Terra Incognita: A Novel of the Roman Empire Read online

  TERRA

  INCOGNITA

  A Novel of the Roman Empire

  RUTH DOWNIE

  BLOOMSBURY

  New York Berlin London

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90

  Chapter 91

  Chapter 92

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  KEEP READING!

  PERSONA NON GRATA

  Chapter 1

  TERRA INCOGNITA

  A NOVEL

  IN WHICH our hero will be . . .

  puzzled by

  Felix—a silenced trumpeter

  troubled by

  Tilla—his housekeeper

  a wagon driver

  a carpenter

  Lydia—the carpenter’s girlfriend

  Thessalus—retiring medic to the Tenth Batavians

  bedbugs

  hindered by

  Gambax—assistant medic to the Tenth Batavians

  Ness—a domestic servant

  challenged by

  a baker’s wife

  Decianus—prefect of the Tenth Batavians

  Metellus—Decianus’s aide, assigned to “special duties”

  Postumus—a centurion from the Twentieth Legion

  Rianorix—a basket maker

  distracted by

  Dari—a waitress

  assisted by

  Albanus—a clerk

  Ingenuus—a hospital bandager

  Valens—a colleague

  welcomed by

  Catavignus—a local brewer

  Susanna, who serves the best food in town

  Veldicca—a single parent

  a shopkeeper

  several civilians with ailments

  disdained by

  Audax—a centurion with the Tenth Batavians

  Trenus—a man from the north

  the ladies of the bathhouse

  several other civilians with ailments

  endangered by

  a mysterious rider

  Festinus—a barber

  a large number of locals

  embarrassed by

  Claudius Innocens—a trader

  surprised by

  Aemilia—Catavignus’s daughter

  missed by

  Lucius—his brother

  Cassia—Lucius’s wife

  their four (or five) children

  Arria—his stepmother

  not missed at all by

  his two half sisters

  Claudia—his former wife

  ruled by

  the emperor Hadrian

  ignored by

  the governor of Britannia

  thanked by

  nobody

  Nec tecum possum vivere, nec sine te.

  I can’t live with you—nor without you.

  —Martial

  HE HAD NOT expected to be afraid. He had been fasting for three days, and still the gods had not answered. The certainty had not come. But he had made a vow and he must keep it. Now, while he still had the strength.

  He glanced around the empty house. He was sorry about that barrel of beer only half drunk. About the stock of baskets that were several weeks’ work, and that he might never now sell at market.

  He had nothing else to regret. Perhaps, if the gods were kind, he would be drinking that beer at breakfast tomorrow with his honor restored. Or perhaps he would have joined his friends in the next world.

  He would give the soldier a chance, of course. Make one final request for him to do as the law demanded. After that, both their fates would lie in the hands of the gods.

  He closed the door of his house and tied it shut, perhaps for the last time. He walked across and checked that the water trough was full. The pony would be all right for three, perhaps four days. Somebody would probably steal her before then anyway.

  He pulled the gate shut out of habit, although there was nothing to escape and little for any wandering animals to eat in there. Then he set off to walk to Coria, find that foreign bastard, and teach him the meaning of respect.

  1

  MANY MILES SOUTH of Coria, Ruso gathered both reins in his left hand, reached down into the saddlebag, and took out the pie he had saved from last night. The secret of happiness, he reflected as he munched on the pie, was to enjoy simple pleasures. A good meal. A warm, dry goatskin tent shared with men who neither snored, passed excessive amounts of wind, nor imagined that he might want to stay awake listening to jokes. Or symptoms. Last night he had slept the sleep of a happy man.

  Ruso had now been in Britannia for eight months, most of them winter. He had learned why the province’s only contribution to fashion was a thick cloak designed to keep out the rain. Rain was not a bad thing, of course, as his brother had reminded him on more than one occasion. But his brother was a farmer, and he was talking about proper rain: the sort that cascaded from the heavens to water the earth and fill the aqueducts and wash the drains. British rain was rarely that simple. For days on end, instead of falling, it simply hung around in the air like a wife waiting for you to notice she was sulking.

  Still, with commendable optimism, the locals were planning to celebrate the arrival of summer in a few days’ time. And as if the gods had finally relented, the polished armor plates of the column stretching along th
e road before him glittered beneath a cheering spring sun.

  Ruso wondered how the soldiers stationed up on the border would greet the arrival of men from the Twentieth Legion: men who were better trained, better equipped, and better paid. No doubt the officers would make fine speeches about their united mission to keep the Britons in order, leaving the quarrels to the lower ranks, and Ruso to patch up the losers.

  In the meantime, though, he was not busy. Any man incapable of several days’ march had been left behind in Deva. The shining armor in front of him was protecting 170 healthy men at the peak of their physical prowess. Even the most resentful of local taxpayers would keep their weapons and their opinions hidden at the sight of a force this size, and it was hard to see how a soldier could acquire any injury worse than blisters by observing a steady pace along a straight road. Ruso suppressed a smile. For a few precious days of holiday, he was enjoying the anonymity of being a traveler instead of a military—

  “Doctor!”

  His first instinct was to snatch a last mouthful of pie.

  “Doctor Gaius Petreius Ruso, sir?”

  Since his other hand was holding the reins, Ruso raised the crumbling pastry in acknowledgment before nudging the horse to the edge of the road where there was room to halt without obstructing the rest of the column. Moments later he found himself looking down at three people.

  Between two legionaries stood a figure that gave the unusual and interesting impression of being two halves of different people stuck together along an unsteady vertical line. Most of the left half, apart from the hand and forearm, was clean. The right half, to the obvious distaste of the soldier restraining that side, was coated with thick mud. There was a bloodied scrape across the clean cheek and a loop of hair stuck out above the one braid that remained blond, making the owner’s head appear lopsided. Despite these indignities, the young woman had drawn herself up to her full height and stood with head erect. The glint in the eyes whose color Ruso had never found a satisfactory word to describe—but when he did, it would be something to do with the sea— suggested someone would soon be sorry for this.

  All three watched as Ruso finished his mouthful and reluctantly rewrapped and consigned the rest of his snack to the saddlebag. Finally he said, “Tilla.”

  “It is me, my lord,” the young woman agreed.

  Ruso glanced from one soldier to the other, noting that the junior of the two had been given the muddy side. “Explain.”

  “She says she’s with you, sir,” said the clean man.

  “Why is she like this?”

  As the man said, “Fighting, sir,” she twisted to one side and spat on the ground. The soldier jerked her by the arm. “Behave!”

  “You can let go of her,” said Ruso, bending to unstrap his waterskin. “Rinse the mud out of your mouth, Tilla. And watch where you spit. I have told you about this before.”

  As Tilla wiped her face and took a long swig from the waterskin, a second and considerably cleaner female appeared, breathless from running up the hill.

  “There she is!” shrieked the woman. “Thief! Where’s our money?” Her attempt to grab the blond braid was foiled by the legionaries.

  Ruso looked at his slave. “Are you a thief, Tilla?”

  “She is the thief, my lord,” his housekeeper replied. “Ask her what she charges for bread.”

  “Nobody else is complaining!” cried the other woman. “Look! Can you see anybody complaining?” She turned back to wave an arm toward the motley trail of mule handlers and bag carriers, merchants’ carts and civilians shuffling up the hill in the wake of the soldiers. “I’m an honest trader, sir!” continued the woman, now addressing Ruso. “My man stays up half the night baking, we take the trouble to come out here to offer a service to travelers, and then she comes along and decides to help herself. And when we ask for our money all we get is these two ugly great bruisers telling us to clear off!”

  If the ugly great bruisers were insulted, they managed not to show it.

  “You seem to have thrown her in the ditch,” pointed out Ruso, faintly recalling a fat man behind a food stall—the first for miles—at the junction they had just passed. “I think that’s enough punishment, don’t you?”

  The woman hesitated, as if she were pondering further and more imaginative suggestions. Finally she said, “We want our money, sir. It’s only fair.”

  Ruso turned to Tilla. “Where’s the bread now?”

  Tilla shrugged. “I think, in the ditch.”

  “That’s not our fault, is it, sir?” put in the woman.

  Ruso was not going to enter into a debate about whose fault it was.

  “How much was it worth?”

  There was a pause while the woman appeared to be assessing his outfit and his horse. Finally she said, “Half a denarius will cover it, sir.”

  “She is a liar!” put in Tilla, as if this were not obvious even to Ruso.

  He reached for his purse. “Let me tell you what is going to happen here,” he said to the woman. “I will give you one sesterce, which is—”

  “Is too much!” said Tilla.

  “Which is more than the bread was worth,” continued Ruso, ignoring her. “My housekeeper will apologize to you—”

  “I am not sorry!”

  “She will apologize to you,” he repeated, “and you will go back to your stall and continue charging exorbitant sums of money to travelers who were foolish enough not to buy before they set out.”

  Ruso dismissed the grinning soldiers with a tip that was not enough to buy their silence but might limit the scurrilous nature of their exaggerations when they told the story around tonight’s campfires. The women seemed less satisfied, but that was hardly surprising. Ruso had long ago learned that the pleasing of women was a tricky business.

  By now the bulk of the legionaries had gone on far ahead, followed by a plodding train of army pack ponies laden with tents and millstones and all the other equipment too heavy to be carried on poles on the soldiers’ backs. Behind them was the unofficial straggle of camp followers.

  Ruso turned to Tilla. “Walk alongside me,” he ordered, adding quickly, “Clean side in.” She sidestepped around the tail of the horse and came forward to walk at its shoulder. Ruso leaned down and said in a voice which would not be overheard, “None of the other civilians is causing trouble, Tilla. What is the matter with you?”

  “I am hungry, my lord.”

  “I gave you money for food.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “Was it not enough?”

  “It was enough, yes.”

  She ventured no further information. Ruso straightened up. He was not in the mood for the I-will-only-answer-the-question-you-ask-me game. He was in the mood for a peaceful morning and some more of last night’s chicken in pastry, which he now retrieved and began to eat. He glanced sideways. Tilla was watching. He did not offer her any.

  They continued in silence along the straight road up and down yet another wooded hill. British hills, it seemed, were as melancholic as British rain. Instead of poking bold fingers of rock up into the clouds, they lay lumpy and morose under damp green blankets, occasionally stirring themselves to roll vaguely skyward and then giving up and sliding into the next valley.

  Somewhere among those hills lay the northern edge of the empire, and even further north, beyond the supposedly friendly tribes living along the border, rose wild cold mountains full of barbarians who had never been conquered and now never would be. Unless, of course, the new emperor had a sudden fit of ambition and gave the order to march north and have another crack at them. But so far Hadrian had shown no signs of spoiling for a fight. In fact he had already withdrawn his forces from several provinces he considered untenable. Britannia remained unfinished business: an island only half-conquered, and Ruso had not found it easy to explain to his puzzled housemate back in Deva why he had volunteered to go and peer over the edge into the other half.

  “The North? Holy Jupiter, man, you don’t want
to go up there!” Valens’s handsome face had appeared to register genuine concern at his colleague’s plans. “It’s at—it’s beyond the edge of the civilized world. Why d’you think we send foreigners up there to run it?”

  Ruso had poured himself more wine and observed, “When you think about it, we’re all foreigners here. Except the Britons, of course.”

  “You know what I mean. Troops who are used to those sorts of conditions. The sort of chap who tramps bare chested through bogs and picks his teeth with a knife. They bring them in from Germania, or Gaul, or somewhere.”

  “I’m from Gaul,” Ruso reminded him.

  “Yes, but you’re from the warm end. You’re practically one of us.” This was evidently intended as a compliment. “I know you haven’t exactly shone here in Deva, after all that business with the barmaids—”

  “This has got nothing to do with barmaids,” Ruso assured him. “You know I spent half of yesterday afternoon waiting for a bunch of men who didn’t turn up?”

  “I believe you did mention it once or twice.”

  “And it’s not the first time, either. So I tracked down their centurion today. Apparently he and his cronies have been telling the men they can go for first aid training if they want to.”

  “If they want to?”

  “Of course they don’t want to. They want to spend their spare time sleeping and fishing and visiting their girlfriends.”

  “I hope he apologized.”

  “No. He said he couldn’t see the point of teaching ordinary soldiers first aid. He said it’s like teaching sailors to swim—just prolongs the agony.”

  Valens shook his head sadly. “You really shouldn’t let a few ignorant centurions banish you to the—” He was interrupted by a crash from the kitchen and a stream of British that had the unmistakeable intonation of a curse. He glanced at the door. “I suppose you’re intending to take the lovely Tilla as well?”