Well Written Wednesdays: his friendship was of the heart

I realized then that I had not yet told him that I was free. Yet he had taken me in and offered me his home and his studio.

I bowed my head and thanked him.

"I will go and bring Lolis," I told him, and as I went away toward the inn I thought about Bartolome's generosity and candid comradeship. Some day, I thought, when we have finished work, and sit to take a glass of wine together-- some day when our wives whispered and rocked children to sleep in the upper rooms-- I would say, "Bartolome, Master Velasquez freed me. I am no longer a slave."

And he would say, "So? Good, my friend."

He would be glad for me. And I would be glad that to him it had never mattered, for his friendship was of the heart.

-from I, Juan de Pareja by Elizabeth Borton de Trevino