Ruth Downie: Medicus

"No."

"Are you busy in the morning?"

"Yes."

"Too bad. Somebody's going to have to go down to Merula's."

"Uh. Send an orderly."

"It ought to be somebody official, and I'm on duty."

"Can't it wait?"

"No. One of the men's identified that body."

The shutters had been pushed back to let in the autumn sunshine. Beyond them, Merula's was almost empty. Benches were upturned on the tables. A boy of eight or nine was shoveling ash out of the grate under the hot drinks counter. A young woman with lank hair tucked behind her ears was sweeping sawdust into a gray pile with limp strokes of a broom. A buxom girl was barefoot on a stool, displaying a dainty silver chain around one ankle as she reached above a lamp bracket to wipe at the smudges on the wall. Ruso looked at the girl with the ankle bracelet. He thought of the discolored figure stretched out on the mortuary table. He w* shed he hadn't.

A door opened somewhere at the back of the bar and a third girl, this one heavily pregnant, emerged carrying a jar of oil. From somewhere in the shadows a gruff voice said, " 'Morning, Daphne."

Daphne came to an instant halt on the far side of one of the tables. Ruso had the impression she was holding her breath as the taller of Merula's two doormen stepped up close behind her.

"Just got out of bed, have we?" inquired the doorman. The pregnant girl flinched as he leaned around to peer into her face.

From the doorway Ruso noticed the cloth dangling unheeded in the hand of the girl standing on the stool, who had turned to watch the encounter. The lank-haired one shuffled away to sweep under the stairs.

The doorman was shaking his head despairingly. "Daphne, Daphne, what am I always telling you about conversation? When a gentleman says hello, you say hello back. Good morning, Daphne."

If Daphne made any reply, it was covered by the screech of the shovel being slid into the fireplace.

"Very nice. Now come here."

He seated himself behind her on the table, placed his hands on her shoulders, and pulled her back toward him until she was standing trapped between his knees with the oil jar propped awkwardly against her swollen belly. "You ought to be more careful," he said, his large fingers re tying her loose braid with a surprisingly deft touch. "You could have lost that ribbon. Couldn't you?"

She did not answer.

He gave her a rough shove forward. "Run along, then. The mistress don't want to see you standing around chatting."

As Daphne approached Ruso, her face was expressionless. She stood on tiptoe to fill the lamp on the bracket by the shutters. When she had finished, she wiped first her nose and then the neck of the jar with a cloth, and made her way back to the kitchen with the sway-backed walk of a woman working to counterbalance a heavy weight.

Ruso stepped forward onto the red tiles, avoiding a pile of sawdust. A broad figure emerged from behind the shutters to block his path. He recognized the fading ginger hair.

"We're closed," said the man in a tone that suggested he too remembered Ruso's last visit, and not fondly.

"Is the manageress in?"

The solid shoulders rose just enough to indicate that the man's job was to know nothing, see nothing, and be as unhelpful as possible, and he was intending to do it to the best of his ability.

Ruso looked him in the eye. He was saying "Would you like me to repeat the question?" when he heard another voice behind him.

"Who wants to know?"

He turned. The doormen had positioned themselves so that he was caught between them. "Gaius Petreius Ruso," he said to the second man, who seemed to be in charge. "Medicus with the Twentieth."

The man folded his arms. "Whatever it is," he said, "it didn't come from here. All our girls are clean. You ought to check down by the docks."

The man's bearing would have said ex-legionary even without the telltale scar where the scarf had failed to keep the armor from chafing his neck. Ruso said, "What's your name, soldier?"

The man assessed him awhile longer, then said, "Bassus. He's Stichus."

"Bassus. I'm here from the hospital to see your mistress on an official matter. It's confidential and it's urgent. So if you don't know where she is, you'd be wise to find out."

The crease between the doorman's eyebrows deepened. "Why didn't you say so?" He turned. "Lucco!"

The boy paused with the shovel in one hand and a brush in the other.

"Go and tell the mistress there's an officer to see her. Chloe, get the officer a seat."

Ruso said, "I'll stand," but the girl with the ankle chain had already stepped down from the stool. She heaved a bench off one of the corner tables and swung it over to land on the tiles with a clatter. "Take a seat, sir," she said, gesturing toward it as if he might not know what it was for. "What would you like to drink?"

Ruso declined. In the circumstances, it hardly seemed appropriate.

Bassus went back to whatever he was doing behind the counter. Stichus seated himself in a corner with the air of a man who had spent long years honing the skill of waiting for action.

Ruso's gaze ran along the loops of gold braid that had been painted at waist height along the deep red of the wall beside him. Similar loops ran along the adjacent wall. A large tassel blossomed in the corner, probably inspired by the painter's discovery that the two braids-which must have been started at opposite ends of the walls-weren't quite going to meet up.

The boy, Lucco, reappeared at the foot of the stairs, and assured him-with more optimism than accuracy, as it turned out-that the mistress would not be long. The girls went back to cleaning.

Merula evidently took just as long as other women to get ready. Ruso was pondering why, when seated at a bar table, the average soldier felt compelled to carve his initials into it, when a female voice from the top of the stairs snapped, "Chloe!"

The girl with the ankle chain looked up in alarm.

"Don't rub so hard, you stupid girl! You'll take all the paint off!"

The figure sweeping down the stairs was, Ruso assumed, Merula.

Ruso had no idea what the silky material in her tunic was called, but he knew it was expensive because his wife had needed something like it for a dinner party once and then had managed to lean across a brazier and burn a hole in it. Merula looked like a woman who would be more careful. The fabric was draped to make the most of an elegant figure. Her hair, which could almost have been naturally black, was pinned back, leaving little tendrils of curls framing her face. As she reached the foot of the stairs, Ruso observed that her eyelids were dark, her lips red, and her cheeks subtly pink. It was well done. Only the lines that ran between nose and mouth suggested that Merula would not look quite as good in broad daylight.

The lines deepened around something approaching a smile when she greeted him.

"Gaius Petreius Ruso," he announced, standing. "Medicus with the Twentieth."

"Gaius Petreius. Ah yes, the new doctor. Did my girls offer you a drink?"

He nodded. "Is there somewhere we could talk in private?"

Merula clapped her hands and called, "Out!"

Instantly the girls stopped what they were doing. Chloe threw the cloth down and beckoned Lucco to follow her into the kitchen.

Merula said, "Thank you, boys."

Bassus and Stichus glanced at each other, then retreated to stand guard outside.

"Now, Doctor." Merula seated herself opposite him. "What can I do for you?"

Ruso scratched his ear. There were good reasons why he was now facing the task of breaking bad news to this woman. Principal among them was that Valens was busy with morning clinic and the duty civilian liaison officer, whose job this surely was, was already late for a meeting. "You know the sort of thing," the man had explained from the back of his horse, swinging one leg forward so the groom could tighten the girth. "Just show them we take it very seriously, but whatever you do, don't promise we'll do anything about it."