by Albert Noyer
Arcadia stepped around a circle of rocks framing a pit in the center of the floor. The depression was filled with cold ashes and partially burned sticks. An iron kettle hung over the pit from a chain attached to a pole rafter. The monk’s kitchen. When she noticed a clothes chest that was carved with beautifully intricate Celtic patterns, she thought it an incongruous vanity for someone who had renounced worldly goods. In contrast, Behan’s simple eating utensils lay on top—a wooden trencher and spoon, an iron knife, and a brass cup stained with a green patina.
The sturdiest article of furniture was a slant-top writing desk with a storage cabinet beneath. It stood by one of the walls, to the left of a window covered by a parchment skin that admitted light but kept out the cold. Examining the items on the desktop, Arcadia saw pots of ink, a box of quill and reed pens, and an erasing knife arranged toward the left edge. Next to them a smooth river stone kept three rolled-up manuscripts from sliding down. Above the desk, a shelf sagged under the weight of several books.
Behan’s belongings certainly reflect the reported passion that Hibernian monks have for writing and literature, she thought.
Glancing from the bookshelf to the narrow door through which Optila had brought the body, Arcadia saw a short rawhide strap, with knots tied on the ends, hanging next to the frame. It made her recall the bruise on the dead man’s neck.
“Getorius,” she called out, examining the strap, “there’s a thong here that looks like it might match the welt on Behan’s throat. Could he have been strangled?”
“By whom, and for what reason? No, Behan obviously drowned.” He beckoned to her with the probe. “As long as you are here, do you want to examine him as part of your training?”
“I…I suppose so.”
“What were those books you were looking at?”
“See for yourself,” she said, taking the probe with fingers increasingly stiff from cold.
Getorius watched her begin searching gingerly around the dead man’s head, then turned away to examine the books.
Jerome’s recent translation of the Testaments propped up smaller volumes. Getorius skimmed past a codex by Bishop Eusebius, an account of early Christianity up to the time of Constantine, and several pamphlets, then took down a parchment-bound booklet. Its title page was written in a language and alphabet style he had not seen before, but from the Latin subtitle, regulae abbatis ciallani, Getorius surmised it was a list of rules formulated by Abbot Ciallanus, who had recently brought Hibernian monasticism to northeastern Gaul.
Getorius brought the volume to Arcadia. “Do you recognize this writing?”
She glanced at the page. “It’s probably Celtic. Behan did come from Hibernia.”
“Celtic. Interesting. I didn’t think it was being written much any more.”
“He is…was Hibernian, so it’s logical Behan would write in his native language.”
Getorius grunted agreement, put the book back, then unrolled and studied the three manuscripts on the desk. “One of these is in Latin,” he called to Arcadia, “but the other two also seem to be Celtic. Hmm, they have three-word groupings and phrases…like short verses. I’m taking these back with us until someone from Behan’s order claims them. His belongings too. Bandits will clean this place out of anything we leave behind.”
Arcadia stepped back, moved the instrument case, and sat down on the chair, trembling slightly. “I…I think I’m finished.”
Getorius came behind her, kissed his wife’s hair, and began to knead her neck muscles. “Does this help relax you, cara?”
“Mmm, nicely,” she murmured.
“Sorry I was a little curt with you earlier. What did you find out about Behan?”
“Well, that long scar on his right leg was from a nasty gash. Probably by an ax while he was cutting wood. It fits with the fact that he was left handed.”
“Good, you noticed.” Getorius gave her neck an affectionate squeeze.
“He has slightly larger muscles in that arm,” she continued, “and the palm has thicker calluses. Also by the position of his desk and writing instruments next to that window.”
“Very good, Arcadia. Anything else?”
She stopped his hand and turned around. “He did have the pox at one time.”
“Yes—pock marks on his face and chest. What about that welt on his neck? You still think he was strangled?”
“With that strap. It’s obvious to me.”
“A holy man of God murdered?” Getorius sounded skeptical. “I can’t see that anything’s been stolen…not that he had much anyone would want. Even that clothes chest probably contains only a spare cloak and tunic. His books are the only real things of value.”
“All right! His heart stopped pumping because he drowned. Galen wrote…”
Getorius interrupted his wife: “Galen never dissected a human body!”
“Surgeon, neither have you,” Arcadia retorted softly, realizing it was a point of contention with her husband. “Yet, you also think the heart works like a pump.”
“Fine,” he conceded, “Galen did recognize it as a pumping organ, but he thought it circulated pneuma, some kind of invisible animating spirit. Ridiculous!”
Although Galen had been dead for almost three centuries, Arcadia knew Getorius became vexed whenever he discussed the ancient physician whose ideas still dominated medicine. She decided to return to her conclusions about the dead monk.
“Behan wasn’t old. Can we determine exactly how he died?”
“I might be able to diagnose things like that more accurately if the bishop would let me dissect the body of one of those beggars who die every day.”
“Optila thinks Behan drowned.”
“So do I.” Getorius agreed. “Let’s find out. Use that speculum to keep his mouth open.”
“This one?”
“No, the smaller one.”
Arcadia winced as she inserted the bronze dilator into the dead man’s jaws, and then helped her husband turn the body and ease Behan’s head over the table edge. Mucus dribbled to the floor. When Getorius pushed hard on the monk’s back, a gush of water and phlegm spurted from the open mouth. Arcadia fought again to keep from retching.
“The Hun was correct about drowning,” Getorius concluded. “Behan may have fallen into a trance and not been aware of what was happening. Let’s get him faceup again.”
After the monk’s body was again lying faceup on the table, Getorius took the rough blanket off the bed and laid it over the corpse. “I’ll have a wicker cage made. The body can be put inside, then put back into the stream so cold water will preserve it until the bishop hears from Behan’s monastery.” He glanced around at the room’s furnishings. “Call the Hun inside. We’ll carry some things back with us.”
“Just a moment.” Arcadia went to the doorframe and disentangled the strap, then compared its width with the bruise on Behan’s neck. “The welt does match the strap, Getorius.”
“Would a murderer bother to come back inside and replace it on the door?”
“Behan could have been strangled here, then his body put in the stream.”
“Why go to all that trouble? And, as I said, there’s no motive.”
“None that we know of,” Arcadia retorted. “You get Optila. I’ll carry the books out to the cart.”
Stubborn female. “Fine, we’ll take only the books, desk, and clothes chest.” Getorius gathered up the three manuscripts, wondering if Theokritos at the palace library could translate them.
After helping load the two-wheeled cart and propping the hut’s door shut against wolves, Getorius sat next to his wife on the chest, in front of the desk. Arcadia had put on a full-length beige wool tunic and shawl against the cold. After pulling an elk-skin pelt over their knees, she leaned against the desk’s back. The five-mile journey back to Ravenna would be an uncomfortable one.
Arcadia glanced up at the cobalt November sky that played host to a brilliant sun. At least the afternoon has warmed up a bit. She took a deep breath of the keen odor
of pines to dispel the rancid taste of the monk’s hut that was still lodged in her throat, then snuggled against Getorius’ shoulder.
Optila guided the mare as it pulled the jostling cart along the rough path Behan would have used to reach the Via Popilia, a stone-paved road that led north to Ravenna. Getorius was silent until the cart turned off the lane and slid into the ruts of the Popilia.
“I’d seen Behan in the library a few times, when I’d gone to read medical texts,” he recalled. “He’s been here about two years, yet I don’t know a thing about him.”
“Perhaps Theokritos does.”
“I’ll ask him.” Getorius slipped an arm around his wife. “You’ve been quiet since we left the hut. Are you thinking of Behan?”
“Partly. I was also remembering the story of how you came to Ravenna.”
“That’s an old scenario, but it does read like one of Plautus’ dramas.”
“Except the plot is so implausible that it would be hooted out of the theater.” Arcadia sat up and kissed her husband’s cheek. “Still, tell me about it again, Getorius. It was a tragedy, yet it eventually brought us together.”
“Nicias told me the story. He was the legion surgeon at Mogontiacum and knew my parents.”
“Treverius and Blandina.”
“Yes. I was four years old when Burgondi warriors attacked the city. They were both killed in the bloodbath to make a usurper, Jovinus, emperor, but Nicias and some men from the garrison managed to escape and take me with them. They wanted to get to Ravenna.”
“But, after that unhappy beginning, Fortuna certainly cast dice favorable to Nicias and you.”
He nodded. “And that’s the unbelievable part that would give Plautus trouble. Nicias happening to meet Galla Placidia while she was on her way to Gaul, and her brother at Ravenna being the Emperor Honorius. She gave Nicias her ring and an introduction to him.”
“And Placidia remembered Nicias when she returned to Ravenna…” Arcadia reached for her husband’s hand. “Fortune… God…someone was looking out for you.”
Getorius blew on her cold fingers. “And for Nicias. Placidia made him palace surgeon.” Remembering, he looked away at the lengthening shadows of the evergreen forest that hemmed the road, then added softly, “He was the only father I really knew.”
“Nicias took care of you and trained you to be a surgeon.”
“I’m grateful, and now cara, I’m training you to be a medica. Despite the archdeacon’s opposition.”
“Surrus Renatus thinks wives should only manage their husband’s households. Did you know there’s a woman presbytera at the Arian sect church in town?”
“A woman?”
“I think her name is Thecla.”
“Well, Arians are also considered heretics.”
Arcadia pushed his arm in mock annoyance. “You mean that I’m one by not following a woman’s tradition and wanting to be a physician?”
“You’ll be a good one, cara.”
“Yes I will. And,” she jested, “after you’re made palace physician, I’ll take over our clinic.”
“Being surgeon to the Augustus and his family could be a deadly honor. Anyone who serves inside Lauretum Palace is undoubtedly caught up in court politics.”
As the Via Popilia neared Ravenna, the pine forest gradually gave way to patches of farmland. On either side, marshes lay as flat as Behan’s table. After the road passed under one arch of the aqueduct that supplied the city from the Apennine springs, skeletal poplars and the green-black spears of cypress trees began to line ditches bordered by the peculiar yellowish earth that had been reclaimed from swampland. Dormant gray vines tied to high trellis supports and distant, tile-roofed white farm buildings gave occasional relief to the monotonous landscape.
The Via Popilia crossed a small river, then, about a half mile before reaching the city walls, the road angled sharply to the northeast. As the cart careened into new ruts on the roadway, Arcadia tightened her grasp on Getorius. When Optila half-turned to see if his load and passengers were safe, the flattish profile of his Hun ancestry was evident.
As the cart approached the bridge over the southern arm of the Bedesis River, which went on to encircle Ravenna to the north, cultivated land gave way to marshes once again. Earlier that morning the glittering expanses had been shrouded in autumn fog, but under the late afternoon sun the smooth surfaces sparkled like dancing pearls. Beyond the bridge, the Porta Aurea was bathed in warm sunlight, momentarily living up to its name, “The Golden Gate.” The portal gave access to the ancient quarter of the city, the Oppidum, and dated back some four hundred years, to the time of the Emperor Claudius.
Massive round brick towers flanked the Aurea’s twin marble entranceways. Slouching sentries, eating chunks of roast pork impaled on their daggers, waved Optila through. A beggar on crutches hobbled forward, saw the Hun driver, muttered something, and walked back to the shadow of the portal.
Inside the wall, Arcadia saw the familiar roofline of the Basilica Ursiana and the square end-towers of Lauretum Palace. To the far right, a cluster of masts marked the port quadrant of the city, where merchant galleys could moor in a protected harbor, after being rowed in from the Adriatic Sea. Getorius wondered what was happening at the old naval base of Classis, two miles to the south. With the new Vandal threat at Carthage, hopefully war galleys would be under construction, or older ones refitted. He frowned when he thought of the legion camp on the Via Armini, where Ravenna’s garrison was billeted. There never seemed to be much training activity there, or on the adjacent Campus Martius.
“Flavius Aetius can’t seem to get the men to train properly,” he muttered aloud.
“What, Getorius?”
“Our barbarian mercenaries. They’re the butt of every tavern jest,” he complained.
“But the Augustus had to open enlistment to Goths, didn’t he?” Arcadia probed.
“Ever since Theodosius ordered it, yes, but it was a decision of desperation. Officers still train the men to fight in a line, behind shields. No room to maneuver against an enemy like…like Huns, who attack as suddenly as Jupiter’s thunderbolts.”
Arcadia gestured toward Optila with her head, but the driver gave no indication that he had heard the remark. “Husband,” she asked, “how did you get to be such an expert in military tactics?”
“I don’t read only medical texts, you know.”
Fragrant smells of baking bread, food frying in olive oil or lard, and roasting meat and fish, were heavy on the late afternoon air. The rays of the setting sun tinted the brick and stucco buildings a pale vermilion, even lending a temporary splendor to the damaged temple of Apollo, closed now for half a century. Further on, the shadowed front of the Basilica of Hercules acted as a backdrop for a colossal statue of the demigod. He stooped on one knee, supporting a hemisphere on his shoulders whose flat top surface was a solar and lunar hour dial.
Stalls in the new market square on the north side of the Via Theodosius were almost empty of customers; only a few slaves still bought bread and meat in the shops along a plaza colonnade. Subdued babble came from taverns, where patrons were eating supper. As they passed the public baths opposite the old forum, Getorius nudged his wife. The resident white-bearded philosopher was on the rostrum again, haranguing a scattering of idlers who were interested—or amused—enough to indulge him.
When Optila guided the mare onto the Via Honorius, a cold northeast wind buffeted the cart. Arcadia pulled up the elk skin, suddenly aware of how much her back ached and rump hurt. It would feel good to relax in the warm pool of her bathhouse.
Getorius’s villa, “The House of the Surgeon,” as it was commonly called, had been deeded to him by Nicias. It was located just south of Lauretum Palace, at the intersection of the Honorius with the Via Julius Caesar. The villa had a separate wing for the clinic where patients were treated. A side facing the Honorius was built into a second story whose lower level was divided into shops, including a fuller’s cloth works and a bakery. T
he latter’s bread aromas helped mask the unpleasant odors from the fuller, who used urine to set his dyes.
Nicias had designed the rooms to be ranged beyond the atrium, rather than around it. The villa’s main entrance was located off the Caesar, near the carriage gate, where a side door led from a courtyard into the house. Beyond the stable and the quarters for Brisios, the gatekeeper and gardener, were a small apple orchard and plots where herbs were grown. A walled garden of trees, flowers, and a fountain at the west end of the house provided a cool haven from the summer heat.
The unique feature of the building was a separate bathhouse with the same sequence of tepid, hot, and cold baths as the public one. Arcadia looked forward to the water’s comfort. After the unsettling experience of examining the monk’s body and the long, bone-jarring ride, it would be good to relax with a long soak in the warm pool—and perhaps entice her husband into some slow love-making.
Optila reined in the mare for the turn into the Via Caesar. The gatekeeper, Brisios, had been watching for him and opened the courtyard portals. He grasped the horse’s bridle as the cart rolled through the opening.
Getorius helped Arcadia down, gave Optila a gold tremissis, and watched the Hun walk across the street toward the palace barracks, before the gatekeeper closed the portals again.
“Brisios,” he ordered, “store that desk and chest in the stable. We may have to keep them until someone arrives from Gaul. Take the books to my study.”
“I will, Master.”
“I’ll take these three scrolls myself,” Getorius told his wife, “but I’m too tired to do anything with them right now.”
“I wonder if we’ve had patients today. Childibert will know.”
The end of the atrium facing the villa’s rooms was curtained off from the cold. Childibert, their Frankish house steward, had evidently heard them arrive. He pushed aside the drape and held up a letter.
“You must read now,” he said in a Latin corrupted by his guttural Germanic accent.
“Who is it from, another creditor?” Getorius quipped, taking the white vellum note.
His question was answered when he turned it over and saw the flap sealed by a blue wax lump stamped with the signet of Galla Placidia. Underneath, Valentinian III had traced his monogram through a template. Arcadia glanced at the twin imperial signatures.
