by Lynne Gentry
The gate cracked open and they quickly squeezed inside.
Glass mosaics of charioteers driving elaborate, golden, horse-drawn vehicles glittered in the amber light of morning. Maggie felt a bit like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz: out of place. And lost without her camera or her phone. Her father nodded to the servant who’d let them in, and then grabbed Maggie’s wrist. “Hurry.”
They followed the beautiful sidewalk scenes to the stoop. Her father planted his sandals upon the heads of two dueling gladiators and lifted the iron ring knocker.
“So who are we running from?”
His brows scrunched. “Probably just looters, but I couldn’t risk our discovery.”
“I hope they enjoy my camera,” she muttered. “So where are we?”
“The home of Titus Cicero.”
“I remember the senator. And his daughter, Diona. They weren’t all that nice.”
“Titus is a very influential man and he’s putting the life of his family in jeopardy to help mine.”
“He’s on our side now?”
A muscle twitched in her father’s jaw. “I have to trust that he is.” He banged the iron ring against the huge front door three times.
Minutes passed. Maggie couldn’t help but steal glances at her father. He paced the threshold with one hand on the dagger in his belt, and both eyes peeled for danger. Near as she could tell, thirteen years had passed for her in the twenty-first century but very little time had passed in this century. She’d popped back in almost exactly where she’d dropped out on the time line of history. Which was more than a little disconcerting. As near as she could calculate, she and her mother had left the third century in the late summer of AD 258. According to most historical accounts, her father was beheaded in the fall of that same year. She had no more than a few weeks to figure out a way to save him.
Maggie studied his profile. She’d have to commit the exact angles to memory and sketch them later. He was still the handsome man of her memory, only now she had the maturity to notice that the weight of the world had carved a few little trenches in his brow. Convincing him to leave before he had everything settled would take some doing on her part.
“So when can I see my Jaddah?”
“It’s not going to be that simple, Maggie.”
“Well, we can’t go home without her.”
A wooden peephole opened. A man sporting a bad case of bedhead peered out. The man’s sleepy eyes widened. “Cyprian?” The door flew open and they were immediately ushered in. Maggie recognized the man as her father’s friend. He clasped her father’s shoulders. “I’m sorry. I must have fallen asleep.”
“It’s all right, Pontius. I trust you’ve had no trouble.”
“Quiet so far.” He looked at Maggie. “Who’s the woman?”
“Pontius, it’s me—”
Her father cut her off. “Fetch Titus and food. I have the strength to explain this only once.”
“Very well.” Pontius spun on his heel and disappeared down a dark hall.
“Let’s sit.” Her father sank wearily onto one of the golden benches.
“Why didn’t you let me tell him who I was?”
“Pontius has believed my explanations of your mother’s comings and goings, but I’m certain your sudden return as a full-grown woman will be a little more difficult to understand . . . for everyone. Best to do it all at once.”
Maggie so wanted to snuggle in beside this kind man, to close the gap her years away from him had put in their relationship. But physical embraces sent her claustrophobia into overdrive. Besides, trying to fit into this world is where her mother made her mistake. Maggie reminded herself that her mission was to take her father back to her world. All she needed was a few days with him. Once he got to know her, he could never send her home alone. Maggie took a breath and sat on the opposite end of the seat, working out in her mind where to start.
The ornate Corinthian pillars and elegant arches that framed the large skylight above the entryway fountain inspired her to give her father a peek into her passion. “The lighting in here is amazing.” Intricate mosaics decorated the floors, and brilliant-colored frescoes covered the walls. “What I wouldn’t give to follow one of these third-century artists around for a few weeks.”
He smiled in a way that attempted to apologize for the years they’d lost. “I remember how much you loved to draw.”
He remembered! A giddy grin danced across Maggie’s face. No wonder history portrayed Cyprianus Thascius as one of the smartest lawyers Carthage had ever seen. Oh, how she wanted to know more about this man, more than the scant details she’d pieced together from fragmented memories or read online. But she needed to play this cool. Not pressure him into choosing between her and his destiny. Mom had tried that, and it hadn’t worked out so well. Maggie worked to keep her voice nonchalant. “G-Pa would salivate if he were sitting in the atrium of a real Roman senator.”
“Does your grandfather know where you are?”
For a second, Maggie felt a little guilty. How could she explain that telling her grandfather was the same as telling her mother? She couldn’t. Not without sounding like a spoiled brat. And she didn’t want anything to ruin this perfect moment. Time to change the subject. “I don’t think Mom knows about Jaddah’s legal troubles.”
“How could she? All of this happened after I sent you and your mother . . . home.”
“You can find anything on the Internet.”
His brow scrunched. “Internet?”
“It’s how I found out about you and well, you know . . . all the bad stuff that’s going to happen.”
He felt her watching and cocked his head to one side. “So you know the future?”
“Not all of it.”
A dark cloud dulled her father’s eyes, and he gave a slight nod of his head. “Knowing the future is a double-edged sword. Good and bad.”
“You know about the . . . bad?”
“Your mother told me.” He reached for her hand. “It’s why she came. To change things.”
Maggie could scarcely imagine how anyone could sit so calmly upon a bench if he knew he was scheduled to die a horrible death. “If you know, then why aren’t you jumping at the chance to grab up the rest of the family and get the heck out of Dodge? I don’t get it.”
Before he could answer, Pontius returned with a tray of big green olives, two kinds of cheese, and a disheveled man. Titus Cicero was palming his Friar Tuck bangs into a smooth, straight line as he hurried toward them. Missing from his face were the pinched lips and haughty expression of her memory. A genuinely relieved smile had taken over his face.
His long arms flew open. “Cyprian! Tell me Magdalena is well.”
Her father rose and gave Titus a hearty embrace. “As well as can be expected, considering Aspasius’s men roughed her up, along with three other helpless women.”
“Women?”
Her father gave a curt nod. “Servants of Aspasius who’ve been charged in aiding Magdalena in the proconsul’s murder.”
“Oh, dear.” Titus finally noticed Maggie staring at him. “Who is this?”
Her father clasped her hand. “This is my daughter.”
The land merchant scowled. “I don’t understand.”
Her father released her hand and launched into a shaky explanation of her presence. Though she was starving and the olives on the breakfast tray were tempting, Maggie couldn’t take her eyes off their host’s puzzled face.
Titus rubbed his eyes, fastened them squarely upon Maggie, and then verbalized his doubt. “Let me see if I can sort through what you’re not telling me. You left your villa with a five-year-old just a few hours ago.” His disbelief volleyed between her and her father. “And now you want me to believe this young woman is that same impetuous girl who caused Ruth’s . . .” His sharp gaze slid over her. “It pains me even to say it.”
“Ruth’s death,” Maggie said around the lump that always formed in her throat whenever she was forced to remember that nigh
t. “Ruth would be alive today if I hadn’t insisted on retrieving a stupid doll from the tenements.”
The tall man gasped. “How could she know that story?”
“Only one way,” Pontius said. “She must have been there.”
“Impossible,” Titus said.
“Titus, you’re going to have to trust me when I say that this girl is my daughter.” Cyprian placed his hand on the man’s shoulder. “Just as I am trusting you with the safety of my family.”
For whatever reason, her father was leaving out the time travel part and she could see that Titus wasn’t going to fall for any of this without that vital piece of the puzzle.
“I say this girl is my daughter. Wasting efforts that should be directed toward preparing for Magdalena’s day in court will serve no good purpose.”
Heavy footsteps in the courtyard were quickly followed by frantic pounding at the door. Everyone stopped talking.
Titus put a finger to his lips. Pontius leaped to one side of the door, his sword drawn.
Maggie’s father grabbed her arm and shoved her behind one of the columns. “Stay put,” he whispered in her ear. He drew the knife from his belt and rushed to a column closer to the entrance. Once he was set to spring upon the intruder, he gave a nod and Titus opened the peephole.
“Barek?” He closed the peephole and opened the door.
“Stand back, Titus.” Barek lurched inside with a body draped over his shoulder. “This one has measles.”
Titus backpedaled with his hands in the air. “Why have you brought him here?”
Pontius and Maggie’s father sprang from their hiding places in the same instant and rushed to Barek’s aid. Her father draped the man’s limp arm over his own shoulder and Pontius took the other. “Who is this?” They lowered the sick man upon the bench. Maggie eased out from behind the pillar.
“He says his name is Eggie,” Barek said, rubbing his own neck. “That’s all he’ll tell me.”
“Where did you get him?” Maggie peered into the face that might have been handsome were his cheeks and jaws not distorted with red boils.
“Who are you?” Barek eyed her suspiciously.
The sick man opened his eyes and reached for Maggie’s hand. “She’s a goddess.” His wink pumped heat from his hand directly to hers. “I have died and gone to live in celestial realms.” A thousand secrets lurked in the depths of those bloodshot eyes. Danger clung to him like his wet clothes.
Maggie rolled her eyes. “Has a girl ever fallen for those lame lines?” She tugged at her hand, but the guy with the Roman numeral III tattooed above his wrist had a tight grip for someone supposedly dying. “You smell like a corpse.”
Her father removed the sick man’s hand from hers. “Release my daughter, young man.”
Barek’s eyes snapped to hers, then quickly diverted, traveling the length of her, as if measuring her changes from toe to head. As he stood sizing her up, she couldn’t help doing the same. She may have grown up, but Barek was exactly as she remembered him: dark and surly. His brooding face, which had nothing in common with the angelic glow of his mother’s, was framed by a wet mane of ebony curls. It was all she could do not to brush them from his forehead, but touching him could easily make her say good-bye to the last of her good judgment, assuming she hadn’t already used up what little she ever had by jumping into the time portal. Even from this distance, Barek’s familiar scent of sun and sea rustled among her senses like an untamed wind in the dune grasses.
He’d paused. “What did you call her?” The instant Barek’s eyes met hers, she knew giving him a chance to figure out who she was had been a mistake.
“My daughter,” her father repeated. “Both of you boys will do well to remember that and treat Maggie with respect.”
A tiny pulse beat in Barek’s set jaw. “Maggie?” His shoulders stiffened.
She locked eyes with his and braced for the usual string of insults he loved to hurl her way.
The pencil-thin line of his lips was not what made him look so menacing. It was the coldness in his eyes. As if he would rather she’d died of typhoid than come back to bug him again. He offered no berating, no greeting, no acknowledgment of her changed appearance.
But she wasn’t afraid. No, she was not. Because she knew something no one else in this room knew. Beneath Barek’s ominous frown and steely armor beat the heart of a guy who’d carried her to safety . . . twice.
Maybe she wasn’t in such a hurry to go home after all.
Maggie summoned her most charming smile and said, “Miss me?”
“You are not Maggie,” Barek declared. “I’d know that little chit anywhere.”
“And you obviously still need a nap.” The old accusation she used to hurl to defend herself against his crankiness unhinged Barek as easily as it did when she was five.
He stumbled back two steps. “I don’t know who you are, but you need to go home.”
Maggie stepped forward and kissed him square on the lips, then stepped back to secretly enjoy the heat she knew her boldness would bring to his cheeks. “And you’re still not my boss.”
10
THE MOMENT THE GIRL’S bewitching blue eyes met his, Barek felt his strained connection to the impish daughter of Cyprian resurface, as if she were the one he’d hauled from the well only weeks ago. Which was impossible.
A bratty child was in Lisbeth’s sling when he’d shinnied down into the dark depths of a cistern in the poorest part of the city. He believed he’d found these two misfits there because the crowded tenements offered the perfect place for a runaway slave and her illegitimate child to hide from Aspasius.
His mother, however, swore Lisbeth had disappeared back into the time from which she had come, claiming she’d witnessed with her own eyes Magdalena pushing her daughter into the miraculous cistern.
When Barek had questioned his mother as to why anyone would shove her daughter down a well, she’d challenged his skepticism: “Some things are like faith. They cannot be explained.”
But this accounting had come from the same woman who’d also told him Jesus arose from the grave and that one day she would do the same. To believe such tall tales required a faith he no longer possessed . . . maybe never had.
Not even a full day had passed since Barek had placed his life in harm’s way so Cyprian could carry his small, feverish daughter to safety. He thought Cyprian had taken Lisbeth and Maggie to his country estate. He hadn’t asked because he didn’t think Cyprian would ever again trust him with the truth. But it had never occurred to him that an intelligent man like Cyprian would push the two people he loved the most in this world through some magical time portal.
No, this alarming beauty standing before him was most likely an impostor sent to aid the followers of Aspasius in Cyprian’s capture.
Barek retreated a safe distance from her reach, his lips on fire where she’d kissed him. “This isn’t funny,” he stuttered. “Maggie was dying.”
She raised her chin with the same cocky slant of that child who could ignite his temper with a word. A curtain of blond curls fell across her shoulders. “Sorry to disappoint you, Barek, but I lived.” Her eyes, turbulent as the sea in winter, dared him to think her anything other than the small child he’d carried through the Tophet.
“I never meant for her to get sick.”
From the arch of her brow, Barek could see she didn’t believe for a minute he was sorry for anything that had happened. “I don’t blame you for the days I spent in the hospital, so there’s no need to be so cranky.”
Only one person had ever called him on his foul mood, and that was the daughter of the healer he’d fished out of the well. Barek couldn’t explain it, but in that instant he knew . . . this girl with the curves of a full-grown woman was the same child who’d changed everything. How different his life might have been had he let her drown. “I will never understand the pleasure you take in taunting me.”
A wry smile fluttered across her perfect lips. “Then you belie
ve it’s me?”
Barek ran a hand through his wet hair, suddenly aware that he reeked of fish. “Or Maggie’s evil twin.”
“Enough.” Cyprian wedged between them. “Where shall we make this boy’s sickbed, Titus?”
“We can’t keep him here.” Titus again raised his palms and backed away. “We’re not set up to handle measles, and without Lisbeth or Magdalena we have no healer.”
“I’ll take care of him,” Maggie volunteered.
“You?” Barek scoffed. “What do you know of measles?”
“I watched my mother build the vaporizer tents.”
“So did I, but that doesn’t make us healers,” Barek said with a snarl. “Keeping him alive will be hard work.”
“Then I suspect we will both need a nap by the time he has recovered, because I expect you to help.” Maggie took several steps toward Titus, balled her fists, and crammed them onto her slender hips. “I seemed to remember that you promised my mother you would do whatever you could to repay the care she and my grandmother gave your daughter.”
“Yes, but that was before—”
“Good.” She smiled. “It seems to me it’s settled.”
“It’s Maggie, all right,” Barek muttered.
Titus rubbed his brow. “My servants will do what they can, but no one in this house has had the rash. We’ll need help from your Christian friends, Cyprian.”
“There’re not many of them left.”
“I helped split the church,” Barek said. “I should be the one to put it back together.”
11
GALERIUS MAXIMUS LAY BOARD-STRAIGHT upon the thick carpet of his bedchamber. He squeezed his eyes shut so his daily elocution exercises would not be spoiled by the ridiculous fresco painted on his ceiling. The artists his mother-in-law commissioned to redecorate his quarters had given the goddess of fertility such a shrewish look. Maximus knew the rendering was Hortensia’s subtle way of saying her eyes were always upon him. Especially on the rare opportunities she allowed him to bed his own wife.