by Lynne Gentry
With a dignified bearing, Cyprian marched up the gangplank of the ship. Right before he stepped aboard the Roman freighter, Cyprian removed his toga and tossed it into the water. Wearing only his under tunic, he shouted to the crowd, “Romans, lords of this world, know that I renounce the race that wears the toga. From this day forward, I serve the one God.”
Soldiers pulled him and Pontius onto the deck and raised the gangplank.
“Cyprian!” Lisbeth didn’t recognize her shredded voice. “Cyprian!”
Her husband cuffed his eyes and scanned the homes stacked along the shore. When he spotted her on Aspasius’s balcony, he blew a kiss.
As the boat carrying her love drifted out of earshot, Lisbeth continued to scream Cyprian’s name even though she knew he wouldn’t hear it. Eyes straining and arms outstretched, she watched the sails of Cyprian’s ship recede.
“Come, daughter.” Mama tried to move her from the railing.
“How have you stood this world?” Lisbeth turned her face into the blustery wind and allowed the salt to scrub her cheeks raw.
59
DURING THE LONG, DARK days that followed, Lisbeth felt completely unhinged, like she was lost in a bad dream. But an eerie sense of hopelessness had swallowed her ability to sleep, so the despair was real. This pressure crushing her bones was beyond the reach of reason. She’d known Cyprian only a month. Falling so head over heels in thirty days was about as logical as time travel. This couldn’t be real love. Yet she could not stop crying.
In Lisbeth’s zombielike state, Mama handled her tenderly, supplying bowls of broth or wine laced with herbal cocktails that numbed the pain. Which was just as well. Letting her mind consider what Mama was doing behind the scenes to keep Aspasius at bay would be the nail in her coffin.
So when Mama appeared at her chamber door with a beautiful silk gown draped over her arm, the reality of what was about to happen hit her like the aftershock that topples the remaining shaky structures after an earthquake.
“He’s ordered you to dine with him.” Mama cleared her throat. “You are to be scrubbed and decked out in my finest.” Mama’s lips quivered. “I’m to take you to the Baths of Antoninus and parade you among the senators’ wives as a reminder to never cross the proconsul. You remember those ruins, correct?”
Lisbeth nodded. “Papa loved them.”
“Yes.” Mama offered her hand. “Your father.” She led Lisbeth from her room. Immediately outside her door stood the scribe Lisbeth had seen attending Aspasius at the arena. “I’ve got it from here, Pytros,” Mama tossed over her shoulder as they hurried down the hall.
Once they cleared the palace gates, Mama spoke in hushed English, a gleam of emotion in her eye Lisbeth could not interpret. “We’ve not but a minute.” She glanced around as if she thought them followed. “I’ve secured your passage.”
“To Curubis?”
“To safety.”
“And you’re coming with me, right?”
Mama hesitated, then offered a reluctant smile. “Yes. Of course.”
“And Laurentius?”
“Him, too. Ruth will bring him to the port—”
“Let’s go.”
“We must wait until dark.” Mama checked once again to see if they were followed. “I know a place where we can hide. Where Aspasius will never think to look.”
They turned toward the mountains, quickly putting an uncomfortable distance between them and the harbor. “But what about Ruth and Laurentius?” Lisbeth asked as the tenements came into view.
“Trust me.” Mama dragged her faster and faster through the darkened alleys and narrow slum dwellings. They zigged and zagged until Lisbeth was hopelessly lost.
Suddenly they passed through the outdoor kitchen where Lisbeth had boiled the water for Junia’s vaporizer and Eunike’s baby. “I know this place.” She froze. “It’s near the cisterns.”
“Come.” Mama tugged on her hand, hauling her into a familiar courtyard that surrounded the stone structure of the wells, the structure with the cave swimmers symbol, the way back.
Ruth and Laurentius huddled near the cistern wall.
“No. I won’t go. Not without Cyprian.” Lisbeth planted her feet near the stone lip of the well. The smell of cold, dark water sent her heart pounding in her ears.
Mama pulled her stethoscope from her tunic pocket and tied it around Lisbeth’s wrist. “Laurentius and I will be right behind you.”
Laurentius peered into the well and shook his head, backing up. “I don’t want to go, Mama.”
“Soldiers!” As the word left Ruth’s mouth, the courtyard filled with armed guards. Two soldiers seized Laurentius by the tunic.
“Let him go!” Lisbeth lunged for her brother, but Mama grabbed her.
“He’ll never touch you.” Mama snatched Lisbeth’s hand, the one with the stethoscope tied around the wrist, and plastered it against the painting of the swimmers.
Heat seared Lisbeth’s palm. “No!”
“I love you.” Mama’s fists pounded Lisbeth’s chest with an incredible force. “Forever.”
Lisbeth tumbled backward, flipped over the well’s edge, and spiraled into the deepest darkness she had ever known.
60
BEETLE BUG?”
Lisbeth felt her father desperately pat her hand for the thousandth time as they jetted back to the States. She tore her gaze away from the vast emptiness outside the plane window and inside her spirit. “I’m good, Papa.” Adding reassurance to the response she’d given over and over didn’t seem to help. Her father still looked at her like she was the one who’d lost her mind.
She fingered the stethoscope Papa said had been tied to her wrist.
Two weeks ago, she’d awakened in a Carthage hospital, bruised, battered, and unsure of her name. When Papa asked her about the ring on the cord around her neck, she remembered that she’d found her mother alive in the third century. While he wept, she’d told him about her mentally challenged half brother whose refusal to jump had probably cost both him and Mama their lives. Her preposterous claims were met with one phrase: “I knew your mother would have come to me if she could.”
Instead of facing the possibility that what she thought happened was the result of a traumatic head injury, she allowed Nigel and Aisa to fuss over her and argue about who had actually saved her from that hellish water shaft.
She squeezed her father’s hand as the plane’s landing gear intersected the Dallas tarmac. “I’m glad you came back with me, Papa.”
“You’re my Beetle Bug.”
He seemed lucid enough now, but she intended to use this opportunity to run him through a battery of medical tests. Even if her extended absence had broken her probation and ruined her chances of ever being a doctor again, she knew where to find some of the best physicians in the world.
Lisbeth paid the taxi driver while Papa gathered their luggage. Together they took the stairs to her apartment. Fumbling with the key, she accidentally pushed the doorbell.
The door flew open. “There you are.” Queenie parked her hands on her hips. “I’ve been calling you for hours.”
“Sorry, I lost my phone and—”
“I thought you said your daddy wasn’t coming for Christmas.” Queenie latched on to Papa’s hand. “You come right on in, Dr. H. If my momma knew you were coming she’d have baked you some corn bread.”
“Queenie, we’ve got to—”
Lisbeth’s roommate glanced at her watch and gasped. “Go!”
“Go?” Lisbeth asked. “Go where?”
Queenie tapped her watch. “Call. Christmas Eve. First years. Bottom of the food chain. Short straw.”
“It’s Christmas Eve … when?”
Her roommate’s brow wrinkled in confusion. “Girl, you should have taken a nap and let me go to the airport to get your daddy.” Queenie tossed Lisbeth her white coat, which was draped over a chair. “If Nurse Ratched gets wind that you’re tired, she’ll run your legs off.” Queenie hooked Lisbeth’s arm. “Dr. H., you ju
st help yourself to anything in the fridge. I’ll have her back in thirty grueling hours.”
Mama’s stethoscope in hand, Lisbeth mutely followed Queenie to the parking garage, too confused to argue.
Queenie sped down the freeway, jabbering about an OB resident who’d asked her out. “He’ll want to have kids, and then what? I’m not a barefoot-and-pregnant kind of girl.” She squealed into the parking garage. “Earth to Lisbeth.”
Lisbeth dug through her quickly eroding memories. Were the past moments of love, laughter, family, and hope real or wishful thinking? “Can we sit here a minute?” She glanced at the scar on her wrist, a pale pink line. Where had that come from? From the ship where she and Cyprian had found the crazed sailor? Or had she gotten the scar as a child playing too close to the campfire? Her mind couldn’t seem to sort it out.
Queenie’s big black eyes regarded her thoughtfully. “Girlfriend, who are you, and what have you done with the girl who had places to go and people to meet?” She yanked the keys out of the ignition. “No, we can’t sit here. We’re late. Ratched will serve our heads on a platter for Christmas supper.”
Following Queenie through the well-lit parking garage, Lisbeth shrugged into her white coat. Had she made the whole time-travel thing up? Had some kind of crazy brain short to compensate for the fact that her papa could be losing his marbles? Searching for a piece of gum, Lisbeth crammed her hand into her pocket.
The letter?
Exactly where she’d put it before everything went south. Still perfectly intact. Not soggy and ruined by the waterslide ride she had taken to the third century. Shaking off the confused feeling, she sprinted through the hospital door.
Around midnight Queenie announced that she’d eat the arm off the next patient if she and Lisbeth didn’t bail and hit the Taco Hut. Afraid Nelda would catch them, they headed to the break room instead. Lisbeth bought a tuna sandwich. She’d barely sat down when the page came. Incoming gunshot wounds.
Sandwich in hand, Lisbeth flew down two flights of stairs and barged into the emergency room. Arms circled her from behind. “Hey, beautiful. I need an examination.”
“Knock it off, Craig.” Lisbeth wiggled free. “Nurse Ratched has spies everywhere.”
“You speak Arabic, right?”
A déjà vu feeling swept over Lisbeth. “Yeah. So?”
“This is a triple gunshot.”
“Yeah, and it’s mine.”
He cranked up the charm. “You know I want this surgery, love. Nelda dumped a baby on me. Projectile vomiting.” Nose wrinkled, Craig thrust a triage chart into Lisbeth’s hands. “Women are better at this kid stuff than men.”
“What?”
He held up his hands to block the possibility of her slapping him. “You know what I mean, more nurturing.”
Lisbeth stopped and stared at him. “Craig?” From the way he was running his finger along her hip he obviously thought they were still engaged. “What do you want?”
He leaned in close, and she could smell his expensive cologne. “How about a little trade?”
“What kind of trade?”
He waved the chart. “Baby for gunshot.” He raised his eyebrows seductively. “You know you want to.”
“Why would I want to do that?”
“Because you love me, right?” Then he kissed her cheek. “And you know deep down women are better suited for pediatrics.”
She ripped the chart from Craig’s hand. “We’re done.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
He held up his palms in surrender. “Hey, no offense.”
“Why would you assume a woman is better suited to peds? Do you even care about my hopes and dreams? Or does it always have to be about you and your career?” She looked at his blank face and realized she was wasting her breath. “Never mind. I’ll do it. Give me her chart.”
“You’re just tired.” He reached for her, and she stepped back. “We’ll get some breakfast at the end of call and then, you know, celebrate Christmas.”
“What part of never in this life don’t you understand?” She reached to yank the engagement ring from her left hand, but it was gone. “I’ll get your ring back to you … later.”
Craig gave her a puzzled look, then stalked off, commenting under his breath that she’d be sorry. For the first time since her return, Lisbeth’s senses did not burn with shame. She felt remarkably free.
Lisbeth took a deep breath, then walked into the examination room. She was rewarded with the sight of a mother dressed in head-to-toe black and holding a baby. “What’s her name?” she asked in Arabic.
The mother released a relieved breath. “Abra.”
Lisbeth paused to gather her composure.
She smiled and offered her hand. “I’m Dr. Hastings.”
Epilogue
THE BLUE PLUS SIGN on the pregnancy test wand confirmed the reason for her upset stomach. Lisbeth checked the device again just to be sure.
Yes, positive.
A piece of the past tucked so far inside of her that no one could take from her what she’d believed to be true all along.
She carried Cyprian’s child. The brave young noble from the third century. The missing part of her that made her whole.
Lisbeth gazed into the mirror above the bathroom sink. Her cheeks were pink, and her eyes were bright despite the nausea. The woman smiling back at her was exactly who Lisbeth wanted to be … a woman brave enough to do whatever it took to save her husband and his people.
She ran the palms of her hands across her tender breasts and let them caress the flatness of her belly.
“Papa!” she called to her father, who was smoking his pipe on the tiny apartment balcony. “We’re going back!”
Author’s Note
I FIRST LEARNED ABOUT THE Cave of the Swimmers from the movie The English Patient. Although the movie was filmed on a set, the real cave is in the southern quadrant of the Sahara. Prehistoric paintings of little swimmers cover the sandstone walls. Except for a labyrinth of underground aquifers that exists beneath the desert floor, the nearest water source is nearly a thousand miles away. What happened to the water? And, even more fascinating, what happened to the Neolithic artists?
In 2008, a group of Egyptian tourists was kidnapped while exploring the cave. My imagination conjured all sorts of scenarios. What if they weren’t actually kidnapped? What if they just mysteriously vanished?
It wasn’t until 2010 that I discovered a specific time and place to drop a brave heroine who might have disappeared into an unexpected rip in time. I was eavesdropping on a conversation about the origin of organized health care when someone mentioned the Plague of Cyprian, a third-century pandemic that nearly destroyed Carthage.
By AD 253, the epidemic was killing an estimated five thousand people a day. Only wealthy citizens had access to the empire’s few physicians. Organized health care for the masses was nonexistent. Interestingly enough, even while the Roman civilization struggled to survive the fever, Christian persecution increased to an all-time high. The fledgling church faced an impossible choice: stay and care for their persecutors, or flee and protect themselves.
Enter a real hero: Cyprianus Thascius, the wealthy son of a Roman senator. According to extensive historical accounts written by this accomplished orator and respected lawyer, an old bishop named Caecilianus converted Cyprian to Christianity.
Cyprian opened his home, used his massive wealth to care for the sick, and organized a scruffy little band of believers into an army who stared down adversity. This risky decision cost Cyprian a shameful exile.
On the plus side, Cyprian’s radical concept of medical charity revolutionized health care and became the founding basis of the world’s earliest hospitals. But more importantly, as Christians rendered aid to the pagans, their actions breached social barriers, touched hearts, and spurred the eventual legalization of Christianity.
The plague virus has not been conclusively identified by historians, though Gary B.
Ferngren’s Medicine & Health Care in Early Christianity was an invaluable resource during my research. Some scholars believe the plague could have been smallpox, some measles. Since I wanted my heroine immune, I chose measles, because we no longer vaccinate against smallpox.
The ancient Carthage I re-created is populated with historical characters, as well as fictional characters running around in my head. The real-life records of Cyprian mention his faithful friend Pontius, a political enemy named Aspasius Paternus, and Felicissimus, a betrayer who broke Cyprian’s heart and nearly destroyed the church. Lisbeth Hastings represents the brave woman I’d like to think I would be in the face of such insurmountable odds. But I wonder. The cost of true courage is great, and few are willing to pay the price.
Acknowledgments
MANY HAVE ENCOURAGED ME on this writing journey, and I am filled with gratitude.
Thanks to my husband, Lonnie, who believed me an accomplished storyteller from the first time I said he was perfect. A truth that needs no embellishment. He is perfect for me.
I want to thank the medical intern who let me peek into the grueling process of becoming a doctor. Any malpractice found in these pages is purely my own. Thanks to the theological graduate student who helped me research early church history. Any historical liberties taken are mine.
Thanks to cheerleaders Diane, Grant, Michael, Lindsey, Kellie, Julie, Lisa, Janice, and my precious Bunco pals. Jackie Castle deserves the credit for creating the beautiful map.
A special thanks to my agent, Sandra Bishop, for knocking on doors; to my editor, Jessica Wong, for polishing this crazy story nugget into a diamond; and to the great team at Howard Books for getting this story into the hands of readers.
And finally, all praise is due the Great Physician, the true healer of body and soul.
Introduction
THE FIRST IN THE series, Healer of Carthage takes readers through a journey in time when Dr. Lisbeth Hastings falls through a hidden hole in her father’s archaeological dig site and awakens in third-century Carthage. Propelled into the unknown, she grapples to rescue those she loves, risking much, while simultaneously experiencing her own rescuing. Slavery, religious persecution, and disease serve as a dark backdrop for romance, justice, and courage, and the stage for a dramatic, suspenseful story of freedom.
