During the wait Arcadia huddled in her damp cloak, indifferent to the sharp scent of the wet pines. The smell usually invigorated her, but today it had no effect; she was too tired after her restless night. The distant pulse of white-capped surf, the monotonous drumming of rain on the leather carriage top, and the call of jays foraging among the wet trees might have lulled her to sleep, except that the night intruder was yet vivid in her mind. If the man had been sent to silence her and her husband, it meant that the conspiracy extended from the palace all the way to Classis.
Protasius knew they had come to find Rabbi ben Zadok. If the clerk had gossiped to others—or if Galla Placidia was correct in claiming that Flavius Aetius had informants everywhere—it was not surprising that she and Getorius had been found so easily. Aetius even might have guessed that their unusual journey had something to do with the papyri.
Arcadia wanted to dismiss the idea that Placidia was involved, and yet she was the only person to know the actual reason for the trip. And the papyri had been found in her mausoleum. Was the Gothic Queen diverting suspicion from herself by implicating Aetius? No, that made no sense. Why would the mother of the Augustus make public a document that, in effect, gave away the empire of her son in the West, and that of her nephew in the East, at Constantinople? It was not possible that she would be involved in such a conspiracy.
After the arch was cleared and the mucky water washing over the roadway had subsided, Getorius clucked the mare ahead. The four passengers rode in silence until Getorius decided to ask Zadok about the Mogontiacum deaths.
“Rabbi, you said my father and yourself had been involved in solving some murders. Can you tell me about them?”
“A seditious business.” After a pause in which Getorius thought Zadok would not continue, the old man wiped his eyes with a linen square. “It was during the winter that the Vandals invaded Gaul,” he explained, his voice slightly hoarse from emotion. “The weather was bitter. Citizens…mostly Christians…began dying mysteriously on their namesakes’ days. Treverius reasoned out the cause at a Purim celebration in my home.”
“What is Purim?” Arcadia asked.
“One of our Hebrew festivals.”
“You must have been very close, to have invited my husband’s parents. And, after all that time, to recall this so clearly.”
“Young woman, it’s as if it all happened within last month’s moon,” he said. “An ambitious praetorium curator tried to form a rebel province.”
“Didn’t that kind of treason spring up again when my parents were killed?”
Zadok nodded. “With the usurper Jovinus that time. I was in Ravenna when he was proclaimed Augustus by a Burgond king. My…my wife Penina was a victim of the rebellion, along with your parents. Will the Empress Mother show me the two papyri, or must I be content with hearing them read?”
“No, no, you’ll be able to examine both. And we’ll ask Theokritos how his tests are coming along.”
“Yes, establishing the authenticity of the documents is crucial,” Zadok said, and lapsed into silence.
Getorius surmised that the old man was still shaken at the news, perhaps devising plans for his community to deal with the will, if it was released.
The downpour continued as the carriage clattered toward Ravenna. Rain-swollen swamps on either side of the causeway took on the look of dull hammered silver, from the spattering raindrop patterns.
Ravenna was enduring a less severe repetition of the street flooding that had occurred three weeks earlier. Getorius realized there would also be a flood of patients at the clinic, waiting to be treated.
When he guided the mare through the Lawrence Gate and retraced the previous day’s route back to the villa, there were several people huddled in the shelter of the atrium waiting area. Getorius thought he recognized the Gothic fisherman who had lacerated his hand. Since he had not returned as instructed, it could be presumed that rather than healing, the wound had become corrupt with black bile.
At his gate, Getorius told Nathaniel to borrow the carriage and take Rabbi Zadok to the Judean district, where he and the Rabbi would be staying. Getorius knew very little about the area, except that it was bordered on the south by artisans’ shops and harbor warehouses, on the west by the Via Armini, and on the remaining sides by the new walls that emperor Valentinian was having constructed.
Getorius began seeing patients that afternoon. As he feared, Varnifrid’s hand would be lost. The man had continued working on his boat, and his hand was now a mass of foul-smelling black tissue. Arcadia scheduled an amputation for early the following morning, yet felt sure the Goth would not come.
The next patient was a stevedore who complained that a lump in his lower abdomen had gotten larger, and that he experienced a leaden feeling after eating. Getorius had seen the condition on dockworkers and farmers, but there was little he could do except fit the man with a padded belt to restrain the bulge, and curse his inability to dissect the area in a corpse to investigate what made the mass suddenly appear.
Most of the patients had been treated when a slave arrived from Senator Maximin, with a message asking Getorius to look in on his mother again. Agatha had developed further ulcers on her withered buttocks, from lying in bed. The note ended with the senator apologizing for the inconvenience and promising to be present at his villa this time.
Maximin stayed in the room while Getorius cleaned Agatha’s lesions with a mild vinegar wash, and then applied an olive oil and garlic poultice. He told Fabia to continue the treatment, and saw no harm in the magic amulets the old slave had placed in her mistress’ bed.
Galla Placidia sent word that she would meet with Getorius, Arcadia, and Rabbi ben Zadok on the
