'Luckily for Mastarna, he never saw his patient that day.' Watching Aedemon adopt his noncommittal face, I said, 'Or that's what he told me.' The lack of comment from Mastarna's rotund colleague continued. 'Was he summoned with the rest of you?' Aedemon looked vague. 'I believe he must have been. I certainly saw him there when we all gathered…' 'Even though his patient was dead?' I demanded scornfully. 'Somebody had a high opinion of his regenerative powers!'
'Well, none of us thought he could sew the head back on to Scaeva. I dare say, the slaves were just told to fetch all the doctors quickly. But Mastarna would have to be told what had happened.'
'And that he had lost his income?' Helena dug me in the ribs. 'So what do you think of Mastarna, Aedemon?' 'A sound physician.' 'You doctors all say that about each other. Even when you're diametrical opposites in your treatments.' 'The truth. Mastarna does good work. Different patients need different cures; different people suit different specialists.' 'And what's his practice? He's Etruscan. So is that magic and herbs?'
Apparently there is a clause in the Hippocratic Oath that says no doctor shall ever criticise another. Aedemon fired up immediately: 'Oh I think Mastarna is more modern than that! Etruscan medicine of course has a long history. It may have begun with religious healing, and that in turn may have meant herb- and root-gathering, perhaps by moonlight in order to find the plants. One should never decry folk medicine; there is a lot of sense to it.'
'It certainly helps Mastarna gather in the denarii – have you seen his house?' I jibed.
A sub-clause in the Oath says that any doctor who thinks a competitor is making more money than he does, can insult him after alclass="underline" 'Patients can be very gullible!' After this flash of jealousy, Aedemon recovered smoothly: 'I would classify our friend Mastarna as fascinated by theory. His school tends to diagnose using the general history of disease -' 'He's a dogmatist?' Helena asked. Aedemon put his index fingers together and surveyed her over them as if he felt it was unhealthy for a woman to use words of more than two syllables. 'I believe so.' Since Helena was familiar with the medical schisms, he then acknowledged: 'And I am an empiricist. Our philosophical rule is, if I may say so, taking over public confidence nowadays. For very good reasons.' That was good news for laxative sellers. I wondered if the laxative market was sponsoring the empiricist school, paying salaries for empiricist teachers and handing out free samples… 'I prefer to study the patient's particular symptoms, then to base my recommendations on his history, my experience and, where appropriate, analogy with similar cases.'
To me, this did not sound too different from Mastarna's approach. But Helena saw distinctions: 'You concentrate on anatomical congestion and look to recent advances in pharmacology for treatment; he would be more likely to suggest surgery?' Aedemon looked startled. She carried on as if unaware he was impressed, 'I'm afraid I did upset him very much by suggesting that dogmatists approve of dissection of dead bodies. In fact Marcus and I had hoped, for selfish reasons, that as the young man's doctor Mastarna had examined Scaeva's corpse in detail. We hoped he could tell us about wounds or other significant factors that would assist us in investigating who killed the young man. Mastarna angrily informed me that post-mortem research is illegal, although he mentioned it had been carried out for a time in Alexandria.'
'Rarely.' Aedemon, the Alexandrian, was instantly dismissive. 'An anarchic, irreligious practice. I cure the living. I don't desecrate the dead.'
I saw Helena decide not to press him on whether surreptitious autopsy still took place nowadays. He wasn't going to tell us, even if he knew of it. She changed her approach: 'He had another patient too, I believe, at one point. V eleda? We know Mastarna discussed trepanation with Veleda. She was desperate to find somebody who would relieve the pressure in her skull. Did you have any views on that?'
'I never met the woman.' He was crisp. Too crisp? I did not think so; he was genuinely relieved to be able to deny involvement. Did that mean there were other subjects where his position might be more equivocal? Were our questions causing him anxiety?
We would not find out. The carriage had finally rumbled to the outskirts of the city. It lurched into the hiring stables and we all had to tumble out, Aedemon setting down one heavy limb at a time, then extracting his body from the carriage with a surprisingly lithe shuffle. As he straightened up, he was huffing alarmingly. Helena and I offered to walk with him, but he claimed he had a litter waiting nearby and was not going in our direction. Since we had not said where we were heading, either he was glad to end our interrogation because it strayed into dangerous areas – or he was just bored with our company.
XXXII
It was dark now. I walked us fast from the stables to our house. The season's misrule had begun. Barrow-wheelers and stallholders in the Transtiberina thought that meant asking women – respectable women who were promenading with their husbands – for a quickie up an alley. Helena took it in silence, but she was obviously rattled. Not as much as I was, to be put in the role of her pimp. We had hardly recovered when we were accosted by a six-foot scallywag in his sister's dress, with heavy eyeliner and rouge, and sporting a ridiculous woollen wig with yellow plaits. 'Get away from us! You look like a damned doll.' 'Oh, don't be like that, darling… Give us a cuddle, legate.' 'I'm not your darling, sweetheart. Compliments of the season – and take yourself off or you'll get a Saturnalia gift you won't like.'
'Spoilsport!' The burly demoiselle stopped pestering us, though not before bombarding us with festive vegetables. I threw them back, with a better aim, and he scampered away. 'I hate this festival!' 'Calm down, Marcus. It's like this in the Transtiberina all the time.' 'There must be better ways to celebrate the end of harvest and the planting of a new crop than letting slaves play dice all day and demented cabbage-sellers dress up in girls' clothes.' 'It's for children,' murmured Helena. 'What? Demanding even more presents than usual? Eating their little selves sick on cake? Learning how to put out the fire by pissing on the hearth? – O Saturn and Ops, how many burned bottoms will doctors have to treat next week? – And so much for ending quarrels and wars – there are more unnatural deaths over Saturnalia and New Year than any other working or holiday period! Merriment leads to murder.'
Helena managed to get a word in: 'Gratianus Scaeva wasn't murdered in the festival.' 'No.' Plenty of people would have hangovers this week. Few would decide that decapitation was a reliable cure. Helena had sidetracked me neatly.
Was the timing of events at the Quadrumatus house significant? I couldn't see it. Veleda was not engaging in the spirit of misrule. She might have had the joyful feast of Saturn explained, but Roman celebrations would mean nothing to her. Did the German tribes glorify the revival of the light? Did they honour the unconquerable sun? All I knew was that those bombastic bastards loved a fight. Suspending grudges, whatever the month, was not in their character.
Veleda's gods were spirits of forest and water. She had been a priestess of the mystic presences in glades and groves. Spring and pool nymphs. They were celebrated by gifts – deposits of treasure, weapons, money – laid at sacred spots in rivers and marshes. And yes, these gods were also honoured by depositing the severed heads of enemies in water. But if there was a special season for it, other than in any time of war, I did not know when. To me, if Veleda killed Scaeva, the fact that it happened now appeared to be irrelevant.
If Scaeva's killer was somebody else, as I still thought most likely, they had hardly been overcome by the normal rages of the festival. No brooding uncle finally lost himself, driven crazy because everyone else was enjoying a good time, so he went for Scaeva. Miserable uncles, in my experience, stick it out and inflict their depression on you year after year. They never bring presents, because they 'aren't feeling quite up to it this time' (same as last year's excuse from the miser). All they are up to is swigging the best wine. They don't do anything bad enough to get themselves completely banned, though; they don't kill people.