“I always enjoy your visits.” Isis patted his knee with a chubby hand heavy with rings. He shifted his leg away reflexively. “Don’t feel obliged to visit just for the sake of chatting with an old friend. Avoid streets and public places as far as possible right now, that’s my advice.”
“According to Gaius the plague strikes at random.”
“Gaius? And what does that physician know? The last batch of contraceptive pessaries he made for my establishment would’ve been more use to a rabbit breeder. Then when a number failed, he charged me double his usual fee to get my girls fit for work again. I might just as well have instructed them to make their own from linen and vinegar.”
She selected a fig from a silver tray of sweetmeats and dried fruit on the small ivory table beside the couch. “Speaking of employees, I need a new doorkeeper,” she continued as she munched. “The current one is not very reliable. Arrives late, departs early, and what’s worse is getting much too interested in a certain young lady here.”
“Always a temptation for a man working in your house.”
“Indeed. And speaking of houses, I’ve been thinking of changing the decor again, provided I can find the necessary craftsmen. What do you think about a religious theme? If the Patriarch anathematizes me, so much the better! My house is already one of the best and most patronized in the city, but given the seal of disapproval from one of the highest church authorities, ah, think of the trade it would bring in from people who would like to see the place for themselves!”
The madam beamed with delight, although whether at the prospect of being anathematized or considering the increase in business, or indeed at both, John was not certain.
“Mind you,” she went on in a confidential tone, “I’d rather be visited by ten religious figures seeking to convert me to their ways than have to deal with my girls’ latest complaint. It’s about one of our regular patrons.”
John gave her a look of inquiry. He knew Isis made it a rule never to talk about her clients and insisted on the same discretion from her employees.
“Oh dear,” she giggled. “You do loosen my tongue, John. I suppose if I leave out the fellow’s name…? He’s a regular visitor and not at all bad-looking. He could spend more time at the gymnasium perhaps, but then so could most of my girls’ admirers. Even so, whenever he appears at the door, they take flight like a flock of seagulls at the sight of a stray dog.”
John, realizing hearing the rest of the story was unavoidable, asked as tactfully as possible if this particular client was more demanding than most.
“That is it, precisely.” Isis took another fig and chewed it thoughtfully. “It isn’t so much the act itself. It is the indecency to which he expects them to submit afterwards.” She puckered her rosy lips. “You should hear the girls, John. ‘Oh, Madam, don’t make me be the one to go with him. We can’t stand it!’”
John raised inquiring eyebrows.
“What happens is, well,” Isis continued, lowering her voice and leaning toward him, “afterwards he insists on reciting his dreadful, whining poetry. Can you imagine? Of course, he is charged for the extra time, but if you ask me, having to pay whores to listen to your poems is the gods’ way of indicating you should find another profession.”
Chapter Thirteen
“You’ll never become a physician, Farvus. What do you think you’re doing? The poor child will be sorry she was brought here!” Gaius irritably pushed aside the young man laboring over the injured girl.
Hypatia had found Gaius in a room at the back of the hospice, futilely attempting to teach his assistant how to bind up a broken arm. Farvus’ face, Hypatia noted, was paler than that of the patient he’d been trying to assist.
“You have to place the first part of the bandage on the fracture itself, to drive the humors into the extremities. As I told you, if you don’t do that, the humors end up in the fracture. You do at least have the right amount of cerate on the compresses this time.”
Gaius began rewinding the woolen strips around the girl’s arm. She winced and bit her lip, but remained silent. “You see? Start wrapping at the fracture and move outwards. The further from the fracture, the less the compression. It’s easy to remember if you concentrate. Here, do you want to try again?”
The injured girl’s eyes widened with alarm.
“Oh, never mind,” snapped Gaius. “I’ll finish it myself. Get about your regular business.”
His assistant left the room.
“Hypatia, come in.” Gaius wound the bandage nimbly around his patient’s arm. “Broken bones can be disconcerting for a beginner, even though from a medical viewpoint, they’re simple enough to treat. They usually take care of themselves so long as you get the bones aligned properly from the outset.”
He finished the task and murmured a few words of encouragement to the girl before motioning Hypatia to follow him out into the hallway.
“The girl was found in the Augustaion, screaming like the Furies. Children will insist on trying to climb statuary. She belongs to one of the shopkeepers around there, but we can’t spare anyone to go and find the parents. Eventually someone will turn up looking for her.”
He rubbed his eyelids. His eyes were red. He looked exhausted. “So you have taken up my kind invitation? I’m more than happy to see you, even if my expression doesn’t show it.”
His face, Hypatia noted, was as red as if it had been cooked, his nose as dark as a carbuncle. She would make him a batch of invigorating Pharaoh’s Elixir, she decided as she followed the lumbering physician along the corridor, stepping deftly around sad clusters of people squatting or lying outside rooms filled to overflowing with patients who were presumably even sicker.
“We’ve got very few of our usual sorts of clients,” Gaius noted as they turned a corner and threaded their way between several patients fortunate enough to have been allotted cots, if not rooms in which to put them. “Not so many cart accidents, there being fewer carts and people about the streets, for example. I suppose we should be grateful for that.”
A hoarse shriek rose wavering into the malodorous air.
Gaius gave Hypatia a wry grin. “Sounds as if a patient is calling. He probably needs more of our pain-killing potion. Could you see to that?”
He nodded toward the room at the end of the corridor. “The colleague overseeing this wing mentioned a young man who emerged alive from one of the towers being used to dispose of the dead, according to the excubitor who brought him here. Seems the patient had a bucket of lye emptied over his head as he emerged, but was lucky enough to keep his eyesight. Not that he’ll consider himself lucky when he sees the face he’ll live with from now on. All we can do is keep him as free from pain as possible and hope he eventually heals. Haven’t attended on him myself. I’ve been busy enough looking after those who need some expert care. Now, do you think you can cope with an injury like that?”
“I’m not as squeamish as your assistant,” Hypatia responded.
“Good. You’ll like it here.”
***
The young man lying half-naked on a soiled pallet may well have once been handsome. Now his face, arms and shoulders were a mass of angry red burns and blisters. As Hypatia carefully carried the prescribed painkiller to him, he gripped the sides of his pallet and shrieked again.
“Shut up, you noisy bastard!” the man sitting on the next bed shouted. “Did you expect to be a lady’s man all your life? How can we get any rest with all that racket you’re making?”
His sentiments brought forth a chorus of agreement from two neighbors. All three were nursing broken limbs.
“Ah, but he’s found himself a lady friend already,” one of the sufferer’s roommates remarked.
“The wheel that protests gets the greasing. I’m in agony over here, girl. Why don’t you help me instead?” leered the first speaker.