by Albert Noyer
“The name of my galley,” Virilo interrupted. “You know all that. Why the questions? My daughter had nothing to do with that slave’s death.”
“No, Galleymaster?” Leudovald flicked the whip toward the floor. “What I discover will be presented to a magistrate. Surgeon. Why did your wife go to the church with you?”
“She’s training to be a medica. And I didn’t know what I’d find. The boy Thecla sent said only that I was to come with him.”
“And your wife later examined the girl?”
“In my clinic. I’ve told you all this, Leudovald.”
“Answer again, Surgeon. What did she determine?”
Getorius wanted to tell Leudovald to ask Arcadia, since she had done the examination, but held back. “She found that Claudia was about three months pregnant.”
“And this Atlos was responsible?”
“How would my wife know? Ask the girl.”
Leudovald’s whip snapped the floor in a gesture of impatience. “Galleymaster. Did you know your daughter was with child, or who the father might be?”
“No.”
“Then I’ll question her about the matter.”
“No! She isn’t well,” Arcadia protested. “It would be like reliving a frightening dream.”
“Woman, you’re not to speak,” Leudovald reprimanded. “You also are here as a prisoner accused of a crime, and certainly not as an advocate for the girl.”
“But my wife is correct,” Getorius broke in. “Questioning Claudia could bring on an epileptic seizure.”
Leudovald ignored his advice and leaned on the table in front of Claudia, who was absently tracing the folds of her tunic with a finger. “Child,” he asked with studied softness, “tell us what happened that evening.”
Claudia did not look up, nor answer, and only continued to pleat and unpleat her tunic folds.
“Child?”
“She doesn’t talk much,” Virilo said. “A god touched her mind when she was born.”
“A god.” Leudovald straightened to repeat his question more forcefully and shook his whip at the girl. “Child, I’m warning you to—”
“Atlos wanted to marry me,” Claudia suddenly remarked in a low, girlish voice. “We went to the church to talk to…to her.” She nodded toward Thecla without looking up. “After Atlos told her that I…I was carrying his baby, she became angry and killed him.”
“N…no!” Thecla gasped out her protest. “That’s not true!”
Dagalaif leaned forward. “Girl, you’re saying the presbytera cas…castrated your lover?”
“She said he had done an evil thing in God’s eyes.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Getorius objected. “Thecla hasn’t the strength to commit such an act.”
“She…she gave him something to drink,” Claudia mumbled. “Yes…wine. He was asleep when she did it.”
Getorius forced himself not to laugh at the girl’s accusation. “You’re saying Thecla brought the sickle, or, if you will, a knife with her, and murdered Atlos?”
“I’ll ask the questions, Surgeon.” Leudovald hit the whip handle hard on the table and scowled at Claudia. “Child, are you telling us that this priestess killed Atlos? Who was he, anyway? No one has come to claim his body. And a slave can’t marry a freewoman.” When Claudia did not reply, he slammed the end of the whip handle against the tabletop. “Look up at me,” he shouted. “Answer me, girl!”
Claudia suddenly clutched her hands to her stomach and began to sway back and forth.
“Getorius,” Arcadia cried, “she’s about to have an attack.”
As Claudia’s body stiffened, Getorius ducked around the table corner and caught her before she fell. He eased the girl off the bench and laid her on the floor, then loosened a shawl around her head. As she jerked uncontrollably, a dark splotch of urine stained her tunic.
Dagalaif signed himself over his heart with a cross and moved away, murmuring, “Father…deliver us from evil.”
Getorius glared up at him. “It’s all right, Deacon, she won’t transmute into a pig and run squealing around the room.”
Virilo stood and looked down at his daughter. “She’s cursed. Always been like that.”
“It’s an illness, not a curse,” Arcadia retorted. “My husband has told you that it can be treated.”
Claudia slowly stopped trembling and her body relaxed. In a moment she was still, seemingly asleep.
“Take…take your daughter home now,” Leudovald ordered Virilo, obviously shaken by the incident. “She’ll have to testify at the priestess’s trial, but…take her home until then.”
“He can’t just take Claudia back,” Getorius intervened. “At the least she should be in the hospital ward here at the palace. There are treatments for her condition.”
“She’s my daughter,” Virilo insisted. “I’m taking her home.”
Leudovald held up a hand. “A moment, Galleymaster. Perhaps the surgeon has a point. Let her stay here for a few days under the care of the sisters.”
“No!” Virilo grabbed Claudia’s hand. “I invoke patria potestas. I’m taking her home now.”
“Potestas? Your legal right as a father?” Leudovald looked at Getorius and spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “There’s nothing I can do.”
After Virilo pulled his daughter out of the room, Getorius went to Thecla. “Presbytera, that was a sick girl who made the accusation.”
“Yes, but I was too surprised, too shocked, to respond sensibly. Nothing like that happened. I hadn’t seen either one of them before.”
“You look exhausted. Leudovald, could Arcadia examine Thecla…prescribe a diet? I’m afraid this stress might put her humors out of balance.”
Thecla stood up and smoothed down her tunic. “Thank you, Surgeon, but I’m quite well.”
“Then, if you’re not ill, priestess,” Leudovald said, “the guard will take you back to your room. Claudia’s accusation clinches the charge of murder.”
“You can’t take the word of an epileptic girl,” Getorius objected. “Claudia’s mind is unstable.”
“Unstable and touched either by God or Satan. A magistrate will decide which.” Leudovald turned to Arcadia. “You, woman, are free to go home with your husband for now.”
“Despite the coins?”
“We’ll deal with them in good time.” Leudovald replaced the whip on its peg, then opened the door. “Guard! Take the old woman back to confinement.”
“May I walk that far with her?” Arcadia asked.
Leudovald hesitated, and then nodded permission. Getorius walked a step behind the two women as they crossed the garden toward the corridor anteroom where Thecla was confined. At the zoo, the ostriches were nervously pacing the perimeter of their temporary cage.
“Poor frightened creatures.” Arcadia tried to calm them with soothing clucks, but they hissed viciously in reply, and pecked at her through the bars.
“Their ancestors must have given Noah quite a problem on the ark,” Thecla joked.
Arcadia smiled and took her arm. “Thecla, I’m puzzled at what Claudia hopes to gain by accusing you.”
“The child is mistaken.”
“More likely, she’s lying to protect her father,” Getorius said. “Of course he knew about her pregnancy. We found that out when he came to us with Diotar. He’s the logical person to avenge her.”
“By using a ritual sickle?”
“To blame someone in that Cybelene cult, Arcadia.”
“Is Virilo that clever?”
“Mastering the Cybele and outfoxing pirates takes a measure of shrewdness.” Getorius lowered his voice below the guard’s hearing. “And don’t forget the smuggled coins and sapphires.”
“Coins?” Thecla repeated as a question. “What do you mean?”
“Nothing,” he said quickly. “Do you need anything, Presbytera?”
“No, they brought me my Gothic Testament and a few sheets of papyrus. Pen, ink.”
“We’ll
try to come and see you tomorrow afternoon,” Arcadia promised. “Senator Maximin once offered my husband his lawyer. I’m sure the man will defend you, if it comes to that.”
“Thank you, dear, but the Son who is subject to the Father will protect me.” She stopped at a door and chuckled. “Here’s my hermit’s cell. Until tomorrow, then.”
Virilo was angry, grasping Claudia tightly by the arm as he strode along back alleys toward his home on the Vicus Judaeorum.
“Father, you’re hurting me,” she complained when he paused for a cart at the Via Fossi.
“You little fool,” he snarled without looking at her. “Leudovald realizes the old woman couldn’t have killed someone as young as that slave.”
“I said it to protect you, Father. He would have blamed you, because of the knife he found.”
“I didn’t kill Atlos. I don’t know how my knife got inside that church.”
“You lied,” Claudia retorted. “You knew I was pregnant.”
“That’s none of Leudovald’s business. There’ll be more questions at the trial, and the magistrate isn’t stupid. Diotar will be furious when they ask about your connection with him in the cult. If you hadn’t gone whoring around with that slave, none of this would be happening.”
“Father, he raped me in the temple while I was touched by the god.”
“So you say.”
“He did, Father. And Atlos broke his oath to Diotar about becoming a priest of Attis at the Megalensia.”
“Megalensia,” Virilo muttered, but relaxed the grip on his daughter. A solution occurred to him as he guided Claudia south along the street to the port area. “Maybe that woman surgeon can give you something to get rid of the baby.” When Claudia did not reply, he shook her arm. “Did you hear me?”
She pulled away. “I heard you, Father.”
“Good. I’ll take you there tomorrow.”
Virilo felt somewhat better as he crossed the Via Armini. No one else need know about his daughter’s shame. Claudia’s pregnancy wasn’t yet showing, and the surgeon’s clinic would have whatever it was they gave a woman who wanted to abort a fetus. He would bring Claudia back to Leudovald, have her recant the accusation, and say that Atlos had killed himself in remorse. The medica would back his daughter by testifying that she had spoken nonsense as a result of her Disease. There would not have to be a trial.
Yet how had Atlos gotten hold of his knife? Perhaps Claudia had let him inside the villa during the day, and that had given him the opportunity to steal the fish-gutting tool. But why did the surgeon keep insisting he had found a sickle in the dead slave’s hand?
On the afternoon of her release, Arcadia found a man in the clinic’s waiting room, complaining of a sharp pain in his lower abdomen. Since he had brought a jug of urine, she took it to her husband, thinking he might want to evaluate the patient’s symptoms before talking to him.
Getorius poured some of the urine into a glass vial and held it up against the light of the clerestory window.
“Looks pinkish, and there are specks of sand on the bottom of the container.”
“What does that indicate?”
“Get me our copy of Galen.”
Arcadia pulled down the volume by the long-dead physician whose views still dominated medical practice. She knew Getorius disagreed with Galen on several points, yet he was worth consulting, if only to posit an opposing diagnosis.
“‘On the Natural Faculties,’” Getorius murmured, searching the pages. He stopped at information about the bladder. “Here, Section Thirteen. Galen is disagreeing with Asclepiades about the function of the kidneys. His rival agrees that they process the water we drink into urine, but thinks it’s changed to a vapor, then recondensed into a liquid before entering the bladder.”
“But it would be an unnecessary step.”
“Exactly. Nature designed our bodies more perfectly than that.” Getorius looked at the discolored urine again. “Let me talk to…what’s his name?”
“Decimus Cordus. I’ll bring him in.”
Cordus was a balding, red-faced man with dark circles of loose flesh below his eyes, an indication of lack of sleep, Getorius surmised, because of the abdominal pain. The man’s full-length tunic was made of finely woven wool, decorated at the sleeves and neck by green and blue stripes. His boots were tanned leather, dyed green to match the case slung around his neck. Getorius thought him likely to be an import merchant, well able to pay for treatment. Good. Being palace physician might be an honor, but it carries no retainer. I’m paid for each service weeks afterwards. This Cordus can help balance the cost of patients I treat without a fee.
“I’m sorry you’re having a problem with your bladder, sir,” Getorius said, after the man was seated.
“Drop the polite manure, call me Cordus,” he responded gruffly. “And it’s my gut that hurts.”
“Ah…yes.” Wealthy, perhaps, but not born to it. “Exactly where do you hurt, Cordus?”
He made a vague circular motion with one hand, which indicated his entire lower body.
“I’ve looked at your urine. Sometimes the kidneys secrete hard stones that can cause pain.”
“What, rocks inside my gut? That’s lunacy.”
Getorius ignored his outburst. “Are you uncomfortable when urinating?”
“What?”
“When you piss, Cordus. Does it hurt?”
“Why didn’t you say? Sometimes.”
The man wasn’t being very helpful. Cordus was the opposite of patients who described several detailed but conflicting conditions, which also made diagnosis difficult. Yet the urine condition fitted with Galen. If the stone could be passed, it was preceded by a sharp pain between the kidneys and bladder as the hard material moved through the ureter. This was assuming, of course, that human anatomy was comparable to that of the monkeys Galen had dissected.
And yet the painful urination that Galen had called dysuria could be caused by other factors. Men who came to the clinic frightened by the hurt, and by a corresponding yellow discharge from their penises, eventually admitted to having been in Ravenna’s brothels. He would have to examine Cordus for symptoms of gonorrhea, always an unpleasant experience.
“Has your stomach been upset lately?” Arcadia asked. “Have you vomited?”
“What?” Cordus scowled up at her as if she had demanded money from him.
“My wife trains with me,” Getorius explained. “It’s the next question I would have asked you.”
Cordus picked nervously at the green band on his sleeve before admitting, “I…I been having pains.”
“What do you like to eat?” Getorius asked.
Cordus leaned back with a smirk. “Fried pork…squid. Goose liver. Lots of cumin and pepper seasoning. I can afford it.”
“Vegetables. Greens?”
“Don’t like them.”
“Do you take your time eating?”
“I’ve got my business to look after, woman,” Cordus replied, evidently offended at Arcadia’s question. “You can’t trust slaves to do it.”
When Arcadia looked at her husband, he read her thoughts. The urine sample suggested stones in the man’s bladder, but his unhealthy eating habits might be exacerbating a stomach unbalance. “Cordus, the wrong food could be part of your problem,” Getorius said, “yet the urine color is pretty damning.”
Arcadia picked up the pitcher she had placed on the table and noticed that it was cracked near the top. “Cordus, what do you usually use this for?”
“Me? Nothing.” Cordus’s tone suggested he had been insulted. “That’s my house slaves’ wine jug. I wouldn’t piss in a good one of mine.”
“Wine jug?” Getorius realized what his wife was suggesting and asked, “Did you rinse it out first?” At Cordus’s negative shake of the head, he poured most of the urine in the vial back into the pitcher, then dribbled the rest into the palm of one hand. He easily crushed the sandlike particles between a thumb and forefinger. “Sediment crystals from the dregs
of a wine barrel. The lees are the slaves’ portion.”
“Some leftover red wine tinted his urine.”
“Good that you noticed, Arcadia.” Getorius wiped his hand and turned to Cordus. “You can thank Fortuna you haven’t formed stones in your kidneys, but you must eat more slowly, and differently. My wife will give you a list of foods for your cook to prepare. And doses of boiled licorice root for those stomach pains.”
Before Cordus could protest, the office door was opened and Childibert looked in. “Master, Senator Maximin is here. He…he insisted that I interrupt you.”
“It’s all right, I’m about through. Take the senator to my study. Arcadia, write up that dietetic regimen for Cordus, then join us.”
Maximin was standing when Getorius entered the room. As the senator reached to grasp his wrist, light flashed off the carnelian stone on his ring. It was carved in the shape of a rooster, reminding Getorius of the senator’s chicken farm.
“How are things at the Villa of the Red Rooster, Senator?”
“I may sell out. Prisca is disgusted at having to endure the smell of chicken droppings all the time.”
“Of course.” Arcadia had mentioned the all-pervading odor after she had spent a week at the villa in December. “Please, take a chair. You’re feeling well, I hope? Not here for medical reasons?”
“No, no. And that tincture you prescribed for my eyes has done wonders. No, I came on another matter.” Maximin looked toward the door. “Your wife isn’t here?”
“She’ll join us shortly.”
“Fine.” He polished his ring on a sleeve in a nervous gesture before asking, “Those counterfeit ‘Valentinians.’ Where exactly did she find them?”
My God, he knows about those too. He must be in thick with Leudovald. “Where?” Getorius repeated. “Uh…as you’ve probably heard, Senator, we boarded the Cybele without actually booking passage.”
“Concealed yourselves in the hold.”
“Yes. Arcadia found a pouch of the coins hidden in a bale of…well…of your wool, Senator.”
“In the name of Hades!” Maximin burst out, smacking a fist against the palm of his hand. “Someone is trying to implicate me in whatever’s going on.”
