Authors: Lynne Gentry
“As attractive as your offer is, Dr. Hastings—”
“Lawrence.”
“Dr. Hastings,” she said as firmly as she could. Father would frown on her getting too familiar with a patient, even one fully discharged and no longer under her care. “I have to work. And I’m sure you have to get back to . . . pillaging the earth or whatever it is you do.”
“Can’t. My doctor told me to take it easy for a few days. . . .” He leaned in and whispered, “And I always follow my doctor’s orders—especially when she’s breathtakingly beautiful.”
Mutfi’s opinion of her beauty had the appeal of fingernails screeching down a chalkboard. Here was a man with good depth perception, and he thought her appearance more than acceptable, even beautiful. But she would be a fool to swoon like Kaifah. Lawrence Hastings was an adventure seeker. When his work was done, he would vanish faster than the autumn rains.
Since the arrival of the ancient Phoenician queen Dido, a parade of invaders had sought to capitalize upon the treasures of Carthage. War upon war had been fought to secure this port as a center of trade for a number of empires. She had no more interest in becoming the purloined prize of this barbarian than she had in becoming the property of Mutfi Zaman. No matter how charming the American’s proposition, no matter how enchanting his smile, no matter how attractive he thought her to be, she had bigger problems that needed attention.
“Dr. Hastings, fraternizing with a patient isn’t a good idea. Besides, we come from two completely different and incompatible worlds.”
“Teach me your world,” he said in perfectly fluent Arabic. “I want to know everything.”
Her father would have been appalled if he caught her staring at a man with her mouth agape, but the American’s ability to speak her language was nearly as shocking as his views on the worth of a woman. Was there more to Lawrence Hastings than his easy-to-love humor, towering height, and rich, mellifluous voice? “I—I can’t,” she finally stammered.
“Here’s how I see it, Magdalena Kader. I’d hate for you to be sorry that you chose to play it safe.”
“Sorry?”
“Sorry that you missed out on an absolutely fabulous day with an extraordinarily fabulous guide.”
“You? I’m the one who grew up here.”
“I bet I can show you a thing or two about your city you never knew.”
“Are all Americans this sure of themselves?”
“Only the handsome ones.”
She stared at his outstretched hand, then glanced around the parking lot. Her father’s limo waited in its usual honored spot. She’d been too angry to ride with him, feigning sleep when he’d brought her breakfast tray. The deception had been childish, but she wasn’t ready to give him the answer he wanted. “After lunch, we part company, and I never see you again. Agreed?” A harmless outing on a beautiful day. Nothing more.
A slow grin danced across the American’s tanned face. “Only if you’re not totally in love with me by dessert.”
4
A
ZURE WAVES WASHED OVER
the stone remains of the harbor walls.
“One hundred and thirty meters in diameter.” Lawrence waved his pipe in the direction of the water. “The port of Carthage may seem small by today’s standards, but at its prime, over two hundred Roman ships docked within these walls.”
“I knew that.” Magdalena finished the last of the cheese. She’d already polished off the majority of the stuffed olives. Interns seldom took lunch breaks. And single women never picnicked on the beach with a man they’d just met. Father would not be happy, especially when he learned she’d missed her shift to play hooky . . . with an American.
“Did you know that at the height of the Roman occupation Carthage had over three hundred thousand inhabitants?”
“Again, trivia easily found in any tourist brochure.” Magdalena made herself take a breath and face the foreigner’s gaze head-on. He lay stretched out on the grass, favoring his injured hip while puffing on a pipe like the one she’d seen in pictures of the British detective Sherlock Holmes. “Why are you really here, Dr. Hastings?”
“Why are
you
here?”
“In Carthage?” To marry well and please her father. Nothing more, apparently. “I grew up here. I belong here.”
“No, I mean why are you
here
? Your purpose?”
“Purpose?” She would never hear such questions from Mutfi. A woman knew her purpose. “To marry. To have children. To serve my family.”
“Then why bother with medicine?”
“Helping sick people feels like making a difference.”
“Being a doctor is a hard path.” His gaze penetrated deep, as if he could see the struggle going on inside her soul. “I admire your focus.”
Waves splashed her feet, tumbling her emotions. Was he really looking at her as if what she did mattered, or was she reading more into his words in an attempt to assuage the sting of Mutfi’s comments?
“Enough about me,” she said, breaking the spell. “I’m sure you’re far more interesting. You never answered my question. Why are you here?”
He blew out a hazy ring that drifted toward her. “I love everything Roman, Magdalena Kader.” Purpose and passion rang in his voice. “Don’t you ever imagine yourself living in the days of Rome?”
Orange-scented smoke hung like a curtain between them, hopefully obscuring her aroused senses. “Hard not to when you live amidst their rubble.”
He took another long drag on his pipe. “With your beauty, I’m certain you would have been the wife of a rich patrician, draped in silks and attended by a bevy of slaves.”
“And forced to give up digging potsherds out of bumbling archaeologists? No thank you.” She poured herself more wine, determined to drown the fire his gaze stirred in her bones and return to her predestined life unscathed, dismal as slaving over a hot stove sounded. “But why here? Most of the records of Carthage have been destroyed. There’s little left to discover.”
He pushed himself to a sitting position. “Not true.” His finger skimmed her jaw. “There are always secrets buried beneath the layers.” He leaned in, his breath warming her already flushed cheeks. “My job is to find them.”
She hesitated, her heart arguing with the flashing caution lights in her head. Clearing her throat awkwardly, she sat back. “Are you good at what you do?”
“Not as good as you are with a needle, but I get by.” If he suspected she’d put the distance between them on purpose, he quickly recovered. “I was doing a bit of postdoctoral digging with a team in Syria when we got the call that additional human remains had been discovered near the Tophet.” His tone had taken on a beneficent reverence for the dead reminiscent of her deep regard for her med school cadaver. She’d never met anyone with her appreciation of what could be learned from bodies. “It took a bit of finagling to get myself assigned to this site, but like my sweet little mama always told me and my four brothers: nothing ventured, nothing gained. And being the archaeologist to unearth the truth behind the legend of pagan infanticide was a rare opportunity I did not want to miss.” His gaze traveled to hers. “I’d do it all again.”
“Even the potsherd to the bum?”
“Especially the potsherd.”
She wanted to touch his jaw, explore the square underpinnings of that easy smile and bedrock confidence. Instead, she stuffed her empty wineglass back into the picnic basket. “Killing babies isn’t exactly one of our finer moments.” She’d avoided the tilted grave markers at the Sanctuary of Tophet. The thought of all of those lost children had always sickened her. Everyone knew the ancient cemetery to be a sacred place with a dark history. The enormity of the numbers sacrificed in the name of religion made her furious. She snapped a lid on the few remaining olives. “So are there really twenty thousand children buried there?”
“At least.” His eyes held the same question as hers: what kind of mother willingly places her child upon the idol fires?
Not her. She loved children. As an only child, she’d dreamed of raising an entire tribe one day. But that was before her father had promised her to a man who announced that her primary obligation would be to immediately provide a son.
She pushed Mutfi’s serious face from her mind.
Lawrence shifted as if to escape the twenty-seven stitches in his posterior. He fished the baggie with the shard from his shirt pocket. “Along with this, I found some small terra-cotta baby-bottle-like vessels and several human skulls that measured only thirty-six centimeters or less. . . .” His voice cracked. “So many children.” Once again, reverence circled her like one of his slow-drifting smoke rings.
“I don’t believe my ancestors were all barbarians.”
“It’s not your fault.” He puffed the pipe thoughtfully. “Infanticide was the norm in ancient cultures. Fifty percent of all children were intentionally killed by their parents. In fact, Roman law demanded a father put a deformed child to death or leave an unwanted daughter to die of exposure. Only the Jews and Christians raised all of their children. Their strange practice was so unheard of that not only did it increase their religious persecution, but several of the ancient writers recorded their behavior as deviant.” He let his gaze drift to the waves. “But why fire in this case? They could have left these children on the bluffs or drowned them in the sea, as some were recorded to have done.”
“Romans believed fire transported the bodies to the gods, but . . .” Exciting possibilities suddenly pinged in her head. “What if the deaths could be attributed to something else, something far less sinister than sacrificial fires, but just as deadly?”
“Like?”
“Plague.” Why hadn’t anyone thought of this before? “Fire also destroys pathogens.”
He took a long drag on the pipe, then slowly released another smoke ring. “Do you always think this hard?”
“Unfortunately.” She couldn’t contain her excitement. “Think about it. Children are usually hardest hit in an epidemic.” She took the potsherd from his hand. The brush of his fingertips heated her whole body. She held the potsherd to the light, golden rays outlining the carefree strokes of the little swimmer. “What if one mass grave was the best a dying people could give their beloved children? Their gift of a blissful afterlife that also happened to purge the deadly germs?”
“Hmmm.” He puffed on the pipe, contemplating the validity of her argument. “Then there’s another question. All of the other urns in the grave were plain and mass-produced in a hurry. Someone took the time to paint this lone swimmer. It does cause one to ask why.” He took the shard from her. “Do you think the two could be related?”
His genuine interest in her opinion felt far more unsettling than the random flirting of their first meeting. “Tunisians are a maritime people. That image could have come from any number of sailing ships that traded in our port. It may not have a thing to do with a virus that took out so many children.”
“Or it could be a clue to the origin.” He looked at the shard with intense interest, turning the plastic bag over and over. “I’ll admit the medical implications of your theory are fascinating.” His gaze returned to hers, full of appreciation for whatever had befallen these people in the past. She wondered if he could care equally as strongly about someone’s future. “Where should we start?”
“
We?
”
“Hey, this is your idea.” His eyes twinkled. “And I think it’s brilliant.”
5
L
AWRENCE LIMPED AFTER MAGDALENA,
impressed by the way she tackled a lead head-on. He snagged her hand. “Hey, we’re not going to a fire.” His fingers interlaced with hers, anchoring him. “My boss called the curator. He knows we’re coming.”
She slid free. “I don’t have all day to do this, no matter how fascinating. I’ve got to get back to the hospital.”
They hurried along the portico that ran the length of the museum overlooking the harbor. Once they tracked down the swimmer’s origin, maybe they could research the plagues that hit Carthage and get to the bottom of what had really happened to all of those babies.
Lawrence paid the uniformed man their entry fee and followed Magdalena into a room filled with magnificent Roman statues. He’d have loved to spend days soaking in the details and sharing tidbits of history with someone as appreciative as Magdalena. Truth was, she was the first woman he’d wanted to share more with than a casual drink.
“Dr. Hastings?” A short, squatty man with a hooked nose greeted him. “I am Taher.”
“Thanks for helping on such short notice, Taher.”
“When HAT calls, we answer.” Irritation at the expedited meeting sizzled in the curator’s black eyes. “After all, we are here to assist in the preservation of our ancient treasures in any way we can.”
“This is my partner, Dr. Kader.” Lawrence removed the potsherd from his pocket and held out the baggie. Magdalena’s cheeks bloomed with color. Had he said something wrong? “Ever seen anything like this, Taher?”
He backed away. “No.”
Lawrence waved the shard in the direction of the display cases. “No vases or mosaics with swimmers?”
“I’m afraid not.” Taher wrung his hands. “Perhaps there are maker’s marks on the back of the piece?”
Lawrence turned the potsherd. “Don’t see anything.”
“Then you will have your work cut out for you, Dr. Hastings.”
“I’m thinking you know a little more about third-century Roman pottery than you’re saying, Taher.” Magdalena put into words exactly what Lawrence had been thinking.
“You’re welcome to visit our Room of the Amphoras. It houses containers of all shapes and sizes used in the business of sea transport. This water image could have come from any number of the ports that ring the Mediterranean.”
“But it didn’t, did it?” Magdalena said insistently.
The curator ignored her and spoke directly to him. “Dr. Hastings, my duties are many today. You must excuse—”
“Taher, please, just point us in the right direction.” Lawrence returned the shard to his pocket.
“We’ll do the rest,” Magdalena added.
The nervous curator glanced about as if he feared someone might overhear their conversation. “Come.”
He led them past several glass cases filled with pottery, weapons, and jewelry, some of it dating back to the Punic Wars. Along the museum’s white walls were intricate tile mosaics depicting the city’s bloody history from the Roman period all the way to the emergence of Christianity.