Dying to be Cured – IX

Dying to be Cured is set in a modern-day Britain where the Roman Empire still rules. Dai and Julia take on a fight against institutional corruption whilst dealing with the demands of family, friendship and domestic crises.

It was a couple of hours later that Dai got back to the Villa Papaverus. As a debriefing, it lacked a lot, but then not too many debriefings he had attended took place in a cozy room with his wife curled in his arms and both of them with cups of steaming mead-sweetened milk. 

Bryn took Gwen home after she was checked over by a medicus, who seemed sure a good sleep was all she needed to overcome the effects of any drugs. Tests had shown the last syringe to have been a mild hallucinogenic. The medicus explained that Gwen would have woken up feeling energised and been hugely suggestible. It took little imagination to see how that would have played out. With the addition of a bottle of some sort of ‘elixir’ to take away with her, a harmless hypochondriac like the woman she was posing as could easily have been tricked into believing in a religious vision and some sort of ‘cure’ even if it would have been at the cost of shortening her life.

“So was that all it was? A scam to make people believe they were cured?” Julia asked, her brow furrowing. “I saw more than that happening, I’m sure.”

“Nope. Was more. A lot more. Some of the less reputable big pharma companies were involved as was the medicus in charge of the ‘treatments’. We caught him trying to escape out the back door. He has a lot of names, but whatever he is calling himself now he’s wanted in about ten provinces. His regular M.O. was to suborn the Pontifex of a small rural temple with promises of wealth and fame. The priesthood raked in money on the growing myth of healing, and behind the scenes he got paid to run unlicensed and unapproved trails for drug companies wanting to know the effect of their drugs before going for regular human trials.” 

He broke off to sip at the sweetened milk. The thought of it all was leaving a bad taste in his mouth.  “Of course, some work and people get their genuine ‘miracle cures’, but most either don’t get better or go into a decline when they go home. But everyone around them just puts that down to the sick person losing hope after not being healed. Zirri Yedder had been after him for a decade. One of the first places he pulled the stunt was Tingist and at the time he had not perfected the trick of it so Yedder got wind of it. Looks like he finally got an in via Fabian Thrace, but they got rumbled. It was Thrace’s finger and ring in Yedder’s throat. It seems both bodies were weighted and dumped at sea, but somehow Zirri Yedder popped up again to be washed on the beach near Segontium.”

“But why were there so many men fighting us?”

“After they rumbled Thrace and Yedder they hired a whole new load of security guards – but these were not the reputable kind, they were more thugs who had no problem breaking heads. Apparently the Pontifex and our medical man feared Yedder had some associates who might be planning a raid on the temple.” 

“So what happened after I left?” Julia asked.

“Not much,” Dai admitted. “You caught the thick of the fighting. All we had to do was finish up checking the place and securing the perimeter. Those who were left in the temple after the initial confrontation didn’t put up much of a fight. Gallus and his men cleared the temple and the Vigiles were charged with clearing the supplicants carefully back to the village and making sure they were who they claimed to be.”

Julia sighed and stretched back against him, from there she was looking up into his face.

“I guess that means the supplicants will go home disillusioned having seen their miracle cures are nothing but a medical fraud.”

Dai shook his head and his jaw tightened.This was the bit he didn’t like.

“I wish that were so, my love. But it won’t happen that way. The Pontifex will be holding services tomorrow and offering blessings. Rome cannot allow the people to see the Divine Diocletian in any way linked with a fraud. The people must never see that their god has feet of clay.” He stopped speaking and stroked her hair in an effort to calm himself, before carrying on in a flat voice. “Word is being spread that the disturbance was the work of a gang of would-be thieves who infiltrated security – and the Pontifex summoned the Vigiles to arrest them.”

Julia sat up so fast she nearly caught his chin.

“So that miserable priest gets away with it?”

“No. Not at all,” Dai assured her. “Gallus and his men are currently manning the security of the place and their brief is to ensure the Pontifex goes nowhere. He will be replaced in a couple of days and returned to Rome, no doubt, never to be heard of again.”

Julia shook her head slowly, her expression one of near disbelief. “And the healing services will go on?”

“Yes. Only at least now it will only be laying on of hands and mumbling blessings.”

“So no one sees anything change.” Julia lay back again with a sigh of frustration. “Except, of course, the miracles will stop.” 

“Well, that’s the interesting thing,” Dai told her, placing a gentle kiss on her brow, “in some of the temples where our friend set up and then moved on, there are still people who claim to be cured. Turns out that faith, even in gods of clay, can be a powerful thing.”

FINIS

Dying to be Cured by Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook first appeared in Gods of Clay: A Sci Fi Roundtable Anthology.