The Grass Crown by Colleen McCullough

streamed out a vivid scarlet.
    “It is a vein, I am sure it is a vein!” said Apollodorus Siculus to himself, then said to the other physicians, “How bright the blood is!”
    “He fights us so, Apollodorus, it is no wonder the blood is bright,” said Publius Sulpicius Solon the Athenian Greek. “Do you think—a plaster on the chest?”
    “Yes, it must be a plaster on the chest,” said Apollodorus of Sicily, looking grave, and snapping his fingers imperiously at his chief assistant. “Praxis, the barbatum plaster!”
    Still Metellus Numidicus struggled for breath, beat at his chest with his free hand, looked with clouding eyes at his son, refused to lie down, clung to Sulla’s hand.
    “He is not dark blue in the face,” said Apollodorus Siculus in his stilted Greek to Metellus Pius and Sulla, “and that I do not understand! Otherwise, he has all the signs of a morbid acuteness in the lungs.” He nodded to where his assistant was smearing a black and sticky mess thickly upon a square of woolen fabric. “This is the best poultice, it will draw the noxious elements out. Scraped verdigris—a properly separated litharge of lead—alum—dried pitch—dried pine resin—all mixed to the right consistency with vinegar and oil. See, it is ready!”
    Sure enough, the poultice was finished. Apollodorus of Sicily smoothed it upon the bared chest himself, and stood with praiseworthy calm to watch the barbatum plaster do its work.
    But it could not cure, any more than the bloodletting or the potion; slowly Metellus Numidicus relinquished his hold on life, and on Lucius Cornelius Sulla’s hand. Face a bright red, eyes no longer capable of seeing, he passed from paralysis to coma, and so died.
    As Sulla left the room, he heard the little Sicilian physician say timidly to Metellus Pius, “Domine, there should be an autopsy,” and heard the devastated Piglet say:
    “What, so you Greek incompetents can butcher him as well as kill him? No! My father will go to his pyre unmolested!”
    His eyes on Sulla’s back, the Piglet pushed between the cluster of doctors and followed Sulla out into the atrium.
    “Lucius Cornelius!”
    Slowly Sulla turned, his face when he presented it to Metellus Pius a picture of sorrow; the tears welled in his eyes, slipped down his cheeks unchecked. “My dear Quintus Pius!” he said.
    Shock still kept the Piglet on his feet, and his own weeping had lessened. “I can’t believe it! My father is dead!”
    “Very sudden,” said Sulla, shaking his head. A sob burst from him. “Very sudden! He was so well, Quintus Pius! I called to pay him my respects and he invited me to dinner. We had such a pleasant time! And then, when dinner was over—this!”
    “Oh, why, why, why?” The Piglet’s tears began to increase again. “He was just home, he wasn’t old!”
    Very tenderly Sulla gathered Metellus Pius to him, pressed the jerking head into his left shoulder, his right hand stroking the Piglet’s hair. But the eyes looking past that cradled head reflected the washed-out satisfaction following a great and physical emotion. What could he possibly do in the future to equal that amazing experience? For the first time he had inserted himself completely into the extremis of a dying, been much more than merely its perpetrator; he had been its minister as well.
    The steward emerged from the triclinium to find the son of his dead master being comforted by a man who shone like Apollo. Then he blinked, shook his head. Imagination.
    “I ought to go,” said Sulla to the steward. “Here, take him. And send for the rest of the family.”
    Outside on the Clivus Victoriae, Sulla stood for long enough to allow his eyes to get used to the darkness. Laughing softly to himself, he moved off in the direction of the temple of Magna Mater. When he saw the barred maw of a drain he dropped his empty little bottle into its blackness.
    “Vale, Piggle-wiggle, Piggle-wiggle!” he howled, and raised his hands to clutch