There were enough rooms to have a bedroom each, a dining room, an entrance hall for patients to wait in, and a room for consulting. There was also another room with a heavy door to which Leo could attach a lock and where Anna could keep herbs, ointments, unguents, and tinctures, and of course her surgical blades, needles, and silks. In here she placed the wooden cabinet with its dozens of drawers into which she put the herbs she had, each one labeled, and including one whole leaf or root so one could not be mistaken for another.

But in spite of the discreet notice she put at the front of the house stating her profession, patients would not come to her. She must go out and seek them, let people know of her presence and her skills.

So it was at midday that she stood on the step of a tavern in the hard sunlight and the wind. She pushed open the door and went inside. She walked through the crowd and saw a table with one empty chair. The rest were filled with men eating and talking excitedly. At least one was a eunuch, taller, long-armed, soft-faced, his voice too high, with the strange, altered tone of his gender.

“May I take this seat?” she asked.

It was the eunuch who replied, inviting her in. Perhaps he was pleased to have another of his kind.

A waiter came and offered her food, cut pieces of roast pork wrapped in wheat bread, and she accepted.

“Thank you,” she said. “I have just moved in, the house with the blue door, straight up the hill. My name is Anastasius Zarides. I am a physician.”