Semper Fidelis: A Novel of the Roman Empire

by Ruth Downie

  “Out!” Ruso had him halfway to the door before he recovered his balance.

  Geminus twisted free and blocked the exit. “He’s my man.”

  “He’s my patient.”

  Ruso was taller. Geminus was solid muscle. There was no sign of his shadows, but they were probably out in the corridor somewhere. Ruso said, “Not here.”

  “You didn’t listen.”

  “Not here!”

  Ruso was conscious of a faint voice behind him. The words were in British. “Not my arm—no.”

  “Don’t worry,” Ruso assured him in the same tongue, keeping his eyes fixed on Geminus. “Nothing will happen here unless I say so.”

  “Outside,” growled Geminus, stepping back to let him pass.

  Ruso murmured, “Stay here and keep him calm,” to the wide-eyed orderly, and gestured to Geminus to go first. He was not giving that man a chance to get near his patient again.

  “You were told to mind your own business.”

  Ruso envied Aesculapius, whose tranquil gaze across the entrance hall was undisturbed by the centurion’s tone. He had brought Geminus here because if there was going to be a fight, he wanted witnesses. He also wanted help, but he doubted he would get any. Still, at least there was no sign of the two shadows. He said, “If you want to talk to my patient, you talk to me first.”

  “I should have known you’d be trouble.”

  “Did you have me followed?”

  Geminus glanced around to make sure no one but the god was listening. “My men have better things to do than get you out of places you shouldn’t get into.”

  “You told me Tadius died at night.”

  “I told you everything you need to know.” Geminus moved closer. He smelled of the sweat of the training ground. Ruso stood very still.

  “When I heard you were coming,” Geminus said, “I asked some questions. And I got some very interesting answers. Why was it you left the Legion last time?”

  Ruso knew now where this was heading, and he did not want to go there. “I was injured. By the time I’d recovered, my contract was over.”

  “Nothing to do with your woman, then?”

  Ruso took a slow breath. “That’s old news.”

  “But I’ll bet it hasn’t reached the tribune, has it?”

  “I’ve no idea.”

  Geminus’s smile was even more fearsome than his scowl. “We’re all on the same side here, Doctor,” he said. “You leave me to get on with my business, and I’ll leave you to get on with yours.”

  Chapter 29

  After last night’s costly mistake, Tilla did not order the evening meal until her husband turned up. At the same moment a local man and his nephew arrived to show him a limp and complain of a bellyache. Then the stew came, and he ate in silence, listening to his own thoughts. It did not seem the best time to ask for a slave so she could learn to be a medicus, so she said, “How is your difficult patient?”

  “Mm?”

  “Your patient. Austalis. How is he?”

  “Desperate to keep the arm. I’m leaving him for one more night.”

  “Perhaps he will improve.”

  “And perhaps I’ll have killed him.”

  So that was what was troubling him. “I went to see Corinna’s boy again,” she said. “He was asleep.”

  “Mm.”

  “She told me something I did not understand.”

  He tore a chunk off the bread and dropped it into the liquid.

  “Shall I tell you what it was?”

  “Uh—what? Yes.”

  “She said Tadius and Victor were good friends, but then they had a fight.”

  He scooped the bread out on his spoon. “Friends fall out.”

  “She says there are things we don’t know.”

  “Maybe we don’t need to know them.”

  “Did you think about that centurion?”

  He looked at her. “That centurion knows why we had to go to Gaul.”

  She put her spoon down. “But how—”

  “Apparently he’s been asking around. It’s not exactly a secret, is it? Metellus circulates his security lists. That’s the point of them.”

  Her throat was suddenly dry. “I thought that was all forgotten.”

  “So did I.”

  “I always knew that centurion was—”

  “I know what he is!”

  The force of his reply startled her.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Don’t worry. You’re none of his business, and Metellus will be busy up on the border, arresting anyone who isn’t a loyal subject of Hadrian.”

  As she said, “I hope so. That man is a snake,” there was a rap on the door and a slave announced more visitors for the Medicus. Tilla sighed and put the bread platter over his bowl in the faint hope that the stew might not be stone cold when he finished.

  The back sufferer turned out to have tried every remedy that was suggested and refused to believe that gentle exercise would help. The child who could not speak was deaf. She had devised her own gestures to communicate with her family, and seemed to have accepted the situation far more readily than they had.

  Tilla had just lifted the bread platter from his bowl when they both looked up, uncertain. He called, “Come in!” and the movement of the latch confirmed that there was indeed somebody there.

  A bent and wrinkled slave shuffled in. Tilla recognized the figure she had seen hoeing the weeds out of the rose beds, but when she greeted him with “You are the gardener!” he shrank away and begged them not to tell anyone he was there. The reason became apparent as he explained his symptoms: stiffness in the hips, painful knees, difficulty in movement, hot and swollen joints in the hands … None of these was desirable in a gardener. He was terrified of being sold and replaced with someone younger and fitter.

  Tilla, seated on the bed and halfheartedly scanning the poetry scroll in the poor light, reflected that any decent owner would buy a boy who could learn from the older slave and take over the heavy work. But while the old man had worked in the mansio gardens for as long as he could remember, managers came and went. And new men liked to make sweeping changes.

  She glanced up and saw that her husband was scratching one ear in the way he did when he was thinking. The treatment she had seen him recommend for this sort of thing would be of no use to a slave who was more likely to sleep in a damp bed than be able to lie in a hot bath. And if he managed to scrape together regular warm fomentations of bark and barley meal, where would he find the privacy to apply them?

  Finally she heard “Tilla, can you get me the bottle of mandrake in wine, and a spoon?” and, to the patient, “Do you grow dill? And rue?”

  “Dill, yes. Rue smells. I could find a patch outside.”

  While Tilla rummaged inside the case, her husband explained how to boil the herbs together to make a medicine that was good for easing joint pain.

  When she handed the bottle across, he checked the thin wooden label tied around the neck as usual and frowned. “Mandrake,” he repeated, handing it back.

  She took it, glanced at the two bubbles near the base of the thick green glass, and offered it back to him. “Mandrake,” she confirmed.

  Silently he pointed to the label.

  “Mandrake,” she insisted.

  He gave her a look of mild alarm that said, You don’t read the labels? and reached for the case himself, picking out one of the three remaining bottles he usually carried with him.

  “That is iris, for purging!” she whispered, placing her hand over his. The patient, who was sitting on the end of the bed nearest the window, was beginning to look worried.

  She placed both bottles on the table, pulled out a stopper, and sniffed before passing the bottle to him. He lifted it to his nose, paused, and turned to the patient. “Sorry about that. Have you finished work for the night?”

  The man nodded.

  “One and a half spoons in a cup, please, Tilla.” To the patient he said, “I don’t recommend you take a lot of this
, but for once it should give you a decent night’s sleep.”

  Tilla handed over the cup with a warm smile that defied any questions about whether this traveling medicus and his woman really knew what they were doing.

  After the slave had drunk the medicine and gone, Tilla watched her husband line up all four bottles on the table and scowl at them. “You must be more careful, Tilla.”

  “Me? I am the one who got it right!”

  “Just as well.” Leaving the bottles on the table, he snapped the case shut and tightened the strap so that the buckle slid into the groove it had made in the leather.

  The stew bowl was barely warm, although he had not had time to find that out when there was yet another rap at the door.

  Tilla called, “The Medicus is eating! Come back tomorrow!”

  “The tribune wants him.”

  Tilla would have told the tribune to wait, but her husband was already on his feet. That was the sort of thing they were trained to do in the army: obey without question or delay. When they were ordered to swim across a swollen river, they did it. Or died trying.

  “Can you sort those bottles out while I’m gone?”

  “I did not tie the wrong labels on.”

  “But it’s obvious you don’t read them.” He scooped a last mouthful of stew.

  “Why bother when it is quicker not to?” She reached for the bottle of purgative and examined the knot in the twine. “This is someone else’s work, husband. I always leave a loop and an end so it undoes easily.”

  He was not listening. “If there’s a message about Austalis, tell them where I am and tell them they absolutely must interrupt.”

  And then he was gone.

  Chapter 30

  Accius had disrupted the end of Ruso’s meal, but he was not allowing anything to distract him from his own. While the tribune picked at a bowl of olives and perused a scroll on the table in front of him, Ruso stood as silent and unnoticed as the slave in the corner, and wondered why Tilla was always determined to argue instead of apologizing. He had enough troubles without standing here feeling annoyed with her. He was probably about to be reprimanded for his public quarrel with Geminus.

  Had he been too harsh on Geminus? The man was undoubtedly a bully who frightened his men into taking dangerous, sometimes fatal risks. On the other hand, he had dived into the river to save Sulio and then later climbed onto a roof to try to talk him out of suicide. He was a centurion with years of experience. He had been specifically chosen for the job of instilling into raw recruits the discipline that would send them out to fight.

  What did Ruso know about training recruits?

  Nothing. He could not even persuade one to sacrifice an arm to save his own life.

  Accius was still eating. Ruso shifted his weight onto the other foot. Beside him, the slave watched for a signal from his master with the air of a man used to making himself invisible.

  Whatever had happened to Tadius—and Ruso was convinced that he still wasn’t being told the whole story—he had to admit that it was up to Geminus to deal with it. Looking at the situation from the other side, he could see how annoying it must be to have an unknown doctor arrive and start interfering. Almost as annoying, in fact, as it was for that doctor to have a centurion dictate what should happen to his patients.

  On the other hand (did that make three hands? He had lost count), if the man had nothing to hide, why start making threats about reporting Tilla’s past to the tribune?

  Accius spat out the last olive stone, looked up, and said, “Ah, there you are!” as if his visitor had just walked in through the wall.

  “Sir.”

  “How are your medics doing?” Before Ruso could answer he said, “I went to the hospital but you weren’t there.”

  “They’ve mostly done a good job in difficult circumstances, sir.”

  “Good. Are all your patients fit to move?”

  “One’s doubtful, sir.”

  “Then we may have to leave him with the Sixth and have him sent back later.”

  When Ruso looked blank, Accius said, “That’s what I called you over to tell you. Apparently the Sixth are only a couple of days’ march away.”

  “I see, sir.” Ruso felt the muscles in his shoulders relax. He was not here to be reprimanded. Nobody had reported his disagreement with Geminus. Why would they? He was getting as nervous as the recruits.

  Accius was talking about the arrangements for the takeover. “So our recruits will have their final trials the day after tomorrow, and then we’ll be ready to march them to Deva as soon as the Sixth take over.”

  “I’ll tell my men, sir.”

  “Good.” Accius paused. “How did you think the ceremony went this morning?”

  Ruso said, “Very well sir.”

  “Yes.” Accius appeared pleased, as if some other answer had been possible. “I thought so too. I think we’ve cleaned off the slate so we can start again.”

  Ruso took a deep breath. “Sir, there’s something I need to mention to you.” He glanced at the slave. “It’s confidential.”

  “Is this really necessary?”

  “Yes, sir. I think it is.”

  Accius glanced at the slave. “More wine, and then clear out till I call you.”

  “It’s something I should have mentioned before, sir,” Ruso confessed. When the slave had refilled the wine—with none offered to the visitor— and cleared away the olive stones, Ruso began to attempt a version of events that laid out the facts while skirting round the truth in the middle of them. “It’s all been dealt with, sir, but I think you ought to know that some time ago my wife received some coins that turned out to be from a stolen pay wagon.”

  “And did she report this?”

  “She didn’t realize, sir.” At least, not until he had pointed it out to her. “We were about to leave for Gaul and she spent some of the money. When we returned, I found the governor’s security adviser had put her name on one of his wanted lists.”

  “Would that be Metellus?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I hear he’s a useful chap.”

  “He’s very thorough, sir.” Ruso could have added sly and vindictive and My wife calls him a snake, but did not.

  Accius said, “Do they know about this at Deva?”

  “I’m not sure, sir.”

  “You didn’t think to mention it when the Legion offered you a new contract?”

  “No, sir.”

  “So why is it so important to tell me now?”

  Ruso cleared his throat. He could hardly say that Geminus was attempting to blackmail him. “It was starting to worry me, sir.”

  “Gods above, man! I don’t have time to sit here while you tell me what’s worrying you!”

  “No, sir.”

  “Make sure you report it when we get back to Deva.”

  Ruso hoped his relief did not show. “Thank you, sir.”

  “Frankly, I’m surprised to find an officer married to a local. Not that she’s not attractive. Some of them do have a kind of …” He paused, searching for a word. “… rustic charm. But surely marriage was hardly necessary?”

  “It wasn’t necessary, sir, no.”

  Accius looked at him for a moment. “I see. Yes. Very forward-thinking of you. Mingling with the natives. Setting an example. Bringing up standards.”

  “I do my best, sir.” Usually without success. “Just be careful they don’t use you.”

  Ruso lifted his chin. “Use me, sir?”

  “Begging for sympathy. Expecting special treatment. That sort of thing. If they think you might be on their side.”

  Ruso cleared his throat. “I think we’re all on the emperor’s side here, sir.” Accius was the son of a politician. He would be used to hearing pompous platitudes.

  “Yes, of course. But given your wife’s unfortunate history, you need to make it clear where your loyalties lie.”

  “You needn’t have any concerns about my wife, sir.” Suddenly he saw his opening. Ge
minus was not his personal problem. He would do the correct thing and refer any decisions up the chain of command. At the same time he would establish Tilla’s loyalty. “In fact, that’s the other reason I wanted to talk to you. Only today she reported a worrying rumor she’d heard in the street. She thought we should know.”

  “Really?”

  No, not really, but it was close enough. “The locals are saying that the lad who drowned was well-known as a poor swimmer, and the river was exceptionally high, but Geminus refused to allow the ferry across to pick them up.”

  “I hope you explained that Geminus entered the water himself to try and pull the men out?”

  “It’s why they got in to start with that’s the issue, sir.”

  Accius did not look pleased to be brought back to the point. “The recruits are here to be challenged and stretched, Ruso. Not to enjoy themselves. No doubt that looks a little harsh to the locals.”

  “Yes, sir.” He had begun now, so he might as well finish. “There’s something that concerns me about the second death as well, sir. The training accident.”

  “Geminus has briefed me on that one.” The fierce eyes met his own. “I believe he’s spoken to you as well.”

  “Yes, sir. But if something’s affecting the welfare of the men, it’s my duty to try and deal with it.”

  “The live men,” Accius agreed. “I don’t expect you to resurrect the dead ones.”

  “I believe the victim was shackled to a weight before he was killed, sir. It wasn’t just a piece of horseplay that went too far.”

  Accius shook his head. “It’s not pretty, I know. We have an intake of recruits who can’t be trusted. To be frank, I think they dressed up a murder as an accident and invented a native rite to explain it. Keep this to yourself, but at one point Geminus was seriously concerned about mutiny. Personally I’d discharge the lot of them, but it’s politically sensitive. Some of their fathers are the heads of tribes who are supposed to be our allies. I’m telling you this because we’ll have to keep a close eye on them all the way to Deva.”