Tabula Rasa: A Crime Novel of the Roman Empire Read online

  Valens said, “I’ll ask around at Magnis, see if somebody knows where he’s gone. From the sound of it I can’t imagine anyone will have poached him.”

  Ruso glanced past Valens at Pandora’s cupboard, and pictured again the words He is rather a sensitive boy in Albanus’s neat handwriting. It was hard to imagine how a sensitive boy could have lasted beyond the first week of basic training. Indeed, unless the bitten fingernails betrayed a nervous disposition, Candidus had shown no sign of sensitivity to anything except the dangers of hard work. At every opportunity, he had abandoned his duties and wandered around the hospital, chatting to people. Several of them seemed to have been given the impression that he was in charge. Ruso might have been almost glad to lose him, except that he had then done something unexpected.

  Immediately after an exasperated Ruso had ordered him to get his backside on that stool and not move or speak until he had sorted out the orders for blankets and buckets and updated the repairs list, Candidus stood to attention behind his desk and said, “May I speak, sir?”

  “Briefly.”

  “I’ve made a bit of a mess of things so far, haven’t I, sir?”

  “Yes,” said Ruso, surprised by the young man’s frankness.

  “I’m sorry, sir. I’ve never been a clerk before, sir. I was hoping you wouldn’t notice and I’d just pick it up as I went along.”

  “Then you should have stayed at your desk and listened to what you were told.”

  Candidus swallowed. “Are you going to get rid of me, sir?”

  Ruso sighed and leaned against Pandora’s cupboard. If the lad hadn’t had the same skinny build and innocent eyes and floppy black hair as his uncle, it might have been easier to be angry with him. “Just get those orders done. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”

  “Thank you, sir. I’ll do them straightaway.”

  “Good,” Ruso said, not sure if he was being taken for a ride. “If there’s anything you don’t understand, ask. Don’t guess.”

  “Yes, sir. I will. And I won’t. And I’ll do better from now on, sir.”

  But the next day Candidus did not turn up, and nobody had seen him since.

  It was a moment before Ruso registered what Valens was pointing at. “Is there something underneath that chicken?”

  Ruso reached underneath the soft feathers and drew out the thin slivers of another writing tablet. As he did so he felt a stab of guilt. He was already late. Tilla would be waiting, and the hen would still be dead when he got back tomorrow. On the other hand, he needed to check that it belonged to him, especially since he might run across the donor by accident and fail to thank them because he had not paused a few short moments to open a—

  “Oh, hell.”

  “From somebody you don’t like?”

  “It’s from Albanus.”

  “Albanus sent a dead bird all the way from Verulamium?”

  Ruso scanned the letter. There was no mention of a hen, which he assumed must have come from somewhere else.

  To Doctor Ruso, greetings.

  I am happy to say that I hope to see you soon. Fortune has granted me a post as tutor to the children of a prefect who is currently stationed at Arbeia.

  I shall try to call upon both yourself and Candidus, who I hope is settling in well. I cannot repeat too often how grateful I am to you for taking him in.

  Thank you for your good wishes to Grata, which I regret I have been unable to convey to her. Believe me, sir, if you knew her as well as I now do, you would not have sent them.

  I hope you are enjoying the best of fortune, along with your wife and Officer Valens and his family.

  Farewell.

  Valens said, “What do you think he’s found out about Grata?”

  But Ruso was not interested in why Albanus had fallen out with his woman. What he wanted to know was where Candidus was, and he wanted to know it before the lad’s uncle arrived and asked the same question. The letter was dated two weeks ago. Albanus could be here at any moment.

  “He’ll turn up,” said Valens. “If he doesn’t, Albanus can look for him. And I’ll see to Pertinax. You’re having a night out tonight.”

  “I know.”

  “You don’t seem very keen.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Stay here, then. We’ll get the food brought in. Invite the lovely Tilla and your, ah . . .” Valens paused. “I’ve never quite known what to call her.”

  “Virana,” Ruso reminded him, although as to what she was . . . Ah was probably as good a word as any. Virana was neither a slave nor a freedwoman. She was most definitely not a concubine. Nor, at this rate, was she ever going to persuade some hapless legionary to call her his spouse. There was no word for a pregnant stray whom my wife took in without consulting me, and if there was a word for and she is worryingly attractive, which is why I try to avoid being alone with her, he was certainly not going to speak it out loud.

  “Well, we can invite her if you like.”

  “We can’t,” said Ruso, well able to imagine Virana’s excitement at an invitation to dine inside the fort. “I have to go and meet some of Tilla’s people. And I’m late,” he added, knowing he could not put it off any longer.

  Valens shook his head. “No good comes of mixing with the wife’s friends and relations.”

  “I know.”

  “If you’re eating somewhere decent, can you have some sent in for me? I can’t leave the father-in-law.”

  Ruso cleared his throat. “Actually I’m going to the house.”

  Valens’s eyes widened. “A native house? At this hour?”

  “I’ll have Tilla as protection,” Ruso assured him. “We’re staying overnight.”

  Having demonstrated his nonchalance, he paused with one hand on the door latch. A man on a dangerous mission should leave details of his plan with someone back at base. Just in case. “It’s only about half a mile. West on the main road, over the stream, up the hill, and turn left before you get to the camp.”

  Valens looked even more surprised. “I thought the lovely Tilla had barely a soul in this world, and one of them lives just down the road?”

  “I know,” Ruso confessed. “It struck me as a remarkable coincidence too. The old man’s a friend of the family. He saw her at market and mistook her for her mother.”

  “Ah.”

  He had begun now; he might as well edge toward the part that was really worrying him. “Have you heard about the old man who sings to trees?” The moment he had said it, he wished he had not.

  “The crazy man?” Valens was going to be no help at all. He was enjoying this.

  “Tilla says he’s not crazy. He’s just very traditional.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “That’s what I asked. She said, ‘You’ll see.’ ” He paused in the doorway. He could not tell Valens, any more than he could tell Tilla, about his discreet enquiries with Security. The old man was deemed to be harmless, as were two of his sons—one because he had been killed in the troubles a couple of years ago, and the other because he was only nine years old. But the name of Conn, the eldest, turned up in watch lists all over the place. He said, “I’m just not sure why he’s bothering to make such a fuss of her now when they never really knew each other.”

  “Because she’s turned up practically on his doorstep?”

  “Or because he thinks she’ll be useful to him in some way. You’re sure you don’t want to go back to Magnis tonight? I’ll stay here and see to Pertinax.”

  “Absolutely not,” Valens assured him. “I want to hear what happens.”

  Chapter 6

  Ruso pulled his hood down over his eyes and strode on, perhaps the only man on the wall who was glad that it was nearly dark and starting to rain yet again. The patrol who had just passed would not know that the figure turning down a track leading only to native farmsteads was one of their own officers.

  He had so nearly escaped. In a few more days, the Legion would be on the march back to Deva. If the wall had run
a couple of hundred paces farther south, the family would have been turfed off their land and ended up somewhere miles away. The old man might never have seen Tilla at the market and seized her by the hand, begging to know if she was Mara come back to him. Unfortunately, the wall was where it was, and the military zone had only sliced off a few of the family’s fields. They had stayed to eke out a living on their shrunken farm, hidden away down a slithery track that was almost impossible to make out under the gloom of the dripping trees. Ruso pulled his cloak tighter around him and trod carefully.

  That was what he would have to do, metaphorically speaking, when he arrived there. Unable to explain his misgivings to Tilla, he would have to stay alert for any hint of suspicious activity or attempts to compromise either of them. If these people thought they could persuade him to become their tame Roman, they were very much mistaken.

  Reaching what must be the fork in the pathways that Tilla had told him about, he followed the curve of the right-hand route, and eventually the shape of a gate loomed ahead. He paused. The locals let their dogs loose at night to repel thieving soldiers.

  There was no barking, just the sighing of the breeze in the trees and a spatter of raindrops. He took a deep breath and called, “Is anyone there?” in the language his wife had taught him.

  “I am,” said a young voice. For a worrying moment it seemed to belong to the large dog that was sniffing at his hand.

  “Hello,” said Ruso, leaving the hand where it was and edging the rest of himself farther away.

  “Are you the doctor?” asked the voice.

  “Yes,” said Ruso, just able to make out the shape of a boy attached to the dog. This must be the youngest son.

  “I’m Branan.”

  “Ruso. Sorry I’m late.”

  “Now I can go in out of the rain.” Leading him across the uneven cobbles, Branan shouted, “He’s here!” and moments later a glimmer of light appeared. A shadowy figure standing in the shelter of the porch handed the lamp to the boy and greeted Ruso with one word in British: “Weapons.”

  Ruso had expected the request to be couched in politer terms. “Who are you?”

  “Conn. Do not pretend you have never heard of me. Give me your weapons.”

  The boy pushed back his hood. From behind a curtain of wet curls, dark eyes glanced from one man to the other.

  “Is my wife here?”

  “She is.”

  Ruso raised his arms, not wanting to pick a fight before he was even through the door. He felt himself being searched, and the boy’s fingers tugging at the fastenings of the scabbard. Conn said something to the boy in their own tongue about not taking the blade out.

  The familiar weight of the sword lifted and was gone, borne away by a native into the darkness. Ruso tried to ask, “Where’s he taking it?” but if Conn understood, he chose not to reply.

  Walking out of the fort without his armor on had been a matter of choice. Handing over an eighteen-inch slice of razor-sharp iron to a hostile local was definitely against regulations and against common sense too. He hoped his wife really was here.

  Tilla had assured him several times that her own family had never collected enemy heads, nor predicted the future from the entrails and death throes of murdered prisoners, nor crammed people they did not much like into giant men made of wicker and burned them alive. But he had seen some of the things natives had done to stray soldiers. When pressed to admit that such things happened, Tilla changed the subject, choosing instead to remind him instead of the evils she had seen in the amphitheater. Usually in a tone that suggested he was personally responsible for them. So it was a relief when Conn pushed the door open to reveal several figures seated around a central fire, and one of them rose and hurried across to him. “Husband!”

  She reached up to unfasten the clasp of his sodden cloak. “I was afraid you might not come.”

  “Of course I came,” he said, trying to sound as though he had been looking forward to it all day. When Conn walked away he murmured, “Watch out for that one.”

  She put a hand over his. “These are my people. We have to trust them.”

  We. As it struck him that she did not sound sure of them herself, she prodded him in the small of the back. He stepped forward into the firelight and she announced, “My man is here!”

  The creature who exclaimed “Ah!” from the depths of the carved chair probably looked less alarming when he was not seated beside a steaming cauldron with his wild white hair and deep-set eyes lit from below by orange flames. At least he looked welcoming. The hand clutching the walking stick shook with the effort as he hauled himself up to stand. A young woman with broad shoulders, capable hands, and a serious expression stepped forward from behind his chair to help him. Ruso guessed she must be Conn’s wife. He had tried to stay awake while Tilla explained all this, but he had only been listening for the gaps so that he could grunt in the right places.

  There was movement in the dark spaces behind the wicker partitions, which were hung with furs and painted shields. Above them, over shelves filled with what looked like apples, he caught the glint of metal slung under the thatch. Not his own sword but curved blades. Farm tools with sharp edges.

  Figures emerged from the hidden parts of the house and padded across the bracken-strewn floor to gather around the fire. Ruso blinked, feeling his eyes beginning to smart. The smoke from the hearth was making a poor job of finding its way out through the thatch. He counted four more adults and several children. All staring directly at him. Finally another figure emerged. He was happier than usual to see that pregnant belly and welcoming bosom below a smiling face. Try as he might, it was impossible to note Virana’s features in any other order.

  “Grandfather Senecio,” announced Tilla in her own language, stepping forward to address the figure leaning on the stick. “This is Gaius Ruso of the Petreius family from southern Gaul. He is a healer in the pay of the emperor’s Twentieth Legion.”

  Ruso bowed.

  “He is a man of honor, and I have chosen him to be mine,” added Tilla, as if she were challenging anyone to argue.

  The strength of the voice that replied, “Good evening, Roman,” took him by surprise. Perhaps the man was not as ancient as he looked. “I am Senecio of the Corionotatae.”

  The introductions that followed seemed oddly formal in the murk of a round house smelling of smoke and sheep and whatever was in the pot, but the man betrayed no obvious sign of craziness. Conn was now standing by his father’s chair. He had the same strong features and curly hair as his father, but although he was not gray, the sour downturn of his mouth made him look almost as old. His young wife, still unsmiling, was called Enica. Branan grinned at Ruso through the wet snakes of hair, revealing dimples and a gap between his front teeth. Ruso decided he liked Branan.

  The names of the rest—the man with one eye, the tall thin man, the woman with the thick brows who lisped when she spoke, the one with nothing remarkable about her, the gaggle of wide-eyed children—were swept out of his memory by the thought that the adults only had to reach up to seize scythes and pitchforks and . . .

  . . . And he must pull himself together. They probably always looked fierce. Who wouldn’t in a place like this? Besides, it was surely bad etiquette to murder guests, even in Britannia.

  After the introductions there was a lot of shuffling about as everyone settled themselves around the hearth. Conn’s wife, still giving the impression that she was not enjoying this, placed him next to Tilla. The animal pelt covering the bench tickled the backs of his legs. The bench rocked as Virana lowered herself down onto the other end of it.

  Senecio said, “We hear you rescued a man from the fallen rocks.”

  “Yes.”

  “First the sky is against you with the rain, and now the earth.”

  Ruso hoped the old man wasn’t going to veer off into craziness. Or religion. There were stories of him yelling at thunderstorms as well as singing to trees. “It is good of you to invite us.”


  “Darlughdacha is very much like her mother,” said Senecio, reaching for a cup made of turned wood. “We have been recalling good friends long gone. Her mother and I were very close at one time.”

  It felt strange to hear Tilla called by her native name. As though this man had some sort of ancient claim upon her. Meanwhile Enica scowled at Tilla as if looking like one’s mother were some sort of crime.

  The man continued. “Friends are always welcome at my hearth.”

  “And at ours, Grandfather,” put in Tilla. “When we have one.”

  “Yes,” said Ruso again, putting an arm around his wife in a gesture that he hoped looked protective, and not as if he were clinging to her for support.

  “Soldiers have no homes,” Conn said, looking round at the household as if he were explaining something new. “This is why they do not understand what it is to turn people off their land.”

  Tilla said, “My husband’s family has a farm in the south of Gaul. His brother looks after it.”

  “The south of Gaul?” Senecio raised one white eyebrow. “I hear the land there is very dry in the summer.”

  “There is not much rain,” Ruso agreed.

  “How many cows do you have?”

  “Just the one.” Aware that the Britons would think he was a pauper, he added, “We have a lot of vines and olives. Some . . .” He turned to Tilla for the native word, then realized there wasn’t one. “Some peaches,” he said, “and a little wheat.”

  “Wine and oil,” Senecio mused. “You can feed a family on these things?”

  “We sell them.” Not very profitably.

  “Ah.” It was Senecio’s turn to explain to his audience. “The Romans have to use coins,” he explained, “because they cannot feed themselves on what they grow.”

  Conn said, “This is why they come here wanting our good land to grow real food on.”