by Adam Golden
Nicholas used the edge of the thin, tattered blanket that was draped around his shoulders to wipe the bloody froth from around his oldest friend’s lips. The unconscious man mumbled something sharp sounding, seeming to flinch away from being touched until Nicholas set a shaking hand firmly on his chest.
“Rest my friend, be still.” His voice sounded harsh, strained. His vision was grainy, his thinking bogged down. The concentration needed for the Mendings was getting more and more difficult. He needed rest himself, he hadn’t had more than a few snatched moments here and there since they’d been dragged, arrow shot and all but dead, from the sea.
Sleep would not come, and when it did he saw Tulio as he’d been when they’d been dragged onto the banks of Byzantium by the fishermen who’d found them. White as a ghost, where he wasn’t burnt or bleeding. Nicholas had been sure Tulio was dead. Three arrows stood up from his faithful retainer’s back, one of them driven so deeply that the tip of the arrow’s head had punctured the chest. Compared to that, the shaft Nicholas had taken to the thigh, and the smattering of nicks and bruises from the fighting, were trivialities not worth considering, no matter what that fraud of a ‘healer’ who ruled this place thought. Those arrows which had littered Tulio’s back had been meant for Nicholas. His old friend had saved his life once again, and every time he closed his eyes Nicholas was taken by the dread that Tulio would die while he slept, and so sleep didn’t come.
The fugitive Bishop reached for the stick he’d propped against the wall, pulled in a long breath, and ground his teeth as he dragged himself to his feet. His wounded leg was starting to stiffen from too long seated. He had to move. Nicholas stumped his way along, pacing the small, stuffy room he and Tulio shared, alternately grimacing or hissing at the pain and awkwardness of the endeavor. He had to admit, if only to himself, and grudgingly even then, that his injuries hadn’t been as minor as he liked to pretend. The arrow he’d taken to the leg would surely have killed anyone else and, even Mended, it brought considerable pain and limited his mobility. As for the other injuries, he dismissed them as ‘cuts and bruises’ and they were surely that, but when he examined their scale he had to admit their seriousness. He was lucky to be alive.
Of course, he’d always known intellectually that his art did not make him invincible, or immortal, but he’d never been forced to face that knowledge as a practical reality before. Now the patchwork of black, purple, and sickly yellowed bruises that covered most of his body seemed to be competing with the dizzying pain brought on by the collage of stiffened muscles, oozing cuts, and fractured bones to remind him of that fact with every passing moment.
He forced the stick forward, lifted his battered leg, brought it down with the thoughtless assurance of a lifetime of unconscious action, and found the leg unwilling to hold him. A frozen flash of panic contracted all existence into a single agonizing second. His walking stick slipped from nerveless fingers and clattered loudly on the grimy, cracked stone floor.
Oh, no! He saw it a second too late.
Nicholas jerked to his left, wrenched his falling body, and hit the ground with more force than he should have, but he narrowly avoided crashing into his comatose friend. Both the floor and the pain hit him far harder than he would have thought possible.
The noise that leaked from him was a sort of breathy, whimpering groan which shook his whole body. Waves of pain, frustration, and humiliation rolled and crashed off each other, and for the first time in long years, Nicholas found tears in his eyes. Look what he’d come to. Nicholas, Son of Origen and Fulvia, the prodigy, born to privilege, bred to influence and command. Where had that paragon vanished to? Only days ago he’d been one of the most respected and powerful men in the Empire. Gone. Decades of effort and struggle, of sacrifice and deeds too dark and numerous to list. For what? He was broken, his oldest and truest friend was likely to die, and for what? What was he now? Disgraced, hunted, standing . . . No, not even standing, lying quivering at death’s door, unable even to hobble successfully across a hovel smaller than his privy at home.
“Help me.” The words came as a sob as Nicholas rolled over onto his back and stared up at the light pouring through the roof. “Lord . . . please . . . I am lost. I have done . . . terrible things, I have stolen, I have killed, yet all that I have done I have done in service to you. Have I not strengthened your church? You, who knows the hearts of all men, have I not been loyal?”
Audentes Deus ipse iuuat.
The words rang so clearly in his mind, not the words of the Father, but the words of his father, of Origen of Myra.
“Your mother would have you kneeling day and night mumbling in that chapel of hers.” The voice, the thick-tongued, slightly slurring timber of a man perpetually in drink, came back to Nicholas as though the intervening fifty years had been no more than moments.
“Piety has its place, I suppose,” he’d said. Nicholas, barely five years old, looked up at the boisterous, exotic stranger that was his father in mute awe. The burly, blurry-eyed trader sat bolt straight astride his mount, swathed in a thick cloak of bear fur. He looked, at least to his son, like one of the legendary generals of the old Republic surveying his troops before a battle. Servants skittered here and there, preparing his train to depart on another of the long trading journeys that would keep Origen far, far away from his home, and his wife, probably for a year or more. Now and then he roared out some command or other to some servant or retainer who wasn’t doing just as he should, and then he’d notice with surprise that Nicholas was still there and continued.
“Yes . . . piety, piety is fine enough, I suppose, but it’s action that makes things happen. You remember that.” The little boy had mumbled shyly that he would, and his Father nodded without even looking down at him.
“Remember your Ovid, boy,” he went on. “Audentes Deus ipse iuuat, God helps those who dare. The world is a wondrous place, full of marvels and delights, but it’s also hard as an unpaid creditor and sharp as an angry woman’s tongue.” He’d looked back over his shoulder at the villa then, hawked, and spat a large glob of stringy phlegm onto the garden stones. Origen looked down at his son and then his red eyes went wide as though seeing him for the first time.
“You’re a precious one, Nikki, a soft one. Not your fault, I suppose. What with me always gone and just women and servants about. No one could ever call your mother soft, no not that one! But she keeps you swaddled and she’ll keep you that way as long as you let her.” He’d paused, shaking his head mournfully, and then his chin shot up and he laughed, a rich, booming laugh that somehow had nothing of real mirth in it.
“One day it’s going to get you boy, life is going to get its teeth in and ring you around, but good. You just remember to be daring. You be brave. Sometimes we find ourselves alone and barefoot in Hell, and all there is for it is to keep on walking.” The big man looked back over his shoulder again, took a flask from his wide leather belt and downed a long drink. “Just keep walking,” he said again, softly as though to himself. The smell of strong spirits hung in the air, but the eyes that met those of the boy at his father’s stirrup were clear, sharp, and heavy with haunted sadness. Even a child of five could not mistake it. “Be strong, boy. You be brave, and you keep on walking.”
The elder Nicholas felt warm tears flowing down his face. He’d all but forgotten that day, his father had died just a few years after that, and though he’d seen him again, their interactions, before and after, were stiff and formal, superficial affairs, always presided over by Mother’s constant looming presence. In that fleeting few moments, Origen had really been a father, trying to impart perhaps the most important lesson he had to offer to his pampered, privileged son. Life was hard, it gave nothing for free, and those who would come out of it on top had to be willing to take what they wanted. They had to be daring.
“Thank you, Father,” the battered old Bishop muttered. Despair and pain had nearly overcome him. Him! He’d come too far, worked too hard, done too much to let it end in
pain and misery in some anonymous peasant hut.
“What is this then, moved again, eh? I tell you and tell you!” The combination of Agelaus’s high, excitable voice and the rapid-fire smattering of his crude Asiatic Greek always put Nicholas in mind of the mad squawking of some particularly unpleasant kind of bird.
“And a fine good morning to you, you jumped-up corpse washer,” Nicholas grunted to the dockside healer in formal Latin, which he’d made sure the other man didn’t understand. Nevertheless, the man’s gaunt, wiry frame stiffened, beady sullen eyes going to slits with the suspicion of a slight.
As far as the man could possibly know, Nicholas had never been anything but polite and agreeable, but Agelaus was the sort of prickly, self-important person who suspected possible insult in every action and word. He was the only thing like a healer that the poorest of the city’s fishermen, dockworkers, and sailors could call upon, so the small, petty little man lorded it over all of them like a despot.
In the few days they’d been in the so-called care of this man, Nicholas had seen him withhold medicine for the most despicable of reasons, like improper glances or disrespectful tone of voice. He’d watched the man reduce a burly dockworker toting his dying mother to groveling on his knees before he would see her and laugh while the man humiliated himself. He’d even seen the man press himself upon a young mother, grasping and pawing at her while she cried about her ailing child, all while her husband, stiff with impotent rage, watched, crying helpless tears as he cradled their hacking, struggling infant.
The man was a scum, the very worst sort. Nothing would have made Nicholas happier than to open the strutting fool’s guts for him, but even if he’d had the strength, where would he be then? Agelaus was a poor excuse for a healer, but he was a sight better than Nicholas himself at the moment, and Tulio needed care. They both did. Agelaus ruled here, even the roof over their heads, poor as it was, was his to give or deny. The sprawling ruin of a dilapidated legion field hospital, which the tyrant had appropriated as his own, was miles outside the city, and there was nowhere else to go. As much as Nicholas hated to admit it, they were as much at the man’s mercy as every other resident of his little kingdom.
Besides, murder, even murder of a figure as loathsome and universally hated as Agelaus, would make talk. The story would travel, rumors would spread, rumors that the various hunters at his heels—the black robes, the authorities of his own Church, perhaps even the Imperial army—could use to track him. So, Nicholas held his tongue while Agelaus chastised and berated him as a stupid fool too dense to follow simple commands like remain in bed. He dipped his head and tried to look contrite and thankful while the fool preened for the small army of sycophants that were always in attendance around him. Students he called them, though Nicholas had never seen any of them do anything beyond fetch for their master, and of course nod sagely at his brilliance.
Most of the real work of caring for the people unfortunate enough to need to be there was done by the small army of hollow-eyed, malnourished, and usually ill-looking slaves that infested the tumbled old hospital. It was they who brought the daily ration of thin soup to the patients, they who changed dressings, cleaned those who couldn’t clean themselves, carried away waste, and did a thousand other things besides. They were the nurses, the orderlies, the coroners, and most of them were children no older than fifteen.
He could see one of them hovering in the doorway now, a small thing, eight? Ten, maybe. He couldn’t tell, the boy was so emaciated, so stunted and obviously starved, that putting an age to him was near impossible. Agelaus prodded at the wounds on Tulio’s back with the thin rod of bone he carried everywhere for a long while, and then launched into one of his grand pronouncements on the balance of the humors and the importance of this or that element of diet in maintaining health. When he finished basking in the adulation and dutiful nods of his entourage, he gathered them up and made to leave. The boy, shivering, whether from fear or fever Nicholas couldn’t tell, stepped into his master’s path.
“Par . . . pardon Magister, please forgive me, it is an emergency,” the boy squeaked.
“What?” Agelaus asked distractedly, and without ever even looking at the boy. “What emergency? Why did you not take it to a junior medicus? Well? Speak!” That last came out in a high nasal screech that made Nicholas wince.
“Forgiveness, Magister,” the boy squeaked again, now vibrating with unmistakable terror. “It is Lila. She is very sick, shivering, sweating all the time, she cannot eat, she barely drinks, and . . . she says she sees our mother. Mother passed years ago. Please master, can you help?”
The pleading and panic in the boy’s voice wrenched at Nicholas and fueled his already considerable hatred for the man who called himself a healer.
The haggard, terrified slave stood looking up at his owner, eyes full with tears and wide with desperation. “Master—” the boy started again, but received a sharp rap on the top of his head with Agelaus’s narrow bone wand.
“Be silent, boy!” the master shrilled. “You creatures should really know better than to waste my time with these kinds of things. Your friend will die, make your peace with it and get back to your work.” The scum delivered his pronouncement with all the careless indifference of a person discussing throwing away a worn sandal.
“No!” The boy fell to his knees, tears streaming as the ragged hopeless word burst from the child, as though the word had taken the strength he was using to hold himself up. “Please! Master, you must . . .” The boy grasped feebly at the hem of Agelaus’ robe.
“How dare you!” Agelaus shrieked, his callous dispassionate voice replaced by furious outrage as his pasty, sallow face suddenly glowed beat red. “Must? I must?” he demanded as a backhanded blow struck the boy in the cheek and rocked him sideways.
Nicholas doubted that such a blow from one as thin and patently weak looking as Agelaus would have done any damage to another man, and little to even a healthy child, but to one as weakened and abused as the poor creature sprawled on the floor the effect had been devastating. He found himself starting to stand before he’d really considered it. He knew all the reasons why he shouldn’t intervene, knew it would do no real good. How could it? This child was, after all, property. He belonged to Agelaus, even if Nicholas did manage to end this assault, there would surely be others. He and Tulio would find themselves without further treatment or shelter, but how could he just sit there? In the end, his treasonous corpse made the decision for him. He was less than halfway to his feet when a biting wave of pain shot up his leg and he collapsed back to the floor with an agonized groan.
“Magister Medicus, please . . . the pain,” Nicholas groaned in common Greek and requiring very little embellishment to make his plea sound gut-wrenchingly pathetic.
The enraged healer whirled about, turning wild, angry eyes on Nicholas. His narrow chest was still heaving with outrage and his face was mottled in blotches of red and purple. The effect was actually quite comical to Nicholas, but he could imagine the terror such a display would incur in a child of seven or eight. Agelaus’ wild eyes took in the scene of Nicholas on his side, clutching his offending thigh and his rage seemed to cool, turning instead to a sort of pleased sneer.
“Fool! You were told not to move. Perhaps you see now that you should heed your betters? Hmmm?” Behind him, some of his hangers-on chuckled, and the hateful little man swelled with self-importance, drinking it in like a man too long in the desert gulping down water. The blood began to slowly leach back out of his face, long claw-like fingers fussily pulled his thin, greasy hair back from his face, and what passed for composure was returned. Agelaus stepped over the still blubbering child sprawled before him and started to sweep from the room before he paused, turned, and delivered a sharp kick to the boy’s back.
“See to the fool,” the healer hissed, voice heavy with malice, “and then get back to your duties. It would be best if I had no further cause to recall your existence.”
The boy didn’t re
spond except to pull himself into a tight ball and continue his sobbing as his master and his entourage left the room.
After a long few moments, and a series of embarrassingly difficult shufflings, Nicholas was seated beside the still balled up and sobbing slave. He laid his hand down on the boy’s side and felt every bone beneath the thin covering of flesh and threadbare cloth.
“There now . . . easy,” he ventured, uncomfortable. What did he know of children? Nothing, and so he found himself doing what he might to soothe a frightened horse.
The boy stiffened at first, but when no blow came he gradually relaxed. The sobbing seemed to ebb and flow, tapering off only to surge again, shaking the boy’s entire body violently.
“I knew she was going to die,” he said after a long while of wordless crying. “I only hoped he might give her something . . . help her sleep or . . . the pain is so terrible. She screams all the time.”
He’d pushed himself back against Nicholas’ knees by then, unthinkingly seeking comfort in simply being close to someone who wouldn’t hurt him, and Nicholas found himself petting the child like one might a dog.
“Sometimes I wish she’d die,” the boy sniveled, “then at least she’d be free. No more pain, no more of this place. There are so many of us who won’t get better.”
Nicholas said nothing. There seemed nothing to say. He kept on with his slow petting of the boy’s side as his father’s voice whispered in his head.
“God helps those who dare.”
—
The slave quarters beneath Agelaus’ ruin of a hospital were little more than a section of tumbled down and filthy sewers which had been sectioned off into dozens of sleeping cubicles. Filthy, wet, dark, and cramped, it was no wonder that the children banished here almost uniformly died of lingering illness.
