by Lynne Gentry
Lisbeth squeezed his hand. “He was on a scouting mission, a new venture to increase his vast fortune. He bravely rode into my father’s camp like he owned the desert.” If she felt the fear gripping his belly, her concern did not mar her confident eyes. “A bronzed god who took my breath.” Her mastery of courtroom theatrics called his into question.
“Yes, and then I …” He looked to her, and she smiled a pleased-with-herself little grin he could see through her gauzy half veil. For the first time in his life, words had failed him. “I saw … uh …”
“He saw me directing my maid at the cooking fire,” she continued, lifting a conspiratorial brow, as if to say keep up or shut up. “My hair a mess from the constant desert winds.” Lisbeth’s eyes twinkled. She relished jumping in to save him, humiliating him in front of the leading citizens of Carthage. “When he kindly asked me to turn over the entire stack of our freshly fried pitas, his genteel manner caused me to do so without a word of complaint.”
The confident tilt of her chin made him very aware of the soft fullness of her lips. His sense of heightened danger ignited into a firestorm, along with his need to slap her and protect her at the same time. Cyprian straightened and found his voice, determined he was more than capable of playing along. “I remember the encounter a bit differently. She spit fire at my trading party, declaring us barbarians.” He turned to face her. “But my heart was no longer my own. She had stolen it.”
“Oh?” She pulled him close, her sweet floral scent intoxicating and alarming. “And so you bought me to get your heart back?”
“Little good it did me.” He brought his lips close to hers and dropped his voice. “My heart still belongs to you and only you.”
They stood, face to face, eyes locked. Around them, the arena was a beehive of random conversations. Through the clamor Cyprian could hear rakes scratching lines in the arena sand, a smoothing out of all the rough patches, an evening of the playing field. Within a breath, the anxious sounds of the arena vanished. All that remained, all that mattered, was the two of them. Slave and master bound by a fraud, quickened breaths sweeping him into chaos.
“So this is a marriage of coemptio?” Aspasius’s verbal spear of contempt pierced the bewitching spell holding them captive. “You had to buy love to secure your election?”
“No,” Cyprian and Lisbeth answered in unison, the response jerking Cyprian back to reality with a thud. They were not playing to a foolish schoolboy.
“There was no sale of this woman to be my wife.” The half-truth scorched Cyprian’s tongue, but he’d come too far down this treacherous path to turn back now and survive. “The relinquishment of her dowry is all very legal.”
“I brag when I say he bought me.” Lisbeth held out her arm and jangled bracelets of hammered gold. “Look at how he spoils me.” She twirled, her dress floating provocatively above her ankles as she held tight to his hand. “What woman wouldn’t sell her soul to be the queen of Cyprian’s heart?”
Weren’t they supposed to be making this stuff up? Wasn’t that the game she was playing? Then why did the admiration in her voice sound as real as the crowd’s chatter in his ears and make him feel so … he wasn’t sure what being joined to this hypnotic beauty made him feel. Whatever the sensation, he’d had stomachaches from eating ill-prepared lamb kabobs that hadn’t twisted his gut so tightly.
Cyprian dropped Lisbeth’s hand and took a step back. He opened his mouth to fabricate an emergency that required their immediate exit when the blast of twelve silver trumpets brought the masses to their feet.
A games announcer dressed in the purple-trimmed toga of a dignitary entered the arena floor via a raised iron gate. Accompanied by a band of golden, curved horns, he led twelve gladiator combatants on a solemn march around the ring. Upon reaching the center, the announcer lifted his hands. The music and the crowd quieted. A welcoming smile split his powdered face. “Let the honorable games of Carthage begin.” The perfect acoustics carried his booming voice past their box and up to the highest tiers.
Spectators went wild. Thousands of feet stamped stone. The announcer basked in the response, milking the excitement to a frenzied froth. Then he raised his hands once again, standing statue-still until silence settled upon the arena. “We give tribute to Aspasius, the proconsul of Carthage and sponsor of today’s glorious entertainment.” He fired a military salute toward their box, and the crowd roared, waving banners and shouting over and over the name Cyprian detested above all others.
“Aspasius! Aspasius!”
ASPASIUS ROSE from his seat. Sun glinted off the gold chains dripping from his neck. Lisbeth and Cyprian made their way back to Sergia. She seated herself between Cyprian and Sergia. Where did that cough come from? I didn’t notice that earlier. If Cyprian’s friend was ill, she wanted him as far from Cyprian as possible. She craned her neck, disgusted by the smirk curling the proconsul’s lip. At the slight nod of Aspasius’s bald head, the games began. They were stuck for now.
First came the mock fights. Pairs of gladiators strode onto the freshly raked sand and pummeled each other with wooden swords. No one was supposed to get hurt in the spurious bouts, but if one of the participants happened to land a blow that drew blood, the audience chanted “Finish him,” leaving the more virile gladiator no choice but to beat his opponent to death with the blunt end of his wooden club.
Sergia and Cyprian chatted as if she weren’t sitting between them. Neither seemed the least bit incensed by the carnage on the arena floor. As the two friends caught up on old times, her attention darted between making sure they never touched and watching the pit crew hook the dead gladiators and haul them away.
Once the sand was cleared and the blood raked into neat rows, a new team of workers scurried out and began setting up for the next display. Large wooden boxes were dragged into place. A man with a painted face ran to the center of the ring and cracked a leather whip. The crowd cheered. A gate opened, and three big cats sprang from the hold, circled the whip-cracking trainer, then obediently leapt upon the boxes. Their circus tricks held the crowd spellbound for thirty minutes. But when a wild boar was released into the mix, Lisbeth had to put her hands over her eyes to block out the bloody chaos that ensued and nearly got the trainer killed.
At high noon, vendors flooded the aisles, carrying trays of roasted game hens, burgers made of ground antelope and green peppercorns, soufflés stuffed with small fishes and raisins, eggs pickled in a mixture of vinegar and honey, and large wooden bowls of freshly cut melons. Cyprian ordered another round of wine and encouraged Lisbeth to eat.
“I think I need to stretch my legs.” Lisbeth stood, determined to extricate her and Cyprian from this madness and his possible exposure to measles. “Care to join me for a little stroll, my love?”
Sergia put his hand on her arm, and she noticed he was exceptionally warm despite their shady location. “Oh, but you mustn’t miss the lunch break entertainment. The hour is devoted to the execution of criminals who’ve committed particularly heinous crimes.”
“Are you well, Sergia?” Lisbeth lowered her voice to keep the question from attracting Cyprian’s attention.
“Just a bit overheated.” Sergia coughed in her face. “I’m not used to this African heat. Much warmer here than in Rome.”
“Ask them to add honey to your water. It will keep you hydrated.” She handed him the hanky Ruth had given her to dab away any uncomely sweat. “Cover your mouth when you cough.”
“Stay.” Sergia leaned in close, obediently hacking into the fine piece of linen. “Offending the proconsul would not be in Cyprian’s best interests.”
If Sergia had measles, she needed to get Cyprian out of harm’s way without drawing the proconsul’s attention. Lisbeth let her gaze slide in the direction of Aspasius, who was gnawing a large drumstick. Mama sat board-straight next to him, sipping a glass of wine with no expression on her face. Lisbeth’s eyes flitted to the arena, where workers frantically removed what was left of the gutted pig, then
back to Cyprian, who seemed to be holding his breath, awaiting her response.
“Perhaps we can leave after lunch then, my love?”
Cyprian tugged on her hand. “Good form demands we stay for the whole of Aspasius’s entertainment.”
She sat down, positioning her body as a barrier between Cyprian and his friend.
The slave assigned to Lisbeth took her plate, freed a tiny drumstick from the succulent breast of a game hen, then handed the roasted meat to her. She doubted the willingness of her stomach to welcome any nourishment, but she took the fowl and nodded her thanks to the girl.
Startling trumpets sounded again. A gate at the opposite end of the arena opened, and a guard dressed in armor that reflected the sun’s glare yanked the end of a rope. A small boy stumbled from the shadows. The child was followed onto the sand by the young woman tied to him, her clothes dirty and tattered. Roped to her were two teenage boys with matted hair and pimpled complexions. They all worked together to help the elderly woman in their group shuffle as far away from the barred cages as possible. The sight of the little family clumped together in the center of the arena sent a clear message: Aspasius was Rome, and Rome could do whatever it wanted. Women and children could be sacrificed on the altar of entertainment, and there was nothing anyone could do to stop them.
“Who are they?” Lisbeth whispered to Cyprian.
“Christians.”
Standing back-to-back, the ragtag group simultaneously lifted their chins and brought their folded hands to their chests, as if they wanted all of Carthage to know they faced their terror with their god’s name upon their lips and their fear in check.
“Put these on,” ordered the guard as he shoved white robes at them.
The young woman Lisbeth guessed to be the mother of the little boy stepped from the group. She paraded a defiant stare around the arena that silenced all forty thousand visitors. “We are here for refusing to honor your gods.” Her gutsy voice floated to the highest tier. “By our death we earn the right not to wear your garments.”
Murmurs rippled through the stands.
Aspasius stood. “Bring forth the father.” An iron gate at the opposite end of the arena clanked open.
A wild-eyed man with iron shackles on his wrists scrambled into the ring. “Let them go.” His desperate lunge for his family was met with the guard’s quick yank on the chain. The man fell backward with a bone-breaking thud. The guard dragged him to the wall, where he promptly clipped the chain into an iron ring.
Aspasius extended his arm. Screaming cats shredded the silence. “For their treason against Rome, these plebeians are sentenced to death.” He turned his thumb to the sun. Cheers exploded. Patrons began shouting their wagers to the bookies scrambling through the bleachers. As the odds takers scribbled down bets on clay-lined wooden slates, Lisbeth could not take her eyes off the child, a gaunt and fragile boy nearly the same age as Junia.
“What will happen to them?” Even as she asked, she knew. “Not the cats.”
“Even the lions are subject to the yoke of Rome.”
The proconsul’s official scribe closed his wax tablet and put away his stylus. There would be no accounting of the traitors sacrificed in the name of entertainment. No record of the tortures performed on innocent women and children in this place. History could only guess at the horrific sight. Even Papa would find it difficult to stomach this dose of historic reality.
“This isn’t right!” Lisbeth stood and leaned over the railing as far as she dared. Below their royal box, hungry cats clamored to be released. She glanced back to the center of the dusty arena. The woman with sad eyes locked with hers. Every movie Lisbeth had ever seen about the Colosseum replayed in her mind. People ripped limb from limb while the frenzied mob celebrated.
“Take my hand!” Lisbeth, leaning over the railing as far as she could, shouted to the woman.
Cyprian pulled her back. “No.”
She jerked free. “Maybe you can sit here and do nothing, but I can’t.”
Cyprian’s arm circled her waist and drew her hard against his solid body. “Say no more, woman,” he warned in her ear, then silenced her completely by covering her lips with his own. Heat penetrated the fine gauze veil. Everything in the world swam from her head. Papa. Mama. Laurentius. Junia. Finding her way back.
“Ah,” he said when he finished. He glanced around the box and smiled when he noticed everyone staring at them. “The craziness of new love. It can drive a man wild.”
Never had a kiss induced such an onslaught of ecstasy and anger. Lisbeth swiped her hand across her lips. “How dare—”
English broke through the din of many languages and reached her ears. “Let it go,” Mama was saying. “For now, you must let it go.”
Lisbeth relaxed against Cyprian’s hold. She swallowed the bile in the back of her throat and worked to find a smile. She lifted her veil and planted a kiss of her own squarely upon his lips. When she released him, she smiled at the tiny trickle of blood her retaliation had drawn. She blushed and cooed, blinking back tears as she dabbed at his lip with the hem of her palla.
Cyprian drew her close, a sheepish smirk on his face. “Such passion,” he told his friends as he held her protectively.
Safety was an illusion, a fantasy that must be pushed from her mind. Never could she forget that she, like the frightened Christians on the arena floor, was a captive. And not just in another time period, but in one big, fat lie she had helped create. Any moment the jig would be up, and she could very well find herself in the jaws of a lion. For now, she had no choice but to dangle from Cyprian’s arm, the prize he needed to gain his senatorial seat and the leverage she needed to free her mother. But she would not watch innocent children ripped to shreds.
Lisbeth squeezed her eyelids tight and forced her mind to find a happy place, a time when her life counted for more than just trying to stay alive. Visions of Craig and the glorious spring day when they’d skipped out on a prostate lecture in favor of a picnic at the arboretum played in her head. Walking among those incredible tulips and the stunning views of White Rock Lake with her hand in his, she’d felt hopeful. Like things would be different from what had become of her family before.
Was Craig wondering where she was? Had he grown weary of waiting on her to text him? Had he caught a plane to Africa and come in search of her? Oh, God, please let it be so. Craig was brilliant, first in his surgery class. If anyone could figure out where she’d gone and how to get her back, it would be her fiancé.
The crowd gasped and then fell completely silent. Curiosity immediately pried Lisbeth’s eyes open. Everyone in their booth stared at the arena floor, their mouths agape. Lisbeth wiggled out of Cyprian’s arms. In the middle of the arena the boy stood alone, his wide eyes darting between his father chained to the arena wall and the big cats stepping over mauled bodies while they circled him.
No one in the stands moved. Dust hung in the air. Screams of innocent women and children would echo from this place for generations, and yet not one spectator in the seats would lift a finger to stop the barbarism. Deaf ears. Blind eyes. Yet not bad men. More likely, good men and women. Good people who worked to keep their own children out of harm’s way. Good people who wouldn’t dream of murdering their neighbors. Yet today, they would do nothing. Good people doing nothing. The fall of every civilization playing out before her very eyes.
“What would you have me do, Lisbeth of Dallas?” Aspasius’s voice rang out. “You choose the child’s fate.”
Had she done that very thing, chosen whether or not a child would live, when she discounted Abra’s symptoms? “Not me. I’ll have no part of this.”
“But you must,” Aspasius crooned. “It is my engagement gift to you and the solicitor of Carthage.”
Lisbeth stood on shaky legs, fully aware the entire arena awaited her decision, including Cyprian. But she avoided his eyes and any judgment they may have held. She had only seconds before the cats pounced. “Amnesty is as good for those wh
o give it as for those who receive it.” How she’d conjured a Victor Hugo quote from the recesses of her literary studies she couldn’t say, but if anyone understood an era of social misery and injustice, it was this avid human rights campaigner. She prayed the author’s words would have the timeless impact her own ability lacked.
“Strange sentiment.” Aspasius chuckled. “The boy lives.” His face completely devoid of compassion, he extended his arm and gave the thumbs down. “But the father dies.”
“No!” Lisbeth’s scream bounced around the stone enclosure.
Aspasius turned his thumb up, and the applause of approval swallowed her disapproval whole.
Cyprian put himself between her and Aspasius. “Your gracious rule will not go unrewarded, Consul.” He wrapped an arm around her shoulder and smiled at his sovereign, but Lisbeth saw tears in his eyes as he eased her back onto her seat. “Not another word,” he mouthed at her.
Lisbeth sank onto the cushion. Her confidence that Cyprianus Thascius would not let this wrong go unpunished dissipated in the dust rising from the arena floor. Political justice could not restore this child’s family any more than she could restore hers.
31
A SHROUD OF DARKNESS HUNG over the city when the last dead gladiator was hooked and dragged from the arena. At Lisbeth’s insistence, Ambassador Sergia finally excused himself for a much-needed rest. She’d doused Cyprian’s hands with a flagon of expensive wine. The added precaution may have protected him from the measles, but no amount of scrubbing would remove the innocent blood from their hands.
The satiated throng, rowdy from overstimulation, pushed toward the exits. Lisbeth gathered her gown’s excess fabric, sadness weighting her steps. She drew the palla hood over her head. Contemplating how much to tell Cyprian about Sergia and her suspicions of measles, she put her hand through the crook of her recently proclaimed fiancé’s arm and let him plow a wide escape path.
