Kelli Stanley - The Curse-Maker

A one-eyed woman could tell your future, and see if you were still in it. A pockmarked youth with a perpetual itch sold Egyptian lotions. Amulets for every disease ever known and a few that someone made up dangled from the neck of a large woman with a growth under her chin. She’d let you touch it-for a price.

Retired soldiers hobbled by, one-legged, while women with festering breasts started to cry because they couldn’t nurse, their babies shrunken from illness or hunger. They bought potions made of cow piss and olive oil, and Babylonian unguent that was local beeswax dyed purple. The sellers mixed in shit from the public shithouse, of course. Everyone knew it was a phony if it didn’t smell bad. But what the hell-put it on, rub it in. Sulis will take care of you.

There were other faces in the crowd, sharper and quick-eyed, recognizing opportunity and holding open the door. Old people in chairs were carted this way and that by hopeful relatives who weren’t hoping for recovery. Stepmothers eyed their stepsons carefully and fingered certain concoctions with an appreciative gleam. Then there were the parents with the baby keeping them up at nights. They were looking for a potion-soaked rag, and they leaned on the counter and you could see in their eyes they weren’t overly particular about what was on it.

I looked up. The sky was blue and cloudless. Maybe for the rich, the pretenders like Grattius, all this was invisible. They could drift in and out of the waters, indulge their vices, enjoy being blind. But I couldn’t shut my eyes fast enough. I walked around to the east side of the temple to find Philo.

* * *

The house was about five years old and expensive. Sculptures of naked goddesses lined the way, and the floor mosaic was a sea scene, complete with frolicking nymphs. Expensive-but I expected his taste to be better.

I was shown in by a pretty young slave girl. She looked like she was on her way to the baths. Philo must be a kind master-maybe especially to the young and pretty ones. He was ushering out an old man hobbling on a stick, with an impossibly twisted and atrophied knee.

“Just keep it wrapped and soak it in the waters, Sulinus. It will feel better eventually.”

The old man looked at Philo as if the town were called Aquae Philonis. Must be nice to inspire that kind of faith. I wondered if I could. I wondered if I should.

I looked around for somewhere to throw the thought, but there was nothing but pricey furniture for it to land on. A beautiful room, beautifully and expensively furnished. My half-broken basket chair with the saggy bottom and the unfinished back wall by the kitchen flashed in front of my eyes.

“Arcturus! Glad to see you-I was hoping you’d come. How do you like Aquae Sulis so far?” Philo turned the full force of his charm on me, and I felt like I was under a waterfall.

“I don’t.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Well, you haven’t really seen the best part of it yet-”

“I think I have. I don’t hold much hope for the baths.”

He stared at me, then nodded.

“Ah. I see. You’ve come through the main marketplace, where every toenail collector in Britannia congregates to sell cure-alls. It is a bit ugly.”

“A bit? It makes a battlefield look like a fresco by Fabullus.”

He put his hand on my shoulder. “It’s difficult, I admit. Eventually, though, you come to understand that you can’t save everyone. Surely as a doctor you realize that.”

I looked up sharply. A recent lesson, and still too painful to hear from Philo’s mouth.

“I do realize that. But giving them false hope-”

“Any hope is better than no hope, Arcturus. People can live a few days longer on a lie. Does it matter so much who gives it to them? You, or I, or Faro Magnus, who claims to talk to the dead?”

His voice was strong, and his good-looking, aristocratic face gleamed with vitality. Or was it almond oil? Philo couldn’t have lived near the marketplace for long without a little of it rubbing off. He was probably close to sixty, looked twenty years younger if you didn’t look too hard. The gray temples weren’t just affectation. The lines were fine and the body still lean, but the age was there.

“Who was Rufus Bibax?”

The abruptness of the question took him by surprise. Probably an affront to his gentility. His smile said he was willing to make allowances for me.

“Bibax was a scribe, one of the professional curse-writers who surround the temple area. Beyond that, I’m afraid I don’t know anything else.”

“You didn’t know him?”

He laughed. “Heavens no, Arcturus. You saw what it’s like out there. I may tolerate it, but I don’t wade in it.”

“Do you know how long he’s been in Aquae Sulis?”

He shook his head regretfully. “I’m afraid I can’t be of much assistance to you there, either. The town has grown remarkably over the last few years. I’ve only lived here for six years myself. The other sellers and scribes might know. I don’t think he has any relatives-none have come forward, anyway.”

I looked at him. “Tell me, Philo-if you don’t know anything about Bibax, why the hell did you want me to talk to you?”

He laughed his easy laugh again. I couldn’t see any cracks in the clay, and I was looking.

“I appreciate your directness. It’s a welcome break from what I put up with on the council. First, I wanted you to come because I like you. You’re a talented, intelligent man, a fellow professional. Second, I wanted you to know that we buried Bibax, and I didn’t find anything else on his body. He dyed his hair, probably an effort to appear exotic. Several of the scribes claim to hail from Egypt.”

Egypt. Every two- as hustler selling goat gonads claimed to be from Egypt. That explained Rufus’s lack of red hair.

“Finally, I thought you might want to find out how things work around here, especially since Bibax’s murderer sent such a vivid message.”

I leaned forward. “Any guesses as to whom?”

Philo shrugged. “The temple or the priests who run it, perhaps. It’s the most obvious choice. Though I can’t see Papirius or anyone else strangling some poor scribe. That’s how the temple collects its money.”

“From the hustlers?”

“Yes, Arcturus. Every hustler-and every legitimate practioner, myself included-who has a stall or a space or a house around the center of the town, pays a tax to the temple. The temple owns the baths. Oh, I know, it’s all public, but the profits go to the temple, which cycles them-or is supposed to-back to the community. They collect the paltry entrance fee-collect taxes from all the freelance bath attendants, masseuses, depilators, et cetera. Even the towel rental.”

“Must be a complex operation. Accounting-wise, especially.”

“It is. It’s a separate city, really. Octavio is the head of the daily operations, but he has many centurions of a sort underneath him.”

“So all the bogus ointment-makers out there-”

“Pay the temple. As did Bibax.”

I shook my head. “ Ultor. I just don’t get it. If it was revenge on the temple, why choose such a minuscule player? Why him?”

“It doesn’t make sense, I know. But listen. I wanted you to be aware of how important you solving this murder is to the community. We don’t want the legion involved-in fact, they’ve just reduced the number of soldiers stationed at the fort, so I don’t know that there’s anyone there to help. We want to handle this independently, as a municipium. ”

“Why? Why not involve the army?”

“Because the baths and the temple are the heart of Aquae Sulis. Look out there. People from all over the empire have heard about these waters, and they come here looking for rest, for a cure, for health.”