Chapter 1: "The Master’s House"- Part A

An Excerpt from "No Longer Slaves"

I woke before the first thrush-call in the pepper trees, the moment when the eastern horizon blushed pale rose behind the black ridge of Cadmus. Dawn in Philemon’s villa always began with a silence so thin it seemed one hard breath might shatter it; yet even then I could feel the day’s weight settling across my shoulders like damp wool. Around me the other household slaves stirred in the half-light—feet scraping straw pallets, muted groans from joints that had slept too cold on terrazzo, the damp cough of Felix the steward two pallets over. We did not speak. Our first language each morning was motion.

I rose, cinched my coarse tunic tight with a frayed cord, and slipped into the long northern service corridor. The limestone floor stole what night-warmth my soles had kept. Torches guttered low in bronze sconces, their smoke already clinging to the ceiling like ghosts reluctant to leave. A single oil-lamp hung at the far arch, its wick trimmed by Julia the night-girl, marking the passage to the kitchens. I knew every crack in those walls, every pale scratch where a platter had once scraped alabaster. They were map-lines of the life I feared I might never leave.

Outside, the courtyard sky was shading lavender. The impluvium’s pool lay black and still, catching the first watery reflection of Venus fading before dawn. I paused at its edge because the rules of the house demanded it: every slave crossing the atrium must move on silent feet so as not to wake our master’s family in their upper rooms. Morning rites, like chains, were invisible but iron.

Felix barked my name—“Onēsimos!”—from the colonnade in a shrill whisper designed to imply disdain but quietly as to not wake the masters of the house. Felix had tablets tucked beneath one arm, stylus poised like a soldier’s spear. He wore the dark red sash that proclaimed him dispensator, steward of accounts, a freeborn Greek who reminded the rest of us daily that birth, not merit, decided such rank. “Carry the grain to the mill,” he said. “And see the oxen watered. Philemon desires bread before first light prayers.” His gray eyes flicked over me, searching for some sign of laziness, then dismissed me like a tool slid back on its peg.

"For someone named 'useful', you certainly are useless!" Felix whispered with venom in his tone.

I found the grain amphorae stacked beneath the west portico. The pottery was cool beneath my palms, dew-rimmed and heavy with the autumn barley we bought from the market in Laodicea. I hoisted the first jar against my hip and felt its rough clay bite through linen. Across the courtyard small figures darted: Myrtis the cook‑boy— a wiry Lydian urchin of perhaps twelve summers, his wrists puckered with old burn‑scars—heaving buckets toward the kitchens; Tabitha from the loom‑room— a shy Cappadocian girl with ink‑dark hair and a voice rarely louder than the shuttle she throws—fetching kindling for the hypocaust fires; and Lysander the stable youth— broad‑shouldered, ash‑blond, forever smelling of horse and liniment—already brushing down Philemon’s prized chestnut team. None of us spoke; speech belonged to citizens, and to the family within.

The mill stood behind the bath wing where steam chimneys rose like twin pillars to the morning sky. The ox, an elderly brindled beast named Hekate, blinked at me with ancient resignation while I fitted the wooden yoke. As her hooves began their slow circle, the lava-stone quern groaned awake, a dirge I had heard more mornings than I could count. Flour dust swirled in the cool air—fine, gray, and choking. Each breath salted my tongue with the taste of other men’s bread.

I let my mind drift beyond the villa walls to the Lycus River glittering in the distance, its cold mountain water threading among poplar and red earth. Beyond it, merchants on the imperial road would already be tugging bales of the famous Colossian wool toward Ephesus; Roman couriers would spur their horses westward carrying edicts sealed with the imperial eagle. Free men, all of them, their skin bronzed by sun rather than floggers’ lashes. I wondered if any of them woke with the same tightness in their chest that I felt each dawn—a knot of questions with no answers in kind.

By full sunrise the household wheels were turning in earnest. Smoke curled from the kitchen flues, thick with the smell of yeast and goat cheese. In the peristyle garden, slaves trimmed last season’s fig branches under Archippus’s watchful eye—Philemon’s only son, a lean twenty‑something with earnest hazel eyes, a neatly clipped beard, and the awkward poise of a young teacher still learning how spiritual authority rests on mortal shoulders.

Apphia crossed the walkway above, her sandaled feet whispering against marble, her mantle draped modestly though its dye marked her wealth. She paused to speak soft encouragement to a serving-girl whose water jug listed dangerously; the girl nearly wept at such gentle words from a mistress—proof that kindness from those above was as rare as snow.

I remained near the columns, back straight, eyes lowered. Apphia’s voice drifted down. “Much to do before the gathering,” she reminded Archippus. “The brothers and sisters come at the second hour.” The gathering—another of Philemon’s assemblies of people who called themselves followers of the Way. I had served many such meetings: carrying lampstands into the triclinium, pouring wine, clearing crusts of bread after they broke it in some solemn remembrance of their crucified god named Yeshua. They spoke often of freedom, yet their eyes slid past the shackles on our ankles as if iron were air.

Like this morning, the caste of the villa revealed itself most clearly when the mornings grew frantic. Felix, steward, could strike a slave for tardiness and think no more of it than swatting a fly; I once saw him backhand Damaris so hard she bled from one ear yet still bowed to thank him for “correction.” My attention snapped back into reality when I saw everyone go silent and stand at attention.

Above the portico at the top of the stairs stood Philemon, paterfamilias, citizen of Rome by grant of the province, draped in undyed wool—an affectation of modesty belied by the gold ring on his index finger. He emerged from the tablinium just then, dictating to Felix a list of accounts—shipment of purple dyes to Laodicea, payment of taxes for the next quarter in denarii and produce, allowance for the repair of the courtyard’s cracked lion fountain. His voice was not cruel but confident, a man accustomed to deference. And why not? The Empire had built the world around him to his measure.

I kept my distance, balancing a newly filled grain-cradle on my shoulder. Philemon noticed me and offered a nod, almost cordial, as if greeting a favored dog. “Onēsimos, after you store that flour, assist Tabitha in setting chairs for the fellowship,” he said. Polite, poised, and utterly unaware that every syllable clinked against the iron collar fastened around my neck; Roman law brands men like me with such rings, and Philemon never allows me a moment without it.

Thus the hierarchy ran: citizens over freedmen, freedmen over slaves, men over women, Romans over Phrygians like me. Below us still were the oxen that turned the millstones—their value, even when they faltered, surpassed that of a disobedient servant.

By the third hour sunlight flooded the impluvium, dazzling marble and reflecting upward to frescoes of nymphs and vines that the prior owner had painted long before Philemon bought the estate. We slaves scurried, invisible ants maintaining the nest. I polished bronze lamps until my fingers went black, arranged low benches in the triclinium, swept mosaics depicting Orpheus charming wild beasts—ironic art for folk who claimed a God of freedom but tolerated chains on men.

While I worked, I overheard scraps of a heated conversation drifting from the reception hall. Archippus, the son of the Master argued with his father about seating for the Jewish believers; some Gentile guests objected to sharing bread with circumcised men. Philemon counseled tact: “We are one body, but some prejudices heal slowly.” I almost laughed—unless you were a slave, in which case prejudice never healed at all; it was enshrined in Roman statute.

Mid-morning, the villa gates opened and visitors shuffled across mosaic floors, sandals clacking, whispers echoing beneath the vault. I lingered near the narthex doorway carrying amphorae of water as more faces filed in than I had ever counted—Greek cloth merchants, a bent Jew with parchment tucked in his sash, a stout Roman matron whose signet ring bore the image of Minerva yet who greeted others with “peace in the Lord.” My task was simple: serve unseen. Yet my ears devoured every word.

A letter from Rome, they murmured—news of the apostle Paul, under guard yet still preaching. Some said he wrote to reassure the Colossians that Messiah reigned even as Nero’s banners darkened the world. Others debated rumors that earthquakes had scarred the valley near Hierapolis—omens, perhaps, or judgments from the gods their neighbors still burned incense to. It struck me then that free men feared chains of their own: judgment, disease, imperial taxes, the tremor of earth underfoot. My bonds were iron, theirs unseen, but both clanged in our ears.

When the assembly settled, Archippus rose to pray. His voice was earnest, the voice of a youth who had memorized the Hebrew psalms in Greek translation. I poured watered wine into their modest clay cups—no silver this week, Apphia had deemed simplicity more fitting for the faith. A hush fell as Archippus read a psalm about the Lord who “executes justice for the oppressed.” I felt the words tighten around my chest. Justice? Oppressed? Did the psalmist imagine a man like me stooping under a millstone yoke?

Yet no one looked my way. Their eyes were closed, brows furrowed in holy fervor, but when I brushed past, a few withdrew their robes lest my slave-sweat soil their linen. Freedom in Christ, they called it. I tasted its perfume in the air, sweeter than Syrian myrrh, yet like mist it slipped through my fingers.

Near noon the bread came forth—flat loaves scored with a cross, a symbol they said of a Jewish rabbi who recently died in Judea under Pontius Pilate. They broke it, whispered blessings, passed pieces hand to hand. I stood by the entrance holding a basin for rinsing fingers. When the bowl returned, the water was pink with dust and wine. No one offered me a crumb.

Afterward I cleared the cups, my gaze drifting toward the inner courtyard garden. A breeze stirred cypress branches and scattered fresh-picked laurel on the walkway. The scent of crushed herbs mingled with charcoal smoke and roasting lamb, a feast being prepared for guests far more honored than I. My stomach knotted with hunger, but Felix would ration us only barley mash and onions after the gentry left.

As the guests departed, I glimpsed a parchment laid across the table—ink still drying in neat uncial hand. I could not read, of course; letters were no more than blots of ink on a scroll. Yet as two merchants, Christian guests of the Master leaned close to admire the letter from Paul. One murmured the words aloud—eleutheria en Christō, "freedom in Christ." The sound of that phrase struck like a knife in my heart. Freedom. The very idea felt treasonous to the order of things, a spear leveled at the ribs of empire. I stared at the parchment, ink barely cooled, unguarded. For an instant I imagined folding it under my tunic, fleeing east to Rome, finding the man who spoke such fire. But I was a slave; even dreaming was theft.

The sun hung high now, white and pitiless. We slaves gathered in the shade of the servants’ cloister to gulp our meager meal. I chewed gritty porridge, grit between teeth, and watched sparrows flit through vine trellises above. They moved where they pleased, carried by wings lighter than any chain. I envied them with a bitterness that scorched hotter than midday sun.

When chores resumed, I found myself alone in the granary sifting wheat. Dust motes drifted like tiny planets in beams of light piercing the slatted shutters. The stillness thickened until even my heartbeat seemed loud. I set down the measure, leaned against a wooden beam, and closed my eyes.

Memories washed up—my mother’s lullaby sung in Phrygian tongue, my father’s laughter in a vineyard before debt claimed his freedom, the auction block where a Roman trader prodded my teeth like horse-flesh. Those recollections were shards; each cut reopened the ache. Yet above them floated new words, foreign yet familiar: “No longer slaves, but heirs.” Heirs—sharing the inheritance of a Jewish carpenter executed in Jerusalem decades past.

A door creaked. I jolted upright, expecting Felix’s reprimand, but no one entered. Only a stray gust rattled the shutters. Still my pulse thumped like a hammer. For a moment I imagined that door swinging wider—beyond it a road winding over the hills, through Laodicea to Ephesus, to the wine-dark sea, to Rome where the apostle in chains spoke of a freedom untouched by Caesar’s sword.

I opened my eyes to the granary walls, the sacks, the ledger board tallying grain owed to tax collectors. Reality settled heavy, yet inside something fragile stirred—hope, perhaps, or rebellion. Were they so different?

That night, when the villa lamps were snuffed and cicadas sang in the orchard, I lay on my straw mat staring at the rafters. Moonlight spilled through the lattice and traced silver bars across my body. They looked like chains—yet they dissolved whenever a cloud crossed the moon. I whispered into the darkness, “If You are there—this God of Hebrew psalms and Roman letters—see me. Answer.” No voice replied, only the far-off bark of a shepherd dog and the rustle of figs in wind. Still, the ache eased a fraction, as though being heard, even by silence, was a beginning.

Sleep crept over me slowly, the last thing I remembered the scent of crushed laurel still clinging to my tunic. Somewhere beyond the orchards a nightjar called, lonely and low, and I wondered if its wings knew the way to Rome.

I nodded off to sleep, dreaming I was a bird flying free and soaring through the air.