Return to Exile (36 page)

“Come back” was all she could manage.

He stopped his thrashing and bobbed in the waves as he searched the shore.

Lisbeth undid her sash and threw it aside. “Don’t make me come after you.”

“There’s only one way to free your mother.”

“What? Get yourself killed?”

“Sail for Rome.” His voice carried over the water. “Speak to the emperor myself. Tell him of Aspasius’s refusal to follow his edict and lift the persecution.”

“Before you stow away on a ship likely carrying two plagues, can we at least talk about this?”

“What is there to talk about? It would have taken every hand to accomplish what we planned.” He waved her back. “Don’t come in the water.”

Lisbeth waded in ankle deep. “If you’re going to Rome, so am I.” She stood in the moonlight, the breeze blowing her hair around her shoulders.

“What about Maggie?”

“We’ll take her. She’s at least had her shots.”

Cyprian stroked toward her. Breathing hard, he came ashore. Although he maintained a distance of a few strides, she could feel the heat radiating off his slick body. “Did you know about the writs of libellus?”

“No.”

Strain was etched across his face. Tired, red eyes from sleepless nights of trying to hold everything together. The church. The city he loved. The fractured remains of his family. She knew she
looked just as haggard.

“You tried to tell me, but I wouldn’t listen. Felicissimus was my right-hand man. I trusted him to administer funds. Supervise the burials. To be my friend. I was a fool. How can the church love those who don’t know Christ when we can’t even love each other? God forgive me, but when I think that I entrusted Ruth and the church into that weasel’s care, I want to kill him.”

“I’ve fought the urge to slap Felicissimus since the moment he removed his boot from my face.”

Cyprian slicked his hair back. “They are all fools to think those writs will keep them safe.”

She threw Cyprian his toga. “So what are we going to do?”

“What
can
we do?” He slid the heavy fabric over his head. “A few women and an old man with a cane are hardly the army we needed.”

Was that regret or blame she heard in his voice? Did he rue the day he’d purchased her off the slave block and started this war with Aspasius?

Beating back her fears, she said, “God’s done more with a lot less.”

They stood there staring at each other, the wind in their ears and the waves washing across their feet. Angry foam swirled around Lisbeth’s ankles, then retreated to the sea with a tug that threatened to pull her under.

Cyprian was the first to speak. “I don’t know how long I can keep you and Maggie safe.”

Tears clogged the back of her throat. “Nor I you.”

His lips twitched. In an instant, his impeccable discipline deserted him, and he reached for her hand. “I never thought you’d come back. I prayed that you would. Dreamed that you had. I saw you everywhere. In the tenements. At the sea. In the boiling water
for the vaporizer pots. In your brother’s drawings. But I never thought you’d leave the world you knew, the world where you belonged, and return to me.”

She held on tightly. “Our daughter needs her father.”

“And you?”

“Worse than I need air.”

Longing shone in his eyes. He closed the distance between them. Cupping her face in his hands, he lightly brushed away her tears. “It’s not death I fear, but losing my faith. God can take my riches, my position, even the church I’ve come to love.” He traced her lips with his salty thumbs. “But it will not be easy to forgive him when the hour comes to send you home. And I’m afraid the time has come.”

She took Cyprian’s hand. “Follow me.” Beneath a velvet sky she led him to the pergola. They stepped into the privacy of the vines. “Remember the last time we were together here?”

He turned to her. “Every time I look out my window.” A wistful, worn gaze met hers. “Had I known the future—”

She put a finger to his lips. “We would have missed this moment.”

Golden stubble roughened his tense jaw. His eyes reflected the same uncertainty she was feeling. They were once again backed into an impossible corner, one misstep away from destruction. What would they do next? Exactly where did two frightened, weary souls go from here? If they gave in, they might very well shatter any chance of coming out of this intact.

Cyprian’s fingers followed the curve of her clavicle. A faint smile lifted the corners of his lips. The aching emptiness she’d carried since their separation grew so large each breath required effort. She wanted to tell him that she loved him, loved him more than her own life, but the words refused to form into a coherent sentence. So she remained as silent as he, willing her eyes to say
what her lips could not.

In their need, they reached for each other. One of Cyprian’s hands wrapped her waist. The other tangled in her hair and lifted her chin. His breath whispered across her cheek. Desire swirled like fine desert sand, every emotion a tiny granule swept across the peaks and valleys that had been their lives. Every minute that had passed while she was away, hope of them holding each other again grew as distant as the cave portal. Impossible to reach in this life. She wouldn’t allow her spinning mind to stop and consider the end of this moment, an end written years ago.

His lips pressed hers, so powerful and intense her mouth opened like that of a little bird demanding to be filled. Her hands traveled the contours of his chest. Fingertips skimming upward, she paused at the rapid pounding of his heart.

The swell of the sea beat against the harbor walls as the years apart fell away. Time shifted. The arrow-straight line connecting past and present faded into a timeless, dreamy circle. Lisbeth pillowed her fears in another dimension and let go.

49

F
ELICISSIMUS BURST INTO ASPASIUS’S
chamber and jolted the proconsul from his slumber. “It’s done,” Felicissimus said, panting.

Soldiers tumbled into the room behind the slave trader. “We tried to stop him, sir.”

Aspasius refused Magdalena’s help and pushed himself up in his bed. “Let him speak.” He waved a weakened hand. “Offer our guest some refreshment, woman.”

Felicissimus came and threw a stack of papers on the bed. “There’s nothing left of Cyprian’s church.”

Magdalena dropped the cup she was filling.

“Well done, little slave trader.” Aspasius directed his pleased chuckle toward Magdalena. “There’s a small pouch in the dresser drawer. Pay the man.”

“I don’t want your money or the power you offered anymore,” Felicissimus said. “I did what you asked. The church is destroyed, and so is Cyprian. Now you no longer have need to kill him or anyone else. That boy you had executed in the tenements did not have to die. I would have eventually sold him the writs.”

“When did you grow a heart?”

“Cyprian
was
my friend.”

“I never really put much stock in friendships.”

“Neither he nor the Christians are a threat to you now.”

“Oh, that’s where you’re wrong. As long as Cyprian is alive, so is their hope. And hope is far more dangerous than any man.” Aspasius waved his hand. “Kill him.”

Surprise flashed across Felicissimus’s face as a soldier’s dagger stabbed him through the back.

50

L
ISBETH’S EYES FLEW OPEN
with a start. Patches of light and shadow freckled the pergola tiles. Cyprian slept curled around her, his arm resting across her stomach. She smiled and inhaled deeply. It was true. Last night was not a dream. They had spent the hours exhausting themselves with apologies and forgiveness.

Lisbeth listened to the deep rhythmic satisfaction of her husband’s respirations and suddenly remembered Maggie. She carefully lifted Cyprian’s fingers. The sticky sea breeze whisked away the warmth of his touch and this moment of security. Fighting the temptation to stay put and return his palm to her belly, she rose and gathered their scattered clothes, dressed hurriedly, then covered Cyprian with Caecilianus’s toga.

Lisbeth retrieved the bishop’s hat tumbling in the waves farther downshore. She shook out the sand, returned to the shelter, and placed the limp felt beside Cyprian’s peaceful face. No matter how much she wished otherwise, the toga and the hat suited him. As did the office of bishop. Ruth was right. Cyprian was the perfect man to restore the church of Carthage. To ask Cyprian to become anything other than the strong leader the church needed would be like asking her to stop thinking and acting like a doctor.

She couldn’t possibly ask him to leave.

*   *   *

LISBETH WAS
fresh from the bath when the door to her chamber banged open. “Tabari?”

Her mother’s friend struggled for breath, her eyes urgent and her hands waving. “Magdalena needs the bone saw.”

Lisbeth’s heart rate quickened. “What has Aspasius done to her?”

Two soldiers stepped from behind the door and shoved Tabari out of the room. “Come with us.”

Lisbeth recognized the redheaded one ordering her about as the same soldier who’d taken Mama.

There was no way Lisbeth wanted to help that monster holding her mother captive. On the other hand, there was no way she would miss this unexpected opportunity to rescue Mama. She couldn’t believe that God had opened this door and opened it so fast.

“I need my backpack.”

“Get it.”

She ran to the chest beside the bed and snatched up everything she could cram into her bag. “I need the herbs from the cupboard in the kitchen.” There weren’t many left, but she’d take what she had just in case.

“No.”

“I don’t know what’s wrong or what I’ll need.” She added flint to her voice. “You want the proconsul to die because you didn’t let me bring the right drugs?”

The redhead weighed her request. “Make it fast.”

“If you haven’t had measles you might not want to follow me.”

“Move it.” Their hobnailed boots clicked on the tiles as they trailed her to the kitchen.

Maggie’s laughter floated down the hall. Lisbeth panicked. Soldiers dragging her off would scare Maggie to death. That was not the last memory she wanted left in her daughter’s mind.

“Wait out here. I don’t want to have to explain things.”

The redhead grabbed Tabari and held his dagger to her throat. “Try to get away, and she won’t be the only one who dies.”

“Just give me a minute.”

Lisbeth found Maggie and Junia helping Naomi roll out barley rounds.

“Look, Mommy.” Maggie held up a circular piece of dough. “If you stab the bread with a fork it doesn’t puff up in the oven.” Maggie’s smile was a deflating prick to Lisbeth’s courage. “You look pretty, Mommy.”

What if this was a trap? She could be walking into an ambush. Then what would happen to Maggie?

Lisbeth’s chest constricted, and for a moment she couldn’t breathe.

“You okay, Mommy?”

She moved to block Maggie from seeing the glint of the soldier’s blade. Mama wouldn’t want her to leave Maggie, no matter what kind of evil Aspasius was inflicting on her. But if Lisbeth didn’t go, that ambitious soldier would kill all of them right now and probably be rewarded for it.

Options raced through her mind. The fire poker was the only available weapon. Her attempt to defend them would put Maggie and Naomi directly in harm’s way. She could scream. Draw Cyprian into the fight. But without a sword, he’d quickly be cut to bits.

In the end, she conceded, her only option was to give herself up to Aspasius and pray she had the opportunity to beg for Cyprian’s life. Lisbeth had been raised by her father. If Cyprian was free, Maggie could be raised by hers. She’d rather have her daughter grow up without a mother than not get the chance to grow up.

“Can I go with you, Mommy?”

“Not this time, baby.” Lisbeth pulled her backpack tight to
conceal the cracks forming in her resolve not to snatch her child and run.

She opened the herb cupboard. Besides her backpack and an extra dose of courage, she wasn’t sure what she needed. She grabbed a few bundles of eucalyptus and crammed them in her bag. “Naomi, I’m going out for supplies.”

Naomi’s face puzzled. “Is Cyprian going with you?”

“No.” Lisbeth closed the cabinet. “He’s busy getting the church back on track and shouldn’t be disturbed.”

“What about Barek? You shouldn’t go alone.”

“You need the help here.” Steeling herself at the prospect of leaving Maggie, Lisbeth gathered her daughter and held her tightly. “I love you, baby.”

“Mommy, I can’t breathe.”

“I’m so sorry. For everything.” Swallowing tears, Lisbeth squeezed one last time. “No matter what, never forget I love you.” She kissed her daughter’s cheek. “You take care of Daddy, okay?” Lisbeth willed herself out the door without a backward glance.

*   *   *

ASPASIUS HAD
doubled the guards throughout the city, but from the eerie silence there was no reason. Corpses left unburied in the streets weren’t going to cause any trouble, and the occasional old man crouched in a shady corner wasn’t healthy enough to raise a ruckus or rally an uprising. As for the rest, those who weren’t covered in rashes or stuck on the latrine were too frightened to come out of their houses.

The soldiers took Lisbeth and Tabari to the front entrance of the palace where a retinue of bored troops entertained themselves with a game, throwing dice carved from the anklebones of goats against the outer courtyard fence. Lisbeth felt their leering gaze.

The redhead shoved them into the atrium. “Remember, we’re right outside.”

She and Tabari hurried past the birdcages. The click of Lisbeth’s sandals, along with the terrifying memories of the last time she was in this place, followed them down the hall. If her mother hadn’t risked everything to save her six years ago, she would be the one trapped in Aspasius’s bedroom.

Tabari knocked on a heavy oak door. Lisbeth could hear muted voices and the shuffle of feet.

Pytros peered into the hall. When it registered who had come knocking, he threw the door open. “Finally.”