Read the Story
Historical fiction inspired by the world surrounding the biblical text.
The morning market had already spilled into the street.
Figs and dates filled shallow baskets beneath the awnings. Clay jars of olive oil stood beside sacks of lentils and grain. A fishmonger held up the morning’s catch and shouted a price to anyone willing to listen.
“No.”
A woman shoved a fish back toward him.
The merchant protested.
She walked away.
“Fine!” he called after her. “Take it.”
She turned around smiling.
Marcus laughed as he passed them.
Farther along, a cloth merchant snapped open a length of deep red fabric. Two women leaned over a table of small clay lamps while a boy slipped between them carrying a basket of grapes nearly as large as he was.
The smell of fish mingled with olives, spices, warm bread and the less pleasant contribution of the mule standing in the middle of the street.
Its cart had caught between two worn paving stones.
“Move!”
The driver tugged the reins.
The mule did not.
Someone behind the cart shouted.
The mule remained unmoved.
Marcus stepped around them and continued toward the harbor.
It was an ordinary morning in Asia Minor, the great peninsula hundreds of miles east of the city of Rome.
Rome was far away.
Its power was not.
Marcus reached into his purse to pay for a handful of dates. The merchant dropped the coins into his palm. On one of them was the face of the emperor.
Marcus turned it over once before slipping it into his pouch.
The same authority appeared throughout the city. The emperor’s name was carved into stone. Roman officials governed the province. Temples honored Rome and its rulers. Taxes traveled west even when most of the people paying them never would.
For Marcus, it was simply the world he had been born into.
“Marcus!”
He turned.
Jonas was weaving through the crowd, narrowly avoiding a porter with a bundle balanced across one shoulder.
“You heard?”
“Heard what?”
“A message has come.”
Marcus glanced toward the harbor. Ships arrived with messages every day—orders from officials, accounts from merchants, news from distant relatives.
“From where?”
“Patmos.”
Marcus stopped.
Patmos lay across the water, a small island off the western coast of Asia Minor.
“From John?”
Jonas nodded.
For days there had been whispers among the believers. Now the word had arrived.
John had written.
“To us?”
“To seven churches.”
Marcus knew their names. Everyone among the believers did.
Ephesus. Smyrna. Pergamum. Thyatira. Sardis. Philadelphia. Laodicea.
“When?”
“Tonight.”
Jonas was already moving away.
“After sundown.”
Marcus watched him disappear into the crowd.
Behind him, the fishmonger had found another customer. The mule had apparently decided Rome could wait and still refused to move. Merchants called across the street, sandals struck the paving stones, and another ship loomed near the harbor.
Marcus opened his hand.
He had forgotten to put away the coin.
The emperor’s face stared up at him from his palm.
By nightfall, Marcus would hear John’s letter read aloud.
Its greeting would offer him something no emperor’s image stamped into silver could give him:
Grace and peace.
