“Me? They call me ‘Brevius’ on th’docks. Y’ see, I’m not very tall, and—”
“Your friend. Sick how long? Eight, nine days?”
“About. We been livin’ under an overturned boat.”
“Well, Brevius,” Getorius warned, “your friend is very ill. A phlegm imbalance has tipped his fever to the critical stage. I’m afraid he may not last the night.”
As if to confirm the diagnosis Marios began to cough uncontrollably, then fell sideways onto the table. Getorius barely caught the man before he hit the wood. The vagrant wheezed again in shallow gasps that brought a bloody froth to his lips, then lay still. Getorius felt his throat for a pulse and found none.
“I’m sorry, Brevius. Your friend is gone.”
“Marios dead? I…I can’t afford no funeral for him.”
Getorius pulled the blanket out from under Marios and laid it over his body. “If you want, I’ll see to it that he’s put in the beggars’ field—” Getorius was interrupted by Primus shuffling into the room with a sack of charcoal and lighted taper to service the grate. “Get out, boy, you’re too late,” he scolded, and turned back to Brevius. “Wait here a moment.”
When Getorius returned, Brevius was at the opposite end of the room, as far away as he could get from his deceased friend.
“The dead can’t harm you,” Getorius said, rattling several coins in his hand. “As I said, I’ll take care of the burial. Here are a few bronzes to reward your loyalty to Marios. If you wish, you can sleep in our bathhouse until morning.”
Brevius mumbled awkward thanks as he counted the money, then licked his lips. “I…I’d best be gettin’ back.”
“As you wish.” Getorius guessed that the temptation of an immediate pitcher of wine was greater than that of a warm place to sleep. “You can go out that door, it leads to the Via Honorius. No one will see you.”
After Brevius was gone, Getorius straightened out Marios’ body on the table, then took a pair of shears from the instrument cabinet. He was cutting away the dead man’s fur vest when he heard movement and looked up. Arcadia stood in the doorway in her night tunic, barefoot, with only a shawl thrown around her shoulders.
“You’re going to dissect him, aren’t you?” she asked.
“You’ll be cold, dressed like that,” Getorius replied, evading her question and putting down the shears. “Let’s go back to bed. We’ll have patients in the morning.”
Getorius had trouble falling asleep again. His mind was filled with conflict over the prospect of cutting into a human body. Even Aristotle thought that dissecting a cadaver was useless research, since the body’s functions ceased after death. Nicias was the only surgeon he knew who had actually examined a person’s inner organs. The city of Alexandria, where Nicias had studied, had allowed the practice then, but Christian fanatics had since taken over the city’s administration and forbidden dissection under threat of closing the medical school.
Dissection was not a subject preached about by the bishop at Mass, but Getorius knew that the Church’s opposition had to do with the expectation of a physical resurrection for the dead. According to the Apostle Paul, the event was long overdue. He had implied that it would take place during his lifetime, warning men who were married to act as if they were celibate. Mourners were to live as if there were nothing to grieve for. The joyful, he had written, need not rejoice in their good fortune, and buyers should be aware that they might not have an opportunity to use their purchases, nor the wealthy to spend their fortunes.
Getorius got up and poured himself a cup of watered wine. There were some who had not believed Paul. Skeptical Greek proselytes, who were still surrounded by sculptures of the ideal human form, scoffed, or questioned the nature of the resurrected dead. How were they to be raised? In what kind of body? Paul had struggled to explain his vision. The perishable clay of Adam’s body would be raised to an imperishable one, the Apostle had reasoned. What had been seeded in humiliation would be harvested in glory. What had been conceived in a human body would be raised as a spiritual entity.
Church scholars assumed Paul meant that all body parts should be intact, without exactly explaining what would happen to those who had lost limbs battling pagans or heretics in the name of Christianity. Willful mutilation was out of the question. Christ’s reference to those who castrated themselves for the sake of the Kingdom was interpreted metaphorically as a rejection of sexual relations—except by a few grim-faced fanatics.
Getorius had gone back to bed but was still awake when he heard the first rooster crowing, well before dawn. He rose quietly, trying not to disturb Arcadia, but she heard him dressing in the semi-darkness of the bedroom.
She sat up. “If you’re determined to dissect that corpse then I’m going to help you.”
“No. Besides, aren’t you annoyed with me?”
“I was, but this is more important to you…to our work…than an argument over those manuscripts.”
“Cara,” he objected, “this is not work for a woman.”
“Am I a woman, or a medica-in-training?”
“I’ll not have you as an accomplice in this—”
“If you keep arguing with me this loudly,” Arcadia hissed, “you’ll awaken the servants and everyone will be an accomplice.”
“It will be cold as the Boreal wind in the clinic,” Getorius warned, still trying to dissuade his wife.
“I’ll wear my fur jacket.” Arcadia slid out of bed and helped him lace up his leather vest. “Meet you in the clinic after I’ve dressed.”
Getorius had finished cutting away the dead man’s jacket and tunic, and was positioning two oil lamps near his head when Arcadia entered.
“Where will you start?” she asked, then puckered her nose. “Agh! Those clothes will have to be burned!”
“I’m going to check the cause of the phlegm imbalance that killed Marios.”
“His name was Marios?”
“Yes. I’ll drill
