‘You need to look after your skin. Do not regard this as effeminate. I suppose you spend much time out of doors? Follow my advice and you will feel an improvement. Keep your scars moisturised. I will give you a pot of my lubricant and a prescription any apothecary will make up when you need more. Rub it in daily. A woman’s touch is helpful, if you have a girlfriend.’
The soldier accepted the ointment pot but barely listened. Vinius knew Verania would have no interest in massaging pungent wax into his face, even if he trusted her with the task.
Themison decided there must be some more sinister reason for their visit. He felt panicky, as if he might be about to vomit.
Decius Gracilis put down the money for the consultation. It was a large amount; his hand lingered on the leather purse. Neither man moved. Yes, their enquiry about Vinius had been a ploy. Themison’s heart sank further. Involuntarily he analysed the symptom. It could not be a physical movement, a literal migration of the beating organ, although clearly not a fantasy either; he wondered what really caused the lurching sensation and how he might use this to prevent terror in gladiators.
‘Is there something else I can help you with?’
‘We hope so.’
Themison abandoned all hope of enjoying his lunch in the near future. He carried the tray to a side-table, where he covered it with his napkin to keep off flies. A fly did settle on the napkin shortly afterwards, but Themison had tucked in the cloth so the weight of the tray held it down and prevented access.
‘So,’ began the centurion, conversationally. ‘You are a doctor. How good are you? What do you think Titus died of?’
Zeus!
Appalled, Themison laid down his stylus. ‘Classic marsh fever. Don’t quote me.’
‘What do you base that on?’
‘Time of year, overheating, and the headaches. It would be unprofessional to give a more detailed opinion when I never examined him.’
‘Any views on the rumour he was poisoned with a hare fish?’ By his brother Domitian.
Please, please don’t ask me that…
‘Reminds us of the old story that Caligula used such methods.’ Decius Gracilis flexed his fingers. Either he had arthritis, or he was making veiled threats. ‘Maybe someone snooping round the palace found a big old jar labelled Danger, Hare Fish Poison, with an imperial seal and a picture of a skeleton? And they tried it out?’
Themison began showing symptoms of hysteria: pallor, acute sweats, agitation. He looked as if he was about to faint. The soldiers were not worried. They knew enough battlefield first-aid to revive him.
It was still the centurion testing him. The other man was roaming about the consulting room, peering at equipment. Themison had the usual display of surgical saws. In addition to models of feet, ears and internal organs, presumably parts he had successfully treated, there was a sculpture of the medical god Aesculapius with his snaky staff among many small statuettes of gladiators. Vinius opened up pillboxes, dropped roundels on his palm, put them back again. Themison suspected this bullying was intended to terrify and control him. Then they would make him say treasonous things. After that he was utterly done for.
‘Any comment on the ice-box story?’
‘The patient needed cooling.’
‘You wouldn’t just dump Titus in a bed of ice and leave him, though?’
‘Obviously I would not. Look — what is this?’
‘Just curious.’ Just testing…
Oh mother, I need a potty!
The Praetorians had chosen Themison because he was easy to access. He was an imperial servant as they were; he worked at the Ludus Magnus, the big gladiators’ barracks that Domitian had built close to the new amphitheatre. Those fighters were not criminals being sent for slaughter, but highly trained professionals, expensive slabs of beef who were looked after by the best doctors in the world. A spin-off for the doctors was lucrative private practice. Some wrote best-selling medical manuals. Themison himself was secretly scribbling a set of lurid memoirs. He would have to be dead before publishing was safe.
Gracilis and Vinius had not wanted to approach any of the gruesomely expensive society physicians who blew magistrates’ noses and carried out their wives’ abortions. Nor, in view of Titus’ fate, did they trust the palace freedmen who tended Domitian’s health. They needed discretion and, as the gladiators’ medico, Themison counted as official.
‘What exactly can I help you with, Praetorians?’
Gaius Vinius stopped prowling. He returned to his seat, taking out a waxed note tablet and stylus of his own as if used to sitting in on interrogations — probably ones that proved fatal for the victims, thought Themison. The centurion sat leaning forward intently with his elbows on his knees. Themison clutched his left wrist with his right hand, as if taking his own pulse; the result was not good.
It was a few weeks since Vinius had gone back to the camp after the Paris murder. It was clear that, as Flavia Lucilla prophesied, he had been wiped from the record. Domitian wanted to believe killing his rival made him a figure of authority. The avenging husband. The moral judge. The new Augustus — utterly hypocritical.
The Emperor recalled Domitia Longina from exile almost immediately, ‘summoning her back to his divine bed’. Nobody was clear whether her removal had counted as divorce — which, legally, Domitian should have insisted upon if he believed she had committed adultery. He claimed he was forced by a public outcry to forgive her. Most people thought their reconciliation was really because he missed her.
Others muttered that it was a ploy to cover up his incestuous affair with his niece Julia. Julia stayed at court, making an awkward family threesome.
If there were recriminations, they were kept behind closed doors. It would be rumoured that the Empress took lovers, though no one specifically named these brave men. Domitian kept his body-beautiful eunuchs, though Vinius had never seen him in a bunk-up. Nor had he ever witnessed him canoodling with Julia. In fact, Vinius wondered if the Emperor now avoided sex, which might explain a lot. The imperial couple would remain married throughout Domitian’s reign, even though Domitia never produced more children.
She knew how to handle Domitian. Possibly she had missed him too.
The ructions should have all died down. But the Emperor learned that people had been leaving flowers and perfumes in the street at the spot where Paris died. Domitian angrily ordered their removal. People who persisted in bringing tributes were dragged off and never seen again. Domitian himself haunted the area obsessively, until he noticed one of the actor’s apprentices, paying his respects to his mentor. For modelling himself too closely on Paris and even having an unfortunate facial resemblance, Domitian had the young dancer executed.
At this point, the centurion Decius Gracilis became so concerned about his charge’s state of mind, he decided to take medical advice.
‘We haven’t come for ourselves,’ Gaius Vinius explained to Themison. ‘We are worried about a friend.’
Caesar’s friends. Not the amici in his council, those friends he didn’t want. These were trusty amici Caesar never knew he had.
Some people might question their actions, but Decius Gracilis was the kind of stubborn, diligent centurion who took protecting the Emperor to the highest level. For him, the task included protecting the Emperor from himself. Never insubordinate, he had discussed his idea with the Praetorian Prefect. Cornelius Fuscus was an old ally of the Flavians, the man who had brought the province of Illyria over to Vespasian’s cause and helped secure his bid for Emperor. Appointed Prefect by Domitian on his succession, Fuscus was too canny to join in this. He allowed Gracilis to make medical enquiries, but on the usual cynical terms of ‘get found out and you can catch the shit on your own shield’.
Themison wiped his sweating face on his sleeve. He had heard ‘for a friend’ before, often. Normally it meant patients were too embarrassed about a symptom that was going to require tunic-lifting: sexual dysfunction; something they caught from a prostitute; or worst of all, haemorrhoids. If all these men wanted was to discuss an anal fissure, he would have a lucky escape. ‘Tell me about your friend.’
‘A bit of an odd personality.’ The centurion spoke. His assistant took notes. Themison certainly did not. Taking notes about personalities was a sure way to end up looking an arena lion in the teeth.
‘In what way?’
‘Solitary. Unduly watchful.’
