“We’ll make it do,” Arcadia agreed.
Getorius turned the mare toward the deteriorated front of a two-story building that was set back twenty-five paces from the curb, facing a weed-choked front yard. The fountain positioned in its center was dry. Undoubtedly, Valentinian’s inspectors had been bribed to overlook the neglected state of the building.
“You, child,” he called to a boy floating a block of wood in a curbside puddle. “Go and bring the manager of this place to me.”
The boy returned a few moments later, with a heavy-set middle-aged man wearing a greasy leather vest. Blussus thought he was being paid a surprise visit by someone from the aedile’s office in Ravenna until he saw Arcadia. A woman would not be accompanying an inspector.
“You wish lodgings for the night?” he asked, still suspicious. “Or longer perhaps?”
“Protasius at the tax office told us we could stay here.”
“Ah”—Blussus raised an eyebrow—“you are an assessor, then?” There were those in town who would pay to know that in advance.
“No, we’re just visiting Classis.”
The eyebrow curved up again; no one came to the port just to visit. “Your ‘visit’ involves shipping, perhaps?”
“My husband is a surgeon,” Arcadia told him. “We have an authorization from the Emperor’s mother to stay here. Show him, Getorius.”
“No need, Domina,” Blussus fawned, “your word suffices.”
“Can you show us a room?”
“Certainly Domina,” he replied, bowing. “An honor to host friends of the Gothic…of the Empress Mother. I myself, Julius Blussus, will assure your comfort. Evantius, lead the horse around to our stables.”
“Evantius is your son?”
“Both son and ‘sun’ of my life, Domina.”
Blussus chuckled at his pun and led the way to the villa’s entrance, which was on the narrower side of the building, facing a brick drive that went to stables in the rear. Inside, the atrium tile was buckled and cracked. The pool in the center of the atrium was choked with moldering willow leaves, and resembled a mosaic of slim, earth-tone spear shapes. The garden beyond was thick with ragged evergreens that needed pruning and the overgrown stems of dried weeds.
Once beyond the peristyle columns, Arcadia fell back to Getorius’ side. “I hope this doesn’t reflect the condition of his rooms,” she murmured to her husband. “Whatever state stipend Blussus receives obviously doesn’t go into the inn’s maintenance.”
“Don’t make a fuss,” Getorius hissed back. “We don’t need to attract attention to ourselves.”
Mercifully, when Blussus pushed open the door to a room in the east wing, Arcadia was pleasantly surprised. The bed was made with what seemed to be reasonably clean linen, and a pitcher on the table actually held water. Although some of the paint had flaked off a mural on the back wall, she could make out a harbor scene; not Classis, but some imagined arcadia from the past, depicting colonnaded warehouses, a bluish mountain range, and a round Tholos temple set amid grazing cattle. The mountains and part of a ship merged into the right-hand wall, which had obviously been set up a while ago to divide what was originally a much larger space into two bedrooms.
“I can arrange for a room like this,” Blussus offered, sheepishly wiping the chair back with his hand.
“What’s wrong with this one?” Arcadia asked him. “I like it. A good dusting is all it would take to make it livable.”
“Ah, Domina, unfortunately it’s taken. Two merchants have—”
“Then why show it?” she snapped.
“Blussus,” Getorius broke in, “whatever room you set up for us will be fine. Where does one have a meal in Classis?”
“I have simple but ample fare. If you would both honor me by dining here?”
“Good. Have your son bring our things in after he stables the mare. We need to go out for awhile.”
“I begin serving at the fifth hour.”
“We’ll be back here by then.” Getorius took Arcadia’s arm and led her toward the entrance.
“That was the room he shows off,” she complained once they were outside. “Ours had better be at least as well kept.”
Getorius did not reply. He knew from consultations with midwives that women often became irritable when their menstrual flow began each month. What was the connection? His dissection of several cats had proved that the uterus was fixed in place and did not wander around the body in search of moisture, as was commonly believed. Even if it did, when excess blood was being thrown off the organ should be at rest, and logically, the woman, too. He shook his head and looked east along the Via Armini, toward the old forum. There were more important things to do than humor his wife.
The Via Armini in Classis was similar in length to the one in Ravenna, although about three paces narrower. Various shops catered to customers on the ground level, with balconies or awnings above to protect them from sun or rain. At the harbor area, where a pall of black smoke smudged the horizon, the masts of galleys stabbed a sky that was fast becoming overcast with low rain clouds. The hollow, clunking sound of hammers and a strong smell of pitch betrayed the location of the port’s naval shipyards and outfitting docks. Squinting along the road, Getorius recalled that the ruins of the ancient forum were located where the Armini intersected with another broad avenue that led to the waterfront.
“There should be a marble or bronze plaque in the forum with a diagram of Classis,” he said, as he guided Arcadia along the sidewalk. “It will help us find the streets, since I didn’t think to question Protasius about Zadok’s address.”
“Why didn’t you ask the innkeeper?”
“The fewer who know our reason for coming here, the better.” Getorius held her arm to let a cart pass on a cross street. “What’s the name cut into that board on the building across the way?”
“Vicus…Syriorum.”
“Street of the Syrians. Good, let’s keep on.”
The forum had been located on the south side of the Armini, to allow more space for commercial buildings and warehouses in the direction of the harbor. After
