The Curse-Maker

CHAPTER TWO

The roses and the hollyhocks laughed, their petals shaking in the wind. She was right, of course. Normally I would’ve stayed with the murdered man, drawn by that gnawing hunger to know, the same feeling that used to earn me a few sestertii before I became old and complacent and the governor’s medicus.

Goddamn hands. They got me in the goddamn business. What happened to the other doctor, the younger man who fought his own goddamn fights, who made his own goddamn way, who could, on occasion, discover the goddamn truth.

I leaned against a pear tree, staring out over the hazy yellow town, the past nine months washing over me like that foul, churning water from the not-so-Sacred Spring.

My eyes closed. Goddamn it. Thirty-four years old. I was thirty-four years old. I wasn’t going to give up yet.

* * *

Nones of September. Agricola’s finest hour. Last hour for thousands of Caledonii.

He conquered the island. Slaughtered the last army. Had gone farther than anyone ever expected-far enough to secure his fame and yet not far enough, maybe, to push the emperor to outright assassination. A delicate dance, with all the precision of a sacrifice.

A light flickered by the governor’s quarters, officers darting in and out. Agricola was moving the men out this morning, heading south to establish forts. He’d work his way slowly to Londinium, where he’d wait for the inevitable order from Domitian to return to Rome. Term complete.

I squinted at the small hill squatting peacefully on the plain. I thought of the men with families, the women and children, loaded into carts and crawling like ants on the surface. Three days ago.

Their horses got tangled up in the wagon leads, the cavalry hunting down the ones who fled. Painted warriors, scars and tattoos proud on their bodies, long swords and short shields useless and clumsy, running, shouting into the path of trained soldiers. All gone, dead. Last wild men of Britannia.

I closed my eyes. I could still hear the cries of the children when the survivors killed them afterward. Better dead than slaves, they thought. For the love of their children, they murdered them. For the love of his son, Agricola slaughtered the Caledonians.

* * *

May.

I’d done everything I could to save his son, everything I’d ever learned, or felt, or knew, or guessed. Not enough.

What about the tonic? Just to make him sleep-sleep was his only chance. Too much? A little saffron, enough to make him drowsy. As drowsy as I was. Up for three days straight, tried everything else. The little boy weaker and weaker, restless, unable to sleep. He’d die without sleep. I gave him the right amount. As soon as the crying stopped, and I heard his breath, even, peaceful, I got what rest I could, so I’d be ready for when he woke up.

Except he never woke up.

Domitia’s eyes, accusing, wild, asking the question, the same question I asked myself, over and over, every night. Could I have saved him if I’d been awake? My lullaby, my prayer, my reason. My excuse. Every night.

She screamed at me, beat my chest, called me a quack, a charlatan, broke down and locked herself in her room. Stayed there until the ship came.

Cleaner than the dazed look on her husband’s face. Not a word against me. No questions. Focused on his strategy. Left for the North the next week. His household-his namesake and heir, the boy he’d wanted all his life-gone. Nothing to lose.

He never blamed me. He channeled his energy into his last, supreme battle as governor, his final chance for glory. Glory didn’t die.

* * *

I watched the dawn shine over the plain. Four months of guilt? More like a lifetime.

It had gnawed my insides since I was ten. I thought I rid myself of it when I found Gywna. Thought I’d forgiven myself for not saving my mother. At the first real crisis, the first tragedy, I left my wife. Left her emotionally. Quit writing. Quit thinking. I withdrew from the woman I loved. My beautiful, oh, so beautiful wife. Gwyna.

I rode north with Agricola, sent a few pitiful scrawls with the governor’s messenger. Her responses were full of hurt. She didn’t know what the hell happened to me, what was devouring my gut every night, wanting to help and not knowing how. I didn’t tell her, either-I ignored her, punishing both of us for my failure.

Her responses became spare and lean. Finally stopped altogether. I withdrew into my nightmares, familiar, safe. Watched my mother get murdered every night. I dreamed about Gwyna, too-dying in childbirth, while I stood by, unable to save her.

Bilicho kept writing, thank God. He did what he could to keep some part of me from drifting too far off the edges of the maps. I was already at the edge of them all, staring at a plain littered with corpses. I thought about my mother, and what she would have wanted. What she would have said.

She told me something that September morning, a whispered southern wind blowing clouds across the bloody sky. Forgive yourself, Arcturus. For not being able to save every life you come across. For not being able to save the child. For being alive.

Simple words. I took a breath and filled my lungs. I was done with war. As much as I was done with the guilt. Finished with stitching up butchered men who’d butchered other men who couldn’t be stitched up. It was time for both of us, governor and doctor, to see what else Fortuna had in store.

Light was flooding the hills, and a fresh gust of wind blew down from the west.

* * *

I could hear Saturninus before I reached the tent. A loud roar rose from the governor’s quarters, and the heavy cloth shook with the sound. The flap belched open like a fat man’s mouth in a seaside bar. The tent fought to steady itself.

“Arcturus! Glad to see you’re still among the living!”

Saturninus’s expansive slap on my back rattled my teeth.

“I’ll be feeling that welcome all the way back to Londinium.”

His white teeth gleamed beneath the bushy black beard. Sometimes I thought Saturninus was part bear. Sometimes I thought he was a bear.

“You should be happy to get back home.” The elbow in my ribs emphasized what he meant. He recognized the look on my face. “What’s wrong? Trouble?”

“Nothing serious. I just need to get home.”

“Is your wife-”

“She’s fine.”

He stared at me, chewing his mustache. Respectful, but with the acknowledgment that I wasn’t fully Roman.

“Have all the scouts returned?”

He nodded. “No enemy movement anywhere. Everything’s nice and quiet. The general’s giving orders to the fleet to sail all the way around Britannia.”

“How is the general?”

“He’s all right, Arcturus. Knows he’s on the way out. Hell, we thought he was out last winter, and he might have been, if it hadn’t been for you. He hasn’t forgotten.”

“Neither have I.”

He knew what I meant and reached a paw out to pat my shoulder. “He’s in there now, with that scribe takin’ down everything about the battle. It’s for his son-in-law, Tacitus, fancies himself a historian.”

I didn’t much fancy Tacitus. Always creeping around, perpetual gloom hanging over his stooped shoulders like an undertaker at the Colosseum gates. I couldn’t help it if his wife tried to seduce me.

“The Battle of Mons Graupius. Not much of a mountain.”

“But a hell of a battle. Memorably fought on the day of Jupiter Stator, the Nones of September-”

“You mean the Nones of Germanicus, don’t you?”

Saturninus’s snort would have done credit to a three-ton bull. “That little jerk-off Domitian wouldn’t know what to do with a German if one pulled off his baby pants and tugged on his-”

“Arcturus!”

It was Agricola, calling me inside, but too late to prevent Saturninus from announcing to all and sundry what a German would find upon pulling down Domitian’s underwear. Someday that mouth of his would get him in serious trouble.

Soldiers scurried about with various orders. A small man with a pointed chin that matched his stylus was taking down notes in a minuscule hand. Whenever Agricola grunted, he hurriedly scrawled away. He looked like he’d be a friend of Tacitus.

“There you are. Where have you been keeping yourself?”

“Sorry to keep you waiting, sir. Saturninus was filling me in.”

“On what, I wonder? So long as he wasn’t filling you up.”

The scribe scribbled furiously over that one.

“The scouts, the fleet. Your memorialization.”

I nodded at the scribe, who was still gazing at Agricola with the ardor of a bitch in heat.

The general glanced down. “Oh, yes. My son-in-law.”

When the brown eyes met mine, they were softer. “We’re building a large fort south of here-by that river we passed, with the grazing land. Haven’t named it yet. It will have a good-sized hospital, Arcturus.”

The tent flap opened with an abrupt slap, and in walked a man I wished I could kick in the face. He was striding toward Agricola and stopped when he saw me. The governor raised his eyebrows and, after glancing my way, turned to Quatio.

“What is it? Aren’t the horses ready?”

Gnaeus Quatio was a bully, a braggart, and an all-around asshole. He’d crawled into favor with the governor because he risked his life to bring back the body of Aulus Atticus, a young idiot who ignored orders, lashed his horse, and rode straight into the enemy spears.

“All except one, your governorship. A gray mare has gone missing, and that thick-skulled British idiot of a hostler won’t tell me where she is.” He fingered a leather crop in his hand. “Not even after he tasted this.”

I was going to owe Ranor more than the denarius I’d slipped him. I took a step toward Quatio.

“You still beating up Brits as a pastime, Quatio? They’re on your side, or are you too ‘thick-skulled’ to remember it?”

His face got even uglier-a trick I hadn’t thought possible-and his fingers grasped the bully stick as if it were my throat. “Mind your own business-medicus. I’m here to see the governor.”

Agricola interjected. “You are seeing him, Quatio. Find the other horse. Bring the hostler to me, if necessary.”

I cleared my throat. “That won’t be necessary, Governor.”

Agricola turned to me, his eyes narrowed. He didn’t like surprises. “What do you mean?”

“The gray mare he’s talking about is Nimbus. My horse. I have her by the south gate.”

Quatio looked happier than I’d ever seen him. “Deserting, are you, like the rest of those mutinous-”

“Enough!” Agricola seldom needed to raise his voice. The scribe crouched with his mouth agape, and the other officers and men stared at us, afraid to move.

“Leave us, Quatio.” The general said it without taking his eyes off my face. I stared back at him. First time in months I was able to.

Quatio turned bright red. He mumbled as he headed out the tent, the words “son” and “killer” reaching our ears.

“Quatio!”

Jove hurling a thunderbolt. My hair stood on end.

“Come here. Now.”

Quatio crawled back to the governor, his dark head hung low. Even his whip shrank.

“You’re demoted. Return to your contubernium and send me the next officer. If you can’t hold your tongue, and repeat idle gossip-especially in my presence!-you’re not worthy of command.”

Quatio backed his way toward the exit, in a gratifying, crablike shuffle. The scribe was still slack-jawed, drool starting to form at the corner of his mouth. When the flap finally closed with a thwack on Quatio’s face, I realized I was a little slack-jawed, too.

Agricola glanced toward the scribe. “Write it down! That’s part of being a general.” Then he turned to me. “Come, Arcturus. Let’s go outside.”

We surveyed the busy camp, the men removing the pickets and temporary fortifications in the distance. He stood with his hands on his hips and took a deep breath.

“Nice country.” He said it conversationally. He never liked good-byes.

I agreed. “Beautiful.”

He looked at me sideways. “Trouble at home?”

I shook my head, wondering how much to tell him. The man-my patron, my friend-carried too many burdens already.

“Some. Mostly with me.”

He pulled on his lower lip, turned back toward the view, and waited.

I ventured a question. “How are your wounds?”

He’d taken some superficial cuts early in the battle. They were healing well, beyond the point of worry. Or I wouldn’t be able to go.

“Keeping them clean, as you always tell me. The mallow poultice helped.”

“Good. Governor-Agricola-I-”

He turned to me suddenly. I was surprised to see the moisture in his eyes. “Don’t say anything, Arcturus.”

He cleared his throat and faced the camp again. “I would, of course, like you to come to Rome with me. If half of what I hear about Domitian is true, I’ll need someone who can prepare a good antidote.”

It was my turn to react. “Do you really think-”

“No, no. I’ll be fine. I think I’ve reached a good middle point. Too popular to kill, not popular enough to damn the popularity.”

He eyed me again. “Avitus has been watching Lucullus. I don’t think he’ll replace me as governor.” He reached out a gnarled hand and gently, for an old soldier, laid it on my shoulder. “Thanks to you.”

I shook my head. This was harder than I expected. “General, if you need me-”

“Then I will call you. Have no doubt about that.”

He let his hand drop easily to his side, and pointed over the hills. “This is the farthest north any Roman or Greek has gone, Arcturus. I’ve achieved what I wanted. I’ll die a happy man, all in all.”

I caught the catch in his voice. He kept his focus on the landscape.

“I expect I’ll have a grandson soon, and there’ll be plenty to do in Rome.”

He turned to me again.

“My friend, it’s time for you to get on with your life. I knew I couldn’t keep you forever. I knew the army couldn’t, either. You feel things too much, Arcturus, it’s the native in you. I’m thankful for the years … you’ve saved me, my work, too many times to count.”

I looked down at the strong, scarred hand that grasped my arm, and I took it in my own hand and brought it to my lips.

He cleared his throat again and put his hands behind his back. “So I want you to take your wife to Aquae Sulis.”

That shocked me out of sentiment. “What? Why? Aquae Sulis is a-”

“Beautiful resort town, with some excellent healing baths. I purchased a small villa there, back when I took Domitia every winter. I’m sending word ahead that you’re to make yourself at home for as long as you like.”

For as many years as I’d known the governor, he’d taken his wife to spas and resorts, small villages with any medical or even magical repute, hoping she’d become pregnant with a boy. Finally, after Gnaeus was born, they’d stayed in Londinium for the winter. I’d forgotten he credited Aquae Sulis with the conception.

He stared straight ahead. “She’s young, Arcturus. Go make some sons with her.”

I swallowed hard. “And you-”

He chuckled. “I’ll take my time coming back to Londinium, and take my time composing the perfect report to Domitian. He’ll probably recall me sometime in midwinter, hoping my ship will capsize and spare him the annoyance of having to deal with me. You’ll beat me home, no doubt. Just pick up your wife, settle your house, and go straight on to Aquae Sulis.”

“But what if-”

He turned to look at me, and this time grabbed me by both shoulders, hard.

“No what-ifs. If I need you from Rome, I will get word to you. You’ve got a family now. As I’m still governor, consider this an order. Go to Aquae Sulis. Take some time to take care of yourself and what you have. We don’t know who the emperor will be sending to this little green isle, but whoever it is, it won’t be easy for you. So please-do as I say.”

I stared into the wrinkled face. The eyes were human again but would soon go back to metal. They had to. Pain makes us more mortal, even with scars of iron.

Sometimes speech is the most awkward form of communication. I embraced him like a father. Then I turned toward the south, and never once looked back.