms closed around Jonathan from behind. He clawed at the arm locked around his neck. His feet left the stone beneath them, and he struggled like a netted fish in the bigger boy’s grasp.
The boy he’d hit appeared in front. Hate gleamed in his eyes above his bloodied nose. He punched Jonathan in the stomach so hard the spent air trapped in his lungs shot up through his clamped throat. The gagging sensation only intensified his struggle to breathe.
Another fist to his stomach—harder this time.
Jonathan’s vision blurred and pain poured from his middle as he thrashed. He yearned for his mother so much that the echo of her voice penetrated his dizziness. Then the voice boomed, powerful and livid.
The big one dropped him and ran. Jonathan lay on the ground, coughing like his mother in one of her spells. He curled onto his side and cradled his tender stomach, drawing breath in deep gasps. A hand touched his back. A touch he’d known all his life.
Jonathan shifted to sit upright, though his stomach protested the movement.
His mother’s gaze went straight to his blood-splattered skin. “You’re hurt.”
“I’m fine.”
She reached for his arm, and Jonathan jerked away. Pain flashed in her eyes, which added to his own. The sight of her kneeling on the filthy stone street, looking as wounded as he felt, cut through his sense of betrayal. Weak and sick, she had still come after him.
Jonathan rose and helped her to stand. She embraced him, the warmth of her tunic pressed to his cheek as when he was a child. He feared tears again. If he allowed them, his pain would become hers, and she had enough to bear. This would be the last night in their home. As much as he wished for a father, he never thought it would mean leaving everything familiar behind.
His mother pulled away to gaze at him with sorrow-filled eyes. “Forgive me.”
The breathiness of her words deepened his concern. Chasing him had spent her strength. “We should go home.”
He draped her arm around his shoulders and fit himself into her side like a crutch to begin the walk back. The poultry merchant, poised to give threat again by the set of his face, relented at the sight of Jonathan’s mother at his side. Jonathan nodded in gratitude when their eyes met.
When he opened the door to their one-room insulae, a familiar sight greeted him. Deborah knelt on the floor in prayer. The older woman was like a second mother. Her head snapped up. Relief flooded her features, swallowed by swift indignation as she rose. She swatted him, her hand gnarled like tree bark from age but strong enough to sting.
“What did you think your mother would do when you ran off?”
“It’s all right.” His mother forced the words between labored breaths. “I enjoyed the fresh air.”
“Humph.” Deborah frowned. “You sound like it.”
His mother grinned at the chastisement as Jonathan lowered her to her blankets on the wooden floor.
“Besides, there’s no such thing in this city.” Deborah moved toward the one piece of furniture they owned. The small table supported their feather-light coin purse, a clay pitcher cracked near its top, and a single clay cup. “I told you the boy was going off to rail at God and to leave him to it. But no, you insisted on chasing after him. At least you finally know where his stubbornness comes from.”
It came from both of them but saying so would be unwise. Deborah poured a cup of water for his mother and brought it to her. She took a long swallow and extended the cup to him.
Jonathan shook his head. “You finish it.”
She drained the rest, and his guilt grew with every swallow.
Deborah counted out copper coins from their leather coin purse. “You need to eat to get your strength back, Liv. I’ll bring cena back for all of us.”
“Thank you,” he and his mother answered in unison.
Deborah nodded and left. “You better both be here when I get back,” she yelled through the closed door.
Jonathan rose and refilled the cup. He took a long draw of the water before handing it back to his mother. A long moment passed, and her breathing slowed to a steady effortless rhythm—at least for now.
“Why can’t we stay here with Deborah? When you’re—” He couldn’t think it, much less say it. Not without the sheltering confines of his oxcart.
“Because to decline your father’s request would insult him. Besides, you know Deborah would be unable to provide for you alone.”
“What is my…” He couldn’t bring himself to say the word father. “What is he like?”
His mother touched his jaw. “He is a good man who will love you as I do.” Her smile didn’t falter, but it disappeared from her eyes.
He knew that look. “What is it?”
She dipped the edge of her sleeve into the cup of water in her hand. Taking his arm, she scrubbed at the dried blood staining his skin. “He does not believe in the true God as we do and requested I not speak of Him in the hearing of anyone at the villa.”
“You agreed to this?”
“It wasn’t an easy decision. Our deeds, not our words, must win your father to the Lord. Our faith lived out to others should always have hands and feet, even without voice.” Her eyes were fierce, even as they pleaded. She took hold of his arm again in a grip firm enough to surprise him. “Do you understand this?”
“I understand.”
Her hold on his arm loosened as she sank back against the wall, rustling the straw beneath her blanket.
Deborah returned, carrying three large honeyed fig cakes and a brick of cheese the size of Jonathan’s hand. She grinned as he and his mother stared wide-eyed at the bounty. “Our last meal together is a special occasion. I’ll hear nothing of the expense, so save your words.”
They sat on the floor and reminisced through happy memories, sharing the meal and their single cup. Jonathan didn’t chew the cheese. Instead he let it dissolve on his tongue to savor the rich, salty flavor. Deborah told stories of her people that he could recite from memory, but still enjoyed hearing.
His mother grasped Deborah’s withered hand. “You know we’ll visit as often as we can, and bring whatever gifts we’re able.”
“None of that, Liv. You know Jehovah-Jireh, the God who provides, will see to my needs as He always has.”
Night was falling, and their jovial mood faded along with the light from their small window. The last morsels of cheese and honey cake were gone. Deborah and his mother settled on the straw pallets on their side of the room before darkness cloaked their small home.
Jonathan rested on his pile of straw beneath a threadbare blanket. Each time he moved, the soreness in his stomach reminded him he’d been on the verge of a beating before the older boys fled. Would he ever see them again?
Perhaps his father owned horses and would permit him to ride one. He’d never ridden a horse, but it looked simple. Sit on the animal’s back and hang a leg on each side. He would smile down at those wretches and wave from atop the horse like Caesar. Perhaps his father would ride beside him and wave to them too. That would slay the taunts on their tongues before they even left their mouths.
But what if the boys in the alley were right? Would his father find him unworthy as so many others did? Would his father cast him out after his mother— No. She couldn’t leave him. He wouldn’t gain a father only to lose the one person he needed most. So he prayed. Lord, You healed the lame and the sick, raised the dead, and parted seas like Deborah told us. I know You can heal my mother. Please, Lord. I need her.
Deborah’s whisper in the dark interrupted him. “What did you tell him?”
A long moment passed. “His father is a good man, who will love him as I do.”
“Was that all?”
“No.”
Silence stretched again. Jonathan strained to hear, even in the small room.
“I told him we must win his father to the Lord through our example, the way you did me when you took me in. You showed me Christ’s love when I was starving with nowhere to go.”
Straw rustled in the dark. Jonathan imagined his mother and Deborah embracing as they often did.
“You saved my life, and my unborn son. You showed me the way to Jesus.” There were tears in his mother’s muffled words.
“There, there,” Deborah whispered. She would be stroking his mother’s back as she had his own whenever he skinned his knee as a child. For a long time, only the soft murmurs of comfort and gratitude permeated the darkness. Then the straw crunched again and all was quiet. A quiet that lasted so long, Jonathan resumed his silent prayer.
Deborah’s muted voice interrupted them again. “A senator risks much by claiming Jonathan as a son.”
His mother’s sigh cut through him like a cold wind.
“I know he does.”
“If his father tells him of your past before you do, Jonathan won’t understand. He deserves to hear it from you.”
“Jonathan knows all he needs to.” Sorrow seasoned his mother’s whisper. “My life as a slave still pains me too much to speak of it. Especially to my son, for whom I would endure it all again.”
“I will pray for both of you, and for his father.”
Uncertainty covered him like a second blanket. He didn’t know what he was more afraid of. What he already knew or the secrets they were still keeping from him.

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