Return to Exile

by Lynne Gentry

  Magdalena had been his slave for more than two decades, and somehow she’d managed to keep her dalliances with the Christians a secret. How could he have been so stupid? How could he have overlooked her treachery? Somehow, in some way, he would make every treasonous heretic who’d received her help pay for what rightfully belonged to him.

  With a pleased chuckle, Aspasius drew his robe closed and shuffled to the double doors leading to his marble balcony. He stepped into the clear, crisp night. To view his city from a god’s perspective was a privilege and an obligation he took seriously.

  He would not lament Magdalena’s unexpected disappearance. No matter how much it angered him. No matter how betrayed and alone he felt. He did not miss her far-too-thin body in his bed any more than he missed her sharp tongue and the eternal judgment smoldering in her eyes. Being rid of her was actually a relief. No longer would her observations about his inability to rule the unsettled masses make him feel the fool.

  If anyone inquired of her whereabouts, he would say she and her high-strung daughter had died at their own hands.

  In the meantime, he would secretly have them both found, returned to him, and Magdalena put to death for separating him from Lisbeth Thascius. He considered Cyprian’s wife the spoils of war. As ruler of this province, he had the right to claim the property of any convicted war criminal. He intended to claim it all. First, Cyprian’s vast estate, and then his wife.

  A voice broke through his thoughts. “Master, you’ll catch your death out here.” Pytros came to him and draped a fur across his shoulders. “Come in and warm yourself.”

  “Tell me again what Felicissimus said.” Aspasius turned to look at his scribe. “Is Cyprian’s estate still occupied?”

  “I had to remind him of his obligations before he was forthcoming with information.” Pytros brushed lint from his robe. “Sick plebs from the tenements have flooded the nobleman’s villa.”

  “It’s been more than a year. Why do the masses still flock to his halls?” he demanded. “What could possibly still draw them there? Are you sure Cyprian has not returned home? Perhaps slipped in behind my back?”

  “Felicissimus would neither confirm nor deny my inquiry.”

  “What other explanation could there be for the stream of plebs who go in and out? Someone is accessing the money that keeps them fed.”

  “I do know the poor go to the home of Cyprian for medical care as well.”

  “Healing?” It infuriated him to think Cyprian could have been under his nose all this time, but the possibility that Magdalena and her daughter might have been hiding in plain sight as well made him want to hit someone. He turned to Pytros. “Is Magdalena acting as their healer?”

  “I don’t think so.” His scribe shrugged. “Felicissimus pleads ignorance, and you know he has no love lost for her. He’d be only too happy to tell you of her whereabouts if he knew.”

  “Ignorance is something the slave trader does not have to plead.”

  “It took me a while, but I finally persuaded Cyprian’s neighbor to talk.”

  Aspasius cast a pleased smile at his scribe. “And?”

  “He said the pretty widow of that Christian bishop you beheaded returned to Cyprian’s villa the very next day. Perhaps she is the reason sick plebeians come and go all through the night.”

  “Why was this neighbor willing to speak against the house of Thascius?”

  “He fears having the slum sickness in his part of town.”

  “Are any of these plebs Christians?”

  “So far, the neighbor denies any knowledge of Cyprian’s presence or of seeing Christians meeting in the home.”

  “Did you remind him that aiding Christians and heretics is punishable by death?”

  “I did. Yet he had no proof that Caecilianus’s wife is teaching her husband’s treasonous ways. For all we know, the bishop’s widow is a bored and lonely squatter.”

  “No one renders charitable aid for their own entertainment.” He wagged his finger before Pytros’s nose. “Treating the poor with the same respect due the wealthy smacks of Christianity.”

  “What are you going to do? If Cyprian is already home, he could be gathering supporters as we speak. Waiting for the perfect time to attack.”

  “If he overthrows my rule, whether I followed Valerian’s edict will be a moot point.” Aspasius thought a moment. “I’ve been extraordinarily patient about taking what is lawfully mine. I can’t afford to lose what’s left of my plebeian workforce if they switch their loyalties to some woman curing their fevers in the house of a noble flaunting his misplaced allegiance. This traitor and his healer will have to die.”

  “Crucify the widow giving desperate citizens a respite from death, and you’ll have riots.” Pytros clutched his robe. “Martyr the man most call a saint, and it will be political suicide.”

  Aspasius peered over the balcony railing. Silvery light illuminated the decks of the empty ships moored in his glorious harbor. In the past, he’d always found the moment the winter winds changed direction intoxicating. He loved standing on his terrace and issuing the command that unfurled a fleet of scarlet sails that would carry the wealth of Africa to the far reaches of the empire. Wealth his leadership and vision had amassed. Wealth sure to bring him the attention and affirmation of the emperor. Wealth that would allow the entire Mediterranean to be shaped to his will. He would not allow a little group of rabble-rousers to take this right from him.

  A ring of fire still glowed along his city’s walls. But to his dismay, inside the walls, darkened brothels lined the port streets. Before the harbor closed for the winter, he’d stationed soldiers at the gangplanks to push any arriving sailors hot with fever into the sea. The efforts had done little to slow the spread of the wicked red rash killing the prostitutes. To the west, large portions of the city, including most of the slums, suffered in darkness.

  Just as Cyprian had predicted, a fact that only served to irritate Aspasius more, half of the city’s workforce was either dead or too weak to work. Restoration of the aqueducts had nearly halted. Without proper sanitation, Cyprian’s neighbor was right. The sickness might very well crawl out of the slums and make its way into the homes of the wealthy.

  Aspasius rubbed his chin. He could not afford to lose a single coin from the higher-income tax bracket. Every denarius was needed if he was to fulfill his destiny.

  Truth was, at his feet lay a poor, torn, and wounded Carthage—he would not desert her now.

  If Magdalena were here, she would tell him what to do. Offer treatments that would help him stop the siege laying waste to his city. Sometimes late at night he could hear her voice echoing through the corridors, an apparition sent by the gods to haunt him. Once he even raced room to room searching for her, only to find her lamp dark and her bed cold.

  No! He would stop this foolish remembering and think for himself, for even after she was found he would not take her into his confidence ever again. For all his blustering threats to confiscate senatorial properties, the best diplomatic course of action by which he could seize Cyprian’s estate had not presented itself … until now.

  “If Cyprian has laid low this long, he must not know that I am obligated to send a ship for his recall. I believe I’ll let him think it is not safe to show his face in Carthage a while longer.”

  “So you’re going to allow your enemy the freedom to rally his followers into an army?”

  “I must not do anything that would alert Cyprian’s supporters in the Senate. I don’t need his father’s old friends siding with him.” Aspasius steepled his fingers and thought. “Rather than attack the widow’s little group from the outside and cause unnecessary hostilities, what if I destroy the movement from the inside?”

  “Divide and conquer.”

  “Yes.” Excitement pulsed in Aspasius’s veins. “Once those sickly little Christians scatter like rats, Cyprian will have to go deeper into hiding to regroup. Then I can move in and claim his property officially deserted, and there isn�
��t a thing any of Cyprian’s old friends can do to stop me.”

  “And how do you intend to accomplish this division?”

  “Fetch Felicissimus.”

  14

  AS REUNIONS GO, THE painful and uncomfortable silence crowding the courtyard was not the heartwarming welcome Lisbeth had envisioned. Tension crackled in the sooty smoke of the single lamp. Ruth, whom Lisbeth had never seen go more than two minutes without saying something, stood mute, her hands woven into a shield over her soccer-ball-size belly. Cyprian’s hands hung limp at his side. His feet refused to take even the smallest step in Lisbeth’s direction. Only his gaze registered any movement, and it was the wild-eyed dart of an animal caught in a trap.

  “Daddy! It’s me.” Maggie tugged on Cyprian’s sleeve. “Say something.”

  Maggie’s pleas cut through the rapid heart rhythm pounding in Lisbeth’s ears. Struggling to shake off the shock, she looked from Cyprian to Ruth and back to Cyprian.

  Her husband had given up on her and married her best friend. All this time, she’d imagined him wasting away in exile, fighting to return, and then bravely kneeling before the executioner. When she’d discovered her name missing from the historical records, it never occurred to her that Cyprian had cut his losses and moved on.

  “Daddy?” Maggie pulled on Cyprian’s hand. “Please,” she croaked, tears gathering behind her lashes. “We have the same eyes.” Any minute, the dam would break, and once Maggie lost it, there would be no stemming the tide.

  For Maggie’s sake, Lisbeth knew she’d have to get past the roadblock of Ruth’s pregnancy and the conflicted look on Cyprian’s face. She could fix this. Somehow. Some way. “Let’s give Daddy a minute, Maggie.” Lisbeth peeled her off.

  “I want my daddy!” Maggie wailed.

  “So do I.” Lisbeth picked her up. “Don’t cry, baby. Daddy and I will work this out.”

  “A daughter?” Cyprian whispered. “I didn’t know.”

  Of course he didn’t know. How could he know she would return with his five-year-old in tow? He hadn’t even known she was pregnant. She hadn’t discovered her pregnancy until she began throwing up in the twenty-first century. It wasn’t like she could send him a text or an Instagram shot of the first ultrasound. The fair thing would be to let him off the hook. To say it was perfectly natural for him to go on with his life. But in her heart, she’d harbored the foolish notion that somehow he would have known his love grew inside her. The same way he would have known she’d find a way to come back. That he, of all people, would never give up on her.

  “Lisbeth!” Mama emerged from the house. Lisbeth gasped, immediately aware of what her mother’s decision to stay behind had cost her. Aspasius had carved a permanent jokerlike smile on Magdalena’s face. “Lisbeth!” Mama pushed her way between Cyprian and Ruth. “I prayed I’d see my daughter again.”

  “Mama!” She set Maggie on the ground and ran to her mother’s open arms. “You’re alive!” She let her relief tumble out. “I saw the soldiers come and take you and Laurentius away from the well. I was afraid …”

  “Your brother’s fine.”

  “Thank God.”

  “Mommy?” Maggie tugged on her sleeve. “Who’s this?”

  “The woman you were named after. Your grandmother.” Lisbeth noticed the deep lines around her mother’s eyes soften, and suddenly her disfiguration didn’t seem so hideous. “Mama, this is Maggie. Your granddaughter.”

  Mama’s lips quivered. “A grandchild?” She dropped to her knees and framed Maggie’s face with her work-worn hands. “The Lord has blessed me beyond what I deserve.”

  Maggie stepped back warily. “What happened to her face?”

  “Love.” Mama answered before Lisbeth could think of an age-appropriate way to describe the horrors her mother had suffered on her behalf. “Love so deep for you and your mama I will never quit smiling.” Mama looked up at Lisbeth, tears streaming down her cheeks. “I see your courage in her beautiful eyes.” She lightly touched Maggie’s hair. “You are a brave one, aren’t you, Maggie?”

  “No. But I want to be.”

  “Then we shall learn together.”

  Maggie stepped forward and lightly traced Mama’s scar with her fingers. “I think your smile is pretty.”

  Years melted from Mama’s face. She kissed Maggie’s forehead. “Tell me what you like to do for fun, my little one.”

  “Draw!”

  Mama’s laughter hadn’t aged a bit. “Of course you do.” Mama stood and offered her hand. Maggie eagerly grabbed hold. “You’ll want to meet your uncle Laurentius. He has plenty of paper and ink.” Mama turned and instantly triaged the tension of the situation. “Ruth, why don’t you help me scrounge up some bread and cheese to celebrate? Naomi, I know you and Barek will want to help me welcome Maggie.”

  In Mama’s effective, take-charge way she cleared the courtyard, leaving Lisbeth and Cyprian alone to sort through their situation.

  Lisbeth and Cyprian stood there staring at each other, frozen in this gut-wrenching moment. Neither making a move to close the distance. A cold gust swept through the courtyard, bending the lamp’s small flame so low to the bowl it nearly sputtered out.

  Cyprian was the first to break the silence. “Magdalena said she sent you home.”

  If she had fought harder to stay or refused to go, none of this would be happening. “Against my will.”

  “She didn’t say you could come back.”

  “Then I guess I should have called before I dropped in.” The bite in her voice was a slap to his face she regretted.

  “Called?” Tolerance for her twenty-first-century sayings was gone, along with the ease they’d once shared.

  “Never mind.” Lisbeth hoped her rusty Latin meant she’d misunderstood Barek’s claim that Cyprian and Ruth were married. That all of this was some glitch in her calculations and that somehow Ruth had been pregnant with Caecilianus’s baby before he died and Cyprian had done the chivalrous thing and taken her in. She’d guess Ruth to be five or six months pregnant at the most. “So when did you get back?”

  “In the fall.”

  She couldn’t be sure of the current month, but judging from the chill, spring hadn’t made its appearance. She didn’t need the calculator app on her phone to know this baby was his. Cyprian must have married Ruth only a short while after his return from exile. Lisbeth felt her lip quiver. Had their marriage meant nothing to him? Had he always had secret feelings for Ruth, and now that she and Caecilianus were out of the way, seized his opportunity? No matter the reason, what he and Ruth had done hurt her feelings. Even worse, she’d put their daughter at risk for nothing, for a father who’d moved on, and that was harder to forgive than his betrayal.

  Lisbeth silently nursed the sting while waiting for Cyprian to explain why he hadn’t waited for her return.

  “I thought you were lost to me forever.” He reached for her hand, then changed his mind midextension and let his hand return to his side. “I’m sorry. I never intended this.”

  Of course, the man who’d given his life for hers would never hurt her on purpose. She knew that. He’d proven himself more than honorable. The Cyprian she’d married was the most loving, giving man she’d ever known. And she wanted to take that man back to the twenty-first century. Not this man who could only offer excuses. The constricting walls of her chest had made it impossible for her to do more than whisper, “Me either.”

  He started to speak, then retreated into the void. They stood there, listening to the mournful howl of the wind and watching the last bit of life hemorrhage from their relationship.

  What was left to discuss? History had not mentioned either woman in the accounts of Cyprian’s life. Some scholars even reported him celibate. Fighting over who was Cyprian’s real wife was foolish. Especially if his marriage to the bishop’s widow had somehow altered the timeline of political tensions and Carthage no longer had need of a selfless hero. Something had calmed Aspasius. Otherwise, why would the proconsul
leave Cyprian alone after his return from exile? If this reprieve meant Cyprian had been spared a martyr’s death, one of her most important reasons for being here had been eliminated.

  Cyprian’s marriage to Ruth had ended the second. She, Maggie, and Cyprian would never be the put-down-roots, stable kind of family she’d dreamed of. How his relationship with Maggie was going to look going forward would depend a lot on him.

  That just left eradicating this plague and taking Mama and Laurentius home. Okay, maybe an eradication plan was too grandiose when comparing her limited vaccination supply with the destruction she’d seen. But she wasn’t ready to concede that the virus may have multiplied beyond her ability to implement focused surveillance and mandatory quarantine. She could also increase survival rates by improving supportive care. The good thing about measles, if there was a good thing, was that survivors gained lifetime immunity. The faster she could reduce the number of viable hosts, the faster the virus would flame out. Lessening the plague duration would save many lives in the third century and eliminate heartaches for future centuries. She could only pray that her efforts this time around would somehow make up for having left these people the first time.

  She’d vaccinate whoever she could and get the hospital going again; then she’d gather Mama and Laurentius and shake the dust of Carthage from her shoes forever.

  “I brought medicine.” Lisbeth adjusted the weight of the backpack. “I guess I should go check on Maggie, then get started on the reason I came.”

  “Maggie” slipped from Cyprian’s lips. “After your mother.” In her dreams, Lisbeth had heard him say their daughter’s name many times. But never in a million years could she have predicted how the actual sound of his approval would tug at her heart. He smiled and whispered “Maggie” again. “Perfect.”

  She swallowed the lump in her throat and gave a slight nod. “The best work either of us will ever do.”