“Good, you noticed.” Getorius gave her neck an affectionate squeeze.
“He has slightly larger muscles in that arm,” she continued, “and the palm has thicker calluses. Also by the position of his desk and writing instruments next to that window.”
“Very good, Arcadia. Anything else?”
She stopped his hand and turned around. “He did have the pox at one time.”
“Yes—pock marks on his face and chest. What about that welt on his neck? You still think he was strangled?”
“With that strap. It’s obvious to me.”
“A holy man of God murdered?” Getorius sounded skeptical. “I can’t see that anything’s been stolen…not that he had much anyone would want. Even that clothes chest probably contains only a spare cloak and tunic. His books are the only real things of value.”
“All right! His heart stopped pumping because he drowned. Galen wrote…”
Getorius interrupted his wife: “Galen never dissected a human body!”
“Surgeon, neither have you,” Arcadia retorted softly, realizing it was a point of contention with her husband. “Yet, you also think the heart works like a pump.”
“Fine,” he conceded, “Galen did recognize it as a pumping organ, but he thought it circulated pneuma, some kind of invisible animating spirit. Ridiculous!”
Although Galen had been dead for almost three centuries, Arcadia knew Getorius became vexed whenever he discussed the ancient physician whose ideas still dominated medicine. She decided to return to her conclusions about the dead monk.
“Behan wasn’t old. Can we determine exactly how he died?”
“I might be able to diagnose things like that more accurately if the bishop would let me dissect the body of one of those beggars who die every day.”
“Optila thinks Behan drowned.”
“So do I.” Getorius agreed. “Let’s find out. Use that speculum to keep his mouth open.”
“This one?”
“No, the smaller one.”
Arcadia winced as she inserted the bronze dilator into the dead man’s jaws, and then helped her husband turn the body and ease Behan’s head over the table edge. Mucus dribbled to the floor. When Getorius pushed hard on the monk’s back, a gush of water and phlegm spurted from the open mouth. Arcadia fought again to keep from retching.
“The Hun was correct about drowning,” Getorius concluded. “Behan may have fallen into a trance and not been aware of what was happening. Let’s get him faceup again.”
After the monk’s body was again lying faceup on the table, Getorius took the rough blanket off the bed and laid it over the corpse. “I’ll have a wicker cage made. The body can be put inside, then put back into the stream so cold water will preserve it until the bishop hears from Behan’s monastery.” He glanced around at the room’s furnishings. “Call the Hun inside. We’ll carry some things back with us.”
“Just a moment.” Arcadia went to the doorframe and disentangled the strap, then compared its width with the bruise on Behan’s neck. “The welt does match the strap, Getorius.”
“Would a murderer bother to come back inside and replace it on the door?”
“Behan could have been strangled here, then his body put in the stream.”
“Why go to all that trouble? And, as I said, there’s no motive.”
“None that we know of,” Arcadia retorted. “You get Optila. I’ll carry the books out to the cart.”
Stubborn female. “Fine, we’ll take only the books, desk, and clothes chest.” Getorius gathered up the three manuscripts, wondering if Theokritos at the palace library could translate them.
After helping load the two-wheeled cart and propping the hut’s door shut against wolves, Getorius sat next to his wife on the chest, in front of the desk. Arcadia had put on a full-length beige wool tunic and shawl against the cold. After pulling an elk-skin pelt over their knees, she leaned against the desk’s back. The five-mile journey back to Ravenna would be an uncomfortable one.
Arcadia glanced up at the cobalt November sky that played host to a brilliant sun. At least the afternoon has warmed up a bit. She took a deep breath of the keen odor of pines to dispel the rancid taste of the monk’s hut that was still lodged in her throat, then snuggled against Getorius’ shoulder.
Optila guided the mare as it pulled the jostling cart along the rough path Behan would have used to reach the Via Popilia, a stone-paved road that led north to Ravenna. Getorius was silent until the cart turned off the lane and slid into the ruts of the Popilia.
“I’d seen Behan in the library a few times, when I’d gone to read medical texts,” he recalled. “He’s been here about two years, yet I don’t know a thing about him.”
“Perhaps Theokritos does.”
“I’ll ask him.” Getorius slipped an arm around his wife. “You’ve been quiet since we left the hut. Are you thinking of Behan?”
“Partly. I was also remembering the story of how you came to Ravenna.”
“That’s an old scenario, but it does read like one of Plautus’ dramas.”
“Except the plot is so implausible that it would be hooted out of the theater.” Arcadia sat up and kissed her husband’s cheek. “Still, tell me about it again, Getorius. It was a tragedy, yet it eventually brought us together.”
“Nicias told me the story. He was the legion surgeon at Mogontiacum and knew my parents.”
“Treverius and Blandina.”
“Yes. I was four years old when Burgondi warriors attacked the city. They were both killed in the bloodbath to make a usurper, Jovinus, emperor, but Nicias and some men from the garrison managed to escape and take me with them. They wanted to get to Ravenna.”
“But, after that unhappy beginning, Fortuna certainly cast dice favorable to Nicias and you.”
He nodded. “And that’s the unbelievable part that would give Plautus trouble. Nicias happening to meet Galla Placidia while she was on her way to Gaul, and her brother at Ravenna being the Emperor Honorius. She gave Nicias her ring and an introduction to him.”
“And Placidia remembered Nicias when she returned to Ravenna…” Arcadia reached for her husband’s hand.
