by Ruth Downie
“Master!” The thumping on the bedroom door echoed a distant banging from the street. “Master, wake up!”
His body rolled out of bed, leaving his mind somewhere else until it returned to remind him that the door would not open until he unjammed the latch. And that it would be a good idea to put some clothes on.
“Master, someone is at the—”
“I know. Shut up!” Dragging a tunic over his head, he stumbled across the kitchen in Esico’s wake, urging, “Quiet!” but it was too late. The small wail from the mattress in the corner grew louder despite the whisper of “Hush!” from the woman slave, and then there was Tilla behind him saying, “What is happening? Mara? Is Mara all right?” and Narina was blundering about asking, “Where is the lamp?” and at the opposite end of the surgery someone was still banging on the door and Esico was shouting, “Yes, yes!” and then calling in British, “What is the Latin for stop that racket—somebody is coming?”
“Everyone shut up!” Ruso yelled, with limited effect. Mara carried on wailing and Tilla carried on shushing her and whoever was at the door carried on banging and shouting, “Doctor!”
“I’m coming!” Ruso called, groping for the lock in the dark. “Hold on.”
“Doctor, Horatius Balbus needs you!”
The name hit him like a punch in the stomach. “What’s the matter with him?”
Finally getting the door open, he recognized the man holding the torch as Balbus’s bodyguard, Latro. “We can’t wake him up!”
A cold shiver ran across Ruso’s shoulders. There are people who mix up all kinds of concoctions and pretend to offer protection. Most of them know nothing.
“What happened?”
“He said he felt ill. Then he fell down, and we can’t get him up.”
Some of them know a little. They are the worst.
He should never have tried to imitate that antidote. He should have told Balbus to consult an expert. Someone who knew what he was doing. Someone who could prescribe something that worked, instead of poppy mixed with burnt onions and—holy gods, he still couldn’t remember what else he had put in there. He had been too distracted to make notes. It had all seemed harmless at the time, but …
They are the ones who kill.
Like, presumably, the person who had first discovered that you shouldn’t treat a patient with both hawthorn and foxglove at the same time.
Tilla was behind him, wanting to know who it was and what was happening.
He felt a sudden and shameful surge of hope at the thought that Balbus might have been poisoned by his dinner host, just as he had feared. But Xanthe had said a few days without his real medicine would not affect his protection …
… from the usual poisons.
Meanwhile, Ruso had knowingly dispensed something that he could not vouch for: a lozenge he had found in a jar faintly labeled POPPY. Put there by a man who had a jar labeled CUMIN on the shelf that contained something else entirely.
Fumbling with his belt, Ruso told himself to calm down. He was not a complete fool. He had smelled it. He had tasted it. It was …
It was stored by a man who reused old parchment that was only half-erased. A man who was fascinated by new medicines, and full of bold curiosity.
The strength of poppy varied from plant to plant: Everyone knew that, which was why he had used a conservative dose. But in a city that attracted exotic imports from all over the world, how could he be sure that this was not some especially powerful new strain? Worse—because it would be harder to check—what if it had been poppy and something else? It was the last letter of the word poppy that had been smudged off the jar. Only now did it occur to him that other letters, now vanished, might have followed. There was no way of finding out because all the empty containers had been scrubbed clean, at his own order.
Ruso fought down an urge to vomit. How could he have been so careless?
“Now, Doctor! Quick!”
He managed to say, “Let me get some shoes on.” Maybe he could get the medicine back up before it was fatal.
Maybe.
Milk? Oil? Salt water? How could you know what would wash poison out, when you didn’t know what you were doing?
His case was by the door where he had left it, ready to be grabbed at short notice. He had told the slaves not to touch it. At least he had got that right.
Gods above, I am ruined. And all these stray barbarians who depend upon me.
You could get a thousand small decisions right, but they would all be eclipsed by the one moment of stupidity when you had poisoned your chief patient.
Out in the street, Latro turned left.
“He’s not in his house?”
“He’s in the street, sir. He was on the way home from a dinner when it happened. Firmicus said not to move him.”
“Right.” So now he would be treating a poisoned man in the dark with nothing except what was in his case. Which meant more delay while somebody sent for the milk or the salt or whatever it was.
“We tried to wake him, sir, but he didn’t hear us.”
Ruso said, “Was he breathing?” but Latro did not know.
Ruso could feel his own heart pounding. His stomach seemed to be trying to crawl up behind his rib cage. He forced himself to keep walking. He was about to ask, “How much farther?” when they turned another corner and he was dazzled by several torches illuminating a cluster of figures. They were gathered around something on the ground. Above them, pale faces were peering down from apartment windows.
“The doctor’s here!” shouted Latro. Other voices repeated, “The doctor!” and the figures in the street parted to let Ruso through to his fate.
31
The white toga draped around the collapsed figure already made him look like a ghost. Ruso tightened his grip on his case and stepped forward. As he knelt by the head of his patient, Latro shouted at the onlookers to get out of the way. He was aware of people shuffling back. Now it was just him and Horatius Balbus. Or rather, just him between Horatius Balbus and death, because as he placed a hand on the chest the patient made a ragged inhalation. Thank you, Jupiter, Aesculapius, Christos—anybody. It might not be too late.
Aloud, he called, “Lights! I need more light!”
Latro announced, “The doctor can’t see!”
Firmicus was beside him, arranging the lights and calling for a fresh torch.
Latro again: “Get them torches in here!”
There were echoes of “Lights! Where’ve the lights gone? Bring a lantern!” and suggestions to “Give him wine!” from among the onlookers, several of them sounding seriously drunk. Ruso was in the middle of his own show in the street.
Feet shuffled forward again, and the side of Horatius Balbus’s head became clearer. Ruso leaned closer, bending at an awkward angle so as not to obstruct the light. The bald scalp seemed to ripple with the movement of the flames.
“Balbus? Balbus, it’s Ruso. The doctor. Can you hear me?”
He was vaguely aware of more shouts of “Bring a torch!” and “Man down!” and Latro yelling at people to shut up and piss off. From Balbus himself there was nothing.
He reached down between the neck and shoulder to pinch the trapezius muscle, but to no effect.
“We didn’t know if we should move him.” The shadows wavered as Firmicus knelt on the opposite side of his master, holding the light above him.
“You did the right thing,” Ruso told him, surprised at the calmness of his own voice. It was as if someone else were speaking through him. Someone competent and unflustered. “But we need to get him home now.” As he said it, he remembered there was no stretcher at the surgery.
“There’s a light!” slurred a drunken voice behind him. “He’s got a light, look!”
There was a commotion, followed by cries of “Leave him alone!” and “He was only trying to help!”
“Latro!” The competent medic using Ruso’s voice wanted to distract the bodyguard before a street fight broke out around them.
“Doctor?”
“Send someone sober to call the watch,” said the competent medic, willing his patient to breathe again.
“It’s done, Doctor.”
“And ask someone to take a door panel out. We can carry him home on that with a cloak around it.” Searching for a pulse, he said, “What happened?”
“He was fine,” Firmicus insisted. “We were walking home, and he was talking about getting some work done on the building across the street … We just got past the corner and …” Firmicus shook his head, as if he could hardly believe what he was about to say. “He just said something I couldn’t make out, made a sort of choking noise, and he was down. So fast we couldn’t catch him.”
“How much had he drunk?” asked the competent medic.
“Not much. He likes to keep his wits about him.”
“Does he ever have fits or fainting?”
“Never. What’s the matter with him, Doctor?”
The competent medic asked what the patient had eaten this evening. Firmicus, who clearly understood the reason for the question, said as far as he knew it was the same as everyone else, “And we had some of it in the kitchen.”
The competent medic beat back a fresh wave of panic and remembered to check for injuries. “Move the light across—ah!” He held his fingers up and sniffed the dark liquid. Head injury. You know what to do for a head injury. Now check the rest. Never assume the first thing you see is the main problem.
“Don’t move him,” said the competent medic. “Just help me lift his clothes out of the way …” But there was no sign of any other injuries. They were replacing the warm wool of the toga when he heard the approaching tramp of the night watch. The marching boots fell silent and over the sound of Latro banging on the nearest shop door, a voice demanded, “What’s all this?” in a tone that suggested he did not expect to like the answer.
Several people all tried to tell him at once. “One at a time!” the watchman ordered, picking on the nearest onlooker. “You. What’s your name?”
Leaving the watch to it, Ruso placed a soft wad of wool wrapped in linen against Balbus’s temple, where it seemed the blood was coming from. Farther up the street Latro was shouting, “Open up for Horatius Balbus!”
“Horatius Balbus, the landlord?” demanded the watchman. “Is he here?”
“This is him,” Firmicus said. “My master. He just collapsed.”
The watchman used Ruso’s shoulder for support as he leaned down to examine what could be seen of the patient’s face. “So that’s what he looks like.”
Firmicus said, “We don’t know what happened.”
The watchman straightened up. “Nobody leaves!” He ordered one of his men to look for anything that might have fallen from the buildings above. Turning back to Firmicus, he said, “Is he dead?”
“No,” said Ruso, hoping it was true. “We need—”
“Then what’s he doing lying in the street? Get him home! And get away from that bloody door, you!”
Ignoring him, Latro gave the door a kick. “I’m not drunk!” he shouted in reply to someone behind it, “and I’m not going away!”
Ruso said, “Have you got a ladder? We need something to carry him on.”
“We don’t carry them around just in case, mate,” said the watchman.
“Then let him get a door panel.”
The watchman nodded and stepped across to the front of the closed shop. “I told you to get away from that door!” Ruso was vaguely aware of some confused pushing and shoving, followed by “You in there, listen to me. This is the night watch. It’s an emergency. Open the door.”
When there was no response he called, “Victor, get over here with that axe.”
But before Victor could do anything with the axe there was a screech of metal hinge on stone, and the door opened.
Finally the makeshift stretcher arrived, along with the news that no fallen object had been found. “We’re going to take you home, sir,” the competent medic told his patient. “We’ll just have to lift you up for a moment.” If Balbus had heard, he showed no sign.
“Gently!” the medic urged, placing a second dressing against the injured head and holding it there as they counted to three and then rolled Balbus sideways to get the support underneath him. “We’re taking you home now,” he said again, taking hold of the wrist and feeling in vain for a pulse. “Not long and you’ll be in your own bed.”
But he was speaking for the benefit of the onlookers, not of the patient. Horatius Balbus, he was fairly certain, was already dead.
32
Ruso insisted on tidying up alone after Balbus had been carried out of the bedroom. The silence was a chance to regain his balance: to distance himself from the horror and desperation of a household thrown into chaos in the middle of the night.
The far-off sound of wailing told him the body had been laid on the couch in the entrance hall. He bent down to retrieve something glinting on the floor in the lamplight: a scalpel he must remember to check, lest the fall onto the tiles had damaged the blade. For now, he wiped it and put it back in the case. One by one, he restored the probes and the tweezers to their places. Once all the instruments were safely accounted for, he collected up all the used dressings and stuffed them into an old flour sack. The staff would have to deal with the bedding later. There was nothing more he could do here now. He had spent longer than he normally would with his patient, trying to revive him. Trying and failing to find conclusive proof either that the death had been accidental or that the man had died of natural causes. He had scrutinized the hands and the elbows, but there was no sign that Balbus had tried to save himself. There was nothing to explain the fall or the death, beyond the obvious skull fracture, and his own presence here now was an intrusion.
The fountain was still trickling outside in the dark garden. He passed between rose-entwined columns lit by a couple of wavering torches. The wailing grew louder as he entered the next courtyard, and the air was heavy with frankincense. He jumped at the sight of a hooded figure loitering in the shadows of the colonnade, then realized it was just one of Balbus’s statues, no more alive than its owner. Farther down, a new statue crouched with its head in its hands, and looked up as he passed.
“You couldn’t have done anything to save him, Latro,” he told it.
The head slumped into the hands again. Ruso moved on into the entrance hall, and the sounds and smells engulfed him like a warm bath.
Horatius Balbus had been laid with his feet toward the door in the traditional manner. The lampstands at the head and foot of the couch illuminated the purple-stripe toga he had been dressed in by the staff and the pale faces of the household standing around the master. Horatia, her hair gray with the ashes of mourning, was still rocking backward and forward in a creaking wicker chair in the corner, weeping and clinging onto her serving maids for support. Beyond flinging her arms in the air and screaming out her father’s name, she had been too upset to help with any of the preparations. The calming concoction Ruso had recommended—her slaves had asked, and he could not refuse—sat untouched on the table beside her. It hardly mattered. A man who now dared to prescribe nothing more powerful than boiled lettuce might as well not bother.
He paused and bowed his head as a last mark of respect to the patient he had known all too briefly, then tried to make his way past the couch as unobtrusively as possible. He was almost at the street door when he felt a hand on his arm. He turned to see Firmicus, who mouthed, “Thank you.”
He was glad for Horatia’s sake that there was someone as capable as Firmicus to take charge. “I’m sorry.”
“You did all you could, Doctor.” The steward shook his head, dislodging his own fine shower of ash. “Something’s not right about this. He was a healthy man.”
Ruso was saved from replying by the sight of Lucius Virius floating in through the entrance hall. The undertakers might be slow to pick up an unclaimed body, but they had lost no time responding to a wealthy househol
d in the late hours of the night.
The doorkeeper let Ruso out in silence, head bowed. The heavy oak door clunked into place behind him, and he surveyed the outlines of the predawn street. Everything was gray, mirroring the numbness of his mind. His senses registered that the aroma of frankincense had faded and been replaced by baking bread and fresh ox dung, but it was as if everything were taking place behind a thick pane of glass. A cart rumbled past. He turned left, walking in the direction of Accius’s house. He had one last duty to perform before he had to stop acting the competent medic and face up to whatever it was he might have become.
33
The patient had collapsed on the way home from a dinner party, as middle-aged men who ate and drank too much sometimes did. There was rarely anything anyone could do to save them. While the rest of Rome was waking up, washing its face, and preparing to deal with the new day, the family would be mourning their loss. The doctor who had been called from his bed in a hopeless attempt to hold the patient back from the next world should have been catching up on some sleep.
Instead, he was blundering around the surgery picking up containers and examining them, and opening half-empty bottles of medicine to sniff what was inside.
“Have you lost something?”
Tilla had to repeat the question before he noticed she was there.
“It’s all old,” he muttered, not looking up. “Useless.” He upended a jar. Several black lumps thudded into the waste bucket.
“What are you doing? Is that the cyclamen root?”
“It needs replacing.” He picked up another jar. Its contents too ended up in the bucket.
When he reached for a third she stepped forward and seized his hand. “Husband, what are you doing?”
He shrugged. “Having a clearout. Might as well do it sometime.”
She wrested it out of his hand and put it back on the shelf. “You should sleep.”
“I’m not tired.”
She peered at him, reaching up to push a strand of hair off his forehead. “Either you are very tired, or some god has made you ten years older during the night. Go and rest. I will call you if we need you.”