‘Deva! Darling-’
But before the herbalist could form one more word, the Damascan girl had launched herself into space.
*
It was late, nearly midnight, when Marcus retraced his steps. He was alone this time. His knock was soft. At first he did not think the herbalist had heard it, then the door opened. Without a word, he motioned Orbilio inside.
‘I gave her a dose of poppy juice. Too much, probably, but…’ His voice trailed off, crushed by horror, exhaustion and grief.
Indeed, the opiate dominated the other scents inside the small dwelling which the chill river air could not seem to penetrate. A single candle burned in the corner and Orbilio wondered if the herbalist had eaten since Deva had been brought home yesterday. Somehow he doubted it.
‘You saved her life,’ the herbalist said thickly. ‘You can’t imagine how grateful I am to you, Marcus.’
‘I did not save her life.’ Orbilio patted him reassuringly on the shoulder. ‘I saved her from breaking an arm or a leg, that was all.’
When he saw Deva’s fingers unclench from the rail, caught the look of hopelessness and utter despair in her eyes, the hairs on his neck had started to prickle. Almost before her feet had left the landing, he had flung himself forward to catch her.
The other man almost smiled. ‘You’re still a hero to me.’
‘If I was a hero,’ Orbilio replied wearily, ‘Deva would have gone to her mother’s house yesterday, sold her honey at market, then come home the same bubbly young woman she was when she left.’
‘Hm.’ The herbalist led him into his workroom, lit an oil lamp and reached for a jar on the shelf. ‘I think we both need some of this,’ he said, pouring a thin, pale yellow liquid into two cups.
The liquid was fire. It made Orbilio’s eyes water, scalded his throat, burned a hole from his stomach down to his toes. Once he’d stopped coughing, he held his cup out for a refill. ‘What is that?’
‘In the mountainous regions of eastern Gaul, along the Helvetican border, the natives brew up the yellow gentians which grow wild on the hills and distil the juice. This, my friend, is the result.’
‘Then here’s to barbarians everywhere,’ Orbilio croaked.
He let the fire in his belly settle and used the time to study the herbalist. Late-thirties, his red hair receding from the temples and with the beginnings of a slight paunch, he was not an obvious catch for a vibrant young woman with a preference for bodices that showed off her midriff and fringed skirts that swayed with her hips. But he could see what had attracted Deva to him. His goodness, his gentleness, his wanting to help those in need of it most. Orbilio was wrong, he realized. The people who had trickled up to this house for their potions and pills had not handed over vast sums for their remedies. Deva and her man would not be living in such humble conditions if he had charged them the going rate.
‘I have a confession to make,’ he said, twisting the cup in his hands. ‘This is not an official call.’
Of all the times to seek a personal consultation, he could hardly have picked a worse one. The man was already a widower once, his first wife killed by falling masonry from one of the hundreds of renovation projects. Now Deva had been subjected to an ordeal that had driven her to the brink of suicide and the helplessness of it all was tearing the poor bugger to shreds. Yet here he was, in the early hours, being asked for his professional advice.
‘Please don’t feel obliged,’ Orbilio said. ‘I quite understand if you-’
‘Marcus.’ The herbalist motioned his visitor to sit. ‘Other men would pick up a sword and go charging round the city to hunt down this beast. To my shame, I’m not other men. I do not know how to avenge her, I can only mend the wounds on her body.’ His mouth twisted in self-revulsion. ‘I do not even possess the ability to heal the wounds in her head.’
Orbilio wasn’t sure about that, and he said so. He’d seen many victims of rape. Had seen how their ordeal was viewed as bringing disgrace on their families, seen their husbands reject them, even though the women were blameless. What all victims of rape needed was tenderness, patience and love. Qualities the herbalist possessed in abundance.
For several moments, the herbalist was unable to speak. Then he tossed down a third shot of the pale yellow liquor, grimaced, and his tortured eyes softened. ‘That, if it’s true-’
‘It’s true.’
‘-makes me feel a whole lot better about what I was about to say,’ he replied. ‘Because I was going to tell you that the best thing you can do for me at the moment is give me something to work on. A problem which can occupy my mind, even for the tiniest amount of time, affords me unimaginable relief from the pain.’
Orbilio leaned back in his chair. It was hard and uncomfortable, and far too small for his large frame, but he barely noticed. He knew, from his previous visit to discuss the attempts to poison the Emperor, that the herbalist was a man to be trusted to listen, understand, sympathize and not judge. And perhaps that was the most important role of any physician. That of confessor.
Which is how, at one o’clock in the morning, Marcus Cornelius Orbilio came to be telling a virtual stranger about the pixie. How he had met her at a friend’s house when she was dancing. How they had got chatting and ended up at her house, too drunk to notice, too drunk to care, who satisfied his bodily urges. That, even when he took Angelina to a tavern to let her down gently over a meal, he found himself in exactly the same predicament the following morning. Furred tongue, lack of memory, those damned castanets clacking like crazy behind his eyes.
‘My head wasn’t the only thing that was throbbing when I woke up,’ he admitted ruefully, explaining how he’d vowed never to touch another drop of wine so long as he lived. True to his word, he had gone to Angelina’s house sober last night to break off the relationship but it was in her bed that he awoke, exhibiting the same muzzy symptoms, the same burning erection and, as previously, the day was more advanced than he would have wished.
‘Hm.’
The herbalist laced his fingers together on the desk. Behind him, on the shelves, earthenware vessels lined up like soldiers, along with glass and ceramic pots, copper pots, tin pots, horn, silver and onyx containers. Bronze boxes, wooden boxes, flasks, scoops and balances stood to attention beside mortars and palettes, pestles and bottles, spatulas and bandages of varying widths. On the table beneath the shuttered window sat turnips, garlic bulbs, mustard and rue, and a small jar marked ‘Cedar resin’.
‘You suspect Angelina of drugging you?’ he asked at length.
‘Let’s say the alternative worries me,’ Orbilio replied.
Across the desk, the herbalist shifted. ‘I have some good news and some bad news,’ he said. ‘The good news is that you aren’t losing your mind and have indeed been the victim of drugs. A cyathus of mandrake, a scruple of henbane, one or two other bits and bobs and we have a sleeping draught which leaves a sledgehammer pounding between the eyes and a tongue that could pass for a rodent.’
‘And the bad news?’
A muscle twitched at the side of the herbalist’s mouth as he poured a shot of gentian liqueur for his visitor. ‘The bad news, my friend, is that under a sedative of that strength, you could not possibly have managed anything more energetic than a snore.’
Despite the situation, Orbilio found himself laughing. ‘Not the four times she said, then?’
The herbalist began laughing with him. ‘Not even once,’ he chuckled. ‘Although.’ He tapped the small jar at his elbow. ‘I can, if you like, make you a potion that would help.’
Laughter was the trigger the herbalist needed. Within seconds, the first healing tears started to flow.
*
Orbilio and the herbalist weren’t the only two whose problems kept them awake in the early hours.