Vita Brevis (5 page)

Ruso’s opinion of Horatius Balbus was not improving as the afternoon wore on. When Balbus had sent his own steward rather than a junior slave to fetch the doctor immediately, Ruso had assumed it must be urgent. Instead, the afternoon was drifting past and he was stuck here among an overblown collection of sculptures, surrounded by walls painted to resemble marble in colors that shouted at one another and made the slaves look dingy by comparison.

He was not especially worried about Tilla making her way to Kleitos’s surgery, even in Rome. If there was one thing army wives were good at, it was moving house on their own at short notice. In fact he was feeling faintly smug about what she would find. He would not, of course, voice the words
I told you so
, but it was just the sort of home a responsible citizen of modest means might arrange for his family: an apartment in what seemed like a good area with a bedroom separate from the kitchen, and no obvious signs of disrepair or vermin. Ruso felt a deeply unprofessional hope that Kleitos’s father would be ill for a very long time.

He was less immediately concerned by the absence of Tilla than by the fact that she had his medical case. There had been no time
to go back and collect it. Nor had there been any time to find any patient records, assuming Kleitos had left some. Almost as soon as the door was unlocked Balbus’s steward had turned up to collect him, and been unhelpfully vague about what was wrong with his master.

A quick hunt around the rooms had failed to reveal any surgical instruments or many of the common remedies that Ruso would normally take on a call. Instead there were wide spaces on shelves that he remembered as crammed with bottles and boxes. Kleitos must have taken a lot of emergency supplies. For a man rushing to tend a sick father he seemed to have burdened himself with a vast amount of luggage: not only equipment, but most of the furniture as well. It all suggested he was expecting a long absence.

Recalling Accius’s orders to make a good impression, Ruso had grabbed one or two items from the shelves and stuffed them into a battered leather satchel he had found hanging on the back of the door. He would have to worry about buying supplies later.

Now he was standing under the shade of Horatius Balbus’s colonnade like one of the statues:
Doctor with Satchel over Shoulder
. Doctor with no more idea than the other statues of why he had been brought here. Doctor wondering how much of this place was paid for by rent from cockroach-infested tenement blocks.
See how cleverly the sculptor has captured his expression of boredom and disgust!

Somewhere beyond one of the doors, a young woman was giving orders. Moments later a door creaked open and a round-faced slave girl scuttled toward him carrying a pile of linen.

“Hello.”

The girl looked around to see if he was talking to someone else.

“Can you tell the steward—the one with—” The gesture was meant to indicate the striking dark eyebrows that looked like smudges of charcoal beneath the graying hair. “What’s his name? Firmicus?”

If she knew, she was too nervous to tell him.

“Can you tell him,” he persisted, “the doctor’s still here?”

The girl hurried away without a word, vanishing through a doorway in the far corner.

Ruso decided to count to fifty and then leave. Accius could make his own good impression. Balbus clearly wasn’t in need of urgent help, and other patients with more pressing needs might be waiting at the surgery. As might Tilla.

Twenty-nine, thirty.

He turned at the sound of the door in the far corner opening again. A different girl slipped into the courtyard, clutching a scroll rather than a pile of washing. She reminded him of his youngest sister: about the age, in other words, when a father needed to settle upon a reliable son-in-law before she flung herself at someone totally unsuitable.

The soft brown eyes narrowed, perhaps to get him in focus. The voice he had heard earlier asked, “Who are you?”

That complicated arrangement of curls must have taken hours. He wondered if she was expecting company. “I’m the doctor. Ruso.”

“Why? Did Gellia send for you?”

“I was sent for,” he agreed. “I was told it was for Horatius Balbus. I don’t think he knows I’m here.”

“Oh, I expect he does. Pa always knows everything. Or at least, he thinks he does.”

Somehow he had known she would have dimples when she smiled.

“It’s all right,” she said. “You don’t have to answer that. Why aren’t you the usual doctor?”

“Kleitos asked me to fill in while he’s away.” No doubt he would be saying that a lot over the next few days. “Publius Accius was going to introduce me, but I’ve been called here anyway.”

The girl brightened. “You’re from Accius! Did he send a message for me?”

“No.”

“Oh well.” The girl reached up to pat the hairstyle as if it had just landed on her head and was still settling in. “I expect he’s busy.”

Ruso, realizing he had been accurate rather than tactful, said, “He didn’t know I was coming here.”

“Oh.”

“I’m sure he, ah—” He stopped, not at all sure that Accius would have sent a message without the father’s permission. “I could tell him you were asking.”

“Oh, yes! You could tell him—” She paused to think. “Tell him I hope he’s well, and tell him I’m looking after his present very carefully just like he said.” She held out a slender wrist encircled by a jet bracelet.

Ruso recognized the sort of fragile luxury that soldiers bought for their girls back in Britannia. For the first time it occurred to him that Accius might have been harboring secret thoughts of this young woman all through the long months of his service in the provinces.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” said the girl, turning the bangle around her wrist with her other hand. “I love how smooth it feels. It was my birthday present.”

“It’s very nice,” said Ruso, who had long ago learned to exercise caution when any woman sought an opinion on her personal adornment. Too little enthusiasm led to accusations of
You don’t like it, do you?
while too much brought on the curious complaint of
You’re just saying that.

“Accius brought it home for me. All the way from the seaside in Britannia.”

Clearly this needed a better response than
Ah
, but Tilla was not here to tell him what it was. So he tried, “It’s really very nice,” and to his relief she lowered the wrist so he was not obliged to stare at it any longer.

Somewhere behind him, Ruso heard the click of a latch. A soft voice called, “Mistress Horatia?”

Horatia—of course, she would have her father’s name—straightened her shoulders. There was a scuffle of footsteps, and a very small woman bustled past him into the courtyard. “Mistress, you are standing in the sun! And your tutor—”

The dimples were gone now. “I shall be out of the sun in just a moment. I am just consulting the doctor about my terrible headache. He says I must lie down, and unless it gets better I can’t possibly go out to dinner with that awful old builder tomorrow night. And he says Greek is very bad for headaches so you can tell the tutor to go home.”

Instead of hurrying away to deliver this message, the little slave took up a position beside her mistress and gave Ruso a look that said if he didn’t leave them both alone, she would turn him to marble like the other figures around the courtyard.

The girl said, “Well, Doctor, I expect you’re very busy, with your, ah—”

“Waiting,” he said.

“Yes. Thank you for your advice. I shall do as you say.” With
that she hurried away, the heels of her delicate sandals clacking on the paving. The slave followed, closing the door firmly behind her.

Thirty-one, thirty-two …

Balbus’s doorman looked shocked when he said he would call back later. “But, sir, the master—”

“He doesn’t need urgent medical attention,” Ruso assured him, but the man had cocked his head to listen to an order being barked from the street. He leapt forward and lifted the bar, dragged the heavy door open and stood back to bow.

A bodyguard barged past Ruso, followed by a bald figure in a purple-edged toga announcing, “Because if he doesn’t, tell him I’ll find someone who will.”

The slave to whom this was addressed scuttled back into the street. The door was slammed behind him, leaving Ruso standing inside the porch watching the man who must be the famous Horatius Balbus—his patient, his recent landlord and Kleitos’s patron—stride away into the house without a second glance.

“He wasn’t here?” he said, incredulous.

The doorman said, “He is now, sir.”

Ruso sighed and returned to the courtyard.

“What a lovely baby!”

Tilla jolted upright on the barrel.

“How old?” A young woman with a droopy eyelid was bending sideways to admire Mara’s sleeping face.

Tilla adjusted her skirts and tried not to look like someone who had been feeling sorry for herself. “Seven months.”

“Oh, the best age! I’m Phyllis. Are you waiting for the doctor? He’s not here, but there’s a new one coming to help.”

“Tilla,” she said, relieved. “The new doctor is my husband. They said he sent for me, but I don’t know where he is.”

“Oh, you poor thing! How long have you been stuck out here?” A hand rested on her shoulder, and the kindness very nearly released the tears of self-pity Tilla had been holding back.

“You wait there,” said Phyllis, as if there was any chance of Tilla running away. “We’ll find him. Sabella might know. Her husband is the caretaker.”

Moments later the woman from the bar appeared and demanded, “Why didn’t you say you were his wife?” The thick black hair tumbled forward as she groped in the folds of a linen work shift and produced a key. “I’m Sabella. He’s been called away.” Unlocking
the door herself rather than handing over the key, she said, “So, how well do you know Delia?”

Tilla said, “Delia?”

The woman paused in the act of seizing one of the bags. “You
are
the new doctor’s wife?”

“We are both healers.”

Sabella looked her up and down. “Germania?” she guessed.

“Britannia.”

Sabella, who was the same width sideways as forwards, grabbed the sack of bedding with one hand and the clothes bag with the other before turning to a scatter of black-haired children who were watching from outside the bar.

“You lot,” ordered Sabella, “come here and sit on the rest of this while I’m inside, and don’t you dare move.” Turning to Tilla, she said, “You can’t be too careful around here, girl. You’re not in Germania now.”

Tilla said, “Britannia,” but Sabella was halfway across a whitewashed room set up with shelves and a workbench and a scrubbed table with a telltale tray of sawdust beneath it. At the far end of the surgery she swung ’round to shove a door open with her backside. Tilla heard the crash of shutters being flung open, and then a cry of “Where’s everything gone?”

From behind a box of bandages and dressings, Phyllis called, “What is the matter?”

“Where’s the furniture?”

Phyllis paused to look closely around the surgery. “Doctor Kleitos’s seat is gone,” she observed. “And the stool his patients sit on.”

“And the saucepans!” called Sabella. “They’ve only just left, and somebody’s been in here and had the lot!”

“And his weighing scales for the medicines.”

“All the bowls and the knives and spoons!”

Tilla put her crockery box down on the scarred surface of the operating table. She could make out the shapes of missing bottles in the dust on the shelves. Below the workbench, a bucket with a broken handle contained a soiled bandage and three blood-stained teeth.

Phyllis said, “They’ve moved out.”

“They can’t have. Delia would have told me.” Sabella stepped
aside to allow them into a back room that was a kitchen and living space. “Even the pot’s gone!” she declared, lifting the blue curtain that sagged across the corner to allow some privacy.

Phyllis said, “Who would steal a smelly pot?”

“The back door’s barred from the inside,” Sabella confirmed, giving it a good rattle to make sure. “Nobody’s been in the front. We’d have seen them moving stuff out. Only your husband, and he was hardly there, so he can’t have—” She stopped short of suggesting that he might have stolen the furniture.

Tilla said, “They must have taken the things themselves.”

“The note said to expect a temporary guest,” said Sabella, adding, “They never said a word to my husband about subletting,” as if that made such a thing impossible.

Phyllis was busy surveying the kitchen. “A hearth and a grill! You will be able to cook at home!”

Tilla, who found cooking a very hit-and-miss affair, reached up to run a forefinger along the rough wood of the kitchen shelf. She examined the faint line of dust that stuck to it. Tentatively, she pushed a jar away from her. Nothing scuttled out.

Behind her, Phyllis said, “Are you all right?”

Tilla lifted the jar and examined the handful of flour inside, as if that was what she had intended all along.

She peered through the window grille at a courtyard much like the one she had left behind at the old apartment, except that instead of a pile of rotting scraps in the middle there was a waterspout over a trough. The balconies above were festooned with washing. There were rows of windows where mothers could lean out and keep an eye on their children, and the curious and the lonely could sit in the shadows to watch the comings and goings of their neighbors.

We could live here.

Returning her attention to the kitchen, she caught sight of a series of unevenly spaced lines scratched across the doorpost. The highest was level with her waist. “Does your friend have children?”

“Only two,” Sabella told her. “Lucky girl. I tried the same stuff but it never worked for me.”

Tilla remembered standing by a rougher doorpost in a faraway land, and being told to step away while her mother cut a new line in the wood, saying, “Look how you’ve grown!”

We could make a home here.

“I don’t know how we didn’t hear them,” Phyllis was saying, fingering a string of onions that hung from a nail on the wall. “Our rooms are up above. We usually hear everything.”