by Lynne Gentry
He’d always loved the water. Perhaps he would join the imperial navy and set sail for parts unknown. Once the skies cleared and the harbor reopened for the summer shipping season, the captains would need sailors to replace those who had died of the fever. Barek emptied another scoop of ash into the urn. A powdery, gray puff rose and filled his nostrils. Blinking away the stink, he continued gathering the remains of his mother.
“Whatcha doin’?” Maggie’s voice came from somewhere behind him.
He didn’t need the little chit poking around in his business. Barek glanced over his shoulder. There she stood. Tangled blond hair, wide blue eyes, and two bare feet. A spoiled princess used to bossing everyone around and getting her way. Well, not anymore. Without his mother here to scold him, he wouldn’t bow to Maggie’s demands. Without his mother …
Barek dug at his watery eyes. “None of your business.”
“Are you crying, Barek?”
“No.”
Maggie came and stood beside him. “My mommy says it’s not safe to play with fire.”
“Your mother says a lot of useless things.” Barek blinked the traces of ash from his eyes and continued shoveling. “Go back to bed.”
“I went to bed early. I’m not tired anymore.” She put her hand on his arm. “I know why you’re so cranky.”
He wiped his forearm across his nose. “You don’t know anything.”
“I know your mother died.” She tiptoed and whispered into his ear. “And I know it’s my fault.”
He stopped shoveling long enough to see a tear roll down Maggie’s cheek. “Where’s that doll you had to have?” His jab deflated her face. He felt bad for being so cruel.
Maggie squatted on the other side of the urn. “I don’t play with dolls anymore.” She sniffed and took hold of a small stick where only the tip had burned.
Barek sighed. Much as Lisbeth’s daughter irritated him, she was but a child, and he wasn’t a barbarian. “It wasn’t your fault the ox broke out of its harness.”
Maggie shrugged. “Why did Cyprian burn Ruth and the baby?”
“How did you know that?”
“I heard people crying, so I peeked out the window.”
He started to explain the battle between the Romans and people like his parents, people who thought there was a god somewhere who cared, but what did the religious bickering matter now? “Cyprian did what he had to do.”
“Oh.” Maggie eyed the blackened ruins. “Would my daddy burn me if I died?”
“You’re too young to die.”
“So was the baby.” She chewed on the corner of her lip as she dragged her stick through the ashes. “Does it hurt?”
“What?”
She used her stick like a stylus and carved trenches in the dirt. “Getting burned up.”
“No, fool. You’re dead.” Barek went back to his task, carefully raking through the debris, searching for anything that even slightly resembled his mother. When he had another sooty scoop ready for the urn, he looked down and found Maggie etching a design on the side of the crock with her charred stick. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Drawing a pretty picture for Ruth.”
He dropped the shovel and snatched the urn away. “What is this?”
“It’s your family.” She pointed at the row of three black figures with potbelly waists. “The big one is your daddy. That one is your mommy.” She wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “And the little one in the middle holding their hands is”—she raised her eyes to his—“you.”
Memories of his family’s old life, the happy one they’d had before his mother made room for these strangers, clogged the back of Barek’s throat. His attempt to quickly clear them away failed, and they pushed up in a bittersweet rush. His parents had been so honored when Cyprian invited their family to move in after his conversion. Barek remembered that the new arrangement had made him happy, too. Cyprian’s villa was so close to the sea, he could go fishing whenever he wanted. And his table always had more than enough food. Their little church grew. And Barek met his best friend, Natalis.
Barek had been young and starry-eyed then, and he’d looked up to the man who’d brought them into his home. Cyprian was an honorable noble who had influence in high places, the kind of influence Barek intended to have someday.
Barek finally managed to swallow, and when he did, he felt his dreams slip away as well. “Isn’t there someone else you can bother?”
“No. Junia and Laurentius are asleep.” Maggie watched as he filled the jar to the brim and carefully set the lid in place. “Now what do we do?”
“We don’t do anything.” Barek rose and tucked the urn under his arm. “You are going back to bed, and I am going to bury my mother beside my father.”
“I’m coming with you.”
“No, you aren’t.”
“I’ll scream.”
“So? Scream.”
She parked her hands on her hips. “Cyprian will come running and tell you to stay home.”
After what Cyprian had done to his mother, he didn’t want Cyprian telling him anything anymore. “You are a bossy little tyrant.”
“And you’re cranky.”
“All right. Fine. But no complaining.”
*
BAREK AND Maggie hurried along the avenue. For someone with such short legs, Maggie was doing a fair job of matching his stride. If she could keep up their current pace, they would reach one of the more obscure city gates during the changing of the guard. Barek rehearsed his plan in his head. He would hide this little pain-in-his-backside behind the soldier’s station, slip through the gate, bury his mother inside their family tomb, slip back inside the city, snatch the brat, and race home before anyone was the wiser.
As they neared the edge of the city, Barek spotted soldiers. “Quick. Follow me.”
He turned onto the well-worn path that led to the Tophet, an ancient burial ground rumored to be the site where his Carthaginian ancestors sacrificed their children to the gods. His father had called the place a living hell, a sad monument to the ability of humans to inflict pain on one another in the name of religion, a black mark on Carthage’s past. As far as he was concerned, humans didn’t need a specific place to be ugly to each other. They could do it in the comfort of their own homes and churches and never blink an eye.
“Halt, plebs!” Behind them, hobnailed spikes scrambled over the cobblestones. Barek motioned for Maggie to step up her pace. “They went that way!” a soldier shouted.
Barek wove thorough grave markers. Some of the limestone stelae had carvings of what looked like different versions of the drawing Maggie had made of a child with outstretched arms. He remembered the urn hidden beneath his cloak and ran faster.
“Wait for me.” Maggie tripped. She fell headlong onto the pavers. Her bloodcurdling scream bounced off the rows of stone pediments.
“Hush.” Barek scooped her up. “Or you’ll lead them to us.” Urn tucked under one arm and Maggie stuffed under the other, he ran toward an opening in the side of Sanctuary Hill. He ducked inside, his breath coming in short spurts, his arms burning from the weight of his load. He waited for his eyes to adjust to the dim light filtering through the door-sized arch opposite the one he’d entered.
Maggie squirmed and fussed, but he wouldn’t let her down. “What is this place?” she whispered. “I can’t breathe.”
“Shhh.” Barek looked around.
Above them, a barrel-like ceiling had been carved out of the rock. A few steps below them … crematory urns. Thousands of plain clay crocks just like the one he was holding stacked fifty to seventy-five high against the walls. Hundreds of piles were scattered across the vault’s floor. Countless urns sat on little shelves carved into the walls.
Barek lowered Maggie to the ground.
“My ankle!” she screamed.
“Shhhhh.”
“In here.” Soldier’s boots thundered down the Tophet’s path.
“Now look what you’ve
done.” Barek searched their hiding spot for an exit. “We’ve got to get going.”
“My ankle hurts.” Maggie hopped like a one-footed flamingo. “I can’t breathe.”
“You’re breathing.”
She shook her head and waved her hands in front of her face. “No, I’m not.”
He’d never seen anyone upset so quickly. No telling what would come out of her mouth next. Her panic was sure to give them away. He would have to carry her home and be quick about it. But they would never escape if he was carrying both Maggie and his mother’s ashes. Barek carefully set his mother’s urn at the base of the nearest pile of crocks, telling himself this was only a temporary solution.
He snatched up Maggie and flung her on his back. “Hang on, and keep quiet.”
Her arms wrapped his neck in a terrified grip that crushed his throat as he picked his way across broken pots, scattered beaded amulets, and brittle bones.
When he reached the opposite exit, Barek did not stop to see how many soldiers had poured in the burial cavern in pursuit of them. Holding tightly to Maggie’s thin legs, he leaped over a stack of urns.
They burst into daylight and smacked into Felicissimus.
“Stranger!” Maggie screamed.
39
“COME QUICKLY.” FELICISSIMUS TOOK off at a surprisingly brisk pace.
The man had been a friend to his father. But Barek didn’t trust him, any more than he trusted the man who’d married his mother and ruined their lives. Unfortunately, he didn’t have a better plan. He tightened his grip on Maggie’s waiflike legs. “Wait.” He set out to keep up with the toad-shaped slave trader hopping from the cover of one grave marker to the next.
“What are you doing?” Maggie pounded his back. “He’s a stranger!”
“You have a better idea?” Barek asked, hissing.
“No.”
“Then hush.”
Weaving their way clear of the Tophet had not shaken the soldiers chasing after them with their swords drawn. Felicissimus pointed to a thicket of thorny shrubs at the base of the hill. Barek ordered Maggie to duck her head and dove in after Felicissimus.
Once inside the briar, he pulled Maggie from his back and clamped his hand over her mouth. “Not a word” he whispered, and scooted them deep into the shadows. For once, she did what he said.
Through the leaves he could see the glint of armor. The frustrated guard captain shouted furious orders to search the perimeter.
Holding their breaths, Barek, Maggie, and Felicissimus waited until the crunch of hobnail boots on gravel subsided. The slave trader jerked his head, indicating Barek and Maggie should follow.
“No.” Maggie tugged Barek back. “Stranger danger.”
Barek warned her again with a silent finger to his lips. Thrashing through the brush as quietly as they could, they exited the thicket opposite the side they’d entered. Cross-hatched scratches bloodied Maggie’s legs, but again she’d done what he’d asked and hadn’t uttered a single complaint. Perhaps the girl was tougher than he gave her credit for.
Barek hefted Maggie onto his back. The threesome scampered through back alleys Roman troops seldom patrolled. The scent of fish alerted Barek that they had emerged deep in the warehouse district down by the docks. Spring’s delay had kept the harbor closed longer than normal. But with the return of the warming winds, any surviving stevedores and military men would soon emerge from their winter dens and haul their pasty faces back to the ships.
“This way.” Felicissimus led them past a large stone platform, stained dark by the blood of slaves forced to parade across the stage.
Barek’s chest tightened. He’d been to the auction block only once … that horrible day he’d disobeyed his parents and followed Cyprian to the docks. He remembered hurrying to catch up and having to squeeze through the crowd. When he’d reached the staging area, he saw a large black man whipping chained captives into large, stone washbasins. Sour-faced plebeians stripped the filthy men and poured jugs of scalding water over their lice-infested bodies. Once the prisoners had been washed, they were forced to climb aboard the bidding platform. As they stood naked beneath the glaring sun, he could almost smell the pus oozing from their festering battle wounds. These once proud men, some not much older than he, had dared to raise their swords against Rome. Now, in their shame, they struggled to remain upright. Their bodies, thin and weak from days spent crammed inside the hold of a Roman slave freighter, were no longer their own.
Barek remembered wanting to punch the auctioneer who came to the podium and made a few jokes as he prodded the men with a long metal rod. But as his father had trained him, he had remained silent. “Turn the other cheek,” his father’s voice rang in his head. In truth, he knew full well he was turning a blind eye to their suffering, and he hated how the teachings of the church had turned him into a coward.
The men with any strength left sold to the highest bidders. Those who crumpled or failed to secure a clean bill of health were speared through the heart and hauled to the arena to feed the lions.
If he’d learned anything that day, it was the high cost of losing to Rome. A price he vowed never to pay.
Felicissimus lumbered down some stone steps. When he reached the bottom, he withdrew a key from his pocket and opened a wooden door. A rank odor escaped a dank, dark cell. “It’s not the luxury you’re used to, but you’ll be safe here until your trail grows cold and those bloodhounds give up.” He stepped inside, lit a lamp, and motioned them in.
Barek felt Maggie’s arms tighten around his throat.
“Don’t go in there,” she whispered in his ear. “I won’t be able to breathe.”
“You want the soldiers to find us?”
She shook her head.
“Then keep quiet.” Barek descended the stairs and stepped inside.
Felicissimus closed the door. “Wait here.” He crossed the little room, then kicked the sleeping man curled into the corner. “Metellus, you might want to cover yourself. We’ve got company.”
Metellus stirred, pushed up from his mat, and stretched his sinewy, black arms. His hands and feet had the roughened appearance of a desert warrior. Jagged scars created a map of pale pink mountains and dark gray valleys across his bare chest. When he lifted his shaved head, his dark eyes swam in bloodshot pools.
Barek gasped and took a step back. This was the man he’d seen flog the skin off an unruly Syrian who’d refused to mount the slave platform.
Barek tightened his grip on Maggie’s legs. “Don’t say a word.”
“It smells like pee in here.” She pinched her nose with one hand and clutched his tunic in the other. “I can’t breathe.”
“You’re breathing.” Barek took in their surroundings, calculating how quickly he could get them out the door.
The buzzard’s nest was feathered with the tools of the slave trade. In the corner opposite Metellus, chalky limestone covered the sides of an empty wooden bucket. Barek guessed the bucket held the dust used to mark the feet of slaves. Everyone in the province had been trained to recognize the familiar sign of bondage and to report anyone caught out and about without their master. Lisbeth’s foot had been coated in the white substance when Cyprian brought her home. Barek remembered Cyprian and his parents cleaning Lisbeth up and trying to pass her off as a desert princess, but he knew from her chalky foot that she was no more than a slave, nowhere near the equal of his mother.
Above the chalk bucket, a flagellum hung from a peg in the stone wall. The whip’s Elmwood handle looked as if it had been carved to fit the big hands of Metellus, and the three strips of rawhide laced with bits of bone still dripped blood from his most recent use.
“Hungry?” Felicissimus opened a dilapidated cupboard. Two little mice squealed. “Greedy little thieves. Scram.” The slave trader flicked his wrist, and the mice jumped to the floor, dashed about the room in a crazed flurry, then scurried across Barek’s boot.
Maggie screamed and nearly climbed atop Barek’s shoulders
as the furry little creatures circled the cell again. Their second lap around, one of the mice found a crack in the plaster, squeezed his plump body into the opening, and disappeared. The other creature hesitated a moment too long. Metellus snatched the whip from the peg. Leather strips slashed the air with a loud crack. The lashes lapped up the rodent’s little gray body and hurled it against the opposite wall. Metellus grunted and returned the whip to the peg.
Felicissimus reached into the cupboard and retrieved a half-eaten round of bread. He brushed away the crumbs gnawed free by the mice as if nothing had happened. “Day old. But at least you won’t starve.” He broke the bread in half and offered Maggie a piece.
Barek could feel Maggie’s fingernails digging through his tunic. “We’re not hungry.” He reached up, pried her loose, then pulled her off his back and set her down beside him. She immediately went into her flamingo imitation, tugging on Barek’s sleeve to keep her balance.
“Suit yourself.” Felicissimus tossed the piece to Metellus. The big slave caught the bread with one hand, crammed it into his mouth, and swallowed without even chewing. Felicissimus flipped over the empty chalk bucket and sat down with an exhausted sigh. “I was surprised to find you out and about after the trouble you encountered with the ox. What mischief were you two planning in the Tophet?”
Maggie’s eyes darted between the dead mouse and Felicissimus. “We were burying his mother.”
“Hush, Maggie,” Barek ordered.
Felicissimus considered this information for a moment. “Of course a good son would want his mother properly laid to rest.” He picked up a hollowed-out gourd from the water bucket and took a drink. “It is a shame that Aspasius has denied Christians access to their ancestral plots.” He rubbed his chin, his eyes narrowed in thought. “My boy, have you pondered what is to become of you now that both of your parents are gone?” Felicissimus emptied the gourd and tossed it back into the bucket.