Ruth Downie: Medicus

"You said she isn't worth anything."

Innocens paused. "Well, not the way she is, sir. After she's been cleaned u p — "

"I'll take her off your hands."

"She's a good strong girl, sir. She'll perk up in a day or two. I'll knock a bit off the price for that arm."

"What price? You told me she was lazy and useless."

"Useless at cleaning, sir, but an excellent cook. And what's more …"

Innocens raised his free arm to steady the girl as he leaned forward in a haze of fish sauce and bellowed over more hammering-"just the thing for a healthy young man like yourself, sir! Ripe as a peach and never been touched!"

"I'm not interested in touching her!" shouted Ruso, just as the noise stopped.

Someone sniggered. Ruso looked up. A couple of men were leaning down over the scaffolding. One of them said something to the other and they both laughed. The youth holding the girl glanced up and grinned.

It would be all over the fort by morning.

You know that new doctor up at the hospital? The one that's been telling the boys to stay out of whorehouses?

What about him?

Hangs around back streets. Tries to buy women.

Innocens was smiling again. Ruso suppressed an urge to grab him by the neck and shake him.

"What would you like to offer, sir?"

Ruso hesitated. "I'll give you fifty denarii," he muttered.

Innocens's jowls collapsed in disappointment. He shrugged the shoulder not being used to prop up his merchandise. "I wish I could, sir. I can hardly afford to feed her. But the debt I took her for was four thousand."

It was a ridiculous lie. Even if it wasn't, Ruso didn't have four thousand denarii. He didn't even have four hundred. It had been an expensive summer.

"Fifty's more than she's worth, and you know it," he insisted. "Look at her."

"Fifty-five!" offered a voice from the scaffolding.

"What?" put in his companion. "You heard the man, she's a virgin. Fifty-six!"

Innocens scowled at them. "One thousand and she's yours, sir."

"Fifty or nothing."

The trader shook his head, unable to believe that any fool would offer all his money at the first bid. Ruso, remembering with' a jolt that payday was still three weeks away, was barely able to believe it himself. He should have put some water in that wine.

"Two hundred, sir. I can't go below two hundred. You'll ruin me."

"Go on!" urged the chorus from the scaffolding. "Two hundred for this lovely lady!"

Ruso looked up at the workmen. "Buy her yourselves if you like. I only came out for a bottle of bath oil."

At that moment the girl's body jerked. A feeble cough emerged from her lips. Her eyelids drifted shut. A slow silver drool emerged from her mouth and came to rest in shining bubbles on the sodden wool of her tunic. Claudius Innocens cleared his throat.

"Will that fifty be cash, then, sir?"

What are you doing in here?"

Ruso opened one eye and wondered briefly why he was being addressed by a giant inkwell. Opening the other eye to find himself in fading light and surrounded by shelves, he realized he must have fallen asleep in the records office. He hauled himself upright on the stool and yawned. "Catching up on some notes. How are you feeling?"

Valens grinned. "Better than that thing in Room Twelve. It looks as if it's just crawled out of the sewer. What is it?"

Ruso reached for the writing tablet before Valens could make out: Female, history unknown, fracture to lower right arm, pale, dry cough, weak, no fever. Note: Launder bedding, treat withfieabane. He snapped it shut and slid it into the Current Patients box.

"That thing is a sick slave with a broken arm."

"Whose?"

"Her own."

"Very funny Whose slave?"

Ruso scratched his ear. "Couldn't say, really" He had entertained a faint hope that his purchase might be claimed by the lovesick porter and taken off his hands, but the man had not recognized her.

"I leave you on your own for a couple of days," said Valens, "and you fill the place with expiring females."

"A couple of fishermen found the other one already expired. The town council clerk wouldn't let them dump her outside his office and they couldn't think what else to do with her."

Valens shrugged. "Of course. We're the army, we'll deal with everything. If somebody doesn't identify her soon, I suppose we'll have to bury her too. So who said her friend could die in one of our beds?"

"She isn't dying," argued Ruso, seizing the chance to side step the question of who had brought her in.

"That's not what I heard. She on your list?"

He nodded.

"No hope for her, then." Valens glanced out into the corridor, pushed the door shut, and lowered his voice. "Five says she'll be dead by sunrise."

Ruso pondered this for a moment. Payday seemed farther away now than when he had foolishly offered all his remaining cash for a slave he didn't want. If he could just keep her alive until tomorrow, he would salvage some of his dignity and come out of it with money in his purse.

"She isn't dying," he repeated with more confidence than he felt.

"Five says she's alive when they blow first watch."

"If she were a dog, you'd knock her on the head now."

"Well she isn't, and I shan't. So push off and find some patients of your own to annoy."

The hollow cheeks of the patient in Room Twelve looked distinctly yellow against the white of the blanket that had been draped over her. The injured arm, secured across her chest in a crisp linen sling, rose and fell gently with each breath. The drugged drink had done its work. She was asleep. Her doctor placed a cup of barley water on the table beside the bed and went to the shrine of Aesculapius.

The hospital entrance hall was empty save for a smell of fresh paint and roses. Aesculapius leaned on his stick and looked out from his niche with a quiet dignity that somehow transcended the inscription WET PAINT chalked underneath him. The god of healing needed more maintenance than most of his colleagues: The touch of his eager supplicants tended to damage his paint. Today the faithful had left a bunch of white roses and a couple of apples at his feet, hoping to be saved from their ailments. Or, more likely, from their doctor.

Usually Ruso spared the deity no more than a passing nod. Now he paused to stand in front of the niche and murmur a promise of two and a half denarii should the girl in Room Twelve survive until morning.

Having thus enlisted extra help for the cost of only half his winnings, and with nothing to pay if the god failed to perform, Ruso headed back to Room Twelve to see what more could be done to improve his chance of winning this unexpected and probably illegal wager.

"Are you sure he's-dead?" asked Ruso, the words punctuated by grunts as he struggled to maneuver his end of the stretcher through the door.

"Positive, sir," said the surgical orderly, deftly kicking the door shut behind him. "The man who told me heard it from someone who got it from one of the kitchen staff in the legate's house. It'll be announced at parade this morning."

"How do the kitchen staff know?"

"The dispatch rider popped by for something to eat while the legate read through the message, sir."

Ruso suppressed a smile. "I suppose you know the cause of death?"

"Not sure yet, sir. All we know is, he had a funny turn on the way back from sorting the Parthians out."

They lowered the stretcher onto the table. "Do we know who's taken over?" asked Ruso, sliding out one of the carrying poles.

"The army are backing Publius Aelius Hadrianus, sir." The orderly slid out the other pole and stacked them both in the corner. "I'm told he's a very generous man when it comes to bonuses. Double the going rate is what I hear."