Ruth Downie - Medicus

When he opened the door the terrier bitch rushed in and then stopped dead, sniffing, while several small shapes bounded past her and disappeared under the bed. Ruso narrowly missed treading on another one in the doorway.

One of Valens's friends, a veterinary surgeon, was waving his arms in the air, demonstrating the height of a jump taken by a filly with the potential to be one of the best horses in the province.

"Ruso!" Valens paused to pick out a date from a bowl propped on the arm of the couch. "Want to buy a horse?"

"Not today."

"How's the work going?"

"Well, the dog was eager to read it."

"Oh, sorry!" Valens gestured toward Ruso's room with the date. "I meant to tell you… " Ruso waited while Valens bit one end off the date. "I think you've got a mouse in there. She was at the door this afternoon. If you leave her, she'll flush it out for you."

"Right."

"Something else bothering you?"

Ruso leaned against the doorpost. "Tell me something," he said, "If you were buying a girl to work in a bar, would you choose someone with a respectable accent and some education?"

Valens shrugged. "Why not? She could help with the books."

"Add a bit of class," suggested the owner of the filly

"Might pull in one or two officers, I suppose," added another voice.

Its owner was prone on the floor next to a jug of wine. Ruso recognized the duty civilian liaison officer who had been too busy to break bad news to Merula. "Personally, Ruso, I'd think twice. Invest in a bar by all means, but don't get involved in running it. It won't go down too well higher up."

"I'm not running a bar, I-"

"He's just collecting women," Valens explained. "Which reminds me. We need a girl who can cook. Anybody who finds us one gets an invitation to dinner."

Ruso returned to his room. Hastily whisking a valuable scroll away from the nose of a curious puppy, he tidied up and stored all his work back in the trunks and fastened the lids. He piled everything else that was chewable onto the top of the cupboard. Then, since he had no money and nowhere else to go, he headed for the hospital.

Ruso lit the lamps in the records room, closed the door quietly, and lifted the box labeled CURRENT PATIENTS, ROOMS VI TO X onto the desk. He pulled up a stool, seated himself, leaned on his elbows and stared at CURRENT PATIENTS. A true philosopher would not give way to exasperation at the waste of an evening. A true philosopher, a man determined to apply the power of reason to every circumstance, would welcome this chance to catch up with his records.

There were footsteps outside the window. The low murmur of conversation. As the sounds faded, the smell of fried chicken wafted in through the shutters.

Ruso flipped through the record tablets with his forefinger until he reached Room Nine. He removed and opened the first one. "Crush injury to left foot." After consulting his rough notes, he dipped his pen into the ink and scrawled, "Day 3, still swollen, extensive bruising visible, no mobility in toes, henbane, repeat compress." Putting it aside to dry, he consulted his notes again and wrote "Day 4, breathing improved," on a chest infection.

The smell of chicken was still there. Reminding himself how much money he had saved by dining on hospital stew, Ruso recorded the symptoms of a blacksmith who had been admitted this afternoon with an unfortunately located boil, which he would be lancing in the morning.

Outside, men were strolling about with their comrades, eating fried chicken. Inside, Ruso was spending his free evening writing about other people's boils. A less philosophical man would have been depressed.

The slave girl was sitting up in bed. On the table, the lamplight glinted on the contents of a bowl of broth, which must have sat there untouched for several hours. Ruso's greeting of "Good evening. How are you feeling?" met with the usual serious stare and silence. The lack of response was beginning to irritate him. She was lucky to be alive. Once her arm had healed and she had been properly cleaned up and fed, she could be worth money. But her value would be limited if she remained silent and uncooperative. So, instead of pointing and saying, "How is the arm?" as a prelude to his usual inspection of the hand and check of the bandaging, he sat on the end of the bed.

"So. Tell me why you haven't eaten your dinner."

As he scrutinized her, he had the uncomfortable sensation that she was doing the same to him. He wondered how long she had been a slave. There must have been a time when she-or her owner-had been rich enough to afford jewelry for the pierced ears. Just as someone in Saufeia's past had thought she was worth the trouble of teaching her to read. He supposed the fortunes of slaves rose and fell, just like those of their owners. But unless he could find some way of communicating with this one, he would never find out how she had slid low enough to be dragged about by Claudius Innocens.

"I know you can speak," he insisted, although if he had not heard her shout out in the poppy-induced dreams, he would have begun to wonder.

No response.

"Are you always this quiet?"

No response.

"Well, silent one," he said, "my dining room is full of horsemen and my bedroom is full of dogs. So a little peace is a welcome change."

He took out his own writing tablet and opened it. The space under "Treatments for Eye Injuries" seemed even emptier than before. He sniffed. He glanced across at the girl. "How long is it since you had a trip to the baths? In fact, have you ever bathed?"

Moments later Ruso nudged the sign aside with his foot and opened the door of the hospital bathhouse with the hand that wasn't supporting the girl. Inside, he lowered her onto a bench and went back out to find a light. On the way back in he repositioned the sign against the foot of the wall: CLOSED.

The changing room was still warm although the fires would have been banked up for the night some time ago. Ruso began to light the lamps. The girl was watching him, clutching her arm, breathing the air that was thick with damp and sweat and perfumed oil. She was taking in the blue-painted walls, the niches and hooks for clothes, the white piles of discarded towels. He considered collecting the towels himself, then realized how inappropriate that would look. The master tidying for the slave.

"Wait there." His voice echoed around the room as he made the gesture that Valens made when telling the dog to "sit."

He lit only one lamp in the cold room: just enough to see by to walk through it. Ladies did not need a cold plunge. Claudia had always been very firm about that. Presumably slave girls could do without too.

The atmosphere in the warm room made his tunic stick to his skin. He tripped on a discarded wooden shoe and almost turned his ankle. The lamp he was carrying swayed and spat as the oil spilled out onto the floor. He sent the shoe clattering across the tiles toward the hot room door, where the rising light revealed an empty rack looming over a jumble of discarded footwear. Another used towel dangled over the side of the massage couch. A strigil, edge glistening with the last oily scrapings of dirt, skin, and hair, lay on the rim of the tub. Ruso, who never used these baths and had never thought to inspect them, was willing to bet they didn't leave this sort of mess when the chief administrator was around. Evidently they weren't expecting him back before morning.

He wiped the strigil on the towel, then dropped the towel to mop up the spilled lamp oil. The light caught an end-of-the-day rainbow sheen dappling the surface in the tub, but at least the water was still warm. He sniffed the contents of a couple of bottles that had been left on the shelf. Spice. Lavender. The girl could take her pick.

The coals in the brazier of the hot room were almost out. The room smelled of overheated men. He had barely stepped inside when something landed on his head. He flinched and shot up a hand to brush it away, then realized, shook his head, and smiled. This was not Africa. There were so few biting and stinging creatures here that the hospital didn't even have its own poisons expert. What he had felt was only condensation dripping from the ceiling.