by M. K. Hume
You’ll be happy to learn that despite some stiffness and a really nasty scar at the elbow, my arm has almost healed. You cannot know how grateful I am to possess two arms that answer my bidding when I could so easily have had only one.
Be well, my friend, and call for me should you continue your journey to Constantinople.
In your absence, I will see if I can discover any man of the Flavius gens who is of an age to be your father. Perhaps Fortuna will aid you in your search.
Written in haste,
Claudius Cleoxenes, known as the Greek, and always your friend.
Autumn had come again to the City of the Seven Hills and Myrddion missed the softness of Britain, the brilliance of the wooded hills in their scarlet cloaks edged in gold and dim green and intermixed with swaths of yellow gorse. Soft skies streaked in pale grey and whitewashed blue were more beautiful in his memories than the hotter, denser skies of Rome.
In fact, he longed to be anywhere but where he was. He had come to loathe Rome and her class system, from her hard, geometric corners to the long, sweeping skirts of the outlying subura, soaked with grime and ordure almost to the knees of the city. He despised the toll that Rome demanded of his inner peace, and he had a strange, unnerving feeling that the city was contaminating his soul. Britain seemed a lifetime away and slipping further beyond his reach with every passing day.
Still, the subura had much to occupy him. The issues of life and death in the alleyways were as cruel and as immediate as ever. Each day merged seamlessly into the next, so that the young man was sure he sleepwalked through each day and each relationship, squandering himself in a pointless, squalid battle against the invincible armies of pestilence, violence and infanticide.
He had grown fond of his landlady, Mistress Pulchria, and had learned a little of her past, discovering in her insouciance and cheerful cynicism an optimism that no woman in her position should possess. Sold into prostitution when she was in her first, childish bloom at nine, she had wept when a rich old senator had deflowered her for an enormous price, but after those first bitter tears she had set about learning the fallibility of men, how to pander to their small vanities and feign the necessary passion in sex that soon made her a very desirable commodity in one of Rome’s best brothels. Myrddion couldn’t begin to imagine the depth of determination that the child Pulchria had possessed as she carved a reputation for sly, hot sex and a certain illusory fragility that appealed to wealthy men of all ages.
‘You know what men are, master healer – well, you’re one yourself. I flattered them by sitting on their laps and pretending to be a little girl. Then I told them how generous they were, so they queued to shower me with gold coins.’ She giggled like a girl, and Myrddion could imagine the child she had once been, still trapped in her fleshy, tiny frame.
‘I paid my purchase price, with interest, in fourteen years of hard labour on my back, master. But there are too many girls who can’t give up the life. They get worn out and old, still hawking what’s between their legs even after they’ve lost their teeth. Not me, dearie! Pulchria learned a thing or two from those fine gentlemen . . . and their ladies too. Now, don’t colour up on me, for the world’s not always black and white. I learned! So when I bought my freedom, I had enough left over for this insula – and here I am.’
Myrddion’s relationship with Healer Isaac had been a stimulating bonus throughout the spring. The wily Jew had persuaded Myrddion to collaborate with him on the mystery disease, but so far none of their research had borne even the frailest hint of success. Myrddion enjoyed Isaac’s company, his wealth of knowledge and a pungent sense of humour that tickled Myrddion’s more serious nature. The Jew was a little casual about his craft at times, but the young Celt knew that Isaac possessed his own spirit of enquiry, so they managed to rub along together with little friction.
The last summer had been particularly vile. The heat had been a series of brazen hammer blows that had assailed the city with thirst, furnace-hot nights and days when the stones of the city burned under hand and foot. Heat had shimmered over the streets, blurring geometric outlines so that the air was a gauzy curtain, thin enough to breathe but hot enough to burn the lungs. The stench from the subura, the latrines and the Tiber was overpowering and Myrddion imagined it as a virulent and rotting green that polluted everything it touched.
Disease had also come to Rome during the hotter months, born in the piles of refuse that rotted in the channels used to carry away rainwater, on the empty land and in the raw sewage that less scrupulous landlords dumped in the streets and in the river. Flies bred the illness and carried it from person to person on the hot air and in the polluted water.
At first, patients came to Myrddion complaining of a high temperature and headaches, followed by diarrhoea that was green in colour and uncontrollable. Myrddion consulted his scrolls and found a description of the gastric plague by ancient Thucydides, who described an outbreak in Athens during the war with Sparta. That disaster resulted in the death of one third of the Athenian population.
Myrddion was terrified of this plague, so, alarmed by the statistics collated by Thucydides, he pored over every scroll he had. Better Attila should have burned the city than it should die in its own vomit, fever and shit, so Myrddion sent word to Isaac, whose sector of the city was, as yet, unaffected by the disease. Myrddion knew that the Jew would come to his aid, for he was forever seeking out disease and trying to discover its root cause.
Isaac entered Myrddion’s surgery in his customary fashion – noisily. Looking up from the series of tinctures he was preparing for patients who were too ill to leave their beds, the younger man breathed a sigh of relief that he’d no longer be floundering through the darkness of ignorance on his own.
‘Here you are, Myrddion Emrys,’ the Jew boomed out, frightening two small children who were waiting for Cadoc to treat a split head and a slash on the forearm respectively. ‘A well-ordered room.’ The Jew nodded appreciatively, but the children wailed shrilly at the sight of a huge bear of a man looming over them, all flashing teeth and curly hair.
‘Hush, little ones. I won’t let the nasties have you.’ Isaac patted their heads with hands as large as terra cotta platters. Both children hiccuped and knuckled their wide eyes with dirty fists, overawed by the odd appearance of this huge newcomer.
‘Noisy as ever, Isaac? Still, I’m very glad to see you. I hope you can spare the time to come with me to see some patients, as I’m at my wit’s end to know how to treat Thucydides’ disease.’
‘That’s the new name for the stomach disease? The plebs call it something else, but I won’t sully the children’s ears by repeating it in front of them.’ Isaac laughed again, until the surgery seemed too small to hold that booming, titanic mirth. ‘Are you ready, Myrddion? If so, I am totally at your disposal.’
The two men left the tenement and walked past several streets until they came to a dark laneway. As they picked their way through piles of rubbish, old clothes and the contents of countless slop buckets, Isaac clicked his tongue against his teeth and growled with disgust. When a rat as large as a small cat ran over his foot, he lashed out at it with a well-aimed kick, shuddering at the length of its naked, scaly tail.
‘Don’t you hate those damned things? They breed disease and they feed on rubbish. When the Lord God created them He made a mistake, because they’re true vermin – I would destroy every one of them if I could.’
‘I can tell,’ Myrddion responded drily. ‘Here we are. This is the house of Arrius, the ironworker.’
‘I’ve never understood how people can live next to such filth,’ Isaac grumbled, attempting to clean something slimy off his sandal.
‘They’re poor, so they have no choice,’ Myrddion retorted, a little sharply.
He knocked at the rickety door and it was pulled open by a worn woman whose black hair and excellent white teeth belied her ageing, faded appearance. The ruins of luminous beauty still lingered in her high cheekbones, almond eyes and dense w
hite skin. She ushered them into two rooms that served the multiple purposes of bedrooms, kitchen and eating place. Five children clustered around her skirts, the youngest barely old enough to walk.
‘A good day to you, Hadria. How is your man? Have your children become ill yet, or have you managed to keep them away from Arrius, as I asked you to do?’
‘I’ve told them and told them to stay away from him, but it’s very hard – them being so fond of their father,’ Hadria replied in a whisper, twisting the hem of her peplum around her fingers.
Isaac surveyed the two mean rooms and recognised a valiant attempt at cleanliness, despite the filth of the alleyway. A twig broom obviously kept the uneven stone floor as clean as possible, and the low table had been scrubbed vigorously so that the wood was pale and smooth.
‘Where’s the patient?’ he asked gruffly.
With instinctive courtesy, Myrddion quickly introduced Isaac to Hadria, who coloured under the older healer’s scrutiny. She ushered them both into the small room next door, which was little bigger than an alcove and was almost filled with a slim pallet stuffed with straw.
The man who lay on the bed was naked except for a loincloth. His body was slick with sweat and Hadria bent over him to coax him to drink a little water.
‘Have you been boiling the water, Hadria?’ Myrddion asked.
‘Yes, master, although fuel is hard to come by. But I’ll manage somehow.’ She bit down hard on her lip, and Myrddion vowed silently to slip her several coins before he left.
Isaac examined Arrius’s chest and slightly distended belly. ‘See those small red spots? Thucydides was the first person to write down the symptoms of the stomach disease. I’ve seen it before.’
‘What’s the treatment?’ Myrddion asked eagerly. ‘I’ve never come across an illness like this before. Britain doesn’t get hot enough for the disease to develop, even in summer.’
‘Perhaps in Britain you have too few cities where filth can accumulate,’ Isaac muttered as he knelt beside the prone man and felt his forehead. ‘What colour are his stools, Hadria?’
She looked at him blankly.
‘His shit, girl!’ Isaac barked. ‘What colour is it?’
Hadria blushed to the roots of her hair. ‘It’s green, master. I’ve used almost all the cloth we have to keep him clean.’
‘Boil all the water! Boil his loincloths and force him to drink every hour. Better he should be sick than dry. If his temperature rises and he becomes too hot, then he’ll die.’
Hadria hiccuped with distress and Myrddion felt a deep pity for her. Isaac was being unduly harsh; he could be very sharp when the mood took him.
‘What about feverwort, Isaac?’ Myrddion asked, lifting a cloth bag out of his satchel. ‘Will that help his treatment?’
‘It wouldn’t hurt, especially in boiled water. He can live for some time without food, but not without fluid.’
Hadria tugged at Isaac’s sleeve. ‘Will he die, master?’
Aware of Myrddion’s reaction, Isaac answered gently and with more consideration than he had shown earlier. ‘He’s strong and not yet thirty. His labour as an ironworker has built good muscle, so he has an excellent chance. I’m more worried about your children.’
Hadria paled, rushed into the next room and clutched the children to her breast. Frightened by her panic, the youngest began to cry gustily.
‘Myrddion, this disease runs wild in places where there is excrement, rats and flies. The subura is a breeding ground for this type of plague in the summer months, because it passes from human to human through contact with filth. If Hadria can keep her children clean and out in the fresh air, and not in that filthy alleyway, then perhaps she can prevent the spread of the illness.’ Isaac shrugged. ‘Otherwise, it’s quite possible that a third of those who contract the illness will die because the citizens of this place cannot clean up their own filth.’
In the next room, Hadria wept fitfully. She understood the realities of life in the subura. Nothing would change, even if the streets were filled with rotting bodies. Slatterns would still empty night soil into the dark recesses of the alleyways, rats would still imperil the lives of infants, and flies would still swarm on the piles of rubbish and transfer their poisons into the eyes, ears and mouths of vulnerable humans.
Myrddion refused to accept that things would always stay the same. Thucydides had offered an excuse for the disease in Athens by saying that the city had been under siege for some time. Rome had no such excuse. The city had ample latrines and Myrddion refused to believe that there was no man or group of men able to force the denizens of the subura to clean up their living conditions.
‘I have a possible solution, Isaac, but I’m not certain it will work. I need to explain the situation to some . . . er . . . citizens who might be able to help us with our hygiene problem, but it will probably take some time. Could you stay with Hadria and mix the henbane with boiled water? I hope I won’t be long, if I manage to survive my negotiations.’ Before anyone could try to dissuade him, he left the mean alleyway and picked his way to the local inn at the crossroads.
The tavernae, or public inns, were the unofficial meeting places of the many criminal gangs that offered protection to shop owners and street sellers. In their own brutal fashion, they controlled the insulae by ensuring that rents were paid and order in the streets was maintained. The emperor and his soldiers of the watch might have provided the overriding mechanism of law and order, but the street gangs, for a nominal payment, provided justice and peace, because it was a sensible way to do business.
Some months earlier, a thoroughly frightened Pulchria had aroused Myrddion in the middle of the night. She had been full of apologies, but an underlying terror had darkened her eyes and made her lips quiver with anxiety.
‘There are two men at the door, Master Myrddion.’ Her eyes darted from Myrddion to Cadoc and back again, and the young healer read the desperation in that anxious expression. ‘They want you to attend a wounded man at the Inn of the One Armed Man. Please, master, speak to them. They’ll not go away without you, and I will be the sufferer if you deny them.’
Unwillingly, and only for the sake of Pulchria’s peace of mind, Myrddion had gathered up his satchel and clattered down the steps that ran down one side of the atrium. Although the night was still and sweetly perfumed from the orange tree that had grown as vigorously as a weed beside the pool in the courtyard, Myrddion was temporarily immune to its fragrance, being tired and out of sorts. After a very busy day in his surgery, he did not welcome imperious calls by strangers in the middle of the night – especially strangers who frightened his landlady.
The two men who were cooling their heels at the iron gate of the insula were heavy-set ruffians, a little above the usual Roman height and disfigured by scars and misshapen facial features. Myrddion decided that they were probably street toughs hired as bodyguards for their undoubted pugilistic skills. Myrddion noticed that the knuckles of the taller man were twisted, swollen and ridged with scar tissue, and wondered if this particular thug had started his career as a prizefighter.
‘Are you the outland healer?’ the taller thug demanded.
Myrddion nodded and tried to appear distant. He was offended by the man’s disrespectful tone and the arrogance in his voice and eyes.
‘You’re wanted at the One Armed Man at once. You have an important patient who awaits your services. If you’re worried about payment, we’ll make it worth your while.’
‘That isn’t important. Who’s my patient? I’m not stirring one foot until I know who I’m treating . . . and why.’
‘Our master is a man with diverse business interests,’ the shorter thug said smoothly. His voice was educated and honeyed, at odds with his rat-like eyes and scarred cheek, and his clothes were clean, elaborate and expensive. Only the knife he wore attached to a wide belt was worn and old.
‘So his name is hardly a secret,’ Myrddion countered.
‘Osculus is his name, or the Kiss, as
some of his friends call him. I know of no other name. An unhappy customer stabbed our master so he needs your assistance. Violence doesn’t hold regular business hours.’
‘Very well, I will come, as long as it is understood that I cannot be held responsible for the state of your master’s health. I’ll do everything I can, but I’m not a god.’
‘Fair enough,’ the taller tough replied and would have gripped Myrddion by the forearm, but the healer shook him off.
‘All right,’ the thug said softly. ‘We’ll escort you – if you don’t like being touched. Agreed?’
‘Agreed,’ Myrddion responded with a set face. He stepped between the two men with as much aplomb as he could manage.
They moved through the predominantly empty streets with ease. The few drunkards or prostitutes who crossed their path cringed away and faded into the shadows, so that the three men walked within an invisible shield on the path of light cast by the flare that the shorter man carried. After passing a number of streets, they came to a crossroads with a large fountain in the centre where women collected clean water from the aqueduct. The Inn of the One Armed Man stood on one corner.
The inn was little more than a hole in the wall. Perhaps a dozen men could crowd into the small room if they stood shoulder to shoulder. A simple plank bar had been cleared of wine jugs, mugs and platters of chicken bones and was now an impromptu stretcher. The man who lay on it was slender and attractive in a coarse fashion, but was obviously racked with pain. Myrddion saw a knife jutting out of the hollow in his left shoulder.
‘Osculus, I take it,’ Myrddion said flatly. ‘Is he conscious?’
The wounded man opened eyes that were an unusual shade of pale green, like drops of fine glass. Myrddion watched the head turn painfully, and the clear, flat gaze swept over him and measured him from head to toe. Self-consciously, the healer was aware that he had passed some unspoken test.