Valley of Decision by Lynne Gentry Page B

backbone to that soft body of yours. Because I expect you to return ready to do whatever it takes to assume the throne.” She wheeled. “Come, Aeliana. The future proconsul of Carthage has to pack.”
    His wife put her hand to her large belly and mouthed I’m sorry , then hurriedly waddled after her mother.

12
    W E’VE ASKED EVERYONE WHO left the church to reconsider.” Barek followed Cyprian down another dark, lonely alley. So far both of them had refrained from stating the obvious. No one was coming to their aid.
    â€œNot everyone.” Cyprian paused beneath a wooden sign carved in the shape of a large tooth and reviewed his list once again, holding it at an angle to take advantage of the splinter of moonlight. A gust of wind whipped the jagged points of the tooth against the tenement building. “According to one of the tenants, we’ll find your old landlord if we turn left here.”
    Barek scanned their surroundings. Unlike the stunning transformation in Maggie’s appearance, a blossoming that had robbed him of sleep these past few nights, his old neighborhood had decayed since his family abandoned their flat above the dye shop and moved into Cyprian’s villa in the posh part of town. Many of the shops and homes were empty. But if he closed his eyes, he could still smell the foul aroma of crushed snail shells clinging to his father’s robe and hear his mother humming her sweet songs of the Lord’s deliverance as her slender fingers worked the loom. How he missed them. And oh how his mother would enjoy seeing Maggie fill out a silk stola rather than trip over the hem as she had playing dress-up as a child.
    Barek shoved his failure to protect all of them in with his guilt for betraying Cyprian. “Metras lived in one of the lower apartments because of his bad leg.” Barek’s empty belly had been howling since sunset. Sweat trickled down his back. Traipsing about in hooded cloaks and begging for help that would never come was perhaps God’s way of giving him a taste of the punishment he deserved. “The old stonemason is the last name on our list, right?”
    Cyprian glanced at their carefully reconstructed record. “He is.”
    Barek’s father believed God kept the roll books, thus eliminating his need to record any believer’s name. Had Caecilianus known his son’s treachery would force Cyprian to reconstruct the roll, he might have left something more tangible. Thus, when Titus proposed dividing the tasks and decided to devote his time to finding out what he could about the new proconsul while Cyprian rallied the church, they all quickly realized there had been no reliable record of whom to rally. Cyprian had questioned Barek for hours, urging him to recall every person who’d ever attended the church gatherings in his home.
    Sketchy list in hand, Barek and Cyprian had spent the past two days knocking on the doors of frightened people, all of whom had sided with Felicissimus in the church split. Barek barely had time to state his business before those who’d lapsed in faith would announce, “Your parents are gone and have taken my faith in the church to their graves. What’s left for us now? As for me and my house, we’ll put our faith in the slave trader’s writs of libellus.”
    â€œFelicissimus had a pocketful of those worthless papers,” Barek argued each time, all the while knowing the scowling faces glaring at him had procured their writs from Barek himself. “All the paper in the empire did not stop a Roman sword from piercing the traitor’s heart.”
    Barek’s arguments had gone unheeded. So far, not one person had changed his mind.
    If he and Cyprian failed to muster some help, how would they manage the big job of converting the senator’s home into a new hospital? Much as it pained Barek to admit it, Maggie was working hard, harder than he expected. She’d assembled a