Valley of Decision (3 page)

Chains rattled behind her. Magdalena glanced over her shoulder. Iltani, her Mesopotamian friend who'd had her tongue removed by the proconsul's bounty hunters after a failed escape attempt, raised her strong chin in silent protest. Following close behind was Tabari. The small, dark-skinned waif from the African desert tribes had become Iltani's voice. Next was Kardide, oldest of Magdalena's fellow slaves. The hook-nosed Turkish wench would swallow hot coals before she would admit she struggled to keep up on this forced march through the city. Magdalena choked back the lump in her throat. Their suffering was her fault. She was the one who'd put them in jeopardy by asking them to stand guard so her daughter could escape through a secret passage in the library wall.

The law required the torture of any slave suspected of a crime.
She feared the blows to her face were just the beginning. Who knew what tortures awaited their arrival at the holding cells beneath the Hippodrome. She'd tended prisoners who'd been beaten with glass-studded whips and kicked with hobnailed soldier boots. If prisoners didn't bleed to death or die from punctured lungs, starvation and poor sanitary conditions would often kill them before their case ever went before the judge. Thank goodness she'd managed to grab her medical bag. Whether she'd be allowed to carry it with her inside the prison remained to be seen.

How have things come to this?

As Magdalena stumbled along, her mind slogged through the blur of the past two days. She'd been hiding out and secretly working at the little hospital Lisbeth had created in Cyprian's home when Aspasius's soldiers found her and dragged her back to her bedridden master. The stench of his bedchamber tipped her off to the putrefaction of his leg. She'd sent Tabari to Cyprian's home to fetch Lisbeth's modern tools, never intending her fellow slave to return with Lisbeth. But she shouldn't have been surprised that her stubborn daughter had insisted on bringing the tools personally and staying to assist.

Lisbeth had argued against the surgery, citing the many risk factors: unsanitary operating conditions; lack of intravenous antibiotics; and, most important, Aspasius's overall poor health due to diabetes and his compromised immune system. In the end, Magdalena had convinced her that doing nothing would guarantee the proconsul's demise. Magdalena had felt she had no choice but to take the gamble, and if she had it to do all over, she'd make the same decision.

Removing the rotten limb had required a great deal of her physical strength. Secretly, she'd been grateful Lisbeth had been there.

But before the proconsul awakened, Magdalena had insisted
that Lisbeth slip through the library's secret door and escape through the underground tunnels. As Aspasius became more and more restless upon the mahogany operating table, Magdalena knew forcing her daughter to go had been the right choice. Aspasius was experiencing complications. The odds of saving him were not in her favor. She'd placed a calming hand upon his chest. Heart palpitations thumped beneath his cool, clammy skin. “Try to breathe deeply, Aspasius. Hyperventilating won't help.”

“What's wrong with him?” Pytros, the scrawny, troublemaking scribe, had demanded.

“Septic shock.” She'd tried to hide her alarm. “He's been through a lot, Pytros. Why don't you step out and let him rest?”

Aspasius started thrashing uncontrollably, mumbling senseless things. The raw end of his new stump hit the makeshift operating table with so much force that his neatly tied sutures burst open. Blood spurted everywhere. In an instant, a minor crisis turned into a major medical emergency.

Pytros ran from the library, screaming, “Help! She's killing my master!”

Magdalena remembered ripping a strip of cloth and was in the process of securing a second tourniquet just above the knee when she noticed her patient's chest. His sternum rose and fell in the short, labored movements of a man in respiratory distress. Within seconds, Aspasius's eyes rolled back into his head, and his shaking stilled.

When soldiers burst into the room, they'd found Magdalena covered in blood and frantically performing CPR on a lifeless man. Strong arms pulled her away from Aspasius's blue-tinged body. It didn't take but a second for the young soldier in charge to figure out that the proconsul was dead. “What happened?” he'd demanded.

What
had
happened?
It could have been a number of things.
Blood clot. Heart attack. Her patient's age and general poor health.

“Keep up.” The pimple-faced boy who'd smacked her several times jerked Magdalena back to the present. Aspasius's loyal guard wouldn't have believed her story if she'd had a chance to tell him. That she was here, in the third century, was difficult for even her to grasp. Some days she couldn't believe that a silly argument she'd had with her husband years ago had led to her falling into this nightmare. That's how she'd come to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. A stupid, ridiculous fight. Who would believe such a tale?

Magdalena's toe caught on an uneven paver. She stumbled and skinned her knees on the cobblestones. She waved off Kardide's rush to help and scrambled to her feet. “I'm fine.”

“Oh, no,” Tabari said with a gasp. “Perpetua's prison.”

Magdalena's gaze followed the direction of her friend's horrified stare. Rose-tinted Ketel limestone had been fashioned into a massive arena that dominated the city's skyline.

Legend had it that the pink tinge of the stones came from the blood of the young noblewoman who'd refused to denounce her faith. Perpetua had been led to the arena. There, before thousands of people, a novice executioner botched her execution. In the end, Perpetua had to slit her own throat.

Magdalena choked down rising bile and brushed the dust from her hands. If the Lord intended her to suffer a martyr's death, then no matter how gruesome it might be, he would give her the strength. Soldiers hooked her under the arms and dragged her to an iron door guarded by one uniformed man.

“This one murdered the proconsul!” the redheaded soldier yelled. “Open the locks!”

“Aspasius is dead?” The guard fumbled with the keys. “How? When?”

“We'll ask the questions. You do the guarding,” the redheaded soldier said. “Wait.” He ripped her bag from her shoulder. “Where did you get this?”

“It's my medical supplies.”

“There was a woman who brought it. I saw her fill this bag.” He grabbed Magdalena's cheeks. “Where is she?”

If God had answered her prayer, Lisbeth was home. Safe in her proper time. “I don't know.”

He peeked inside. “Saws. Knives.” He extracted a bone drill she'd purchased from a Greek healer who was going out of business. “I didn't see her put this in here.”

“They're mine, I tell you.”

Suspicion raised his brows. “I don't even want to know what you do with this.”

Hastily tossing everything back into her satchel, he smirked. “How long do you think my superior would let me live if you escaped because you hacked off a leg to get free of those shackles?” The contents of the bag clanked and rattled as he chucked it to the jailer. “These blades are evidence. Put them someplace safe.”

“Yes, sir.” The guard tugged on the handle, and the prison door creaked open. A musky stench rushed at Magdalena. Unwashed bodies. Dirty hair. Rancid mutton grease. A dark space fouled by human waste. The soldiers shoved Magdalena and her friends into a hallway that stretched into total blackness. The four women huddled in the darkness.

“Do not be afraid,” Magdalena said boldly, despite the fear pulsing through her veins. “They can kill our bodies, but they cannot touch our souls.”

“Torch,” ordered the soldier squeezing her arm.

In the moments it took for someone to appear with a fiery bundle of twigs dipped in tar, Magdalena squinted, letting her eyes adjust.

A tunnel.

She almost laughed out loud. Tunnels didn't scare her.

Twenty-five years ago, God had found her beaten, pregnant, and enslaved in the dankest subterranean passage in the world . . . the tunnel beneath the palace of Aspasius Paternus, proconsul of Carthage.

God would find her again.

B
AREK AWOKE FACEDOWN IN
a coagulating puddle that stank of rusty iron and sweat. Dazed and uncertain of where he was or what had happened, he brought his left hand to his head to investigate the throbbing near his temple. It came away sticky with blood. A painful haze clouded his vision. He pushed himself upright and blinked. Hot, thick waves of air fanned the open door back and forth on creaky hinges. In the fading light, the terrifying events that had rendered him totally ineffective rushed in, sharp as the blade he clutched in his right hand.

Soldiers had come to Cyprian's villa. Searching for the exiled solicitor of Carthage and those who harbored him. Barek remembered grabbing his knife from his belt to defend the innocent, but he was no match for the heartless killing machine of Rome.

Oh, God!

Barek pushed himself upright. Everything hurt, but there was only one way to assess the damage and that was to get to his feet. Excruciating pain stabbed his lungs. Hobnailed boots must have broken a few of his ribs. His legs buckled and sent his body to the floor with an agonizing thud.

“Lisbeth? Maggie?” His unanswered pleas scraped his raw throat.

Had he embarrassed himself and screamed like a girl when
the soldiers began running their swords through the patients who filled Cyprian's home? The shame of his possible cowardice paled in comparison to the shame his betrayal had brought upon this house. Thank God his parents' earlier deaths had spared them the humiliation of seeing their son destroy the church they'd worked so hard to build, as well as the man they'd chosen to lead in their absence.

Barek refused to curl around his injuries. He deserved to feel every bit of pain. What a failure he was compared to his godly father, the former bishop of Carthage. Helping the slave trader Felicissimus sell the evil writs of
libellus
was a mistake. How many people would die because of those worthless pieces of paper? It wouldn't take the Romans long to figure out that true Christians would never give the Roman gods genuine allegiance. If only he could take back his part in this horrible fiasco.

He raised a shaky hand to his lips and called, “Cyprian?”

The house was silent.

No coughing. No crying out for relief from fevers. No sign of the soldiers. All that remained of Lisbeth's little hospital were the motionless bodies of the people he'd failed to protect.

He no longer had to worry about his lack of faith. His sin would never again allow him to boldly approach the one God of his father, but he had nowhere else to turn. Barek squeezed his eyes tight and dared to commit one last sacrilege. “God, please do not make Cyprian pay for my disloyalty.”

Struggling for breath, Barek searched the carnage in the atrium. The patients were dead. What about everyone else? Those he loved who had been caring for the sick. If they had been spared, he would dedicate his life to their protection.

Barek grabbed hold of a nearby bench to steady himself. “Laurentius?” His desperation echoed in the frescoed arches. “Naomi?”

Pain accompanied every jarring step. He skirted bodies and hurried to the quarantine hall. The secluded space had been assigned to keep the Cicero family away from those with measles after Lisbeth discovered their daughter carried an even more deadly kind of sickness: typhoid.

“Titus? Vivia?” The bed where the wealthy patrician's daughter had been recovering from surgery to repair her damaged bowels was empty, and her parents were gone.

Barek scanned the destruction in the hall for their bodies.

Nothing.

Behind him a faint rustle was followed by the slightest of whispers. He strained to listen, to nail down the location of what he hoped was a survivor, but his own heart was thudding so loudly in his ears he couldn't trace the sounds.

“Barek?” The female voice came from behind.

He wheeled. “Naomi?” Relief pumped strength into his legs. He rushed to the servant girl and grabbed her outstretched hands. “Are you hurt?”

She shook her head, her eyes wet with tears. “But you are.”

Her concern was more than he deserved. More than he wanted. “Where are Laurentius and Junia?”

She tugged him toward the back door. “Come with me before the soldiers return.”

B
REATHLESS AND EMPTY INSIDE,
Cyprian returned to his villa with great haste. His wife and daughter deserved a chance to be a family. That he would never join them was a sadness he could not let stop him from his promise to locate Lisbeth's mother and half brother. At the earliest opportunity he would send them sailing through the time portal after her.

“Barek!” he called as he burst through the door. Overturned mats, smashed pottery, broken vaporizer tents, and the still bodies of Lisbeth's patients littered the atrium. “Barek!” His anxiety growing, Cyprian picked his way through the mess and sprinted to the gardener's cottage.

The door stood ajar.

He slowly pushed back the weathered wood. “Barek!” Ruth's son stood beside Pontius. Both had their daggers drawn. Barek's eyes were wide, and his ghostly pale face was smeared with blood. Cyprian held up his palms. “Barek, it's me. Where are Junia and Laurentius?”

Barek shook his head as if he didn't understand Cyprian's question.

“Pontius, where are they?”

Cyprian's faithful friend stepped aside. Laurentius had his face buried in the shoulder of the young girl Lisbeth had saved and
Ruth had adopted. Junia's arms were wrapped tightly around Laurentius and Naomi.

“Is everyone all right?” Cyprian rushed to the little huddle. “What about the Ciceros?”