IGMS Issue 29 (2 page)

Given the delineation of each of his muscles, the man standing in the doorway would have made a perfect model for an introductory anatomy class. He would have made an even better specimen as a corpse on a slab for dissection. Bare-chested, he wore a green loin cloth and sandals, a sleeveless wool jacket his only concession to the chill spring air. He also wore a traditional manicae - a thick leather and cloth padding - on his right forearm, but a bandage encircled his left.

"You're Caro Carvetii, the new Chirurgeon."

The title, with its slurred start and extra syllable, sounded odd to me. I was used to the more commonly used term - surgeon. "I am. And you're . . . a gladiator."

"Flavus. Your predecessor had asked me to come by today, to have my arm checked."

No man entered the Emperor's Ludus until he had a reputation for excellence in the arena. I hadn't followed the games closely enough to know the names of the most famous gladiators, but even I had heard of Flavus, the Champion of Aquae Sulis. In the three years he'd been competing, he'd never been defeated.

"Come sit." I pointed to the cot furthest from Blaesus. "I'll take a look." Flavus sat down and I unwrapped the bandage from his arm, baring the tear in his flesh. He never took his eyes off my face.

Though sufficient for its purpose, the uneven row of sutures in Flavus' arm would have shamed the meanest apprentice. The skin was not inflamed, but the edges of the wound had not yet healed sufficiently to hold together unaided. "You'll need to keep these in a few more days. The previous surgeon, he applied these himself?"

"No. He had the palsy." Flavus made his hand tremble to demonstrate. "A gift from strangers, I believe, though one he received before the Lanista hired him on. He oversaw things here, but had Blaesus do the hands-on work. He kept him sober, for the most part, on game days and during practice." Clenching his hand into a fist, Flavus flexed the muscles in his arm. "And yet he died at the Market. It can be dangerous in the most unexpected places."

"A fact of which I'm well aware." I retrieved a bottle of antiseptic and some fresh bandages.

"Your actions precede you, Butcher. The Lanista hired you because he needed a surgeon, and he need not pay you. The coin he receives for a surgeon shall instead line his pockets. I, too, am not immune to the call of coin. I could buy out my contract today, but I would not have sufficient means to live as I desire. But neither do I mean to die from a wound that's not fatal. I would die on the sands, or live to make the coin to retire in comfort."

After sluicing the wound in antiseptic, I applied a fresh bandage. "I think you'll find that I excel at my job. Just see to your own."

"See that you stay within the bounds of your job. If you so much as look at a woman wrong . . ." Flavus smiled. "You'll die before you ever reach the sands."

As I shut Caepio's sightless eyes, the thundering roar of the Colosseum crowd crested, washing down into my underground surgical quarters before falling to sudden silence. The silence didn't last long. The final fight of the day continued, but that wasn't my immediate concern. Blaesus was with the second gurney and its bearers in case another of the Emperor's gladiators was killed or injured. I'd left him with just enough whisky to stop his shakes, though not enough to inebriate him. Right now, my job was here.

The Lanista had had a box dropped off at dawn, before the games began, the games I was meant to die in. I pulled off the lid, and rifled past the blank embossed sheets, and the journal that, on cursory inspection, proved to list gladiator names and details, until I found a blank death certificate. Caepio had raised his finger, signaling defeat, and had died to satisfy the blood hunger of the crowd. There was no box on the form for that. Why he died and cause of death were two separate things.

I'd just finished filling out the certificate when the roars of the crowd fell to a hush, then burst out louder than before. Victory, and defeat. I closed the box, set the death certificate atop it, and went to the door to see if I was needed. Minutes later I saw two men carrying a gurney bearing a gladiator, blood seeping from his abdomen, and Blaesus trailing behind them. I recognized him from mealtimes - the foreigner, Alfred.

While the two men transferred Alfred to the middle cot, I was able to make out enough of the wound - a deep slash into the muscle of the abdomen just above his wide leather belt- to begin making preparations. If the slash had penetrated into the abdominal cavity, I had little hope of saving him.

I directed Blaesus to wash his hands, sterilize a needle and grab the silk thread, while I soaked a cloth in a carefully measured amount of chloroform - just enough to put Alfred in a state of clinical anesthesia. Too little, and he'd experience serious disorientation or hallucinations, and still be capable of movement, a dangerous combination. Too much could lead to cardiovascular depression and death. It was a fine balance.

After sedating the gladiator, I washed my hands, pulled on a pair of clean gloves, and cleaned away enough of the blood to get a clear look at what I was dealing with. I liked what I saw: a clean slice through fat and muscle that stopped just short of piercing completely through the abdominal wall. I would need to sew the muscles together, and carefully if I wanted him to be able to regain full functionality. I didn't care one way or the other about his future, but it was the type of challenge I loved. I set to work.

Time passed without my awareness until I was finished. The gurney bearers had long since left, taking Caepio's corpse with them, and Blaesus had cracked another whisky bottle. But none of that mattered. I wrapped a wide swath of gauze about Alfred's midriff, then went into the back room to wash up.

When I returned to the main room, Blaesus had disappeared with his bottle, and Flavus stood beside Alfred's unconscious body. He turned to me, and asked, "Will he live?"

"Unless the wound becomes infected, he will." Despite the best of precautions, there were never any guarantees when it came to infection. "If he has the will to."

"Will he be able to fight again?"

"If he lives, he very well could." I had confidence in my work. "But not for months. He'll need to allow the wound to heal fully, and take care in rebuilding his strength."

Flavus nodded, rubbing at the freshly-healed scar on his arm. "He needs to fight to buy out his contract, to return to his wife and children." He looked back to Alfred, at the bandages that bound his midriff. "Did you know he was captured in battle? A skirmish at the north border of Gallia. He's an enemy of the New Roman Empire, a barbarian. Out there. But in here, he's a gladiator, and a brother to me. I've already lost one brother today."

Though Flavus didn't name Caepio, I knew who he meant. I had nothing to add, so I left him alone. He departed a few minutes later, while I finished cleaning up from the surgery. I had just sat down to record my notes on the procedure when Lanista Silus arrived.

"Flavus tells me Alfred's outlook is bright. See that it stays that way." He walked over to the box he'd had delivered, picked up the death certificate, and studied it.

"I'll do my best, Lanista."

"Good. I'll see this delivered to the Magistrate. Have you started on the notification letter?"

"Notification letter?"

"For the next of kin." Lanista Silus' eyes narrowed. "I covered for your predecessor because his hand shook, and Blaesus' handwriting is illegible, but your script is satisfactory. There's a journal in the box, it lists each gladiator at this
ludus
, and the address for notifying their next of kin upon their death. Write the letter, cross out the deceased's entry in the journal, and bring it to me. I'll see it posted."

An hour later, a guard admitted me to the Lanista's private study. Seated at a heavy oak desk strewn with papers, Silus took a few minutes to acknowledge me. I handed him the letter, and turned to leave.

"Stop," Silus said impatiently. "This will never do. Caepio died with honor serving as one of the Emperor's gladiators. This reads as if you're notifying the family of the slaughter of a chicken, and not a prized one at that. Rewrite it to express our sympathies, and leave out the description of how he died. They don't need a list of his wounds." He crumpled the paper and threw it at me. "And sign the damn thing. It's a personal letter, not an anonymous one."

Though I didn't see the point, I started the new letter with
'I regret to inform you,'
left out the salient details, and signed it Caro Carvetii. While I didn't feel any regret, the Lanista had asked, and I would oblige. After all, they were just words on paper.

By the time two more game days had passed, I'd become used to my new daily routine which is why the sound of the guards yelling in the gallery piqued my interest. I'd been sterilizing needles in the side room, and by the time I ducked back into the main room and made it to the doorway, the guards had moved on. But when I turned around and spotted a small foot poking out from behind one of the cots, I suspected I had found the cause.

"If you come out, I'll give you a chance to explain yourself." The foot snaked back, out of my line of sight. "If not, I'll call for the guards." I wasn't sure that the guards would hear me, but the ultimatum seemed warranted.

A prepubescent boy poked his head above the cot and regarded me for a moment before standing up. Given his shapeless striped shirt and rough canvas trousers, he looked to be a workhouse escapee. His short brown hair appeared to have been finger-combed. "I was just looking for my father. He's to be a gladiator here."

The way the boy was eyeing me, I got the distinct impression he believed his father could beat me up. I never knew my father. My mother had slept with so many men, I don't think she even knew his name. "Your father give you a name, boy?"

"What're you anyway?"

I raised my eyebrows.

"Stolo." He bit at his lower lip before saying, "Your turn."

"I'm the Chirurgeon here." At his blank look, I added, "I sew up the gladiators when they get hurt, among other things."

"So you'll help keep my father safe?"

"I suppose I will."

"His name's Metellus. He's supposed to arrive here today. That's why we came here, to New Rome. We caught a train out when we found out. He'll be fighting in the Emperor's Games next month."

"We?"

"My sister and me. Do you know where my father is?"

I had no idea if the Emperor's newest gladiators had arrived yet, but I did know which door they'd be coming through. It had to be the same door the boy had used. Only the Lanista, his family and guests arrived through the main door. A part of me wanted to point the boy in the correct direction and be done with him, but if he got lost and mentioned to the guards that he'd spoken with me . . . A little time wasn't worth the potential trouble I could be in. "I know where we can find out, if you'll come with me."

"What do I call you?" Stolo asked as he rounded the cots and headed towards me.

"My name's Caro."

The boy stopped. "I don't like that name. I'll call you Chirgeon."

"Chirugeon," I said, correcting his pronunciation. Caro was not an uncommon name. Perhaps he'd known a drunk or a bully of the same name. Or . . . "Where are you from?" I walked into the underground gallery, heading towards the Ludus.

"From Carvetii. In Londinium, on the East Side."

No surprise, then, that he still remembered the name of the Butcher. "Where's your sister?"

"At a linen factory. She got a job as soon as we came here. She's very experienced. We're living out by the ruins for now, so we can stay together. I haven't found a job yet, but I make sure to walk her to and from the factory each day, so she doesn't ever have to walk alone. It's not good for a woman to walk alone. And during the days, I've been exploring the city."

He chattered on non-stop about the harbor, the forum, and the markets for the next ten minutes, until we passed into the hallway that terminated in the service entrance. I'd expected the guards to be present - they always were, guarding the exit - but our timing was more opportune than I would have imagined. Three men, obviously gladiators from their builds and outfits, stood with their backs to me, facing Silus and two men I didn't recognize.