Healer of Carthage (21 page)

“Contagious?” Ruth raised a skeptical brow. “What is contagious? What’s going on?”

“When I left the cleaners, I ran into Numidicus and . . .” Lisbeth shifted Junia’s weight. “Look, it’s a long story. I need a room where Junia can stay. One far away from everyone else.”

“I should have you lashed.” Ruth didn’t hide the struggle with her conscience. “Come with me. I’ll decide how much to tell Cyprian later.” She led Lisbeth through the courtyard to a gardener’s small cottage on the far corner of the property.

In a show of appreciation, Lisbeth asked questions about Barek and Laurentius. Ruth was reluctant at first, still a little miffed by Lisbeth’s disappearance, but Lisbeth coaxed her until she rattled off the details of their miraculous recoveries and Laurentius’s return to the proconsul’s palace.

Lisbeth settled Junia on the tidy cot, surprised at the disappointment she felt at Laurentius’s recovery without her and the missed opportunity to tell him good-bye.

“Ruth, I need you to listen carefully.” She waited for the seriousness in her voice to stall Ruth’s motor long enough for some parting orders. “The sickness sweeping the tenements is more serious than Caecilianus wants to admit. I’m pretty sure the fever killed Junia’s mother and a couple of their neighbors.” She’d seen cardio docs scare smokers into healthier behaviors; maybe if she scared Ruth into taking every precaution . . . “Whenever you tend Junia, you must wear something over your nose and mouth.” She ripped another couple of inches from the hem of her frayed tunic and demonstrated a mask. “Wash your hands with hot water and soap. And try not to touch any oozing sores. Keep her well hydrated—I mean, make sure she drinks enough—and she should be up and around in a couple of days.”

“Where are you going?” The cloth over Ruth’s mouth didn’t muffle her alarm.

“Home.”

“But—”

A slim black girl burst into the cottage, short of breath like she’d been running for her life. “Where’s the other healer?”

“Tabari?” Ruth offered a steadying hand. “What’s wrong?”

Lisbeth recognized the slave girl as the one who’d delivered Mama’s bloody clothes to the cleaners and then disappeared before she could get answers. “I’m the healer.”

“Come quick.” Tabari took Lisbeth’s hand and dragged her toward the door.

Lisbeth jerked free. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”

Fire leapt from Tabari’s dark eyes. “Aspasius beat your mother half to death.”

24

L
ISBETH RUMMAGED THROUGH THE
pantry, her nerves on high alert. She gathered a loaf of crusty bread, two slabs of cheese, a handful of dried figs, and a large skin of wine and stuffed them into the spare medical bag her mother kept at Cyprian’s. She lifted the lid on a small wooden box and looked to Ruth. “I hate to take your entire tea store, but I don’t know what I’ll need.”

“Take it. I’ll explain to Cyprian.” Ruth added a wad of fresh bandages. “I should come with you.”

“No.” Lisbeth snapped the wooden lid and crammed it in the bag. “Everyone in this house is in quarantine now that I’ve brought Junia here. Besides, that child is going to need some serious mothering after all she’s been through.”

“Once you charge the proconsul’s palace, then what?” Ruth’s position had morphed from refusing to let Lisbeth go to tearful pleading that she stay.

“I’ll think of something.”

Ruth tossed Lisbeth a fresh tunic. “If you won’t wait on Cyprian’s return, at least don’t disgrace his house by roaming the streets in that filthy rag.” The bishop’s wife had not insisted upon an explanation of how she and Mama were related, a dignified managing of her curiosity that made Lisbeth respect her all the more. Ruth
fished the pieces of Lisbeth’s stethoscope from her pocket. “You might need this.”

Lisbeth quickly assembled the instrument, touched that Ruth had taken such good care of her treasure. “If I’m not back by sunset”—she tossed the strap of her bag over her shoulder—“promise me that you’ll make sure Junia gets a good home.”

“This is her home now . . . as it is yours.” Ruth put a hand on Lisbeth’s wrist. “Don’t forget where you belong.”

Soldiers in hobnailed boots strutted the main streets. Too many accusing eyes for Tabari’s comfort, which, after Lisbeth’s last run-in with the touchy-feely troops of Aspasius, didn’t suit her well either.

“This way.” The alert little slave girl darted down an alley.

The closer they got to the palace, the more patrols they encountered, even on the back streets. They rounded a corner. Tabari stopped Lisbeth with a stiff arm and pointed straight ahead. An impressive structure, the size of a small hospital, towered behind a six-foot-tall brick fence.

“Stay low.” Tabari skirted the heavy ironwork of the large gate and led Lisbeth to a place along the wall safe from the view of the tower guards. The slave girl parted a thick vine and slipped through the foliage without breaking a leaf.

Lisbeth followed her through a dwarf-size opening in the brick. Once clear of the fence, they descended four stone steps that dead-ended at the palace itself. A heavy wooden plank rested flush against the massive stones. Tabari fished a rusty key from her pocket and twisted a hidden lock. She pulled the wood back. Air, as stale and damp as a sealed tomb, rushed to escape.

“Careful. There’s another step.” A rusty squeak accompanied Tabari’s attempt to quietly shut the plank behind them. “Don’t move.” Tabari slid an iron bolt through a lock, then mysteriously produced a lamp and flint.

Tiny flames illuminated a low, stone ceiling.

“I hate tunnels.” Lisbeth’s heart hammered her chest as she felt along the wall for some sort of railing to pull herself out of the cold water covering her feet. “No, really. I’m claustrophobic.”

When she was six, she had begged Papa to let her explore inside the tomb he was excavating. Walls of dirt that had not seen the sun in years hemmed her in. The confined space sent her into a full-blown panic attack. So they made a deal. While Papa dug, she explored the wide-open spaces of the desert, listening to the wind and climbing the highest peaks of any nearby landmass, pretending she could see for eternity.

In truth, she searched the barren landscape for signs of Mama. A dot in the distance. A lone tree on the horizon. An unusual rock formation. Anything could become the mother she missed more than she could confess. Then, with a visual lock on the speck of hope, she’d imagine her mother running toward her until Aisa called her to supper and the sobering and disappointing truth. There was a despair darker than any tunnel.

“Why don’t I wait right outside the door, and you can bring Mama to me?” Lisbeth suggested.

“She’s too ill.” Tabari ducked beneath some cobwebs and set out with the light.

Lisbeth took a tentative step. Water covered her feet. “This can’t be good.” Her splashy footfalls on the wet cobblestones sent unidentified creatures scuttling. Twisting stairwells and narrow passageways led them deeper and deeper into the bowels of the palace.

Tabari climbed two steps, then paused at the landing outside a small door. She held the lamp close to her chest, illuminating the sheen on her forehead and her blatant disapproval of Lisbeth’s slow progress.

“Please tell me this is it.” Lisbeth brushed cobwebs from her
cloak, but she couldn’t shake the thought of being buried alive, a wide-eyed mummy discovered when Papa or some other archaeologist excavated these ruins nearly two thousand years in the future. “Well, I’m not doing my mother any good standing here. Open it.”

Tabari forced the corroded hinges with a grating moan. What Lisbeth expected to see behind the door was a dusty, deserted space. Perhaps littered with discarded furniture or cast-off clutter from a palace remodel. Instead, she found a tidy, windowless room warmed by the light of a small oil lamp. Tacked to the stone walls were parchments inked with drawings of mice and crickets playing stick games with balls. Across the room, Mama lay on a tiny bed, moaning in obvious pain. To Lisbeth’s left, Laurentius sat hunched over a desk covered in parchments, his clubbed fingers clutched around a stylus like a kindergartner working over a coloring book.

“Laurentius?” Her shocked voice startled him. “What are you doing here?”

The boy’s lopsided smile pushed against the panic she’d been feeling, making it suddenly easier for her to breathe. “Thith ith my room.” He jumped up, hugged her tight, then turned and shuffled to the bed. “I tol’ you my preddy girlfrien’ would come. You’ll get better like me now.” He nudged Magdalena’s shoulder. “Wake up, Mama.”

25

C
HIRPING CRICKETS GAVE LAURENTIUS’S
six-by-six-foot cell a calm, homey feel. Lisbeth’s shattered nerves refused to transmit the deceptive sensations to her racing heart. Her world had shifted. Nothing about this shocking picture included her. Not the tiny pole bed. Not the cartoons on the wall. Not even the doting half brother eyeing her from his sentinel post at their mother’s bedside. Lisbeth didn’t care how many hollow explanations Mama offered; if Laurentius was her half brother, then this woman had abandoned one child to love another. A gut punch that changed everything.

She didn’t know what to say in response or which language to say it in. Stalling until her breath returned, Lisbeth took the lamp from Tabari. She cupped the clay bowl in trembling hands. Not trusting her unsteady legs, she triaged Mama from a distance. “Your right shoulder looks dislocated,” she said in her best Latin, unwilling to give back a single piece of their former life.

“Excellent call.” Mama ignored Laurentius and his nervous fussing with her blanket, narrowing her focus directly on Lisbeth, as if they were the only two people in the world. Mother and daughter sitting once again in the shade of Papa’s tent, arms wrapped around each other in a fragile, web-thin tie easily snapped. “A reduction ought to set things right, don’t you think?”

Could things be set right? She doubted her world would ever be right again. “It’ll hurt like hell.”

Mama’s grimace concurred with Lisbeth’s diagnosis. “But once bone and joint are securely in place, the pain will stop immediately, right?”

She knew what Mama was saying was not what she was asking. She didn’t give an answer to the possibility of mending their relationship, because there wasn’t one. Lisbeth took a shaky step forward. “Manipulating broken pieces is harder than it looks.” She gently nudged Laurentius aside, his doughy body tangible proof of Mama’s infidelity, a truth that would crush Papa. “Fractures don’t always heal like they should.”

“Mama?” Laurentius’s face puckered in confusion. He reached for their mother. “I don’t want you to hurt.”

“It’s okay, son.” Mama stroked his arm with her good hand, and he quickly calmed. “Tabari, can you get Laurentius started on a new drawing? Something happy. Something to celebrate that Lisbeth has finally joined us.”

The servant girl settled Laurentius before a small desk fashioned from warped boards and stacked stones. She gave him a clean piece of parchment and moved the inkwell within easy reach of his stubby arms.

He dipped the stylus and held it ready, poised as if he were about to create a great work of art. “Mithe or crickeths, Mama?”

“Surprise us.” Mama captured the frayed ends of her divided attention and aimed her laser stare at Lisbeth. “He’s a good boy.” She spoke in English, as if Laurentius deserved a special cloak of privacy, a protection from the ugly truth that she seemed more than willing to deny the daughter she hadn’t seen in decades.

Secrets had been kept far too long. Lisbeth intended to get answers, details to which she and this boy Mama claimed was her half brother were entitled. She clasped her mother’s wrist; pain
distorted Mama’s face. “Without X-rays I’ll have to do this the old-fashioned way,” Lisbeth said in Latin. Her mother’s strong heartbeat pounded against her fingers. “Pulse is good.” Lisbeth tested for sensation in her mother’s lateral upper arm. Satisfied the axillary nerve had not been damaged, she ran her hand the length of Mama’s dangling limb. “Does this hurt?”

Mama bit her lip and nodded.

She flexed Mama’s wrist a bit harder than she needed to and immediately felt petty and immature. “What about this?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t think you have any broken bones.” Lisbeth released her mother’s hand. “Aspasius did this to you, didn’t he?”

Mama reached for her with her good arm. “I couldn’t let him find out about you.”

Lisbeth’s heart twisted. She stepped out of reach. Her mind raced back to that awful night at the tenements. Had Mama silently taken a beating to keep her from running back to the apartment? “Is Laurentius his son?”

Lisbeth could see Mama weighing her answer, searching for words to make things right. “Yes—but I named him after Lawrence.” She paused, as if recounting the story would require time to regroup. “Having a little piece of your father with me made the rutting goat easier to bear.”

Shards of Mama’s shattered image pierced Lisbeth’s soul. “Does Aspasius know about Laurentius?”

“No. He thinks he’s dead. When Aspasius saw that his heir was . . . different . . . he ordered me to leave that tiny infant on the bluffs for the buzzards to peck apart, but I”—she swallowed hard—“I’d already left one child to fend for herself.” Tears seeped from the corners of her eyes; regret broke her voice. “I could not bear to leave another.”

The melancholic force of Mama’s admission unlocked a
memory buried so deep that Lisbeth felt a strange mixture of love and acid bubble forth, a deadly combination disintegrating her ability to stay focused, to stay in the presence of so much pain. Her mind slipped into darkness, tripping along until it stumbled upon the resurrected image of her and Mama sitting on overturned buckets in the shade of the camp tarp, playing doctor like they did every morning before the sun got too hot.

“Here, let me help you,” Mama had said as she placed the stethoscope ear buds in Lisbeth’s tiny ear canals. “Listen carefully for the pounding of a drum.” Mama slid the bell over her left breast. “Can you hear it?” Lisbeth listened intently, then sadly shook her head. “Breathe in and listen again,” Mama had prodded.