Semper Fidelis: A Novel of the Roman Empire

by Ruth Downie

  “Sir, I told him—”

  “I ordered you to stay away from him. You disobeyed me.”

  Common sense and experience were telling Ruso not to argue, but he was not in the mood to listen to either of them. “Sir, the emperor asked me—”

  “Of course he did: That’s what emperors do! The answer was Yes, everything is fine, because it is! Our men were having a simple run of bad luck. Everything was getting back to normal until you and that native woman started stirring up malicious gossip.”

  “Sir, I was going to—”

  “You ran after him to tell him! And you did it because you thought I wouldn’t listen!”

  There was no point in denying it. “Yes, sir. I did it because—” The back of Accius’s hand hit his face with a force that stunned him.

  “Don’t speak! Guards!” The men Accius had stationed outside the door stepped in. “If this man speaks again, run him through.”

  Over the ringing in one ear Ruso heard, “You are demoted to the ranks, confined to the fortress, and forbidden to speak until further notice. You can reflect on your disloyalty while you scrub out the sewers. As for that woman: Have her sent back to wherever you got her from. You’re divorced.”

  Ruso opened his mouth to protest, heard the swish of swords being drawn, and thought better of it.

  Accius shook his head sadly. “You’re a fool, Ruso. You could have used your time with Hadrian to get yourself noticed. Instead you’ve ruined yourself and embarrassed everybody else.” He gestured toward the guards. “Take him to the sewers.”

  Ruso tied his neckerchief over his nose and mouth. He turned aside, took a deep breath, hooked his fingers through the iron rings, and heaved. The trapdoor lifted. He did not need to inhale the stench: He could taste it.

  The guards, one of whom Ruso vaguely recognized as a former patient from Deva, stepped back.

  “The tribune didn’t order you to stay,” said Ruso. The pair looked at each other, evidently wondering whether to run him through for speaking, then shrugged and walked away.

  Chapter 44

  “Well,” said Sabina when the woman had gone, “what did you make of her? Shall I take her with me?”

  “Take her with you?” At the sight of Tranquillus’s mouth forming an “O” of horror in his little round face, Sabina felt a shiver of delight. This afternoon had been the best entertainment she had had since coming to Britannia. “Oh, Tranquillus! You look almost as amusing as she did when I said, ‘Do not pray too hard.’”

  “Madam, the woman is a native!”

  “That is what makes her interesting. Clarus, what do you think?”

  “And very impertinent!” put in Tranquillus before he had a chance to answer.

  Sabina sighed. “Yes, I suppose so. Sooner or later I should be obliged to have her beaten, which would be a pity. Do our centurions really gamble away their men, Clarus?”

  “It’s not customary, madam. I think that woman must be the wife of the rather wild-eyed doctor who ran after the emperor this morning.”

  “Really?” Sabina sat forward, felt herself jerked backward, and aimed a slap at the slave who had failed to let go of her hair in time. “A doctor ran after the emperor? How wild was he? Did he have to be restrained?”

  Tranquillus said, “He was not quite that wild, madam.”

  “A pity. Still, at last, something interesting! I love a good scandal.”

  “But, madam—”

  “Don’t pretend you don’t, Tranquillus. We all know what you wrote about Tiberius. So what will happen to the gambling centurion?”

  But disappointingly it seemed nothing would happen to the centurion. The case had been referred back to the tribune. “The same tribune that the woman said does nothing?”

  “Perhaps because the centurion is innocent,” said Clarus, setting aside the usual disdain of the Praetorians for everyone else in order to defend a fellow officer.

  Tranquillus said, “One cannot believe everything the Britons say, madam.” Sabina sniffed. “She seemed alarmingly honest to me. And not unintelligent.”

  “She may believe what she says,” put in Clarus. “Apparently the natives here imagine all sorts of nonsense.”

  “I see,” Sabina said. “Perhaps I shall bring her back and ask if she believes in men who wrap themselves in their ears.”

  The chief hairdresser was hovering in front of her, clutching a mirror. Sabina snatched it from her, because no matter how many directions one gave, a mirror in someone else’s hands was never at quite the right angle. She moved it about, examining the result of their efforts, and saw the relief on their faces when she said, “I expect that will do. It is rather hard to tell. Why is it that no one has made a mirror in which a person can see all of herself at once?”

  It was one of those perfectly sensible questions that left everyone in the room looking worried, as if she were about to order instant execution if they failed to produce whatever it was she wanted. The next question was just as good: “And why,” she said, “do our officers leave it to some mad-eyed doctor and a barbarian woman to discipline one of our centurions?”

  Chapter 45

  Tilla held her head high as she stepped into the entrance hall of the mansio. She was not going to allow a group of spoiled rich people to upset her. The manager, looking concerned, hurried to greet her. The last time he had seen her, she was being marched off to the fort by four Praetorian Guards. “It is all right,” she assured him, not sure she wanted to tell anyone about her meeting with the empress. “It was nothing bad.”

  But he was not interested in where she had been. He was interested in where she was going, which was anywhere but in his building. He was very sorry, but there was no room any more.

  “But I have nowhere to go! Everywhere in Eboracum is full.”

  “I’m sorry, madam. You can’t stay here. We’ve had orders.”

  “But why? Is the tribune’s household still here?”

  “I can’t discuss other guests, madam.”

  She was about to answer, when she heard shouting outside. “They’re here! The Sixth are here!”

  The manager straightened up, craning past her to look out through the open doors. She could hear the steady tread of boots now. This was not good. In moments the street would be filled with a blue and silver river of men in armor, sweeping away everything in its path. She would have to find a way out through a side door and hope that there would still be somewhere in the fortress for an officer and his wife to spend the night.

  “I need to find my husband.”

  “There is also the matter of payment—”

  “Send the bill to my husband at the hospital.”

  “Madam, our usual policy—”

  She straightened her shoulders and looked him in the eye. “Do you want me to leave, or not?”

  Corinna was kind, and surprised, and reassuring. No, they had no right to throw her out like that. “You are safe here,” Corinna assured her, handing her a piece of bread and giving another to her son, distracting him from tugging threads out of the bandage on his leg. “The door is strong, and there is no one here but us.”

  As if to reinforce what she said, the sound of raised voices came from the street. Corinna looked up from stirring something that smelled good, and sighed. “It was noisy last night too. All these new people arriving. You must stay here until your husband comes to take you to the fort.”

  Tilla ripped a chunk off the bread. “I sent a message. I hope someone will give it to him.”

  She had managed to snatch a word with the lame gardener, who had been sympathetic but able neither to help nor to explain. He did whisper, though, that he thought the order to throw her out had come from the tribune. He did not know why, and Tilla could only guess. Was it something to do with what her husband had said about Geminus? Surely they were not being thrown out because she had stared at the empress?

  She glanced up, startled by a sound that seemed to come from the top of the ladder leading
to the boarded loft under the thatch. “What is that?”

  Corinna took a sip from the spoon and said calmly, “Just the rats. A nuisance, but last night they put off two ambassadors from Baetica who banged on the door demanding beds. If we stay here, I must find a cat.”

  Tilla shuddered and hoped the message would get through quickly. She had thought about asking if she could spend the night here, but how could anyone sleep with rats running about the house? Was nowhere safe? She needed to be settled somewhere else before dark. She needed the Medicus.

  Someone banged on the door, but it was only a mansio porter bringing her luggage, just as the embarrassed manager had promised. She checked the contents, only too aware of how easy it would be for a slave to hide something and sell it quietly later on. When she had finished, she sank down onto the stool by the hearth.

  Corinna said, “Is it all there?”

  She nodded.

  Corinna wrapped a cloth around her hands and poured broth from the pan into the two bowls she had set on the table. “Eat,” she said, wiping the drips from the metal rim of the pan. “We will think of something more cheerful. Tell me about the empress.”

  “You know about that?”

  “This is a small place. People talk.”

  “She wanted to meet a Briton,” said Tilla. “I think I was a disappointment to her.”

  “So is it true what they say about them? That he prefers boys and they hate each other?”

  Tilla looked up from her bowl. “They hate each other?”

  Corinna dipped a piece of bread into the broth, shook off the drips, and tested the temperature before handing it to her son. “I hear he was always more friendly with his mother-in-law than his wife.”

  Tilla’s spoon came to a halt as she heard an echo of her own voice. I can tell you that no woman of my people would lie with a man she does not like. She hoped the empress had not thought it was a deliberate insult. “Perhaps that is why she has no children,” she said. “I thought she might have sent for me because she wanted medicine, but she did not ask.”

  “They say she makes sure she will never give him children. I heard that she says any child of his would harm the human race.”

  Tilla stared at her in mounting alarm. “Are you sure?”

  “Who knows?” Corinna shrugged. “That is what I heard.”

  “Perhaps you heard wrongly,” said Tilla, feeling her intestines writhe as she recalled the sound of laughter following her around the courtyard. So that was why the empress had said, Do not pray too hard.

  She had spoken with the best of intentions. She had tried to be kind. She hoped the empress realized that. Still, no matter what the empress realized, the words were out now. There is always hope. And then she had made it worse by gabbling about the patient who had been married for seventeen winters.

  Tilla pushed a chunk of bread under the surface of the broth with her spoon. She was no longer hungry. She had made a fool of herself. It should not be any worse because it was in front of the wife of the most powerful man in the world, but it was.

  “So what did she say to you?”

  Tilla watched the brown liquid soak up into another piece of bread. It was bad enough to be laughed at without having to relive the embarrassment every time someone asked. “I can’t tell you,” she said, shoving the second piece of bread down below the surface. “It was a secret.”

  Chapter 46

  Nobody seemed to know how the fighting started, but for once it was impossible to blame the recruits. Despite putting on a remarkably good show for the emperor, they had been ordered to celebrate within the walls of the fort. Outside, there was talk of a local trader quarreling with men from the Twentieth about settling their bills before heading west; but the putative trader seemed to have fled, and if the departing legionaries were involved, they were not going to admit it. There was talk of a fight erupting between the Sixth and some of the maintenance crews, who did not take kindly to being called old men who could piss off now that the professionals were here. That version had the Praetorians trying to restore order. Other accounts had the Praetorians involved from the start, with comrades on all sides weighing in to defend each other and nobody attempting to halt the spread of the mayhem until a gang of centurions and their staff charged out of the east gate, beating their sticks on their shields. By this time teeth and noses were broken, furniture had been dragged into the street as weaponry, and someone’s roof was on fire.

  In the confusion, it was a while before anyone noticed the soldier from the Sixth who was leaning quietly against the wall of the temple of Mithras, clutching both hands to his head and staring in puzzlement at the dark liquid dripping into his lap.

  * * *

  Meanwhile Ruso, denied access to the bathhouse, had resorted to washing by stripping off beside the nearest water trough and tipping several buckets of water over his head. He had then dunked his stinking tunic and loincloth into another bucket and given them several rinses before hanging them outside the crumbling barrack room where he would spend the night alone, since no one wanted to share with him. Those were the only clothes he had with him, and he supposed they would still be wet in the morning, but a man had to keep up some sort of standards.

  He untied his boots, which he had slung around his neck after a bathhouse slave had taken pity on him and slipped him a pair of wooden sandals. In a reversal of the usual practice, he now put the boots on to go indoors.

  He had been allowed the concession of a straw mattress, although not a clean one, and a thin gray blanket into which he now rolled his aching and chilled body. Stretching out on the mattress, he reminded himself that virtue was sufficient for happiness.

  The man who thought that one up evidently had no need of clothes. Or a fire. Or dignity. Or dinner. Or a wife, who might or might not get the message that he had paid one of the bathhouse slaves to give to a friend who might or might not be going to the mansio.

  He hoped Accius would leave Tilla alone. He hoped Pera would make sure the staff didn’t neglect Austalis. He hoped the emperor would get to hear about the plight of his old comrade from Antioch and order his immediate reinstatement. He hoped he wasn’t becoming as deluded as his stepmother. After that, he could think of nothing else to hope for, so he closed his eyes and attempted to enter the last refuge of the desperate: sleep.

  He had almost made it when someone crashed open the door and started shouting about needing a doctor.

  “I’m not on duty.”

  “You are now,” said Dexter. “Get out of bed. Jupiter’s arse, something stinks in here. One whiff of you’ll kill the poor bastard anyway.”

  “On my way,” said Ruso, flinging the blanket round his naked shoulders.

  “Like that?”

  “Or not at all.”

  It was Pera who had insisted on having Ruso summoned to help with the injured. A spare tunic was swiftly produced, after which cuts were bathed and stitched, noses straightened, and one or two hopelessly loose teeth removed before the owners sobered up enough to care. In the midst of all this, a semiconscious and dramatically bloody man arrived on a stretcher, and Ruso spent some time cleaning him up, searching for the source of the bleeding before he could staunch it.

  Eventually the waiting area was cleared and the man with the bleeding head admitted for observation. Tomorrow the centurions would have to sort out the recriminations. Tonight, since Dexter must be busy elsewhere and had left no instructions, Ruso and Pera left the orderlies to clear up the treatment room and headed off down a poorly lit corridor to take advantage of whatever warmth was left in the hospital baths.

  On the way, Pera murmured, “I’m very sorry to hear about your situation, sir.”

  “You don’t have to call me sir now.”

  “I know, sir.”

  They had just stolen one of the few lamps from the corridor to light the changing room, when Ruso said, “The password hasn’t changed since this morning, has it?”

  Pera paused with his tunic
halfway over his head. “Sir, you can’t—”

  “Yes or no?”

  “Not as far as I know, sir. But—”

  “Then I’ll thank you for the respite, wish you good night, and go back to barracks.”

  Before Pera could extract himself from his clothing, Ruso had snatched up the cloak he had just spotted abandoned in an alcove and was back in the corridor with it bundled under his arm. He hid it behind his back to stroll past a couple of off-duty Praetorians. True to form, they ignored him.

  The office door was ajar. He heard the murmur of conversation from the late-duty staff, but nobody seemed to notice his passing. He waited until he was out in the dark of the street and well away from the hospital before flinging the Praetorian cloak around his shoulders, tugging the hood over his head, and fumbling with the arrangement of loops and toggles that seemed to fasten it together at the front. The last thing he wanted was for anyone to spot that they’d taken away his army belt.

  The guards on the east gate looked at him strangely, but decided to err on the side of caution and added a “sir” to the very reasonable question of “At this hour?”

  Ruso said, “When the emperor says now, he means now.”

  They stepped aside to let him pass.

  Whatever had gone on out here an hour ago, the streets were quiet now. The slave on duty at the mansio took one look at the cloak and let him in, but the door to the courtyard rooms was locked and he insisted he could not open it without authorization. Ruso stood in the entrance hall, still concealed beneath the hood, hearing a distant clatter from the kitchen. The convivial murmur of a dinner party swelled suddenly, then faded with the click of a door latch. A pair of matching slaves scuttled across the entrance hall, not pausing to bow. Moments later the manager appeared with the rumpled look of a man who had finally managed to snatch some sleep and had now been woken by someone he neither expected nor wanted to see.