Read Nine for the Devil for Free Online

said.
    “You’ll be back on duty in a few months,” Gaius told him. “Your leg will be good as new.”
    The servant sighed. “Can you make the rest of me new as well?”
    ***
    Seated at John’s kitchen table, Gaius looked up from his cup. “I’m grateful for your assistance in helping me set Peter’s leg, but not for this terrible wine of yours. Not that I would ever refuse to drink it,” he added truthfully. The physician had spent so much of his life with his bulbous nose buried in cups it had taken on a wine-dark color. “You’ll have to tie Peter to his bed for several weeks.”
    “That will be difficult,” John replied. “He’ll try to get up before you’re out of sight.”
    “For now, the draught of poppy potion I gave him will make him sleep. He may not be as difficult as you anticipate. After you left us alone I frightened him into agreeing not to get out of bed until I give him permission.”
    John asked how this remarkable feat had been accomplished.
    “Oh, quite easily. I told him he would probably faint if he did and if we found him apparently dead on the floor I would have to establish if he was still living by extreme methods, such as thrashing his chest with nettles or pouring vinegar into his mouth. According to Peter, vinegar tastes no worse than your awful wine. So I went on to the possibility of onion juice squirted into the nose and horse-radish rubbed on the tongue. That got his attention. I didn’t have to mention any of the more stringent invasive tests. If the healing goes well, his leg should remain much the same length as it always has been. If not, it’ll be shorter than the other and he’ll limp.”
    “He’s already does, but thinks nobody’s noticed.”
    “It’s age gnawing at his joints. I’ll bring something for that tomorrow.”
    John nodded. His own joints ached on damp mornings like this. “You’ve heard Justinian has ordered me to find out who poisoned Theodora?”
    “Yes. Word gets around fast. I’m under suspicion, needless to say.” The physician drained his cup and reached for the jug. “I attended Theodora until the day before she died, and it was not an easy illness. That last week she was asking for more and more poppy potion and yet it hardly seemed to lessen the agony.”
    “Could anyone have poisoned it?”
    Gaius considered the question. “No. I make it myself from tears of poppy and it never left my hands between completion and delivery to the sickroom. I’ve served as palace physician long enough to know it’s the only way to avoid problems.”
    “Do you think she was poisoned?”
    “No. She was gravely ill. I saw no signs of poisoning. It would have been impossible. Who could have poisoned her? It’s not like anyone could walk in and invite her to have a drink or eat a honey cake. No, I’m certain it wasn’t that, despite what Justinian says. Though if the emperor says a thing is so, as far as we’re all concerned it is so.”
    “He expects me to prove it.”
    Gaius shook his head. “It was a wasting disease, John. There were all the characteristic signs as illness ran its course. Marked loss of weight, yellowing of the skin, increasing pain.”
    He shook his head and took a gulp of wine. “The pain was unimaginable. Several times Justinian summoned me, begging me to give her something stronger. You could hear her screaming all the way to the end of the corridor. I tried to explain to him that there was a limit to the amount of painkiller I could administer and that it could only deaden the agony so far. He was frantic.”
    “The emperor is used to having his own way.”
    Gaius nodded. “By a week ago it was obvious she was not long for this world. At the very end the pain subsided, mercifully. The last time I attended her she was drowsy. Until I got close enough it was hard to tell if she was still alive, her breathing was so shallow. Her pulse was strong but slower than it should have been, her pupils contracted. She seemed