Semper Fidelis: A Novel of the Roman Empire

by Ruth Downie

  “Are you normally in good health?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How’s your appetite?”

  The youth’s hollow eyes turned to the bowl of something brown that sat untouched beside the water jug on the bedside table.

  Pera said, “We weren’t sure whether to feed him, sir, but he didn’t want it.”

  Ruso lifted the spoon a fraction. A skin like a leather tent rose up with it. He handed the cold bowl to one of the juniors. “Get rid of it.”

  Outside the room he said, “I’ll clean the wound up in the morning. Meanwhile, move him where you can keep a close eye on him. Give him half a lozenge of poppy, make sure he takes plenty of water, and call me immediately if there’s any change.”

  “I would have moved him, sir, but he’s supposed to be kept away from the other men.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Centurion’s orders, sir. The injury was self-inflicted.”

  “The centurion doesn’t know how ill he is,” said Ruso, not wanting to pick a fight with Geminus over a man who had probably sliced up his sword arm to get out of training. “Move him carefully, straightaway, and if there’s any problem I’ll take responsibility.”

  For a moment Pera looked like a man who did not know which way to run. “This is the hospital, Pera,” he said, trying to keep the impatience out of his voice. “I’m the medical officer.”

  Pera looked relieved to be given no choice. He gave instructions to prepare a room opposite the staff office.

  Two accidental deaths in six weeks, not to mention one suicide and one potentially fatal self-inflicted injury. The recruits of Eboracum did indeed seem to be under some sort of malign influence. Geminus was trying to impose discipline. Pera was trying to patch them up. Maybe it was his own role to introduce some logical thinking around here.

  Meanwhile, he realized there was one place he had not been shown. “Where’s your mortuary?”

  An expression that might have been embarrassment passed over Pera’s face. “I didn’t want to disturb them while they’re preparing the body, sir.”

  “You did tell your staff there would be an inspection?”

  “Oh, yes, sir.”

  “Then just point me in the right direction. I won’t disturb them any more than necessary.”

  Chapter 9

  The mortuary floor was being washed by a lone orderly who leapt to attention, displaying large yellow teeth protruding from a face the color of chalk. Beyond him, Ruso was surprised to see not one but two parallel tables with white-shrouded figures laid out beneath the flickering lights on the lamp stands.

  He bowed to the shrine in the corner and introduced himself to the orderly, adding, “I believe Doctor Pera told you I’d be here?”

  The youth nodded and formed the words “Yes, sir” round the teeth.

  “And no doubt he told you to answer my questions honestly?”

  The nod was less enthusiastic, the “Yes, sir” a little more hesitant.

  Wondering exactly what Pera had said to his staff, Ruso glanced at the shrouds and had a momentary and inappropriate vision of one of them sitting up and shouting, “Help me! Where am I?”

  “So here you have—”

  “Sulio came in this afternoon, sir.” The youth pointed to the nearest corpse, which was the smaller of the two. “Both going for cremation this evening.”

  Ruso made his way between the bodies. The incense in the burners was fighting a good battle against the smell of death, and what he had momentarily taken for stains in the light from the high windows were pale pink rose petals scattered across the crisp linen of the shrouds.

  He had only to lift the cloth over Sulio’s head to satisfy himself that the body had been treated with respect. It was both reassuring and alarming how the features relaxed in death: apart from a cleaned graze on his cheek, the blond recruit looked as though he were enjoying an untroubled sleep. He also looked about fifteen years old. Ruso lowered the cloth and sprinkled a few of the displaced petals over the shroud. Whatever the hospital staff thought about the manner of Sulio’s death, they were being very careful not to enrage his spirit.

  “And the other one is … ?”

  “Tadius, sir.”

  “The training accident?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  As Ruso reached for the cloth the orderly said, “Sir, I was ordered not to—”

  “I’ll take responsibility …” The word trailed into silence as he stared down at the dead face. According to Pera, this man had fallen and hit his head during training. He also appeared to have given himself several bruises and broken his nose. Ruso reached forward. The lower jaw grated unnaturally when he tried to move it.

  The mortuary attendant had retreated toward the door.

  Ruso said, “What can you tell me about this man?”

  “I—I’m not usually here, sir.”

  Ruso noted with interest that he seemed far more nervous of the accidental death than of the suicide. “I gather the cause of death was a blow to the head.”

  “Please, sir, I don’t know. I don’t know anything at all.”

  Ruso crouched beside the body. Whoever had washed it had missed a trickle of blood from the opening of the left ear. That could be the result of a head injury he could not see without rolling the body over. “Perhaps,” he said, getting to his feet, “you could ask Doctor Pera to step in here when he has a moment?”

  The youth nearly tripped over his own bucket in his eagerness to escape.

  Pera found a moment almost immediately, but had the demeanor of a man who wanted to get a tricky job over and done with. Ruso apologized for interrupting him. “Just a few questions about this chap.”

  “That’s Tadius, sir.”

  “The one you were told fell and hit his head.”

  “Yes, sir.” There was no hesitation this time. “The occipital bone’s fractured: you can’t see it from there.”

  “I just wondered,” said Ruso, who had already discovered the fracture for himself, “what you make of the broken nose and jaw, the broken fingers on the right hand, extensive bruising to the face and torso, and the circular abrasions around one ankle.”

  “I’d imagine he got into a fight, sir.”

  “Doesn’t anyone supervise them?”

  “You’d have to ask their centurion, sir.”

  “You didn’t query it at the time?”

  Pera cleared his throat. “He might have fallen off the stretcher, sir.”

  “Fallen off the stretcher?” It was such a farcical excuse that Ruso could not resist seeing how far his former pupil would take it. “This was after he’d received the blow to the head?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Was this in the hospital or outside?”

  Pera seemed to be having trouble with his neck again. “On the steps outside, sir.”

  “I see.” If the injuries had been more plausible, he might have believed it. Accurately noting a cause of death was one thing; admitting to dropping a patient was quite another: It was the sort of embarrassing mishap that nobody wanted on record, except perhaps the outraged patient himself. “So if you question the fight injuries, this fall will come to light?”

  “Perhaps, sir.”

  Ruso nodded. “I suppose if he was dead when he came in, a few more bruises wouldn’t have made much difference.”

  “Exactly, sir. He—” Pera stopped just on the edge of the trap. “Well, he wasn’t quite dead sir, but as good as. He was clearly slipping away.”

  “I see.”

  “There was just time for the bruising to develop before he died,” Pera explained, digging himself deeper into the hole.

  “I see,” said Ruso, baffled as to why the man would lie over a small mishap when it was clear that Tadius had been in much bigger trouble than anything that could be inflicted by incompetent stretcher bearers.

  “Sir, there was nothing more we could have done for him.”

  Ruso smoothed the young man’s hair, the
n lifted the cloth and laid it over the body, adding another scatter of rose petals.

  “Are we in trouble, sir?”

  “I don’t know,” said Ruso. “But somebody should be.”

  Chapter 10

  Ruso left Pera to worry, and seated himself on a wobbly stool in the office. He was aware of his every move being scrutinized by a hefty clerk who, despite being told to stand easy, still looked as though he were being squeezed into a small space on one of his own shelves.

  Medical records, as Ruso had insisted to Pera and dozens like him over the years, were crucial. They told the next medic what you’d seen and done. They told you what you’d seen and done, after a string of night duties when it was hard to remember your own name, let alone anything about the patient. If you took the time to review them, they helped you to decide which treatments were useful and which weren’t, or which patients were genuinely ill and which were constant complainers. The trouble was, when you were the doctor, there was always something more urgent to do. And when you were supervising other doctors, the prospect of sitting down to read their notes made you aware of a pressing need to go and do … well, almost anything.

  Like asking what that wooden box with “Sulio” chalked on the side was doing here.

  “It’s his effects, sir. We’re waiting for someone to collect them.”

  Ruso eyed the bloodstained writing tablet sticking out from a fold of cloth. “Did he write a last note?”

  The man leaned forward and pulled it out. “Tucked into his belt, sir.”

  Ruso had begun to read by the time the clerk added, “It’s a letter from his mother, sir.”

  He had already skimmed far enough to know that the mother was praying for her son’s success and enclosing some lambskin to line his boots. He slapped it shut and handed it back. “If I’d known that, I wouldn’t have asked.”

  He tried not to imagine the woman’s pleasure at receiving a reply. Eager for news, she would take it to someone who could read—perhaps the scribe to whom she had dictated this—and he would read out Geminus’s words informing her that her faraway son had been dead for several days.

  “A waste of a life,” he said, feeling as though he should make some comment.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Still, Sulio’s mother was not his problem. The medical service was. The clerk was watching him: he must make a good show of inspecting the records.

  “Right,” he said, wishing as he always did at this stage that his own clerk—who genuinely loved this sort of thing—were still in the army, instead of hanging around down in Verulamium while a local woman decided whether or not she wanted to marry him. “Show me what you’ve got here, will you?”

  Moments later a set of extralong wooden tablets listing admissions was laid out before him on the desk. Running a finger down the entries, he noted the acceptance of a body into the mortuary some weeks ago: Dannicus. Dead on arrival. Drowned. After that he could trace the seasonal transition from cold-weather coughs and catarrh to stomach problems and runny eyes and fevers. Something else was apparent too.

  “What can you tell me about the training regime here?”

  This was clearly not a question the clerk was expecting. “You’d have to ask Centurion Geminus about that, sir.”

  “I will. But first I’m asking you.”

  “Well, it’s just … basic training, really. Drill and military pace, learning the commands, physical training … jumping and vaulting, that sort of thing.”

  “I see.”

  “Use and maintenance of weapons,” added the clerk, evidently keen to show that he had not forgotten.

  “So—”

  “Throwing missiles, sir. And swimming in the river.”

  “So would you say it’s significantly different from your own training?”

  “Running, sir. That’s another one. Plenty of running. Long-distance marches with full kit twice a week.”

  “So nothing unusual?”

  “I don’t think so, sir.”

  “There seem to be a lot of training injuries.”

  “It’s the recruits, sir,” said the clerk cryptically.

  “The recruits?”

  “They keep having accidents, sir.”

  It might not be as ridiculous as it sounded. Hadrian’s promise of reinforcements had aroused fears amongst senior officers in Britannia that they would be fobbed off with all the idlers and troublemakers that none of the other legions wanted. The consequent pressure for hasty recruitment was bound to result in some bad choices. This bunch might be clumsy rather than cursed. Still, that did not explain either of the bodies in the mortuary.

  He found the second death two sheets further on. The entry was dated the day before yesterday. The word Deceased was written next to Tadius’s name. Squeezed above it in a different hand, a word that could plausibly have read Postmortem was followed by a squiggle that must be a signature.

  When he asked to see the postmortem report on Tadius, the clerk looked blank. “There isn’t one, sir. Dead on arrival.”

  Ruso pointed to the register. “Whose signature is that?”

  The clerk peered at it. “It’s hard to say, sir.”

  “Where would I find the records for Tadius?”

  Moments later the clerk was apologizing as he fumbled with the twine holding the postmortem report together. “I can’t understand how it got there without me seeing it, sir. They usually just leave everything in a heap on the desk for me to put away.”

  On separating the pair of wax-coated leaves, Ruso was gratified to see a full set of neatly written notes covering both sides, dated the same day as the admission. His insistence on the value of record keeping had not been wasted. The hurried scrawl by the admission notice had belonged to Pera.

  There was, of course, no mention of the nonsense about falling off the stretcher. It was a thorough report detailing the injuries he had seen just now: injuries sustained by a man who had died from a blow to the head following the sort of fight that should never have been permitted to take place on a training ground.

  Pera had recorded the evidence, yet for some reason he had taken the matter no further himself and seemed desperate to keep Ruso out of it too.

  Ruso closed the report, handed it back to the clerk for filing, and sighed. Eboracum should have been such a simple trip. If only Pera had come up with a good reason for silence, he would have been happy to collude with it, on the grounds that whatever they did, the man would still be dead. But Pera had not.

  Meanwhile, the recruits seemed to believe that they were cursed. And the glum recruit with the broken wrist had been right: If the story reached Deva, he and his comrades would not get a warm welcome.

  Ruso left the office deep in thought. He was not an investigator now. He could leave the business of Tadius’s death alone and decide it was someone else’s problem. But it involved the medical service, which was his responsibility, and what was the point of inspecting if he was not going to act on what he found?

  Nodding to the statue of Aesculapius in the hospital entrance hall, he could not help wondering if the gods had noted his decision to avoid all the fuss and bother of Hadrian’s visit and decided to have some fun with him.

  Chapter 11

  As Ruso hurried down the hospital steps, the wind snatched at his cloak and spattered cold rain down his legs. He paused to get directions to the mansio from a gate guard who looked as though he had just swum to his post, then sped past the luxuriant weeds waving in the fort ditch and tried to dodge the worst of the puddles as he sprinted down the street.

  One of the potted trees beside the mansio entrance had fallen over. He paused to set it upright before entering. He was stamping his clammy boots on the mat when he heard the thud of the wretched thing blowing over again.

  The manager confirmed that, yes indeed, the Medicus’s wife was here, and rang a bell to summon a servant. While he was waiting to be taken to the room, Ruso was treated to the sight of another visitor tottering up the s
teps toward the entrance hall.

  The girl was clothed in a style that was appealing rather than appropriate. Below the look-at-us-boys cleavage, the flimsy pink dress that appeared to have been shrunk onto her was grubby and mud spattered.

  This was as much as Ruso saw before the door slave stepped into his line of vision. “Guests only.”

  She craned to see past. “Is he the Medicus? It’s urgent.”

  “This is an inn,” the slave pointed out, “not a doctor’s house.”

  “Well, that’s not very nice! I just picked your tree up for you!”

  Ruso moved away from the doors and stood examining his damp boots and his conscience. It had been a long day. Now he needed to tell Tilla that he had been invited to dine with the tribune this evening, while she had not. Experience had taught him that women did not like this sort of news, even if they had never wanted to go in the first place. He was also fairly confident that the last thing Tilla would want to hear next was that his best kit needed to be polished before tomorrow morning and that he didn’t have time to do it himself, because he could neither arrive at dinner smelling of horse nor keep the tribune waiting, so he needed to rush off to the bathhouse straightaway.

  Meanwhile, the young woman outside was urgently seeking a doctor.

  “It’s all right,” he said, noting the unkempt hair and the wide eyes peering over the door slave’s outstretched arm. The body was mature but the face above it was that of a child. “You can let her in.”

  The slave withdrew the arm and the unescorted girl stumbled past him, too busy taking in her surroundings to look where she was going. Noting the expression on the manager’s face, Ruso drew her away from the desk and into a corner beside a shrine garlanded with wilting flowers. “I’m the Medicus,” he explained. “But I can’t—”

  “I’m Virana.”

  “I can’t see you this evening, Virana.”

  The girl was looking him up and down with undisguised admiration. “You are an officer!”