by Albert Noyer
“Take the letter to our bedroom, Childibert,” she ordered. “Good news or not, we’re going to wait until morning to open it.”
“What?” Getorius objected. “It…it’s from the Augustus and his mother. We can’t wait.”
“Ask Silvia to bring towels to the bathhouse,” Arcadia added, ignoring her husband’s comment. “Tell her no one is to disturb us. We may eat something later on.”
“Are you insane, woman?” Getorius persisted. “Placidia is my patroness. Her son is emperor.”
Arcadia waited until Childibert was gone, then confronted Getorius. “I notice you didn’t say ‘they are my patrons’ and you’re right. Galla Placidia, not her son, still runs the palace. Patroness? Were you made palace physician after Nicias died?”
“I was still young.”
Arcadia turned away to open a clothes storage cupboard. “I’m changing into my night tunic. I need a soak in the tepidarium, Husband, and so do you.”
When Silvia brought the towels to the bathhouse, she also lit three lamps and a silver censer that gave off aromatic smoke. Her eight-year-old son, Primus, carried in a pitcher of warm wine mulled with honey and mastic, spilling some as he poured two wide-mouthed cups too full.
Arcadia sighed. “That’s fine, Primus. Leave the cups near the edge of the pool.”
After the boy and his mother had gone, Arcadia dropped her tunic on the tiled floor, knelt to swallow a gulp of wine, and then slid into the warm water. Getorius followed her.
While he clung to the rim of the small pool, she massaged his shoulder muscles, then came around to sponge his face and touch at the gray hairs that interlaced with his black ones. She thought he looked tired, and rubbed at the creases in his forehead, wondering how much of his Celtic ancestry was reflected in his features.
Nicias had said that Getorius’s father was born at Treveri, in northern Gaul, yet had not spoken much of his mother, other than saying that Blandina had also had Celtic ancestors. The name Getorius was a Latinized form of that of an ancient Treveri chieftain, Cingetorix, and a diminutive of Getorius’ grandfather’s name, Cingetorius.
Arcadia’s ancestry was Roman, going back to Campania. Her father told her that adventurous forebears had emigrated from there to Ravenna, to serve in Augustus Caesar’s new fleet. She wondered what a child of theirs would look like, and recalled that she had not inserted the acacia juice pessary she used as a contraceptive.
The tepid water was relaxing. Reaching for the wine, Arcadia took a sip and passed the spicy drink from her mouth to her husband’s as she clung to him. When she felt him harden against her thigh, she brought her legs up around his waist and eased him inside herself. Eyes closed, holding onto his neck with both arms, she began a gentle thrusting motion that sent wavelets lapping over the pool’s edge and soaked their tunics. Arcadia quickened her rhythm to match the rate of Getorius’s breathing, then paused to let the pleasurable sensation ripple through her own body and isolate them from the world outside, to concentrate on the warm island their bodies had become.
After she began thrusting again her own quickened breathing matched her husband’s. When she heard his sharp intake of breath and felt his body stiffen, she pushed harder until her own rush of pleasure melded with his. As her orgasm slowly subsided, Arcadia clung tightly to Getorius, keeping her eyes shut tight, to block out the world beyond the pool. There would be time enough in the morning for the sick patients who crowded into the clinic waiting rooms. For now she only wanted the safe world of the water and their joined bodies.
Lately, Arcadia had come to feel that Ravenna was like that, a city only seemingly secure behind its protective ring of walls and swamps. She feared that one day it would be jolted by the reality of barbarian—even internal—enemies, who could destroy a world that had been secure as recently as her father’s childhood, less than fifty years earlier.
In a short time the warmth gave way to sleepiness. Arcadia let go, passed Getorius his wine to finish, and climbed out of the pool. As she helped him dry his back, her momentary tranquility was upset by thoughts of the dead hermit. Why had Behan come to the Western capital from the most remote edge of the world? At the same time she began to feel curious about his Celtic manuscripts. What might they say?
There was also the matter of Galla Placidia’s letter. It would have to be dealt with in the morning, at breakfast, before the clinic opened.
Chapter three
Getorius felt nervous as he watched his wife slide a silver knife blade under Galla Placidia’s wax seal and work it loose from the note’s vellum flap. What might the Empress Mother and the Emperor want from him?
Despite the soak and brief lovemaking in the warmth of the pool, Getorius had not slept well. The dead monk and putting off reading the unexpected letter cluttered his mind, yet it was usually he, not his wife, who postponed facing things that could possibly be unpleasant.
“There, the seal’s broken.” Arcadia handed him the note.
After Getorius read a few lines, his frown of concern dissolved. “It’s an invitation to the palace for a dinner,” he said in a tone of mixed surprise and relief.
“Really? Let me see.” Arcadia scanned the text. “It looks like an early style of writing. ‘In honor of the Fourteenth Anniversary of the elevation of the Illustrious Flavius Placidius Valentinianus III to Augustus, and the Second of his Marriage to Licinia Eudoxia, Augusta.’”
“Why are we being invited?” Getorius asked.
“I have no idea, but the dinner is on the ides of November.”
“The ides? The day hasn’t been called that since the first Theodosius ordained a seven-day week.”
“I think it’s either the thirteenth or fifteenth of the month. And listen to this,” Arcadia continued, “Placidia wants to pretend we’re living in the days of our ancient Republic. She’s asking us to dress accordingly.”
“As Romans did four hundred years ago?”
“Presumably.” Arcadia laughed at her first thought. “At least I won’t have to compete with one of Placidia’s elaborate silk tunics. We’ll need to look at statues in the old senate house to get your toga right, but they don’t portray women there. I’ll have to have an idea of what to wear and how Silvia should do my hair.”
“Will we lie down on couches to eat?” Getorius scoffed. “What is Placidia thinking?”
“Nostalgia, who knows? She lists the other guests, nine people in all, the way banquets were back then.”
“Who are they?”
“Let me see…” Arcadia read a moment. “We should be flattered to be included. Besides the Augustus and Augusta, there’ll be the archdeacon—”
“Surrus Renatus. We were talking about him yesterday.”
“Also Flavius Aetius and Theokritos.”
“Good. At least I’ll be able to talk to the librarian.”
“Placidia’s architect, Sigisvult.” Arcadia looked up. “We know him, he’s been your patient.”
“Perhaps he’ll tell us about the mausoleum he just designed for her. Who else?’
“Just the two of us. That makes nine.”
“Pelagia, Aetius’ wife, isn’t included?”
“Getorius,” Arcadia reminded him, “you know Placidia doesn’t like her because she’s not Roman. Restricting the dinner to nine people is another excuse for the Gothic Queen not to invite Pelagia.”
“Gothic Queen. I haven’t heard that title used in a while.” Getorius chuckled at the reference to Placidia’s marriage to a Visigoth king, after she had been captured in Rome, twenty-nine years earlier. “Still, excuse or not, Arcadia, it’s an insult to the commander. Again, why include us?”
“Placidia has her eye on you,” she teased, reaching across the table to tousle his hair. “You’ll be appointed palace surgeon yet.”
“More likely, the Augustus has his eye on you,” Getorius retorted, smoothing his hair back in place. “You know his reputation for womanizing…”
Silvia came in to ask if they
wanted to have anything more for breakfast.
“Nothing.” Arcadia glanced at her husband’s empty plate. “You haven’t eaten a thing, Getorius. Stay here, I’ll see who’s waiting at the clinic.”
“I am a bit hungry now that I know the note wasn’t bad news. If someone is there, take a urine sample and check for humor imbalances. I’ll be in shortly.”
After Arcadia left, he munched on some olives and looked through the glass-paned doors of the dining room. November’s morning fog blurred the bare garden trees, but he could hear the splash of the fountain through the mist.
Arcadia’s mention of Nicias yesterday had brought to the surface memories of the old surgeon to whom he owed everything. Fortune had indeed smiled on him at Mount Genevris, the pass through the Cottian Alps from Gaul to Italy, where they had met Galla Placidia and her husband Ataulf’s Visigoth tribe who had happened to be crossing in the opposite direction. Placidia, from concern for Nicias and his four-year-old ward, had given him her signet ring as an introduction to her half-brother Honorius, the Western Roman Emperor at Ravenna.
Talk about good fortune. Now I’m being invited to dinner with the Gothic Queen. Getorius took up the invitation list again. Sigisvult had a background similar to his own. Placidia had brought him to Ravenna after Ataulf’s murder and her subsequent ransom. She had fostered the youth into a local family, where he had trained as an architect, and she had recently entrusted him with the design for her family mausoleum.
When he came to the librarian’s name Getorius muttered aloud, “If I don’t have patients this afternoon, I want to show Theokritos those manuscripts.”
He liked—no, respected—the white-haired scholar who had been born in Athens. Greek was Theokritos’ native language, but he was fluent in Latin and could translate enough words of Hebrew and Gothic to make sense of texts in those languages. Getorius felt fortunate that, because of his connection to Nicias, the library master allowed him to read the medical texts in the collection. It was annoying, though, that his assistant, Feletheus, always seemed to be spying on him from behind the storage racks.
Archdeacon Renatus. Getorius knew him from having treated his recurring fevers. The churchman had given a strange history when he had first come in. A Gaul, his full name was Surrus Martinus Renatios, born at Primulacium. The town was the site of a shrine to Blessed Martin, to which his mother had been on pilgrimage when she gave birth.
Having been raised on stories about the miracles of Martin, it was logical that Surrus adopt a middle name after the saint, and enter studies for the presbyterate. The bishop Latinized his surname to Renatus, which neatly corresponded with the verb “to be born again.” His mother hoped—and Renatus had laughed when he mentioned it to Getorius—that he would be born again as a bishop in the growing Gallican Church. Instead, he had left his studies after attaining the rank of deacon.
When Renatus came to the new capital at Ravenna he had impressed the bishop, who made him archdeacon, an important church post that supervised the money and provisions given out to the poor of the city.
Getorius stood and wiped his fingers on a napkin, thinking that the sooner he finished with his patients, the quicker he could take the manuscripts to Theokritos. He passed along the garden portico to his clinic with the scroll case, half-wondering if Galla Placidia actually was interested in appointing him palace physician to replace the aging Antioches.
No one was in the examination room. Getorius went to his office, an area with a high ceiling and three clerestory windows in the north wall. Shelves underneath displayed the bones of animals that had been brought to him. Alongside the bleached skulls of a horse, a cow, two pigs, and several dogs and cats, were those of wilder species—boar, deer and bear. His prize skeleton was that of a Rhesus monkey that had died in the palace zoo.
Getorius’ patients usually avoided looking at these reminders of their own mortality, and even more so at a collection of containers that held preserved organs. The glass jars were filled with liquids in which floated animal hearts, livers, and lungs, as well as several intestinal worms that had been purged from clients. Getorius had experimented with various substances that might preserve these tissues: a solution of wine and salt would keep hearts intact for up to a year, while a mixture of wine, honey and vinegar preserved stomachs and livers long enough to be dissected, although he had discovered that liver tissue tended to break down the quickest.
Before calling for Arcadia to bring in the first patient, Getorius put the manuscript case on his desk and went to look at the hog heart he had been dissecting. A fatty yellow mass surrounded the organ, a mass that was absent from the lean heart of a chicken next to it. Both animals were about the same age. What could cause the different conditions?
As he idly picked at the fat with a needle, Arcadia opened the door from the waiting rooms.
“Getorius? I thought I heard you come in. Ready?”
“What? Oh…yes. Who is the first patient?”
“Domina Felicitas Firma.”
“Did you check her urine?”
Arcadia held up a glass flask. “It’s cloudy. She’s overly heavy, complains of being thirsty and tired all the time. There are ulcers on her legs.”
“Good, you’ve completed half the diagnosis. Send the lady in. Did you ask her age?”
“Felicitas admits to forty-four. Her son is with her.” Arcadia put the flask on the desk and eyed an iron stove in the corner. “It’s cold in here. I’ll have Primus light a fire.”
After Getorius sat down, his wife brought in the woman and her son. Felicitas shuffled to a chair. The man stood behind her, holding a round basket. Felicitas looked ten years older than the age she had given, a tired-looking gray-haired matron in a soiled tunic, and shoes that were becoming unstitched. Even across the desk the smell of urine was strong. Her son was a gaunt Germanic type, Getorius noted, with unkempt blondish hair and a bushy moustache that needed trimming.
Getorius knew that beginning a conversation with a new patient was awkward. Most people would not come except out of desperation, so he tried to relax them before asking about health problems.
“Well, Domina, what seems to be the trouble?” he inquired cheerfully. “You’re not too happy about our cold weather?”
“Mother doesn’t want t’get up in the morning,” the son complained. “Up all night pissin’…”
“Let her answer, please,” Getorius interrupted. “You are?”
“Her son Fabius.” He laid the basket on the desk. “This here’s an eel for payment. Can y’help mother?”
“I’ll try.” Getorius glanced at Arcadia. “The eel will be fine. Now then, Domina, how long has this been going on?”
“Since…since a few months,” Felicitas answered in a frightened voice. “I couldn’t get up for Mass. Wet the bed….” Her voice trailed off in shame.
Getorius tried to reassure her. “Don’t be embarrassed, that could be normal for your condition. What do you like to eat?”
“Take away her bread and honey and she’d die,” her son interjected again.
“Fabius, please.” If I don’t, she will be dead. “So you like sweet things, Domina?”
Felicitas nodded and pulled up her ragged tunic hem to scratch a scab on her leg.
Getorius knew the symptoms—the excess release of urine and resulting abnormal thirst, sores on limbs, blurred vision. Death often came soon afterward.
Galen had written about the inability of the liver to synthesize and distribute certain foods, yet without knowing why this was so. Logic dictated that a body’s excess should be treated with its opposite. This patient displayed an overbalance of sweet. It was not one of the four major body humors, Blood, Phlegm, Yellow or Black Bile, yet serious nonetheless. Her lethargy might indicate the presence of too much black bile. Getorius dipped a finger into the urine and tasted it. As he expected, it was slightly sweet.
“No more honey, Domina,” he chided gently. “I’m going to prescribe a vinegar drink. It won�
��t taste very good, but perhaps we can soon substitute wine. Not a sweetened one, though. My wife will rub your legs with a vinegar solution, and you must continue this at home. She will also give you a list of things to eat and those not to eat. Fabius, see that your mother follows my instructions.”
“I’m not always there.”
“Your father?”
“Dead ten years this Nativity,” Felicitas lamented.
“Then a neighbor must help you.” Getorius tried to be encouraging. “We must make you slim again, like Venus. Leeks, cucumbers, green beans…vegetables will do it.”
“No pork?” she asked, squinting at him in disappointment.
“Especially no pork,” he warned with mock severity. “I want you to be able to walk, no, dance around the church on the Feast of Palms.”
“Felicitas, I’ll take you into the clinic now,” Arcadia said. “Your son can go back to the waiting rooms.”
After his patient was gone, Getorius tasted her urine again. Galen believed that food processed by the liver converted into pneuma physikon, an animating spirit transmitted to the body through a hollow network of nerves. I’ve seen organs other than the liver in animals I’ve dissected, but what in the name of Aesculapius are they all for?
Galen had written that all the body’s organs were perfect parts of a whole. Getorius also believed this, so it followed that these mysterious organs played a role of which he was totally ignorant. One of them must control Felicitas’s imbalance. He felt his anger rise, stood up, and went to the row of jars and held one up.
“If the bishop would permit human dissection I could at least try to determine what function these organs played. His prohibition is endangering citizens’ health.”
Getorius turned when Primus came in carrying an armload of moss and kindling for the stove, an interruption that added to his frustration. He had only a short time while Arcadia treated Felicitas and then brought in the next patient, and he wanted to look over Behan’s manuscripts.