Eyes grew big as fingerbowls.
Claudia patted the rock beside her. ‘So why don’t you and I share this,’ she opened her handkerchief to reveal a luscious assortment of honeyed fruits, ‘while I show you how to make a catapult?’
XVI
‘Bite on this.’
Diomedes placed a stick between the child’s teeth before rubbing the mixture of salt, saltpetre, wine and vinegar into the wound on his shin. The boy’s eyes watered, but he didn’t murmur even when Diomedes began to set the fracture with palm fibre splints. Behind them, the boy’s mother hovered like a broody hen, clucking and soothing her chick and throwing out a big, brave smile every now and then, and although it wasn’t her intention, it was she who was largely responsible for the boy’s courage. He’d have gone through surgery without poppy juice before letting his mum know the doctor was hurting him.
Diomedes tied the last knot in place. ‘And next time you play blind-man’s-buff, stay away from the cliffs. That could have been a jolly sight worse, you know.’
He ruffled the boy’s hair and, taking pity on the pinched, white face, popped a pastille into his mouth. He used them in the main for the expulsion of bladder stones, but they were flavoured with honey and wouldn’t do the lad any harm.
‘Take half a cup of this twice a day-’
‘Cor, that stinks!’
It was the first time the child had flinched and Diomedes wasn’t surprised. The root of the white mandrake had a stench which alone was often quite sufficient to put a person out. Even Diomedes had not grown inured to it.
The boy’s mother pushed herself between her son and the physician. ‘Thank you, sir. Thank you very much. He’ll take it, sir, twice a day, like you said.’
‘Be careful with it, it’s very strong. No more than half a cup. Once in the morning, once at night.’
‘Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.’
The slave woman backed clumsily out of the room, the boy already feeling the painkilling effects as he hobbled off on his bandaged leg, his mind busy with what capital he might make out of his injury among his peers.
Diomedes closed the door behind them. At least it made a change from the usual toothaches and stomach problems he was presented with. He wiped his hands on a towel and began to mix up a saffron salve for Gelon’s inflammation. Gelon was the head fuller and Diomedes didn’t know why those slaves who worked in the fuller’s yard had more eye problems than those in the weaving sheds, or why the dyers seemed to suffer more from hardening of the limbs than anyone else, and frankly he didn’t care. Collatinus ran so many slaves-far more than he had realized when he accepted the job-that it was tough enough simply keeping abreast of the coughs and colds, sores and swellings. Now there was an outbreak of whipworm to contend with, an intestinal parasite he was having serious trouble controlling. Zeus forbid it ever got into the house, his head would be on the block for that. The old man wasn’t renowned for swingeing acts of forgiveness and he’d already made no bones that he hadn’t wanted Diomedes here in the first place.
‘Waste of bloody money, all you know is blood letting. I could have bought my own doctor from the auctions for a fraction of what I pay you.’
Diomedes had continued to massage the wasted muscles. ‘An unqualified slave with a few quack remedies is no good,’ he pointed out. ‘Look at the trouble the last one gave you.’
The old man had snorted. ‘Cured my warts, didn’t he?’
Diomedes turned him over. ‘What did he prescribe when you had the fever, eh?’ Cat dung and owls’ toes tied to the body of a cat killed just before the moon waned!
Would Eugenius accept he’d recovered naturally? ‘Pah! I tell you, if physics were any good, there wouldn’t be three of the buggers buried up in Sullium-and not one of ’em a day over thirty.’
Diomedes had long since concluded it was Aulus who had pushed for his appointment, but Aulus would have no sway if the whipworm spread any further…and Diomedes didn’t fancy moving on again.
Not yet.
Not alone.
Not since Claudia Seferius walked into his life.
He ceased rubbing saffron into the beeswax. She was beautiful and no mistake. A straighter back he’d rarely seen and she moved with the grace of a panther. She had a reputation for being prickly, but he’d only ever found her witty and charming. Then again-he recommenced his mixing-she had a reputation for that as well. She was reputed to have charmed half the men in Rome, and Diomedes found that very easy to believe.
He transferred the ointment into a small ceramic pot, set it aside for when Gelon called during his meal break, and began measuring milk into a cup. Claudia was waiting for something, but to ask outright would mean showing his hand and he’d made one terrible mistake already. He ought to have remembered she’d recently been widowed and would still be grieving for Gaius. Zeus, he shouldn’t have tried to kiss her last Tuesday! On the footpath in broad daylight, what was he thinking of? At the time, though, she appeared so full of life, so full of laughter, that he thought the signals he’d picked up were from a woman not just wanting to be kissed, but expecting to be kissed. Diomedes, he told himself, you’re a fool to think you could rush a woman like Claudia Seferius.
In the corner a small bronze container bubbled on the brazier. Diomedes lifted it off and poured the boiling water over a pile of crushed peppermint leaves, oblivious of the aromatic scent. When it was cool, he would strain it and add it to the milk and, with any luck, there should be enough of the mixture to cure a week’s worth of indigestion in the Collatinus household. Ordinarily he would have passed the half hour’s waiting either reading or catnapping, but today there was too much to catch up on and he set about making another infusion, this time of horehound with wine for the cook’s cough.
He’d spent as much time as he could with Claudia over the last few days, more time than he should, in fact, but it was important to him. Dare he risk a second kiss? Progress was good-look how grateful she’d been because he’d nursed that floozy Cypassis back to health. She could have taken that grainship yesterday. Why hadn’t she? She hinted her stay concerned business with the old man, but Diomedes knew that wasn’t the whole truth. From what he’d overhead, Eugenius’s business with Claudia (and no one except the two of them seemed privy to exactly what this entailed) was pretty well concluded to the satisfaction of both parties.
Could her reluctance to go, he wondered, his heartbeat increasingly rapid, have any connection with himself?
There was one other hint, the most solid yet. If she wasn’t interested in him, why spend so much time in his company?
Flimsy excuses. First she needed balsam, then she was back to enquire as to the efficacy of chalk in bathwater. She’d even demonstrated a close interest in the tools of his trade, selecting a pair of forceps with long, slender handles, hollowed jaws and interlocking teeth and asking, ‘What’s this for?’
When he told her they were pilecrushers, it was truly comical to note the speed with which she dropped them.
Another time she said, ‘They found that child, you know,’ and he pretended not to know about the missing kid. That way she was forced to spend yet more time with him as she recounted the story of the child-a boy, as it turned out-who had been frightened by the storm, ran for shelter then got himself hopelessly lost. He was eventually found over in Fintium by an old fisherman whom he cajoled into taking him out next day, little suspecting there was a storm of a very different kind awaiting his return.
Diomedes had smiled at the way she’d ended the story by saying, ‘I’d have scalped the little bugger if he’d been mine.’ She injected such energy into things!
Had he been born either wealthy or aristocratic, it would have been easy. Instead, as a Greek, he was acutely aware of the disadvantages weighed against him. Setting the cook’s horehound infusion to one side, he moved across to his desk and opened an envelope of papyrus. Shaking a dozen or so tiny oval seeds of fenugreek into his mortar, he began to pound them with his pestle. In a poultice, they should sort out Antefa’s boil once and for all. Yes, if only he’d been born patrician!