Return to Exile

by Lynne Gentry

  The sounds of a lone horseman crashing through the stalks came closer and closer. Neither man dared breathe. Less than a stone’s throw from where they hid, the soldier reined his mount. Hooves pawed the sandy soil, nervous and wary. Clouds of vapor huffed from the animal’s lowered nose as if he smelled the cornered prey that they were.

  “Easy.” The captain patted the horse’s neck, scanning the area with a trained eye.

  Booted footfalls approached the rider at a brisk pace. “These fields have already been plundered, sir,” one of the troops reported, his breath coming in short spurts. “There’s nothing for us here.”

  “Move out.” The captain wheeled his horse and cantered from the field with the entire patrol trotting after him.

  Not until the soldiers’ footfalls receded did Barek dare suck in air freely. Without a word, Pontius unwrapped their leftover cod. They devoured the cold fish and guzzled the last of the water from their hollowed gourd canteen.

  “Today the Lord has provided food, shelter, and safety.” Pontius dragged the back of his hand across his mouth. “With at least another night of hard travel ahead of us, we’ve no choice but to trust our tomorrow to him as well.” Prayers on his lips, Pontius curled into a ball and fell asleep with his back to the cave opening.

  Cyprian envied a faith that would allow a man to sleep with his back to possible danger. His own trust in God’s justice and ability to rectify the sorry state of his affairs wavered like the weak flames he and Pontius had huddled around in the swamps of Curubis. Cyprian scooted across the dusty cave floor. He inched his back as close to the stone walls as possible and kept his eyes on the mountains of home as he drifted to sleep.

  Several hours later, he awoke shivering and disoriented. Late afternoon shadows had lowered the cave’s temperature several ­degrees and turned his mountain a dark purple. Neck taut from his refusal to assume a relaxed position, his thoughts floated upon an angry sea of emotion.

  He’d been gone nearly a year. In that space of time, more than Lisbeth’s well-being could have changed. Did he still own his country estate? Aspasius had wanted more than Cyprian’s wife and good reputation. The proconsul needed Cyprian’s wealth to erase his lavish and foolish spending before Rome conducted an audit and removed him from office.

  Cyprian roused Pontius. In hungry silence they waited for the last golden rays of light to bleed from the day. Stiff from cramped quarters, they trudged through the night, bellies empty of nourishment and hearts full of worry. If Aspasius had used Cyprian’s time away to discover the many layers to Cyprian’s holdings they could be walking into a trap.

  “Lights.” Cyprian held out his arm to halt Pontius, his senses on high alert. “Could be trouble.”

  They ducked into the dry creekbed across from the wall surrounding a large country house and peered over its banks. Except for the wind sweeping down the mountain, the night was quiet. In the past, his country house had always seemed small and cramped, especially compared to his expansive city villa with its wide marbled terraces overlooking the port of Carthage. Now, as Cyprian struggled to take in the sight of his favorite rustic retreat, he realized the days he’d spent living in a small lean-to had magically transformed this modest stone house into a palace. A flicker of an oil lamp breached the shutter slats of a second-floor window.

  “Who occupies Bou Kornine this time of year?” Pontius whispered.

  “Probably just the caretaker.” Cyprian snagged a broken branch.

  “Generous with your oil, don’t you think?” Pontius found a stick, too. “Why would Silas be awake at this hour?”

  Two shadows crossed the shutters. “Only one way to find out.” Cyprian crept from their hiding place clutching his makeshift club.

  They climbed the stone wall to avoid the squeak of rusty gate hinges and landed feetfirst on the courtyard’s hard-packed earth. Growling came from the shadows. Clubs poised and ready, Cyprian and Pontius prepared for battle. Two dogs sprang from the shadows and quickly surrounded them, howling and nipping at their scratched and bruised legs. The door of the villa opened a crack. A faint shaft of light slit the darkness.

  “Who’s there?” The woman’s voice sounded more tired than frightened.

  “Travelers.” Cyprian shook a dog from the frayed hem of his tunic. “In need of food and lodging.”

  “We’re not allowed to offer assistance, sir. Be on your way.”

  “By whose orders?” Cyprian demanded.

  “The proconsul of Carthage.” The woman’s bold reply had the ring of familiarity.

  The dogs objected to Cyprian’s attempted advance, forcing him to shout toward the eyes peering out at him. “Since when does the proconsul control the larders of private citizens?”

  “Cyprian? Is that you?” The door swung open, and a small woman flew at him, her arms around his neck before he had time to withdraw. “I prayed for your return.”

  “Magdalena?” Cyprian dropped his stick and held his sobbing mother-in-law, hope blossoming in his chest despite himself. “What are you doing here? Are you all right? Is Lisbeth with you?”

  She released her hold on him and wiped at her tears. “Come. You must not be seen, especially not with me.” She took his hand and led him toward the house.

  “I hate to break up this touching reunion”—Pontius shook his leg—“but could someone call off these dogs?”

  Magdalena whistled, and the dogs charged inside. Once the healer had everyone safely behind closed doors she quickly went to work preparing a fire in the hearth. “No need to worry. Aspasius doesn’t know about this place.” Flickering light revealed pink scars across her face.

  “What are you doing here?” Cyprian surveyed the kitchen where he’d once spent so much time watching the cooks prepare meat pies and wondered who had used Magdalena’s face as a cutting board. “Where’s Lisbeth?”

  “When my master learned what I’d done, he beat me.” She cracked a piece of kindling over her knee. “Before he could sentence me to die in the arena, I took what was mine and left through the tunnels.” She waved to the person hiding in the shadows.

  Cyprian’s gaze eagerly swung in the same direction. “Lisbeth?”

  Magdalena shook her head. “You can come out, Laurentius. It’s safe.” Her son, a slump-shouldered young man with thinning tufts of hair and clubbed fingers, shuffled into the room. Even with the boy’s chin resting upon his chest, Cyprian recognized Lisbeth’s simpleminded half brother. Laurentius had won his heart as well as Lisbeth’s with his sunny smile and gift for art, but Cyprian couldn’t help deflating with disappointment.

  “You remember Cyprian. Don’t you, Laurentius?”

  “Thyprian and Lithbutt.” The boy raised his chin long enough to give Cyprian a brief peek into his almond-shaped eyes. “My favorith.”

  Cyprian wrapped him in a hug. “Good to see you, my man.”

  Magdalena relieved Pontius of the long stick he still clutched and gave it to Laurentius. “Can you tend the fire for me, son?” Once Laurentius was occupied, she turned her attention back to Cyprian. “Laurentius and I managed to make it to your villa. If we’d stayed in Carthage, Aspasius would have found us, and I didn’t want to endanger Ruth and Barek. Ruth gave us two of the bishop’s dogs and suggested we hide in your summer home in the mountains.” She tossed him a guarded look. “I hope you don’t mind.”

  “No. This is the perfect place for you.”

  “Not really.” Magdalena brushed wood shavings from her hands and set to work removing the gauzy cloth from a round of cheese. “Ruth needs me, especially since she grieves the death of Caecilianus. Barek’s there to help her with the hospital Lisbeth set up, but the plague is spreading so fast they can’t possibly meet the demands.”

  The stench of bodies in the tenements had been one of the reasons for Cyprian’s attempt to remove Aspasius from office. Without a healthy workforce, Carthage would never be restored to the commanding port it had once been. It appeared that Aspasius’s rejection of his p
roposals to at least repair the aqueducts and restore running water to every home in the city had facilitated an unstoppable spread of a sickness. If the ship that had limped into Curubis was any indication of what was to come, the sickness could destroy more than just Carthage. The entire empire was at risk because of one man’s folly.

  “And Lisbeth?” Her name hung in his throat. “Did she manage to escape Aspasius as well?”

  Magdalena took his hand. “Sit.”

  Something about her tone immediately unsettled him, but Cyprian did as she commanded. “These long months have been almost more than I can bear. Tell me.”

  Magdalena carefully poured a cup of wine for him and another for Pontius. It seemed her effort to seal the crock took longer than necessary. Just when Cyprian thought he could stand her silence no longer, she wiped her hands on her woolen tunic and looked him straight in the eye. “My daughter is free.”

  “Thank God!” Cyprian picked Magdalena up and spun her around.

  Pontius raised his glass. “How did you manage it?”

  “It wasn’t easy,” Magdalena admitted.

  “What matters is my wife’s safety.” Cyprian couldn’t quit grinning. “You took her to Ruth, right? She’ll be a great help to Ruth, I’m sure.”

  “She would be, if she were there … but …”

  Cyprian set her down. He took a step back, bracing for whatever the year apart had dealt his beloved. “Tell me.”

  “I sent Lisbeth home.”

  4

  THROUGH THE SWIRL OF disbelief, Cyprian could see that time travel had cost Magdalena everything. Stranded for years in his world, she’d made the best of her situation, yet she’d never truly become one of them. She was a foreigner, a stranger held in place by the thin root of a sickly son. The increased stoop in her once proud shoulders indicated that the healer carried wounds deeper than the scars on her face. Lost freedom. A lost marriage. And now, the unbearable loss of a daughter after an all-too-brief reunion. Cyprian had no intention of inflicting more pain, yet the shock of what she’d just told him stung. Rang in his ears.

  His wife was gone. Shipped off to a world he could never reach. Dead to him forever.

  Magdalena would not have dispatched Lisbeth without good reason. He’d watched with great admiration the joy Magdalena took in working to rebuild the years she’d lost with her daughter. At first, Lisbeth had resisted any kind of reconciliation, too angry to forgive her mother’s abandonment. But once Lisbeth learned of Laurentius and understood Magdalena’s reason for staying, mother and daughter quickly became one in purpose. Working ­together so closely it seemed they’d been chiseled from the same piece of exquisite marble. Same hands. Same strength and determination. Same ability to care for others. He had no doubt that sending Lisbeth back to the place she’d be safe had cost Magdalena the last piece of her soul.

  Small consolation for his shattered heart.

  “We can’t stay here.” Magdalena touched his hand lightly, apology in her tone. “Aspasius claims the drought is the retribution of the gods, due punishment upon Romans willing to allow the nonsensical belief of the one God to spread and pollute their cities. For the most part, the Roman doctors have abandoned their wealthy charges. Some slaves have begun to flee to the country ­estates of their masters, taking disease with them.” She gazed at the sputtering oil lamp. “I thought you were someone seeking refuge in an abandoned estate.”

  “Where shall we go?” Pontius’s face flushed with concern.

  Without Lisbeth waiting for him in Carthage, where would Cyprian go? Whatever was left of his estate meant little to him now, and even if his fortune was somehow intact, no amount of gold could ever take his wife’s place. She’d quickly become everything to him in the short time they’d been together, and now there was nothing he could do to bring her back… . But he could avenge her loss.

  Cyprian rose. “The last place Aspasius will look: home.”

  • • •

  IT WAS late afternoon before they eventually reached the hewn cobblestones of one of Rome’s finest highways. The breeze sweeping off the sea had turned brisk and salty. Cyprian had tucked ­Laurentius beneath the tarp covering their cart. He worried jolting across the frozen ruts cut by the farm wagons would elicit ­protests from the boy. So far, though, he’d not heard a peep. Lisbeth’s younger brother was a tough little man.

  With each stone highway mile marker passed, Cyprian’s chest tightened. The paved road had been laid with the most direct path in mind, so it was not the added distance bothering him but the unusually high volume of traffic hurrying away from the city. Men and women loaded with bedrolls, clothing, and strings of dried vegetables hanging around their necks.

  If things were getting worse in Carthage, where were the litters and slave entourages of the rich? Cyprian considered stopping someone to ask about the conditions they’d left behind, but then he decided against stirring suspicion.

  The closer they came to the city, the more congested the road. At this rate they would not arrive at the city until dusk. Then they would be forced to wait for the gates to open with the other wheeled traffic banned from the urban streets during daylight hours. Milling among the traders increased their risk of being recognized. Although Cyprian’s exile had seemed an eternity to him, it wasn’t that long ago that he’d had a sketched likeness of himself commissioned. His face had decorated campaign banners hanging from every lamppost along the colonnade. He could not count on his unkempt hair, beard, and weight loss to prevent his being easily recognized.

  But even riskier than his discovery was the fact that someone might recognize Magdalena. For years, this striking woman had been a regular in the private arena and theater boxes of the city’s most hated man. Though she’d secretly carried out her work among the poor and sick in the tenements, the curative powers of the healer’s unusual methods had become legendary. People talked. Magdalena Hastings was far more apt to be recognized than a disgraced politician, a fact that made Cyprian both proud and determined to be even more careful to conceal the precarious plan forming in his head. For Lisbeth’s sake, he could not allow harm to come to Magdalena.

  Lisbeth. Gone.

  Of all the unspeakable things he’d dreamed could have happened to his beloved wife, returning to her time had never occurred to him. Of course, Magdalena was right to send her back. Lisbeth had to go home. In truth, he’d known of that possibility from the moment she’d shared her identity. Much as Lisbeth had tried to fit in, her destiny rested in the future, not in the past, the past to which he was forever bound. If only he had a way of contacting his wife in the future, of letting her know her family was safe and would be well cared for, then perhaps Lisbeth could go on, free to live a full and happy life, in her time, in her different world. Go on to become the doctor she was destined to be without worry or regret.

  Once he’d recovered from the initial shock of losing Lisbeth forever, Magdalena had tried to reassure him that he would still go on to walk the path God had set before him. But how? A life of sorrow was no life. Bitterness spread a poisonous ache through his tired limbs.

  “Soldiers,” Pontius warned under his breath. “We’ll be required to pay tribute at the customs station.”

  A soldier flicking the reins of a fine black horse with the legion’s brand seared into its flank spurred his beast close enough to trample their feet. “Fall out and pay your tax.”

  Cyprian dropped his head to avoid recognition, his temperature rising at the injustice of having to sneak back into the city that had once embraced him. In the space of a year he’d lost his position, his wife, and the last of his self-respect. He joined the line waiting at the official tent erected to fleece anyone brave enough to enter the diseased city.

  “State your business in Carthage.” The government agent’s seal ring flashed on his left hand as he used his right to press numbers into a wax slate with a sharp stylus.

  “Commerce.”

  The agent scribbled down the answer without l
ooking up. “And what do you intend to sell?”

  “Grain.”

  The agent raised his stylus. “Who has grain left to sell?”

  Cyprian recalled the parched fields of the Cap Bon peninsula. The few sacks of grain he’d brought from his country estate would scarcely put a dent in the needs of Carthage. “To the east the rains have been generous.” God forgive him, but now he’d lost his integrity, too.

  “Increased harvest?” The agent’s eyes slid from Cyprian’s head to the money pouch Cyprian had purposefully attached to the ­outside of his belt. “Increased tariff.”

  Cyprian put his hand to his belt, struggling to maintain his cool facade. “Shall you tax my virtue as well?”

  “Smart-mouthed cur.” The agent dropped his stylus and reared back to strike. “You’ll pay more than coin.”

  Pontius appeared from nowhere and leaped between them, his palms raised to show himself unarmed. “Sir, our only wish is to fill the empty bellies of the empire.” He slipped the man a few extra coins, then pulled Cyprian back to their wagon. “What were you thinking, angering the agent? We have no papers, nothing granting us safe passage. The spies of Aspasius are everywhere.”

  Cyprian broke free of Pontius’s grasp. “It’s not right.” The source of his fury was not really that he’d been denied respect; rather, it was his struggle to reconcile the life that now was with the life he’d once hoped to have. “But you’re right, Pontius. We’ve trouble enough.” Cyprian stomped to the wagon and busied himself tightening the straps on the load.

  In the thickening gray dusk, they waited with the wagon handlers, tillers of soil, and tradesmen milling outside the massive stone walls. Fear-tinged murmurs echoed Cyprian’s own thoughts. What would they find once they entered the city? Would Aspasius wait with an executioner’s sword? Was he a fool to go in while others rushed out? Especially now that Lisbeth was gone. If Caecilianus were here, he’d second Pontius’s lectures on the futility of vengeance.