Barbarian Princess

by Barbarian Princess (retail) (epub)

  “It already hurts,” Flavius said. “It – aaaaahhhh!”

  Flavius struggled to sit up as Correus ruthlessly plunged his hand into the third bowl and held it under.

  “Hold him!” Correus snapped, and the innkeeper’s son put his hands on Flavius’s shoulders.

  Flavius shook his head. “No! No, I’m all right now. Leave me be!” He forced himself to lie back, teeth clenched, while Correus counted to one hundred under his breath. He didn’t know how long he was supposed to leave the vinegar on, but the longer the better, he supposed. When he took the hand out and dried it, Flavius was shaking, but he had made no sound. The stitches Silanus had used to close the skin over the amputated joint were torn, and the flesh was ragged with the bone showing through.

  I’m no surgeon, Correus thought desperately. I can’t stitch this. It would have to wait for Aquae Sulis. The bleeding seemed to be stopping. He wrapped the clean bandages from his kit around it, fervently hoping for the best, and said a quick prayer to the healer Aesculapius for good measure. He stood up stiffly and went around the bed to look at Flavius’s other hand. There was no blood on the bandage, but it also was mired with dung, and when Correus pulled it off, he could see that it had soaked through to the healing wound inside. “Go and fill the bowls again,” he told the innkeeper’s wife. “We’ll have to clean this one, too.”

  Flavius lay back on the bed and tried not to think about the vinegar. “I should have let you shave your face without my help,” he said with a wry smile.

  “I told you to, didn’t I?” Correus said. “We’ll get you to a proper physician in Aquae Sulis tomorrow.”

  The innkeeper’s wife and son came back with the refilled bowls, plus a dish of hot stew and wine. Correus cleaned the other hand as quickly as possible and salved it with the ointment Silanus had given him. When it was done, they propped Flavius up in the bed, and Correus fed him all of the stew he was willing to eat – about half – and held the wine cup for him.

  He ate and drank obediently and then let them pull the covers up over him, but it took him a long time to sleep, and midway through the night he grew restless. By morning he was flushed and all too plainly in a fever.

  Correus debated between trying to drag the retired army surgeon, of unknown skill, away from his sleep, or risking the ride into Aquae Sulis, where there would presumably be several physicians, as well as Flavius’s wife and servants to help cope.

  “Aquae Sulis,” Flavius said firmly. “There’s no telling how long it’s been since this army fellow’s done any surgery, and it’ll take just as long to get him back here as it will to get me to Aquae Sulis. And I want to see my wife,” he added. He sat up and held out his arms carefully, to let Correus slip his tunic over them.

  Correus agreed, reluctantly, neither prospect seeming any better than the other. They paid their tab at the inn and were on the road to Aquae Sulis an hour after first light, Correus on the troop horse and Flavius, this time with only a token protest, astride Antaeus’s broad golden back. Antaeus was renowned as the most unflappable horse in the empire and met all things which the Fates chose to send down his path with the unshakable dignity of a marble senator.

  They arrived in Aquae Sulis in good time. Besides the speed of his half-Arab blood, Antaeus had the endurance of an ox, and Correus didn’t care if he rode the troop horse into the ground. Bericus would have taken Lady Aemelia to the best inn available, and a wine merchant’s boy, trundling a cargo of long-necked jars along in a handcart, said that that would be the Green Plover, near the sacred spring, and he would be glad to show the centurions since he was bound that way now. They followed the boy through the broad streets, fairly crowded now with strolling visitors bound for the baths or the cures promised by the priests of Sulis Minerva at the temple spring. Correus kept a worried eye on Flavius. His eyes were unnaturally bright, and his mouth had the flushed, dry look that comes with fever. If they didn’t find Aemelia at the Green Plover, he decided, they would take a room anyway and find a physician first.

  Fortunately, since there was no room, Aemelia proved to be in residence. Bericus appeared and, after a shocked look at Flavius, began seeing to baggage and horses, while an inn servant showed Correus and Flavius to his wife’s rooms. Aemelia embraced him with wifely affection and Flavius caught her to him in a bear hug, unmindful of his bandaged hands. Over his shoulder she caught sight of Correus in the doorway. Her eyes opened wide, and her lovely face went stiff with shock.

  “C-Correus?”

  “I’m glad we found you,” Correus said, pushing in past her and slipping his own arm around Flavius. “He should be in bed. And he needs a surgeon – someone who can clean a wound properly and stitch it.”

  “What?” Aemelia turned back to Flavius, her eyes now taking in the fading bruises on his face. “What happened to you?”

  “A little… minor surgery,” Flavius said, trying to smile. He was beginning to feel light in the head, and his right hand was throbbing. He leaned against Correus. “I think I’d better… The room began to blur, and he couldn’t seem to finish the sentence. Correus caught him as he started to fall.

  “Where’s the bed?”

  Aemelia pointed through an arched doorway into a second room. Correus got Flavius up onto a bed covered with a light woolen quilt, and Aemelia was bending to pull his sandals off when she saw his hands. She put her own to her mouth with a gasp. “What is it?”

  “He was captured,” Correus said. He was unbuckling Flavius’s belt and thanking the gods that they had had enough sense to tie his armor on the horse instead of on Flavius. “They wanted information,” he went on, pulling the belt free and laying the back of one hand to Flavius’s forehead. It was hot. “They cut two of his fingers off.” Aemelia gave a choked sound and sank into a chair. Correus continued without turning around. “He was sweating earlier. This tunic’s damp clear through. There’ll be clean ones in his kit. Where’s Bericus?”

  Aemelia stood up. “I’ll find him,” she said faintly. “Rusonia!” A fair girl in servant’s clothes, some years older than her mistress, pattered in. “Go and find Bericus. He’s probably still at the stables. Tell him we need a physician. Now. The best one. Tell him to ask the innkeeper. And then get the master’s things, and bring them up here.” Rusonia gave a shocked look at Flavius and at the tall officer standing by the bed and hurried out. Aemelia turned to Correus and put out one hand to the arm of the chair to support herself. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I think I have myself together now. What were they about to let him travel in this condition?”

  “He was all right,” Correus said. “It was healing. A horse put a hoof down on it in Abona last night, and now I think it’s infected.” He realized how pale she was. “Here, you look done in. I shouldn’t have told you straight off like that. Go and sit down, and I’ll find you some wine. I think the quieter he is for now, the better.”

  Aemelia nodded and trotted into the outer chamber – gratefully, Correus thought, Her eyes had kept returning to her husband’s bandaged hands and were beginning to look panicky. He caught a passing inn servant, sent him to fetch her some wine, and then eyed his sister-in-law uncomfortably. He had assumed that Aemelia would take charge, in the way in which Lady Antonia or even Julia would have done, but she was sitting in her chair with her hands clenched tightly in her lap, all too plainly looking to him for directions. He had forgotten how young she was, he thought with sympathy, and then with a certain amount of irritation that Julia was only one year older, but Julia would have coped.

  “Did you know that Julia’s here? In Aquae Sulis, I mean?” he asked, seeking some soothing topic of conversation. The inn servant came with the wine, and Correus poured her a measure into the pewter cup on the tray and added water from the second jug.

  “Thank you.” Aemelia looked up at him uncertainly. “Yes, I bumped into her – quite literally – in the baths. I knew she was coming to Britain, of course, but I didn’t expect to suddenly find her beside me in the sw
imming bath. She’s staying at the Girl with the Jug, behind the Temple of Minerva. I was never so glad to see anyone.”

  “Poor kid, I’ll bet you were. Flavius didn’t like sending you off to wait for him in Aquae Sulis, but he thought it was better than Lindum right now.” He didn’t elaborate on why, and Aemelia didn’t seem to wonder, fortunately. “When the physician has seen to Flavius, I’ll get myself out of your way,” he went on. “I thought I’d stay with Julia if she can find me a corner to curl up in.”

  “You… you could stay here,” Aemelia said.

  Correus shook his head. “I think Flavius has had quite enough of my company. It’s you he’ll be wanting to see – and without his family underfoot.” And I’m tired, he thought. Tired of being in charge and not knowing what the hell I’m doing. He wished the physician would come.

  Aemelia looked at him dubiously. She didn’t know how to tell him that when she had met Julia, Julia had had a maidservant with her, carrying a baby whom Julia had presented to her, in a voice that brooked no comments, as her nephew. Julia had told her that the German woman had died, but she didn’t know how to say anything about that, either. There was something dark in Correus’s face that told her not to. He didn’t even seem to be the same person anymore… not the one she remembered. What had been between them – he seemed to have forgotten that and talked to her as if she were Julia. Or he was hiding it, because she was his brother’s wife now. Aemelia couldn’t tell. I can’t tell anything about him anymore.

  She watched him, bewildered, over the edge of her wine cup. And what about Flavius? What if he, too, had undergone some mysterious change? What if he were a stranger when he woke up?

  “I… don’t know you,” she said finally, frightened.

  “I’m older,” Correus said tiredly. Older by two wars, and you never knew me anyway. But he didn’t say that, it would only have been cruel. He looked up gratefully as Bericus came in with a short, stout man in a carefully draped toga.

  The physician put his bag down in the bedchamber and unwrapped the bandages, clucking as he went. “Hmmm. Yes, well it is most fortunate that you called me in, although of course at this stage—” He gave Correus and Aemelia a serious look. “There is inflammation, you see – redness, swelling, heat, and pain: the four cardinal signs. And the possibility of convulsion, of course, caused by the ill humors that have entered the blood. It will be necessary to bleed him to draw them out.”

  “He’s already lost a lot of blood,” Correus said.

  The physician gave him a raised eyebrow and continued. “It is bad blood that is causing the trouble. An excess of blood attracted by the wound.”

  Flavius opened his eyes. “Let him do what he wants to, Correus. The man must know his business.”

  “It’s up to you,” Correus said. This man was supposed to be the best physician in Aquae Sulis, and Aquae was thick with physicians. “I don’t know enough to argue.” Flavius nodded to the physician. “Go ahead.”

  “Give me that bowl.” Bericus handed the physician the washbowl from a table in the corner, and the man took up a scalpel and tied a linen strip around Flavius’s upper arm before opening a vein at the elbow.

  Flavius leaned back against the pillows while the blood dripped into the bowl. At least it didn’t hurt, he thought wearily: Everything else had hurt like Hades.

  Correus watched dubiously. It seemed like a lot of blood. At last the physician seemed satisfied. He closed the incision and began to repair Silanus’s torn sutures as well. Then he smeared both hands with a dressing and rebandaged them. Flavius gave a long sigh and settled into sleep. He did look less fevered.

  The physician beckoned Aemelia and Correus into the outer room, leaving Bericus to sit anxiously at Flavius’s bed.

  “I will call tomorrow, my lady,” the physician informed Aemelia. “To assure myself that the bleeding has indeed drawn the infection from the wound. These amputation cases can be very tricky, you understand. But I’m sure there’s no need for us to worry just yet.” He patted her hand in a fatherly fashion and was gone.

  “Oh, dear…” Aemelia looked after him. “He seems… very competent. But I – what do I do when he wakes up?”

  “Make him comfortable. Let him eat if he’s hungry.”

  “What do I do if he has to—to—”

  “Help him up so he can,” Correus said, trying not to sound exasperated. “Or Bericus can help him.” If you’re too delicate to watch your husband take a piss. “I’ll be at the Girl with the Jug, with Julia, if you need me,” he added, retreating before his company manners deserted him entirely. He patted her hand, and then he too was gone.

  * * *

  The Girl with the Jug, embodied on its signboard by a dark woman with braided hair and a vaguely Egyptian face, proved to be an airy, comfortable inn, not quite so ornate as the Green Plover, but having, so Julia said, the advantage of catering more to army men and locals, and less to fat old hens with female complaints. It was plain from her speech that she much preferred the company of the former.

  “A few more months with Paulinus and you won’t be fit to be anybody’s wife and mother,” Correus said disapprovingly, and she gave him a hug and a cheeky smile.

  “I’ll be admirably suited to be Lucius’s wife. And as to my maternal abilities, come and look at your son.”

  Julia had taken a suite of rooms on the top floor of the inn, with a wide, pleasant balcony that looked out over the inn’s garden. Julia clapped her hands, and a large, capable-looking woman with a baby in the crook of each arm came in from the balcony. Correus recognized her after a moment as Gemellus’s woman. She was considerably cleaner now and wore a servant’s plain gown.

  “You will remember Coventina,” Julia said. “She has kindly agreed to stay with me until the child is weaned.” Correus didn’t remember that Coventina had had any choice, but she seemed content enough, and certainly she was in the lap of Fortune here, as compared to the hut Gemellus had provided her with in Isca. It hadn’t been much worse than the quarters Freita had endured, he thought, with the familiar twist in his stomach that her memory always brought him. Freita would have preferred a hut and his company to luxurious surroundings without him.

  Julia took the smaller of the babies from her and cuddled him, nodding dismissal to Coventina, who bobbed a nervous bow at the pair of them and disappeared again. The baby was watching Julia’s dangling earring, and she tickled his chin affectionately.

  “She’s scared to death of you,” Correus said, eyeing Coventina’s retreating form. He felt awkward and scared to death himself. This was his child, his and Freita’s, and suddenly he was terrified of meeting it again.

  Julia giggled. “It’s not me. It’s Martia who puts the fear of the gods in her. Martia has very definite standards on how a servant should behave, and she… uh, instills them ruthlessly. Coventina’s being a free woman carries no weight with Martia, and she doesn’t let it carry any with Coventina, either. Martia sees herself as the force of civilization, I think. Certainly the force of cleanliness. Coventina’s not so badly off. She’s getting the proper food and being made to stay washed, so her own baby’s benefitting. Here, take your lorica off, and you can hold him.”

  Correus obeyed reluctantly, and Julia put the baby in his arms. He had a cap of thin, pale hair now, and bright inquisitive eyes beginning to turn from the dark blue of birth to some as yet indefinite shade. He burped suddenly and then looked in fascination at the shiny plates of Correus’s helmet.

  “Look how big he is for only a month old,” Julia said proudly. “Now try and tell me I’m not a good mother. And he’s as good as he can be. He never has colic or fusses. And don’t think I leave him to Coventina, either. She feeds him, but I do everything else. He’s already had a dip in Sulis Minerva’s spring to make him strong, and the priest there read me his fortune and said he’s going to be a soldier, so that’s all right.”

  Correus sat down carefully with the baby in his lap. You’re so little, he thou
ght. Do you look like me? Or Freita? You don’t look like anybody yet. “Is it so important he be a soldier?”

  “Well, I thought it would be to you,” Julia said. “He’s your son.”

  Correus thought about that. “I want him to be what he damn well wants,” he said finally. “I’m not going to do what Father did to Flavius.”

  “Flavius!” Julia looked conscience-stricken. “Oh, I didn’t even ask! I get so wrapped up in the baby. Correus, how is he? Lucius wrote me what happened. Is he all right now?”

  “Yes, I think so.” He explained again about the horse. “But the physician looking after him is supposed to be the best man in Aquae, so I wouldn’t worry. You can see him in a day or two, I expect. He’d like that.” Correus pulled off his helmet carefully with his right hand, holding the baby with his left, and set the helmet on the floor beside him. The baby’s eyes swiveled curiously toward the red horsehair crest. Correus ran his hand through his hair, a habit he had of smoothing the cowlick over his left brow. It stood straight up instead, as it always did. “Julia, I’m tired. I’m dead on my feet. I think you’d better take him before I drop him.”

  Julia scooped the baby up and settled back with him in her lap. “You need to sleep. Is Aemelia all right? I haven’t seen her since I got Lucius’s letter, and of course he said Flavius was all right, so I thought the rest of it was something Flavius ought to tell her himself. And Lucius wasn’t very informative, anyway. Correus, what did happen?”

  “Later,” Correus said. “Julia, if I don’t go to sleep, you’ll be nursing me.”

  She showed him into a small bedchamber. “I’m afraid you’ll have to share it with Tullius—”

  “I don’t give a damn.” Correus kicked off his greaves and sandals and sank down on the bed. Feathers. They seemed to wrap themselves around him, and he was asleep before she could say another word.

  He slept the day around, with Tullius tiptoeing in in the evening and out again the next morning without awakening him. It was late afternoon on the next day before he woke up.