Historical Setting: An unknown time in a cold land
This woman in shackles speaks in the comfortable language of Frankish Gaul. She tells me men are most often killed when they are captured and the women are taken as slaves. So, she says, I should be fortunate they only wrapped me in heavy chains. I guess I am fortunate but the chains are cold and debilitating. It is better than death. I know. I’ve tried both death and life and I choose life. Her only shackles are on her ankles. Dirty and bruised, her long, colorless strings of hair are tangled and matted with a patch of black dried blood. Her bruises tell of a violent capture.
“My sons and my husband were slaughtered.”
So, in her tears and howls I hear the unfairness of the grace that these captors let me, a man, live. I ask her name.
“That is only for my husband to know and now he’s gone.”
“So, I will call you Mara, the name in Ruth Naomi gave herself in her sorrow. [Ruth 1:20]”
“So, you are Christian?” Mara asks.
“Yes. Are you?”
“I’m guessing there are better gods. I only asked because you mentioned a Christian story.”
“It is older than Christian. Ruth is an old Jewish story.” And I ask her, how long she’s been here.
“Longer than the others, because I was wailing and I couldn’t be sold. No one wanted to buy a weeping slave? I don’t know if I am better off here but here is where I am. The good thing is when they dropped you here, they came with firewood.”
So, I guess for her, I have some sort of goodness. But she’s too frail to lift the log into the embers.
“I can help you if you release my chains.”
“Why would I do that?”
“So, I can lift the logs and help you cook this venison.”
“You would just eat all the meat yourself and then rape me.”
“No, Mara. I won’t hurt you.”
She succeeds at placing the log without my help. And she lays the meat next to the new flame. I’ve been having it raw in these times. And here it will be burnt all through, a hard greasy crust of meat it will be. But now, cooking, it stinks of rot.
“We shouldn’t eat that, Mara.”
She doesn’t answer me because she is devouring the char of meat and she is immediately sick.
I can’t even offer her comfort while wrapped up in chains.
(Continues Tuesday, December 10, 2024)
Lazarus Ink 