Death of an Empire (34 page)

All day, a steady stream of patients, gawkers or personages of importance passed through Myrddion’s doors. As the long hours advanced, the healer worked to the point of exhaustion, his cracked ribs protesting every time he bent to examine rotted teeth or asked a crying child to show him the cuts, abrasions or wasted limbs that had brought its parents to his clinic. Cadoc and Finn did all the hard physical work, washing instruments and drawing teeth, and even, under Myrddion’s direction, setting simple broken bones. In a multi-coloured, multi-racial stream, the denizens of the subura flocked to the small shop-front with every ailment that Myrddion knew and a frightening number of symptoms that he didn’t.

Several family members presented in a very emaciated condition, although there was no lack of food available. The distraught parents swore that their children had lost their appetites and could only be tempted by sweet treats that they frequently vomited up as soon as they had eaten them. The children were listless, very small for their age and slow in their responses to his questions.

Myrddion prescribed a purgative herb and forbade the parents to permit the children to eat the sweetmeats they craved, asking them instead to provide them with fresh fruit, vegetables, eggs and meat. Privately, the healer knew that the parents were unlikely to be able to do so, for unfortunately the poor had little money to purchase the bare essentials of life.

More worrying were four adults who complained of blinding headaches that prevented them from carrying out the most basic of tasks. These chronic patients had visited many other healers but had received no lasting relief from their symptoms. After observing the patients closely, Myrddion noticed a common affliction with all four patients – that they were having difficulty walking. The gait of each was unsteady and all four had a peculiar walk in which the front of the foot took most of the weight. They were also having similar difficulties with their hands, so Myrddion deduced that something was causing problems with their tendons. He offered pain relief for their headaches, but the underlying cause remained a total mystery to him. His brows knit with perplexity, for although he consulted the scrolls until his eyes ached with strain, he was unable to offer even an elementary diagnosis for such a large group of patients. Failure settled over his shoulders like a cloak of frustration.

Even so, the healers accepted payment for their services, initially a uniform amount, but soon adapting the fees to fit differing financial needs of their patients. Myrddion refused to deny treatment to ragged slum-dwellers with nothing to give. Still, he
understood the emasculating nature of charity and agreed to accept whatever payment his patients could afford at a time when they were in a position to pay for his services.

At the end of the first day, the healers had amassed a small store of silver and bronze coins, several eggs, a brass ring, a basket of ripe olives, a tiny stone carving of a household god and a small bird in a wicker cage. As the tiny creature would never survive if it was set free, and was far too small for eating, Willa was given the yellow bird to feed and to love.

Willa was now at least three years old, with burn scars much like the injuries Cadoc bore, but she lacked his natural ebullience and was a self-contained, mute little girl. Months ago, Myrddion had established that there was no physical damage that prevented the child from speaking; her silence was more likely to be caused by the trauma of her injuries and the death of her mother. Willa took one look at the dejected bird and then, like the sun finally emerging from rain clouds, her face broke into a wide smile and she went in search of water for the tiny creature.

After the second day of solid work, their store of coins had increased and Myrddion’s perplexity regarding his undiagnosed patients was deeper. Among the stranger forms of payment for their services, they had received a small bunch of radishes and peppers and, inexplicably, an orange tree in a pot. It was a tiny, malnourished thing, but Myrddion accepted it with grateful thanks before giving it to Pulchria. She was delighted, and promised to plant it in the central atrium where it would grow and thrive.

Day followed day in the same unvarying pattern of illness and pain.

Myrddion discovered that he could ease the suffering of many of his patients, but life for the poor underclass of Rome was far more dangerous than in any city he had ever known. As the heat of summer beat down on the stone of the city, causing the roughly
cobbled streets to become painful underfoot, illness flourished in the subura, breeding in piles of rotting refuse and excrement and spread by the flies that swarmed over the detritus of Rome. Children came to Myrddion with suppurating eyes and sores turned septic from poor hygiene. To his utter dismay, one hysterical mother brought in a babe with nasty bites all over its body. The healer recognised those tooth marks immediately. Rats had tried to devour the infant as it slept.

At night, by the light of his precious oil lamp, Myrddion kept notes of the strange ailments that he saw daily. But observation and recording weren’t enough. Somewhere in this teeming mass of humanity was the man he sought, Isaac the Jew, although none of the people of the subura had ever heard his name. Myrddion waited impatiently, hoping that Isaac might hear of him and, out of curiosity, seek out a fellow healer. However, after the first month in Pulchria’s tenement without hearing anything of his elusive quarry, Myrddion began to despair.

Nor had Myrddion forgotten his father, the mysterious Flavius who had given him life so carelessly and so brutally. But the Flavian gens was huge, and many scions of the family were spread throughout the Roman world. As surreptitiously as possible, Myrddion sought news of a man called Flavius who would be in his forties or fifties, but without further information to support his search his enquiries came to nothing.

Perhaps Myrddion would have wearied of the ugly life of the subura and become restive for the excitement of life on the road and the battlefield. But destiny came knocking at Myrddion’s door once more when two vaguely familiar men presented themselves at his shop-front at the end of a long procession of patients.

Myrddion was treating a carbuncle on a sandalmaker’s neck when the two burly men walked deferentially through the double doors. The sandalmaker flinched at the sight of the strangers and
their long staves, so Myrddion finished with the nasty swelling as quickly as possible and called Finn to apply a drawing poultice. Then, after washing his hands in hot water, he turned to face his visitors.

‘How may I be of service?’ he asked, wincing as he eased his left shoulder back into the sling that offered relief when he wasn’t working.

‘We are servants of Lord Cleoxenes, master healer. He has an ailment which requires your urgent attention, and has asked that you attend him.’

The servant who spoke sparked a dim memory of two men armed with similar iron-tipped staves who had acted as Cleoxenes’s bodyguards in Massilia. Myrddion nodded and fetched his satchel, which he always kept ready for emergencies.

‘So your master hasn’t yet departed from Rome? I had expected that he would have set sail for Constantinople by now.’

The guard merely shrugged, for the minds of the great men they served were of no interest to those who worked in the dangerous but simple trade of guarding their bodies.

In silence, the three men entered the street and began to walk, but Myrddion soon lost all sense of direction in the confusing alleyways and long intersecting streets that were both ordered and haphazard in their planning. As he hurried in the wake of the bodyguards, Myrddion realised that the streets were becoming cleaner and better lit, and guessed that they were approaching the Palatine. Larger single houses lined the streets and foot traffic was much reduced. Only those men and women who belonged in this district, and their anonymous servants, dared to venture into the sacred heart of Rome. Before an imposing villa lit with torches on its portico, the bodyguards relinquished the care of the healer into the hands of a superior servant dressed in a tunic of bleached light wool who was clean, well fed and autocratic.

‘I am Myrddion Emrys, summoned by Lord Cleoxenes to treat him,’ Myrddion began, but the servant simply gestured imperiously and entered the mansion on silent feet. Myrddion had no choice but to follow.

The villa was palatial, two-storeyed and profusely decorated with frescoes and mosaics of great naturalness and beauty. Myrddion tried hard not to gape like a bucolic at walls painted to resemble olive and orange groves, at living trees growing tall within the atrium and a fountain that pumped a delicate mist of water over a profusion of herbs and flowering shrubs in the very centre of the structure. The scent of fine oils, nard and cleanliness wafted through the echoing rooms.

The servant led Myrddion to a sleeping chamber of some opulence. It boasted a small balcony that overlooked the atrium and was linked to the corridor by long shuttered doors. More shuttered windows permitted the entry of the evening breeze. A low wooden bed, uncarved but polished with oil that emitted a strong citrus smell, dominated a room that was sparsely but elegantly furnished with several clothes chests and carved wooden stools softened with cushions. Myrddion noticed that the whole house was bare of the household gods that usually occupied niches in the walls. Cleoxenes sat on a wool-stuffed pallet, cradling his arm, which was bandaged from elbow to wrist.

‘Greetings, my lord. I had not hoped to see you again so soon, for I understood you were leaving for Constantinople. How may I serve you?’

‘Be seated, Myrddion. Pincus will fetch wine for us.’

As the servant turned to leave, Myrddion stopped him with a glance. ‘I don’t wish to insult your hospitality, Lord Cleoxenes, but I would prefer water. The wines of Rome are far too sweet and heavy for my taste.’

Cleoxenes grinned, and then winced as he moved his arm after
momentarily forgetting his injury. ‘Most assuredly. I will also have water, Pincus. No doubt it will be better for me.’

As soon as the servant had removed himself, closing the inner shutters in his wake, Myrddion approached the bed and laid his satchel on the timber floor beside the coverlet.

‘Now, my lord, what have you done to yourself? I’m surprised that you called for me when Rome is reputed to have some of the finest healers in the world.’

‘Perhaps. One such healer, at exorbitant cost, suggested I should wash my arm in the waters of holy Mother Tiber. I’d as soon drink the water as immerse myself in it. The cut began as a trifling injury sustained a week ago and was treated immediately, but it won’t heal and now I’m beginning to feel feverish and unwell.’

Myrddion sighed. Summer in Rome was a particularly dangerous season for open cuts, whether the sufferer was patrician or plebeian. Myrddion carefully unwrapped the linen bandages but the cloth had adhered to the weeping wound, and his gentle attempt to peel the last layers away caused Cleoxenes to bite his lip until a spot of blood appeared at the corner of his mouth.

‘Relax, Cleoxenes, I’ll not hurt you further.’

Pincus returned bearing a tray on which two fine goblets and a jug rested. The metal jug was beaded with condensation, and as the servant poured water into the goblets Myrddion heard the distinctive clink of ice. His eyebrows rose involuntarily.

‘The ice comes from the Alpes Maritimi in wagons filled with straw and is then stored in underground icehouses so we can enjoy pure, cold water,’ Cleoxenes explained, although his lips and face were pale with strain.

‘Pincus!’ Myrddion ordered, and Cleoxenes smiled at the autocratic tone in the healer’s voice. ‘I require two bowls of water, one at room temperature and one that has boiled and is still hot to the touch. Do you understand me?’ Affronted, the servant nodded.
‘And I need an open flame – an oil lamp will do – and a quantity of clean cloth torn into strips. Don’t bring me anything that has been used, because I won’t accept it. The cloth must be clean, boiled in hot water and then dried in sunlight. Can this house supply my requirements?’

‘Of course!’ Pincus’s voice was almost sharp, but years of service had taught him to keep his feelings to himself.

‘Please bring them at speed then, for your master is suffering.’

Pincus vanished soundlessly, and Myrddion assisted Cleoxenes to drink the chilled water. ‘Don’t use your arm, my friend,’ he warned him. ‘I’m going to soak the bandage away from the wound so I can see exactly what is wrong. There’s no need to fret, Cleoxenes, for I’ll not do anything to you without explaining it first. You can trust my judgement.’

‘I do, Myrddion. That’s exactly why I sent for you when I became ill.’

The healer took a sip of cold water and marvelled privately that a city of such sophistication could still be so terrible and unfair in its contrasts.

‘Let’s talk of other matters while we wait for Pincus,’ Cleoxenes whispered, trying to smile. ‘Have the people in the subura heard the latest news of the war?’

Myrddion realised that the envoy was very frightened. Cleoxenes’s elegant feet tapped the floor with a nervous tic, while his good hand flexed and unflexed unconsciously.

‘The people of the subura hardly mention Attila. Their enemies are starvation and disease, which can be just as fatal as a Hun arrow. No, I don’t know anything about the progress of the war. For the five weeks I’ve been in Rome, I could be as far from the battlefront as Segontium for all I’ve been told.’

‘Then they’ll not be alarmed to know that Attila is massing his troops for a single fast cavalry strike across the Padus river to the
very doorstep of Rome. He’s demanded the hand of Honoria in marriage in the misguided belief that Valentinian’s silly sister will hand him Rome on a plate. It seems that Honoria is less than pleased with her brother’s choice of an elderly Roman senator for a husband.’

Myrddion was shocked. Had untold thousands died because the emperor’s sister disliked her future husband? His amazement must have shown on his face because Cleoxenes laughed naturally, his arm momentarily forgotten again.