Medicus (6 page)

The room stank of burning oil. Black smoke was seeping through cracks in one elegantly painted wall. A smartly dressed body was sprawled on the floor. Blood was seeping from beneath a heavy cabinet that lay where the head should have been.

"Over here!" called the voice. "Under the table!"

Through the murk, Ruso saw a corner of a table sticking out from under a pile of plaster and brick. Trying to move quickly without pulling more masonry down on top of himself, he managed to clear a way through to the gap beneath. A figure gray with dust crawled out, grabbed his arm, and started to thank him just as the floor gave a sickening heave. "Move!" yelled Ruso, dragging the man across the room and pushing him headfirst out the window before scrambling after him.

Behind them, what was left of the building seemed to groan in despair before finally crashing in on itself. They were still peering at it through the clouded air when a voice cried, "Your majesty! Oh my Lord, you're safe!" and someone fell at the feet of the man Ruso had just rescued. The man reached down and helped the servant up, still staring at the ruins from which he had so narrowly escaped. That was when Ruso realized why he looked vaguely familiar. He wasn't a half-remembered patient after all. Ruso had just rescued the emperor Trajan.

Over the next few days and nights the tremors had continued, claiming more victims from the rescuers trying to reach people trapped under the rubble. Ruso struggled to save the dying and patch up the injured with no equipment, no water, no sleep, and nowhere to turn for advice. Rumors abounded: that the whole country had been devastated, that nowhere outside the city had been hit, that the army was bringing elephants to clear the streets, that plague had broken out, that Antioch was being punished by the gods, that a man crushed to death had come back to life and that a mysterious being, surely a god, had entered the building where the emperor Trajan was trapped and spirited him out through the window. It never occurred to Ruso to try and set the record straight. For the first time in days, he had found something to laugh about.

Claudia, with whom he unwisely tried to share the joke, later cited it as one of her reasons for leaving. Following
you abandoned me in the earthquake!
was
You had a chance to make something of yourself with the emperor and you refused to do anything about it!

Three weeks after Claudia moved out, Ruso had signed up to a fresh start in Africa with the army. Now he stared at his pathetic collection of furniture and wondered if his wife had been right.

Valens was back, bringing a gnarled creature who had evidently spent all his money on blue tattoos and couldn't afford to bathe.

"I suppose you'll want to carry on using the spare bed, then?" inquired Valens as the tattooed one moved the table aside, lifted both trunks at once, and set off with them down the jetty.

Ruso picked up the chair. "Just until I get sorted out."

Valens reached for the legs of the table and swung it up over his head like a large sunshade. "With what these people charge," he said, "we ought to give up medicine and take up moving furniture."

They reached the end of the jetty. The trunks had been loaded onto a cart that smelled of old fish and appeared to be held together with greasy twine and dirt.

Valens wrinkled his nose and stepped back from the cart. "Were you serious about those termites?"

"The smell from that cart should finish them off."

"You're not in some sort of trouble, are you?"

Ruso watched the man roping down all that remained of his furniture, and said, "No, of course not."

"You won't find much to buy over here, but we've got a few decent carpenters. I'm thinking of having a proper dining room set made."

"For that house?"

"No. I told you, that one's supposed to have been flattened weeks ago. I mean in my new rooms. The ones I'll get when they promote me to CMO."

"So he's definitely not coming back?" Ruso was aware that no one expected the hot springs of Aquae Sulis to rejuvenate the present chief medical officer, but so far there had been no official word of his retirement.

"He's bound to go before long," said Valens. "I'll save him the bother of trailing back up here and have his things sent on."

"And you think they're promoting you to CMO?"

"Why not?"

"Because they might choose me."

"Bollocks."

"I've got combat experience."

"But you don't know anybody yet, Ruso. Anyway, you don't need the money like I do."

"No?"

"I thought you were supposed to inherit from your father. Aren't you the oldest son?"

"There were a lot of expenses," said Ruso. "You know what funerals are like."

"Didn't he have land in Gaul?"

"My brother's looking after it. The farm has a lot of people to support."

"Giddyup!" The driver gave one of the beasts a flick with his stick and the cart lurched forward. They followed its creaking progress up the slope.

"What you need," said Valens suddenly, "is a rich widow."

Ruso noted this suggestion to add to his list of things he didn't need at all. He had no intention of explaining to Valens that what he
did
need was either the CMO's salary or a collection of lucrative private patients and some peace and quiet to get on with his writing. Now that he was living in a backwater with no earthquakes or family members or ex-wife to distract him, he hoped to complete the work he had already started and abandoned several times. G. Petreius Ruso's
Concise Guide to Military First Aid
would be detailed enough to be useful in the field, and short enough to be copied onto very small scrolls that would fit into a soldier's pack. The copying would be expensive, but once those copies had been sold, there would be a double profit—one in cash, and one, he felt sure, in lives and limbs saved. What he didn't need was Valens making helpful suggestions, or worse still, taking up the idea himself.

"Did I tell you," Valens continued, bringing Ruso back to the subject at hand, "I'm thinking of proposing to the second spear's daughter?"

"Is she a rich widow?"

"Gods, no. She's sixteen. Rather attractive, actually, considering what her father looks like."

Whatever the second spear looked like, he must have been on centurion's pay for some years before he had been promoted to a command in the top cohort. He would be a wealthy man.

"Only child, I suppose?" ventured Ruso.

Valens grinned. "Divorce has turned you sadly cynical, my friend."

"Not divorce," said Ruso. "Marriage."

9

R
USO LAY IN the darkness and listened to the scurry of the mice in the dining room, and then to the patter of the dog. There followed some skidding and squeaking and a crash, then a long silence. It was finally broken by the wail of third watch being blown, and the creak of his bed as he rolled over and vowed to move out of this madhouse as soon as he could afford it.

By the time he woke again, Valens had gone on duty. The house was quiet. As soon as he had breakfasted and bathed (there would be no time later), he would be able to make some progress with his writing.

Ruso wandered into the kitchen and picked up half a loaf of bread and a chunk of cheese that had been left out on the kitchen table. There were, he observed with relief, no mouse droppings on the table this morning. Then he glanced across at the little box on the windowsill and saw that the pile Valens was collecting had grown considerably. Abandoning the idea of food, Ruso strode back to his room, pulled on his overtunic, and went across to the hospital to see his private patient.

The girl was still asleep. He did not wake her. Valens would check on her during ward rounds.

The words CLOSED FOR IMPROVEMENTS had now been chalked on the main fort baths for so long that they had grown faint with age. Apparently half the builders had been called away on more pressing peacekeeping duties. The rest were clearly determined not to be accused of rushing their work. The height of the weeds growing around the feet of the scaffolding struts suggested to Ruso that it would be weeks before they got around to fixing the hospital roof. Months until they demolished the old centurion's house in which he now lived, which Valens had somehow persuaded them to leave standing when the adjoining barracks block was flattened for rebuilding. The rebuilding hadn't even been started. The reopening of the main military baths was surely far more urgent, but even that didn't seem likely to happen this month—let alone this morning.

Using the hospital baths was out of the question. The thought of being trapped naked with a roomful of patients comparing their symptoms made him shudder. He would go out to the public baths. This early, there would be no lines. With no mistreated slave girls to distract him, he should soon return clean, invigorated, and ready to make progress with the
Concise Guide to Military First Aid.

First he needed a decent breakfast. Recent disappointments at other shops had confirmed that it was worth the trouble of walking across to the bakery opposite Merula's, where he savored the smell before handing over his cash for a fresh roll. The crust crackled as he tore it. Steam rose into the cool morning air. He sat on the bench, leaned back with his legs stretched out over the pavement, and took a mouthful.

The streets were as quiet as was usual in the mornings: so quiet that he could catch the occasional bellow of orders from the parade ground, where most of the legion would be sweating their way through daily training. So far his name had not appeared on the training rota: an oversight that would no doubt be rectified when the administrative officer returned.

A couple of women went into the bakery to load their shopping baskets. A small boy passed down the street, bumping along a cartload of apples cushioned in straw. A settled hen squawked in annoyance as a woman emerged from the doorway where it was sitting and batted it out of the way with a broom. Across the street, the shutters were still closed. Ruso gazed idly at the advertisements on Merula's whitewashed walls.

Beneath a picture of a bowl and a jug, BEST FOOD IN DEVA and FINE WINES, LOW PRICES had been daubed in red for long enough to fade and be refurbished—not very accurately, so the faded paint still appeared at the edges of some of the letters. He was surprised to see Saufeia's name still listed under BEAUTIFUL GIRLS!: a bizarre memorial in sharp fresh paint. Asellina and Irene had evidently moved on and been wiped away with a single coat of white, which left them still faintly legible. Chloe was listed, along with someone called Mariamne, but not the nervous and pregnant Daphne. Customers had scrawled comments next to the names. Most were predictable. Something that looked very much like JUICY! was inscribed next to Chloe. Someone had attempted to scrub off Saufeia's only testimonial, but it was still possible to make out the faint scrawl of SNOOTY BITCH.

An elderly man with one leg was lurching toward the bakery on crutches, managing to balance despite a bulging sack tied over one shoulder. Seeing Ruso's interest in the bar he called, "You're too hasty, boss!"

Ruso turned, but his scowl failed to stop the cackle of laughter and the announcement that, "Them girls don't get up till it's time to go to bed!"

The last thing Ruso wanted this morning was a close encounter with them girls, or indeed with anything female. He was about to leave when another handcart came rumbling along the street. It paused outside Merula's. Its owner, a whistling man in a paint-spattered tunic, unloaded a box and put it down in front of the shutters.

"Don't get up till it's time to go to bed, hah!" chortled the one-legged man for the benefit of anyone who had missed it the first time, and lurched off down the street.

Ruso sat down again. For reasons he could not articulate, he wanted to see the dead girl's name removed from that wall.

The painter fetched a cloth out of the box and cleaned the word SAUFEIA and the scrubbed patch next to it. Then he stepped back and surveyed the rest of the wall.

Ruso stepped across to join him. "You need to take that name off, not clean it up."

The painter squinted at the wall.
"Mariamne Bites.
That'd better go too." He stepped forward again and rubbed at the words, which had been scratched on with charcoal. "Keeping me busy, this lot are. Can't keep the staff, see?"

He bent over the box and lifted a brush. He paused to finger a silver charm in the form of a phallus which was slung around his throat, then, with one stroke, he reduced Saufeia's name to a red shadow showing through the white.

"Bad luck, having that up there," he observed. "Might as well finish off the other one too."

"Other one?"

"The one that run off with the sailor." He reached up and obliterated the faint outline of ASELLINA with a fresh brushstroke of white paint. "She won't be back."

"I think I've met somebody who knew her," said Ruso. It had not occurred to him that the porter's missing girlfriend might have worked in a place like this.

The man grinned. " 'Round here, you'll have met quite a few."

Asellina had probably weighed the offers of several admirers, and the luckless porter had not been at the top of the list.

The painter stepped back and squinted at the wall. "Looks a bit patchy, don't it? I told 'em the whole lot wants doing again, but her inside won't part with the money Knew that Saufeia, then, did you?"

"No."

"Something funny going on there. I reckon she had a premonition."

Ruso, who spent much of his professional life battling against superstition, could not resist asking, "Why?"

"I never took much notice at the time, but she stuck her head 'round the door while I was working, took one look, and said in that posh voice of hers, 'You've spelt me wrong.' I'd gone and put two f's in, see? So I went to put it right and she said, 'You really needn't bother; I shan't be here much longer.' "

The man touched the charm again, then recharged the brush and ran it across the wall again. In its wake, Saufeia's name, correctly spelled with one "f," grew fainter still. "Course, I changed it anyway," he said. "I like to do a proper job." He put the brush back in the pot. "Might as well not have bothered."

He picked up the red brush. "Here's something to cheer the lads up." In the space where MARIAMNE BITES could still faintly be read, he sketched out in large letters the words NEW COOK.

"Merula says I got to put it in big letters," he explained, "So everybody knows. She don't want a bad name after them oysters."

"She's sacked the old cook?" said Ruso.

"Packed her off to the dealer. Lucky that doctor didn't drop dead, or they'd all be facing the inquisitors."

"How many people were ill?"

"Just the one," replied the painter, frowning with concentration as he led the brush down the first stroke of the "N." "That were lucky, weren't it?"

"Not for the doctor."

"That's what they're saying," agreed the painter. "Peculiar, like, just him and no one else. Anyway, won't happen again. New cook, see?"