I never saw him. I was a felled log surging through warm barley soup, though my legs and arms could hardly thrash against the bumbling grains; they had filled me with poppyjuice to kill the pain.

“Marcus, rest now, I’ve had your report from Vitalis; I’ve been able to act on it already. Well done!”

Gaius, my friend; my friend, who sent me there…

I struggled abruptly; someone else gripped my arm. “Hush! It’s over; you’re quite safe.”

Helena, his niece, my enemy. My enemy, who came and fetched me back…

“Lie still, Falco; don’t make such a fuss…”

The dependable vindictiveness of Helena’s voice swung with me through delirium. To a freed slave, tyranny can be oddly comforting.

XXX

Awake again.

Their opium had ebbed away. When I moved, pain shot back. A red tunic, brooched on one shoulder with the medical snake and staff, loomed over me, then sheered off again when I stared him in the eye. I recognized the complete absence of bedside manner: must be the chief orderly. Pupils stretched their necks behind him like awestruck ducklings jostling their mother duck.

“Tell me the truth, Hippocrates!” I jested. They never tell you the truth.

He tickled me up and down my ribs like a money-changer on an abacus. I yelped, though not because his hands were cold.

“Still in discomfort—that will last several months. He can expect a great deal of pain. No real problems if he avoids getting pneumonia…” He sounded disappointed at the thought that I might. “Emaciated specimen; he’s vulnerable to gangrene in this leg.” My heart sank. “Best amputate, whilst he has some strength.” I glared at him with a heartbreak that brightened him up. “We can give him something!” he consoled his listeners. Did you know, the main part of a surgeon’s training is how to ignore the screams?

“Why not wait and see what develops?” I managed to croak.

“Your young woman asked me that—” Now he sounded quite respectful; probably impressed to discover someone even more bad mannered than him.

“She’s not mine! Don’t insult me,” I growled viciously, letting myself get annoyed over the girl as a way of fighting off what he had said. But it had to be faced. “Do what you have to then—take the leg!”

I went back to sleep.

He woke me up again.

“Flavius Hilaris wants to interview you urgently. Is that all right?”

“You’re the doctor.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Leave me alone.”

I went back to sleep again.

They never leave you alone.

“Marcus—” Flavius Hilaris. He wanted me to tell him again everything about the mine that I had already passed on through Rufrius Vitalis. He was too polite to say he was taking formal evidence now in case I died under surgery—but I understood.

I told him all I knew. Anything to make him go away.