by Lynne Gentry
“Shhhh. Tomorrow has enough worries of its own.”
“But she could—”
“Lisbeth, her husband has clearly abandoned her. Many of the senators have left town. I know you can see it’s a difficult time for her, but what you may not see is that this could be good news for us. If there aren’t many senators left to rally, Xystus will be free to reinstate my solicitorship on his own.”
“Wait.” Lisbeth pulled Cyprian back into the alcove. “Contrary to what you and Maggie may think of me, I’m not made of stone. I’ll help her.” She jerked her head in the direction of the crowd staring at them. “But these people whom you seem so happy to welcome back into the fold are the same backstabbing cowards who walked out on us.”
“They are.”
“And all is forgiven? No questions asked? Is that wise?”
“Is it not enough that followers of Christ have to fight against the court of public opinion? How will it help the dying in Carthage if Christians bicker among themselves?” Cyprian clasped her shoulders, a stern look in his eyes. “Neither you nor I can claim to be free of mistakes.” He didn’t have to list the reasons for the tangled emotions in his voice. His decision to marry Ruth had changed everything for both of them. “These good men and women had to swallow a great deal of pride to come to our aid. Being here is the same as admitting they were wrong. I must forgive them.”
“I’m all for grace, but what if the new proconsul makes them a better offer? Food for their bellies? Their properties restored? Assurances of safety for their families? Who’s to say they won’t desert you again?”
The meaning of his heavy sigh was not lost on her. Cyprian was disappointed in her inability to back him up, and frankly, so was she.
His fingers dug into her shoulders as if he was attempting to pull her back from a dangerous ledge. “When the soldiers came for Christ, he looked about the garden and found he stood alone.” Cyprian released her. “Do I deserve better than our Lord?”
“You’re right. You can choose to trust whomever you like just as you can foolishly choose to go before the praetor.” She peeled from his grasp. “But forgive me if I sleep with one eye open.”
“If I fail before the praetor, I want to know I’ve left you surrounded by friends, people who can help you do whatever you must to take our family home.” Cyprian brought her hand to his lips. “A few days. It’s all I’m asking.”
Lisbeth let her gaze sand the ragged group staring at her. They distrusted her as much as she distrusted them. These were not her friends. She fastened her apprehension on Cyprian. “Three days.”
22
MAGGIE COULDN’T HELP THE little flutter of pride when her mother congratulated her on Eggie’s recovery and told her to transfer his vaporizer to someone in greater need. Maybe Mom was beginning to see that she wasn’t a total screwup.
“Cool your jets, Eggie. This will only take a second.” Maggie freed the silky fabric draped over the tent. The stowaway’s seal-gray eyes peered at her through the tepee stakes. “What are you looking at?” She shook out the cloth.
“You.” Eggie grinned. “You don’t talk or look like anyone I’ve ever met before.”
“Well, stare at something else.”
Although her patient had definitely gained strength since Mom arrived and shot him full of antibiotics, he was still a frightful mess. Brown crusty scabs dotted his face. Cracks deep as a Texas blacktop in August split his lips. His hair was a tangled bird’s nest her own mother couldn’t tame, and her mother thought she could conquer everything.
“You’re beautiful.” Eggie’s voice was still raspy from healing pustules in his throat.
“My mom says measles can ruin your eyesight.” Maggie lifted the tripod she’d cobbled together, taking care to keep the frame intact so she wouldn’t have to reassemble it for the next patient.
Eggie pushed up on his elbows. “I see things others do not.”
“Those are hallucinations from the high fever.”
He glanced around the room. “See the cloisonné vase on the pedestal?”
Maggie looked over her shoulder “What do you know about cloisonné?”
“It’s Greek. A copy, but a fairly expensive one.” Eggie pointed at the wall mural. “Rural and common in flavor. Most likely a Peiraikos.” He directed her gaze to the floor. “The mosaic is Roman in design, but judging from the color combinations, the artist was Etruscan.” He smirked at her surprise. “As you can tell, I have a very refined appreciation of beauty. So when I say your beauty is of more value than any of these things”—he scooped her hand and brought it to his lips—“you may take my observations on the highest authority.”
“Okay, anyone who knows the difference between cloisonné and a mosaic has my attention.”
“Finally.” Eggie’s grin tilted mischievously toward his dimple. “I didn’t think I stood a chance of redirecting those magnificent eyes from our heroic fisherman.”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I’ve seen you sketching him when you think no one is looking.”
Heat swept up her neck and flamed scarlet on her cheeks. Her free hand slid to her pocket where she’d hidden the small pen-and-ink sketch she’d finished late last night. Maggie wasn’t going to talk about Barek, not to anyone. “And you came by this appreciation of art while swabbing the decks of fishing vessels?”
“Give me a kiss and I’ll tell you how I came to possess my appreciation.”
Maggie removed her hand. “I don’t need you to teach me about art, or kissing.” She folded the tripod and started to leave but something inside her screamed Stay!
What was it about this guy? Maggie tucked the tripod under her arm. “So why would you tell me your secrets?”
Eggie crammed a pillow behind his back. “Because I trust you?”
Trust? Nobody trusted her. Not her mother. Not her father. And especially not Barek. She gave Eggie a doubtful look. “Whatever.”
“Really, I do.” Okay, he was a smooth talker and possibly an escaped convict, but she liked him.
Eggie had a creative side he wasn’t afraid to express. Maggie liked the hint of trouble brewing in the depths of his eyes. She liked how the richness of his voice beat inside her chest and made her feel alive.
“Girl! Come here!” an impatient male voice shouted at her from the doorway. “Quick!”
Maggie turned to find Titus waving her toward him. Never thought she would have considered Friar Tuck a lifesaver, but his interruption had saved her from doing something stupid like divulging her silly thoughts and giving Eggie the wrong idea.
Titus smoothed his bangs impatiently as Maggie made her way to him. “Tell your mother word has come of the new proconsul’s arrival. I’m heading to the harbor to meet him.”
“Now?” Maggie stared after his hurried exit, then turned to Eggie. “We are in so much trouble.”
Her fright must have shown on her face because Eggie took her hand and asked, “Why does the new proconsul’s arrival matter to you?”
“He doesn’t. It’s the emperor who sent him. I’ve read all about Valerian and everybody’s thinking he’s wonderful, but history records him as a jerk who thinks Christians should be eliminated.”
“Whoa! You talk faster than a runaway horse. History? What records are you talking about?”
Her mouth fell silent. Maggie had once again said too much. “Never mind.”
“Do these history records also say the great Valerian is a pompous, self-righteous pig who’s more concerned about keeping Rome together than his family?” Eggie let his shoulders fall back upon his pillow. “I hope the Sassanids remove the old man’s head.”
Maggie stepped back, unsure if he was teasing or if he was an emperor-lover setting her up. “You talk like you know him.”
Eggie lifted his head and eyed her coolly. “Valerian is my grandfather.” He ripped his sleeve from his wrist. “I will bear his mark to my grave.”
“Holy cow.”
She shuttled back even farther, knocking over a chamber pot as her eyes skimmed the premises for Barek. “Who are you?”
“Publius Licinius Egnatius Marinianus. Youngest son of Gallienus Augustus and Cornelia Salonina.” He nodded his head in a half bow. “At your service, my lady.” For once he wasn’t smiling, and neither was she. “Are you going to tell your fisherman friend he saved the successor to the throne?”
All of Barek’s warnings beat in her ears. “What do you think?”
“Please”—he reached for her hand, his eyes pleading—“if your father sends me home, my fate will mirror that of my brothers.”
“What happened to them?”
“They pursued the purple and now they are dead.”
“What does that even mean?”
“To see who was worthy of the throne, my grandfather sent my oldest brother, Valerianus, to deal with the troubled Illyrian provinces and my middle brother, Saloninus, was sent to help my father deal with the Gauls. After both brothers were killed, my grandfather expected me to take their place, to prepare for the day I would succeed my father. When I confessed my love of sculpture and my distaste for his bloody wars, he called me the son of a Bithynian Greek witch and had this little reminder of my forfeited place in this world branded upon my wrist. That’s when I decided to take my leave.”
Maggie remembered how upset Barek had become when he saw Eggie’s tattoo. “How do I know you’re not really some criminal or an escaped slave or something?”
“Because like me, my beautiful little goddess, you see what no one else can see . . . the beauty of truth.”
23
THE PORT OF OSTIA stank like fish, brackish water, and moldy wheat. Maximus lifted a piece of linen to his nose and continued his inspection of the towering ship. “I’m to be ferried to my new position aboard a grain freighter?”
“Your orders said ‘first available ship.’ ” Kaeso hoisted a trunk to his bare shoulder. “At least it is not an exotic animal transport vessel.”
Stevedores rolled large, empty wooden casks up the gangplank. Maximus had not slept a wink since Hortensia’s carriage dumped him and Kaeso at the port three days earlier. “I have died and gone to Hades.” He let out a long, dramatic sigh, certain nothing would wash this salty bitterness from his mouth, and trudged the briny two-board bridge with the zeal of a man going to his execution.
Before he was settled in his hammock belowdeck, favorable winds snapped a billow into the sails and hauled them from the port. They’d not been in deep water more than a day when the weather turned foul. The boat pitched and tossed Maximus as if he were a worm in a cocoon.
He pried the hemp with his fingers and shouted at Kaeso, “What in the name of the gods is happening?!”
“Shall I go see?”
“No. Another minute in this rank hole and I shall lose my mind.” He flipped to the floor. The hard landing upon his belly emptied the last of the sustenance he’d managed to choke down. Maximus pushed himself to his hands and knees, then clawed his way to the ladder. He climbed to the deck and poked his head through the opening. The horizon toward which they plowed was black with storm and menace. He suggested to the captain that they turn around, but his pleas could not be heard over the crew’s prayers begging the gods to allow the rain to follow them to Carthage.
“One season of moisture,” the captain had explained, “is all it would take to break Africa’s drought and transform the breadbasket of Rome from brown to green. And if the good proconsul prayed hard enough, the rain might wash away the sickness marching toward Rome faster than the angry Persians.”
The massive ship rose, then dipped sharply. Masts creaked and swayed in the pounding rain. Maximus did not care what became of those pompous dignitaries who’d bowed to his mother-in-law. He slunk back to his sling and cursed the woman who’d arranged his exile to Africa.
It would serve Hortensia right if he threw himself overboard and impaled her dreams of his rise to power upon the trident of Neptune. Instead, he sipped a camphorous mixture of crushed horse heal root and warm wine, but Kaeso’s sure cure for seasickness failed to hold his nausea at bay. Hand clasped over his mouth, Maximus was once again forced to make a hasty dash for the ladder. He staggered to the ship’s railing and hurled a sour offering into the saltwater sanding his face.
It was time he faced the horrible truth: he was neither a politician nor a man equipped to tame savages raised from a primordial sea. And since he’d not convinced his mother-in-law otherwise, he was not even a very good actor. Maximus swiped at the bile trailing his lip. Oh, that the gods would put him out of his misery.
“Master!” Kaeso pulled him back from the edge and shouted into the howling winds, “Come below! Land has been sighted. You cannot arrive at your new post looking like a drowned tiger cub.”
“I prefer to wear my traveling clothes. Men who wear snowy white togas end up with daggers in their backs or their legs sawed off in their sleep.”
“Come, master.”
Huddled between their hammocks, Maximus clung to a low beam as Kaeso peeled away his wet tunic. It no longer mattered that the sailors snickered and pointed at his pale frame. “The gods have left me to die without ever having applause echo in my ears, Kaeso.”
His servant dipped a sponge in a basin of fresh water and squeezed it over Maximus’s head. “Have you considered using your time in Carthage to learn the theater techniques of Terence?”
“Terence?” Maximus felt his briny face crack with a faint smile, his first since Hortensia had rearranged his fate. “His name is known on every Roman stage.” Water trickled over the contours of Maximus’s body and puddled at his feet. “I adore his work. Hecyra is my favorite comedy of all time. Sostra, the pushy mother-in-law, is written so true to form.” Maximus extended his arm and Kaeso ran the sponge to his fingertips. “Is it too much to hope that a backwater hole has a theater and a company that practices the philosophies of the greatest actor the world has ever seen?”
“Terence hails from Carthage and I’ve heard a marvelous structure, with perfect acoustics and overlooking the harbor, has been resurrected in his name.” Kaeso held out a fresh garment.
“But would they want me?”
“Think of the prestige the theater would gain if a man of your political stature joined their company.”
Maximus lifted his arms and the silky tunic slid easily over the intriguing possibilities whirling in his head. “They would be lucky to have me, wouldn’t they?”
“Do your duty to Rome”—Kaeso draped the heavy woolen toga over Maximus’s shoulder—“and when you go home, Valerian will be obligated to grant you anything you desire . . . perhaps your own stage, or better yet, your mother-in-law’s head upon a spike.”
By the time their ship had moored, the rain had stopped and Maximus’s spirits had lifted. Gulls swooped overhead and steam rose from the miles of wet concrete that circled the harbor.
“Galerius Maximus?” On the dock, a monkey-faced man with a bowl haircut and apelike arms summoned him from a golden two-wheeled cart. “Proconsul, your chariot awaits.”
Maximus wrinkled his nose and whispered under his breath, “Kaeso, are you sure this dump has a theater?”
His servant shrugged. “You will do well to remember that you are already onstage.”
Maximus gathered the hem of his toga, plastered on the aloof expression his mother-in-law always used on him, and followed Kaeso’s glistening back down the gangplank.
The gangly man leaped from the chariot and rushed forward. “I am Titus Cicero.” His fine robes and polished red shoes were those of a patrician. “I’m sorry to burden your arrival with such troubling news, but there is sickness in Carthage.” He offered two white cloths. “You and your man might want to cover your noses.”
Maximus couldn’t deny the wind carried an unpleasant odor. “I thought the stench merely the scent of barbarism.” The hint of disdain he’d injected into his response, so reminiscent of Hortensia’s voice, had
done its trick, for Titus immediately took an appropriate step back. Maximus tied the cloth around his growing smile. “I suspect this sickness has been greatly exaggerated.”
“I wish that were so, my lord.”
My lord. No one had addressed him with such respect in quite some time. Perhaps Kaeso was right. No one here need know about the black eye his father had given his family. This was his chance to make a new name for himself. A respected name. A powerful name. This was his chance to finally have what he wanted.
Maximus straightened his shoulders and asked boldly, “Have you a theater in this rat’s hole?”
Titus’s face looked puzzled. “Yes.”
“How does it compare to the one in Rome?” Maximus could tell his driver thought his questions odd but he didn’t care. He was lord here.
“I’ve been to both. This one is far superior, my lord.”
“Take me.”
“But wouldn’t you rather see—”
“The theater. Now!”
“Very well.”
The closer they came to the city, the more fetid the smell. Crusty brown treetops crackled in the hot breeze sweeping in from the desert. Carthage burned hotter than his worst imaginings. Maximus dabbed at his neck with his personal linen. Perhaps he’d been a bit shortsighted not to beg the rain gods to wash the air clean and cool. He’d maintained his breathing exercises as best he could on that horrible sea crossing, but even he could not hold his breath for a year.
Titus drove far too slow, dropping useless tidbits of information like bread crumbs Maximus could follow back to his ship should he desire to get out of this pigsty while he still could. “From our spectacular man-made harbor, the city is accessed via one of its twelve guarded gates.” Titus motioned to the stone lintel marked Qrt Hdcht . . . Carthage New City.
