by Albert Noyer
“What’s your name?”
“Juba.”
“Well, Juba, your friend did what I expected. Thrusting is a standard tactic for lancemen. Maybe he felt overconfident because I’m a woman, and these tits probably distracted him”—Giamona paused to allow herself a smile as the other men hooted and clapped—“but he underestimated the net, and my scars should have warned him that I’ve fought many times and survived.”
“If he’d taken the shield,” Sabatis added, “Aspar could have broken your jaw when you stepped up to him.”
“Yes.” Giamona demonstrated with her hands. “A quick upward thrust.”
Aspar stood up, brushing sand from his legs. When Giamona reached out a hand to him, he only glared at her with narrowed eyes, but after Juba spat out a command in Berber, he lightly touched her forearm in a reluctant gesture of conciliation.
“Good. Come and eat with us,” she offered, pulling her tunic back up to cover her breasts. “Sabatis, where’s Tigris?”
“In his barrack.”
“Help Bellelus bring the surgeon’s instruments.”
Getorius looked at the raw bruise on Giamona’s shoulder, which was oozing a bloody lymph fluid. “You should let me take care of your injury.”
“After you’ve seen Tigris.” She turned and walked quickly toward one of the buildings.
As Getorius followed her, the sun dropped behind the rugged summits in a final blinding flash of brilliance. A savory smell of stewing venison was issuing from an iron pot tended by two women. They looked up at him curiously. Three young girls, who were stacking loaves of bread and setting out wooden bowls and pewter spoons on one of the long tables, smiled. One waved. Getorius nodded to acknowledge them.
Tigris was on the last cot of the nearest barracks, his face florid and glistening with perspiration. Getorius could smell his diseased arm even before he pulled back the covers and saw what he had expected. The limb was black with a putrid bile excess, which indicated that the flesh and underlying bone were dead. The withered remains of a poultice of sumac leaves, with clay votive offerings tucked among them, had fallen aside. “Who knows about sumac here?” Getorius asked, surprised at the dressing.
Giamona hesitated then said, “Sa…Sabatis. Was that the right thing for him to apply?”
“He didn’t do anything wrong. Is…was he a surgeon?”
“Capsillarius. Legion medical orderly, somewhere in the north.”
“That’s good, I’ll need his help after he brings my instruments. But I’m afraid Tigris will have to trade his arm for his life. Assuming he survives the fever.”
The dead flesh reached almost to the shoulder joint. Getorius knew he would have to amputate at that point, then cauterize the wound to stop bleeding from two major veins and the subclavian artery.
Sabatis came in with the driver, carrying the cases.
“Bellelus, stay here. You’ll have to help hold Tigris down,” Getorius ordered. “Sabatis, have you ever assisted at an amputation?”
He shook his head. “Cutting out arrow heads. Treating sword slashes.”
Getorius grunted. He searched among his instruments and selected the surgical saw and a scalpel, then a flattish cauterizing iron. “Have someone heat this in the cookfire. I’ll prepare a strong dose of opion to put Tigris to sleep, but I’m concerned about his fever.”
“I gave him a brew of rumex leaves.”
“Good, Sabatis, but arctium would be better. Can you find some young roots this early in the year?”
“I think so.”
“Crush them in wine. It will take all three of us to get him to drink it, and then the opion on top of that.”
Following the amputation procedure, Getorius pulled the flaps of Tigris’s skin together and sutured them over the seared stump of shoulder. After applying another poultice of fresh sumac leaves he judged the amputation itself a success, but the question of the fever remained. Sabatis could probably monitor the healing of the wound, but the next day or two would be crucial to the gladiator’s recovery. '
During the long twilight, Getorius ate a little bread and stew outdoors with the others, listening to harrowing stories about their narrow escapes in the arena, or myths about legendary gladiators of the past with unfamiliar foreign names—Purpurio, Rodan, Filematio. Giamona sat beside him. Despite her exertion in the arena, the scent of Arcadia’s oil was still evident, mingled with the slight smell of the woman’s perspiration. Several times, as Giamona reacted with laughter to the stories, Getorius noticed that she playfully pushed her leg against his for emphasis. He thought she might be drinking too much in order to forget Tigris’s ordeal, but was also aware that her blue eyes were often fixed on him, instead of the man telling the story. He felt in turn embarrassed and flattered, and then aroused, when he recalled the glimpse of her loins in the wagon.
At a lull in the conversations, while wine cups were being refilled, Giamona suddenly turned her injured shoulder to Getorius and leaned against him.
“Y’ said y’d treat my arm,” she reminded him in slurred words, an odor of wine strong on her breath.
“I did, I did,” he replied, grinning foolishly. He had not refused the serving women’s refills in his own cup and felt a little giddy. Name of Hades…I think I’m getting drunk.
Giamona lurched to her feet with as much dignity as possible. “Bring your case t’ my room,” she mumbled. “I don’t need these wine-soaked pig stickers watchin’ y’ put a band’ge on me.”
The men clanged their cups on the table and hooted as she stepped over the bench and weaved her way toward the second barracks. Getorius muttered an embarrassed thanks to them and walked unsteadily after her, to find his medical bag.
Women and children lived in a separate section of the building. Getorius brought his case to the door that Giamona had entered and found her sitting on the edge of a bed. She had pulled the tunic high above her muscular thighs; her pubic blondeness, now more prominent, triggered an erection in him.
She looked up from examining a scar. “Took y’ long enough, Get’rix.”
“I’m here.” Getorius grinned foolishly as he fumbled to pull the stopper off a jar of plantain salve. “I’ll just spread some of this on you,” he babbled hoarsely, conscious of the pressure in his groin as he smeared on the ointment. “Then I’ll bandage your shoulder, even if old Hippocrates wrote that—”
“Screw Hipp…Hippocr’tes.” Giamona slipped the tunic over her head, pushed Getorius back onto the bed and wriggled her nude body on top of him. “And screw spreadin’ that glop…spread these.” She giggled and clamped muscular legs around his waist.
Wine was strong on her breath as she bent to thrust her tongue into his mouth. At the same time she tightened her leg grip, until Getorius felt as if an iron barrel hoop had circled his body. He had guessed this might happen, even as he followed her, grinning like an idiot.
Her tongue was drunk-sloppy, like a warm sponge washing his mouth. Giamona moved her head alongside his and reached under his tunic to fondle his hardness. “Wan’ do it regular ‘dog-dog,’ or some other way?” She tittered to herself again. “I know lots o’ good Greek an’ ’Gyptian tricks.”
Her short blonde hair was tangled in Getorius’s face. As he blew it aside and tried to breathe, the odor of Arcadia’s perfume on the woman’s skin became overwhelming. He remembered the plaque his wife had given him on his birthday.
The Oath. I did smear a little salve on her, so Giamona is technically my patient. Arcadia left out the part of the Oath about seducing females because she didn’t think it was necessary. But who’s seducing whom here? Still…He tried to slip out from the tight vise of her thighs, and moved to push her hand from his groin. But when he reached down, it was her fingers that went limp. Her leg hold on him abruptly relaxed.
Getorius worked himself free of her weight and rolled an unresisting Giamona to one side of the bed, where she lay on her back, mouth open, snoring in spurts.
Giamona, the Cel
tic woman gladiatrix whose jiggling bosom had lured hapless opponents to their deaths, and whose iron thighs had trapped other undoubtedly happier living ones, was asleep.
Getorius eased her body all the way to the mattress’s center, then covered her with the gray army blanket on the foot of the bed, his Oath to Hippocrates and Arcadia still intact.
In the morning Getorius felt nauseous. Drinking had not helped his unbalanced wet humor. After he looked in on Tigris, he saw Giamona come out of her barracks door. She was pale and looked tired, but did not indicate by her manner that she remembered anything about the previous night. He guessed that if she did, the woman considered it an incident not worth recalling, much like a bout she had survived in the arena and would not think about until facing her next opponent.
“How is Tigris?” she asked.
“Still feverish, but not any worse. The crisis could come today or tomorrow. How long do you want me here?”
“Can Sabatis take care of Tigris?”
“If he follows my instructions about continuing the poultices and arctium…wean him off the opion. There’s nothing more I would do.”
Giamona shrugged her shoulders. “Bellelus is driving a wagon to Ravenna to pick up the supplies Atrax bought. You’re free to go with him.”
“I’ll tell Sabatis what to do.”
She grunted and reached into her purse, then handed Getorius two silver coins. “Siliquae. If your fee is more I’ll get you the money after our next bout.”
“No, no…please,” he declined, closing her hand over the coins. “If you insist on still fighting, use the money to…ah…perhaps have an armorer make breast protectors for you.”
“And hide my best advantage?” Giamona laughed and kissed his mouth hard. She tasted fresh from mint leaves she had chewed. She pressed his hands against her tunic top and frowned. “Are my tits beginning to sag? Maybe I’ll think about that armor.”
“Giamona, if…I mean when Tigris recovers, perhaps a woodworker, or sculptor, could fit him with an artificial arm. Cedar, and a hollow silver hand.”
“Perhaps.” She looked toward Tigris’s barrack, then back at Getorius. “Come to one of our bouts next month.”
“I don’t even know where we are.”
“Outside Forum Livii. I’ll send Bellelus for you.”
“Who comes? The bouts are illegal.”
“Not when you have the wealthiest senator in Ravenna backing your team.”
“Publius Maximin? I should have realized. He already wagers on the fighting cocks he raises.”
Giamona winked at him. “Maybe, after awhile, raising the same old cock isn’t good enough.”
Is she propositioning me again or telling me something about the senator? Getorius bent down to pick up his medical case, knowing his face was not flushed solely from fever. “When is Bellelus leaving?”
“Go ask him. I’m going to teach those two barbarians the finer points of avoiding a sudden meeting with Dis Pater, Father Death.” '
On his way back to Ravenna, Getorius began to feel even worse. His head and eyes ached, and overdrinking had aggravated his phlegm imbalance. He thought of this latest venture of Maximin’s, sponsoring a team of illegal gladiators. Money seemed to roll in for the senator like breakers on the Adriatic shore. Pepper, high quality wine and oil, possibly smuggled sapphires, and now a cryptic cargo from the Orient. That, too, had to be an investment that would make him even wealthier. A more important concern was to get Arcadia back home, then find the origin of the counterfeit coins, in case she was indicted. And prove Thecla innocent of the death of Atlos.
Once at his villa, Getorius asked Childibert about Arcadia. Told she was well and had been brought clothing and food, he went directly to his bed, dropped onto it fully clothed and slept as if in a feverish trance the rest of that day and into the night.
Getorius arose the next morning, still tired, his nose clogged, and without an appetite. Food would be tasteless anyway. His delirious sleep had been haunted by worry about his wife and the remembrance of the amputation still vivid in his mind; the putrid stink of Tigris’s arm, the rush of black bile as he had cut away the last shred of muscle, the searing sound and sickening smell of burned flesh as Sabatis applied the cauterizing iron. Realizing there was no way he could treat patients in his present state, Getorius ordered Brisios to take Arcadia breakfast and tell her he would visit, after he had done some reading at the palace library.
Since the death of the library master in December, no one had been put in charge of the scroll and book storage bins, but Getorius knew Lucius, the chief copyist. Getorius questioned him about the location of information about the cult of Cybele. Lucius thought the earliest reports were probably by the historian Livius, and sorted through the collection until he located a passage in Codex XXXVI.
Getorius read with growing concern, taking notes in a small vellum tablet he had made, about the first entrance of the goddess into Rome. After he finished he went to find Arcadia. A guard told him she was being held in the third reception room off the atrium corridor.
Arcadia had finished the meal Brisios brought when Getorius entered.
“Cara, I missed you. Are you well?”
“Well enough,” she replied, standing up. “I’m glad you came, Getorius.”
He hugged her tightly and buried his face in her hair, smelling her perfume, and grateful that Giamona had fallen asleep before he could violate the Oath. She pulled away and brushed at the lines on his forehead.
“You look exhausted, Husband. And ill.”
“A touch of fever.”
“Brisios told me you had been called away. Where?”
“I…I’ll tell you later.” He sat on her cot and pulled his note tablet from a sleeve. “I went to the library to find out what I could about this Cybelene cult.”
“And?”
He flipped open the wooden cover. “It began in the province of Galatia, called Phrygia back then, and settled by Celtic mercenaries after their defeat by a local king.”
“Didn’t I say Diotar might know Celtic?”
“You were right. Clan chieftains continued to rule over the local population as a Celtic aristocracy.”
“What about Cybele?”
“Her cult started in the town of Pessinus.”
“Where Diotar said he was born!” she exclaimed.
“Exactly, Arcadia. The goddess was depicted with the body of a woman, but…get this…her face was a sacred black stone thrown down by some sky god or other.”
“The meteorite face we saw on that temple statue.”
“Yes. Her rites included music and dancing, but also flagellation and ritual self-mutilation…like the cuts I saw on Kastor.”
“Castration?”
He nodded. “We saw, or thought we saw, how central to the rite the practice is. After you drank from this Gallus River that Diotar mentioned, you supposedly went mad for a time.”
“Alucinari in the water?”
“More likely the visions were from chewing plants that grew on the banks. The cult was brought to Rome on the advice of a Sibylline Oracle, at the time of the Carthaginian wars, when the Republic was fighting Hannibal. The story goes that Cybele’s statue was taken from Pessinus and hauled up the Tiber on a barge pulled by a Vestal Virgin. Can you guess her name?”
“Don’t tell me it was Claudia Quinta?”
“On target, Arcadia! That’s the connection with our epileptic Claudia.”
“Getorius, Diotar is using her. We’ve got to get the girl away from whatever illegal Cybelene cult is in Ravenna. Who would worship a…a meteorite in our enlightened age?”
“Don’t mock. A scribe’s notation on the text margin mentioned the Historia Augusta. I looked it up. About two hundred years ago an emperor wanted to revive the worship of Cybele in Rome.”
“Two centuries past, Getorius.”
“Yes, but less than fifty years ago a fanatic named Flavianus tried to restore the cult’s March and September fest
ivals. We saw the first one at that temple, the ‘Day of Blood.’ A man representing Attis castrates himself, then is ‘resurrected’ under a pine tree the next day.”
“Horrible.”
“Another thing. I found a map that locates Pessinus on the Silk Road.”
“From Sina? You think Zhang Chen is connected with Diotar too?”
“I don’t know, but I’m more interested in the priest’s connection with Carthage. He may exploit the disastrous Vandal occupation to revive a cult that began during the old wars against Hannibal. In times of uncertainty people will believe anything they think might help them.”
Getorius fell silent, pondering the extent of his discoveries, wondering how they could be connected to the dead youth Thecla found in her church, or even the smuggled items and Chen’s mysterious crates.
Arcadia broke the quiet. “Getorius, I don’t think that Atlos mutilated himself.”
“No. That lump on his head told me he had been hit from behind. Virilo, or someone he hired, is likely responsible.”
“And they left the sickle-turned-knife behind?”
“That’s harder to diagnose. Have you seen Thecla?”
“Only once. She’s very depressed.”
“Understandably,” he said. “I’ll try to talk with her, but you ask her if the church door was still locked when Leudovald went there. If it was, that could mean there’s a hidden entrance somewhere inside her basilica.”
“And that makes sense, Husband. Arians haven’t been all that secure in the past either. If a mob decided to enforce the ban on my sect, I’d certainly make sure I had an escape route.”
Getorius looked around the small room. “I’m going to get you out of here. I’ll…” He paused at the sound of footsteps and a jingling of metal equipment in the corridor.