by Albert Noyer
“‘Physician, heal thyself,’” he jested, “with the help of thine wife.” '
While her husband bathed, Arcadia went to his study with her copy of Soranus’s treatise on gynecology.
“Getorius is right,” she admitted to herself. “I need more experience before even thinking of opening a clinic for women. I couldn’t even get a pregnant girl to agree to an examination.”
There was something disturbing about Claudia, but it was probably due to physical changes brought about by her pregnancy. What did Soranus have to say on the subject? Arcadia opened his volume and went to Section XVI of Book I, about the care that should be given pregnant women.
The ancient physician had suggested three levels of concern: in the early stages, the need to preserve the injected seed; then the alleviation of subsequent physical and mental discomfort during the pregnancy; and lastly, preparation for the birth. Soranus believed the embryo could be discarded for a variety of reasons—from extreme fright, to joy, to mental upsets. These could have happened to Claudia in the amounts necessary to produce a miscarriage. The gruesome death of her lover had to have been a traumatic experience, and suspecting her father to be Atlos’s murderer would have added to the emotional shock, yet if all the reasons the physician gave were valid, few women would carry a fetus to term.
Perhaps, like Galen, Soranus was mistaken in some of the medical advice he gave. He listed several other ways that women might miscarry, but, again, these were so all-inclusive as to be almost useless information. He stated that the pregnancy discomfort called pica began at the fortieth day, a condition marked by a craving for unusual substances, and other gastric symptoms. Claudia had passed that date, but she was also an epileptic. How would this affect her pregnancy? Maybe Hippocrates could provide an answer.
Arcadia took down her husband’s volume of the Greek physician’s work, and turned to Section LXX, titled, On the Sacred Disease. She went past the preliminary paragraphs refuting the superstitions associated with the disease, and concentrated on Hippocrates’ theory that epilepsia occurred in those with an inherited phlegm imbalance.
“‘This malady, then, affects phlegmatic people…and begins to be formed while the fetus is in utero. For the brain…is cleansed and purified as it grows before birth.’”
Hippocrates went on to explain that if the brain was improperly purged, phlegm would accumulate in the organ. Children might rid themselves of this through ulcers on the head and body, as well as the copious discharge of saliva and mucus. Otherwise, they would be susceptible to getting the disease. Most of the youngsters who did, died in childhood.
I have no way of knowing if Claudia suffered from body ulcers as a child without examining her skin more carefully. She doesn’t exhibit a chronic phlegm imbalance, and Hippocrates describes other symptoms and causes that are impossible for me to know, unless I talk to whoever raised the girl.
Arcadia put down the book and closed her eyes. Claudia had accused Thecla of killing Atlos, a charge so ridiculous that someone had to have put her up to it. Leudovald kept insisting that a fisherman’s knife he suspected belonged to her father was found next to the body. Perhaps Virilo had ordered his daughter to blame Thecla to divert suspicion from himself.
We weren’t dreaming! That was a golden sickle in the dead youth’s hand. I saw it. Getorius saw it. So why does Leudovald say he found a knife? If he did, how could it have gotten into the church after we left?
The revelation came to Arcadia despite her fatigue. Blessed Cosmas, the sewer tunnel! Someone who knew about the passageway could have come into the church and replaced that sickle with a fishing knife. Fine, Arcadia, you may have discovered a clue, but the mystery is still as murky as an image in a cheap bronze mirror. Leudovald…even Getorius…believes that Virilo found out about Claudia’s pregnancy and killed Atlos. Yet he, or whatever professional killer he hired, certainly wouldn’t have been so careless as to leave the knife at the scene. Someone is trying to blame Claudia’s father…
Arcadia opened her eyes and exhaled in frustration. “I’m too tired to think straight,” she muttered. “I’ll make a mint and thyme valerian drink for Getorius. Perhaps in the morning I can sort out my thoughts about the girl.”
Chapter eighteen
Scanning the list of cult members Adonis had recruited, Diotar discovered that one was a guard at the Villa of the Red Rooster. He also found out that Publius Maximin and his wife would be in Arminum from the sixth to the twelfth of May, celebrating the Lemuralia, an ancient Roman festival commemorating the dead. Diotar knew that it would have been too dangerous for the senator to attempt to travel to Rome to honor his ancestors. Perhaps Maximin had a branch of his Anicii family in Arminum.
He recalled seeing the rites performed last year by a few of the bolder pagan sympathizers. In the necropolis outside the Lawrence Gate, black beans had been burned on graves. The resulting unpleasant stench was believed to frighten away evil spirits, and a few participants had beaten kettles and drums to help the exorcism succeed. This time Diotar guessed that citizens’ attention would be drawn to the few defiant pagans who still observed the festival, and to possible trouble from Christians opposed to the ritual. The festival would create a diversion that could be used for moving Zhang Chen’s crates from Maximin’s villa. With the senator away, his guards would relax, some even be absent. Gold would buy the silence of any who noticed what was happening.
Adonis had found the new cult member among the guards. His name was Malarich, a Goth. The plan was for him to arrive with a cart loaded with wine amphorae cradled in straw. After unloading the jars in the storeroom where Chen’s boxes were kept, Malarich would help the Oriental hide his crates under the straw of the empty wagon bed, for the return to the temple compound.
May seventh, Frigedag, according to its new Frankish name, was a market day. Arcadia and Ursina went out to purchase food supplies for the next few days. Getorius was feeling better and thought now would be a good opportunity to retrace the surface route he had plotted while in the sewer under the Via Armini. If he could find the opening of the lateral drain into the harbor, then estimate the paces he had counted from there to the underground room, he felt he might be able to find the location where the illegal coins were being minted.
Getorius reached the warehouses at the end of the Via Porti and noticed the Cybele riding empty at her berth, while stevedores loaded nearby merchant ships. He saw that a few more galleys had finally arrived—also from the Eastern Empire, judging by the names that were close enough to read; Greek, all of them—Arcas, Neleus, and Selene. That was encouraging. Wheat imports sent from Constantinople might yet forestall the looming bread shortage in an Italy threatened by the Vandal occupation of the African provinces.
Getorius threaded his way north between workers, along the edge of the stone wharf. He counted paces until he heard a splash of water and saw bits of debris swirling from an arched sewer opening near the far end of the galley anchorages.
“One hundred twenty paces,” he told himself aloud. “This is the outlet of that lateral cloaca.” He looked along a canal opposite that led toward the Armini. “The intersection with the main sewer was a little past halfway to the smaller tunnel, where I found the door to the room.”
He started walking west along the canal, which was stagnant with floating refuse. The houses opposite were among the oldest in Ravenna, dating from a time when many of the streets were canals. Most buildings had been cheaply made of mortared stone rubble that was held together by a timber framework. All of the house fronts still displayed some Roman god or other in a shrine niche, yet the burned-out shells of several buildings were charred testimony that the old gods had not always protected their worshippers.
Shabbily dressed, dirty children played in flat-bottomed skiffs, or floated blocks of wood in the canal filth. The sons and daughters of freemen laborers, Getorius surmised, or of slaves whose masters lived, not here, but in new homes in the quarter where Galla Placidia’s mausoleum
was located. He wondered if there was even a single physician to serve these people. Most of the children who had reached five years of age would have seen playmates and adult family members die of disease or in horrible accidents.
At the Via Armini, Getorius turned north and counted paces, oblivious to jostling by pedestrians on the sidewalk and imprecations by vendors selling from booths.
There should be a street somewhat beyond the distance I’ve counted along the wharf, and an apartment or house to the right. That distance had been twenty-two paces, he recalled, the same number as from Thecla’s church to the Armini sewer. The building would not be located too far from a corner.
Sixteen paces beyond those he had measured to the drain, Getorius stopped at the Vicus Judaeorum.
“The street of the Judeans. This must be where Nathaniel took Rabbi ben Zadok when he was here last December, but is this the place that I’m looking for?”
He saw Ravenna’s north wall and the Porta Anastasia a long block ahead. The Judaeorum seemed to be the last fair-sized street. From the noise and acrid smell of metalworking shops lining the narrow way, Getorius knew he was in an artisans’ quarter.
He turned into the Judaeorum.
Beyond an outdoor bronze foundry and potters’ kilns, an alleyway separated what appeared to be an open space on the right, surrounded by a brick wall. Continuing along the barrier, Getorius peered through a gap in the gate, and caught a glimpse of a garden and two-story villa complex beyond.
Could this be the place? Who might I ask about the people who live in there without arousing too much suspicion?
Getorius turned. The shop across the street had a sign painted on its front wall in Greek that identified it as AEION, the Apolleion. A crude painting of a silver statue of the god was underneath, and the Latin word ARGENTARIVS. He might get information from a silversmith who spoke Latin.
Getorius crossed the Judaeorum and went to the shop’s sidewalk counter. A swarthy, bearded man glanced up from his bench, then motioned to a young woman who was polishing a dish. “Roto afton ti aftos thelo,” he ordered her in Greek.
She came to see what Getorius wanted. “You wish to buy or commission silver work?” the woman asked in softly accented Latin. “Pharnaces gives the best price.”
“Not just yet.” Getorius slid a half-follis across the counter to her. “I was wondering who lives in the villa across the street. If it’s the place I want.”
She looked up from the money with a smile of scorn. “Kirios…sir…a half coin buys half that information.”
Pharnaces had evidently heard the clink of money and his daughter’s answer. He put down his engraving burin and came to the counter. When he saw the bronze, he shrugged in mock disdain and pushed it back with a forced grin.
“Ah, sir. Regretfully, the price for what you ask of Pharnaces would be a siliqua. Still the best bargain in Ravenna.”
“Half a siliqua for all the information,” Getorius countered, mimicking the artisan’s smirking grin. He took a small silver coin from his purse and spun it on the counter.
“Done!” Pharnaces deftly scooped up the disc before it stopped turning. “You, Kirios, are indeed a shrewd bargainer.” He pulled at the girl’s sleeve. “Back to work, kori.” He watched his daughter return to her bench, pouting, then asked Getorius, “You perhaps have important business at the villa?”
“And will you pay me to know that?” Getorius quipped.
Pharnaces’s eyes crinkled in delight as he hid a chuckle with the back of his hand. “Humor. A commodity as rare as truth these days.” He leaned closer and whispered, “The house could be that of the galleymaster Gaius Quintus Virilo.”
“Virilo?” Unbelievable…what good luck! “His boat is the Cybele?”
“Indeed, sir. Named for the infernal goddess who is worshiped by that gaggle of womanly eunuchs who also reside there.”
“Eunuchs?” Getorius feigned surprise, thinking that he should not tell this artisan too much. “Gaius Virilo, you say? I’ve heard of him, but no, I…I was looking for someone else. I’m grateful for your help, Pharnaces.”
“Of course you are,” the craftsman mocked. “I was not the galleymaster you wanted, but the pleasure of telling you about him was mine. And should you desire the finest in silverwork—”
“I’ll come to you for another bargain.”
Getorius turned back toward the Via Armini, shaken by the implications of what he had just heard. The ‘Valentinians’ evidently were being counterfeited by Virilo and hidden in Maximin’s wool bales. But were the coins made for the senator, or were his exports simply a convenient place for the galleymaster to smuggle them into Dalmatia? Surely not all of the bales contained leather pouches, so how would the receiver know where to find them?
Getorius visualized the wharf at Olcinium, recalling that the bales were being separated into two unequal piles. The answer struck him with the suddenness of summer lightning. The knots! The bales were tied differently when I opened the two that we slept in on the galley. That means at least one of the customs officials at Olcinium…probably more…have to be part of this. The sapphires also must be Virilo’s. The man has a complete smuggling operation going on, using the prestige of Maximin’s senatorial position to allay suspicion and avoid much of the usual customs inspection.
Arcadia had still not returned by the time Getorius got back to the clinic. No one was in the waiting room, so he went into his study.
He was making notes on a wax tablet when Arcadia entered and saw him there.
“I found some early asparagus at the market,” she said. “It will be nice for supper tonight. Did any patients come in while I was gone?”
“No. Arcadia, sit down. You won’t believe this.”
“What is it?”
“I traced our route on the streets above the sewer. That room we found at the end, where the ‘Valentinians’ are being counterfeited, is probably a basement inside Virilo’s house.”
“Virilo? Then that definitely makes him involved in the smuggling.”
“Not only that—I think Diotar’s temple to Cybele is located on the property.”
“How did you find that out, when Leudovald couldn’t?”
“I wouldn’t have, except for the hidden door you noticed in Thecla’s basilica, and our odorous odyssey beneath Ravenna. It turns out that Virilo’s place is in the artisans’ quarter, on the Vicus Judaeorum, just east of the Armini. I bribed a Greek silversmith across the way to tell me who lived there.”
“Clever, but what do we do now?”
Getorius held up his note tablet. “I’ve been trying to figure out the relationship between Virilo and Diotar. Even Senator Maximin…if he has a part in this.”
“We did suspect that Diotar had some kind of hold on Virilo.”
“Perhaps by threatening to expose his smuggling operations? If Diotar’s temple is there, he may have found out about them.”
“Did you see anyone at the villa?” Arcadia asked.
“No. In fact, it looked deserted.”
“If it is Virilo’s, that must be where Claudia lives.”
“With her father and that nurse he once mentioned.” Getorius stood up. “After our noon meal I’m going over to see Maros.”
“The sick pigment-maker?”
“Yes. I want to make sure he’s not gone back to the library and is still working with the lead.”
“It’s almost the sixth hour. I’ll tell Ursina to serve us in the dining room.”
That afternoon, after her husband had gone to see Maros, Arcadia thought about what he had discovered and decided to go to the artisans’ quarter. If she could locate Claudia, she might somehow convince the girl to let her help with the pregnancy. Getorius would have discouraged the idea, of course, so she did not tell him or Childibert, nor even Silvia, where she was going.
Arcadia retraced the route Getorius had mentioned, and found the Vicus Judaeorum and the silversmith’s shop. Now she stood outside the gate to Virilo’s
house. If she waited long enough, she reasoned, someone would surely come out, and she could ask about going in to see Claudia. She glanced across the street. A bearded man, who had been watching her, quickly bent back over his workbench. She had read the sign, ARGENTARIVS, on the shop’s wall, and guessed he was the silversmith Getorius had mentioned.
Arcadia was about to cross over and ask him if there were specific times when those living in the compound came out, but then she heard a noise on the other side of the gate. Peering through the crack, she saw a cart being driven toward the entrance. She stepped aside as the driver got off and opened the portals, and was surprised to recognize the youth who had pretended to castrate himself at the Olcinium temple.
“Adonis?”
He was equally startled. “Th…the surgeon’s wife! How…what are you doing here?”
“I came to see Claudia. Is she here?”
Adonis hesitated a moment before asking, “Is this about her pregnancy?”
“Yes. I’m worried about her condition. Could you persuade Claudia to let me examine her?”
“I was going somewhere,” he said, closing the gate again, “but I’ll take you to where she is.”
Arcadia glanced into the cart as she passed, and was surprised to see the two crates of Zhang Chen’s writing material that she and Getorius had witnessed in Galla Placidia’s anteroom. The boxes were partially hidden by straw and several sackcloth bales placed on top of them, but the red Sinese characters on the sides were unmistakable.
“Adonis, what are you doing with Senator Maximin’s crates?” she asked. “I thought they were at his villa.”
“I…an…an errand for the senator,” Adonis stammered. “Come with me if you want to see Claudia.”
