I stood there, clenching my fists helplessly. Then I went out into the main room. I had to do something; even if I couldn’t escape tonight, I could at least get some idea of what I could do. The fire was low and the room was empty. My medical bag was sitting beside the door that led to the main part of the house. I went over and picked it up. The leather handle was black with, use, and the sides were worn and dented where it had bumped against my side when I carried it. It was heavy, full of boxes and bottles of drugs, of knives, bandages, and my casebook. Its weight over my shoulder was so familiar now that I felt undressed if I left a house without it. If the news of what I am reaches the Romans, I thought, and if I do go back, I might just as well leave it behind forever.
Another of the doors opened, and Amalberga came in, her tunic undone and her long hair loose over her shoulders, shining in the dim light of the fire. She looked at me steadily a moment, then said, “It would be better if you rested. Whatever you do tomorrow, it will be better done if you sleep now.”
“Whatever I do tomorrow?” I repeated bitterly. “I have no choice in the matter, do I? I thought it was determined that I would assist Edico with his patients.”
“That is true,” Amalberga said quietly. “I hope that you will help them.”
“Do you know what you’ve done to me?” I asked her. “Perhaps you think I deserve slavery, for acting so indecently. But I never hurt you.”
She shook her head. “I admire what you have done. Few women are able to determine so clearly what it is they wish to be, and fewer still can become it. It is cruel, I suppose, to take from you something you must have struggled hard to win, and I am sorry. But, you know, this is not slavery. Many of my people were enslaved last summer, and many of yours have been enslaved since. They would envy you your freedom even now.”
I bit my lip. “Perhaps that’s true,” I said after a minute. “But it does not excuse you.”
“Our people have suffered very much. We haven’t been free either: we were forced into revolt. My husband still hopes to make peace with the emperor and become his client. What else do we have to hope for? No one can defeat the empire — it’s too big. But his first duty, and mine, is to our people, to feed and protect them. I think you understand that, and understand why we wanted you here, even against your will and our honor.” She came over and touched my hand, watching me earnestly. “But it doesn’t have to be so dreadful. You can practice your art openly here, and be honored for it. That’s something, isn’t it?”
“I love my own people,” I told her. “I don’t belong here.”
She dropped her hand and sighed. “I don’t understand why people love the empire so dearly.”
“We were born under it, and it shaped us.”
She shrugged.. “Very many Goths, born under our own kings, abandon their people and go to live under the dragons. My uncle Ermaneric did that, and his son, my cousin Athanaric, loves the empire as much as any Roman-born citizen could. But few Romans are willing to live among us, even if they are offered wealth and honor. Even my husband still adores the dream of Rome, though he is at war with it.”
“I don’t love dreams. Only . . . the way of life that I have chosen is something that doesn’t exist among your people. I am a doctor, a Hippocratic. Not a wizard or a wisewoman or an enchantress. I don’t fit in here.”
“A woman doctor is something that doesn’t exist among your own people.”
“But I wasn’t one, was I?”
She smiled a little at that. “No. But you could be one, among us. You already have Edico half-trained in Hippocratic medicine. If we survive this war, you could teach others as well. Perhaps we are ignorant barbarians, but we want to be part of the empire, to learn Roman ways — particularly Roman skills and Roman arts, like yours. Why should you dismiss us so quickly? Among your own people you have to pretend to be something you’re not, in order to be what you are. You have the chance here to create your own law, to be a Hippocratic and a woman.”
I stared at her, stirred and excited against my will. Was that true? In Alexandria I had dreamed that I would one day be able to say openly that I was a woman and a doctor. But Alexandria is a city with as many different laws as the empire. The Goths have only one set of customs. And yet, they do have women healers. And they might survive the war, set up their client kingdom, and become a part of the empire. It was conceivable that I could (to use legal language) create a precedent.
And I didn’t have much choice but to try.
Amalberga smiled at me, noting, no doubt, that her words had sunk in. She touched my arm again. “But rest. You will not do it without food or sleep.”
So I went back to bed.
Of course I did as Amalberga said. I settled down very quickly to being a woman Hippocratic, imposing on my Gothic patients the full glories of the Alexandrian school of medicine. And they accepted it. It helped that the Goths were in quite desperate need of any kind of medicine from anyone who could give it. And it helped me, I suppose, that there was an enormous amount that needed to be done.
Edico had been put in charge of the health of the whole wagon city, and he had done quite well, considering the enormous difficulties. He had set up a hospital, modeled on the one in Novidunum. He had recruited all the skilled attendants he could — an assortment of ex-Roman army doctors, Gothic wisewomen and midwives, dubious-seeming wizards and sorcerers, and straightforward charlatans. He had lectured firmly on the need for hygiene, and insisted that the Goths dig wells for their drinking water. He kept infectious cases at the hospital and quarantined them and their attendants. His main fault was that he paid far more attention to the Goths wounded in fighting than to the diseased of the camp. This was owing partly to his own background — Gothic noblemen are always trained as warriors, and even though he had decided that he loved medicine, he could not shed the belief in the nobility of war — and partly to his training. Novidunum was, after all, a military hospital. It had not prepared him very well for becoming state physician for a great city, which was what the wagon settlement had undoubtedly grown into. Carragines, the Goths called it, using the Latin word: “the wagons.” My first impression of it was not misleading. It was vast and it was crowded. It was also dirty and becoming increasingly dangerous.
The chief problem was sanitation. Edico had been clear on the need for wells, but he had known nothing about the need for drains. The arrangements were totally inadequate. The Goths had simply dug latrines, one for every ten families, scattering them about the settlement. That may be fine for a temporary camp or a small village. But for a city of many tens of thousands, it was impossible. Only the cold weather had prevented the latrines from contaminating all the water on the site. As it was, dysentery, diarrhea, dropsy, and enteritic fevers were abundant. Already far more people were dying of these than were being killed fighting the Romans, though of course most of those who died were children, which didn’t affect the Goths’ fighting strength. What the camp would become in the summer didn’t bear thinking about.
But Goths aren’t like Romans. They’d never had public drains, and they didn’t understand the need for them. They think that worrying about such things is effeminate, menial, slavish. Edico simply looked confused when I told him that unless something was done at once, the camp would be a death trap come summer. Of course, he was very confused about me anyway. When I first appeared at the hospital dressed as a woman, he kept staring, then blushing and looking away. I was still wearing my cloak back from my shoulders, to keep it out of the way, and I’d tied the tunic around the top, crossing the cord between my breasts, because it was a bit too large and because I missed the corset’s support. I suppose the change in my shape was startling. In the end I had to tell him to close his eyes and forget “Lady Charis”; I was his master in the art, and my knowledge hadn’t changed. Even so, I couldn’t get him to talk sensibly to me for a week. I didn’t have time to wait for him to settle down: the weather was already beginning to turn warm, and as soon as the gro
und thawed the problem of the drains would be crucial. I abandoned the hospital on the first day and demanded an audience with Fritigern.
I was admitted to the audience room fairly promptly. Fritigern was alone today. He stared at me curiously and complimented me on my appearance. I ignored this and came directly to the point: I told him that dozens of his people were dying now, and hundreds more would die when the hot weather came, because of the latrines. He stared. I explained, quoting Hippocrates and Erasistratos and citing the example of Roman cities with their public sewers to avoid this problem. He looked uneasy, and asked what I thought he should do. “Have a public sewerage system built at once,” I replied. “Or an aqueduct. But a sewer would be simpler, and less subject to disruption by the Romans.”
Fritigern frowned. He suggested that we wait and see whether the present system worked before we went about building a new one. I said it was already abundantly clear that the system didn’t work. He said it was not a woman’s place to decide such things.
“Your Excellency,” I said, “you went to some trouble to acquire my services and to make certain I had no reason to return to the Romans. You might as well listen now you’ve got me. It may not be a woman’s place to learn medicine, but I have learned it, and what I say is true.”
“I expected you to work at healing the sick, not to tell me I need enormous public sewers!” Fritigern snapped back. “A system for the whole city will take hundreds of men to construct. That’s expensive. And I don’t even know how such things are built, nor does anyone else here — unless Your Wisdom learned that as well as medicine.”
The construction of public drains had not been discussed in the Alexandrian medical school, but I knew that the Goths had taken plenty of Roman prisoners. I suggested that he find some of those who understood such things and offer them their freedom and a large sum of money for designing a sewer for Carragines. I said they were certain to jump at such an offer. It was not as though they were being asked to build fortifications or do anything that would be regarded as treachery by the Roman authorities. And the slaves were likely to suffer most in the event of plague.
“I can’t free someone else’s prisoners!” said Fritigern. “Half the quarrels I have to adjudicate already are over slaves; I can’t uphold the law and then go seizing someone else’s property. No, it’s not worth it. You Greeks are simply fanatical about hygiene. Perhaps a lack of drains would make you sick. But we Goths are hardier. We don’t bathe, and it’s never hurt us, and nor will this.”
I bit my tongue to stop myself calling him a stinking, ignorant barbarian. “Your Excellency, this is a question of contaminated water, not of baths. It is already killing people. There were several dead children at the hospital this morning. How many do there have to be before you admit there’s a problem?”
“You’re exaggerating,” Fritigern said coldly. “Children die from many causes. I can’t tell my men to stop raiding and dig drains because of the opinions of some Greek female doctor.”
“It’s not just my opinion! All the best medical authorities say that contaminated water causes disease! And a Roman state physician is supposed to safeguard the public’s health.”
“You are not a Roman state physician!” Fritigern snapped. “Now go back to the hospital and treat the sick!”
I glared at him for a minute, saw I’d get nowhere, and bowed stiffly. “If Your Prudence is unable to help me,” I said bitterly. “Edico tells me he is out of a whole range of drugs; could Your Carefulness perhaps ask some of the raiding parties to look for them? I could draw pictures of the herbs we need most urgently.”
“Edico has been begging for drugs since he came here. But my men aren’t interested in digging up roots and picking berries when they’re raiding. You will simply have to manage with what is available.”
I set my teeth. “Very well. If Your Excellency is unable to control your men, and can’t get them to dig and can’t get them to look for drugs, I will have to ask for help from someone who is a bit more competent at ruling!”
He went red and jumped off his couch. “What do you mean by that?”
“I will go talk to your wife. Most noble Fritigern, much health!”
And I bowed and walked out, hoping that Amalberga would listen to me.
She did, bless her. I went straight to her and explained the need for the drains, and she understood at once. She had noticed that there were a lot of illnesses of the stomach around, but had not known what caused them. “And are they really caused by that?” she asked. “The latrines? I thought it was the air, or the water.”
“It is the water,” I told her, and quoted my medical authorities until she lifted her hand and begged me to stop.
“You haven’t wasted any time brooding, have you?” she asked, smiling.
I shrugged. “The problem is very urgent.” But it was only then that I realized that I was not acting in any way differently than I would have if everyone believed I was a eunuch. And of course I hadn’t changed; only what others knew of me was different. But what others know is a powerful thing, and can change you; it might do so yet to me.
“Well then, we will have to build drains,” said Amalberga. “Do you know how it’s done?”
I told her the plan I had suggested to Fritigern, and then admitted all of Fritigern’s objections. She looked at me ruefully. “And you’ve quarreled with him already? Oh, my dear! I hope you haven’t offended him: it will make it much more difficult if he’s angry.”
“He kept saying he couldn’t do things because of his men. I said I would talk to you because you were better at controlling them than he was.”
She stared at me, then gave a soft, gurgling laugh. “Oh Christ! I hope no one else was there! It was a private audience? It should be all right then. I can make it a private joke. Well, after that I have to do something, don’t I? It should be possible. What do we need? Freedom and money for some Roman slaves who can design the system, workers to do the digging — I think the women and household slaves should be able to manage that. The men will never agree to dig drains. You should have come to me first. My husband is concerned first with the war, second with supplies, and third with administering justice. These little problems about the camp are the concern of women and slaves.”
I pointed out that a serious epidemic would hardly be a “little problem about the camp.”
Amalberga smiled. “Yes, but ordinarily . . . We are not used to such big camps, such great cities. We have never needed things like this before. I know, I will tell my husband that he is founding a great city, like Constantine and Alexander did. That will make him take more interest in the problem.”
“Fritigernopolis?” I asked sourly.
Amalberga laughed. “Is it really that much sillier a name than Hadrianopolis? But I suppose we’ll still just call it Carragines; even with drains, we won’t live here long. If we’re lucky, we’ll be allowed to settle on lands of our own. And if not . .” She paused, her eyes involuntarily going to her little son, who was sitting in a corner of the room playing with a wooden horse. “If not, the city still won’t last.” She stared hungrily at the child for a moment, as though already the city were burning and he were dead; then she sighed. “But that isn’t to the point. What else will we need for the drains?”
Amalberga spoke to her husband, spoke to her ladies and their husbands, and had the work on the drains started within the week. By that time warmer weather had arrived and we were in the middle of an epidemic, but we controlled this with hard work and strict quarantine, and by ordering everyone to boil their water, and so we limped on till the drains were completed a few weeks later. Then, predictably, the problem faded away, leaving the Goths greatly impressed by my wisdom and that of Hippocrates.
What’s more, the queen cajoled several of the Gothic leaders into telling their men to search for medicinal herbs when they went raiding, and so we had a good, if erratic, supply of necessities like mandragora and hellebore — though we had to do without
opium. Edico was astonished.
“I’ve been trying for months to get someone to look for them,” he told me. We had grown back into a partnership during the epidemic. “I don’t know how many times I’ve talked to Fritigern about it.”
“For things like that, you can forget Fritigern,” I said complacently. “Just let me talk to Amalberga. You can rely on the natural superiority of women.”
Edico snorted. “I’m glad it isn’t ‘women,’ but just you and Amalberga. Otherwise we men would be keeping house and minding babies, and the women would run the world.”
“We couldn’t let you do that,” I said. “You make such a mess of running the world, we couldn’t possibly trust you with the babies. It would be the end of the human race.”
“I think I preferred you as a eunuch,” Edico said, and I laughed.
All that spring I worked hard, attending to the sick of Carragines. I left most of the wounded to Edico. This was partly because he was now the senior doctor and so took the more prestigious patients, partly because women and children were felt to be more appropriate patients for a woman, and partly because I didn’t want to attend the wounded. I did not like healing men who, when they were better, would go out and kill some of my own people. Women, children, slaves, the old and the weak — I didn’t mind helping them, even if they were the enemy. I had settled into my new position now, and I no longer thought much about escaping. After the first couple of weeks my cloak and shoes stopped disappearing every night, and I might have slipped out of the camp — only, where could I go? Salices was not far away, but with Roman slaves escaping from the Goths and Gothic slaves from the Romans, news traveled quickly in Thrace. I assumed that by now all the troops in Scythia must know that Chariton of Ephesus was really a woman, and I’d have nothing but disgrace waiting for me among the Romans. They might even know more: that Chariton of Ephesus was really Charis daughter of Theodoros, something I had not told the Goths. It depended on what Athanaric had discovered and whom he had told. I hoped that he had either discovered or said nothing, because I did not want Fritigern to learn that the governor of Scythia was my brother. It was bad enough being a prisoner; I didn’t want to be a hostage as well. I did not think the king would harm me, but he might tell Thorion that he would, and even if he didn’t, nothing but trouble could come from it.
The Beacon at Alexandria Page 41