The Cole Trilogy: The Physician, Shaman, and Matters of Choice Read Online Free PDF Page B

he couldn’t refrain from crying.
    The man smiled and flicked the reins, causing the dappled horse to trot.
    “Everywhere,” he said.

4
    THE BARBER-SURGEON

    Before dusk they made camp on a hill by a stream. The man said the gray plodder of a horse was Tatus. “Short for Incitatus, after the steed the emperor Caligula loved so much he made the beast a priest and a consul. Our Incitatus is a passing fair animal for a poor beggar with his balls cut off,” Barber said, and showed him how to care for the gelding, rubbing the horse with handfuls of soft dry grass and then allowing him to drink and go to grazing before they tended to their own needs. They were in the open, a distance from the forest, but Barber sent him to gather dry wood for the fire and he had to make repeated trips to accumulate a pile. Soon the fire was snapping, and cooking had begun to produce odors that weakened his legs. Into an iron pot Barber had placed a generous amount of thick-sliced smoked pork. Now he poured out most of the rendered fat and into the sputtering grease cut a large turnip and several leeks, adding a handful of dried mulberries and a sprinkling of herbs. By the time the pungent mixture had cooked, Rob had never smelled anything better. Barber ate stolidly, watching him wolf down a large portion and in silence giving him another. They mopped their wooden bowls with chunks of barley bread. Without being told, Rob took the pot and bowls to the stream and scrubbed them with sand.
    When he had returned the utensils he went to a nearby bush and passed water.
    “My blessed Lord and Lady, but that is a remarkable-looking peter,” Barber said, coming up on him suddenly.
    He finished before his need and hid the member. “When I was an infant,” he said stiffly, “I had a mortification … there. I’m told a surgeon removed the little hood of flesh at the end.”
    Barber gazed at him in astonishment. “Took off the prepuce. You were circumcised, like a bleeding heathen.”
    The boy moved away, very disturbed. He was watchful and expectant. A dankness rolled toward them from the forest and he opened his small bundle and took out his other shirt, putting it on over the one he wore.
    Barber removed two furred pelts from the wagon and flung them toward him. “We bed outside, for the cart is full of all manner of things.”
    In the open bundle Barber saw the glint of the coin and picked it up. He didn’t ask where it had been gotten, nor did Rob tell him. “There’s an inscription,” Rob said. “My father and I … We believed it identifies the first cohort of Romans to come to London.”
    Barber examined it. “Yes.”
    Obviously he knew a lot about the Romans and valued them, judging from the name he’d given his horse. Rob was seized with a sick certainty that the man would keep his possession. “On the other side are letters,” he said hoarsely.
    Barber took the coin to the fire to read in the growing dark. “IOX. Io means ‘shout.’
X
is ten. It’s a Roman cheer for victory: ‘Shout ten times!’”
    Rob accepted the coin’s return with relief and made his bed near the fire. The pelts were a sheepskin, which he placed on the ground fleece up, and a bearskin, which he used as a topping. They were old and smelled strong but would keep him warm.
    Barber made his own bed on the other side of the fire, placing his sword and knife where they could be used to repel attackers or, Rob thought fearfully, to slay a fleeing boy. Barber had removed a Saxon horn which he wore on a thong around his neck. Closing the bottom with a bone plug, he filled it with a dark liquid from a flask and held it toward Rob. “My own spirits. Drink deep.”
    He didn’t want it but feared to refuse. A child of working-class London was threatened with no soft and easy version of the boogerman but instead was taught early that there were sailors and stevedores anxious to lure a boy behind deserted warehouses. He knew of children who had accepted