Return to Exile

by Lynne Gentry

  Tappo stood. “Love those who persecute us?”

  “Especially those who persecute us,” Cyprian said.

  “The moment they are well we will suffer their wrath.” Tappo began gathering his family.

  “Tappo, please. Hear me out. As Christians we have been given not only the privilege of trusting in Christ but also the privilege of suffering for him.” He raised his voice above the murmurs. “It is easy to believe those who live in the villas are different from those who live in the tenements. While you believe the rich are without problems, the rich think the poor fortunate for being free to live without obligation. Believe me, Tappo, no one finds this command to love everyone equally more difficult than I do. But if the church is to be the body of Christ, we are neither slave nor free. We are brothers and sisters called to fight together.”

  “A sickness more deadly than the plague is consuming the entire empire,” Tappo said. “Greed. And you want us to help those who would take the clothes from our backs and feed our naked carcasses to the lions for sport?”

  “I’m saying those are the very people we must win over.”

  “How?” Tappo demanded. “Take the bread from my child’s mouth and shove it into their fat cheeks?”

  “We unite in purpose.”

  “Rebel against Rome? They will crush us.”

  “No. Quite the opposite.” Cyprian headed off Tappo’s growing angst by fleshing out his plan. “I propose we excel in doing good.”

  “Good?” Quinta said. “What kind of good?”

  “We pick up our efforts. Form a stealthy coalition of men to take stretchers not only to the slums but also to the villas of the rich and powerful. Wherever the sick are found, we are there to bring them inside these walls for healing, to care for them like our own whether or not they’re one of us. I’m funding a workforce of anyone willing to join in the effort, to transport the sick to our hospital, poor or rich. While you clear the broad avenues of the rich, I shall work in the slums. Who is with me?”

  47

  GOOSEFLESH RAISED ON LISBETH’S arms as Cyprian spoke to the church. His passion reminded her of Papa’s antiquities lectures. Her father didn’t have Cyprian’s gift of oratory, his intense stare, or his ability to speak without notes, but like Papa’s, tonight Cyprian’s words came from someplace deep and tender.

  He had always been the first to take up a civic cause, especially if he thought the underdog was being mistreated. His noble desire to right the wrongs Rome inflicted on the poor was the very thing Aspasius hated about the solicitor of Carthage. Modern-day politicians would tremble if they had to face Cyprianus Thascius at a debate podium. His unwillingness to back down from a fight was a character trait she admired and one she was grateful Maggie had inherited.

  But Lisbeth had never seen this side of her husband. Vulnerable, transparent, and willing to become one of those he considered far below his social standing. His humbling admissions of fear and prejudice drew her in and stirred a fire in her belly. She could spend a lifetime exploring the raw layers he’d just exposed, and it would not be long enough. Until this very moment, she hadn’t thought it possible to love this man more than she already did.

  She glanced around at the crowd, trying to judge the impact of Cyprian’s impassioned argument.

  “You’ll pay us to care?” Tappo asked.

  A flicker of disappointment raised Cyprian’s brow. “If that is what it takes to start changing hearts. Talk to Felicissimus. He’s handling the hiring for me.”

  When everyone turned to Felicissimus, he squirmed. “Since Aspasius has forbidden access to our cemeteries, it’s been a little difficult to get things started.”

  “But we will get started, and soon. Right, Felicissimus?”

  “Soon enough.”

  The garden gate flew open. “Soldiers killed my son!” The mother of Natalis panted, her face streaked with tears and her tunic stained with blood.

  Cyprian and Lisbeth rushed to her at the same time. Flanking her, they led her to the nearest bench.

  “Someone give her wine,” Lisbeth called over the gasps of terror and the scramble to gather families together.

  “Can you tell me what happened?” Cyprian asked gently.

  She refused the cup Lisbeth offered. “I came home from the cooking fires to find them dragging my boy to the street. They put a dagger to his throat and bade him utter blasphemous words. When he refused, they tied him to a hitching post and shot an arrow through his heart.” She began to sob. “He bled to death in my arms.”

  “Natalis should have taken the papers,” Tappo murmured.

  “What papers?” Cyprian demanded.

  Tappo pulled out a slip of parchment. “One of these.”

  Cyprian’s face puzzled. He took the paper and read it out loud. “Let the record show that Tappo from the Egyptian village of Theadelphia has sacrificed and shown reverence to the gods of Rome. As roving commissioner, I do hereby certify that in my presence, this man has poured a libation and sacrificed and eaten some of the sacrificial meat. I, Aurelius Hermas, do hereby certify I saw Tappo sacrificing.” Cyprian slowly raised his eyes. Displeasure plowed furrows in his brow. “You have sacrificed to the pagan gods?”

  “No, that’s the beauty. This writ of libellus says I did when, in truth, I did not.” Tappo grabbed up his younger child. “When the soldiers knock on my door, my family will be safe and my conscience clear. God knows it is nothing but a forgery. Natalis was a fool not to take one for him and his mother.”

  “Since when is pleasing Romans more important than pleasing the one God?”

  “The one God does not have a spear pointed at my girl’s head. Rome does.”

  “And from whom, pray tell, did you acquire this illegal certificate of sacrifice?” Cyprian asked.

  “I’m not the only one who’s bought protection,” Tappo defended as he waved his hand over the crowd. “Show him!”

  Cyprian glanced around. Slips of paper fluttered in the hands of most of the crowd. “Quinta? Metras?” The grandmother lifted her writ higher. Old man Metras kept a level gaze and lifted the sheaf in his hand. Cyprian shook the parchment in Tappo’s face. “Who sold you this unholy writ?”

  Tappo stiffened. “I’m not at liberty to say.”

  “Who?” Cyprian demanded.

  Tappo hesitated before pointing across the garden, his expression hard. “The slave trader.”

  “Felicissimus?” Cyprian turned slowly, as if a knife in his back had cut him in two. “Felicissimus, is this true?”

  Lisbeth jumped to her feet. Her first impulse was to jerk Cyprian away from the pain she’d tried to spare him, but her second impulse, to strangle Felicissimus, won out. “I should have stopped you the moment I returned.” She barreled into him. “Tell him!” she shouted at the paunchy weasel. “Let him see what you’re really capable of.”

  “I don’t see the harm in purchasing a few pieces of paper if it gives the church a reprieve.” Felicissimus smoothed the front of his tunic. “In fact, I think buying these certificates fits well with your plan. I was only trying to help.”

  “You’ve been using my money to buy a false salvation?”

  “Think, Cyprian,” Felicissimus purred. “If Christians aren’t fretting about the possibility of losing their lives, how much easier would it be for them to do good? The good works you insist will change the feelings of Carthage.”

  It was as if the smoke suddenly cleared, and Cyprian saw the truth and it sickened him. “What have you done?”

  “I’ve done what you didn’t have the courage to do.” Naked ambition gleamed in the slave trader’s eyes. “I gave these people protection.”

  “You’ve given them worthless scraps of paper.” Cyprian’s nostrils flared, and Lisbeth could see him fighting back the urge to lose it.

  “I did what I thought was best for the church!” Felicissimus shouted.

  Cyprian’s face creased in pain. “Lisbeth was right. You’ve done nothing but harm.” C
yprian sank to the dais. The note of bewilderment in his voice as he scrambled to put the pieces together ripped Lisbeth’s heart in two. “It was you who set up the ambush that took Caecilianus from the church and my wife from me.” ­Cyprian shook his head, the anger mounting. “It was you who told Aspasius of Magdalena’s presence in my home.” His veins throbbed in his noble patrician profile. “And I suspect it is no longer safe for Christians to meet here, because you have told ­Aspasius of my return.”

  Felicissimus averted his eyes and dry-washed his hands in a brazen show of excusing himself from liability. “I regret you don’t see the merit of my actions or the depth of my love for you and the church.”

  Cyprian grabbed the slave trader by the collar. “When is he coming for me?”

  “Don’t you see, he doesn’t have to now.” Felicissimus jerked away. He gathered Metellus, his beer keg, the mother of Natalis, Quinta, and more than half the church. “Without the church, you are already dead to him.”

  Mama was right. Control was such an illusion. In an instant, everything had changed. Standing with Cyprian, Lisbeth watched helplessly as their hope of altering the world’s opinion of the church followed a plump little Judas into the night.

  “And what about you, Metras?” Cyprian asked the old man. “Are you going to take your writ and desert the faith, too?”

  “Never told a patrician about Jesus before.” The old man wadded his paper and threw it in the fountain. “According to those words you just read, once I do, I can’t let them sleep on these filthy streets.”

  48

  CLOUDS MUTED THE MOON’S glow on the sand. Lisbeth stood at the top of the stairs leading to the beach, debating her next move. Below her, Cyprian paced ankle-deep in the tumbling waves. Would going to him make things better or worse? And if she went, what could she offer? Another useless plan?

  Cyprian was not the only one undone by this debacle. The unraveling of the church had gut-punched her and destroyed her plans to eventually liberate Mama and save her husband’s neck.

  Cyprian ripped the bishop’s hat from his head and threw it into the sea. Unaware she was watching from afar, he stripped out of Caecilianus’s toga and left it in a heap on the shore. He shook his fists at the heavens in what looked like a boxing match with God. After a few minutes of wrestling with the wind, Cyprian stood with his muscled back to her. As he stared out at the sea, Lisbeth could see his bare shoulders shake. Broken as he was by Felicissimus’s betrayal, he was still a physical specimen of admirable craftsmanship, the man she longed to hold.

  As she cupped her hands to her lips to call out to him, he raised his arms above his head, plunged into the foamy waters, and disappeared.

  “Cyprian!” Lisbeth gathered her skirts and flew down the steps. Her sandaled feet raced across the sand. At the water’s edge she searched the charcoal horizon for any sign of his blond head. As she peeled out of her shoes preparing to dive in after him, Cyprian surfaced with a gasp and began cranking out angry strokes that carried him toward one of the few remaining anchored ships.

  “Come back” was all she could manage.

  He stopped his thrashing and bobbed in the waves as he searched the shore.

  Lisbeth undid her sash and threw it aside. “Don’t make me come after you.”

  “There’s only one way to free your mother.”

  “What? Get yourself killed?”

  “Sail for Rome.” His voice carried over the water. “Speak to the emperor myself. Tell him of Aspasius’s refusal to follow his edict and lift the persecution.”

  “Before you stow away on a ship likely carrying two plagues, can we at least talk about this?”

  “What is there to talk about? It would have taken every hand to accomplish what we planned.” He waved her back. “Don’t come in the water.”

  Lisbeth waded in ankle deep. “If you’re going to Rome, so am I.” She stood in the moonlight, the breeze blowing her hair around her shoulders.

  “What about Maggie?”

  “We’ll take her. She’s at least had her shots.”

  Cyprian stroked toward her. Breathing hard, he came ashore. Although he maintained a distance of a few strides, she could feel the heat radiating off his slick body. “Did you know about the writs of libellus?”

  “No.”

  Strain was etched across his face. Tired, red eyes from sleepless nights of trying to hold everything together. The church. The city he loved. The fractured remains of his family. She knew she looked just as haggard.

  “You tried to tell me, but I wouldn’t listen. Felicissimus was my right-hand man. I trusted him to administer funds. Supervise the burials. To be my friend. I was a fool. How can the church love those who don’t know Christ when we can’t even love each other? God forgive me, but when I think that I entrusted Ruth and the church into that weasel’s care, I want to kill him.”

  “I’ve fought the urge to slap Felicissimus since the moment he removed his boot from my face.”

  Cyprian slicked his hair back. “They are all fools to think those writs will keep them safe.”

  She threw Cyprian his toga. “So what are we going to do?”

  “What can we do?” He slid the heavy fabric over his head. “A few women and an old man with a cane are hardly the army we needed.”

  Was that regret or blame she heard in his voice? Did he rue the day he’d purchased her off the slave block and started this war with Aspasius?

  Beating back her fears, she said, “God’s done more with a lot less.”

  They stood there staring at each other, the wind in their ears and the waves washing across their feet. Angry foam swirled around Lisbeth’s ankles, then retreated to the sea with a tug that threatened to pull her under.

  Cyprian was the first to speak. “I don’t know how long I can keep you and Maggie safe.”

  Tears clogged the back of her throat. “Nor I you.”

  His lips twitched. In an instant, his impeccable discipline deserted him, and he reached for her hand. “I never thought you’d come back. I prayed that you would. Dreamed that you had. I saw you everywhere. In the tenements. At the sea. In the boiling water for the vaporizer pots. In your brother’s drawings. But I never thought you’d leave the world you knew, the world where you belonged, and return to me.”

  She held on tightly. “Our daughter needs her father.”

  “And you?”

  “Worse than I need air.”

  Longing shone in his eyes. He closed the distance between them. Cupping her face in his hands, he lightly brushed away her tears. “It’s not death I fear, but losing my faith. God can take my riches, my position, even the church I’ve come to love.” He traced her lips with his salty thumbs. “But it will not be easy to forgive him when the hour comes to send you home. And I’m afraid the time has come.”

  She took Cyprian’s hand. “Follow me.” Beneath a velvet sky she led him to the pergola. They stepped into the privacy of the vines. “Remember the last time we were together here?”

  He turned to her. “Every time I look out my window.” A wistful, worn gaze met hers. “Had I known the future—”

  She put a finger to his lips. “We would have missed this moment.”

  Golden stubble roughened his tense jaw. His eyes reflected the same uncertainty she was feeling. They were once again backed into an impossible corner, one misstep away from destruction. What would they do next? Exactly where did two frightened, weary souls go from here? If they gave in, they might very well shatter any chance of coming out of this intact.

  Cyprian’s fingers followed the curve of her clavicle. A faint smile lifted the corners of his lips. The aching emptiness she’d carried since their separation grew so large each breath required effort. She wanted to tell him that she loved him, loved him more than her own life, but the words refused to form into a coherent sentence. So she remained as silent as he, willing her eyes to say what her lips could not.

  In their need, they reached for each other. One of Cypr
ian’s hands wrapped her waist. The other tangled in her hair and lifted her chin. His breath whispered across her cheek. Desire swirled like fine desert sand, every emotion a tiny granule swept across the peaks and valleys that had been their lives. Every minute that had passed while she was away, hope of them holding each other again grew as distant as the cave portal. Impossible to reach in this life. She wouldn’t allow her spinning mind to stop and consider the end of this moment, an end written years ago.

  His lips pressed hers, so powerful and intense her mouth opened like that of a little bird demanding to be filled. Her hands traveled the contours of his chest. Fingertips skimming upward, she paused at the rapid pounding of his heart.

  The swell of the sea beat against the harbor walls as the years apart fell away. Time shifted. The arrow-straight line connecting past and present faded into a timeless, dreamy circle. Lisbeth pillowed her fears in another dimension and let go.

  49

  FELICISSIMUS BURST INTO ASPASIUS’S chamber and jolted the proconsul from his slumber. “It’s done,” Felicissimus said, panting.

  Soldiers tumbled into the room behind the slave trader. “We tried to stop him, sir.”

  Aspasius refused Magdalena’s help and pushed himself up in his bed. “Let him speak.” He waved a weakened hand. “Offer our guest some refreshment, woman.”

  Felicissimus came and threw a stack of papers on the bed. “There’s nothing left of Cyprian’s church.”

  Magdalena dropped the cup she was filling.

  “Well done, little slave trader.” Aspasius directed his pleased chuckle toward Magdalena. “There’s a small pouch in the dresser drawer. Pay the man.”

  “I don’t want your money or the power you offered anymore,” Felicissimus said. “I did what you asked. The church is destroyed, and so is Cyprian. Now you no longer have need to kill him or anyone else. That boy you had executed in the tenements did not have to die. I would have eventually sold him the writs.”