A Pattern of Blood

by Rosemary Rowe

  They were interrupted, it seemed, by a message from the gatekeeper. An anonymous package had arrived at the gate for Julia, wrapped in fine silk. Julia had no suspicions. In fact, she was delighted. Quintus sometimes sent her trinkets as a surprise, and she had been dropping hints about some new ivory combs for her hair. Mutuus was sent to fetch the parcel.

  ‘When she unwrapped it,’ the secretary said, ‘it was a writing block. A pretty thing. Julia still thought it was a present from Quintus. But when she opened it, there was a message inscribed inside the tablet, on the wax itself. “To Julia, a love token to bring you back to me.” I saw the writing myself.

  ‘Julia was furious. I have never seen her so upset. She scratched out the message with her nails, and flung the tablet on the floor. That put an end to the little recital in the arbour. She’d had enough of poetry, she said, and she made me accompany her inside while she craved an immediate audience with her husband.’

  ‘And did he grant it?’ I asked, remembering that he had retired to his quarters with Rollo and that the slave probably had more intimate duties than merely playing the cythera.

  Mutuus looked surprised. ‘Of course. Quintus was devoted to his lady. She might have interrupted him at the bathhouse itself if she chose.’

  ‘And the writing tablet? You left it in the arbour. What happened to it then?’

  He shrugged. ‘I cannot tell you that, citizen. Until you showed it to me just now, I had never seen it again.’

  ‘Oh, come!’ Marcus said sharply. ‘The tablet is a pretty thing, the frame is carved ivory and cunningly made. It would have a value anywhere. You don’t expect me to believe that you left it in the garden where it fell?’

  Mutuus was doing his imitation of Samian ware again. ‘I did not say that, Excellence. It is true that I tried to recover it. When Julia went in to speak to Quintus, I was no longer required – Quintus always dismissed his slaves when Julia sought private audience with him – so I came back to the arbour, hoping to find the writing tablet. I spent a long time searching, but there was no sign of it. Doubtless one of the garden slaves had stolen it.’

  He spoke with bitterness. The slaves had ‘stolen’ it, I noticed. If Mutuus had picked it up, he would not have described the action that way.

  ‘What did you hope to do with it?’ I said, hoping to shame him by the question. ‘Sell it? Or show it to Quintus?’ It occurred to me that the secretary might have been pleased to drive a little splitting wedge between husband and wife.

  I had mistaken my man. Mutuus looked at me gravely. ‘I would not have sold it, citizen, far less have given it away. It had been Julia’s, you understand – for a brief moment, true, but it was hers.’

  ‘You would have taken it as a keepsake?’ Marcus was incredulous. He had enjoyed his share of women, but it would never occur to him to be sentimental.

  He spoke at the same moment as I said, ‘However could you hide such a thing?’ in equally disbelieving tones. I knew how little privacy a servant could possess.

  Oddly, Mutuus addressed his answer to me. ‘I was a secretary, citizen, and a bondsman. I was not obliged to sleep with the common slaves, like a sheep in a barn. I had a small private partition at one end of the room.’

  I nodded. ‘So you had somewhere to keep your things? A storage chest, at least?’ I blamed myself for not deducing that earlier. He had, after all, produced a spotless robe from somewhere.

  ‘What can a secretary have that warrants a storage chest?’ Marcus wanted to know, with more than a touch of impatience. It had not escaped him that Mutuus had unthinkingly answered my question first.

  Mutuus inclined his head. ‘I have, in my sleeping quarters, Excellence, every stylus that her hands have touched. Believe me, when you feel as I do . . .’ He trailed off.

  I nodded. I remembered a time when I, too, had treasured a lock of hair, a scrap of perfumed plaid. Marcus, who had never married, but who could command any girl in Glevum at the turn of a coin, was looking less convinced.

  ‘Well! So you could not find the writing tablet, you say? And despite your desire to own it, you did not think that it was worth enquiring for?’ Marcus was scathing now.

  He wanted to, Mutuus explained, but circumstances prevented him. He went to Julia and told her that the writing tablet had disappeared, hoping that she would start a search for it. Instead, she merely laughed and said that it was of no account. Whoever had found it was welcome to it, for her part – and if a slave had taken it, so much the better. That was all Flavius deserved. What was worse, from Mutuus’s point of view, was that she said so in the presence of her handmaids.

  ‘If I had attempted to ask questions and get it back, the maidservants would have told Julia. I did not wish her to think badly of me,’ Mutuus finished, sadly. He sighed. ‘I never did discover who had it.’

  He stopped for a moment, wistfully, and then seemed struck by a sudden thought. ‘I wonder how Flavius came to have it? Unless, perhaps,’ he glanced at us from under his lids, ‘Rollo, you know, was talking to Flavius last night, in the courtyard. He told me he had an appointment to wait upon him later. You don’t think . . .’

  ‘I don’t think,’ I said, ‘that this is even the same tablet.’

  Mutuus looked scornful. ‘I could hardly be mistaken. The wax is set in a distinctive frame.’

  I looked at Marcus, and raised my eyebrows questioningly. He nodded, so I signalled to Junio, who opened the travelling chest again and produced the second writing frame with a flourish. I gave him an encouraging wink and took the object from him.

  ‘You are quite sure,’ I said to the astonished Mutuus, ‘that it could not have been this one that you saw?’ I handed it to him for inspection.

  He frowned. ‘I . . . that is . . . citizen, it is impossible to be certain. The two are much alike. But no, look – the corner of this one is chipped. That must be where Julia flung it to the floor. I saw it hit the corner of the stone seat as it fell. Yes, you are quite right, citizen. This is Julia’s writing tablet, not the other. But how did you acquire this? It disappeared in the arbour.’

  ‘It was sent to me,’ Marcus said, with a certain emphasis. Mutuus had been addressing his answers to me again. Any moment now my patron would start tapping his baton. Mutuus looked to me for amplification, but I simply smiled encouragingly. One of the secrets of my success with Marcus is knowing when to keep silent.

  ‘To me,’ Marcus said again, as if Mutuus might have overlooked the implications. ‘It was found here in the colonnade, with a threatening message on it, shortly after Quintus Ulpius was stabbed in the street.’

  ‘A threatening message?’ Mutuus looked alarmed. ‘You do not suppose that I wrote it, Excellence? That I was responsible for that evening’s attack?’

  I waited for Marcus to deny that, at least, but he did not.

  ‘Who is more likely than a secretary to inscribe on a wax tablet?’ Marcus demanded, taking the second tablet from him, ‘and who else knew where this one was to be found?’

  Marcus is capable of surprising me sometimes. That was a shrewd deduction, in its way, although it ignored some obvious indications.

  I debated for a moment whether to point them out to him, but I was spared the necessity. The screen door opened, so that the room was filled for a moment with the still unceasing wail of the lament, and then Julia herself came in, with her two plain maidservants in attendance.

  ‘Excellence, since you are now my sponsor, will you speak at the . . .’ she began, approaching Marcus with a smile of greeting, but then she saw the two writing tablets in his hands.

  The smile withered like a dinner snail in salt. She opened her mouth as if to speak, but no words emerged. Julia Honoria was a strong woman, but if Sollers had not appeared behind her to catch her as she swayed, I believe she would have fallen to the floor in a faint.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  At the sight of Julia’s distress, the normal social formalities were forgotten. Mutuus rushed forward, heedless
of protocol in his eagerness to help. One of the slave girls cried, ‘Water and vinegar!’ and disappeared unbidden to fetch it. Most surprisingly of all, Marcus at once put away the writing tablets and offered his stool for her assistance. I have never before seen him give up his seat to any living person.

  Sollers, however, seemed characteristically self-possessed. ‘Air,’ he said, authoritatively. ‘The lady needs air. And hydromel will help revive her too. The kitchens know how to prepare it; I ordered it often for her husband, previously. See to it, slave.’ He nodded to Junio who bounded away instantly, without reference to me, as if he, too, had been transformed by events.

  She was pale and shaking, and Sollers led her to the stool where she sank down gracefully, her head in her hands, and for a moment we watched her in silence. Then she found her voice. ‘Pardon me, citizens,’ she managed. ‘I do not know what weakness overcame me.’

  And why should the sight of Flavius’s writing tablets bring it on? That was the question I wanted to ask, but I judged the moment was not propitious. Besides, from the look on his face, Marcus would have considered it unfeeling and I would have risked a stinging rebuke. I held my tongue.

  ‘Momentary faintness like this is not unusual,’ Sollers was saying, with a professional air. ‘Your mind has sustained some dreadful shocks, and this has produced imbalance in your body. You have a surfeit of dry and airy humours. It often happens, in such circumstances.’

  The maidservant came hurrying back at this moment with a goblet of watered vinegar, but he waved it away imperiously. ‘Water alone might have helped. Coolness and wet will help correct the imbalance. But vinegar will only add bitterness.’

  ‘Honey and water is better?’ I was remembering his instruction to bring hydromel.

  ‘It is.’ He smiled towards me as he spoke, and again I felt the flattery of his regard. ‘Sweetness will help to drive out sorrow, and also increase her strength. Ah! Here is your servant with some now.’ He took the cup from a panting Junio and held it to the lady’s lips.

  Julia swallowed some hydromel and did indeed seem a little revived. She gave Sollers a faint, glowing smile. ‘Thank you. I am better already.’

  I was ready to ask my question about the writing blocks, but Sollers intervened. ‘All the same, lady, I think you should be cupped. That will draw off the dangerous humours physically. It is a strong remedy, stronger than I would normally advise, but there is need for a swift cure. You have a funeral to attend tonight, and your presence will be required at the banquet too.’

  ‘You are going to bleed her?’ I asked, doubtfully. Julia had turned white at the prospect, but obviously the little crisis had affected my social judgement. It was not my place to question the doctor’s decision.

  He took no offence. ‘Not bleed her, no. That is for reducing fever in the blood. This is an affliction of the brain, caused by airy humours: dry-cupping will suffice.’

  I had heard of it, the application of suction to the skin to draw the offending humours through it. Julia looked greatly relieved at this reduction of sentence, and glanced at me with the most charming conspiratorial smile. Even so, my next question startled everyone, most of all myself. Ever afterwards I wondered how I dared to ask it. ‘Can I assist you, Sollers?’ I enquired.

  Everyone stared at me in astonishment. The medicus was the first to recover.

  ‘Citizen, a pair of hands would certainly be useful, but there are many slaves here who can help me.’

  I shook my head. ‘They have a funeral to prepare,’ I said. I can be stubborn when I choose, and having volunteered myself to this, I was seized by a strong desire to see it through. ‘In any case, I should be fascinated to observe your skill.’

  He was visibly flattered by that.

  I saw him waver, and I pressed my advantage. ‘As you, once, were interested to witness Galen’s work,’ I added.

  He gave a slight smile. ‘In that case, citizen, if Julia has no objection . . .?’

  She indicated that she had none.

  ‘Then by all means watch me if you wish. Though there is little anyone can do to help, and very little to see. We shall require a cupping bowl, that is all, a little lint and a lighted taper. You will find all these things in the consulting room of my apartments. Or better, perhaps we should take Julia Honoria there. I have good lamps, and an upright chair with arms which I use for operating – it helps to steady my hands. Julia may sit in that and support her arm. My box of salves and remedies will be on hand, too, to restore her after the cupping.’

  Julia made no demur, so he placed a firm hand under her elbow, and – with the assistance of Junio, who stepped forward at my signal – helped her across the courtyard to the room, with her handmaidens in attendance. I followed them, as suggested, but the rest of the company, after a little hesitation, dispersed.

  If I had been a patient of Sollers, I thought, I should either have made a miraculous recovery the moment I walked in through his door or (perhaps more likely) expired entirely from fright. One’s symptoms could scarcely be more dreadful than the treatments hinted at here.

  The very sight of the implements set out on the surgeon’s table was enough to induce an immediate fever. There were blades for cutting rotting flesh; saws for bones and limbs; heating irons for cautery; hand drills for the skull; a dreadful four-jawed device with ratchets, for some internal use; and a pair of fearsome pincers for the teeth. I remembered that army surgeons were trained to ignore their patients’ cries. The very thought made me shudder. I turned away.

  True, on the shelves around there were labelled caskets of dried herbs to ease distress – I spotted mustard, crocus, belladonna, linseed, poppy and mallow – and vessels of oils, salt, turpentine and vinegar to clean the wounds. But my eyes were instinctively drawn back to the surgeon’s gallery on the table: it looked like a torturer’s armoury. And, among the rest, as Sollers had said, was a selection of cupping bowls – some, delicate affairs of horn, with tiny apertures in the bottom, while others were more robust in bronze, large hollow bell shapes with a smooth lip at the edge.

  Sollers selected one of the latter, and asked Julia to bare her arm. She did so herself, waving away the maidservant who stepped forward to help. I admired her fortitude. Sollers had lighted a small piece of lint from a taper which he dropped into the cup, and now, rubbing a little oil around the rim, he was preparing to clamp the bell firmly against the milky skin of the proffered arm.

  ‘Will it not burn her?’ I could not restrain the question.

  ‘It will be hot at first, certainly.’ Sollers spoke with his customary pride in his own expertise, and I realised that he was enjoying giving this little demonstration. ‘But the lint will burn away the natural vapour in the jar, and since nature abhors a vacuum, the excess humours will be sucked out of the arm. They’ll fill the space and put the fire out. If we had more leisure, I would have used a bone cupping bowl, and sucked the humours out myself, through the hole in the base. But it is getting late, and Julia must be well enough to face the funeral celebrations tonight. This method is stronger and brings swifter results.’

  Indeed, within a few moments he was withdrawing the cup from her arm, and I could see what he meant about the vacuum. There was no fire in the cup, and no actual burning on the arm, although the skin was reddened and marked where it had been drawn up into the cupping vessel. I had, I remembered, seen a similar bruise on the arm of Quintus Ulpius as he lay dead at my feet. I remembered that he, too, had been cupped shortly before.

  I tried to imagine Sollers applying this treatment to the decurion. And then something occurred to me. I had been an idiot not to think of it before.

  I turned to Sollers, with what I hoped was a disarming smile. ‘You did the same to Quintus yesterday morning?’

  ‘Not quite the same, no.’ He was rubbing a perfumed salve gently into Julia’s arm and she was smiling at him gratefully. ‘Quintus was suffering from a fever, so I wet-cupped him. A similar process, but one cuts the vein. It dra
ws blood, and hence the fiery humours are drawn out.’

  I took a deep breath. ‘And what, on these occasions, do you do with the blood?’

  I heard Julia catch her breath sharply. Sollers’s hands visibly trembled as they held the salve pot, but it was only for an instant. A moment later he had regained his self-possession, and was saying evenly, ‘In general, citizen, one carries it away and washes the cupping vessel in the stream.’

  ‘In general,’ I said. ‘But what about yesterday morning? What did you do with it then?’

  There was a pause, during which Julia looked at Sollers and everyone else looked at me.

  ‘I should warn you, lady,’ I said, ‘I have been to the fuller’s. Your clothes had not yet been laundered.’

  Julia turned so pale I thought Sollers would suggest another cupping. ‘Great Minerva, giver of wisdom!’ she exclaimed. ‘Sollers, you had better tell them everything.’

  None of the servants moved. One could almost feel the expectation in the room.

  Sollers looked at me steadily. ‘What Julia did was no crime, citizen.’

  ‘I did not suggest it was. The blood, after all, was withdrawn already, and you have just explained how that is treatment for a fever. All the same, I would like to hear her account of it. Or yours. A petition, was it, or a thank offering? Because the treatment you were giving her had worked?’

  Julia gave a little sob. ‘A little of both. It was not the first time I had sacrificed to the goddess – though not usually with blood. But we always sent the servants away when I made an offering, and I know we were not observed this time. We did it so swiftly. How did you discover the truth?’

  ‘I examined the altar, yesterday, and the channel around the shrine was wet with blood. I wondered at the time if someone had used it as a way of disposing of inconvenient evidence. It was foolish of me, but I did not make the connection with cupping, until now.’