style="font-size:15px;"> Scribonia’s gift, the palla, was long and octagonal, made of a finely woven lightweight wool. It was perfect for fashioning into a makeshift cradle on the lowest branch of an ancient olive tree that grew alone a few yards from the stream.
She felt Marcus’s admiring eyes on her makeshift cradle, and had to laugh.
“Is there anything you can’t do?” he asked.
“You are very easily impressed,” she said, “that or you haven’t been around many mothers with babies. Though when I think about it that seems odd since your mother has a house full of them.”
“I haven’t been here long,” Marcus said.
“Really?” Annia said. “I thought you were born and raised here.”
“Off and on,” Marcus said. “But I joined the service as soon as I could, a bit before my seventeenth year. I finished my twentieth year in the service this year and came home to plan what I will do next.”
“And what will that be?” Annia asked, hoping in spite of herself that it would be something close by.
Ironically, this man—who had come to her private abode with an armed guard to take her baby—made her feel safe.
“I don’t know yet,” he said. “Now, tell me which sheep you want to start with.”
Annia turned her attention back to the sheep. It was clear he did not want to talk about his future plans.
Was it because there was a woman involved? Was he promised in marriage to someone?
It made sense. He was young and handsome enough to land any woman he wanted. His parents probably had the perfect young woman picked out for him.
Why should she care? She shouldn’t. But she did. She would like to know that this man, whose company she was beginning to enjoy, was not thinking about another woman.
Stop this foolishness. You will never remarry. You don’t want to. You aren’t interested in men. Marriage was the most miserable state you’ve ever experienced. You were forced to be with a man who didn’t love you, who said you looked like an elf, not a woman, who kept you only for your dowry.
She shook off that downhill spiral of thoughts, shed her stola and marched down to the stream clothed only in her tunic.
She found a sandbar and positioned herself on it.
“All right,” she said, “send in the first victim.”
Marcus walked into the pen and chose the closest sheep.
He positioned himself behind the dirty sheep and pushed her forward.
She circled back around behind him.
He tried it again.
The sheep circled around behind him.
He looked up to see Annia laughing at him.
“You think this amusing?” he yelled, positioning himself behind the sheep once again.
His yelling had an unintended effect. The startled sheep surged forward. He bolted with her, and all the other sheep followed.
The sheep lopped along wildly in the opposite direction from the stream.
“You make a poor sheepdog,” Annia said, laughing until tears streamed down her cheeks.
He ran to catch up with the sheep and tried herding them as if he were a sheepdog, barking orders behind them, “Move, go, go.” Finally steering them all back into the pen so he could start all over again and perhaps get it right.
Once inside the pen, he looked over at Annia, who was still laughing. “I think I can do it now,” he said, laughing with her.
This time, he was careful to position himself behind one sheep and slam the gate quickly behind himself before the other two escaped.
When the sheep made it into the stream, Annia wrestled her down into the deeper water, careful to hold her shaggy fleece so that she didn’t float away. Annia scrubbed the filthy coat as best she could, then guided the flailing sheep safely to the shore. She watched Marcus try to herd the sheep into her pen.
He ran like a crazy man, whooping and clapping to herd her.
When the sheep was safely fastened in her pen, he looked up at Annia.
“How did I do?” he asked.
“Very well,” she said. “I’ll make a sheep farmer out of you yet.” He really seemed to care what she thought. It made her happy.
“Just what I’ve always wanted to do,” Marcus said, “grow up and be a sheep farmer.”
She laughed, and he brought the next sheep out.
When all three sheep were washed and ready, Lucia, trailed by Julius, arrived at the pen with newly sharpened shears.
“I hate to send you back in again, but I forgot something. Can I get you to go back and get some old cloths to pat them dry?” Annia asked.
“I’m happy to,” Lucia said. “Going back and forth keeps Julius busy. He likes going on errands. It keeps him from straying.”
Lucia’s happy smile brought yet another pang to Annia’s heart.
She missed her boys.
Would she ever see them again?
Before she was divorced and sent away, the boys, at ten and six, were jolly, joyful things, always getting into scrapes in the back garden, trying to catch some bird or small animal for their make-believe wild jungle.
They’d heard of the wild jungle from some of the slaves. The boys had worked hard to make their own.
Tears smarted in Annia’s eyes.
Marcus noticed. “Is something wrong?” he asked.
“Nothing,” she said, wiping the stray tear from her cheek. “Just missing my boys.”
“Your boys,” Marcus said, “they mean a lot to you.”
“The world,” Annia said.
Marcus thought of the brown-eyed child peering at him from the window at the top floor of the villa of Galerius Janius earlier this morning.
The child was loyal to his mother, that was clear.
There was nothing Marcus would love more than reuniting Annia with her two boys. His father might be right. Perhaps God called His people to help others, but only one at a time.
Right now he had to make a plan to get Janius off their trail. As soon as they finished shearing the sheep.
“You start with three shears down the belly,” Annia said after she had wrestled the first sheep to her back and wedged the sheep’s head securely
