M. Scott - Rome - The Emperor's spy

He didn’t stammer, either; that came only when he was afraid. In Hannah’s presence, he was fluent and engaging and therein lay the heart of her conflict.

She loved Ajax; six months in his daily company had made that certain. She loved him for his courage, for his wisdom, for the scars on his back and the history she might never know. She loved the tone of his voice and his wildness, the sense of danger in his presence that left her so very safe. She loved his cautious, overwhelming care of Math, and his honouring of the oaths that bound him. She loved his eyes and the curve of his mouth. She loved his scent, after the end of a day’s riding.

But Saulos… Too often, the face that held her mind when she lay down to sleep was Saulos’. Too often, the voice that continued unbroken the discussions of the day was Saulos’, engaging her in conversation as if she were an equal, setting him far apart from the Greek-schooled sophists of Hannah’s acquaintance, all of whom treated women like cattle.

Unexpectedly, she remembered her mother, who had taught her of Pythagoras, who, almost uniquely amongst the philosophers of old, had schooled women alongside men. Blinking fiercely, she reached for the bag of linen, knives and salves and the nested copper pots that were her constant company.

‘I make you unhappy?’ Saulos asked.

Hannah shook her head. ‘I was thinking of my mother,’ she said. ‘She instructed me in the treatment of festering wounds.’

She spoke Greek with him, where Ajax and Math still spoke Gaulish. It felt fresh and sharp on her tongue, the language of poets and medicine. She said, ‘You wish me to change your dressing?’

‘I’m afraid I do. It’s the heat, I think. The wound festers more in summer than in winter, and here more than in Gaul. In the past day, it has become exceptionally fluid. I wouldn’t bother you otherwise.’

He leaned forward, resting his arms on the trestle in front of him, that she might see for herself. Unlike the drivers, he wore a thin linen tunic which meant that when flies came to investigate his wound, they settled on the fine weave and left spots behind. Hannah noted the speckled dirt of their passing just before a chance shift in the breeze brought her the smell. Saulos saw her wrinkle her nose.

‘I’m sorry.’ His hands spoke it better.

‘Should a patient apologize to his physician for needing care? I don’t think so.’

Hannah busied herself with the routine of preparations, the same each time so that she might not forget anything; first the linen strips laid out, and then the cotton dressings. Near to them, the salves in their order, and beyond them the nest of five hand-beaten copper pots that held each half the volume of the one above, down to the smallest that held a mouthful and was only for the very sweet or very bitter drenches. Last were the knives, forceps and the lead vessel topped with wax that held her scouring paste for the debridement of wounds.

No man ever liked to watch her lay out cold iron. Saulos sat in profile, looking past her to where Ajax had walked on to the track and was explaining to Math exactly why he should not have tried to show off earlier. Ajax was not speaking especially loudly, but his voice carried from one side of the compound to the other and every other apprentice boy heard it.

Math was scarlet; every part of him burned with shame. Hannah winced inside. On the far side of the table, Saulos pinched the bridge of his nose and clicked his tongue. ‘Math should ride a race soon,’ he said conversationally. ‘He’ll only learn properly if he’s put under pressure.’

‘We were just speaking of that,’ Hannah said. ‘Ajax pointed out that the only race coming up is the trial to see who will go to Rome. Too much hinges on it and, in any case, Math’s not ready.’

‘With respect,’ Saulos said, ‘I think he’s as ready as he’s ever going to be. He won’t improve without the added pressure. That boy is brilliant but lazy. He learns best when he must. What more could he ask for than a trial to prove himself?’

Hannah blew out her cheeks. ‘He’s not good enough yet,’ she said, and in the saying, knew it was true. ‘He was brought up riding horses, not driving them. It’s a different skill.’

‘But one he’s desperate to acquire. The need shines from him throughout the day. Only by being given the chance will he begin to learn what he needs. You wish me to remove my tunic?’

‘If you would.’

With a self-conscious modesty that only a Hebrew could achieve, Saulos turned fully away, stripped off his belt and pulled his tunic over his head, and with that she had to tear her mind away from Math and Ajax and turn it instead to her profession.

The bandage that encircled Saulos’ chest and reached over his right shoulder was soiled with only the usual dust and sweat, except at the place where the ulcer had oozed its foulness on to it. There, it was evilly crusted and glued to his body.

With clinical care, Hannah cut the linen, letting fall those parts that could do so. The skin beneath was the pale white of a Gaulish winter, untouched by the Alexandrian sun. The ulcer lay just medial to his scapula, and was a circular hand’s breadth in diameter. Here, in spite of the grease and ointments she had applied not five days before, and the lace of thin cotton gauze after, the dressing stuck firmly to the wound and surrounding skin.

She held her breath as she eased the stiff, foul cloth inwards from its margins. Saulos gasped, tightly. The excess flesh of his belly quivered and rolled. For both their sakes, she tugged the last bit sharply away.

‘Done.’

‘Thank you.’ His voice was a thread, whispering.

He had been right about the wound’s new fecundity. Damp humours, ripe and yellow as custard, covered its surface, with the wound edges palely friable beneath. The smell was of old death and liquefaction, sweetly rotting. Breathing only through her mouth against the stench, Hannah dropped the fetid bandage to the floor. An avalanche of flies fell on it, feasting.

She kicked the mess away and began to clean the wound, examining the ripe flesh at the edges and the bed of healing tissue beneath. A slave had brought warm water without her asking; after a winter in which she had cared for them as if they were freeborn, the slaves watched her as if she were the empress, whose will must be anticipated at every step. She reached for her gauze and began to swab at the edges.

‘It’s deeper and more extensive than it was,’ she said, when she had cleaned it fully, ‘but it hasn’t begun to under-run the skin again as it had done in Gaul.’

Saulos grimaced. ‘Forty lashes less one. You’d think that by now I had paid enough.’

Hannah raised a brow. She had been treating him for over six months and not once in all that time had he admitted that the wound was the result of an unhealed flogging. Now, she thought she heard regret in his voice, or shame.

Carefully, she said, ‘Ajax has been flogged. The scars are clear on his back. It didn’t make him a lesser man.’

He had no time to say he was less than Ajax, or that his flogging was for a lesser offence — both of which would have been his style — because by then she was applying the scouring paste and Saulos couldn’t have answered even if he had wanted to. He folded his forearms on the trestle ahead of him and leaned his brow on them, blanching the skin with the pressure. Over the space of the next while, the sweat grew slick at his temples and his fingers pressed on to the boards until they took on the same colour as the pale, sunned wood.

Hannah dropped the fouled spatula into a bucket of sand and used another the same to scrape the paste off, bringing with it the dead and dying matter of his wound. Slaves took the foul ones away and burned them.