Return to Me - By Morgan O'Neill Page 0,8

to his new posting in Rome, the side trip to Hadrian’s Villa a special request of his wife.

Thin and frail, the caretaker nevertheless exuded strength and a gentle determination, and, if she harbored doubts as to the veracity of their tale, she didn’t let on. She welcomed them into her office, which was finely appointed, but sparse and chill, the brazier unlit.

Anxious, Gigi shivered with the cold and pulled her cloak closer.

“We are few in number up here, when the royals aren’t in residence,” Cretia explained, “and it has been a very long time since we’ve welcomed any of those. Honorius will not answer our pleas for more funding, furious because we allowed Placidia to stay here. But how could we not? They were a very great force, and she, a royal. Despite our meager condition, we remain, tending the site because we love it, and because this is all we have ever known. I am embarrassed you were able to find your way in through the mountains without being detected, but our protection was withdrawn the moment Placidia and her Visigoths arrived.”

“When were the Visigoths here?” Magnus asked. “How long ago did they leave?”

“Oh, let me think,” Cretia looked up at the ceiling, her fingers tapping the tabletop as she counted. “They arrived in the winter of the fifteenth year of Emperor Honorius’s reign, and were here but several months.” She smiled. “They were quite well behaved and left us without damaging anything. They were forced out by General Constantius, you see. He could not confront them openly, since his forces were stretched so thin, but he was able to block food supplies, and eventually their choices were either to leave or starve.”

Gigi leaned forward. “How long ago did they leave?”

“Where did they go?” Magnus added.

Cretia looked bewildered, as though the answers had already been given. “As I said, they were only here for the winter and early spring of the emperor’s … let me see,” her fingers tapped four more times, then she continued, “we are in the emperor’s nineteenth year, so they have been gone nearly four years. They were not physically forced out by anyone. Our emperor let them depart unmolested, but it was well known at the time it was Attalus who bid them leave and go into Gaul, so I presume they are there.”

A.D. 414! Appalled, Gigi sat back and looked at Magnus. When they’d left ancient Rome and time traveled, it had been A.D. 410.

Magnus’s jaw clenched, but he showed no other sign of stress.

“Sister,” Gigi asked, “we have journeyed in the mountains for a long while. What month are we in? Is it October? November?”

“We are well into late November,” Cretia answered. “The Nones of December will soon be upon us.”

Gigi sat rigidly, thinking how little time they had. Placidia and Athaulf’s infant son was said to have died during the winter of 415 in Barcelona. That meant she and Magnus might have, at most, a few months to save the baby, and it would take weeks and weeks to get to Spain. Would the medicine they brought be useless, the child already gone? She bit her lip, striving for optimism, but she couldn’t overcome her rising panic.

“Thank you, sister,” Magnus said, getting up, “you have been most helpful.”

“Will you not stay and sup with us?” Cretia asked. “We would love to share what little we have in exchange for news of the wider world. You are welcome to stay the night.”

“Thank you. We will sup with you, but we cannot stay the night,” Magnus said. “I’m afraid we must keep moving. We are expected in Rome, and the rain has delayed us overmuch already.”

After a surprisingly hearty meal of venison stew, Gigi and Magnus thanked the woman and left. Outside, the sun, weak and pale, lost its battle with threatening clouds, and the world grew dark and cold once again. As they gathered their reins and mounted, Gigi couldn’t shake the sense of doom enveloping her heart.

They turned their horses onto the main road that would lead them toward Rome. “It’s late autumn, A.D. 414,” she said to Magnus when they were out of earshot. “Are we too late?”

“No, my sweet,” he grimly replied, “but we must hurry. They are in Hispania by now. I think we should go to Portus and see about boarding the next ship. It would be quicker than going by land, and I fear the time we’ve lost.”

“Portus?” Gigi asked, worried. It was Rome’s port city,