Free Valley of Decision by Lynne Gentry Page A

nose.
    â€œWait,” she called after him.
    He ignored her and kept going. “Someone may have seen Maggie.”
    â€œSo much for keeping our heads down.” Lisbeth hurried across the street and caught up with him. “Let me do the talking.” She stopped the first person, an old woman with fresh scabs on her face. “What’s going on?” Her rusty Latin must have frightened the woman because she backed away. Lisbeth turned to summon her father, but he was right behind her.
    Papa stepped in and rephrased the question. The woman nodded in the direction of the proconsul’s palace high atop the Acropolis and mumbled something Papa translated. “She says Aspasius is dead.”
    â€œWhat? When?”
    â€œYesterday.”
    â€œThat can’t be.” Was her timing off? The sickening possibility she’d overshot their desired entry time slammed Lisbeth’s gut. “Let’s check it out, Papa.”
    â€œI thought we weren’t sightseeing.”
    â€œThis is one sight I’m not going to miss.”
    Arm in arm, they approached the line that snaked around the palace grounds. Lisbeth strained to make out the circulating whispers.
    â€œMurdered,” Papa whispered. “They’re saying the proconsul was murdered.”
    â€œBy whom?” Lisbeth’s pulse quickened. “When?” Did the person who killed the proconsul kill her mother? Had Cyprian already been executed? Was she too late? Where was Maggie? Lisbeth’s gaze raced over the crowd. God, help me find my strong-willed runaway.
    â€œThey’re saying Aspasius died at the hand of his personal healer,” Papa said.
    â€œMama?” She and Papa exchanged terrified looks. “That’s impossible.”
    â€œWell, impossible or not, he’s dead.” Papa pointed to the cypress branch hanging over the open doors of the palace and the group of women throwing themselves upon the ground and wailing in a mournful rhythm. “I don’t think we want to be here. This is the line to view his body.” He tried to pull her away, but Lisbeth strained in the direction of the body. “Wait, where are we going?”
    â€œTo spit upon the face of the tyrant who tortured my mother.” Lisbeth dragged Papa to the end of a long procession of men, women, and children filing past the pale body laid out in the atrium. Different accounts of how the proconsul died reached Lisbeth’s ears. One version stopped her heart.
    â€œWhen he refused to marry his lover, she sawed off his leg and kept it as a memento.”
    â€œThat’s not true,” Lisbeth whispered to Papa. “Mama loves you. Not that coward who hid in his bedroom with his gangrenous foot and weasel-eyed scribe.”
    What she didn’t go on to say was that she’d begged her mothernot to nurse the man who’d abused her for nearly a quarter of a century. She’d pleaded with Mama to come with her. To come back to Papa. Lisbeth didn’t say it, because she didn’t want her father to misconstrue the truth. Mama had chosen to remain in the past. Not because of Aspasius but because of his son.
    Lisbeth inched forward. She wouldn’t believe the man who’d exiled her husband and made her mother’s life miserable was dead until she saw his body. She shifted from foot to foot, trying to see around the tall oil merchant blocking her view. When the man in front of her had finally seen enough and moved on in a greasy swirl, Lisbeth gasped.
    The bloated corpse of Aspasius lay in repose upon a marble table. The slight tilt of his head had permanently pressed his lips into that wicked, twisted grin he’d given her right before she’d administered the mandrake that put him under for surgery.
    In life, the proconsul of Carthage had seemed invincible. His massive girth had filled a room with fear. People cowered when his mercurial red sandals clicked upon the marble tiles of the