Return to Exile

by Lynne Gentry

  “We were in too deep the day we fell through that hole.” Truth was, the secret of the Cave of the Swimmers had destroyed any chance of a normal life, and they both knew it.

  Mama whispered a prayer, pressed her feet solidly to the floor, then leaned in to the task. Lisbeth helped her cinch a tourniquet high on his thigh. Mama cleansed the wound site with an antiseptic wash of ground leaves and barks.

  While comparing the appearance of Aspasius’s diseased limb to his other leg, Mama discussed with her the best place to cut. Determined to maintain as much of a functional stump as possible, Mama opted to saw below the knee. First, the tedious task of removing most of the dead tissue. Within seconds, the office smelled like a stagnant pond. The soldiers standing guard clamped hands over their noses and fled while Kardide and Iltani stood fast. Sometime during the transfer of Aspasius to his office Pytros had decided to make himself scarce. It was just as well. The scribe’s all-seeing eyes made Lisbeth’s skin crawl.

  Mama set her jaw, lifted the saw, and gave Lisbeth a curt nod.

  Other than moral support, Lisbeth didn’t feel she had much to offer. She was an epidemiologist, not a surgeon or an anesthesiologist. If Mama’s patient crashed, Lisbeth didn’t know how much she could help past performing CPR. Her gaze ping-ponged between Aspasius and the sheer strength Mama was expending to carve through bone. No wonder most ortho surgeons were the size of linebackers.

  “I can take a turn on the saw, Mama.”

  Her mother used her forearm to brush hair from her sweaty forehead. “I’ve about got it.” She straightened her back, twisted the exhaustion from her shoulders, then put her weight behind the dulling blade.

  As the minutes dragged by, Mama continued her precise back-and-forth movements until the leg had been completely severed below the knee.

  While her mother tied off veins, Lisbeth fought the sour taste in her mouth. Caring for her enemy was ten times harder than caring for the strangers who came through the doors of the county hospital.

  When the last bleeder had been sutured, awareness that she and Mama had done the impossible drained the adrenaline from Lisbeth’s limbs. Only one thing could explain their success. For some reason God wanted this monster to live.

  52

  BAREK BROUGHT IN THE load of driftwood he’d scavenged after spending the night weeping for Natalis at their favorite fishing pier. He’d tried and failed to find the slave trader who’d shackled him to his treachery. Which was just as well, since he was the one who deserved to be beaten. Today he would pack a few things, tell Cyprian the truth, and cast himself into exile.

  He closed the door to the kitchen with his foot and dumped the sun-bleached sticks next to the oven. The wad of parchments Felicissimus had given him slipped from his pocket and fell to the floor. He hurriedly gathered them, but not before Naomi turned from her bread making.

  “Where have you been?” The doe-eyed servant girl wiped flour from her hands.

  “Out.”

  “You left with those who broke Cyprian’s heart.”

  He didn’t appreciate the way Naomi kept tabs on him or the way she looked at him now. “I needed air.”

  It was like she’d somehow discovered what he’d done and didn’t approve. He didn’t need her judgment to make him feel bad. He already felt lower than a sand viper. If he would have taken the time to think things through a little better, he would never have agreed to help Felicissimus. His anger over his mother’s death had blinded him. Made him a fool.

  A naval commission on the first ship out of here was not worth destroying Cyprian, the church his parents had died for, and his best friend. Once again, he’d let down the people he loved the most.

  Barek stuffed his guilt and tucked the pieces of paper back into his pocket. “Where’s Cyprian?” He cut his eyes at Maggie. She stood on a stool scrubbing vegetables with Junia and eyeing him with that evil little stare of hers. “I need to talk to him.”

  “He’s been praying and poring over your father’s scrolls all day.” Naomi lifted the lid on a pot over the fire. “I’ve kept the soup warm.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “If you ate dinner you might not be so cranky.” Maggie pointed a carrot at him. “When are we going back for Ruth?”

  He didn’t want to admit spending a good part of the morning searching through the burial crocks in the Tophet. Since the day he and Maggie had left his mother’s urn, a hundred more had been added. He couldn’t find the jar with Maggie’s charcoal drawing. “We aren’t going anywhere.”

  “You can’t just leave Ruth in that cave.” Maggie tossed a clean vegetable into a bowl. “When my mommy gets home, she’ll take us there.”

  Barek didn’t like all their eyes on him. “It’s not a cave, and it’s not your business.” He grabbed a piece of bread and jabbed it in Maggie’s direction. “I’ll worry about my mother; you worry about yours.”

  She lifted her chin in that defiant way of hers. “You’re not my boss.”

  He started to say he was glad of that, then stopped cold when he saw a dark red trickle dripping from her nose. “You’re bleeding.”

  “No, I’m not,” Maggie argued.

  Naomi gasped. “He’s right.” She grabbed a towel. “You are.” She pressed the cloth to Maggie’s nose, then pulled it away. “See?”

  Maggie’s eyes expanded to the size of two huge sapphires. “I don’t feel good.” She rubbed her stomach. “I need the bathroom.”

  Barek snatched her off the stool. “Come on.”

  He ran down the hall with her pressed to his chest. He could feel her hot skin through his tunic. He remembered how hot his mother had felt when she had the measles. He raced to the latrine, praying Maggie’s drink from the bucket at Felicissimus’s slave cell hadn’t made her sick. He shouldn’t have let her go with him to the Tophet. If she was sick, it was all his fault.

  Another failing to add to his growing list.

  He gently set Maggie down before the hole in the marble slab.

  Her face was bright red. “My head hurts.”

  “You’re going to be fine.” How could somebody be so mouthy one minute and so sick the next? Why hadn’t he told Lisbeth about Maggie drinking out of the bucket? Maybe she could have done something. Given her some of the fancy medicine she kept in her strange bag.

  Maggie swiped her hand across her nose and smeared blood across her cheeks. “Wait outside.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “You’re a boy.” She looked so little and helpless. She was getting sicker by the minute.

  “I shouldn’t leave you.”

  “Go.”

  “If you need me, shout and I’ll come running.” He stepped into the hall.

  Naomi and Junia had gathered clean towels and a fresh tunic. Junia stayed with him while Naomi went in to check on Maggie. He could hear Maggie moaning and crying.

  Barek paced. “I should go find Lisbeth.”

  “Wait.” Naomi emerged with Maggie in her arms. “She has diarrhea and a rash on her chest. We need to get her to the typhoid hall.”

  Barek held out his arms, and Naomi deposited Maggie into his hold. He cradled her close. “I’m so sorry, Maggie.”

  She opened her eyes. “I want my mommy.”

  53

  “WHATEVER THE PAST BEQUEATHS to us, know this: God is the one with the ultimate control of the future.” Tears brimmed in Mama’s eyes as she tucked a note into Lisbeth’s hand. “Cyprian is safe now.”

  “I won’t go without you.”

  “That was the deal. I stay, and everyone I love is free.”

  The eager click of Pytros’s shoes sounded outside the office door. Before he’d stepped out to run a quick errand, he’d stationed the redheaded soldier outside the door. The sharp-eyed scribe would expect two doctors to be attending his master when he stepped back in.

  “Mama, don’t do this,” Lisbeth whispered in English. “Come with me. Please.”

  “I’m so proud of the woman you’
ve become.” Mama hurriedly kissed her cheek. “Run to your family, and don’t look back.”

  Pytros breezed into the room. “Well, how is he?”

  “Sleeping.” Mama took Pytros by the arm and wheeled him back out the door. “You know how irritable our master can be if he’s awakened. Let’s discuss the best ways to keep him comfortable.”

  While her mother chatted Pytros to distraction in the hall, Kardide and Iltani positioned themselves between Lisbeth and the closed door.

  “Do like your mother says,” Kardide ordered.

  Lisbeth grabbed her backpack, activated the lever on the secret wall panel, and stepped into the tunnel that ran beneath the palace. The stones slid shut. Forever cut off from her mother, Lisbeth fought panic. She struck the flint. The flame glowed in the stifling emptiness.

  She’d journeyed to this world prepared to win. To take control of the situation and turn things around. She’d studied Roman history. Worked to become an expert on controlling infectious diseases. Memorized botany charts and different herbal recipes. She’d given a great deal of thought to the supplies she packed in her medical bag. Granted she regretted not obtaining more antibiotics for the trip, but for the most part she’d had what she needed. Yet, when it came time to save her own mother, her plans were as ­useless as her cell phone.

  If she’d learned anything in the past two weeks, it was that control did not inoculate someone from disappointment, heartbreak, or catastrophe. The past pursued the future with the specific intent of creating chaos.

  Lisbeth choked back sobs and thrust the tiny oil lamp into the musty darkness. Rats squealed and scattered. Clawing her way back to Mama was useless. Mama had chosen to operate in Aspasius’s office with the express purpose of pushing Lisbeth to safety at her first opportunity. It shouldn’t have surprised her that Mama had chosen to secure her daughter’s freedom at the cost of her own life for the second time. Tempting as it was to cry foul, Lisbeth had done the very same thing to save Maggie.

  Lisbeth descended into ankle-deep water. As she stepped away from the mother she’d longed for her whole life, the dream of reuniting her whole family sank into the sludge.

  She slogged through the tunnel, her hand cupped around the flickering light. One wrong turn could alter her course, and she might never find the exit. Wandering aimlessly through the inky blackness was a lot like time travel. She’d thought doing her homework would give her an advantage this time around. But hindsight was not the twenty-twenty panacea everyone claimed. Knowing what was coming had distracted her and stripped away the ability to find joy in the moment.

  She pressed forward. Sweating and weak-kneed, she emerged worse for the wear. She snuffed the lamp and slipped through the opening in the stone wall. Blood, perspiration, and muddy water soiled her tunic. Sticking to the tenement alleyways, she set off ­toward Cyprian’s villa.

  The acidic bite of urine and the stench of decomposing bodies overwhelmed the heart of the city. Carthage, like Aspasius, was rotting from the inside out.

  The deserted market offered the perfect shortcut. She headed for a gate swinging on rusty hinges. The flutter of parchment, an announcement of some sort, caught her attention. She rose on her tiptoes and ripped the paper from the peg:

  By order of the Proconsul of Carthage!

  Curses on Cyprianus Thascius.

  A Christian and treasonous heretic.

  May he become liquid as water and

  disappear into the earth forever.

  A reward of five gold pieces is hereby

  offered to the man who brings

  Cyprianus Thascius before the throne of justice.

  Hands shaking, Lisbeth glanced around the square. Copies of the curse fluttered from every post and pillar. So was this the errand Aspasius had sent Pytros on? While she and Mama were saving their enemy, he was having his sorry little scribe paper the city with what was basically a Most Wanted notice, a death warrant for her husband. Aspasius had lied, and she’d helped him live long enough to get away with it.

  Blood boiling, she marched around the square, ripping each piece from its nail. She wanted to toss the wadded lot of them into the disgusting gutter where they belonged. Instead, she clutched them tight.

  Lisbeth sprinted the avenue snaking along the coastline. The late afternoon sun had set the sky ablaze and turned the crystal sea bloodred. She ran faster. Aspasius was sending his men for ­Cyprian.

  She burst into the villa.

  Cyprian paced the atrium, his face grim. “Thank God you’re here.”

  Had he heard of the bounty on his head? “Aspasius lied.” She pulled the note from her pocket. “He signed this agreement to leave you alone, and yet I found these … ” She stopped midsentence. “Wait. What’s going on? Tell me.”

  “Maggie’s sick,” he managed before his voice broke.

  “Where is she?” Her gaze followed the movement of his hand toward the hall where Diona Cicero convalesced. A shudder shook the support pillars deep inside Lisbeth’s body, the resounding blow she deserved for giving away the last of her antibiotics. “No!” She shoved the papers into Cyprian’s hand and pushed past him.

  “It’s my fault she’s sick!” Barek called after her.

  Lisbeth skidded to a halt. “What?”

  “I let her drink from a bucket in Felicissimus’s slave cell,” Barek explained. “I turned my back for a second, and next thing I knew she was guzzling water from a filthy gourd.”

  Typhoid needed a minimum of seven to twenty-one days to incubate. Maggie had taken that drink in Felicissimus’s slave cell no more than three days ago. As much as she’d love to blame the slave trader, the source of her daughter’s exposure was not that bucket. The third-century cistern was the most likely culprit. The same cistern where she and Maggie had surfaced three weeks ago to the day. During their entry, Maggie had swallowed so much stagnant water she’d nearly drowned.

  “If Maggie has typhoid, it’s not your fault, Barek.”

  “Can’t you give her the same medicine you gave Diona?” ­Cyprian asked.

  Lisbeth had meant to give a precautionary round of antibiotics the moment they’d arrived at Cyprian’s, but in the shock of discovering her husband remarried she’d completely forgotten. If her daughter was sick, she had no one to blame but herself. She was the one who’d made it possible for her daughter to jump into a world of killer epidemics.

  As if her malpractice as a mother weren’t bad enough, she’d just given her daughter’s hope to the vilest man in all of history.

  “I gave it to Aspasius.” She wheeled and raced toward her daughter. “I’m coming, baby!”

  When she reached the hall, Vivia sat beside Maggie’s mat, twisting water from a cloth. “I’m trying to get her fever down.”

  Lisbeth dropped to her knees at the head of Maggie’s bed. She ran a trembling hand over her child’s sweaty brow. Maggie was burning up and unresponsive. “Baby, Mommy’s here.” What to do next jumbled in Lisbeth’s mind. She looked helplessly to Vivia.

  Vivia’s eye widened. “I’ve offered Magdalena’s special mixture of salt and fruit juice whenever she wakes, but she refuses and complains of belly pain. Maybe she’s just picked up one of those passing sicknesses children get from time to time.”

  Lisbeth ignored Vivia’s doubtful expression and lifted Maggie’s tunic. The flat splotches on her tiny chest were undeniable. Lisbeth ran her shaky fingers along Maggie’s abdomen. When she approached the lower right quadrant, Maggie winced and opened her eyes.

  “Mommy, it hurts.” Maggie’s raw voice croaked from chapped lips.

  “I know, baby. I’m sorry. So sorry.” Lisbeth lowered Maggie’s gown and kissed her forehead. “Mommy’s going to make it all ­better.” She had to look away before her daughter saw beneath her tears and guessed that she had no way of pulling such a miracle out of thin air.

  54

  BAREK WAS IN THE middle of apologizing to Cyprian for siding with Felicissimus, for taking Maggie to the slave b
locks, and for everything else he’d done to disappoint his family when burly soldiers brandishing swords stormed the atrium.

  Before either of them could react, angry-faced troops swept through the measles hall. They turned over mats and destroyed vaporizer tents, then planted their hobnail boots in the backs of patients too weak to run.

  “Stop. This is a private residence!” Cyprian commanded authoritatively. “You’ve no right.”

  “What are we to do with them?” one of the soldiers asked the commander.

  “Slit their throats.”

  “No!” Lisbeth emerged from the typhoid hall and threw herself between the little boy whose mother had died and the redheaded soldier.

  The soldier’s boot landed in Lisbeth’s belly and sent her flying into a wall. She groaned and put her hand to her head. It came away red with blood, but she scrambled to her feet. “Leave them alone.”

  Cyprian snagged her arm. “No.”

  Barek ripped his sword from his belt and yelled at Cyprian, “Take her and go!”

  “No! I’m not leaving!” Lisbeth screamed as Cyprian snatched her up and navigated his way across the mangled landscape. “Barek, no!”

  55

  LISBETH CLAWED AND KICKED all the way back to the typhoid hall. By the time Cyprian set her down she was beyond consolation. “I won’t go.”

  Titus had Maggie in his arms. “You must.” He thrust the child at Cyprian.

  “But I won’t leave Laurentius and Junia,” Lisbeth said.

  Vivia crammed the backpack into Lisbeth’s hands. “The day has come for Titus Cicero to defend the children of Magdalena. They will be safe with us.”

  Cyprian shouted, “Come now, Lisbeth!” He raced toward the back gate. Lisbeth had no choice but to follow.

  The three of them arrived at the well, breathless and frightened as cornered prey.