Second Act (18 page)

One was religion. Money (from the rich), garlands (from the poor) would be left for Aesculapius at his temple on the island in the Tiber, for Aesculapius was the god of medicine and healing, and it was to him they looked if sickness descended. Carna’s shrine up on the Caelian Hill would be inundated with cakes of fat bacon and beans in the hope that the goddess who watched over their vital organs might make them stronger, if she was propitiated accordingly. And they would pour solemn libations to their family gods with the prayer, ‘Admit no plague or sickness into this household. If disease comes to our threshold, make it stay there.’ However, the populace was well aware that the Immortals would be rushed off their feet in times of crisis and, even though they’d hedged their bets three ways, it was still possible for their entreaties to slip through the divine net. Hence the second arm of the pincer.

Armed with potions and ointments, tablets and suppositories, the trickle of visitors from the herbalist’s door was slow but steady as Orbilio and Dymas approached.

‘Trust me, mate, we have to do this,’ Dymas said, his hobnailed boots echoing dully on the timbers of the Sublician Bridge.

‘The rape only took place yesterday morning.’

The people who visited the herbalist were not rich. Their coarse cloaks were patched, their sandals made from woven palm leaves rather than leather, and the men wore beards, since they were not in a position to afford barbers. Yet they were prepared to hand over what, to them, were vast sums of money for poultices and infusions, indemnity against the inevitable.

‘I know, but you said yourself we don’t have any fresh leads. Bloody fuck, mate, we need Deva’s statement or we’re screwed.’

Orbilio knew Dymas was right, but calling on the poor girl so soon after the attack felt like another assault. Unfortunately, time wasn’t on Marcus’s side. This morning another girl had fallen victim to the Halcyon Rapist. More lives had been destroyed by this monster. Panic was filling the streets. As much as it went against his personal and professional grain, he had caved in to his colleague’s demands.

‘We’ll take it slowly,’ he told him. ‘See how it goes.’

The sneering allegation of his boss that Orbilio knew the victims had cut no ice. Whether he knew the girls directly, indirectly or not at all was irrelevant, but that was something he could sort out later, this vicious attempt to smear his reputation and character. Right now, all he cared about was that four young women had been brutalized. Four more young women violated
because of him.

‘Bloody fuck, mate!’ Dymas had snorted with derision when Orbilio confided to him how he felt. ‘You did everything you could, didn’t you? Confession. Identification. Evidence. You got the bugger bang to rights, he paid the price, now quit beating yourself up. This is the work of a sick bastard copycat and don’t you forget it.’

‘What made you keep the records of this case, Dymas?’ They were almost at the herbalist’s door. ‘I mean, if you didn’t have reservations about the rapist yourself, then why bother?’

‘Same reason I keep all the others,’ the Greek said dryly. ‘Insurance, mate.’

‘Insurance?’

Dymas glanced up from his feet. ‘Oh, fine for you. Midwife removed the silver spoon before she cut the umbilical bloody chord, didn’t she?’ The eyes dropped again. ‘Me, I’m a foreigner. What you Romans very nicely call an alien, and a low-born blacksmith’s son at that. If anything goes arse-over-tip, I don’t have no poncy family to fall back on, do I? I’m in no position to bribe my way out of the shit, like some I might mention. Them case notes are my insurance policy.’

There it was, the old chip on the shoulder revealing itself to be half a pine tree. Another reason Marcus despised the surly Greek.

The herbalist opened the door to his knock and his eyes narrowed when he recognized his visitors.

‘Have you caught him?’

Orbilio shook his head sadly. ‘How’s Deva?’ he asked.

‘How do you think?’ the herbalist rasped back. Deep purple hollows surrounded his eyes and the skin on his face hung slack, like a person newly bereaved.

The house consisted of three tiny chambers. His workroom, the main room which served as living-area-cum-kitchen with wood-burning stove, plain, wooden furniture and functional clay plates and pots. And the sleeping chamber above, masked off by a makeshift screen that the herbalist had hastily thrown up and behind which Deva lay curled like a foetus, clutching her red Damascan shawl. The cottage smelled of balsam and fennel, horehound and sulphur, and sprigs of herbs hung from the joists on the ceiling. Thyme, hyssop, licebane and borage.

‘We need to ask a few questions,’ Marcus told the distraught herbalist under his breath. ‘Any detail, no matter how small, how trivial it might seem, brings us one step closer towards putting this bastard where he belongs.’

‘She hasn’t uttered a word since it happened,’ the man replied, ‘and I haven’t forced her. But— Well, if it’s important, I’ll see what I can do.’

‘Of course it’s bloody important,’ Dymas snapped, making no effort to keep his voice low. ‘If this is a repeat of last year’s shenanigans, we’re looking at ten more girls getting buggered and beaten, and if we don’t nail the sick bastard this time, it’ll be fourteen more next year, as well.’

The makeshift curtain was suddenly pulled back. Three heads jerked upwards in surprise. Her face battered and swollen, the skin beneath white as parchment, Deva stood looking down at the men. Her fingers clenched over the wooden rail.

‘Deva! Darling—’

But before the herbalist could form one more word, the Damascan girl had launched herself into space.

*

It was late, nearly midnight, when Marcus retraced his steps. He was alone this time. His knock was soft. At first he did not think the herbalist had heard it, then the door opened. Without a word, he motioned Orbilio inside.

‘I gave her a dose of poppy juice. Too much, probably,
but…’
His voice trailed off, crushed by horror, exhaustion and grief.

Indeed, the opiate dominated the other scents inside the small dwelling which the chill river air could not seem to penetrate. A single candle burned in the corner and Orbilio wondered if the herbalist had eaten since Deva had been brought home yesterday. Somehow he doubted it.

‘You saved her life,’ the herbalist said thickly. ‘You can’t imagine how grateful I am to you, Marcus.’

‘I did not save her life.’ Orbilio patted him reassuringly on the shoulder. ‘I saved her from breaking an arm or a leg, that was all.’

When he saw Deva’s fingers unclench from the rail, caught the look of hopelessness and utter despair in her eyes, the hairs on his neck had started to prickle. Almost before her feet had left the landing, he had flung himself forward to catch her.

The other man almost smiled. ‘You’re still a hero to me.’

‘If I was a hero,’ Orbilio replied wearily, ‘Deva would have gone to her mother’s house yesterday, sold her honey at market, then come home the same bubbly young woman she was when she left.’

‘Hm.’ The herbalist led him into his workroom, lit an oil lamp and reached for a jar on the shelf. ‘I think we both need some of this,’ he said, pouring a thin, pale yellow liquid into two cups.

The liquid was fire. It made Orbilio’s eyes water, scalded his throat, burned a hole from his stomach down to his toes. Once he’d stopped coughing, he held his cup out for a refill. ‘What
is
that?’

‘In the mountainous regions of eastern Gaul, along the Helvetican border, the natives brew up the yellow gentians which grow wild on the hills and distil the juice. This, my friend, is the result.’

‘Then here’s to barbarians everywhere,’ Orbilio croaked.

He let the fire in his belly settle and used the time to study the herbalist. Late-thirties, his red hair receding from the temples and with the beginnings of a slight paunch, he was not an obvious catch for a vibrant young woman with a preference for bodices that showed off her midriff and fringed skirts that swayed with her hips. But he could see what had attracted Deva to him. His goodness, his gentleness, his wanting to help those in need of it most. Orbilio was wrong, he realized. The people who had trickled up to this house for their potions and pills had not handed over vast sums for their remedies. Deva and her man would not be living in such humble conditions if he had charged them the going rate.

‘I have a confession to make,’ he said, twisting the cup in his hands. ‘This is not an official call.’

Of all the times to seek a personal consultation, he could hardly have picked a worse one. The man was already a widower once, his first wife killed by falling masonry from one of the hundreds of renovation projects. Now Deva had been subjected to an ordeal that had driven her to the brink of suicide and the helplessness of it all was tearing the poor bugger to shreds. Yet here he was, in the early hours, being asked for his professional advice.

‘Please don’t feel obliged,’ Orbilio said. ‘I quite understand if you—’

‘Marcus.’ The herbalist motioned his visitor to sit. ‘Other men would pick up a sword and go charging round the city to hunt down this beast. To my shame, I’m not other men. I do not know how to avenge her, I can only mend the wounds on her body.’ His mouth twisted in self-revulsion. ‘I do not even possess the ability to heal the wounds in her head.’

Orbilio wasn’t sure about that, and he said so. He’d seen many victims of rape. Had seen how their ordeal was viewed as bringing disgrace on their families, seen their husbands reject them, even though the women were blameless. What all victims of rape needed was tenderness, patience and love. Qualities the herbalist possessed in abundance.

For several moments, the herbalist was unable to speak. Then he tossed down a third shot of the pale yellow liquor, grimaced, and his tortured eyes softened. ‘That, if it’s true—’

‘It’s true.’

‘—makes me feel a whole lot better about what I was about to say,’ he replied. ‘Because I was going to tell you that the best thing you can do for me at the moment is give me something to work on. A problem which can occupy my mind, even for the tiniest amount of time, affords me unimaginable relief from the pain.’

Orbilio leaned back in his chair. It was hard and uncomfortable, and far too small for his large frame, but he barely noticed. He knew, from his previous visit to discuss the attempts to poison the Emperor, that the herbalist was a man to be trusted to listen, understand, sympathize and not judge. And perhaps that was the most important role of any physician. That of confessor.

Which is how, at one o’clock in the morning, Marcus Cornelius Orbilio came to be telling a virtual stranger about the pixie. How he had met her at a friend’s house when she was dancing. How they had got chatting and ended up at her house, too drunk to notice, too drunk to care, who satisfied his bodily urges. That, even when he took Angelina to a tavern to let her down gently over a meal, he found himself in exactly the same predicament the following morning. Furred tongue, lack of memory, those damned castanets clacking like crazy behind his eyes.

‘My head wasn’t the only thing that was throbbing when I woke up,’ he admitted ruefully, explaining how he’d vowed never to touch another drop of wine so long as he lived. True to his word, he had gone to Angelina’s house sober last night to break off the relationship but it was in her bed that he awoke, exhibiting the same muzzy symptoms, the same burning erection and, as previously, the day was more advanced than he would have wished.

‘Hm.’

The herbalist laced his fingers together on the desk. Behind him, on the shelves, earthenware vessels lined up like soldiers, along with glass and ceramic pots, copper pots, tin pots, horn, silver and onyx containers. Bronze boxes, wooden boxes, flasks, scoops and balances stood to attention beside mortars and palettes, pestles and bottles, spatulas and bandages of varying widths. On the table beneath the shuttered window sat turnips, garlic bulbs, mustard and rue, and a small jar marked ‘Cedar resin’.

‘You suspect Angelina of drugging you?’ he asked at length.

‘Let’s say the alternative worries me,’ Orbilio replied.

Across the desk, the herbalist shifted. ‘I have some good news and some bad news,’ he said. ‘The good news is that you aren’t losing your mind and have indeed been the victim of drugs. A cyathus of mandrake, a scruple of henbane, one or two other bits and bobs and we have a sleeping draught which leaves a sledgehammer pounding between the eyes and a tongue that could pass for a rodent.’

‘And the bad news?’

A muscle twitched at the side of the herbalist’s mouth as he poured a shot of gentian liqueur for his visitor. ‘The bad news, my friend, is that under a sedative of that strength, you could not possibly have managed anything more energetic than a snore.’

Despite the situation, Orbilio found himself laughing. ‘Not the four times she said, then?’

The herbalist began laughing with him. ‘Not even once,’ he chuckled. ‘Although.’ He tapped the small jar at his elbow. ‘I can, if you like, make you a potion that would help.’

Laughter was the trigger the herbalist needed. Within seconds, the first healing tears started to flow.

*

Orbilio and the herbalist weren’t the only two whose problems kept them awake in the early hours.

*

In her office, Claudia was going through her accounts with a fine flea comb. Sending Butico those three thousand bronze sesterces had literally drained her coffers dry. How on earth was she supposed to fund her Saturnalia banquet now? There was no quick way to liquidate her assets. That brickworks on the Via Tiburtina wouldn’t sell this close to Saturnalia. Rents on her properties could not be collected until New Year’s Day. To be seen selling off the silver and gold plate would start alarm bells ringing.