A Pattern of Blood

Chapter Twenty-one

At the sight of Julia’s distress, the normal social formalities were forgotten. Mutuus rushed forward, heedless of protocol in his eagerness to help. One of the slave girls cried, ‘Water and vinegar!’ and disappeared unbidden to fetch it. Most surprisingly of all, Marcus at once put away the writing tablets and offered his stool for her assistance. I have never before seen him give up his seat to any living person.

Sollers, however, seemed characteristically self-possessed. ‘Air,’ he said, authoritatively. ‘The lady needs air. And hydromel will help revive her too. The kitchens know how to prepare it; I ordered it often for her husband, previously. See to it, slave.’ He nodded to Junio who bounded away instantly, without reference to me, as if he, too, had been transformed by events.

She was pale and shaking, and Sollers led her to the stool where she sank down gracefully, her head in her hands, and for a moment we watched her in silence. Then she found her voice. ‘Pardon me, citizens,’ she managed. ‘I do not know what weakness overcame me.’

And why should the sight of Flavius’s writing tablets bring it on? That was the question I wanted to ask, but I judged the moment was not propitious. Besides, from the look on his face, Marcus would have considered it unfeeling and I would have risked a stinging rebuke. I held my tongue.

‘Momentary faintness like this is not unusual,’ Sollers was saying, with a professional air. ‘Your mind has sustained some dreadful shocks, and this has produced imbalance in your body. You have a surfeit of dry and airy humours. It often happens, in such circumstances.’

The maidservant came hurrying back at this moment with a goblet of watered vinegar, but he waved it away imperiously. ‘Water alone might have helped. Coolness and wet will help correct the imbalance. But vinegar will only add bitterness.’

‘Honey and water is better?’ I was remembering his instruction to bring hydromel.

‘It is.’ He smiled towards me as he spoke, and again I felt the flattery of his regard. ‘Sweetness will help to drive out sorrow, and also increase her strength. Ah! Here is your servant with some now.’ He took the cup from a panting Junio and held it to the lady’s lips.

Julia swallowed some hydromel and did indeed seem a little revived. She gave Sollers a faint, glowing smile. ‘Thank you. I am better already.’

I was ready to ask my question about the writing blocks, but Sollers intervened. ‘All the same, lady, I think you should be cupped. That will draw off the dangerous humours physically. It is a strong remedy, stronger than I would normally advise, but there is need for a swift cure. You have a funeral to attend tonight, and your presence will be required at the banquet too.’

‘You are going to bleed her?’ I asked, doubtfully. Julia had turned white at the prospect, but obviously the little crisis had affected my social judgement. It was not my place to question the doctor’s decision.

He took no offence. ‘Not bleed her, no. That is for reducing fever in the blood. This is an affliction of the brain, caused by airy humours: dry-cupping will suffice.’

I had heard of it, the application of suction to the skin to draw the offending humours through it. Julia looked greatly relieved at this reduction of sentence, and glanced at me with the most charming conspiratorial smile. Even so, my next question startled everyone, most of all myself. Ever afterwards I wondered how I dared to ask it. ‘Can I assist you, Sollers?’ I enquired.

Everyone stared at me in astonishment. The medicus was the first to recover.

‘Citizen, a pair of hands would certainly be useful, but there are many slaves here who can help me.’

I shook my head. ‘They have a funeral to prepare,’ I said. I can be stubborn when I choose, and having volunteered myself to this, I was seized by a strong desire to see it through. ‘In any case, I should be fascinated to observe your skill.’

He was visibly flattered by that.

I saw him waver, and I pressed my advantage. ‘As you, once, were interested to witness Galen’s work,’ I added.

He gave a slight smile. ‘In that case, citizen, if Julia has no objection. .?’

She indicated that she had none.

‘Then by all means watch me if you wish. Though there is little anyone can do to help, and very little to see. We shall require a cupping bowl, that is all, a little lint and a lighted taper. You will find all these things in the consulting room of my apartments. Or better, perhaps we should take Julia Honoria there. I have good lamps, and an upright chair with arms which I use for operating — it helps to steady my hands. Julia may sit in that and support her arm. My box of salves and remedies will be on hand, too, to restore her after the cupping.’

Julia made no demur, so he placed a firm hand under her elbow, and — with the assistance of Junio, who stepped forward at my signal — helped her across the courtyard to the room, with her handmaidens in attendance. I followed them, as suggested, but the rest of the company, after a little hesitation, dispersed.

If I had been a patient of Sollers, I thought, I should either have made a miraculous recovery the moment I walked in through his door or (perhaps more likely) expired entirely from fright. One’s symptoms could scarcely be more dreadful than the treatments hinted at here.

The very sight of the implements set out on the surgeon’s table was enough to induce an immediate fever. There were blades for cutting rotting flesh; saws for bones and limbs; heating irons for cautery; hand drills for the skull; a dreadful four-jawed device with ratchets, for some internal use; and a pair of fearsome pincers for the teeth. I remembered that army surgeons were trained to ignore their patients’ cries. The very thought made me shudder. I turned away.

True, on the shelves around there were labelled caskets of dried herbs to ease distress — I spotted mustard, crocus, belladonna, linseed, poppy and mallow — and vessels of oils, salt, turpentine and vinegar to clean the wounds. But my eyes were instinctively drawn back to the surgeon’s gallery on the table: it looked like a torturer’s armoury. And, among the rest, as Sollers had said, was a selection of cupping bowls — some, delicate affairs of horn, with tiny apertures in the bottom, while others were more robust in bronze, large hollow bell shapes with a smooth lip at the edge.

Sollers selected one of the latter, and asked Julia to bare her arm. She did so herself, waving away the maidservant who stepped forward to help. I admired her fortitude. Sollers had lighted a small piece of lint from a taper which he dropped into the cup, and now, rubbing a little oil around the rim, he was preparing to clamp the bell firmly against the milky skin of the proffered arm.

‘Will it not burn her?’ I could not restrain the question.

‘It will be hot at first, certainly.’ Sollers spoke with his customary pride in his own expertise, and I realised that he was enjoying giving this little demonstration. ‘But the lint will burn away the natural vapour in the jar, and since nature abhors a vacuum, the excess humours will be sucked out of the arm. They’ll fill the space and put the fire out. If we had more leisure, I would have used a bone cupping bowl, and sucked the humours out myself, through the hole in the base. But it is getting late, and Julia must be well enough to face the funeral celebrations tonight. This method is stronger and brings swifter results.’

Indeed, within a few moments he was withdrawing the cup from her arm, and I could see what he meant about the vacuum. There was no fire in the cup, and no actual burning on the arm, although the skin was reddened and marked where it had been drawn up into the cupping vessel. I had, I remembered, seen a similar bruise on the arm of Quintus Ulpius as he lay dead at my feet. I remembered that he, too, had been cupped shortly before.

I tried to imagine Sollers applying this treatment to the decurion. And then something occurred to me. I had been an idiot not to think of it before.

I turned to Sollers, with what I hoped was a disarming smile. ‘You did the same to Quintus yesterday morning?’

‘Not quite the same, no.’ He was rubbing a perfumed salve gently into Julia’s arm and she was smiling at him gratefully. ‘Quintus was suffering from a fever, so I wet-cupped him. A similar process, but one cuts the vein. It draws blood, and hence the fiery humours are drawn out.’

I took a deep breath. ‘And what, on these occasions, do you do with the blood?’

I heard Julia catch her breath sharply. Sollers’s hands visibly trembled as they held the salve pot, but it was only for an instant. A moment later he had regained his self-possession, and was saying evenly, ‘In general, citizen, one carries it away and washes the cupping vessel in the stream.’

‘In general,’ I said. ‘But what about yesterday morning? What did you do with it then?’

There was a pause, during which Julia looked at Sollers and everyone else looked at me.

‘I should warn you, lady,’ I said, ‘I have been to the fuller’s. Your clothes had not yet been laundered.’

Julia turned so pale I thought Sollers would suggest another cupping. ‘Great Minerva, giver of wisdom!’ she exclaimed. ‘Sollers, you had better tell them everything.’

None of the servants moved. One could almost feel the expectation in the room.

Sollers looked at me steadily. ‘What Julia did was no crime, citizen.’

‘I did not suggest it was. The blood, after all, was withdrawn already, and you have just explained how that is treatment for a fever. All the same, I would like to hear her account of it. Or yours. A petition, was it, or a thank offering? Because the treatment you were giving her had worked?’

Julia gave a little sob. ‘A little of both. It was not the first time I had sacrificed to the goddess — though not usually with blood. But we always sent the servants away when I made an offering, and I know we were not observed this time. We did it so swiftly. How did you discover the truth?’

‘I examined the altar, yesterday, and the channel around the shrine was wet with blood. I wondered at the time if someone had used it as a way of disposing of inconvenient evidence. It was foolish of me, but I did not make the connection with cupping, until now.’

Julia opened her mouth to speak, and thought better of it.

‘Minerva,’ I went on, ‘giver of wisdom, as you pointed out — and guardian of women’s troubles, too. There are several statues of her in the garden. Of course you would make sacrifice to her. You were being treated by Sollers for just such a problem — he told me so himself.’

She turned to him, white-faced, and he burst out, ‘And you, citizen, gave me your word upon your silence.’

‘I promised not to betray your confidence to others, and I have not done so. The attendants knew already, since they told my servant about it. I have betrayed you to no one. And I won’t, unless the matter bears upon the killing. But I would have been glad to learn about it sooner. Blood close to a stabbing requires explanation, don’t you think?’

‘Oh, citizen!’ Julia raised her lovely eyes to mine. ‘You are right. It is my fault. I was too terrified, when Quintus was killed, and too embarrassed to explain. I made Sollers promise to keep silent too. After I left you yesterday I went into my quarters, as I said, and put a little rouge upon my lips. I knew that Quintus would be bad-tempered when I saw him, after his argument with his son, and I wanted to humour him as much as possible — partly so that he should greet you with civility. Then, as I came out of my room, I met Sollers in the court. He had bled my husband earlier, and since Quintus was still arguing with Maximilian, was taking the opportunity to carry away his equipment. I needed to wait for Quintus, so. .’ she hesitated.

Sollers finished for her. ‘We decided that there was time to make an oblation — and for Julia to have her final treatment, too. It takes only a short time, but it is hard to find a moment when it is discreet. This seemed an ideal opportunity. There was no one in the court, Quintus was busy, you would not look for her, and it was easy for Julia to dismiss her attendants. And once we were in her husband’s apartments we were safe.’

‘You weren’t afraid you would be seen at the shrine?’

‘It was a risk, of course, but not a great one. The grotto is hidden from the colonnade.’

That was true, I thought, remembering the bald-headed serving maid. ‘This was the final treatment?’ I enquired.

He nodded. ‘That was the reason for the thank offering. The inflammation was already eased. When Quintus was recovered, Julia could go to him again with every expectation of a child.’

I glanced at Julia, surprised at this disconcerting candour in front of a woman, but Roman wives are more forthright about sexual matters than Celtic ones. Or Celtic husbands, for that matter. She said, with only the faintest flush, ‘I had vowed a special sacrifice to Minerva when I was cured, and this seemed a splendid opportunity. What better offering could I make to the goddess than a libation of my husband’s blood, freely given? In gratitude and in petition for a son.’

‘You poured it from the cupping bowl?’ It seemed unlikely as a sacrificial urn.

She smiled. ‘No. Sollers was carrying his equipment in a bowl — a large bronze bowl which Quintus kept beside him. It is a fine thing — suitable for making a sacrifice.’

I looked at Sollers questioningly, and he gave an ironic bow. ‘It was not, I grant you, the most elegant of solutions. But I had just finished bleeding Quintus when Maximilian barged in. Knife, salve pots, bandages and a cupping vessel full of blood — it was more than a man could carry at one time. So when Quintus ordered me to leave the room, I put it all into the bowl, and carried it that way. When Julia wanted to make a libation it seemed an obvious vessel.’ He put away his salve and knelt down beside Julia to place a pad of cotton on her arm and bind it tenderly into place.

‘I see!’ I said, struck by a moment of illumination. ‘That answers a puzzle which has worried me. I wondered why Quintus had not summoned his slaves to his aid when he was attacked. I should have noticed that the bowl was missing from his room. Where is it now? You have not returned it to Quintus?’

‘You saw it yourself,’ Julia said, ‘supporting a vase of funeral foliage in the atrium.’

Where I had overlooked it, I thought. Sollers might compliment me on my perception, but I was not proud of what I had failed to see. ‘So you made the sacrifice? Together?’

Julia shook her head. ‘Not together, citizen. It was a woman’s sacrifice. There was not much time. I made the blood libation while Sollers rinsed the other equipment in the pool and then went to his room to get the treatment for me. He hurried back to help me complete the sacrifice, and then — as you know — we went to my husband’s usual room where we could be undisturbed.’

And where, I thought, she could lie down while he administered the treatment. ‘And that was when you discovered that you had splashed your stola with blood?’

‘I had, a little,’ she confessed. ‘The bowl was heavy, and I poured it badly. It was too heavy for me to lift it up to the focus on the altar. I had to pour it around the channel in the base. Sollers brought the water from the cascade for us to wash the bowl, as ritual demands. I could not carry it so far.’

‘And the clothes?’

‘I went back and took them off, as soon as the treatment was finished, but I had scarcely had time to change them before a slave came to my rooms with the dreadful news of Quintus. And there was I with blood on my clothes. Oh, citizen, I could not even grieve. I was too terrified!’ She shook her head as if the memory haunted her.

Sollers finished his ministrations and rose to his feet.

‘I thought that someone would see the bloodstains and blame me for the murder,’ Julia went on. ‘Once Quintus was dead, who would believe that we acquired his blood innocently? That it had been let to cure him, not to kill him? I made a parcel of my dirty garments, and as soon as my maidservants had helped me dress I sent them to the fuller’s straight away. Sollers came to get me, and I made him promise to say nothing about the sacrifice. Of course, I did not expect that you would guess the truth.’

I turned to Sollers. ‘And you encouraged her in this deception?’

He inclined his head. ‘I did, although deception is not perhaps the word. I was simply frugal with the truth. After all, it was an innocent event. But we chose a dreadful time to do it — although we could not know that at the time. Maximilian does not love Julia — or me, and as a future decurion he has influence. If he had heard about the blood, he would have raised a case against us and then we would have been lucky to escape with our lives.’

I had to admit the justice of that. ‘The timing was certainly unfortunate,’ I said.

‘And more unfortunate,’ Sollers said, ‘that we had dismissed the servants from the court. It was not necessary. But Julia had insisted all along that her treatment, and everything connected with it, should be kept as secret as possible. There is too much gossip in a household of slaves.’

There was, I thought. Despite all their care the rumours had still reached me.

‘So,’ Julia said, ‘now you know everything.’

I smiled. ‘Not quite everything.’ She was looking calmer now, and I felt that the moment had come. ‘What was it about Flavius’s writing blocks which could disturb you so?’