Rosemary Rowe - A Pattern of Blood

She was pale and shaking, and Sollers led her to the stool where she sank down gracefully, her head in her hands, and for a moment we watched her in silence. Then she found her voice. ‘Pardon me, citizens,’ she managed. ‘I do not know what weakness overcame me.’

And why should the sight of Flavius’s writing tablets bring it on? That was the question I wanted to ask, but I judged the moment was not propitious. Besides, from the look on his face, Marcus would have considered it unfeeling and I would have risked a stinging rebuke. I held my tongue.

‘Momentary faintness like this is not unusual,’ Sollers was saying, with a professional air. ‘Your mind has sustained some dreadful shocks, and this has produced imbalance in your body. You have a surfeit of dry and airy humours. It often happens, in such circumstances.’

The maidservant came hurrying back at this moment with a goblet of watered vinegar, but he waved it away imperiously. ‘Water alone might have helped. Coolness and wet will help correct the imbalance. But vinegar will only add bitterness.’

‘Honey and water is better?’ I was remembering his instruction to bring hydromel.

‘It is.’ He smiled towards me as he spoke, and again I felt the flattery of his regard. ‘Sweetness will help to drive out sorrow, and also increase her strength. Ah! Here is your servant with some now.’ He took the cup from a panting Junio and held it to the lady’s lips.

Julia swallowed some hydromel and did indeed seem a little revived. She gave Sollers a faint, glowing smile. ‘Thank you. I am better already.’

I was ready to ask my question about the writing blocks, but Sollers intervened. ‘All the same, lady, I think you should be cupped. That will draw off the dangerous humours physically. It is a strong remedy, stronger than I would normally advise, but there is need for a swift cure. You have a funeral to attend tonight, and your presence will be required at the banquet too.’

‘You are going to bleed her?’ I asked, doubtfully. Julia had turned white at the prospect, but obviously the little crisis had affected my social judgement. It was not my place to question the doctor’s decision.

He took no offence. ‘Not bleed her, no. That is for reducing fever in the blood. This is an affliction of the brain, caused by airy humours: dry-cupping will suffice.’

I had heard of it, the application of suction to the skin to draw the offending humours through it. Julia looked greatly relieved at this reduction of sentence, and glanced at me with the most charming conspiratorial smile. Even so, my next question startled everyone, most of all myself. Ever afterwards I wondered how I dared to ask it. ‘Can I assist you, Sollers?’ I enquired.

Everyone stared at me in astonishment. The medicus was the first to recover.

‘Citizen, a pair of hands would certainly be useful, but there are many slaves here who can help me.’

I shook my head. ‘They have a funeral to prepare,’ I said. I can be stubborn when I choose, and having volunteered myself to this, I was seized by a strong desire to see it through. ‘In any case, I should be fascinated to observe your skill.’

He was visibly flattered by that.

I saw him waver, and I pressed my advantage. ‘As you, once, were interested to witness Galen’s work,’ I added.

He gave a slight smile. ‘In that case, citizen, if Julia has no objection. .?’

She indicated that she had none.

‘Then by all means watch me if you wish. Though there is little anyone can do to help, and very little to see. We shall require a cupping bowl, that is all, a little lint and a lighted taper. You will find all these things in the consulting room of my apartments. Or better, perhaps we should take Julia Honoria there. I have good lamps, and an upright chair with arms which I use for operating — it helps to steady my hands. Julia may sit in that and support her arm. My box of salves and remedies will be on hand, too, to restore her after the cupping.’

Julia made no demur, so he placed a firm hand under her elbow, and — with the assistance of Junio, who stepped forward at my signal — helped her across the courtyard to the room, with her handmaidens in attendance. I followed them, as suggested, but the rest of the company, after a little hesitation, dispersed.

If I had been a patient of Sollers, I thought, I should either have made a miraculous recovery the moment I walked in through his door or (perhaps more likely) expired entirely from fright. One’s symptoms could scarcely be more dreadful than the treatments hinted at here.

The very sight of the implements set out on the surgeon’s table was enough to induce an immediate fever. There were blades for cutting rotting flesh; saws for bones and limbs; heating irons for cautery; hand drills for the skull; a dreadful four-jawed device with ratchets, for some internal use; and a pair of fearsome pincers for the teeth. I remembered that army surgeons were trained to ignore their patients’ cries. The very thought made me shudder. I turned away.

True, on the shelves around there were labelled caskets of dried herbs to ease distress — I spotted mustard, crocus, belladonna, linseed, poppy and mallow — and vessels of oils, salt, turpentine and vinegar to clean the wounds. But my eyes were instinctively drawn back to the surgeon’s gallery on the table: it looked like a torturer’s armoury. And, among the rest, as Sollers had said, was a selection of cupping bowls — some, delicate affairs of horn, with tiny apertures in the bottom, while others were more robust in bronze, large hollow bell shapes with a smooth lip at the edge.

Sollers selected one of the latter, and asked Julia to bare her arm. She did so herself, waving away the maidservant who stepped forward to help. I admired her fortitude. Sollers had lighted a small piece of lint from a taper which he dropped into the cup, and now, rubbing a little oil around the rim, he was preparing to clamp the bell firmly against the milky skin of the proffered arm.

‘Will it not burn her?’ I could not restrain the question.

‘It will be hot at first, certainly.’ Sollers spoke with his customary pride in his own expertise, and I realised that he was enjoying giving this little demonstration. ‘But the lint will burn away the natural vapour in the jar, and since nature abhors a vacuum, the excess humours will be sucked out of the arm. They’ll fill the space and put the fire out. If we had more leisure, I would have used a bone cupping bowl, and sucked the humours out myself, through the hole in the base. But it is getting late, and Julia must be well enough to face the funeral celebrations tonight. This method is stronger and brings swifter results.’

Indeed, within a few moments he was withdrawing the cup from her arm, and I could see what he meant about the vacuum. There was no fire in the cup, and no actual burning on the arm, although the skin was reddened and marked where it had been drawn up into the cupping vessel. I had, I remembered, seen a similar bruise on the arm of Quintus Ulpius as he lay dead at my feet. I remembered that he, too, had been cupped shortly before.

I tried to imagine Sollers applying this treatment to the decurion. And then something occurred to me. I had been an idiot not to think of it before.

I turned to Sollers, with what I hoped was a disarming smile. ‘You did the same to Quintus yesterday morning?’

‘Not quite the same, no.’ He was rubbing a perfumed salve gently into Julia’s arm and she was smiling at him gratefully. ‘Quintus was suffering from a fever, so I wet-cupped him. A similar process, but one cuts the vein. It draws blood, and hence the fiery humours are drawn out.’

I took a deep breath. ‘And what, on these occasions, do you do with the blood?’