Vita Brevis

by Ruth Downie

  The girl was too busy with her own troubles to notice that Tilla was preparing to leave, but Phyllis already knew.

  “Timo has gone out,” she explained as she sidled into the surgery and placed herself in the corner where he could not see her if he came back. “I had to come and talk to you. I am so sorry you are going.”

  “You’re going?” demanded the girl, looking ’round her as if for the first time. “Where are you going?”

  “Home,” Tilla told her.

  “What for? Don’t you like us?”

  “I like you very well,” Tilla replied. “But—”

  “Sabella’s husband told them to go,” Phyllis put in, moving to get a better view of the baby’s dark head. “All because other people made trouble, and it wasn’t even their fault. And Timo mended the door so it’s not as if there’s any damage to repair.”

  “It’s that cow Sabella,” said the girl. “Her stupid husband does whatever she tells him. My ma says somebody ought to slap her.”

  “There are many reasons why we are going,” Tilla told her. “Not just Sabella.” Sabella certainly had not helped, though. She said to Phyllis, “Your friends will need to take their furniture back by first thing tomorrow morning.”

  Phyllis said, “There must be rooms you can move to nearby. I’ll ask around. Somebody will know a good place.”

  Avoiding the question, Tilla pointed upward. “How are things?”

  Phyllis smiled. “Better than before. Thank you.”

  The girl said, “You ought to do what Ma did when Sabella tried to get us out. Ma said she would tell Horatius Balbus how her husband was cheating him on the rent. That shut her up all right. And Pa told the husband he would tell Sabella about him and the girl who delivers the laundry.”

  “Yes,” agreed Phyllis, to Tilla’s surprise. “You should try that. And— Oh!”

  She ducked back into the corner as a shadow fell across the doorway, but instead of her husband it was a frightened young woman Tilla had never seen before. Her husband was on the way, bringing their son. He was three years old and he had climbed up onto the windowsill and fallen out.

  The boy shrieked in pain as the father laid him on the operating table. His left foot was twisted at an impossible angle. The mother was sobbing, demanding that Tilla do something and wanting to know where the doctor was, while her husband was telling her this was what happened if you didn’t watch them properly, and Tilla was silently cursing Publius Accius and his selfish problems, because this child really needed her husband’s help, and her husband wasn’t here. Worse, she had no idea when he would be back.

  “If you couldn’t help him, why didn’t you say so?” demanded the father. “Now we’ve got to carry him somewhere else.”

  It was useless to explain that she had been hoping it was a sprain, that only when she’d seen the full extent of the injury could she see that there were delicate bones to be set, and that if she set them wrong, he would limp for life. Or worse. She was about to say, “You can leave him here: I will fetch someone”—Who? Phyllis might know—when a voice from the street said, “Am I interrupting, dear lady? I’ve come to look for Doctor Ruso.”

  “We were here first!” snapped the mother.

  It was the last person Tilla had been expecting, but it was the first person she would have chosen. “Doctor Simmias! Please! We need help!”

  To his credit, Simmias did not complain about how tired he was. Not until after the boy had been carried out with his straightened leg dressed with the linen she had removed from the weighing scales and had soaked with wine and oil, and the last layer of bandage had been coated with cerate. Then Tilla heard all about it: how lucky Simmias had been to find some lads from the night watch who were traveling down to the barracks at Ostia and who could take him with them. How he had been unable to find a lift back so he’d had to use some of the money for a carriage to get here quickly, and how he had been traveling most of the night, and it really was very tiring being bumped around for hours in the dark when you weren’t as young as you used to be. But anyway, he was delighted to be back now.

  Was she supposed to know why he had rushed to Ostia? She could not remember. “You could not have come at a better time,” she told him, handing him the drink and the cake Narina had fetched from the bar.

  “Glad to help.” Simmias took a mouthful of cake before shifting awkwardly on the stool to look around him at the confusion of the half-packed surgery. “Oh, dear. I’m so sorry. I was hoping to get here before they came.”

  For a moment she looked at him blankly. Then she guessed what he was thinking. “This is our own mess,” she explained. “That man with the squeaky voice is not coming. My husband went to see his boss and it is all settled and there is nothing to pay because the boss told him to behave himself.”

  Simmias looked shocked. “Nothing to pay?”

  “Yes, and I have to give you your savings back.” She climbed on a stool and groped for the bag of coins that was out of sight, propped on two nails in the back of the rafter nearest the wall.

  “Nothing?”

  “No. Really. It was very kind of you to help, but you can have this back now.”

  He let out a long sigh and slumped his head into his hands.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Quite—yes, quite—oh, dear.”

  “You wanted to pay them?”

  “No!” The head jerked up. “Certainly not, no. But I have been all that way to fetch—ah well, never mind.” He snatched another mouthful of cake and washed it down with the wine.

  “What have you been to Ostia to fetch?”

  “I thought it was only fair to you and your husband,” he said. “I went to fetch the rest of the money. From Kleitos.”

  She stared at him. “You have seen Doctor Kleitos?”

  Simmias’s jowls wobbled as he swallowed. “Yes. I explained what was happening here and he told me something I really do need to pass on urgently to your husband.”

  66

  Simmias was in no condition to rush across to Balbus’s house. Leaving him to mind the surgery and Narina to mind Mara, Tilla ran down the arcade and along past the shops and the council buildings and the lodging houses of the Vicus Sabuci. Beside her, Esico looked even more alarming than before with the bandage off and the stitched wound exposed above his red-and-purple eye.

  “Left!” she called as they reached the shrine on the corner, and they both halted, breathless, at the door with the cypress bough over it.

  She tried to knock in a way that was urgent but not disrespectful. “Look to one side so they can’t see the state of you,” she warned him. The last thing she wanted was to be refused entry. Her husband was in danger.

  She could still barely believe what she had to tell him: that Simmias had known where Kleitos was all along, but had sworn not to tell anyone. That he really had been trying to sell his furniture for him. That he had only confessed this now because of what Kleitos had told him yesterday before boarding a ship bound for Alexandria. That Simmias had no idea what had been in the poppy jar, and that Kleitos really had gone now, so it was too late to ask. But it was not too late for the other thing. At least, she hoped not.

  “Answer the door!” she muttered, knocking again. “Blessed Christos, make them answer the door!”

  Finally there were footsteps, and the rattling of iron and the squeak of hinges, and the door scraped back a couple of inches to reveal the man who had let her in yesterday.

  “The family are not at home to callers.”

  “I am sorry for the loss of your master,” Tilla told him, “But I need to get a message to my husband, the doctor. There is a patient at home who needs him quickly.”

  “Wait there.”

  The door clamped shut in her face.

  Clutching the little carved horse tightly, Tilla was muttering prayers to all the gods she could think of. Esico stood back, obediently facing away down the street. He had no idea what was going on, which, she thought,
made him very lucky. “Holy mothers, bring him out safe.”

  Footsteps approached the door. She straightened. Any moment now—

  Firmicus said, “He’s not here. He might have gone to Publius Accius’s house.”

  “Are you quite sure?”

  He looked at her oddly.

  “I mean—are you sure it was Accius’s? Did he mention going anywhere else?”

  “No,” said Firmicus. “And no.”

  “He’s needed urgently back at home. A patient is dangerously ill. If you see him, please tell him his wife said to hurry.”

  He said he would. Then he shut the door. She stared at its iron studs for a moment, trying to decide what to do. Then she turned to Esico. “We are going to another house,” she told him. “And if you have any breath while we are running, pray for your master.”

  67

  It was not difficult to get into Publius Accius’s house, where she knew most of the staff, but it was useless. Her husband was not there.

  “I’d say, miss,” said the witch housekeeper, addressing Tilla but keeping her attention on the gangling Briton with the black eye in case he ran wild around the entrance hall, “that if your husband didn’t leave word of where he was going, then he didn’t want to be found.”

  “Never mind what you would say.” Tilla was in no mood to be polite. “I need to know where he is.”

  The witch sniffed. “I’ll see if someone can recommend another doctor.”

  “I don’t need another doctor. I need to speak to my husband.”

  “What about your urgent patient?”

  “There is no patient!” Suddenly she was shrieking, and she could not stop herself. “I made the patient up! Tell me where my husband is, right now, or I will set my man on you!”

  Esico was backing away in alarm, but the witch was so frightened of him that she squealed and ran anyway, knocking over a palm tree in a pot and almost tripping into the pool.

  Left alone with her slave, Tilla let out a wail of frustration and anguish that the gods must surely have heard, but they did not answer.

  After a moment Esico said, “What do we do now, mistress?”

  Tilla did not know. She could try asking some of the other staff, but it was unlikely that the housekeeper had lied. Her husband was not here. She was very much afraid that Firmicus was the one who was lying.

  They were almost back in the street by the time Accius caught up with them, looking much better than he had last time she saw him. “I thought it sounded like you,” he said. “Nobody told me you were here. What’s happening? Where’s Ruso? How did it go with Horatia’s family?”

  “He has not come home,” Tilla told him. “And I need to tell him something. Now.”

  Accius ran one hand through his hair. “I left him over at Balbus’s,” he said. “He was going to talk to them.” He leaned ’round to look at the angle of the sun slanting into the open roof of the entrance hall. “He can’t still be there at this hour. He must have gone somewhere else.”

  “Would he not come to tell you what had happened at Balbus’s house first?”

  Both hands went through the hair this time. “Yes.”

  “I think he is still there,” Tilla told him. “And I think Firmicus is lying. I do not know what is happening, but I do not think it is good.”

  68

  Tilla had never realized until now how like a fortress a rich man’s house could be. The door was solid oak, the fastenings were of iron, and nobody was answering her knock. When she called out that it was an urgent message for the doctor, a voice shouted back that he was not there. When she asked to speak to mistress Horatia or Gellia the slave girl, there was no reply.

  Accius warned her it was useless for him to try because he was banned, but he tried anyway, and it was. He kept saying there must be someone with the authority to demand they open up, but when she wanted to know who, and how fast that person could be fetched, he fell silent.

  The front wall opened out into shops on either side of them, but the scribe and the basket seller were telling the truth: Neither room had access to the inside of the house. She knew, because Accius sent his man in to check on both sides.

  One side of the house was joined onto another two-story building. The alley that ran down the other side stank of piss and rotting vegetables, and from it the four of them gazed up at a painted wall that was completely blank all the way to the roof. She remembered how it was inside now: all those rooms opening onto the courtyards for light. No need for windows onto the street to let in noise or burglars or spies. Or wives who were afraid for their husbands.

  “Did you not have some secret way in to visit Horatia?”

  Accius looked shocked. “Horatia is a respectable girl!”

  “Pity.” Farther along, Tilla paused and put her finger to her lips. “Sh!”

  All four of them stopped. After a moment Accius said, “What?”

  She shook her head. “Only the fountain. Is there a garden door?”

  It was amazing how blind the wealthy could be to what servants did and how they did it. Accius had no idea where the service entrance might be. When they found it, it was another heavy studded door that did not move when they tried to barge it open. It was set in another blank wall with weeds growing out of the bottom and tiles overhanging the top. Horatius Balbus had certainly not wanted unexpected visitors. The wall was so high that even if Esico stood on Accius’s shoulders, he would not get over it. If he had, there would be a long drop on the other side. She said, “You are the soldier. How would you take this place?”

  Accius said, “I’d put a spy in to open the gates.” Seeing the look on her face, he added, “Create a diversion at the front and send men with ladders up over the walls.”

  The diversion would be easy enough. For a moment she wondered if Accius could persuade the night watch to lend them a tall ladder, but then she supposed they would send men with it, and the watch were surely not allowed to break into a house unless … “We could set fire to something,” she said. That was how the soldiers forced people out of their houses at home.

  When Accius said straightaway, “There’s no thatch,” she knew he must have been thinking the same thing. “Besides, they’ve got water. They’ll put it out.”

  He strode back down the alley to the point where she had heard the fountain. “Doctor!”

  The yell was so loud it made her jump.

  “Ruso, this is Accius. Are you in there? Ruso? I need to talk to you!”

  “We have come for the doctor!” Tilla shouted, her own voice weak by comparison. There were other, more useful things she could have shouted, but only if she could be certain who was listening. Otherwise she could make things very much worse. “The doctor is needed at home! There is a patient!”

  A couple of pigeons fluttered up over the walls and flew away, but if any humans heard, none of them responded.

  “This is hopeless,” said Accius.

  Esico said something she did not catch. She asked him to repeat it.

  “We do not need to burn the house, mistress,” he said. “Only the door.”

  “There are too many people about,” she explained. “And that door will take hours to burn.”

  “But the smoke and the smell go through the cracks,” he said in a way that told her he had seen it done. “And then what will the man inside do?”

  69

  Elysium. Paradise. Heaven. This was what all those inadequate words were trying to describe. He was a part of it at last. The joyful serenity that he had never understood, but secretly longed to share.

  How he pitied the poor unbeliever that he had once been. How he pitied all the others, with their wizened brains and their tricky questions. If only they could see all the troubles of the anxious world in their proper place, as he did now.

  An urgent thought came to him. He must share this. He must write it down. Others must know. Tilla. And the little wriggly one, whatever her name was.

  But the voices were gett
ing louder, starting to distract him with idle chatter. Something seized his shoulder and shook it. He tried to tell them to stop, but his throat was dry and nothing came out.

  “He’s waking up! Run and fetch my cousin.”

  He tried to say No, I was awake then, but you are dragging me back into this body.

  Footsteps. A door banged. A voice said, “Water.”

  Blessed coolness was splattering across his parched lips but he pressed them shut. He must not be distracted. He must write it all down before—

  “Take some water, Doctor,” a voice urged him. “It will do you good.”

  A blurry face leaning over him, dark eyebrows and a faint gritty cascade of—was that ash falling on his skin? Then the water again.

  He managed to raise a hand but he was not strong enough to push the cup away. A soft voice said, “He doesn’t want it.”

  “It’ll do him good,” said the first voice. “Not that he deserves it.”

  A hand took hold of his. The soft voice said, “Welcome back, Doctor. We were afraid we’d lost you.”

  And then he was struggling to the surface, knowing something but not knowing why he knew it. He squinted upward. Faces. One, two, three faces. The one with the eyebrows. He was holding the water. The dark-haired girl with black around her wrist. And Metellus. Always Metellus, watching from the shadows.

  Ruso said, “The water—”

  “Here,” The man was holding out the cup again.

  More faces appeared: a skeleton still in his skin and a girl whose face held all the flesh that her companion lacked. The skeleton wanted to know what was happening.

  Good question.

  He had only to open his lips and liquid would soothe his rasping tongue and cool his throat. The man tipped it toward him. He turned his head away. “The water,” he said, feeling it trickle over his jaw and down behind one ear. “Where from?”