Terra Incognita: A Novel of the Roman Empire Page 11

  Ruso opened his eyes. There was a pale form on the bench in the corner. The man, who must have entered without making a sound, nodded a greeting and closed his eyes as if he was not listening. It was a moment before Ruso realized it was Metellus the aide. He wondered how long he had been there.

  Postumus glanced at the door before sliding closer to Ruso so that their shoulders stuck together in the heat.

  “That wagon business,” he growled in what seemed to be the nearest he could manage to a whisper, “wasn’t an accident.”

  Ruso looked at Metellus, conscious that the sound was echoing off the hard surfaces of the room and the aide was taking in every word.

  “It’s all right,” said Postumus. “He knows. Some bastard had sawed halfway through the brake.”

  “So the driver was right?”

  “Hmph.” Postumus did not sound inclined to be charitable.

  “Should’ve kept his eyes open. Sonny with the antlers had an accomplice. There was a lump of lead slingshot in one of the oxen. That would have got them trotting along all right. Then, once a heavy load got going down that hill, there was no way of stopping it.”

  “The accomplice must have been hiding somewhere up on the bank,” mused Ruso. “And all our escorts . . .”

  “Were busy chasing the Stag Man,” said Postumus, finishing the sentence for him. “Bloody cavalry. All of ’em want to be heroes. S’pose we’ll have to let the driver go, then.”

  “So was Tilla’s evidence useful?”

  Postumus sniffed. “My sources say she was hanging around the vehicles in the yard during the storm.”

  “What are your sources?”

  Postumus looked askance at him. “You’re not the only one who’s sick of sleeping in a tent. I sent a couple of lads up there to escort the wagon in and they seemed to think that meant they could stay the night.”

  “Ah.”

  “Now they wish they hadn’t. And they didn’t even guard the bloody wagon. Just stuck their heads out in the rain from time to time to make sure it wasn’t floating away.”

  “Why didn’t they do something when they saw her?” demanded Ruso, wondering when Metellus was going to have the decency to either join the conversation or leave.

  Postumus shrugged. “Said they were thinking about it when somebody came and took her away. They did a lot more thinking when I’d finished with them.”

  “That was me,” said Ruso. “She went to look for your carpenter’s girlfriend and her baby. I followed her out into the yard.”

  The centurion’s “Hm,” did not sound entirely convinced. “See anybody else out there?”

  “I heard her calling out. But it was pitch dark and pelting with rain. I couldn’t see a thing.”

  “What was she saying?”

  “I don’t know. It was in British.”

  “So who was she talking to?”

  “She told me she was praying to her gods.”

  Postumus snorted. “Bit unusual in the middle of a thunderstorm, isn’t it?”

  “Not for Tilla.”

  To Ruso’s relief, the centurion shifted his weight and their shoulders peeled apart. A long breath whistled out down the misshapen nose. “My lads tell me,” said Postumus, “that she could have unbolted the gate and let somebody in.”

  “Your lads are trying to cover their own backs,” said Ruso. “Those gates weren’t impossibly high. Somebody could have climbed over them and not been noticed in the storm.”

  “True,” agreed Postumus. “But all I know is, that wagon was all right yesterday. It’s parked in the yard at the inn all night, the only person seen near it is your woman, and today it flattened some of my best men.”

  “Why would Tilla help someone interfere with a wagon?”

  “She’s a native,” said Postumus, as if that explained everything.

  “She’s my housekeeper.”

  “So you think you can trust her?”

  “Of course!” In the silence that followed Ruso wondered if he had said it a little too quickly. “She’s very loyal,” he insisted, uneasily recalling I am not a friend of the army.

  “We hope so,” put in Metellus from the corner. “Because she’s told Postumus she was out there with the god Cernunnos.”

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake!” Ruso’s exasperation was as much with Tilla as with her questioners. If she could not manage to control her imagination, why could she not at least learn to control her tongue? “She’s very religious,” he said. “Superstitious. You know what the natives are like. She heard the stories. She saw him outrun the cavalry this afternoon. She probably got confused with something she saw in the lightning.”

  “You just said she was reliable,” pointed out Postumus.

  “She is.”

  “I heard she was caught stealing.”

  “That was a misunderstanding. She was just trying to save me some money.”

  “Save you money? A woman? That’s a first.”

  “I told you she was unusual,” said Ruso.

  “Our friend Metellus here,” said Postumus, “wants to get his hands on whoever this Cernunnos is and ask him a few questions. I want to get my hands on him and kill him. Trouble is, nobody’s got much to go on.”

  “This is all very interesting, Ruso,” said Metellus. “I’m surprised you didn’t mention any of it earlier.”

  “I didn’t know,” Ruso said, feeling sweat trickle down his spine and wishing he had at least said something about Tilla being local.

  “She didn’t tell you she saw the antlered man in the yard? That’s interesting.”

  “She told me she saw something,” said Ruso. “I didn’t take much notice, frankly.”

  “We all know what the natives are like,” said Metellus. “But now if she’s telling the truth, we have a witness who’s seen this man—which undoubtedly he is—close up. So we’re rounding up a few suspects and we’ll get her to take a look at them in the morning.”

  “I see,” said Ruso, making a mental note to urge Tilla to cooperate.

  “I thought as her owner you ought to be kept informed. But you won’t mention it to her, of course.”

  “Er—no.”

  “We don’t want anyone having advance warning. If we can get ahold of him, the man in the yard should be able to tell us a lot of things we’d like to know. Who knows? Maybe your housekeeper will solve our problems at a stroke.”

  Ruso said nothing, entranced by the prospect of Tilla solving problems rather than causing them. Then he retrieved Arria’s letter and got to his feet. He wanted to go and check on the carpenter.

  “Off to investigate your latest body?” said Postumus.

  “I was asked to do a postmortem,” Ruso assured him, marveling at the speed with which gossip could travel. “I’m not involved in the investigation.”

  Postumus snorted. “That’s what you told everybody last time.”

  Ruso’s glare was wasted, since the centurion had his eyes closed.

  “Last time?” inquired Metellus, a little too casually.

  “There was an unexplained death at Deva,” Ruso said. “There was a misunderstanding about the inquiries.”

  “Like his housekeeper being a thief,” put in Postumus. “That was a misunderstanding too.” He leaned back against the painted wall. Instantly he jerked forward. “Hercules, that’s hot!”

  “The Second Spear ran the investigation,” Ruso pointed out, retrieving his towel. “Not me. Now if you’ve finished, I’ve patients to see.”

  “Hey!” said Postumus when Ruso was halfway out the door. “Where did you get that shave?”

  Ruso jerked a thumb toward the exit. “Out there,” he said. “He’s very good. Tell him you’re in a hurry and you’ll be done in no time.”

  18

  RUSO RETURNED TO the infirmary to find that little had improved in the few hours since he had performed the amputation at the roadside. The carpenter had woken but was weak and incoherent, which did not bode well. He wondered whether he s
hould send for the girlfriend tonight. When Tilla turned up—what was taking her so long?—he would ask her to fetch her.

  The malingerers had taken to their beds. Albanus was diligently walling himself into a corner behind stacks of half-sorted record tablets and Gambax was sitting beside the chaotic pharmacy table apparently doing nothing at all.

  Ruso beckoned Albanus out from behind the wall. “That can wait,” he said, summoning him out into the corridor. “Go and sort your quarters out and finish the records tomorrow. Otherwise you’re going to end up being given a scrubbing brush.”

  Albanus grinned and left. Gambax was still sitting by the pharmacy table as if he was waiting to be told to move.

  “Well?”

  “I’m stuck, sir.”

  Ruso went across and picked up a writing tablet that read,

  Patients must wash

  Air

  Floors and walls

  Mattresses

  “Is this as far as you’ve got?”

  “I couldn’t remember the other thing, sir. So I was waiting to ask you. I didn’t want to get it wrong.”

  “Bedding,” said Ruso, understanding why centurions were equipped with solid and knobby vine sticks and wondering whether he could borrow one to goad Gambax into action. “Next time, get on with what you can remember.”

  Gambax’s “Yes, sir!” made it sound as though Ruso had just made a brilliant suggestion that had never occurred to him before.

  “I’ve been to see Doctor Thessalus,” continued Ruso. “He was very confused. Has he been like this before?”

  “Confused, sir?”

  “Confused,” confirmed Ruso, aware that Gambax’s habit of repeating the question rather than answering it, combined with the secrecy of Thessalus’s confession to murder, was going to make it extremely difficult to find out anything useful.

  “I wouldn’t say he was confused, sir. Not really.”

  “Was he all right when he was on duty last night?”

  Gambax shook his head. “I don’t know, sir. We take turns doing night duty.”

  “So when was the last time you saw him, apart from taking his food across?”

  “He was all right when we came back from Susanna’s.”

  “And that was last night?”

  “Yes, sir. It was my birthday. Doctor Thessalus took a few of us out to celebrate. He’s very good to his staff, sir.”

  “And when you came back here, was he all right then?”

  “I don’t know. I went to my quarters and Doctor Thessalus went out on an emergency call.”

  “Out? Outside the fort?”

  “I don’t know where,” said Gambax, anticipating the next question. “You’d have to ask him that.”

  Ruso managed to establish that an emergency summons from a patient living out in the civilian housing would have to be delivered as a message at one of the fort gates. Beyond that, Gambax’s mind seemed to be as blank as his face. He decided to try a different approach.

  “Gambax, do you know anything about Doctor Thessalus and fish?”

  The deputy considered this for a moment, then offered, “He’s partial to a bit of fish, sir.”

  “He didn’t seem to want to eat it,” said Ruso. “He seemed to want to do something—ah!” He paused, rerunning the conversation in his memory. A fish around the head. A fish on a dish around the head until it’s . . . “Have you heard of the torpedo fish?”

  “I don’t think so, sir.”

  “It gives a shock to the nerves. I’ve heard of it being prescribed for headaches. And it’s quite successful with gout, apparently.”

  “A fish that gives a shock to the nerves, sir?”

  “Yes,” insisted Ruso, aware that he was sounding almost as delusional as his patient.

  “Some sort of poison, sir?”

  “No, just a sort of—shock. A jolt. Like lightning. Only not as big, obviously.”

  “No,” agreed Gambax. “I suppose not. And it’s definitely a fish?”

  “Yes,” said Ruso.

  “You won’t find it around here, sir.”

  “Does he suffer from headaches?”

  “Not particularly, sir.”

  “Gout?”

  “Not as far as I know.”

  Ruso scratched one ear. “He must have read about it in a book.”

  “I don’t think so, sir,” said Gambax. “We don’t have that sort of book here.”

  Ruso was beginning to wonder why Thessalus’s strange fantasies about murder had not fixed themselves upon Gambax. “I hear there’s a public clinic over at the baths tomorrow,” he said. “Will you be deputizing for Thessalus?”

  “Me, sir?” A faint smirk appeared, as if Ruso had just suggested something ridiculous. “’Fraid I can’t help you there, sir. Army medical training. I don’t know anything about women and children. But don’t you worry. I’ll find you a good bandager to help out.”

  The main thing Ruso knew about the ailments of women and children was that he wasn’t very confident with them either. “I’ll think about it,” he conceded. “And you’ll have time to supervise the cleanup back here. Is my room cleared?”

  To his surprise the reply was, “All done, sir.”

  “Good. If my housekeeper turns up, show her to it. You haven’t seen her, have you? Blond girl. Local.”

  Gambax’s brief flash of helpfulness had faded. The smirk reappeared. “Sorry, sir,” he said. “Can’t help you there.”

  Finally, he was alone. A shaft of late afternoon sunlight revealed a sparkle of dust motes dancing in the space above a narrow bed. It also illuminated the fat barrel that blocked access to the rest of the room. Bed and barrel fit perfectly into the space provided, but with the barrel in its present position, the only way to reach the chair at the far end of the room was to clamber across the mattress, and the only way Ruso could sit on the chair and still have room for his feet was to remove the trunk resting on the seat and place it on top of the bed. On the other hand, if he shifted the barrel to the far end of the room everyone would have to climb over his furniture to reach the beer. This had not been one of his better ideas. Unfortunately, it was too late to back down now.

  He surveyed the small space into which his belongings were crammed and wondered how he was going to fit Tilla into it as well. He would have to explain to her that one of the first steps in restoring the infirmary to working order was to establish control of the beer supply, and what better way to do so than to have it under his own personal supervision? Besides, she would probably want to spend most of the few days they were here with her remaining family.

  He would insist on more comfortable arrangements down the road at Ulucium. Maybe Postumus would save him a decent place. On reflection, maybe not. Definitely not, if he’d followed Ruso’s recommendation to visit Festinus the barber.

  Ruso made the necessary furniture removals to get to his chair. The room looked no better from this end than the other. There was not even room to rock the chair onto its back legs, which was a pity, because he needed to do some serious thinking.

  There were several things he did not want to think about. One was the question of exactly who, or what, Tilla had seen in the yard of the inn. Another was what the sulkers and skulkers might at this moment be doing with the head of Felix the trumpeter. Ruso shuddered. He was not going to like the north of Britannia very much.

  What he did need to think about was Doctor Thessalus. Apparently Thessalus knew the dreadful details of the murder even though they seemed to be a secret from everyone else—but the prefect and Metellus were adamant that he was not guilty. The chances of getting any sense out of Thessalus himself were minimal. He needed to track down the guard who had taken that urgent call for a doctor and find out from him where Thessalus had gone that night after he returned from the bar. In the meantime, if he was to stand any chance of sorting out the infirmary before the governor’s new medic arrived, he needed to find a way of spurring Gambax into action.

  That barrel
would be better six inches nearer the door. Ruso got to his feet and gave it an experimental shove. It did not move. He turned and braced his back against it with his feet on the floor beneath the chair, and heaved. The barrel gave way suddenly, tipping away from him and almost overturning to block the door as he tried not to fall backward. As he recovered himself it landed back into place with a thud. He was wondering whether to call for reinforcements when there was a knock on the door. The bandager from the Twentieth was worried about the carpenter.

  19

  THE LOG WALLS surrounding the fort were more silvered with age now. The steep grassy ramparts that rose up beneath them were spattered with spring flowers. Little had changed since the last time Tilla had seen this place. But everything was different.

  When she left, the soldiers’ fort had been impressive. Now that she had lived in Deva, it looked almost puny. She wondered if the men who were busy clearing out the rampart ditch knew that their fort was nothing to be proud of. Probably not. What would they say if somebody told them?

  She walked on. Ahead of her, beneath two wooden towers, was a dark rectangle surrounding a splash of late afternoon sunlight. The gates were open. In a moment she would be able to see inside.

  Her parents and grandparents had watched from the top of the ridge as soldiers stacked turf into ramparts and hammered in posts around a patch of land that their people had walked over freely for generations. Once the walls were up none of them had ever set foot on that land again apart from her uncle, who usually had more wisdom than to boast of it when her father was around. Like most sensible people, the rest of them had done their best to avoid Rome’s intrusions into what—according to the very old—had once been a peaceful valley. Although you could never trust old people not to exaggerate. Any peace must have always been fragile with the Votadini tribe as neighbors. Perhaps this was why some people had imagined that the arrival of the Romans might be a good thing.

  The truth, of course, was quite different. The truth was that when foreigners desecrated your land, cut down your trees, fouled your water supply, and made impressive speeches about bringing peace in return for taxes, nothing good could possibly come of it. She could imagine what her family would be saying now if they were watching her walking toward the gates, knowing there was a soldier waiting for her inside.