Semper Fidelis: A Novel of the Roman Empire

by Ruth Downie

  “My wife,” said Ruso without preamble. “Is she here?”

  The manager was eyeing the stolen cloak with an air of confusion when someone else hurried in from the street and clacked across the tiles in studded boots. Ruso shrank deeper into the hood as Dexter demanded to know if Centurion Geminus was on the premises. The manager consulted with the door slave and confirmed that he was not. “Then I need to talk to the tribune,” declared Dexter, ignoring the lone Praetorian hunched over the counter with his back to him.

  To Ruso’s relief, Dexter was sent into the courtyard to await the tribune’s response. When he had gone, the manager reached underneath the counter. Etched across a wax tablet in a large and unevenly formed hand that Ruso recognized as Tilla’s was Come for me at the house of Krina.

  Mercifully the clouds had cleared. The moon was silvering one side of the street and plunging the rest into deep shadow. Ruso walked quickly, pushing aside thoughts of dogs and Geminus and what any stray Praetorians might do to a legionary deemed to be impersonating one of their own.

  Tilla answered his knock so quickly, she must have been waiting behind the door. “At last!” she whispered, giving him an unexpectedly warm embrace and murmuring in his ear, “There are rats!”

  He closed the door behind him. “Rats?”

  She sniffed. “What have you been doing? Are you all right? Were you in the fighting?”

  He shook his head. “I can’t stay. What have they told you?”

  “We must go to the fort. If you take that box, I can carry the bags, and on the way you must tell me everything you know about the empress Sabina.” She stopped, and pulled his hand toward the light from the fire. “Is that blood?”

  “Work.” He wiped his hands on the borrowed tunic, but the ingrained red needed to be scrubbed. “Tilla, I’m in trouble.”

  When he had finished telling her, she was silent for a moment. Then she took his hand. “This is my fault. I prayed that you would talk to him.”

  “I chose to do it.”

  She said, “Are we divorced? Will you ask me to go back to my people?”

  “Of course not. Lay low until the Twentieth march out tomorrow, and I’ll send a message here for you. This will probably all blow over.”

  “‘Probably’?”

  “I don’t know,” he confessed. “I’ve never betrayed a legion, harassed an emperor, and humiliated a tribune before.”

  “You are not the one who has done wrong here.”

  “I deliberately disobeyed an order.”

  She began to rifle through one of the bags.

  “I’ve made a bit of a mess of this,” he said, feeling the stitches pull in his leg as he crouched beside her.

  “It does not matter,” she insisted, placing a hand on his knee. “You have done a brave thing.” She turned back to the bag.

  “What are you looking for?”

  “I am taking out the things we do not need,” she said, tugging at some sort of female undergarment. “If we do not carry too much and we start now, we can be ten miles away by morning.”

  “What? Tilla, I’m not—”

  “Shhh!” She put her fingers on his lips. “Corinna and the boy are sleeping in the loft.”

  “I’m not going to run!” he whispered.

  “Then what are you going to do? The Legion will not want you!”

  He shrugged. “I swore to serve.”

  “But—”

  “Besides, where could we go where we wouldn’t be noticed, you and I?” Her silence was his answer. She said dully, “They execute men who disobey orders.”

  “Oh, it won’t come to that,” he assured her, pushing aside the moments in the dark depths of the sewer this afternoon when he had felt almost paralyzed with terror. If disease really was caused by foul air, then spending time down here could kill him as surely as having his head severed—only more slowly. “I’ll send a message as soon as I can. Have you got enough money?”

  She cast an eye over his beltless tunic. “Have you any to give me?”

  “No.”

  “Then I have enough.”

  He took both her hands in his bloodstained grasp and kissed her on the lips. “Be safe, Darlughdacha of the Corionotatae.”

  She stroked his hair. “May the gods smile upon you, Gaius Petreius the Medicus.”

  “Look after my kit, will you?” She nodded. Halfway out of the door, he paused. “Why did you want to know about Sabina?”

  “Is it true she and her husband hate each other?”

  “I believe so.”

  “Why did you never tell me this?”

  He shook his head, baffled. “You never asked. Does it matter?”

  “No,” she said. “Not now.”

  Chapter 47

  The men of the twentieth had been ordered to have everything packed and ready so they could march out at sunrise, but when dawn came, there was no call to assemble. The old hands began to gather round the water fountains, rinsing and filling their leather bottles for the journey. With no orders to follow, the men stood chatting in the cool air, checking the comfort of their boots, rearranging their packs, and occasionally glancing up into a cloudless sky, hoping to get going before the sun was too high. Loaded mules flicked their tails and looked bored.

  When the trumpet finally sounded, it was not to assemble the men but to summon the Legion’s officers. Ruso, who would normally have been amongst them, was left to wait in ignorance along with everyone else. Some of the recruits began to look anxious. Grumblers demanded to know the point of getting up in the middle of the night only to stand around and wait. Meanwhile, several of the more experienced men propped themselves against the barrack walls in the early sunshine, closed their eyes, and appeared to fall asleep.

  One of Geminus’s shadows finally appeared with instructions to return to barracks, where they were to sweep the floors and scrub the walls. There were groans of disbelief, and several voices demanded to know the reason for the holdup.

  “None of your business,” said the shadow.

  “He doesn’t know,” interpreted one of the complainers.

  “Yes I do,” retorted the shadow.

  “How long’s it going to be, then, sir?”

  “Just go and clean up. I’ll be round to inspect in an hour. Not you, Ruso. You’re on latrines.”

  Catching the spirit of the moment, Ruso asked, “Why me?”

  “Because you ask bloody stupid questions. And if anyone’s seen Centurion Geminus since last night, speak up.”

  That got their attention. “Geminus is missing?” demanded one man, evidently sharper than another who asked, “Where is he?”

  “Has any man here seen the centurion since last night?”

  While Ruso’s mind scurried round a series of possibilities, nobody replied.

  “Then go and get scrubbing,” said the shadow.

  “Sir, are we leaving today, or not?”

  “You’ll be told later.”

  To be an officer on latrine duty added humiliation to the routine discomforts of tedium, loneliness, and bad smells, but Ruso had one great advantage over the men consigned to sprucing up their barrack rooms: A man who kept his head down and appeared to be concentrating on scrubbing the flagstones could overhear a regular stream of outside gossip from the occupants of the wooden seating that ran along both sides of the room.

  “He’ll turn up. He’s just gone off somewhere to see someone.”

  “One of his many friends, eh?” The confidence of the sarcasm told Ruso the voices did not belong to recruits. “And then what: He got lost?”

  “Perhaps he’s been struck down for not believing in the curse.”

  “Perhaps he’s on a secret mission.”

  “Perhaps he’s saying good-bye to his fancy woman.”

  “Lucina is as fancy as he gets.”

  “Lucina? That’s it, then. He’ll be waiting in the queue.”

  “Have the Twentieth found their centurion yet?”

  “Don�
��t think so. They’re even more hopeless than they look.”

  “They’re searching all the empty buildings now.”

  “They ought to set his dog to find him.”

  “A dog needs to follow a trail, dim-brain. His stink’ll be all over the place.”

  “Like yours.”

  “Ha ha.” A pair of broad feet stepped past Ruso, and a sponge on the end of a stick was lowered into the channel that ran along the middle of the floor. Ruso shuffled out of splashing distance as the sponge was pumped up and down several times to rinse it. A voice said, “Perhaps he’s deserted.”

  “Never. Not this close to his retirement money.”

  The man smacked the sponge on the edge of the paving to shake out the worst of the water, then thrust it back amongst the others in the bowl of weak vinegar solution. “I heard he didn’t want to retire anyway,” he said, “but it sounds like he’ll have to now.”

  “Aulus says the medic’s a crank. The tribune’s backing Geminus.”

  Ruso, who had no idea who Aulus was, resisted the urge to look up and see who was talking.

  “He might be a crank, but he’s forced the tribune into a corner.”

  “I wouldn’t like to be him right now.”

  “The tribune?”

  “The medic.”

  Ruso remembered he was supposed to be working. The men’s departure was drowned out by the swish of bristles on stone.

  He’s forced the tribune into a corner. Rumors of his conversation with Hadrian must have spread through the fort. Geminus would have heard of the allegations of betting that had been made against him. Now he had disappeared.

  Ruso dropped the scrubbing brush back in the bucket and sat back on one heel with his injured leg stretched out in front of him. Geminus the war hero was not a man to run away—but if not, where was he?

  I wouldn’t like to be him right now.

  Ruso was not enjoying being him, either, but at least his misdemeanors had brought about some good. Geminus had bullied his last recruit. He would retire with a tarnished reputation. His handsome discharge bonus might be in doubt too.

  Ruso emptied the bucket into the drain and rinsed the brush. He was not fool enough to expect a release, nor a reinstatement. Accius could still make plenty of trouble for him, both within the Legion and beyond. But he had known that when he took the risk of speaking to the emperor. He would just have to console himself with the thought that, somehow, justice had been done.

  He was about to put the bucket back in the corner when he was startled by the sound of shouting and running feet. Still clutching the bucket, he opened the door and slipped outside to watch.

  Pera and three men he recognized as hospital orderlies were hurrying toward the east gate with a stretcher. Two members of the Sixth were running in the opposite direction, one of them shouting, “Where’s the emperor?”

  A passing Praetorian asked who wanted to know.

  “Primus, optio in the century of Proculus. Important visitor for the emperor.”

  A skeptical voice from back in the latrines said, “Another one come to lick the emperor’s arse.”

  The Praetorian directed the man toward the legate’s house, adding in a superior drawl, “Try not to make too much fuss. They aren’t always as important as they think they are.”

  Ruso glanced around. Nobody was paying him any attention. He weighed the bucket in his hand for a moment, then set it down, swiftly washed his hands, and sprinted down the street after Pera.

  Pera’s men were hampered by the stretcher and a box of supplies, and Ruso caught up with them just before they reached the gate. “Want some help?”

  Pera looked alarmed but then grasped the situation and gestured to one of the orderlies to hand over the box. Ruso hoisted it onto his shoulder. The men of the Sixth, who had taken over guard duties—Accius must have made his handover speech—were standing strictly to attention at the gates. They paid no heed to the unknown medical team and their shabbily clad slave.

  Pera murmured, “You’ve heard, then, sir?”

  As they emerged from the archway of the gatehouse he saw a carriage approaching, pulled by a team of four matching bays. There were dark patches of sweat on the horses and the red paint was dull with dust. The man had been right: This was somebody important. “Who is it?”

  “He’s dead, sir.”

  Ruso said, “Who’s dead?” but his voice was lost beneath the rush of the carriage and its guards sweeping past them into the fort.

  Pera led his men for about thirty paces along the outside of the perimeter ditch to where a burly squad from the Sixth Legion stood, apparently guarding the weeds that the maintenance crews had failed to clear in time for the emperor’s arrival.

  Pera beckoned Ruso to follow. Then he stepped forward and peered into the ditch. “It’s true, then,” he said.

  Below them, protruding from a battered patch of nettles, was a muscular and blood-smeared arm. Centurion Geminus had been found.

  Chapter 48

  “What do we do?”

  Ruso stood beside Pera at the bottom of the ditch, running one hand through his hair. He could not believe what he was seeing. Geminus’s throat had been cut open and his head pulled back with an efficiency that suggested the practiced butchering of an animal. A bloodstained dagger lay beside him.

  He crouched beside the body, feeling the tingle of nettles against his skin. The dagger slid neatly into the empty sheath at the centurion’s side.

  Pera said, “He couldn’t have done that to himself, could he, sir?”

  “No.”

  “What do we do?”

  Ruso closed his eyes for a moment and tried to detach his mind from the shock. “‘Time of death, cause of death, any other matters of note,’” he recited. “You can do the rest of the details up at the mortuary. Did you bring anything to write with?”

  “Sorry, sir.”

  Pera extended a hand, put it on the centurion’s arm, and then quickly withdrew it. “He’s cold, sir.”

  “Sometime last night. Cause of death, severing of right and left carotid arteries. Anything else of note …” He stood, slapping at the nettle stings. “Did you slide down here or jump?”

  “Jump, sir.”

  “So did I.” Ruso peered at the side of the ditch, where he could now make out smears of blood. Several clumps of grass were hanging by pale roots. “Looks as though they did it up there,” he said, “and then tipped him in.”

  “‘They’?”

  Ruso said, “You think one man could take Geminus?”

  There were two thuds as a couple of the orderlies landed in the ditch behind them. They complained vigorously about the nettles as they lifted the body onto the stretcher and maneuvered it up to their comrade waiting at ground level. The men from the Sixth finally produced a ladder from the gatehouse and Ruso was halfway up it when he heard a growing sound of tramping boots and jingling belt straps. It was followed by a cry of “Make way for His Honour the Praetorian Prefect and Tribune Accius!”

  Pera emerged from the ditch and crouched to wipe his hands on the grass before saluting. Ruso recognized the lanky man who had been riding behind Hadrian in the procession: Praetorian Prefect Clarus, the only man authorized to carry a sword in the private company of the emperor. Accius was beside him, looking like a man who had not slept well, and behind them Dexter was craning to see what was on the stretcher. Prefect Clarus approached and gestured for the orderly to draw back the top of the sheet. Both he and Accius blanched and turned away from the sight. Dexter stared down at the mutilated body of his comrade, betraying no emotion. The man replaced the sheet.

  Clarus said, “Is that him?”

  Accius swallowed. “Yes, sir.”

  “Who found him?”

  “The perimeter patrol, sir,” said one of the Sixth.

  Accius shook his head. “Terrible. Terrible. He was just about to retire. What a tragedy.” Suddenly he noticed Ruso. “You!” His voice was hoarse. “Get away from
him!”

  “Sir, if I can help—”

  “Arrest this man!”

  “But, sir—”

  “Have him chained up in the guardhouse.”

  “Sir, I didn’t—”

  The blow to his head sent him staggering sideways.

  “Speak when you’re spoken to!” snarled Dexter. “And show some respect to the centurion. Like a flock of vultures, you lot.”

  Dazed, he was aware of Accius somewhere in the distance saying, “He can speak at his trial. Until then, get him out of my sight or I’ll have him killed on the spot.”

  Chapter 49

  Ruso’s head was throbbing. He supposed he should be glad that they had left him the dignity of a loincloth, but the stone walls of the cell were cold and unyielding against his naked back, and the iron bands he had seen two days ago were now cutting into his own wrists. He could not even scratch at the crawling itches of the nettle stings because the chains were too short, clamped to the wall in such a way that it was impossible either to stand up properly or to lower his hands from shoulder height when he sat.

  What a fool he had been. What a pompous ass. I swore to serve indeed! At every crossroads, he had taken the wrong turn.

  Pera’s careful report about Tadius had been destroyed because he had blundered in, trying to help.

  Hadrian’s annoyed expression as he had called “Your Majesty!” should have warned him to shut up, but instead he had plowed on.

  He closed his eyes and pictured Tilla pulling clothes out of their luggage. If we do not carry too much and we start now, we can be ten miles away by morning.

  If only he could have that moment over again. He would say, Give me both bags and you take the box.

  She had said, May the gods smile upon you, Gaius Petreius the Medicus.

  Whatever the gods were up to, smiling was not a part of it.

  He was drifting into a fitful sleep when a key rattled in the lock and the door crashed open.

  “On your feet!” bawled a guard. “Septicius Clarus, prefect of the Praetorian Guard, and Tribune Accius to see the prisoner!”