Marilyn Todd - Virgin Territory

In the corner a small bronze container bubbled on the brazier. Diomedes lifted it off and poured the boiling water over a pile of crushed peppermint leaves, oblivious of the aromatic scent. When it was cool, he would strain it and add it to the milk and, with any luck, there should be enough of the mixture to cure a week’s worth of indigestion in the Collatinus household. Ordinarily he would have passed the half hour’s waiting either reading or catnapping, but today there was too much to catch up on and he set about making another infusion, this time of horehound with wine for the cook’s cough.

He’d spent as much time as he could with Claudia over the last few days, more time than he should, in fact, but it was important to him. Dare he risk a second kiss? Progress was good-look how grateful she’d been because he’d nursed that floozy Cypassis back to health. She could have taken that grainship yesterday. Why hadn’t she? She hinted her stay concerned business with the old man, but Diomedes knew that wasn’t the whole truth. From what he’d overhead, Eugenius’s business with Claudia (and no one except the two of them seemed privy to exactly what this entailed) was pretty well concluded to the satisfaction of both parties.

Could her reluctance to go, he wondered, his heartbeat increasingly rapid, have any connection with himself?

There was one other hint, the most solid yet. If she wasn’t interested in him, why spend so much time in his company?

Flimsy excuses. First she needed balsam, then she was back to enquire as to the efficacy of chalk in bathwater. She’d even demonstrated a close interest in the tools of his trade, selecting a pair of forceps with long, slender handles, hollowed jaws and interlocking teeth and asking, ‘What’s this for?’

When he told her they were pilecrushers, it was truly comical to note the speed with which she dropped them.

Another time she said, ‘They found that child, you know,’ and he pretended not to know about the missing kid. That way she was forced to spend yet more time with him as she recounted the story of the child-a boy, as it turned out-who had been frightened by the storm, ran for shelter then got himself hopelessly lost. He was eventually found over in Fintium by an old fisherman whom he cajoled into taking him out next day, little suspecting there was a storm of a very different kind awaiting his return.

Diomedes had smiled at the way she’d ended the story by saying, ‘I’d have scalped the little bugger if he’d been mine.’ She injected such energy into things!

Had he been born either wealthy or aristocratic, it would have been easy. Instead, as a Greek, he was acutely aware of the disadvantages weighed against him. Setting the cook’s horehound infusion to one side, he moved across to his desk and opened an envelope of papyrus. Shaking a dozen or so tiny oval seeds of fenugreek into his mortar, he began to pound them with his pestle. In a poultice, they should sort out Antefa’s boil once and for all. Yes, if only he’d been born patrician!

His lips pursed instinctively whenever he thought of Marcus Cornelius Orbilio. Everything about the man screamed class. Class and breeding, and he hadn’t realized Claudia knew him so well until he saw the two of them together on Thursday night-Orbilio in his fancy scarlet cloak, Claudia in that sensuous midnight blue creation.

Impossible to find words to describe the sense of loss, of failure, that he experienced in that split second. They were two of a kind. Same class, same background-what chance did a Greek physician stand?

That night Diomedes had prayed to Aphrodite-oh, how he had prayed-for help, and to his utter astonishment the goddess dismissed Orbilio the very next day, demonstrating in that one Olympian gesture that there was no stigma attached to being a doctor. It’s a respectable profession, Aphrodite was telling him, requiring skill and qualifications well beyond the abilities of the average man. You should not feel shame.

Thus his spirits lifted and his confidence soared with them.

But however buoyed up he was by Aphrodite’s support, Diomedes appreciated it was far too soon to moot the subject of marriage. Nevertheless, he worked on it as skilfully as he worked on his remedies. Claudia was young, beautiful, suggestible even, and Diomedes more than most understood the immense power of sex. It could pull a person against their will, draw them like a fish on a line-and women, especially, were susceptible. His Claudia would be no different.

Content with progress on both his love life and Antefa’s troublesome boil, he decided it was time to stretch his legs. Automatically patting the little stone statue of his healing god, Asklepios, he turned left to follow the dusty track up the hill. The view from his quarters might not be the worst in the world, but even a physician grew sick of certain smells and the stink of urine from the adjacent fuller’s yard was one of them.

The scenery was breathtaking, the air redolent with pine and spurge and wild rosemary. The African Sea, today as blue as forget-me-nots, tickled the sands under a cloudless sky while sheep bleated contentedly beneath the noonday sun. He would miss this land, he thought, but come spring it would be time to move on. To move on, the way he had always moved on, forever seeking his sacred goal. So often in the past he had been on the point of giving up, fearing his aim to be as unattainable as immortality itself-but now, since meeting Claudia, he was not so sure. He felt his fists clench. If only-

The raucous cry of a jackdaw cut in and he paused to look down on the villa, its red roof dwarfed by the distance between them. Miniature figures dashed hither and thither, always at someone else’s beck and call. So many of them! When he took on the job, Diomedes had no conception of the size of the Collatinus empire, nor that he would be required to doctor the entire contingent of slaves single-handed. For the most part, his previous positions had entailed little more than pandering to the problems of over-indulgence by prescribing fresh air and exercise and a decent diet. Well, excess was no problem in this family, quite the contrary, but he hadn’t expected to have to earn his living as a slave doctor. Diomedes plucked a blade of grass to chew on and continued his climb.

These rocks, these coves, these shrouded mountain ridges seemed to him more Greek than Roman, even down to the reserved and sombre townspeople, and he felt very strongly that the island ought to have remained in his countrymen’s hands. Instead it had been wrenched from their grasp, and it was unfortunate that the very people who had founded democracy should have taken this rugged and beautiful island from the Sicels and then promptly allowed it to be ruled by a succession of tyrants. As a result it fell under Roman dominion and now his own land, too, was a Roman province. He was taught as a child to be proud to be a part of the Empire. Well, he wasn’t. He was Greek, and as such he was viewed by Romans-especially Romans like that arrogant bastard Orbilio-as second rate. Diomedes pursed his lips. We shall see, he thought. We shall see who’s top and who’s not.

A fat, stripey bee came buzzing up to check whether this newcomer was a walking pollen factory, decided he wasn’t and buzzed off elsewhere.

One thing had been bothering him these past two days. A small matter, but it nagged him like an obstinate itch.

Someone had been in his room.

In the few months since his arrival, Diomedes had become aware that someone was regularly filching one of his eye drugs. Minute quantities were being taken at a time, but he had quickly noticed that one particular copper vessel was getting gradually lighter and now he weighed it once a week on his balances to prove it. This didn’t bother him. Someone in the house had poor eyesight but was shrewd enough to correct it and stealthy enough to ensure no one else found out. Sooner or later the supply would run dry and the culprit (he suspected it was Senbi) would be forced into the open. Diomedes was content to wait.