Medicus

by Ruth Downie

  A black bird with a yellow beak hopped across the clearing. Gently, slowly, Ruso shifted his weight into a more comfortable position. Undisturbed, the bird continued to stab at something in the grass. There was no other sign of movement.

  Hiding behind a tree trunk with his back exposed to the rustling undergrowth, it occurred to Ruso that following a native into the woods unarmed had not been a sensible thing to do. He was beyond shouting distance from the road. If there were more than one man to deal with, or if that man were carrying a weapon, he was in trouble.

  That was probably why the voice terrified him. Only for a second, though, as he assured himself later. Of course he had not believed for more than a glancing moment that he was hearing the triumphant war cry of a native about to hack him to pieces. Or that a vengeful ghost had come to steal his spirit away in the depths of the woods. He had known, as soon as he had recovered from the surprise, that the sound was nothing to fear. Unfortunately his head did not communicate this knowledge to his heart, which continued to pound against the wall of his chest as if he were being pursued through the forest by a pack of howling wolves, instead of leaning against a tree trunk listening to a woman singing.

  Tilla's singing in the kitchen had never been like this. At first shrill and ululating and eerie, then gradually descending, becoming breathy and resonant and peculiarly intimate. Ruso moved slowly forward to peer through the leaves again. He could see her now. She seemed to be alone. He frowned with confusion before guessing she must be standing down in a dip, which was hidden by the undergrowth on the far side of the clearing. Her good arm was raised to the sky. Her face glistened with water. Darkened tendrils of wet hair stuck to her forehead. Her eyes were closed in concentration. The expression on her face was little short of ecstatic. He released a long breath. His servant had not ventured into the woods to meet a lover, but a god.

  A thin trail of smoke rose into the air. The question of how Tilla had lit a fire in the middle of the damp woods merged in his mind with the question of what she had been carrying in the basket. He suspected he was now going to have to add "theft of firewood" to her list of misdemeanors.

  The song rolled on. It was, in a peculiar barbaric way, beautiful. Sometimes there were strains of a tune Ruso felt he should recognize, then the notes soared away in unexpected directions. Sometimes the same tune seemed to repeat and tangle around itself before giving way to a different one. Another high eerie section gave way to huskiness and a tune that meandered about in a sequence he thought he remembered from the kitchen.

  Ruso retreated behind the tree and surveyed the damage to his new trousers. They were now snagged in several places. The bottoms hung limp and muddy around his feet. As he watched, a beetle scurried across the front of his boot. He shifted his foot. The beetle scuttled off and buried itself under a leaf.

  The song, or collection of songs, was still going on. Ruso began to experience a familiar sensation. It was the feeling that usually crept over him during the first few verses of after-dinner poetry recitals: the sense that time was slowing down around him and that this damned performance was going to go on all night. Tilla, however, seemed to be enraptured.

  Although he could not share it, there were times when Ruso was jealous of the comfort other people seemed to draw from their religion. Patients who retained a calm hope in the face of desperate and painful situations. One man had even offered to pray for Ruso's soul while Ruso amputated two of his toes. So although he had troubling doubts about Aesculapius, very little faith in Jupiter and his ilk, and—usually—silent contempt for the so-called divinity of emperors, Ruso had a solid belief in the value of religion. Leaving aside the water engineer who had to be tied to his bunk until he lost faith in his ability to fly from the top of his aqueduct, even the craziest of beliefs seemed to do less harm than any effort to dislodge them. So he would, if asked, have given Tilla permission for some sort of religious worship. But he had not been asked, and now he was witnessing blatant disobedience of a kind he had never encountered in a servant before. He had excused the attack with the soup bowl as a mistake. The business of cooking up medicines in his kitchen had been more of a misunderstanding. This was nothing short of defiance. He was now obliged, for the first time in his life, to administer a serious beating.

  He was not sure what to use. Claudia had usually marked her displeasure by snatching up whatever came to hand—a spoon, a hairbrush, a shoe. He would have to use his belt. To that end, and because he was uncomfortable in them anyway, he would let the singing warble on while he climbed out of the trousers.

  He was out of one leg and easing the second boot through the tube of fabric when he felt something drop into his hair. Logic vanished. Both hands shot up to sweep away the scorpion before it stabbed him in the scalp. The movement threw him off-balance. He hopped sideways, grabbing at the tree trunk to stop himself from falling. A bird flew up, squawking in alarm, and as Ruso realized that the thing that had fallen on his head was an autumn leaf, the song stopped.

  He flattened himself back against the trunk, scarcely breathing.

  In place of the song came a peculiar chanting, as if she were repeating the words of a spell over and over again. The chanting grew nearer. She was walking toward him.

  There was no point in trying to hide. He stepped out from behind the tree.

  The chanting stopped. Tilla was staring at him. At his face. At his feet. At his trousers. Then at his face again.

  "Tilla."

  "My Lord."

  "You are supposed to be at work."

  "Yes, my Lord."

  "Instead, you are here."

  "Yes, my Lord." She lowered her gaze again. For a moment neither of them spoke. Then she said quietly, "My Lord's trousers are fallen down."

  Ruso slowly unrolled the belt from his palm and buckled it around his tunic, trying not to speculate on his servant's perception of what he was up to behind the tree. The punishment would have to wait until he had recovered some dignity.

  51

  RUSO LOOKED UP from the whetstone and put the scalpel down. "Come in, Albanus."

  The door opened. Albanus appeared. "How did you know it was me, sir?"

  "Magic," said Ruso, who had recognized the knock. "Any luck?"

  Albanus advanced into the surgery. "Sir, the pharmacist says he doesn't know anything that uses all those ingredients."

  "Did you ask if you could use them separately?"

  "Yes, sir. Or in any combination. And he said yes, it was dog's mercury, and you could use it as a purgative but you'd be safer using hellebore because too much would cause severe gastric problems and coma. The wood sorrel—he said he didn't know any uses for it but if you took lots of it you'd probably be ill, and he said the best thing to do with garlic mustard and nettles is to mix them with scrambled egg and eat it while it's still hot."

  "Good. Thank you." Ruso retrieved the scalpel and began work on the other side of the blade.

  A wax tablet and a collection of wilted leaves appeared by the whetstone. "I wrote it down, sir."

  Ruso glanced across. The notes inscribed in the clerk's neat handwriting really did end with "eat while still hot."

  "Very thorough as usual, thank you."

  "And there's somebody to see you, sir."

  Ruso cleared the greenery to one side of his desk. "Send him in. Have you got his notes?"

  "It's a her, sir." Albanus left a slight pause before adding, "I think you've got the notes already."

  Albanus had gone, leaving Ruso alone with his slave.

  "Close the door, Tilla."

  The latch clanked into position.

  He carried on stroking the triangular blade across the stone, conscious that she was waiting for him to speak. Her feet were in his line of vision. She was wearing the new boots.

  He had asked her to report to him here as soon as she had finished the shopping. By this time, he felt, he would have worked out what disciplinary measures were appropriate. But despite mulling it over thr
oughout their swift and silent walk back to town, and again in the few minutes since he had finished ward rounds, he had failed to make a decision.

  He drizzled more oil onto the stone. As it soaked into the worn gray surface in the wake of the blade, he reflected that at least she had turned up as instructed. He had thought she might go gallivanting back to the woods in search of the plants he had confiscated from the basket. Garlic mustard and nettles. Edible and harmless, as the pharmacist had confirmed. Mix with scrambled egg. Eat while still hot. Perhaps he had done her an injustice. But dog's mercury? Severe gastric problems and coma? Surely it was a common enough plant for no one—especially the daughter of a midwife—to mistake it for something else?

  He glanced up to find those eyes looking directly into his. Her mouth was set in the sort of line that suggested a direct approach would be a waste of time. Instead he said mildly, "Are the boots a good fit?"

  He could see he had taken her by surprise. She lifted her skirt to look at them. "They are, my Lord," she said, and then added, "I thank you."

  He nodded. "Good." She had tidied her hair. He noticed for the first time that she had made beads from three acorns: one brown flanked by two green, threaded on a length of thin twine to form a necklace. As her doctor, he should have been pleased to note that she was starting to take an interest in her appearance. As her owner, he had more pressing concerns. He laid the scalpel on the whetstone and pushed it to one side. "Now bring the basket over here and let's see what you've bought me."

  She had bought him bread, apples, five eggs, cheese, bacon, and green beans. He glanced into the greased leather pouch that held his own flint and steel, and which she had no business bringing out of the house. He put it back without comment and said, "Tell me, Tilla. What tribe do you come from?"

  She laid the folded cloak back across the top of the basket and put them both on a stool. "The Brigantes, my Lord."

  The ones who were causing trouble. Somehow this was not a surprise. "They are from the hills north and east of here?"

  "Yes, my Lord."

  "And are they a very religious people?"

  She shook her head. "Not all of them, my Lord."

  "But you are faithful to your gods."

  "The goddess protects me."

  "And when you make medicine, is that something to do with your goddess?"

  No reply.

  "I'm interested in your medicine. Some of your plants here are new to me. Maybe I have something to learn."

  No reply.

  He lifted up one of the wilted stalks. "What is the use of wood sorrel?"

  No reply. Her good hand was picking at a frayed strand of linen at the end of the bandage.

  He put the first plant down and picked up the second. "I'm told this is dog's mercury. What would you use that for?"

  No reply.

  "You were in the kitchen when Claudius Innocens was taken ill. You put a curse on him."

  "Yes, my Lord."

  "Had you also made medicine for him?"

  "No!"

  "So if I ask the other people who were there, they'll confirm that you didn't go near Innocens or his food?"

  Tilla pursed her lips as if she were about to spit, then cast a sideways glance at the floorboards and thought better of it. She said, "I do not wish to go near Claudius Innocens."

  "No," said Ruso, "that's quite understandable." He ran a forefinger through the stubble he still hadn't found time to have shaved. Perhaps he should give up and hope beards would come into fashion when Hadrian's famously hairy chin began to appear on the coinage. He said, "Who were you making medicine for yesterday?"

  No reply. The hand went back to the bandage.

  Ruso sighed. "This blessing and cursing business, Tilla. Cooking up potions. Chanting. Wandering off into the woods. It's got to stop. People will think I'm harboring a Druid."

  No reply.

  "Am I?"

  "The Druids are all gone."

  "Am I, Tilla?"

  "The army kill them all."

  Ruso was quite well aware of the official line. The Druids, chased out of Gaul generations ago, had taken refuge in Britannia and made their last stand on a far western island in the territory now covered by the Twentieth. It was rumored that some had escaped, but Rome had taken comfort in the fact that Druid knowledge was not only secret and murderous, but complicated and coupled with a widespread refusal to write anything down. It took, they said, twenty years to train a Druid. So instead of hunting down hidden copies of documents, all the army had to do was keep culling the Druids on a regular basis and they would finish them off, like chopping down weeds before they had a chance to seed.

  "Those songs," he said. "What are they about?"

  "They tell stories."

  "About Druids?"

  "About my people. We sing of our ancestors. If we do not sing, our story is lost."

  Ruso pondered that for a moment. It was plausible. The locals seemed to have no proper statues or tombstones. A people without that tradition would have to keep the memories alive in another way.

  "Somebody should write it down," he suggested.

  She looked at him as if he had just said something very naive. "My Lord, the people could not read it."

  "They could learn."

  "But why would they want to when they can sing?"

  "Refusing to learn to read and write," said Ruso, determined to win at least one point, "is a very shortsighted view."

  "Saufeia could read and write."

  "Indeed," said Ruso. "Even women can learn."

  "Saufeia is dead."

  He scratched his ear. This was the sort of illogical leap that made women so difficult to deal with. "Saufeia wasn't murdered because she could read and write."

  "If you say, my Lord."

  "She was murdered because she met a bad man."

  "She was stupid. I am not stupid like Saufeia."

  "Wandering off into the woods by yourself is hardly clever, Tilla.

  Especially at the moment. Did anyone suggest you go there?"

  "No, my Lord."

  "You found the place by yourself? Nobody helpfully told you where to find a nice stream?"

  "No, my Lord."

  "Even so. If I could follow you, so could someone else. Now explain to me about the medicine."

  No reply.

  "I have to know. I can't leave a servant I can't trust in charge of my house."

  The loose thread on the bandage began to unravel. She wound it around her forefinger.

  "The medicine, Tilla."

  Finally she said, "Is for someone else."

  "Who?"

  The end of her forefinger was turning pink.

  Ruso sighed. "I don't want to have to punish you, Tilla," he said, wondering what sort of doctor contemplated beating his patients. Besides, he was not sure where to hit her. On the back? On the legs? Across her one usable hand? "I also assume," he said, buying time, "that you stole my firewood."

  "No, my Lord. I took from a pile by the hospital."

  "Oh, marvelous. You stole the hospital's firewood." Priscus had probably counted the logs and was in the process of billing him for them.

  "Now. Tell me about the medicine."

  The finger tugged more thread loose and then jerked to a stop as the unraveling reached the knot where the bandage was tied. "Is the goddess!" she said suddenly "The goddess tell me to do it!"

  "Who did the goddess tell you to give it to?"

  "I cannot say."

  Slowly, Ruso pushed back his chair and stood up. He put both hands on the buckle of his belt. "I don't want to do this, Tilla," he said.

  "Tell me."

  She shook her head. "I cannot."

  He sighed again and unfastened the belt. He had spoken the truth: He did not want to do this. Discipline was like surgery: unpleasant but necessary. He wrapped the heavy buckle end around his right hand, making sure the studded straps were safely clutched in his palm and would not flail about. He did not want to i
njure her. But neither could he allow any suspicion that his servant might be poisoning people at the whim of some mad native god.

  He grasped the loose end of the belt in his left hand and stretched it out so she could see it. The belt was supple with age. He knew, from years of polishing, every scar in the deep brown of the leather; every scratch on the silver of the trim. He had never before considered using it to inflict pain. Now he snapped it taut and stepped out from behind the desk. "Tell me," he said, seeing the color fade from her cheeks. "Now."

  She bowed her head.

  Someone was knocking at the door.

  Ruso felt his voice rise to a shout. "Not now, Albanus!"

  "Sir, a message from Officer Priscus!"

  "In a minute!"

  "Right-oh, sir! Sorry, sir!"

  Ruso closed his eyes for a moment and attempted to compose himself. He heard the whisper'of fabric. When he opened his eyes she was kneeling at his feet with her head still bowed, as if pleading for mercy.

  He was beginning to feel exasperated. He had put up with far more than most owners would tolerate. Now, because he had tried to treat her fairly, this wretched girl had assumed she could get away with whatever she liked and he found himself having to fill a role he found deeply distasteful.

  He took a long breath. "You have been collecting poisonous plants," he said. "If there is an innocent explanation, you must give it to me. Otherwise, I will have to report you. I have already told you about the questioners. You will beg for mercy, and they will not listen."

  In the silence that followed, he prayed she was not going to tell him something he would have to report anyway. The cursing would not go down well if it were made public. If the questioners got hold of her, the best she could hope for was a swift end.

  A dark tear splash appeared on the floorboards in front of her. A second fell beside it. Ruso clenched his fists. This was not fair. She was doing it on purpose to avoid answering questions. Sooner or later, this was the trick they all resorted to. Gods, how he hated having to deal with women! It was as if they sensed that he wouldn't know what to do.

  Tilla sniffed and lifted both fists, still held together by the thread of bandage, to wipe her eyes.