Free Medicus by Ruth Downie Page B

communicating with this one, he would never find out how she had slid low enough to be dragged about by Claudius Innocens.
    "I know you can speak," he insisted, although if he had not heard her shout out in the poppy-induced dreams, he would have begun to wonder.
    No response.
    "Are you always this quiet?"
    No response.
    "Well, silent one," he said, "my dining room is full of horsemen and my bedroom is full of dogs. So a little peace is a welcome change."
    He took out his own writing tablet and opened it. The space under "Treatments for Eye Injuries" seemed even emptier than before. He sniffed. He glanced across at the girl. "How long is it since you had a trip to the baths? In fact, have you ever bathed?"
    Moments later Ruso nudged the sign aside with his foot and opened the door of the hospital bathhouse with the hand that wasn't supporting the girl. Inside, he lowered her onto a bench and went back out to find a light. On the way back in he repositioned the sign against the foot of the wall: CLOSED.
    The changing room was still warm although the fires would have been banked up for the night some time ago. Ruso began to light the lamps. The girl was watching him, clutching her arm, breathing the air that was thick with damp and sweat and perfumed oil. She was taking in the blue-painted walls, the niches and hooks for clothes, the white piles of discarded towels. He considered collecting the towels himself, then realized how inappropriate that would look. The master tidying for the slave.
    "Wait there." His voice echoed around the room as he made the gesture that Valens made when telling the dog to "sit."
    He lit only one lamp in the cold room: just enough to see by to walk through it. Ladies did not need a cold plunge. Claudia had always been very firm about that. Presumably slave girls could do without too.
    The atmosphere in the warm room made his tunic stick to his skin. He tripped on a discarded wooden shoe and almost turned his ankle. The lamp he was carrying swayed and spat as the oil spilled out onto the floor. He sent the shoe clattering across the tiles toward the hot room door, where the rising light revealed an empty rack looming over a jumble of discarded footwear. Another used towel dangled over the side of the massage couch. A strigil, edge glistening with the last oily scrapings of dirt, skin, and hair, lay on the rim of the tub. Ruso, who never used these baths and had never thought to inspect them, was willing to bet they didn't leave this sort of mess when the chief administrator was around. Evidently they weren't expecting him back before morning.
    He wiped the strigil on the towel, then dropped the towel to mop up the spilled lamp oil. The light caught an end-of-the-day rainbow sheen dappling the surface in the tub, but at least the water was still warm. He sniffed the contents of a couple of bottles that had been left on the shelf. Spice. Lavender. The girl could take her pick.
    The coals in the brazier of the hot room were almost out. The room smelled of overheated men. He had barely stepped inside when something landed on his head. He flinched and shot up a hand to brush it away, then realized, shook his head, and smiled. This was not Africa. There were so few biting and stinging creatures here that the hospital didn't even have its own poisons expert. What he had felt was only condensation dripping from the ceiling.
    Ruso abandoned the hot room, guessing the girl would not linger in there.
    When he went back he found she had edged along the bench and was huddled in the corner. She looked bewildered. It struck Ruso that since she had been unconscious when he carried her in, this was the first time she had seen anywhere outside Room Twelve.
    He turned to find her a clean towel, only to find himself facing an empty shelf. He did the sit gesture again and stepped out into the corridor just as an orderly was passing with a tray of water jugs.
    "Where's the clean linen kept?"
    "Third door on the left, sir."