Return to Exile

by Lynne Gentry

  Magdalena appeared at his side. Her anxious breath formed pale clouds in the gathering dark. She held out a strip of cloth. “Cover your nose and mouth. Touch nothing, especially the dead.”

  Faces covered, they watched linkboys carrying torches along the wall’s thick ledge, lighting lamps that circled the city in an eerie yellow halo. Amid the growing buzz of anxiety, wagon handlers took their places at the reins, trying to calm the animals that stamped and pulled against the yokes to get on with whatever awaited them in the city. A groan from inside the massive gates signaled the lifting of the large wooden beam from the metal locking arms.

  The gates swung open. A putrid plume of air swooshed over the waiting crowd.

  “Death!” someone shouted. “Death!”

  Women gasped. Mules shied, backing into the carts behind them. Burly oxen drivers grabbed their noses, tears streaming down their faces like babies. A few drivers vomited upon the cobblestones. Though ten wagons stood between Cyprian and the open gates, he caught a glimpse of the horror awaiting his return. He reached to steady Magdalena, but it was he who needed ­steadying.

  “Move out!” Soldiers from the customs tent spurred their horses. “Move it, plebs.”

  One by one the wagons lurched into motion.

  Cyprian’s bare feet trod the stones worn smooth by those who’d come and gone through this gate for centuries. Abandoned water jugs, torn pieces of garments, and smashed baskets littered the boulevard flanked with a bevy of inns, taverns, and brothels. Large arched doorways extended the full width of each business and opened straight onto the street. Instead of the usual flurry of ruffians and men bent on satisfying themselves with the boldly dressed prostitutes, folding wooden shutters were drawn across the windows and thresholds, bolted tight. Carthage was no longer the shiny jewel in the empire’s crown.

  Bloated bodies stacked two and three high blocked most of the doors. Ravenous maggots, undeterred by the cooler temperatures, plundered the carcasses with the intensity of an invading army. Cyprian wondered if there were any patrons left to navigate the putrid mess. Why would Aspasius allow the stink of rotting flesh to defile his city, or more importantly, to shut down the lucrative trades of a shipping port?

  Several wagons back, Cyprian could hear someone slap the reins. A nervous team of mules shot forward, trampling any carts in the way and coming straight at them. In an instant, Cyprian grabbed Magdalena and pressed her into the nearest doorway. The bar’s door was not completely shut. Together, they stumbled inside, tripping across what felt like a stiffened body. The stench they’d endured outside paled compared to the overwhelming odor of death trapped inside these walls.

  “Let’s get out of here.” Cyprian latched onto Magdalena’s elbow.

  They heard a whimper and froze. Straining to hear it again, they listened with every nerve on high alert. Then it came again. No louder than the mewing of a stable kitten.

  “The sleeping loft.” Magdalena started toward a rickety ladder that led to a stone ledge.

  “Stay here.” Cyprian wove through the racks of dried herbs and empty wine casks and climbed to the loft. He peered over the dusty floorboards. A small child huddled on a filthy sleeping mat with his knees pulled to his chest. “What’s your name, boy?”

  “Horace.”

  “What has happened here, Horace?”

  “Sickness.” The boy coughed as though his insides were trying to escape.

  Cyprian backed two steps down the ladder. “He has the rash.”

  “We can’t leave him.” Magdalena blocked his retreat. “Let me get him.”

  A sick child was not what they needed, but he couldn’t leave him. “Be quick.”

  They traded places, and Magdalena motioned the boy to her. “It’s all right, Horace. Take my hand.” Pretty soon Horace’s legs dangled over the ledge. Magdalena gathered him into her arms and backed down the stairs. “Whatever you do, Cyprian, don’t come closer.”

  Boy in tow, they quickly withdrew.

  Cyprian burst onto the street and pulled down his mask, gasping for fresh air and finding none out on the street. “Lisbeth would not have gone if she knew how bad things would get.”

  “I gave her no choice.” Magdalena motioned for him to bring his mask to his nose. She lifted a corner of the tarp on the opposite side of the cart from where Laurentius hid and slid the boy inside. She told the child to say nothing, then covered his splotchy red face. “We should cut through the tenements.”

  At the first side street they encountered, Pontius led them off the main thoroughfare. Progress was slow through the narrow alleys. Since few in the slums could afford the luxury of lamp oil, the streets were black as the sea on a moonless night. Cyprian would have abandoned the cart were it not for his concern that Laurentius and their new charge would be unable to finish the journey on foot.

  Near the heart of the ghetto, they encountered a small group of people huddled around a fire pit. Dressed in rags, the peasants warmed their hands near glowing embers. Only one woman turned to see who dared come this way. Her face drawn and eyes blank, she clutched a bundle in her arms.

  Cyprian halted the wagon. Pontius and Magdalena exchanged worried looks. The dogs flanked Cyprian, low growls in the backs of their throats.

  “She has a child.” Cyprian reached under the tarp.

  Magdalena stayed his hand before he could withdraw a sack of grain. “What are you doing?”

  “They’re starving.”

  She lowered her chin and moved close. “They’ll storm the wagon.”

  His eyes darted from the tarp to the group huddled around the fire. “But her child—”

  “I’ll come back tomorrow,” Magdalena said. “Bring only the bread I can carry. When it’s gone, it’s gone.”

  “Same as you couldn’t leave the boy, I can’t leave them,” Cyprian argued.

  “Save a few? Or save many?”

  Magdalena was right. He must not forget why he had returned. A riot in the slums would bring the soldiers. Aspasius would have him nailed to a cross before the sun came up.

  Cyprian clicked the reins, and they moved on. The tenement dwellers gathered around the fire didn’t even bother to pursue them.

  Thirty minutes later, the wrought-iron gates to Cyprian’s villa came into view. He couldn’t help but pick up the pace. It was foolish to think Lisbeth had somehow returned, yet he burst through the front door calling her name as he had done in his dreams.

  A small lamp burned in the atrium, illuminating the pallets that surrounded the fountain. Every bed was full.

  “Cyprian?” A petite blond woman who’d been resting beside one of the beds scrambled to her feet. “It is you! I prayed you would come. Thank God you’re home.” Ruth flew into his arms.

  He held her sobbing frame. She was much thinner than he remembered, but then so was he. This past year had been hard on everyone. “Where’s Barek? Is he safe?”

  She wiped her cheeks, but the dark circles remained under her eyes. “We’ve run out of room, so we had to set up our living quarters in the gardener’s cottage.” She assured those who’d roused from their beds that it was safe to go back to sleep. Then she noticed Magdalena. “Oh, my friend. I thought we’d lost you forever.”

  The two women hugged.

  “You shouldn’t have returned, but I’m so glad you have.” Ruth waved at the line of beds stretching the full length of the hall. “Sometimes I don’t know what to do for them.”

  “I should never have left you.” Magdalena wrapped her arm around Ruth’s shoulders. “You look as though you could use a bit of rest yourself.”

  “My feet are nearly as worn as my heart. So much death and sorrow.” Ruth turned to Cyprian. “I pray you don’t mind that I took over your home. After my husband’s death, we didn’t know where else to go, and the sick just kept coming.”

  “My home will always be your home, just as I promised our dear Caecilianus.”

  A guarded look passed over Ruth’s face, one that warn
ed of trouble. “Your home may not be yours for long. I’ve heard rumors that the moment your exile ship cleared our harbor the proconsul set to work securing the senatorial votes needed to confiscate your property. Once he finally forces your father’s powerful friends to give in, he will bring an army crashing through your door.”

  “Let him come. I intend to be ready.” Cyprian peeled off his dirty cloak. “Until then, no one must know of my return.”

  5

  Dallas, Texas

  LISBETH SAT IN THE blue glow of a hospital computer, staring at the CDC’s spreadsheet. The latest entry on the growing list of victims was a boy about Maggie’s age. If she couldn’t figure out how this child fit into her mathematical model, she couldn’t pinpoint the source of his infection or calculate how many potentially infected people had yet to present themselves for treatment. In a highly mobile world, one person could easily come in contact with several people who, for a multitude of possible reasons, had not been vaccinated.

  Effective control was what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention team considered themselves … the cavalry charging in to save the day.

  Less than forty-eight hours after the first official measles death, the CDC had swooped in with their black gear bags loaded with Kevlar-reinforced gloves and Tyvek body bags. They’d set up a fully operational command center in the hospital’s emergency room, taken over the morgue and the postmortems, and declared a state of voluntary quarantine for every unvaccinated person who’d come in contact with the dead or the ill still in isolation. Medical personnel were included in this sequester, which meant adding folding cots in the break rooms and on-call suites. If the viral samples, urine specimens, and throat swabs sent off to the national labs confirmed a measles outbreak, which Lisbeth felt certain they would, dealing with a mandatory quarantine would keep her away from Maggie for days.

  Lisbeth gulped down the dregs of cold coffee. The CDC hadn’t been in camp twenty-four hours, and they’d already created a landfill of paperwork. After a bitter run-in with the team’s arrogant leader, she’d been denied access to the autopsies and tasked with the tedious job of digging through the statistics. She took a file from the top of the heap and began inputting the extensive immunization histories and chains of contact information she’d collected from the five new admissions in isolation.

  A rumbling down the hall alerted her to her chance to get back into the action.

  “Dr. Pruda?”

  The CDC’s chief of infectious diseases stopped before her desk and gazed over the top of his glasses. “Dr. Hastings?”

  She wasn’t necessarily expecting a Roman noble, but every time the government’s self-assured epidemiologist with the intense bedroom eyes and broad shoulders entered her space, her mind automatically dressed the hunk in a toga, despite how off-putting his manners were. She quickly blinked away the image. Since her return to the twenty-first century, she’d begrudgingly agreed to a couple of blind dates her old roommate Queenie had arranged, but she’d never let any progress to a second date. In her heart, she was still married, even if her spouse was technically long gone.

  “Have you had time to review my case notes?” she asked.

  He remained on the opposite side of the counter, keeping a safe distance between him and anything that might be contaminated. Including her. His triple-gloved hands clutched a stack of charts. “Measles are extremely rare in the United States. Most clinicians have never seen measles, especially people our age. What led you to make this particular diagnosis?”

  “I’ve seen measles before.”

  “Really?” His dark brows rose. “Where?”

  Dr. Pruda wouldn’t believe the horrors of third-century Carthage even if she could find the right words to describe the suffering she’d witnessed in that place. If it wasn’t for the charcoal brazier scar on her wrist and the pregnancy stretch marks on her belly, she wouldn’t believe the impossible story either.

  Lisbeth tugged her white coat sleeve over the fading mark just above her watch band. “North Africa.”

  “When and where exactly?”

  “My father’s an archaeologist. I grew up traveling from one desert hole to the next. I’m not sure exactly where. Why?”

  “The lab results are back.” He offered a piece of paper for her review. “Seems your diagnosis was correct.” Dr. Pruda leaned in. A hint of something powerful and musky penetrated her own mask and hit her nose. “Measles is the most highly infectious virus known to man, aerosolized with a simple cough. It’s easy for an infected person who’s not yet covered in the telltale rash to get past airport security. Put one hundred unvaccinated people on a plane, let that infected person cough, and ninety people onboard will contract the disease.”

  Lisbeth’s racing mind surpassed her galloping heart. “Are you ordering mandatory vaccinations?” It was what she would do to control the possibility of a few cases becoming an epidemic, but she was just a novice infectious disease specialist. Dr. Pruda, though no more than five years her senior, was the only one with the clout to sound that governmental alarm.

  He straightened, his expression condescending. “What is rule number one of outbreak management?”

  “Avoid full-scale panic.”

  “Fear spreads faster than fevers.” His charcoal eyes turned hard and drilled into her over his mask. “Communicable diseases are never entirely absent from the community. There will always be sporadic cases and minor outbreaks like what we have now. We’ve not nearly enough information yet to jump to conclusions.” Dr. Pruda tapped the back of her computer screen. “I shouldn’t have to explain to someone with your brilliant reputation the importance of managing this situation to avoid a fluke transmission becoming a large-scale panic that leads to an epidemic when the public tries to flee the area. Isolation, quarantine, and making sure the press doesn’t catch wind of this will be our first lines of defense.” He’d spoken precisely—every word sifted through a filter, stripped of any contaminants before released into the atmosphere.

  “Wait a minute. That’s it? Keeping this out of the news is the best you’ve got?” Lisbeth pushed away from the computer, unwilling to have the urgency of this situation dismissed because of politics. “You might as well toss us into the third century with nothing more than a homemade vaporizer and a few eucalyptus leaves.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Improving herd immunity by upping the numbers who’ve received viable vaccinations is our only line of defense. Trust me. I’ve tried every stopgap control you’ve suggested, and it didn’t work.”

  Suspicion hung in the disinfected silence, a knotted noose awaiting her neck. “Dr. Hastings, exactly when did you try this methodology?”

  How had she let something so stupid slip? Lisbeth clenched her jaw, fuming that she’d lost control, and lost it to this pompous weasel. “I meant, I’ve read several historical attempts at isolation and quarantine. You’re right. Those protocols reduced the transmission rates, but they didn’t stop them.”

  “But you have no practical experience managing even a small outbreak?”

  Sharing the details of how badly she’d handled being thrown into the terrifying experience of a third-century plague would do nothing for her credibility. Lisbeth swallowed and gave a slight shake of her head.

  “Well, Doctor, I do. And what I’m saying is this.” He took back his report. “We will work to achieve complete containment within forty-eight hours by sticking to our current protocol. Observe the quarantine, and treat our isolated patients as best we can.” He raised himself to his full six-foot-one height. “Do I make myself clear?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Lisbeth slumped into the desk chair and buried her face in her hands. Her mind traveled back eighteen hundred years to an exquisite villa by the Mediterranean Sea. The stench of fear and ­desperation filled the marbled halls. Twigs draped with strips of fabric, eucalyptus leaves floating in boiling water, and homemade hydration solutions had saved a few. But she’d been forced to l
eave long before she knew the true effectiveness of her efforts. She’d left the frightened people of Carthage to fend off an invading virus with nothing but their prayers. Was she overthinking things now out of guilt over the past? Was she making an outbreak into an ­epidemic in her mind because she’d been unable to forgive herself for deserting the people she’d grown to love?

  “Dr. Hastings?” The tap to Lisbeth’s shoulder startled her upright.

  “What is it, Nelda?”

  “Your father just tried to get past the command center.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “I hustled him outside and told him to wait there until you could come to him.”

  “Thanks.” After shedding her contaminated clothes, Lisbeth scrubbed her hands and arms with the vigilance of a surgeon headed into the OR, then suited up in a fresh paper gown, mask, cap, and gloves. She stuck a couple of extra masks in her scrub pocket, waited until the cop on door duty left for a bathroom break, then quickly slipped outside for the first time in days. A cold mist stung her eyes.

  “Maggie?” She fought the urge to run to her daughter. “Papa, you shouldn’t have brought my baby here.”

  “Wasn’t about to leave her home alone.”

  Maggie scooted behind Papa. “Stranger!” She clutched her Christmas doll with one hand and Papa’s legs with the other. “Stranger danger!”

  “Maggie, it’s me, Mommy.”

  Maggie peered around Papa’s leg. “Let me see your face.”

  A man with an umbrella hurried along the sidewalk, coughing as he passed their little huddle.

  “Hey, buddy, cover your mouth.” The man ignored Lisbeth’s direction and scurried inside the hospital without looking back. Lisbeth held out a mask to Maggie. “I can’t take my mask off, baby. In fact, you and G-Pa need to put these on.”

  “Why?” Maggie backed away, fear flashing in her saucer-wide eyes.