Medicus

'Five says she's alive when they blow first watch.'

'If she were a dog, you'd knock her on the head now.'

'Well she isn't, and I shan't. So push off and find some patients of your own to annoy.'

The hollow cheeks of the patient in Room Twelve looked distinctly yellow against the white of the blanket that had been draped over her. The injured arm, secured across her chest in a crisp linen sling, rose and fell gently with each breath. The drugged drink had done its work. She was asleep. Her doctor placed a cup of barley water on the table beside the bed and went to the shrine of Aesculapius.

The hospital entrance hall was empty save for a smell of fresh paint and roses. Aesculapius leaned on his stick and looked out from his niche with a quiet dignity that somehow transcended the inscription WET PAINT chalked underneath him. The god of healing needed more maintenance than most of his colleagues: The touch of his eager supplicants tended to damage his paint. Today the faithful had left a bunch of white roses and a couple of apples at his feet, hoping to be saved from their ailments. Or, more likely, from their doctor.

Usually Ruso spared the deity no more than a passing nod. Now he paused to stand in front of the niche and murmur a promise of two and a half denarii should the girl in Room Twelve survive until morning.

Having thus enlisted extra help for the cost of only half his winnings, and with nothing to pay if the god failed to perform, Ruso headed back to Room Twelve to see what more could be done to improve his chance of winning this unexpected and probably illegal wager.

4

'Are you sure he's-dead?' asked Ruso, the words punctuated by grunts as he struggled to maneuver his end of the stretcher through the door.

'Positive, sir,' said the surgical orderly, deftly kicking the door shut behind him. 'The man who told me heard it from someone who got it from one of the kitchen staff in the legate's house. It'll be announced at parade this morning.'

'How do the kitchen staff know?'

'The dispatch rider popped by for something to eat while the legate read through the message, sir.'

Ruso suppressed a smile. 'I suppose you know the cause of death?'

'Not sure yet, sir. All we know is, he had a funny turn on the way back from sorting the Parthians out.'

They lowered the stretcher onto the table. 'Do we know who's taken over?' asked Ruso, sliding out one of the carrying poles.

'The army are backing Publius Aelius Hadrianus, sir.' The orderly slid out the other pole and stacked them both in the corner. 'I'm told he's a very generous man when it comes to bonuses. Double the going rate is what I hear.'

'Does anybody know what the going rate is?' asked Ruso. 'Half the army wasn't even born when Trajan took over, let alone on the payroll.'

'Hard to say, sir,' said the orderly, 'but in nineteen years it's bound to have gone up, isn't it?' He bent over the table. 'Just lie on your left, now.' As they rolled the girl first to one side of the table and then the other, slipping the stretcher sheet out from beneath her, he observed, 'Nothing of her, is there?'

When they had settled the girl, the man hurried out to refill the water bucket, complaining that someone else should have refilled it the previous night. 'You can tell Priscus isn't here.'

Ruso waited, hearing distant voices. The clump of boots on floorboards in the corridors. The usual clatter from the kitchen. Window shutters crashing open to let in the new day A day the anonymous girl in the mortuary would never see. Ruso, who did not like to inquire too deeply into matters of religion, wondered vaguely if she and Trajan would meet each other on the voyage into the shadowy world of the departed. He eyed the girl lying on the table in front of him. It might have been kinder to let her join them.

Laid out under a crumpled linen gown that smelled faintly of lavender, she looked smaller than she'd appeared to him yesterday And younger. He wondered how old she was. She must have a name, a tribe, a language. The trader had been yelling at her in Latin but the words she had mumbled as the poppy juice carried her into oblivion sounded British.

That was the only time he had heard her speak. When he had put his head around the door of Room Twelve just after dawn and said, ' 'Morning! Did you sleep well?' — She was alive! He must go and tell Valens-she had looked at him with those eyes that were the color of-well, whatever it was-as if she did not understand the question.

The eyes were open again now. The pupils had been shrunk to small black dots by the medicine he had given her. She was staring up at the dust motes floating in the sunshine that streamed in from the high windows. She showed no curiosity about where she was.

She did not seem to have grasped the purpose of the gleaming instruments laid out on the cloth beside the empty water basin. She was not alarmed by the rolls of bandages stacked on the shelves, nor did she seem to be wondering what so many empty bowls might be there to catch.

Ruso was pleased with himself. Deciding the right amount of poppy juice to administer had been a tricky business. The borrowed works he had hurriedly consulted last night had implied that in all respects that would matter this morning, women were the same as men, only smaller. In Ruso's experience, however, there was much about women that was dangerously unpredictable, and one of the attractions of army life was that he was no longer expected to live with one.

'Everything all right, sir?' The orderly was back, splashing clean water into the basin.

Ruso nodded. 'I think she's about ready.'

The orderly began to buckle a leather strap across the girl's legs. She lifted her head slightly.

'Nothing to worry about,' said the orderly, who was a practiced liar.

The girl's head fell back. She closed her eyes and appeared to be drifting off to sleep.

The door opened. Valens's head appeared, then retreated. 'Sorry!

Didn't know you were in here.'

Ruso called after him, 'What about that five denarii?'

Valens reappeared, glanced at the body on the operating table, and grinned. 'You must have cheated.'

'I could do with some help.'

'I'm supposed to be doing rounds. What have you got?'

As the girl continued to doze while the orderly strapped her down, Ruso jerked a thumb toward the bandaged arm lying on top of the linen sheet. 'Compound fracture of radius and ulna about halfway down. Probably three or four days old. I redressed what I could last night but it was too dark to operate.'

'I like a challenge,' said Valens, and closed the door behind him. 'Have you heard? Trajan's dead.'

'I know,' said Ruso, who had private reasons to mourn the emperor's passing. 'Sounds as though it's going to be Hadrian.'

Ruso began to remove the bandaging he had put on last night. The girl's body jerked as she tried to raise herself. The orderly gripped her shoulders and held her down.

On the other side of the table, Valens stroked her good hand, leaned over, and said gently, 'We're going to see to your arm. We'll be very quick.'

Ruso wished he had remembered to say that himself.

They began to soak the rag that had been stuffed into the wound.

'I met him once,' mused Ruso.

'Hadrian?'

'Trajan. InAntioch.'

'I suppose he'll be the Divine Trajan soon.'

'No doubt,' agreed Ruso. At least, none that he was foolish enough to express in public.

'May he rest among the gods,' added Valens.

'Among the gods indeed, sir,' echoed the orderly.

Ruso left a brief silence that could have been respect or rebellion, then murmured, 'Water.'

The orderly refilled the jug.