Valley of Decision

by Lynne Gentry

  Barek reluctantly supplied Eggie with specific instructions as to what to take from the military food stores and his opinion of the best way to avoid being detected. “Steal only enough supplies to get us down the road a few days,” Barek said sternly. “And I don’t care who you are—no more fires.”

  Eggie gave a solemn half bow, and then turned to Maggie. “And what special treat can I bring that will aid your grandmother’s relief?”

  “We’ll have to ask her.” Maggie gently roused her grandmother. “Jaddah, is there anything other than Mom’s medicine that would make you feel better?”

  “Honey and water. Maybe some basil, saffron, and black pepper to grind into an edible paste.”

  “Your wish is my command, dear lady.” Eggie flashed Maggie a mischievous wink and raised his hood.

  Barek growled low in his throat. “Don’t take foolish chances.”

  “I’ve learned my lesson when it comes to fire, but I will remain bold when it comes to love.” Eggie swept up Maggie’s hand and kissed it soundly. “When I return, I expect to be rewarded properly.”

  Maggie rolled her eyes. “Stay alive.”

  Barek’s lips grew taut, his eyes hard. He sent Eggie out into the night like Noah releasing the dove from the ark.

  “He won’t betray us,” Maggie said. “I know it.”

  Barek snatched a blanket from the open chest. “What else do you know about Eggie that you’re not telling me?”

  43

  THE PROCONSUL HAS BEEN inconsolable.” Maximus heard the soldier stationed outside his bedchamber arguing with whoever had dared to knock on his door. “He has issued strict orders to be left alone.”

  “He shall see me.” Titus barged into the room with a force that brought Maximus’s face out from behind his pillow. “What is the meaning of arresting Cyprianus Thascius?” Titus’s roar shook the mosquito netting draped around the large ivory bed. “Have you not caused enough trouble for one day?”

  “Someone burned my theater.” Maximus had ordered the shutters bolted, for he could not bear looking at the blackened rubble. He swiped his hand across his nose. “Two very good men died.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss.” Titus’s fleeting sympathy was quickly replaced by the real reason he’d come. “You’re fortunate this entire town did not go up in flames.”

  Maximus lifted his head, indignation straightening his spine. “If you want an apology from me, you won’t get it.”

  “I want Cyprian granted the freedom accorded him in the codicil to the late proconsul’s will.” Titus shook his long finger and looked down his nose with the same accusing stare Hortensia used when she wished to threaten him. “That document clearly granted him a pardon and justified Cyprian’s reinstatement as a Roman citizen and a solicitor. You have no legal basis upon which to hold him.”

  Something inside Maximus snapped. A loud crack reminiscent of the one that sent the theater’s pillars plummeting to the stage. A bitter brew of desolation and despair seeped from the fissure. He was the one who’d lost everything, not this monkey-faced frontier patrician. Kaeso was right, he could still fix this. But he wouldn’t do it by issuing pardons. No, he would make a new path for himself—one where he would never again cower in fear. Maximus would make certain everyone feared him, including his mother-in-law. He would fix it so that whoever was responsible for this searing agony in his chest would feel the same pain.

  Maximus threw back the mosquito netting and leaped from the bed so quickly Titus staggered back several steps. Now it was he who pointed a finger. “You dare to come into my palace and issue demands?” He drew his robe closed and cinched the sash. “Cyprianus Thascius is the leader of those professing heresy and burning my city.”

  “You don’t know that it was Christians who set fire to the theater.”

  “Prove that it wasn’t!” Maximus said. “Cyprian knew his rebels were plotting destruction and he did nothing to stop it.”

  “Christians are too busy caring for the sick to plot rebellion.” Titus drew in a slow, angry breath. “Cyprian surrendered in a magnanimous effort to avert further bloodshed. His surrender is by no means an admission of any wrongdoing by the Christians. He is admired in this city. Free him and let him calm the masses . . . Christian or not.”

  Maximus strode to the bedside table. He snatched up the wanted poster he’d ripped from a post as he’d stormed from the empty arena. “I lost more than a fine servant and a theater in that fire. Those convicted of the murder of Aspasius have escaped into the smoke. I’ll not let another felon go free.”

  “Why must Cyprian bear the blame for your military’s ineptitude?”

  “According to eyewitness reports, the women were stolen by a scruffy little group of Christians who ambushed my troops.” He thrust the poster into Titus’s sobered face. “Valerian wasn’t lifting the persecution when he had Cyprian recalled. He was bringing that Christian traitor home for execution. To put an end to these rabble-rousers who refuse to bow to the gods of Rome. Do you think I do not know who Cyprianus Thascius really is? I will not let his Christians destroy Carthage.”

  “Yet you allow your troops to rape and pillage,” Titus said. “You saw how all of Carthage supports Cyprianus Thascius. He is the only one who can restore order.”

  “As long as I am forced to live in this godforsaken rat hole, I shall be the one to whom everyone turns.”

  “And what is to become of Cyprian?”

  Kaeso’s exhortation to fix this once again rang in Maximus’s ears, a clanging cymbal that would drive him mad if he did not silence it. Which he could not if every time he closed his eyes he saw his servant take his place in the flames. He must shift his focus to Epolon. More than a theater and a friend had perished today. His dreams of acquiring a skill that would forever liberate him from the clutches of his mother-in-law went up in smoke. Someone would have to pay for what had been done to him.

  “Cyprian must die.”

  “The people will never support his death. Without the support of the people you have nothing. And without Cyprianus Thascius to reassure them as they struggle through this famine and plague, you will not have an end to this uprising.”

  “Then they will leave me no choice. I will flood the temples with candles and incense, call forth more troops, and summon the wrath of the gods.”

  44

  MASS HYSTERIA AND LOOTING of the city had gone on through the night. The two guards now stationed outside Cyprian’s former home had dragged him from the Forum, tossed him inside his villa, and locked the door. He’d stumbled about the atrium looking for a lamp. After stubbing his toe twice, he gave up, slid to the tile floor, and propped his forehead against his drawn knees.

  What had happened to his family after he was arrested and escorted from the Forum? Had Barek kept Maggie safe? Had Lisbeth been reunited with his children? Had Magdalena been put to death in the arena? Had Lawrence died with her? Lisbeth would be crushed.

  Distress and fear swirled in his empty belly. Was this the future Lisbeth had risked everything to prevent? Cyprian had tried to forget the dreams that had haunted his nights on that lonely beach during his exile—dreams of facing a horrible death. He didn’t know why the visions had terrified him so. Everything that had happened since his conversion kept pointing to one hard truth: living as a Christ follower would cost him more than his mentor, Caecilianus, or his dear, sweet Ruth and their unborn child. He would also lose his wealth and position. So why was he surprised that he now found himself separated from his faithful deacon, Pontius, with no way of offering his wife and daughter protection?

  With the Lord’s help, Cyprian knew he could accept his fate. But he’d racked his brain trying to think of a way to get word to the church members and beg them to come to his family’s defense.

  “Lord, help me” rolled off his lips again and again.

  * * *

  WHEN CYPRIAN awoke hours later, he was stiff and sore from sitting on the floor. Pale rays of light filtered thro
ugh the opening in the atrium’s roof and illuminated a message of hate scribbled upon the tapestry Ruth had woven for his family years ago. He clambered to his feet. The marble heads of two toppled statues that had guarded his father’s entry had rolled several feet away from their voluptuous bodies. Their vacant eyes stared at him.

  Cyprian stepped around the stone heads and ran his fingers over the tapestry. Dried blood. He pulled his sleeve over the iron shackle chaffing his wrist, cuffed the hem with his fingers, and scrubbed at the stains with his forearm. Heat rose from the friction. He stepped back to look. His efforts had been pointless. Like so many things he’d touched, the story of God’s love was ruined.

  He dropped his arm and surveyed the atrium. The destruction went well beyond personal possessions. He was powerless. He was a condemned man. He was alone.

  Cyprian fell to his knees. “Oh, God. Help me.” His plea echoed off the stone walls. And then it was silent. He released a long, slow breath, then filled his lungs again, repeating the process several times until his thoughts had cleared.

  His mind skipped to happier times, to the early days of Lisbeth’s arrival. Cyprian had loved her from the moment his eyes beheld her standing for inspection upon the slave block. She was bruised from her tumble through the time portal and angry as a cornered animal, but the spark in her emerald eyes had immediately kindled a burning desire in him. Bringing her and her crazy medical practices into his home had changed his life, opened his heart to a world of new possibilities. He loved watching her glide through the halls of his home with her mother’s strange medical instrument draped around her beautiful neck and her slender hands dispensing healing to broken bodies and souls.

  His in particular.

  Not only had she hauled Cyprian from the sea after a terrible ship explosion, on her second return to his world she’d also extricated him from the pit of his own despair. When he’d fought plagues and persecution alongside Lisbeth, he’d known a sense of purpose. Those were days he would treasure. Days that mattered. Days of loving and being loved.

  The turmoil in his gut settled. His spirit was strangely peaceful.

  Muted voices drifted into Cyprian’s consciousness. He scrambled to his feet. The door opened and his friend Titus bustled in, a heavy bag slung over his shoulder. He slammed the door shut behind him.

  “The world’s gone mad, I tell you. Mad.” He plopped the bag upon a table. “I’ve brought what few supplies Metras felt the hospital could spare. Plus a little something from my private stores.” He pulled out a wine amphora embellished with a painted rural scape Maggie would have enjoyed re-creating. “Been aging this sweet white from Surrentine for five years.” He offered a hopeful smile. “It must put a fire in your belly, for there is much to be done to beat these ridiculous charges against you.”

  “Give it to the sick.” Cyprian pushed the sack away, far hungrier for something to sustain his heart. “What news do you have of Lisbeth and Maggie? Did they make it back to your villa?”

  Titus’s mouth tightened into a tortured line. “The reports are muddled because of the fire, but a few claimed to have seen a girl with white-blond hair and a young man with a small knife overtake the soldiers guarding Magdalena.”

  Cyprian’s heart lifted for the first time since he’d been imprisoned in his own home. “Magdalena was not executed?”

  “No.”

  “She’s safe? In your care now?”

  Titus began unloading bread and fruit in a definite stall. “Magdalena has . . . disappeared along with your daughter and Barek.”

  Cyprian’s throat constricted with a strange combination of fear and pride. “Are you telling me my children may have been involved in aiding a sick old woman’s evasion of the law?”

  “Plus an old man and the three servants of Aspasius who were supposed to have been executed along with your sweet mother-in-law.”

  “Lisbeth must be sick with worry.”

  Titus set the jug on the table. “You may not have heard of the fire’s destruction of the theater.”

  Cyprian shook his head, his mind grasping at possible reasons why his friend continued to avoid his questions about Lisbeth. None of them good. “I couldn’t tell what was burning, but from the commotion I knew it was more than a bakery fire.”

  “Maximus is beside himself.” Titus motioned toward an upended settee. “I’ve been on my feet all night.” Together they righted the small couch, and Titus sank in a huff of weariness. “For reasons I cannot figure, the destruction of the theater has turned the proconsul from all reason.” Titus pinched the bridge of his nose, as if what he had to say next pained him greatly. “My attempts to force Maximus to release you have proven fruitless.”

  “He can’t blame me for the riot.”

  The immediate lowering of Titus’s eyes indicated the answer was exactly as Cyprian had feared. “You and the Christians.” Titus’s face creased with worry and sadness. “Maximus believes the destruction can only be stopped by eliminating the leader of the Christians.”

  “And he believes me to be that leader?”

  Titus eyed him. “Yes.”

  If Maximus had hoped to use him to extinguish the flames of rebellion licking at his door, he’d captured the wrong man. Starving people had nothing to chew on but discontent. During Cyprian’s time of exile on the outskirts of the empire, he’d seen desperation press many good men to the wall. When men with nothing to lose were cornered, anything could happen.

  “You could recant.”

  Cyprian sighed. “I cannot do that.”

  “No, I didn’t think you would.”

  “Tell me of Lisbeth.” Cyprian swallowed the knot in his throat. “If she were well, you could not have kept her from coming with you today.”

  The grave expression on Titus’s face deepened. “I know she went in search of Maggie.”

  Now it was Cyprian who pinched the pain between his eyes. “That was my fault. I told her to get our daughter and go home.”

  “Tappo and Pontius wisely insisted on going with her. There was a skirmish between Lisbeth and some soldiers overwrought by the chaos of the fire.”

  Cyprian felt the last of his hope drain. “And?”

  “She was hurt.” Titus settled Cyprian back on the bench. “They managed to carry her back to the hospital. The church is doing what they can for her, but I won’t lie to you . . . she is injured.”

  “How bad?”

  “A blow to the head, but it is the infection in her foot that has us worried. She has fever.”

  Cyprian dropped to his knees. He should have let her tend her injury. Had his impatience to be with her again cost Lisbeth her life? His vision narrowed, the light growing dimmer. He lifted his chained wrists above his head. “God, do what you must to me, but please, spare Lisbeth.”

  Titus sat in silence, allowing Cyprian’s grief to pour out. When he could cry no more, he felt a gentle hand on his shoulder. “There is another way.”

  Cyprian lowered his chains. “Another way?”

  “Bella Rugia is only a day’s journey inland.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Titus’s eyes smoldered with a dark secret. “Rich men afraid of dying build contingency plans. Places of refuge should they ever need to make a hasty escape. Surely you have one?”

  Cyprian shook his head.

  “Your father most likely did. Perhaps at your country estate.” Titus waved off Cyprian’s shaking of his head. “Not to worry, my friend. You can use mine.”

  “Yours?”

  “Years ago, I acquired a little-known subterranean wheat storage tunnel near my fields in Jendouba. Upon a closer inspection, I realized the maze of passages provided the perfect place to build a secret fortress.” Titus inched in closer. “A small bribe to your guards, and you and your family could disappear until all of this nasty business blows over and Maximus calms down.”

  “But my family is scattered to the four winds.”

  “Put money in the right hands and
I’m sure they can be found easily enough.”

  Cyprian drew back, surprised at how appealing he found this unexpected offer. Only a few moments ago he’d thought himself completely committed to dying for the cause of Christ. After all, when most of the church walked out with Felicissimus, he’d been the one to stay. He’d even stayed when he could have so easily flung himself down the well and followed his wife to the future—a future where Christians were free to worship the one God without fear.

  Yet here he was, seriously considering how wonderful it would be to flee. To leave the responsibility of the fledgling church on someone else’s shoulders. Did Cyprian not deserve the happiness that came from having his family under one roof? The joy of having his wife in his arms? His daughter close enough that he could stroke her beautiful hair, and his adopted son, Barek, sitting at his feet, learning the ways of truth?

  Truth?

  The word rang in his ears, piercing his soul as if the Lord himself had spoken directly to him. What truth would he teach his children or his church by running? Cyprian clasped Titus’s shoulder. “My friend, thank you, but I won’t hide again.”

  “A few weeks would give the riots time to die down and for the real culprits of the destruction to be rooted out. Then I could persuade the remaining senators of the merits of Christianity. If Maximus was outnumbered he would back down, I’m sure.”

  “Neither Maximus nor the senators will believe what they cannot see.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Cyprian had already traveled the treacherous road of deceit once, hiding from Aspasius for months. His cowardly actions had forced Ruth to bear the weight of the church upon her shoulders and nearly led to his own destruction. He had no intention of repeating those horrible mistakes. He was no saint and had never professed to be one. He was merely the conduit through which the Lord’s agenda was to be accomplished.

  “The court of public opinion will be changed the same way your opinion was changed.” Cyprian saw understanding sweep the face of Titus. “With the help of those who have repented and returned to the flock, you can continue dispensing medical help from your home. It could make a real difference in this city,” he explained. “My purpose was to rally and unify a fragmented church. Perhaps yours is to see to it that the church becomes the hands and feet of Christ. To ensure that the good works of the believers carry the good news of our Savior far into the future.”