‘No!’
The doctor had surged out of his chair, but froze when he saw the expression on Scaurus’s face, then sank back into a sitting position. When he resumed, the equestrian’s voice was cold.
‘You waited three hours to answer your patient’s call for help, and by the time you arrived at her house you were too drunk to operate safely. You killed the lady, as surely as if you’d handed her a cup of hemlock. Had you been working for nothing, helping a patient in distress, I might have seen fit to let the realisation of your incompetence be your punishment.’
Silence fell over the room as the doctor stared down at the gold coin before him.
‘But you weren’t working for the public good, were you? You expected payment. You harassed the dead patient’s friend for the money every day for a week, and when she wouldn’t pay you, you gave coin to some aged crone to put a curse on her.’
He dropped a thin folded sheet of bronze onto the table in front of the doctor, shaking his head in disgust.
‘My men found it pushed into a slot that had been gouged out of the mortar in the wall that surrounds her house, and after that it wasn’t hard to find the witch who’d placed it there. She retracted the curse quickly enough, of course, when the alternative became clear to her. Indeed she very promptly replaced it with one directed to yourself.’ He tossed a second bronze wafer onto the table before the doctor. ‘I believe it suggests that you turn your instruments on your own body, which I found rather instructive. Funny how we take inspiration from the most unlikely of sources, isn’t it?’
Turning away from the sweating physician, he walked to the other end of the room before turning back to face the object of his ire.
‘My travels to the east took me to Nisibis, a city with a substantial population of Christians, and while I’m sworn to the service of Mithras, I’m not above talking to followers of other religions, if only to understand what motivates them. I soon enough realised that they’re not all that different from we followers of the one true faith, especially in the area of their beliefs about retaliative justice. The one phrase they have that really struck me the first time I heard it was their idea of “an eye for an eye”. If you wrong me, the same wrong should be visited back upon you. How do you find that concept, Doctor?’
The medicus looked up at him in disbelief.
‘You can’t-’
‘No indeed, I can’t. The obvious repercussions might well lead to an equally harsh penalty being visited upon me, were I to be implicated in your murder. But that’s of no concern, because I don’t intend killing you. I’m going to leave that to you. After all, you’re the expert in the field of inflicting death.’
The doctor shook his head slowly.
‘You expect me to … kill myself?’
Scaurus pursed his lips and shrugged.
‘It may seem a little outlandish, I suppose. But let’s consider the facts, leaving aside any debate as to whether you were responsible for your patient’s death. Or rather one simple fact. You see, the good lady in question was married to a young man who has been blessed and cursed in life. Blessed with quite remarkable skills with a blade and having been born as Marcus Valerius Aquila, the son of a family wealthy enough to develop that talent, but equally cursed by the destruction of that family on false charges of treason. So now he’s forced to live under an assumed name, as Marcus Tribulus Corvus, a wanted man, while the emperor who condemned his family to death uses their rather grand villa on the Appian Way as his country palace.’
The doctor shook his head with a horrified expression.
‘Why … why are you telling me these things?! Stop it, I don’t want to-’
‘You don’t want to know because it makes you party to a felony that could see you executed if you don’t promptly inform on the man. Don’t worry, it won’t come to that.’
He stared at the doctor until he was sure the other man wasn’t going to open his mouth again.
‘So, to continue my story, my friend was just starting to find a place for himself in the sun again, with the love of a good woman, when you managed to undo all that by bringing about the death of his wife. I didn’t bring him with me today because, to be frank, I’m not sure I could have kept him from killing you as soon as he laid eyes on you. Which would have been temporarily satisfying for all of us, but also a little self-defeating in terms of the consequences. So, as you can see, I’m actually doing you a favour in allowing you to choose the way you’re going to leave this life, once you’ve written a note explaining why you’re doing it in order to obviate any responsibility that might cling to myself and my colleagues. You can slit your wrists if you like, we’ve all the time needed to make sure you do the job right. Or perhaps a swift-acting poison would suit you better? I’m sure you’ve something suitable in your medicine pots. So, either you choose, or I will.’
He looked down at the doctor in silence for a moment.
‘Making sure that you’re dead before we leave isn’t going to do the lady’s husband much good, obviously, since it won’t bring her back, but it will stop him brooding on yet another person he needs to bring to bloody justice. It’s a long enough list without adding your name to it. And besides, nobody wants to spend the rest of their short span of days looking over their shoulder for the man who’ll end it for them, do they? Were you to have avoided death today you’d only have spent the rest of what’s left of your life dying small deaths a dozen times a day, every time someone caught your eye or jostled you in the street. This way really is so much kinder. So, what’s it going to be, Doctor?’
Scaurus took a sideways look at his subordinate as the two men sat waiting for their summons into the imperial chamberlain’s presence. Marcus kept his gaze fixed on the mural on the room’s far side, the painted figures illuminated by the soft glow of the late afternoon sun through a window above their heads, his lips twitching into a humourless half smile.
‘Don’t worry, Legatus. I’m not going to tear Marcus Aurelius Cleander’s throat out. Not today.’
The older man returned his own stare to the painting before them, grimacing at the artist’s representation of two lines of men facing off across an open piece of ground with half a dozen bodies strewn between the two forces.
‘I’ve often wondered just who advises these artists as to what happens in a battle. Anyone who’s never served the empire could go away with the impression that it’s a big game of push and shove, and that we all walk away afterwards.’
The two men stared at the bloodless scene in silence until Marcus turned his head to look at his superior.
‘Cotta told me what you did to Felicia’s doctor this morning …’
Scaurus shrugged, his smile bleak.
‘Disappointed you weren’t there to watch him die? We all take revenge in our own ways, and I knew that mine was likely to be a good deal more subtle than yours, and less likely to invite the attention of the city authorities. Whether we like it or not, our only outward reaction to this outrage has to be one of stoic acceptance of the fates that the gods visit upon us. And besides, your wife was a friend of mine too.’
A tunic-clad slave crossed the chamber and stopped before them with a bow.
‘The Chamberlain will see you now, gentlemen. Please follow me.’
As he led them towards the door that led into Cleander’s office, he spoke softly over his shoulder, a hint of caution in his voice.
‘I gather you’ve been away for a year, Legatus, in which case I should advise you that the chamberlain has come to favour open shows of respect in his audiences with supplicants such as yourselves. A bow, perhaps, or-’
Scaurus nodded tersely.
‘The power does it to them all, given enough time. And I do not consider myself to be that man’s supplicant …’