Written in the Ashes Read Online Free Page B

a dead bougainvillea bush. Her skin glistened with sweat, and the sheets beneath her were soaked through. The acrid stench in the room of sweat, urine, and vomit was overwhelming, and drew a curtain of flies.
    Alizar did not turn his eyes from the girl. “Jemir, shut the door.”
    The door clicked shut.
    “Tarek, where did she come from?”
    “The market.”
    “I do not mean the market, boy. Tell me where she comes from.” Alizar studied the girl before him. This was no Egyptian slave. Her skin might have made her Persian for its smooth burnish the color of sandalwood, but her eyes…her eyes were a blue as dark and deep as the Sardinian sea.
    “I, I do not know,” Tarek stammered. “I bought her.”
    “You what?”
    Tarek bowed his head and lied. “For you.”
    Alizar’s eyes could have impaled the boy. “For me. I hardly think so. And that is a matter I will attend to in fine detail at another time. For now, I must see to this child. What language does she speak, Tarek?”
    “I do not know.”
    A whimper escaped Hannah’s lips as a tear slipped down her cheek. Her whole body shook as if in the cold, though the room was an inferno. She was aware that these strange men were discussing her, and the fear she had felt on the road was unequaled by this new wave of terror. What would they do with her now?
    Leitah’s feminine instincts swelled within her, and she tiptoed to the bed. She reached out tenderly and took the girl’s hand. Hannah suddenly jolted to life, and struck out with flailing fists. Leitah stood up and reached forward to take her shoulders, whispering soothing words as Hannah thrashed about until she finally calmed down and began to cry. When Hannah had no resistance left in her, Leitah took the poor thing in her arms and rocked her, wiping the sticky hair back from her shoulders. This revealed the unhealed gash where the raiders had cut her. Hannah trembled soundlessly, her body given over to shock.
    Jemir, who stood beside the door, said accusingly, “What have you done to her, Tarek?”
    Tarek bowed his head. “Nothing. I swear it. I have tried to feed her and clothe her, and she refuses every piece of meat I give her. I give her clothes and return to find her like this.”
    Alizar sat on the bed, touched the sheets, and regarded the deep festering gash that ran along Hannah’s breast to her sternum. “That needs to be treated by a doctor. Jemir, send for Philomen. Leitah, go and fetch a bucket of warm water and a sponge. Tarek, leave us.”
    When they had gone, Alizar spoke softly in Greek. “What is your name, child?”
    Hannah’s expression remained unchanged.
    Alizar shifted his tongue to Latin. No response. Then to Egyptian. Then to the few words he could still remember from the northern territories of Gaul, then Persia. Nothing.
    Finally, it was Hannah who spoke. “My father is coming for me.” She wanted to sound strong, but her voice was hardly a whisper. She lifted her head and spit in Alizar’s face for emphasis, which did more to charm than irk him.
    Alizar wiped his cheek on his sleeve and smiled to himself, for here was a daughter of Abraham. Although he could see slight traces of that lineage in her, perhaps in the pout of her lips or the way her straight nose rounded and flared at the tip, it was undoubtedly the aristocracy of Rome he saw in her pronounced cheek bones, her well-sculpted jaw, her high brow and oceanic eyes. Alizar listened closely, turning her words over again in his mind. It was Aramaic, the language of the Jewish shepherds. How did she come to be so far from home? Her bronze collar seemed evidence enough. The metal was still new enough to retain its polish. She must have been captured, taken from her family, and then sold. “Calm yourself,” said Alizar in her native tongue. “No one is going to hurt you here. I have sent for a doctor. You are not well. You must rest. Do you have a name?”
    “My father,” Hannah pleaded. Her voice was even weaker