Return to Exile (31 page)

“We don’t want your money,” Lisbeth said.

Titus thrust the bag into Lisbeth’s hands. “Keep it.”

“You really should consider his offer quite an honor. Titus is not easily parted from his money, especially when it comes to healers.”

Lisbeth gave the money back. “What we really need is some help.” She took the chamber pot and held it out to Vivia.

The woman backed up, and her hands disappeared back into the folds of her garment. “Help?”

“We’re a little . . . shorthanded.”

“I heard about Ruth and the baby.” Vivia seemed honestly sad, but still wary of getting too involved in the lives of Christians. “I’m sorry. She was a good woman.”

“Yes.” Lisbeth bit back tears. “Ruth was a remarkable woman.” Selfless, forgiving, and trusting. The kind of woman Lis
beth thought she’d automatically become after she became a Christian.

Instead she continued to forge her own path and look for ways to manipulate outcomes. What had her schemes gained? She hadn’t slowed measles. Typhoid could still double the plague’s destruction. Her family was more fractured than ever. Cyprian had no interest in coming home with her. And yet, despite her total ineffectiveness, all she could think about was that there had to be a way to turn things around.

“I don’t know what I can do to help,” Vivia was saying when Lisbeth pulled her attention back to her patients. “I’ve never changed a bed or emptied a chamber pot. But we’re willing to learn, aren’t we, Titus?”

Titus’s eyes grew wide and shifted beneath his bangs.

“Titus,” Vivia warned.

He sighed. “It’s the least we can do.”

“We’ll start by teaching you how to nurse your family back to health.” Mama held out the chamber pot. “I’ll show you how to properly dispose of the waste and how to disinfect your hands so that you don’t contract the sickness.”

Vivia’s hands slowly came out from beneath her stola. She took a deep breath and grasped hold of the chamber pot and a whole new way of life.

Watching this amazing transformation, Lisbeth felt an idea dawn. A few days ago she was willing to fiddle with time by taking Cyprian away from here. What if she committed to something even more risky? Like staying here and helping him fight evil with good.

41

L
ISBETH LEFT MAMA WITH
the daunting chore of turning the Ciceros into nursing staff while she went in search of Cyprian. Passing the library, she noticed the door ajar. She pushed it open and peeked inside.

Cyprian rifled through scrolls scattered across the desk. Dogs paced nervously around his feet. His hair was wet. Sometime between her failed attempt to save him from himself and her morning rounds, he’d managed to slip to the baths and get cleaned up. He’d changed out of the simple tunic he’d been wearing since her return and donned the dingy, off-white toga Caecilianus had worn to his death. She’d read enough about Roman customs to know what this changing of his dress meant. Cyprian intended to publically demonstrate his sympathy for his fallen leader. If he added Caecilianus to his name, there would be no turning back.

“Cyprian, you shouldn’t be in here.” The dogs bounded to her outstretched hand.

He looked up from the mess. “It is
my
library.” Dark circles under his eyes indicated he hadn’t rested any better upon the downy tick he and Ruth had shared than she had upon the lonely boards of the wagonbed.

She held up her palms to deflect his barb. “I only meant it’s dangerous for you to be in this part of the house.”

“I’ll wash my hands.” He added another parchment to the stack among the pots of ink and sharpened quills.

She patted the dogs nuzzling her hands. “What are you looking for?”

“Caecilianus’s notes.” Obviously he was in no mood for more interference from her, but that was too bad.

“On what?”

“Caecilianus worked to acquire one of the finest collections of the early church letters written by the apostles.” Cyprian produced a carefully bound scroll. “Paul’s personal correspondence to the church at Philippi was one of his favorites.”

“Bet that cost a handsome sum.”

He fingered the worn parchment. “Worth every piece of silver my old friend convinced me to pay.” The loss in his eyes tugged at Lisbeth’s heart.

She understood the importance of cherished memories. They’d kept her going through many lonely nights. “Why have you chosen that particular scripture?”

“My feeble attempt to rally the church at their last worship assembly did not go well.”

“And you think the right verse will help?”

“Paul was under arrest in Rome when he wrote these words. He knew what it felt like to be afraid.” His eyes found hers for the briefest of moments, long enough for understanding to pass between them. Beneath his bravado was a man as anxious as she. “And yet,” Cyprian continued, “Paul found the words to encourage that little church to stick together. In their unity they would find joy.”

“The church seems perfectly unified to me. Especially in their dislike of patricians.” She smiled at his lack of appreciation for her attempt to lighten his mood. “Overall, I was very impressed with how they all worked together and embraced our plan to tackle the problems in the slums.”

“They did it for Ruth.”

“Oh.”

“I didn’t mean they weren’t glad to help you; it’s just . . .” He undid the clasp on the scroll and began to unroll the parchment across his desk. “The church gathers this evening. As their new bishop, I need to offer some sort of encouragement. Some kind of hope now that Ruth is gone.”

“Is that why you’re wearing Caecilianus’s toga?”

“I’m not fit to carry his sandals. It’s my attempt to remind them of the man we all loved. The man who brought us together. Give them hope . . .”

“Hope’s a good thing.” If only hope had been enough to save the last man who wore that garment. Lisbeth stepped in and closed the door. “Especially if it’s in Christ and not in the strength of one man.”

“Or one woman determined to control the future.” He moved from behind the desk and took a step toward her. “Before you go, I think we should talk about what happened or didn’t happen last night.”

Much as she wished he would make a move to close the gap between them, he did not. He stood his ground, keeping himself an excruciating arm’s length away. His drawn expression communicated his contemplation of whether continuing this conversation would result in the undoing of his resolve. If she let this opportunity pass without telling him everything, her own undoing was the only certainty.

Lisbeth took a breath. “You can’t imagine what it was like for me to walk the streets of a thriving Roman city for the first time. I’d grown up watching my father reclaim crumbling bits of ancient civilizations from the earth and try to piece them together.”

Whether or not it was wise to point out their differences at this critical moment, she believed it foolish to pretend they both weren’t fully aware of them. “While Papa carefully catalogued pot
tery shards, I assigned my own imaginings to the partial remains. I could never have guessed this.” She waved her hands to take in the grandeur of his home. “To actually experience something like an occupied villa, or the Colosseum in all its splendor, whole and operational, was breathtaking. To hear the lions roar beneath the floor or to watch gladiators duel to the death . . . all of it was shocking.”

She half expected him to say something about how her protest at the games had nearly gotten both of them tossed to the arena floor. But when he didn’t interrupt, she took a chance and reached out to lightly touch his arm. “Horrible as that arena experience was, meeting you made it bearable. When I saw your people, dying simply because they refused to recant their faith, and I saw how much you cared, something inside me changed.”

His face puzzled. “Changed?”

“Your people became my people. And your God my God.”

“How do you know our holy words?”

She waved her hand over the stack of parchments. “In the future, all of these different scrolls, plus a few Caecilianus didn’t manage to acquire, get combined into one book, and . . .” She could see that he wasn’t grasping the concept. “Anyway, it’s all packaged in a handy leather carrying case, so to speak. It’s easy to read. Anyone can see for themselves what God has to say.”

“Anyone?”

“Anyone.”

“Including you?”

“Okay, you caught me. Sue me. Something about all of this
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you
Ruth and Caecilianus not only preached but also lived intrigued me. It didn’t make sense. Then I started reading and . . .”

“They lived their life in a way that was hard to ignore.” The hard lines etched at the corners of his eyes slackened. “And so?”

In that moment, she wanted him to see her for the generous, trusting person she was desperately trying to become. “I believed.”

His defensive posture melted. “You are a believer?”

“I may not always be the best example of a Christian, but yes, I am.”

Her confession did not bring him rushing into her arms as she had always imagined it would. His eyes were once again impossible to read. “Did you become a follower for me?”

“I did it for me.” She made a bold move and closed the gap between them, her chest lightly brushing his.

He flinched at the physical contact but did not back away. His quick breaths warmed her cheek. She could feel the thrum of his heart struggling to match hers. In the tense silence, she could hear the sorting of his thoughts.

“I didn’t understand how much this church meant to you until . . .” She let her fingers skim the length of his arm, soaking in the heat of him. “I saw how easily you opened your home to them and saw you working with them. I couldn’t help but love these people even more.” When her hand met his, she felt his fingers relax and slowly take hers in. This small gesture of acquiescence encouraged her to say the hardest part of all. “You’ve been more than generous. But I don’t believe you have to die to prove you love them.”

“Don’t you think I’ve asked the Lord if there is any other way?”

“Did it ever occur to you that I may have been sent here to help you find another option? If you let me stay and help you, I think the church can avoid losing you before your time.” The emotional boundaries she’d set in place since her arrival disintegrated. With her free hand, she reached into her pocket and fished out the paper. “Let me read this to you.” She opened the page. “History records that if you continue on this path, traitors will arrange for your gruesome
death. You will be martyred. But you already know that.” She pointed at the last paragraph. “What you don’t know is what it goes on to say. What the church did after your death, and how successful their actions were at turning the tide of popular opinion. So I was thinking, what if we implemented those tactics earlier rather than later?”

Cyprian extricated his hand from hers and took the paper. He folded it without looking at the paragraph she’d highlighted in yellow. “The difference between us is not a span of time. The difference is that I know we all die. How we die is up to God, and I am resigned to his will. You, on the other hand, live like one who believes if you claim Christ as savior, you can tell him when, where, and what you’re willing to die for.”

“That’s not true. Doctors see deaths every day that they can’t stop.” Images of the still body of the young mother who’d taken her daughter to Disney World flashed in Lisbeth’s mind. “Let me tell you something: there’s nothing like staring at a life snuffed out too early to make you come face-to-face with your own mortality. All of us die. Even Aspasius. But I take comfort in knowing that when that jerk leaves this world, he’ll go out the same way the rest of us do . . . with nothing.” She could still see the wedding ring on that young mother’s left hand. Her Disney T-shirt hanging in the tiny hospital closet. Her toddler crying in the hall. All of it had been left behind. “Two thousand years from now, if some archaeologist cracks open the proconsul’s tomb, everything that monster has fought so hard to keep will be right where he left it.”

Cyprian frowned. “If you know all of this, why do you live like you will do the deciding on when and how death comes to you or to those you love?” He pressed the paper into her hand and closed her fingers around its sharp edges. His breath, although warm against her neck, sent a chill down her spine. “What good is it if we save our own bodies but the church loses its soul?” He released her. “You have your work, and I have mine.”

She wasn’t the only one who’d returned from exile a changed person. He was more hardheaded than ever. “I’m saying we can do both. If we join forces, keep the church unified like the early believers in Philippi, we can apply the tactics of the early church and shut Aspasius down.” She lifted her hands and smiled. “We both win.”

“This is not about winning or losing.”

Lisbeth paused. She stood at the crossroads of decision. Was it her knowledge of the future or her need to control outcomes driving this train? Should she keep silent or tell Cyprian the truth? She thought of the cancer rotation she’d done during her internship, how she’d watched each patient’s face as the attending broke the devastating diagnosis.
“How long?”
was always the first response. She’d decided then and there that numbered days deserve the truth. While everyone may not know the exact number of their days, she knew Cyprian’s days ended on September 14, 258 AD. It was already spring. He had six months at best.

If Cyprian heard nothing else, she wasn’t leaving until he heard the whole story.

“Felicissimus is trying to get you killed. If you won’t let me help you, the least you can do is cut your ties with him.”

“Felicissimus?” His brow crinkled in disbelief. “What does the slave trader have to do with my future?”

“Everything.”

“You’ve held a grudge against him from your first encounter.”

“Not easy to love someone who pins your face to the filthy floor of a rank little cell block. But what he did to me is nothing compared to how he has betrayed you and continues to betray you.” She hooked Cyprian’s arm and kept him from walking off. “Felicissimus was the one who set the trap that day in the market. Ruth and I were the bait; you were the prey.”