Return to Me - By Morgan O'Neill Page 0,4
she and Magnus stepped to the pulpit, where they put on their knapsacks. Fingers trembling, she got her flute ready. Gravely serious, Magnus withdrew his blades and wrapped his arms around her waist.
Her heart pounded. With a last look, she memorized the moment. A nod from Jack. Her parents’ tears. Her mom blowing her a kiss, the ruby ring sparkling on her left hand.
Gigi placed her golden flute to her lips and began to play.
The “Minute Waltz.”
• • •
The air shimmered with color and sparkling lights, and Jack heard two flutes playing. In amazement, he glanced around the baptistery for the other flutist, but only Gigi stood at the pulpit, Magnus by her side.
Jack cocked his head and listened as the musicians got more in sync, until they matched note for note. Then, in a flash, Gigi and Magnus vanished.
Jack’s mouth dropped open. Holy shit, it worked!
Susan Perrin collapsed into her husband’s arms, and Jack quickly helped him lower her to the floor.
“Libertas!” someone triumphantly shouted.
Jack spun toward the pulpit and saw him, a little man in a toga, holding a silver flute.
Chapter 2
Ravenna, Italy
“Libertas!”
Gigi heard the man’s distant cry and knew the time travel had worked before she opened her eyes. Unsteady, woozy, she leaned against Magnus, who held her fast. The other flutist had played the “Minute Waltz” with her, their music meshing easily this time. The present had given way to the past in a swirl of sparkles and cold fire.
“We’re here, my sweet.”
She nodded and looked around. The baptistery’s interior was dimly lit by shafts of moonlight filtering in through high windows. Bare, shadowy walls. The marble pulpit new, crisply carved. The scent of incense lingering in the air.
Pinpricks of dread needled her spine, and her hands shook. They were back in the fifth century. Why had they done this? Why had they put themselves in such danger?
The children. She took a deep breath.
Magnus released her and sheathed his sword, but kept his Bowie knife at the ready.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said in English, then shook his head and switched to Latin. “Merda — from now on, we must speak my mother tongue.”
“I am terrified,” Gigi admitted in Latin.
He kissed her temple. “Think of the children, think of Placidia.”
“I know. I’ll be fine.” She put her flute away and drew her palla over her hair. She followed Magnus to the door and together they slipped into the night, moving from shadow to shadow beneath the plane trees lining the plaza.
No one was around. A chill breeze sent dried leaves skittering across their path. Autumn. But what year? The air smelled of wood smoke, fish and garlic — the ancient Ravenna she remembered.
As they approached a guardhouse near the southern gate, the Porta Nuova, she knew their most brazen moment lay ahead. Gigi pulled her palla closer about her face.
“Guard,” Magnus shouted, “I have need of horses.”
A slave ran out of the stables, bleary-eyed and confused, followed by a Roman legionnaire coming from the guardhouse.
“What’s this? You have a nerve! These are our — ” Seeing Magnus’s uniform, the legionnaire snapped to attention and saluted, his arm touching his chest, then thrusting forward. “Forgive me, sir. I, I didn’t realize.”
“I have need of two horses,” Magnus reiterated. “Ours are down with stone bruises, and my wife and I must leave Ravenna tonight. I’ve let my stable boy know, and he will be here tomorrow to replace the two I’m taking now.”
The legionnaire saluted again. “See to the needs of the legatus and his wife,” he commanded the stablehand, who ran off to saddle the mounts.
Soon, Gigi and Magnus were passing through the gate. She hazarded a glance at the guards manning the tower and caught one man’s answering stare. She held herself straight in the saddle and stared back, as if she were the aloof, spoiled, high-born Roman wife of a legatus.
His gaze was keen, but then he turned away, and Gigi hoped what she had seen was mere curiosity.
• • •
Smiling coldly, Sextus stood in the guardhouse and mulled what had just happened. His lot had worsened since the death of his general, Sarus, three years earlier. No longer a proud centurion, he and all of Saurus’s men had been demoted after that barbarian cocksucker Athaulf murdered the general. And now, unbelievably, the catalyst for all his woes had just left Ravenna — Senator Magnus and his slave-wife, whom he recalled had the odd name of Gigiperrin.
The bitch had looked at him as if