Medicus

by Ruth Downie

  The moment the door opened, the arm of the young soldier outside shot up in a salute.

  Ruso transferred the beer to his other hand, put out his good foot to prevent a puppy escape and lost his balance slightly before returning an untidy salute and asking, "What do you want?"

  "Albanus, sir, reporting for duty."

  Ruso frowned, trying to imagine what the man's duty might be.

  "Have you come to help out?"

  "Yes sir."

  "Oh. Good. Well, you can start by getting some water. I've got a mouth like a sand dune and there's nothing to drink."

  The man looked puzzled. "Water, sir?"

  Ruso jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "Jug's in the kitchen."

  He stepped aside, but the man did not move.

  "Come in," ordered Ruso. "Shut the door before the dogs get out."

  "Sir?"

  "What?"

  "I'm your scribe, sir."

  Ruso stared at him and noticed the clues for the first time. The ink-stained fingers. The slight bulge to the eyes caused by peering at documents by lamplight. "Oh."

  The man held up a satchel. "I've brought my equipment, sir."

  "Well, you can take it away again," said Ruso. "I'm not on duty till this afternoon." He paused. "Report to me at the hospital at the seventh hour."

  "Yes, sir." There was a pause. "What would you like me to do until then, sir?"

  Gods above, Priscus had sent him an enthusiast. "Haven't you got some old records to copy?"

  Yes, sir, he had.

  "Then you can get on with that. Anything you can't read, ask me this afternoon. Don't make it up."

  "Yes, sir."

  The wretched man was still standing there.

  "Anything else?"

  "No, sir."

  There was a silence, then Ruso remembered to say, "Dismissed."

  After another snappy salute Albanus spun around, sending his satchel swinging outward and crashing back against his side, and marched off in the direction of the hospital. Ruso shut the door, sniffed the beer, and decided it wasn't better than nothing, after all. He limped back into the kitchen to fetch the jug. He had the feeling Albanus would have copied all the records in triplicate by lunchtime and be pestering him for more work. He could have given him the Concise Guide to copy. It was a pity that most of it wasn't written yet.

  Ruso was carrying the jug out the door when there was a crash and a skitter of paws across floorboards. He turned. Several puppies were running for cover. One was perched on a side table, peering over the edge at fragments of a cup lying in a spreading pool of beer.

  Ruso shut the door quietly, limped down the street to the water fountain, and stuck his head under it.

  23

  TILLA COULD SMELL fresh bread. She pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders and peered out between the window bars. Across the street, a pigeon was perched on the roof of the bakery. Beneath it, someone swung back the first panel of the door shutters. A plump woman appeared in the gap, bending to apply her bottom to the rest of the shuttering. The panels shifted on their hinges and the pigeon swooped away as the whole apparatus began to screech back along its groove.

  Tilla watched the pigeon until the frame of the window blocked her view. Then she returned to her bed, slid her hand underneath, and pulled out the iron key the healer had given her the night before. She had felt sorry for the healer, who had done nothing to deserve being smacked on the head and who should have had her beaten—since it seemed she did, after all, still belong to him. Evidently she was not yet the property of the ill-mannered bullies who had sauntered in yesterday with the clear intention of sizing her up for their own use.

  The question was, what should she do now? She had the key. If she could find clothes, if she ate and built up her strength, if she could judge the right moment—she could escape. Or, she could choose not to eat, to cheat the work of the healer, and step forward toward her death. What honor, though, would she have in the next world if she had been offered a chance of freedom in this one and refused to take the risk?

  A clunk from the loose board in the corridor warned her that someone was outside. Moments later there was a soft knock at the door. Tilla pressed her face against the door frame and squinted through the crack. She could just about make out a shape that was not tall enough to be either of the men.

  "Daphne?"

  The form moved and the hand knocked again.

  Tilla slid the key into the lock, positioned one foot an inch away to hold the door while she assured herself it was only the girl, and then let her in.

  "Daphne," she said, locking the door again. "Thank you."

  The girl put the tray down on the bench.

  "Did you sleep well?"

  Daphne shrugged, and indicated her belly in a way that suggested her expectations of sleep were limited.

  "When is your baby due?"

  A second shrug indicated that this was not a subject of great interest.

  "My master has given me the key," explained Tilla, "so I can decide who comes in. I do not want those men in here. If you come alone, knock like this." She demonstrated three short taps on the windowsill.

  "Understand?"

  Daphne reached out a hand and gave three short taps on the door.

  "Only if you are alone, yes?"

  Daphne nodded and pointed to herself. For a moment Tilla thought she was about to smile, but a yell of, "Daphne!" from downstairs reminded her of her duties. Tilla let her out, locked the door, and retreated to see what they had given her for breakfast.

  24

  THE OUTSIDE DOOR to the hospital kitchen was propped open to let out the heat as usual. Ruso nodded a greeting to the cooks as he passed, pausing long enough to light a taper on the grilling coals but not long enough to answer any questions, either about why he was limping horribly or about why he didn't use the front door like everyone else.

  He waited until the corridor was empty before making his way down to the courtyard door. Clutching his case in one hand and the taper in the other, he managed to hobble across the courtyard garden and enter by the consulting rooms without being accosted by either patients or staff.

  Ruso leaned back on the closed door of the consulting room and contemplated his toe. Such a small part of the body. Such disproportionate agony.

  He lit a stub of candle. Then he unlatched his case and retrieved the thinnest of the bronze probes which had, as usual, fallen out of its place.

  He propped the thicker end of the probe on the top of an inkwell and moved the candle so the tip of the probe was being lapped by the flame.

  While he waited for the instrument to heat, he unlaced his sandal, glanced around the room, and then moved a chair away from the wall under the window. This was a quick and straightforward procedure.

  There was no need for painkillers or restraints. There was also no need for furniture for him to fall off if things didn't turn out to be quite as straightforward and quick as when he did this to other people.

  Shielding his fingers from the heat with a cloth, Ruso picked up the cooler end of the probe. He sat himself on the floor below the window and braced his back against the wall. He took a deep breath. Then he placed the tip of the probe against his toenail.

  The door burst open. His hand jolted. The probe slipped out of his grasp and rolled across the floor.

  "Ruso!" exclaimed Valens. "They told me you were in here. What are you doing down there?"

  He explained.

  Valens examined the toe. His face brightened in a manner that Ruso found faintly unsettling. "Shall I do it?"

  "No thank you."

  "Well, can I bring a couple of chaps in to watch?"

  It was an unwelcome, but not an unreasonable, request. "If you must," said Ruso. He got to his feet with some difficulty and repositioned the probe over the flame.

  Moments later Valens returned with the couple of chaps. Either he had lost the ability to count, or each of the chaps had invited a couple more
chaps of his own.

  "See how the blood's built up under the nail," explained Valens as his audience shuffled about to get a better view of Ruso's blackened toenail. "How does it feel?"

  "Painful," grunted Ruso. He could feel himself starting to sweat.

  "It's the pressure that's causing the pain," explained Valens. "You, pass that probe over, will you?"

  There was movement in the corner. A voice said, "Shall I put the candle out, sir?"

  "Not yet," ordered Valens cheerfully. "He might want to have several stabs at it."

  Ruso, who hoped fervently that he would not need more than one stab at it, told himself that this was only a very small amount of additional pain. It would, as he assured his patients, bring instant relief. Suddenly, however, this logic did not seem to offer a great deal of comfort. But he could not change his mind now. Nor could he postpone the moment any longer. The probe was being held out for him to take between forefinger and thumb.

  He adjusted his grip, positioned the tip of the probe over the dark blister that had formed under his toenail during the night, and pressed.

  He gasped as an excruciating wave of pain shot up his foot. Sweating, he forced himself to hold the probe steady and keep pressing as he smelled the nail burning. He closed his eyes, clenched his teeth, and pushed harder.

  Suddenly the resistance to the probe gave way. He withdrew it and gave an involuntary sigh of relief as the blood welled out of the burned hole and the pain began to subside.

  He looked up, surveyed the silent faces, and grinned. "Thank you, gentlemen. Any questions?"

  After the students had been shooed out, Valens said, "Before you distracted me, I came to tell you I've been invited out to dinner tonight."

  "Really?" Ruso wiped his toe with a damp cloth and wondered if dinner invitations were so rare in Britannia that guests felt the need to boast about them.

  "And," Valens continued, "it's a pity you've already performed your party trick, because so have you."

  25

  A SMALL INFORMAL dinner, as arranged by the wife of Centurion Rutilius, was one where Ruso was required to make conversation with seven people he didn't know plus one he'd seen too much of, while eating a selection of elaborate dishes that bore little or no resemblance to their stated ingredients.

  He had been introduced to his fellow guests and promptly forgotten most of their names. This was a situation he was hoping to salvage by not speaking unless spoken to. He would ask Valens afterward. Valens would know what everyone was called, particularly the two daughters of their host. Obviously they were both Rutilia something, but Ruso was damned if he could remember what. The younger one wasn't supposed to be there anyway: She had been summoned at the last minute when the second spear, who turned out to be her uncle, arrived alone. Apparently his daughter had a bad head cold and wouldn't be coming after all.

  Valens, who might conceivably have been disappointed at this news, seemed to accept it stoically enough when etiquette now demanded a rearrangement of the seating plan and he found himself lounging between the plump and giggly wife of another centurion and the elder Rutilia, who must have been of marriageable age.

  Ruso took another spoonful of something soft and eggy and wondered how long it would be before Valens offered the second spear's daughter a house call. Around him, his fellow diners were finding ways of informing one another that they thought Hadrian would make a fine emperor, largely because nobody was yet drunk enough to dare say anything else. It was an example of the meaningless conversation that, as Ruso had once tried to explain to Claudia, was one of the reasons he could not see the point of dinner parties.

  "What's wrong with people being nice? I suppose you'd rather stay at home and be grumpy?"

  "I'm not grumpy. I'm busy."

  "Well, just because you're busy, why do I have to stay at home by myself and be miserable?"

  Claudia's parents, Ruso felt, had done their daughter a serious disservice. It was clear that they had never introduced her, either by education or example, to the words "obedience" and "duty."

  His hosts were going to have similar problems with the other Rutilia, who was not much younger than her sister, if they were not careful.

  While the plump wife moved on from praising the emperor to admiring the catering and the decor of the dining room, Rutilia the Younger was beckoning the wine jug over for the third time. The slave, who should have had the sense to refuse, didn't.

  Ruso licked meat sauce off his fingers and realized his hostess was speaking to him. "I'm sorry, you said . . . ?"

  "I said, are you enjoying our venison gravy, Doctor?"

  He nodded. "Excellent." (So that was what it was.)

  "I'll have the recipe sent over."

  He thanked her, wondering what sort of sauce would be produced by two medics who between them could barely boil an egg. Across the table, Valens caught his eye and grinned.

  The plump woman, casually propping one hand under her jaw to disguise her chins, leaned forward and peered at Ruso. He was diagnosing short sight as she said, "So, how long have you been in Britannia, doctor?"

  "Two weeks," replied Ruso.

  The woman appeared to be waiting for more. He felt there was something else he should add to this reply to pad it out a little, but since he had fully answered the question he could not think what the something might be. This was another reason why he disliked dinner parties.

  Claudia would insist that attending them was for his own benefit ("You must put yourself forward, Gaius! How will you advance if you never meet the right people?"), but afterward she would complain about his refusal to chatter mindlessly to the right people when he met them. It had just struck him that he could pass the baton by asking this woman the same question back, when she gave up waiting and asked, "And what do you think of it?"

  He hesitated. Britannia was dilapidated, primitive, and damp, but some of these men might have chosen to serve here. "It's interesting," he said.

  "Our mother doesn't think it's interesting," piped up a young voice from across the table. "Our mother says it's the Back of Beyond."

  "Rutilia Paula!" The woman frowned at her daughter across the top of the tureen. Her earrings glittered in the lamplight as she turned to Ruso. "And what do you make of the natives, Doctor?"

  "I haven't met many yet," said Ruso, omitting the fact that he owned one of them.

  "Are you married?" inquired Rutilia Paula.

  "Divorced," replied Ruso as one of Rutilia the Elder's sandals gave her little sister a hefty kick and her mother reinforced the message with, "Paula, dear, really!"

  The mother turned back to Ruso. "I'm so sorry, Doctor. You were saying?"

  Ruso shook his head. "I'd finished."

  Rutilia Paula, evidently encouraged by this response, said, "Is it true you came from Africa and all your things were eaten by ants and now you're very poor?"

  Her mother said loudly, "They're not very interesting, I'm afraid."

  "Terribly primitive and superstitious," put in the woman with the chins. "They put their enemies inside great big men made of sticks and burn them alive, you know."

  "Not now they don't," pointed out her husband. "We've put a stop to all that sort of carrying-on."

  "I certainly hope so," replied the wife.

  "Now they're just bloody argumentative," put in her husband. "Half the trouble we get is trying to stop them fighting each other."

  "They don't want to pay the taxes," put in Rutilius, "but they expect us to turn up when there's trouble."

  Ruso deduced that they were talking about the natives. "Is there much trouble?" he asked.

  "The lowland tribes don't give us much these days," said the second spear, "but the higher the mountains, they worse they get."

  "And they are so terribly dirty."

  To Ruso's relief the mention of dirt turned the conversation to the vexed question of who was responsible for the slow completion of the work on the fort bathhouse. As the finger of blame moved around
the fort and beyond, Valens remarked to their hostess how nice it was to meet someone socially who wasn't in the medical profession. "Most people think we're either going to poison them or slice them up," he explained, "So we end up just socializing with one another." He glanced at Ruso. "Except those of us who don't socialize with anybody, of course."

  "You're another of these medical fellers, then?" inquired the second spear, eyeing Valens through the steam rising from a roast bird (duck? large hen? small goose? It had been announced on arrival, but Ruso had been distracted by the sight of Rutilia the Elder clamping her hand across the top of her sister's wineglass until the water jug appeared).

  "I am," Valens was saying. "I was wondering—"

  "Never believed in doctors, myself," said the second spear. "Bunch of squabbling buffoons."

  Valens shook his head sadly as if in total agreement. "It's not a well-regulated profession, I'm afraid."

  "Bloody right," agreed the second spear. "Killed my father. Only had a bit of a cough. Could have lived to be eighty. That lot started at him with the blood-cupping and the silly diets and shoving stuff up his backside, and he was dead within the week."

  The younger Rutilia started to giggle.

  "Very unfortunate," said Valens.

  "That's what they said too."

  Their hostess stepped in. "Marcus, Doctor Valens was marvelous to Aulus when he was ill. Wasn't he, Aulus?"

  Aulus Rutilius grunted assent.

  "We were lucky to get him and Doctor Ruso here tonight. They work very hard at that hospital."

  "It'll be easier when we get the CMO back," said Ruso.

  The plump woman looked puzzled. "The chief medical officer,"

  Valens explained. "He's on long-term sick leave."

  There was a "Hmph" from the second spear as Valens added, "Frankly, he's not likely to come back," and Rutilia Paula could be heard whispering to her sister, "Was that the hairy old man with cold hands?"

  "Shut up!" hissed the sister.

  As Rutilius beckoned a sharp-faced slave and murmured something in her ear, the plump woman said, "I'm sure one of you doctors would make a lovely chief medical officer."