Medicus

by Ruth Downie

  His mood lifted as he approached the wharf, passing an altar to Neptune and a couple of surprisingly elegant houses probably built by traders wanting to enjoy the sight of the sea god safely delivering their latest cargoes. Ahead of him, a light breeze was lifting the broad river into a glitter around the silhouettes of fat-bellied merchant ships and a scatter of fishing boats. A slender trireme was moored at the distant end of the wooden jetty. Ruso paused to watch as a fishing boat, which had turned in from the main course of the river, dropped its sail and began to row in under the stern of the trireme. The shriek of gulls rose above faint shouts of orders and a chant of One! Two! Three! from a team shifting something heavy.

  A man who had seen little of the world might think this was a beautiful view. A man who had never stood by a sea that was translucent, under a sky so brilliantly blue it hurt the eyes, would probably think this was a grand place to be.

  Scanning the painted merchant ships tied up along the jetty, Ruso wondered which had brought the remains of his belongings, and how many years it would be before he could load them up again and have them sent to a posting back in civilization. The bars and the whorehouses would be the same wherever soldiers were stationed, but they didn't have to be set in a chilly place where gray sloppy waves retreated twice a day to leave the land and river separated by glutinous brown mud flats. No wonder the hospital was stocking up on cough mixture for the winter. Unfortunately the nature of the Britons was such that the army wouldn't let him prescribe a mass transfer of the legion to a healthier climate.

  Valens's letters had made Britannia sound entertaining. The islands, apparently, were bursting with six-foot warrior women and droopy-mustached, poetry-spouting fanatics who roamed the misty mountains stirring up quarrelsome tribesmen in the guise of religion.

  His own observation of Britannia now led Ruso to suspect that Valens had deliberately lured him here to relieve the boredom.

  The bizarre movements of the British seas had been a novelty, but not one with which he desired a better acquaintance. When his ship had docked in Rutupiae, the captain had offered him the chance to stay on board and sail to Deva. He had declined, taken a lift as far as Londinium with an eye surgeon who was on the way to operate on the governor's wife, then hired a horse and spent several days riding north. He had, he now realized, probably passed Chief Administrative Officer Priscus traveling in the opposite direction on his way to discuss contracts for army medical supplies. Had he but known, he would have seized Priscus and wrested the hospital keys from his grasp. As it was, the trip had been an interesting introduction to his new province.

  It had been hard to imagine the lush meadows and busy little towns of Britannia as the setting for the ghastly massacres witnessed by the old and toothless who could remember the rebellion. But by the fifth day of traveling, the hills had become steeper, the military traffic heavier, and the towns less welcoming. Here it was easier to see the problem with keeping order. The road passed through stretches of dark woods where the occasional column of smoke in the distance might have signaled charcoal burning or someone cooking breakfast or an unwary tax collector being ambushed. The farmland was rich still, but the houses were primitive: mud-plastered round huts squatting under mushrooms of thatch and not a window or a water tap in sight. At one point he passed a knot of grim-faced civilians being marched along the road under guard from a squad of auxiliaries, and half a day's ride farther north there was a double crucifixion at the roadside. More civilians huddled weeping underneath the bloodied figures, while a military guard gazed on with studied indifference, and an officer's horse, the only creature at the scene who was definitely innocent, raised its head and whinnied to Ruso's mount in the apparent hope that someone had at last come to take it away.

  The only trouble he had encountered on the journey north was a minor brawl in a roadside inn, but the civilians Ruso met on the road looked as sullen as the weather when they stepped aside to let him pass.

  And these were supposed to be the friendly tribes. Still, many a man had made his reputation at this moist and chilly frontier of empire, and Ruso, who had needed a change for reasons he wasn't intending to confide to anyone here, was happy to let it be thought that he considered Britain a smart career move.

  "Fresh fish, sir?" A woman who was out of breath from pushing a cart up the slope lifted a cloth to display glistening silver bodies. She grinned, showing a gap where her front teeth should have been. "Just caught in time for dinner!"

  Ruso shook his head.

  In the space of a hundred paces he also declined a bucket of mussels, a jar of pepper, a delivery of coal, a set of tableware, an amphora of wine, a bolt of cloth to make the finest bedspread in Deva, some indefinable things in the shape of small sausages, and an introduction to an exotic dancer. Stepping onto the quay, he dodged a trolley being pushed by a small boy who couldn't see over it. Behind him a voice shouted, "Tray of plums, sir?"

  It was comforting to know that he still had the appearance of a man with money to spend.

  The quay stank of fish with undertones of sandalwood. Somebody must have dropped something expensive. The crews were rushing to load cargoes while the tide was in, shifting crates and sacks and baskets of whatever it took to maintain civilization in this corner of the empire before the tide forced the captains to move their vessels farther out or be stranded in the mud. Ruso wove his way between carts and trolleys, skirting a pile of slate that must have come from the western mountains and would probably be someone's roof by the end of the week. The stack of jars labeled SALINAE would be loaded up and shipped out. He knew that not because he was interested in exports but because one of the legionaries guarding the salt springs had somehow managed to impale himself on a fencing spike, and Ruso had made him talk about his duties in great detail as a distraction from the efforts to remove it.

  A wide-eyed brown monkey peered at him from a crate, its childlike fingers wrapped around the bars of its prison. Farther along he passed a pale group of chained slaves. They looked even less thrilled to be here than the monkey was. A couple of them seemed to be gazing at the water heaving against the legs of the jetty and wondering whether to fling themselves into it. He hoped they would have enough sense to realize that since they were chained, they would only be fished out again and revived to have TENDENCY TO SUICIDE written on their sale tags. A warning to buyers that might as well read, PLEASE WORK ME TO DEATH.

  None of the ships moored along the quayside was the one he sought. Ruso turned and added his footsteps to the dull thunder of boots making their way along the jetty.

  The second ship out bore the name Sirius in jaunty blue letters, and beside it Ruso recognized the figure leaning back on a chair with his feet up on a small upturned table.

  "Bad news," said Valens, rising to greet him. "Some sort of mixup." He waved one hand toward the carved chair he had been sitting on. It was facing two large trunks, on top of which the table had been upended. Ruso saw his name, and the words LEG XX DEVA BRIT chalked on each item. "You'll have to talk to them," said Valens. "I can't make any sense out of them. They keep telling me this is all there is. Jupiter knows where they've sent the rest of it."

  Ruso knelt and checked the seals on the trunks. "No, it all seems to be here." Valens looked blank. "Where's your furniture?"

  "Termites," explained Ruso, who had anticipated the question.

  "Africa's full of them."

  "Termites?" Valens scratched his head and stared at the table. "Termites ate the Lucky Earthquake Bed?"

  Ruso shrugged. "Turn your back for a moment over there and the damn things eat everything." Of all the items that were gone, he would miss that bed the most. It had been a reminder of a time when he had, briefly, been mistaken for a Divine Being. Now the Divine Being was reduced to telling lies to explain his lack of furniture.

  Valens was leaning down and peering at the locked trunks. "You don't think you've brought any with you, do you?"

  "They'll have fumigated it," Ruso assure
d him. "They'd have to. Long voyage, wooden ship . . ."

  "I'll go and get a cart," Valens offered, moving hastily away from the articles that looked like trunks but might turn out to be Trojan horses.

  Ruso lowered himself into his chair to wait, and wondered who was now sleeping on the Lucky Earthquake Bed. It had been a wedding present from his father and stepmother. In conventional respects it hadn't been a great success. The only time the earth had truly moved in it for him and Claudia, it had also moved for the rest of Antioch. They had clung to each other under the heavy oak frame while roof beams smashed down on top of it and tiles shattered all around them. When the shaking seemed to be over, they crawled out to find that others had not been as lucky. All around was confusion: screams of pain, shouts for help, people scrabbling at piles of rubble, calling the names of their loved ones, and the smell of smoke in the dusty air as fires took hold in the ruins. Had he but known it, the earthquake had signaled the final collapse of his marriage.

  He managed to send Claudia to safety with friends who were heading for the countryside. Then he headed back toward the nearest army base: They would surely be organizing rescue parties.

  Moments after he set out, the earth shook again. He flung himself to the ground with his hands over his head and hoped Claudia was somewhere out in the open.

  The shaking stopped. For a moment all was silence, save the creak and rumble of more buildings collapsing. Ruso lifted his head. A man close by was calling for help.

  No one else seemed to have heard the voice, which was coming from an ornate building that was still partially standing. Squinting through the dust and cupping one hand over his nose, Ruso picked his way around the ruins. The only door he could find had most of a wall collapsed against it. Finally he managed to squeeze himself in through a small window.

  The room stank of burning oil. Black smoke was seeping through cracks in one elegantly painted wall. A smartly dressed body was sprawled on the floor. Blood was seeping from beneath a heavy cabinet that lay where the head should have been.

  "Over here!" called the voice. "Under the table!"

  Through the murk, Ruso saw a corner of a table sticking out from under a pile of plaster and brick. Trying to move quickly without pulling more masonry down on top of himself, he managed to clear a way through to the gap beneath. A figure gray with dust crawled out, grabbed his arm, and started to thank him just as the floor gave a sickening heave. "Move!" yelled Ruso, dragging the man across the room and pushing him headfirst out the window before scrambling after him.

  Behind them, what was left of the building seemed to groan in despair before finally crashing in on itself. They were still peering at it through the clouded air when a voice cried, "Your majesty! Oh my Lord, you're safe!" and someone fell at the feet of the man Ruso had just rescued. The man reached down and helped the servant up, still staring at the ruins from which he had so narrowly escaped. That was when Ruso realized why he looked vaguely familiar. He wasn't a half-remembered patient after all. Ruso had just rescued the emperor Trajan.

  Over the next few days and nights the tremors had continued, claiming more victims from the rescuers trying to reach people trapped under the rubble. Ruso struggled to save the dying and patch up the injured with no equipment, no water, no sleep, and nowhere to turn for advice. Rumors abounded: that the whole country had been devastated, that nowhere outside the city had been hit, that the army was bringing elephants to clear the streets, that plague had broken out, that Antioch was being punished by the gods, that a man crushed to death had come back to life and that a mysterious being, surely a god, had entered the building where the emperor Trajan was trapped and spirited him out through the window. It never occurred to Ruso to try and set the record straight. For the first time in days, he had found something to laugh about.

  Claudia, with whom he unwisely tried to share the joke, later cited it as one of her reasons for leaving. Following you abandoned me in the earthquake! was You had a chance to make something of yourself with the emperor and you refused to do anything about it!

  Three weeks after Claudia moved out, Ruso had signed up to a fresh start in Africa with the army. Now he stared at his pathetic collection of furniture and wondered if his wife had been right.

  Valens was back, bringing a gnarled creature who had evidently spent all his money on blue tattoos and couldn't afford to bathe.

  "I suppose you'll want to carry on using the spare bed, then?" inquired Valens as the tattooed one moved the table aside, lifted both trunks at once, and set off with them down the jetty.

  Ruso picked up the chair. "Just until I get sorted out."

  Valens reached for the legs of the table and swung it up over his head like a large sunshade. "With what these people charge," he said, "we ought to give up medicine and take up moving furniture."

  They reached the end of the jetty. The trunks had been loaded onto a cart that smelled of old fish and appeared to be held together with greasy twine and dirt.

  Valens wrinkled his nose and stepped back from the cart. "Were you serious about those termites?"

  "The smell from that cart should finish them off."

  "You're not in some sort of trouble, are you?"

  Ruso watched the man roping down all that remained of his furniture, and said, "No, of course not."

  "You won't find much to buy over here, but we've got a few decent carpenters. I'm thinking of having a proper dining room set made."

  "For that house?"

  "No. I told you, that one's supposed to have been flattened weeks ago. I mean in my new rooms. The ones I'll get when they promote me to CMO."

  "So he's definitely not coming back?" Ruso was aware that no one expected the hot springs of Aquae Sulis to rejuvenate the present chief medical officer, but so far there had been no official word of his retirement.

  "He's bound to go before long," said Valens. "I'll save him the bother of trailing back up here and have his things sent on."

  "And you think they're promoting you to CMO?"

  "Why not?"

  "Because they might choose me."

  "Bollocks."

  "I've got combat experience."

  "But you don't know anybody yet, Ruso. Anyway, you don't need the money like I do."

  "No?"

  "I thought you were supposed to inherit from your father. Aren't you the oldest son?"

  "There were a lot of expenses," said Ruso. "You know what funerals are like."

  "Didn't he have land in Gaul?"

  "My brother's looking after it. The farm has a lot of people to support."

  "Giddyup!" The driver gave one of the beasts a flick with his stick and the cart lurched forward. They followed its creaking progress up the slope.

  "What you need," said Valens suddenly, "is a rich widow."

  Ruso noted this suggestion to add to his list of things he didn't need at all. He had no intention of explaining to Valens that what he did need was either the CMO's salary or a collection of lucrative private patients and some peace and quiet to get on with his writing. Now that he was living in a backwater with no earthquakes or family members or ex-wife to distract him, he hoped to complete the work he had already started and abandoned several times. G. Petreius Ruso's Concise Guide to Military First Aid would be detailed enough to be useful in the field, and short enough to be copied onto very small scrolls that would fit into a soldier's pack. The copying would be expensive, but once those copies had been sold, there would be a double profit—one in cash, and one, he felt sure, in lives and limbs saved. What he didn't need was Valens making helpful suggestions, or worse still, taking up the idea himself.

  "Did I tell you," Valens continued, bringing Ruso back to the subject at hand, "I'm thinking of proposing to the second spear's daughter?"

  "Is she a rich widow?"

  "Gods, no. She's sixteen. Rather attractive, actually, considering what her father looks like."

  Whatever the second spear looked like, he must have been on centuri
on's pay for some years before he had been promoted to a command in the top cohort. He would be a wealthy man.

  "Only child, I suppose?" ventured Ruso.

  Valens grinned. "Divorce has turned you sadly cynical, my friend."

  "Not divorce," said Ruso. "Marriage."

  9

  RUSO LAY IN the darkness and listened to the scurry of the mice in the dining room, and then to the patter of the dog. There followed some skidding and squeaking and a crash, then a long silence. It was finally broken by the wail of third watch being blown, and the creak of his bed as he rolled over and vowed to move out of this madhouse as soon as he could afford it.

  By the time he woke again, Valens had gone on duty. The house was quiet. As soon as he had breakfasted and bathed (there would be no time later), he would be able to make some progress with his writing.

  Ruso wandered into the kitchen and picked up half a loaf of bread and a chunk of cheese that had been left out on the kitchen table. There were, he observed with relief, no mouse droppings on the table this morning. Then he glanced across at the little box on the windowsill and saw that the pile Valens was collecting had grown considerably. Abandoning the idea of food, Ruso strode back to his room, pulled on his overtunic, and went across to the hospital to see his private patient.

  The girl was still asleep. He did not wake her. Valens would check on her during ward rounds.

  The words CLOSED FOR IMPROVEMENTS had now been chalked on the main fort baths for so long that they had grown faint with age. Apparently half the builders had been called away on more pressing peacekeeping duties. The rest were clearly determined not to be accused of rushing their work. The height of the weeds growing around the feet of the scaffolding struts suggested to Ruso that it would be weeks before they got around to fixing the hospital roof. Months until they demolished the old centurion's house in which he now lived, which Valens had somehow persuaded them to leave standing when the adjoining barracks block was flattened for rebuilding. The rebuilding hadn't even been started. The reopening of the main military baths was surely far more urgent, but even that didn't seem likely to happen this month—let alone this morning.