Semper Fidelis: A Novel of the Roman Empire

by Ruth Downie

  The girl chased the geese away and dragged the gate far enough open for them to squeeze through. “You’re in trouble!” she announced gleefully. “Barita’s still sulking and I’m not big enough to do things. Who’s that?”

  Virana glanced at Tilla and mumbled something. The bigger brother looked Tilla up and down and gave a noisy sniff through a flattened nose before observing, “She can bring you here anytime.”

  Tilla introduced herself as a friend from Eboracum.

  The smaller brother swung a basket of cabbages up into the cart and said, “At least this friend’s not in uniform.”

  “Remember your manners, you!” snapped the mother. She turned to Tilla. “You’ll have to excuse them: They take after their father—not that he cares. I do my best, but they take no notice. None of them. Will you get off that gate? How many times?” The small girl grinned and slithered to the ground. The woman turned to Virana. “You, get in the house and put some proper clothes on. What do you think you look like, running around like that?”

  Virana cast Tilla a look that said, I told you so! although she had not.

  Tilla said, “Perhaps—”

  “She looks like what she is,” observed the smaller brother. “A cheap little bitch who opens her legs for the soldiers.”

  “Shut up!” Virana shrieked at him. “Just shut up!” Then with a sob she buried her face in her hands and rushed toward the house, the pink skirt trailing in the mud.

  Her mother rounded on him with “Now see what you’ve done!” as if it were all his fault. To Tilla she said, “Nothing but trouble since the day she was born, that one.”

  Tilla said, “I think she has a kind heart.”

  “Hah! That’s what they used to say about me. Too kind, I was!”

  “What about you, then?” The smaller brother, who really was very rude, had turned to Tilla. “You another friend of the soldier boys?”

  “Take no notice of him, miss,” put in Flat-nose. “All mouth and no manners, him.”

  “I came to bring your sister home,” said Tilla, deciding the rude one was not worth the bother of slapping. “She was not sure she would be welcome.”

  “She don’t have to be bloody welcome,” observed the rude one. “She lives here. What’s it to do with you?”

  “I am a friend of your sister,” said Tilla. “And since you ask about soldiers, my husband is a senior medical officer with the Twentieth Legion.”

  In the silence that followed, she was conscious of them all staring at her.

  “Well done,” muttered Flat-nose to his brother.

  The small girl said, “Are we in trouble, miss?”

  “Not you,” Tilla assured her. She turned to the brothers. “Perhaps, when you have finished loading all those things you are hoping to sell to the soldiers you despise so much, you will escort me into town?”

  “They’ll escort you into town and like it, miss!” said the mother before they could answer. “And they’ll keep their big mouths shut for a change. Miss, you come into the house for a sit-down and a drink while you’re waiting. You two, get that load on. You should have been off at dawn. At this rate, the emperor will be gone before you get there.”

  Tilla’s eyes adjusted to the gloom inside the house while she breathed in the familiar smells of wood smoke and cabbage water and dog. Virana approached and offered a cup of fresh goat’s milk. She had changed into a dull brown tunic tied loosely around the middle with braid. Her eyes were swollen and her hair was even more disheveled than usual. Tilla said, “Virana, your mother needs you. And it is safer for you to be here.” Safer, at least, than ending up in a whorehouse in Deva. But she could hardly say that in front of the mother, and without it she was not sure her claim sounded very convincing.

  Virana sniffed and went back to sit next to her little sister on the log by the hearth. Her mother thanked Tilla for bringing her home, adding with a sidelong glance, “The longer she hangs around the fortress, the more shame she heaps upon us. At least her sister got herself properly betrothed to a decent—”

  “She wasn’t betrothed!” interrupted Virana. “Only officers can get married, Mam. Everybody knows that.”

  The mother sighed. “Well, he can’t marry her now, that’s certain.” She raised her voice and called into the shadows behind her. “Barita, come and say hello to the officer’s wife!”

  A muffled voice from the darkness said, “Leave me alone!”

  “If your father were here, my girl, he’d have you out of that bed in no time!”

  No reply.

  The mother shook her head but made no attempt to roust her daughter. “I’ve told her she can’t keep this up. There’s plenty of lads round here would take her on. She’s not disgraced herself like this one.”

  Suddenly there was movement. A wild-haired, blinking figure in creased clothes shambled into the light. She moved toward her mother. “You don’t know what you’re talking about!” she hissed. She turned to address her sisters and Tilla. “You will never understand! None of you!” With that, she shuffled back toward the darkness.

  Tilla said, “I am sorry for your loss.”

  The girl spun round. “You? What do you care?”

  “Oh, Barita!” sighed her mother. “There are plenty of other lads!”

  “You are right,” agreed Tilla, wishing she had kept quiet. “It is none of my business.”

  “It was never anyone’s business,” retorted Barita. “You’re just like the rest of them. Wash your hands and walk away!”

  Virana folded her arms. “Anyone would think she is the only one with troubles.”

  “Oh, will you two stop!” cried the mother. “Barita, put on your good tunic and comb your hair.”

  Tilla drained the milk and said she would go and see whether the cart was ready. She was halfway across the yard when Barita’s voice called after her: “They place bets! Geminus and his men were betting on whether Dann and Sulio would get across the river!”

  “Enough!” Tilla spun round, raising one hand for silence. “Say nothing more.”

  “Walk away, officer’s wife! Pretend you haven’t heard. Just like everyone else.”

  Even with her hands over her ears, Tilla still heard, “Tadius and Victor tried to get it stopped. None of the others had the courage to help. Not one!”

  Tilla could feel her own heart beating. Flat-nose and the rude one had paused to watch her from the far side of the cart. The girl was standing with her hands on her hips, waiting for a response. Tilla walked over toward her. “You have not spoken about this,” she said. “I have not heard it, and neither have your mother and your brothers and sisters.”

  “So, Brigante woman,” said the rude one, “you are just as bad as they are.”

  “And you are a fool!” snapped Tilla. She turned back to Barita. “I am already in trouble because I repeated what a person told me, hoping as you do that something would be done. They have done nothing to help, and now they are trying to make me say who told them.”

  “Tell them it was me! Tell them Barita of the Parisi told you. Tell everyone what I said. If I die, I will be in the next world with Tadius.”

  “They will not just come for you, girl! Have you not seen what they do to troublemakers? They will come for your family as well. When they have finished with you they will feast on your animals and sell you as slaves. Do you want that to happen?”

  “But your husband—”

  She seized the girl’s thin shoulders. “Understand this. I have already explained it to your sister. My husband is a good man, but he is only a doctor. He cannot tell the other officers what to do.”

  The girl’s red-rimmed eyes glared into hers for a moment, then she lowered her head. “It was my fault,” she whispered. “All my fault. He talked of nothing but the drowning and how wicked it was. I grew weary of listening. I told him he must either stop complaining or do something about it. So he did something.” She looked up. “If you want to keep your man, tell him to stay silent.”
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  Tilla gathered the stale-smelling girl into her arms. “Your revenge is to live,” she murmured. “They will go back to Deva in two days. Say nothing to anyone else, and you will be safe.”

  “They tried to send a message to the legate in Deva, but they were betrayed.” Barita drew back. “I have no weapons to avenge my man, but I tell you this: There really is a curse upon that place, and upon Centurion Geminus. I know this is true because I am the one who put it there.”

  Chapter 36

  Tilla had left the room in the mansio with its shutters closed. It seemed very gloomy after the sunlit courtyard. That was why she took a moment to notice the figure in the bed. She stepped back, wondering if the slave had let her into the wrong room, but no: There was her bag, and the medicine boxes on the floor. She was not the one in the wrong room.

  She opened her mouth to call the slave back, then stopped. There was something odd about the sleeper. Keeping away from the bed and ready to spring toward the open door, she reached out and fumbled with the window latch. Eventually one shutter swung open.

  That was when she screamed.

  A couple of flies rose from the pillow and circled around the room.

  The slaves all arrived at once and crowded into the doorway, craning around each other to gawp at the bloodstained snout of a dead pig poking out from under the sheet. The pig was lying on the pillow where Tilla had woken this morning next to her husband.

  Somebody said, “Who put that there?”

  Tilla swallowed and forced herself to step forward. Gripping the bedding between finger and thumb, she whipped the blankets back. The “body” was nothing but a couple of cushions.

  Standing above the bed, she could see that the spatter of blood up the snout was an arrangement of letters. They were clumsily done—it must be hard to write on a pig’s snout with blood—but she managed to spell out enough to know what it said. One word.

  TRAITOR.

  She turned to face the slaves. “Did anyone see who put this here?”

  But of course nobody had. The manager appeared, stared at the head in horror, and then hurried to promise investigations, punishments, and disposal of the offending object. He assigned Tilla a new room on the opposite side of the courtyard, escorting her there personally while the slaves followed with her baggage and the boxes of medicines. He promised to send warmed wine to soothe her nerves, and a message to alert her husband.

  In the end, he seemed so worried about her that Tilla found she was trying to comfort him instead of the other way round. It was only a pig. Just someone’s idea of a silly joke. She was not hurt. She just wanted a clean bed, and this one would be fine, thank you. No, there was no need to leave one of the girls with her.

  But when she was alone, someone rapped on the door of the new room and she found herself on her feet, knife in hand, before she had time to reason with her fear. It was a struggle to form the words “Who is it?” and only when it really was the slave with the warmed wine did she feel safe enough to put the knife away.

  Chapter 37

  The problem with the dog bite—apart from the damage, the shock, and the pain—was that it was behind him. From the front, Ruso looked perfectly capable of paying attention to someone else’s problems. Greeted by “Sir, the window in the blanket store’s been leaking and the bedding is all musty,” he was tempted to reply, I don’t care! I’ve just been chased and bitten by a bloody great wolf dog!

  Instead he said, “Oh?”

  “Should we launder it, sir? Do you think the emperor will mind a few wet blankets?”

  “The Praetorians will,” he pointed out. “They’re sleeping in them.”

  “We’ll just air them, then, sir, shall we?”

  “Good idea.”

  He was relieved to find the treatment room empty. It was only a bite from a dog that wasn’t mad. There was no point in wasting other people’s time, and besides, he was no longer sure he trusted anyone else.

  With the worst of the blood wiped off, he lay on his back on the table, raised his left leg in the air, and contorted himself to an angle at which he could examine the jagged tooth marks. It was perversely disappointing not to have something more dramatic to prove how nearly he had ended up as dog food. He reached for the cloth, took a deep breath, and swore as the vinegar penetrated the torn skin.

  He was concentrating on the agony of prodding one of the deeper recesses when he heard a discreet cough, glanced through the crook of his left knee, and saw three men standing in the doorway, watching him.

  “I see I’m interrupting,” said Accius.

  Ruso rolled over and sat up, wincing as the wound came into contact with the wooden bench. “I was bitten by a dog, sir.”

  “I’m here to inspect and encourage,” Accius informed him. He might have added, Not to hear more of your complaining. “Any problems?”

  “None that I’m aware of, sir.”

  “Good.” Accius squinted at a couple of writing tablets held out to him by a secretary. “Looks like the heralds have whipped up a good crowd,” he said, handing the first one back. “Tell them to send plenty of patrols out to keep order. And make sure the crowds know to cheer and wave, not just stare like simpletons.”

  The news on the second tablet seemed to surprise him. “Already? This is turning into a circus. Tell them to wait outside. They’ll have to give them to his secretary at Headquarters tomorrow.”

  He turned back to Ruso. “Embassies and petitions. Swarming round like ants after honey. Anyway, it’s just as well I had the men smarten up their kit yesterday, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I think we’ll put on a good show. Which reminds me: your wife.” Ruso felt himself tense.

  “She seems like a practical sort. Ask her to report to the legate’s house, will you? Some steward chap of Hadrian’s has turned up to oversee things, and he’s making a fuss. I’ve sent my own staff in to help, so she won’t be on her own.”

  Housework. All he wanted was housework. Nothing to do with informants and names and consequences. Ruso should have been insulted to hear his wife and Accius’s slaves mentioned in the same breath, but instead he was relieved. Hoping she was somewhere a message could reach her, he said, “I’ll see what she can do, sir.”

  “She doesn’t know any decent entertainers around here, I suppose?”

  “I don’t think so, sir.”

  “No, of course not. Respectable married woman. Well, we shall have to do without. Somebody found a juggler, but he wasn’t up to much. Did Geminus have a word, by the way?”

  “After his dog bit me, sir.”

  “Good. I had a chat with him on the way to worship last night. He took it like the man I always knew he was. Shame you weren’t there. He could have put your mind at rest personally.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You’re not a follower of Mithras, are you, Ruso?”

  “No, sir.”

  “You should consider it. Not only an inspiration, but you make good contacts. Friends wherever you go.”

  Ruso, whose former clerk was miles away in Verulamium and whose old friend Valens was somewhere sucking up to people more important than himself, felt suddenly like the only man left out of the club.

  “Geminus has his rough edges, but he’s a fine centurion. Staunch. A lot of men owe their lives to him. I couldn’t allow the end of his career to be blighted by unfounded rumors.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “So, onward! Tell your men to keep up the good work.”

  Accius was enjoying himself. Hadrian might not be his family’s choice for emperor but this was his chance to shine, and he knew it. “Not long to go now. Eboracum’s luck has turned.”

  “I hope so, sir. Is there anything else I can do to help?”

  “There is,” said Accius. “When Hadrian gets here, stay out of his way.”

  Chapter 38

  Motionless, silent, gazing at the crested helmet of the man in front of him, Ruso marveled at the wa
y a couple of trumpet blasts had conjured these splendid ranks of legionaries out of the chaos of half an hour ago. The first call had been the signal for every man to abandon whatever unfinished task lay in front of him, run to his quarters, and scramble into full parade uniform. The second was the signal to assemble. They were now standing like parallel rows of statues lining the road from the marketplace to the east gate, waiting in the low evening sun for the most powerful man in the world to pass between them. All around, an excited rabble of civilians chatted and laughed and argued in the sunshine, waiting for the free show. Youths dangled their legs from the eaves of buildings. Children had been hoisted up on parents’ shoulders. A white-haired woman was clinging to a donkey.

  Ruso shifted his grip on his shield and watched a fly land on the helmet and begin to crawl up the crest. His bandaged leg was aching and his mind kept going back to two conversations. The first was with Marcus.

  He had spotted the tattooed recruit moving toward the barrack blocks with the cautious gait of a man in pain. He offered what was intended to be a friendly greeting. Marcus jumped as if he had felt the cold touch of a ghost, then turned and gave an awkward salute.

  His upper lip was swollen to twice its normal size. There was dark blood congealed around his nostrils and a jagged wound at the edge of his hairline.

  “What happened to you?”

  “Nothing, sir.” The swollen lip distorted the edges of his words.

  Ruso wondered what else was concealed beneath the tunic. “A training injury, perhaps?”

  “Yes, sir.” The Briton glanced around awkwardly, as if he were trapped with a bore at a party and was longing to get away.

  “I haven’t forgotten our conversation. I’ll talk to your centurion—”

  “No, sir, don’t—”

  “I’m speaking!” Ruso was not used to being interrupted by his juniors. “I’ll talk to your centurion when things aren’t so busy.”

  Marcus’s eyes widened with desperation. “Please, sir. I’ve changed my mind. I want to keep them, sir.”