“The only way he could learn of your whereabouts is by questioning my father. To do that, he would have to admit that I had left him, and he would never do that. He is after all a man in the public eye and must be ever careful of his reputation.”
“And what about your own reputation, Lucretia? Do you not think that your servants are not wagging their tongues and nodding very wisely as they discuss the identity of your lover? Or lovers?”
The stern look on the old woman’s face relaxed. “Well, now,” she continued with a chuckle, “I see that setting of the jaw that I remember so well from your childhood. Nonna has said enough, yes, yes. But no doubt you accept the wisdom of my words, just as you always did when you were a little girl, so let’s enjoy a last few quiet hours together before you’re on your way home.”
She wiped a crust of bread around her silver bowl to sop up the last scraps of boiled wheat. “You were blessed not to be assaulted when you went to visit that shrine, Lucretia, for even in that wretched old tunic you are as beautiful as a dove and it is a miracle you did not attract unwanted attention. Perhaps it would be safest to convey a message to Senator Balbinus so that he can come to take you back, or at the very least send a couple of brawny servants to accompany you home.”
Lucretia stared down into the busy street, panic welling in her breast. A thin girl passed along below, carrying a basket of vegetables. Slaves had more freedom than well-born women. A beggar could roam the city without an escort.
The world was such a large place and so full of wonders and life, how could she spend all her days confined in the dark, windowless cell of a loveless marriage?
Chapter Fourteen
John was startled by a high-pitched scream sliding upwards until the voice cracked and gave out.
“The master is attending a patient,” explained the maidservant who had just admitted him to Gaius’ house. The bruise under her eye, newly blossoming when he had called on Gaius the night Peter had been taken ill, had faded to a yellowish discoloration.
“Don’t worry, the master isn’t inflicting unnecessary suffering,” the girl rattled on. “A good loud scream is always a hopeful sign. When there’s no sound from the surgery, that’s when the poor things are carted out on boards.”
John crossed the atrium to the room where Gaius conducted his professional consultations. The ruddy-faced physician was tending to a young man seated on the edge of a long wooden table. Gaius looked up from the man’s right arm, which was already firmly swathed in bandages from wrist to shoulder, to acknowledge John’s arrival with an amiable nod. The contents of a small clay pot set on the table beside his patient filled the sunny room with a rancid smell. The injured man’s face was the color of an unpainted marble statue and set just as rigidly.
“You are fortunate you broke the upper bone,” Gaius informed his patient. “It’s possible that you might be left with a slight deformity when it’s healed, but you have good muscles and a little extra flesh there, so if you are, your injury won’t show at all. The ladies will love you as much as ever!”
He secured the last length of linen strip and the man climbed gingerly off the table.
“Now whatever you do, don’t try to bend that arm too soon,” Gaius instructed. “I once treated someone who took no notice of this advice and the jagged end of the bone not only broke through the skin but the bandaging as well.”
The patient fumbled at the pouch on his belt with his useful hand. “I am sorry but I have few nummi,” he said hoarsely. “I hope these will be sufficient?”
Gaius waved away his offer of payment. “Never mind. Put them towards buying yourself a jug of wine. In a couple of hours you’ll need it. You’ll think Cerberus’ teeth are chewing on that bone,” he replied cheerfully. “Pain isn’t so bad. Just think of it as a sign you’re alive.”
Gaius shook his head when the man had departed. “That poor young man is a plasterer, John. He was working on the new banqueting hall’s ceiling when the scaffolding gave way. Fortunately an excubitor was passing by and brought him here immediately.”
“He will recover full use of his arm?”
“Oh, I have set the bone well, John. It will certainly heal well if he follows my instructions. But until it does, how he will feed himself and his family, if he has one, with just one good arm, I cannot say.”
Gaius wiped unguent from the leaf-shaped blade of the spathomele lying next to the clay pot and bustled off with both through an archway into the small storeroom opening off his surgery. Glancing into the other room, John noted two walls of shelves crowded with pots, jars and wooden boxes. A large, low table holding trays of probes, forceps and scalpels and a selection of basins of various sizes stood against the third wall.
“That was a foul smelling concoction you were using, Gaius,” John remarked, following him into the storeroom.
“Cerate, that’s what it was. It’s compounded mostly of lard and wax. Marvelously effective for dressings.”
John picked up a mortar partly filled with pulped leaves.
“Comfrey,” Gaius told him. “Another excellent medication for knitting together broken bones, but in fact when that young man arrived I was preparing it for burns.”
“You are expecting to be treating them, then?”
“The entire city is expecting fires, I would imagine. If not of the supernatural sort, then the kind set by the sort of fools driven to violence by superstitious fear.”
John set down the mortar and fingered a stoppered jar containing a dried herb he could not identify. “I suspect many of your ingredients are poisonous?”
“Practically everything in this room is poisonous, if you do not administer it correctly,” Gaius confirmed, “or if you mix it with another ingredient or two. Take hellebore for example, which is what you’re fiddling with, by the way. Hypatia brought me that from the palace gardens only last week. She says the empress always stops to admire its flowers, which is rather amusing since we both know the plant is poisonous and doubtless so does Theodora. I’ve asked Hypatia if she can supply me with rue. I’m beginning to run out.”
John, grasping his opportunity, asked about the course of treatment the physician had prescribed for Aurelius.
“When he first came to me with his bladder complaint I prescribed warm naphtha, the usual thing for that sort of discomfort. But when that didn’t heal him, I realized he was suffering from a bladder stone.” Gaius’ expression darkened. “John, why are you questioning me so closely?”
“Simply put, the senator was poisoned-and here is a room full of poisons.”
“He hadn’t taken naphtha for three or four days, if you’re implying that I tampered with his medication. He was fasting, or at least he should have been, because had he not passed the stone, I would have had to resort to surgery.”
“He was telling everyone at the banquet he had been cured by Michael’s blessing.”
“I heard him,” Gaius said shortly. “Regrettably, it resulted in heated words between us. Strange how it hadn’t occurred to him that his miraculous cure may have simply been my ministrations taking effect. As I pointed out to him, unlike miracles which are instantaneous, medical treatments often take some time to work their full effect.”
“However unfair he might have seemed by crediting your cure to Michael, still, it’s undeniable that the two of you argued before he was murdered.”
“That was the wine talking.”
“If wine can talk, doubtless it can also wield a weapon, and while some men find Lethe in their cups, others find the Furies. Did you think I would not notice your servant’s face the other night? Her bruising was as purple as your nose and its cause was the same.”