Vita Brevis

by Ruth Downie

  “Because it doesn’t work!” Ruso shouted.

  Several people turned to glare at him, but the man was smiling. “Because other doctors don’t know how to make it work,” he said. “Because they listen to people like our friend here, who can’t accept the evidence of his own eyes, and to their own ignorant teachers, instead of studying for themselves!”

  A murmur of appreciation ran through the crowd. The speaker bent forward, surveying them as if he were addressing them one by one. “Tell me now, friends. How many times have you heard of a gang of doctors standing ’round some poor patient’s bed and arguing with one another?”

  Judging from the laughter, everyone knew exactly what he was talking about.

  “Friends …” His voice grew quieter, so that they had to strain to listen. “I’m not one of these so-called healers who wastes his time criticizing his rivals. I’m not part of some fancy school of philosophy that I have to defend because I have a book to sell. You deserve better than that! And that’s why I’ve spent years of study and travel finding out for myself what works.”

  Ruso felt his teeth clench. Like the most pernicious lies, the man’s claims had a superficial coating of truth and an appeal to common sense.

  “You saw it for yourself, friends! Let us see if we can help you like we helped this young lady. Every medicine I will give you is guaranteed blessed by the goddess Angitia, every treatment taken from the genuine writings of Hippocrates himself! No problem is too large or too small! We’re only passing through, so seize your chance—don’t go home today without speaking to me!”

  “Stay away from him!” Ruso shouted. “He’s dangerous!”

  He was aware of a silence falling on the crowd. People were turning to stare as the showman offered him an even broader smile.

  “Might you be a medical man, my friend?”

  Vaguely aware of the distant tramp of marching boots, Ruso took a deep breath. Leaving out the word former, he called, “Medical officer with the Twentieth Legion.”

  The showman extended an arm from on high as if to present Ruso to the crowd. “My friends, you see how it is! Jealousy! Your own doctors don’t want you to come to me and be cured. And why not? You know why not! Because they’d rather keep taking your money!”

  The sound of boots on stone was louder now. Someone had called out the troops of the urban cohort to keep order. Ruso yelled, “If you’re so good, why don’t you stay in—” But one place? was lost under the relentless rhythm of sword hilts beating on shields and the cries of the crowd. The men of the cohort charged. The people fled. In moments Ruso was standing alone in an empty expanse of paving with only a scatter of debris and the stink from a trampled dog turd to indicate that anyone had been there.

  Having averted the riot, the cohort was reassembling under the deserted sun god. Ruso leaned against the plinth to rub his grazed knees and pull his tunic straight.

  “You there!” roared a voice, its owner striding toward him. “You deaf or what? Clear off home!”

  Eyeing the centurion’s raised stick, Ruso chose not to argue. He had barely taken ten paces when a voice from a shadowed doorway across the street said, “I see you’re still causing trouble, Ruso.”

  3

  Brown hair, average height, faded tunic, battered sandals … had it not been for the voice, Ruso would never have noticed him. How long had he been standing in that doorway?

  Metellus, looking faintly amused, nodded a greeting to the centurion. Then he took Ruso by the elbow as if they were old friends and steered him toward the clatter that had resumed on the demolition site across the road now that all the excitement was over. “I heard you were in Rome.”

  Anyone who did not know Metellus would have taken this to mean someone happened to mention you. Anyone who had served in Britannia during Metellus’s time as security advisor to the governor would interpret it as I have an informer at the port who sends me lists of disembarking passengers.

  “So,” Ruso said, because it was best to be the one asking the questions, “what are you doing these days?”

  “Oh, this and that,” said Metellus. “Fortune has been kind. You?”

  “I’ve made some useful contacts,” Ruso assured him, wondering if Metellus wanted to know anything in particular, and for whom, and how to avoid telling him.

  “Really?” Metellus sounded surprised. “Who?”

  “I can’t say anything just yet,” Ruso told him. “You know how it is.”

  “Indeed.”

  Ruso hoped he didn’t. “Sorry I can’t stop and chat,” he said, waving past the sun god in the direction of the emperor Titus’s splendid baths, and not caring that this was an obvious lie from a man who moments ago had been loitering in the street. “I have to see a man about a job.”

  Metellus said, “I’ll walk with you.”

  Ruso glanced across at the demolition site, where a man in a battered straw hat was supervising a crane team as they cranked up a boulder to load into a waiting cart. Pushing aside a fantasy of what might happen if Metellus stood underneath it, he headed in the direction of the baths. His destination was up the Oppian Hill and with luck Metellus would get bored before they got there. If not, well, Kleitos was the sort of doctor who would happily spend an hour talking about the medicinal properties of thistles or the finer points of treating prolapsed hemorrhoids. That should see him off.

  They waited for two men to lug a bulbous oil amphora past, and then stepped into the street. Metellus said, “And how is your wife enjoying Rome?”

  “She’s very busy with the baby,” said Ruso.

  “Oh, dear, yes. I heard something about that.”

  “Parenthood is a marvelous thing,” Ruso assured him. “You should try it yourself.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” Metellus told him. “Especially after the rumors.”

  Ruso said, “It never pays to listen to rumors.”

  “Actually, I find it pays rather well.”

  Ruso tried, “And what are they saying about you?” but there was no reply.

  Smells of woodsmoke and perfume and stale sweat wafted into the street from Titus’s bathhouse and the one behind it which, being built by a later emperor, was of course spectacularly bigger.

  “I was told,” Metellus began smoothly, “that the child isn’t yours.”

  Ruso took a slow breath, savoring the memory of the day his patience had snapped and he had shoved Metellus into the nearest river. “She’s not Tilla’s either,” he said. “We adopted.”

  “Ah. I did wonder, but one never knows what to expect with the Britons.”

  “My wife is a Roman citizen now,” Ruso reminded him.

  “Of course,” Metellus continued smoothly. “Remarkable. I don’t think I ever congratulated her. Please pass on my good wishes.”

  Ruso had no intention of ruining Tilla’s day by telling her the man who had once put her on a security list of Undesirables to Watch was in Rome.

  “If there’s anything I can do,” Metellus continued, “just ask. I know one or two people who could offer you work.”

  “Thank you, but I don’t think it’ll be a problem.”

  “I do hope you aren’t relying on Publius Accius just because he encouraged you to come here—I believe that’s how it was?” When Ruso did not reply, Metellus added, “Accius was a big man back in Britannia, but you’ll need far better connections than that to get on in Rome. Especially with his tendency to make unfortunate remarks after too much wine.” He glanced back at the amphitheater. “I take it you’ve tried the gladiator school?”

  “I’m on their list.”

  Metellus said, “I may be able to help with that.”

  “Please don’t.” Facing a crocodile was one thing. Putting your head between its jaws was something else entirely.

  Metellus shrugged. “As you wish. But the offer is there. You can always contact me via the urban prefect’s office. Your wife won’t want to stay in that rather unpleasant boarding house forever.” />
  And with that the man was gone, brown hair and average height and faded tunic lost among the shoppers in a shady side street. The whole exchange might have been a hallucination, except now the tightness of Ruso’s fists and the soreness of his grazed knees was accompanied by a deep feeling of unease.

  He forced himself to take a couple of deep breaths and relax his shoulders. He was not involved in anything that could possibly interest the urban prefect, whose job it was to keep order in the city while the emperor was away on another of his foreign tours. If indeed Metellus really was working for the prefect. No, it was far more likely that Metellus had been drawn by the crowd, had spotted an old adversary, and decided to enjoy spoiling his morning.

  4

  It was easy to pick out Kleitos’s apartment on the busy Vicus Sabuci—it was the door under the arcade that had two holes clumsily bashed through the wall above it so extra windows could cast light into the surgery. To Ruso’s disappointment, it was locked. There was a large barrel half blocking the entrance, and there was no reply to his knocking. He was surprised: On his first visit he had been introduced to a couple of apprentices as well as Kleitos’s wife and children. He would have expected one of them to be there in the middle of the morning to take messages, even if the little Greek himself was out seeing a patient.

  He hoped there was nothing wrong. Kleitos had seemed a decent man: an enthusiast who had plied Ruso with questions about military surgical techniques and the plants and minerals that could be found in Britannia and had made scribbled notes of the answers on scraps of parchment and the unused corners of writing tablets. He had recommended reliable suppliers of roots and herbs, and his promise to send a message if there was any work had sounded genuine. He had also seemed sincerely sorry when he explained that he could not send any of his patients to Ruso’s lodgings, because none of them would dare to go there. But staring at the locked door, Ruso felt that if this was how Kleitos went about his business, it was hard to imagine he had a thriving practice.

  The blank face of the hefty woman serving in the bar next door told Ruso it was a mistake to ask for information without first ordering a drink. The purchase of a cup of spiced wine loosened her tongue a little, but not in a helpful way. She didn’t know where the doctor was, and they didn’t run a message service. “Come back this afternoon.”

  The wine was better than he had expected, which might explain the busyness of the surrounding tables: It certainly wasn’t caused by the warmth of the welcome. He took the cup across to where he could loll against one of the pillars of the arcade and keep an eye on the doctor’s front door. He might as well wait and have a chat with Kleitos now that he was here.

  As he watched, another visitor arrived. She could not have been more than fourteen. Somebody seemed to have glued a perfectly rounded pregnant belly onto her underfed frame. She knocked, waited, knocked again, tried to peer around the edge of the door and called, “Doctor! Doctor, are you there?” before glancing ’round in an agitated manner.

  Ruso stepped toward her. “Can I help?”

  She turned, startled.

  “I’m a doctor myself,” he assured her. “I’m just—”

  But she had fled. Ruso, still clutching his drink and marooned in the middle of the arcade, attempted a casual return to the pillar.

  “Nice try, pal,” suggested a voice from a nearby table.

  Another voice said, “You again.”

  “I really am a doctor,” Ruso insisted, not pleased to recognize the man with the bad haircut who had refused to let him past in the crowd at the amphitheater.

  “So you keep saying.” The man indicated Ruso’s empty left hand. “Where’s your box of tricks, then?”

  “I’m visiting Doctor Kleitos.”

  “Feeling poorly, are you, Doctor?”

  Ruso downed the rest of his drink in one gulp. “Not now,” he said, putting the empty cup down on their table. In his haste to get away he narrowly missed falling over that wretched barrel outside Kleitos’s door.

  Around the corner he bent to tighten a loose bootlace before trudging back down the hill past the bathhouses. The larger of the two had been commissioned by an emperor Ruso had actually met, although the aftermath of a massive earthquake had been no time to exchange pleasantries. Much to his first wife’s disgust, he had failed to exploit this brief acquaintance with Trajan, and by the time Hadrian had risen to power, he and Claudia were divorced. So she was spared the awful knowledge that he had failed to ask Hadrian for a promotion too. It was something that he was now beginning to realize might have been a major mistake.

  Despite what he had told Metellus, this morning’s outing had been a waste of time. There was no vacancy for a surgeon at the gladiators’ training camp beside the amphitheater. The clerk had indeed offered to put his name on a waiting list, but when asked about the length of the list, the man had raised both hands and stretched his palms apart like a fisherman demonstrating the size of the one that had got away.

  Ignoring the cries of the souvenir sellers, Ruso headed along the Sacred Way toward the business center of the city. The glare of sun on marble made him squint, and it occurred to him that Tilla was right. When they first arrived he had wandered down this most famous of streets, gazing at the marvels he had heard described so many times, barely able to believe that at last he was here, seeing for himself how everything was more glorious than he had imagined. Three weeks later, he was beginning to share his wife’s view that Rome had too much of everything. Too many columns and statues and temples, the public buildings gobbling up so much space that ordinary people’s lodgings were stacked five or six high on top of one another with cramped courtyards in the middle to let in some daylight. Too many smells, especially where the sewer vomited its waste into the river. Too much noise.

  Worst of all, there were too many people who called themselves doctors. It was a sad state of affairs when a man who had run several military hospitals and who had prior experience of patching up gladiators could get no work, but some smooth-tongued charlatan in a fancy red outfit could drum up trade by dropping a young woman headfirst from the arches of the amphitheater.

  His first wife’s urgings echoed in his memory: “You must put yourself forward, Gaius!” But he could not think of any crowd-pleasing, patient-attracting miracles to offer. He certainly wasn’t about to start dissecting live animals or tying women to ladders. He wasn’t going to ask Metellus for help, either.

  Passing through the shade of a ceremonial archway and back out into the glare, he averted his gaze from a couple of day laborers, who were still hanging about in the diminishing hope that someone would offer them work. He knew how they felt.

  Ruso’s own hanging about was less public, since it was done in the somewhat gloomy private residence of his former commanding officer, but it was hardly less humiliating. In the weeks since their ship had docked over at Portus, it had become obvious that he was an embarrassment—like a souvenir from a foreign country that didn’t look as exotic when you got it home.

  Unfortunately for Accius, Ruso was not the kind of souvenir that could be resold, as he had come here voluntarily. The voice of the first wife urged Ruso to remind Accius exactly whose idea it had been for Ruso to leave Britannia. Exactly who had insisted on pulling the strings that had released him early from his latest contract with the Twentieth Legion, and whose moral responsibility it now was to offer him work. But Claudia was not here to explain how this might be done without wrecking any chance of future employment.

  Even if she had been, she might have struggled to be heard above Tilla, whose determination not to say, “I told you so!” had finally cracked over the stale loaf that was this morning’s breakfast.

  “But why did he offer you a job if he did not have one? And why did you not ask what it was before you said yes?”

  Ruso, who had already considered these questions many times, especially in the long watches of the night, had no answers to offer. He was still trying to remember why
coming here had seemed like a good idea when Tilla closed her eyes and sighed, “Just like a man!”

  “What else should I be like?”

  She lifted up their daughter and pointed the chubby face toward him as if the baby wore the terrifying stare of a Gorgon.

  “We have Mara to care for now! You must be more responsible! You are a father!”

  But not, it seemed, a satisfactory one.

  He had abandoned breakfast and clattered away down the apartment stairs as angry with himself as he was with his wife. She was right. He had persuaded her to come to this place. Now those eyes that bore the changeable colors of the sea had dark hollows around them, and she was thinner than he had seen her in a very long time.

  So, here he was, turning in yet again at the plain doorway that led to Accius’s family home. The owner of the shop next door nodded a greeting. The aged doorman, who had seen him almost daily for the last three weeks, stepped back and gave a bow that managed to be both respectful and supercilious at the same time. Or perhaps Ruso was starting to imagine things. Each of them was obliged to report to Accius, but the doorman had a job, whereas Ruso came here freely in the hope of being given something to do, but left empty-handed.

  The scowl that Accius had probably been born with had grown deeper as the days passed. Doubtless Ruso’s visits were the reminder of a bad decision and of a disappointment. On his return from military service, the former tribune had expected better than to be put in charge of Rome’s Department of Street Cleaning.

  Still, until this morning’s conversation with Metellus, Ruso had managed to hope that Accius had a bright future. Admittedly he was not among Hadrian’s staunchest supporters, especially since one of the men who had been executed shortly after the new emperor came into power was a relative. But Hadrian had been swift to express his disapproval of the killings. Then, in case anyone harbored any lingering doubts about his right to rule, he had arranged a massive public bonfire made up of everyone’s outstanding tax bills.