by Ruth Downie
Ruso let out a long breath. There were many questions he wanted to ask, but he dared not interrupt.
“Then they let Dannicus drown. Sulio heard the ferryman yelling at Geminus, asking permission to go and get them. Geminus made him stay back, saying it was too dangerous.” Victor snorted. “Too dangerous for the ferry, but he still made them swim.”
“Why would he do that?”
“Because him and Dexter had money on Dann not making it,” said Victor without hesitation. “That was when me and Tad stopped trying to pretend it would be all right in the end. We wrote a letter to the legate.”
With each day that passed, their hopes rose that the message had got through. Almost a week had gone by when Geminus announced the latest Sports Night. As they stumbled down the dark streets to the warehouse, they tried to assure each other that tonight would be no worse than usual. It was too soon for a reply, and too long since the letter had left. If it had been intercepted, Geminus would have acted before. But Geminus was a man who enjoyed a slow revenge. When all the recruits were assembled, he called Victor and Tadius out into the center, held their letter up, and made them read it aloud.
“And they kept us there, and Tad was chained, and they … they …” Victor hid his face in his hands. “He was my best friend,” he whispered. “But I was too frightened to stop.”
Ruso let out a long, slow breath.
“I just wanted it to be over.”
“You should never have been put in that position.”
Victor shook his head. “Marcus bribed the gate guards to get me out. He said all the lads chipped in. I think he lied.” He shifted his position on the damp mud floor. “I wouldn’t have bothered saving someone who did what I did.”
Ruso said, “It had to be one of you.”
But Victor was beyond comfort. “Every morning,” he said, “I wake up to another day Tad will never see. And he’ll never see it because I was a coward.” He looked up. “We were all cowards, sir. One way or another. That’s the curse.”
Ruso closed his eyes, imagining the shame of men forced to make the choice Geminus had given them. Men made complicit in the deaths of their comrades. How would he feel if he had been compelled to fight for his life against a friend? It was unimaginable. Valens, he supposed, would have fought back. Albanus would probably have apologized for his blood making a mess on Ruso’s fists.
Victor was still talking. “I went to see his girl. I told her the truth. I thought perhaps if she forgave me …”
Ruso already knew that forgiveness had not been granted.
Victor said, “He said it would turn us into men.”
It had turned them into beasts. Ruso felt almost a physical ache in his chest at the cruel waste of young men who had joined the Legion eager to better themselves in the service of an emperor who had never heard of them. He asked gently, “Did you kill Geminus?”
“I wish I had.”
“Do you know who did?”
“No. And if I knew, I would never tell you.”
“Next time they ask, don’t say that. Just say what you know. Don’t antagonize them.”
“Thanks.”
“Be a friend to yourself, Victor. If not for your own sake, then for your family.”
Victor gave a snort of derision. “Like I was a friend to Tadius?”
Heavy footsteps were approaching. A key scraped in the lock, and within seconds Ruso was being unchained and ordered to his feet.
“Where are you taking me?”
“Tribune wants to see you.”
“Hah!” he heard Victor shout after him, his voice suddenly hard. “Tell the tribune his little trick failed. The native didn’t confess!”
Chapter 67
The tribune was a guest in the commanding officer’s house at Calcaria, as presumably was the empress. Ruso, whose request to wash had been refused, was led into a dining room whose décor made him think of the insides of a raw chicken: yellow fat, cream skin, pink flesh, red blood. In the midst of this lay Accius, propped on one elbow on a yellow couch. He was surrounded by the debris of a formal dinner. Standing in front of one of the tables was Tilla, looking alarmingly pale. He glanced from her to Accius, slightly reassured by the fact that she was fully clothed and her hair was no more ruffled than usual.
Her eyes widened when she saw him. The quick pout and lift of the eyebrows told him only that he should have learned to interpret her facial expressions by now.
“Ah,” said Accius with the languor of a man who had eaten too much and did not want to shake it up with an animated conversation. “Ruso.”
“Sir.”
“I have decided,” declared Accius, “that it is a waste of skill to have a doctor marching in chains.”
Ruso let out a secret sigh of relief and offered the obligatory “Thank you, sir” as if it were not Accius’s fault he had been chained in the first place. This was probably the nearest he would get to an apology.
“I find myself,” said Accius, “in something of a quandary.”
Ruso glanced at the scattered remains of the meal. He could smell wine and fish and spice and lavender. He looked at Accius’s soft leather house shoes dangling from the end of the couch, and thought of Victor crouched in a malodorous cell not two hundred paces away. It was hard to sympathize with the tribune’s quandary.
“I have been informed by this annoyingly persistent young woman”—here Ruso exchanged another uncommunicative glance with his wife—“that there may be further information about the murder of Centurion Geminus. If I tell you that none of this information is to leave this room, do I have the faintest chance of you obeying me this time?”
“Absolutely, sir. Whatever it is, it’s confidential.” Since Ruso already knew what it was likely to be, this was not a difficult promise to make.
Accius turned to Tilla. “Tell him what you told me.”
Tilla looked at them both, opened her mouth, swayed, and grabbed at a table for support. Ruso seized her and lowered her onto one of the couches. “Head between your knees,” he ordered, feeling her forehead for fever and scanning the tables for a water jug.
“It is nothing,” Tilla insisted in a muffled voice.
“Of course it’s something!” Ruso glared at Accius. “What did you do to her?”
“I haven’t touched her.”
From between her knees Tilla said, “I drank too much cough medicine.”
Ruso decided he must have misheard. “You drank too much? Has he been giving you wine?”
“Cough medicine,” she repeated, making no more sense than before. “It made me vomit. Can I come up now?”
When she did, he gave her a look that was intended to mean he wanted to continue this conversation later and that they would be discussing more than medicine, but it was too complicated a message for a simple look to convey.
Restored, Tilla perched on the edge of the dining couch and relayed the account of her anonymous witnesses from Eboracum. Three or four Praetorians, recognizable by the scorpions on their shields, and Geminus talking to them about going into action together again. Then the sound of a struggle and someone landing in the ditch.
When she had finished, Accius said, “Some of us believe in knowing all the facts before we draw our final conclusions.”
Ruso bit back Then why did you send me down the sewers? and said, “I thought the Praetorian prefect was in charge?”
“Prefect Clarus is in overall charge, yes.”
A misdemeanor in the Legion would normally be dealt with by a tribune. Possibly Accius had not taken kindly to having the investigation snatched away from him.
“It has come to my notice, Ruso, that you seem to have the knack of persuading men to confide in you.”
“It’s my job, sir.”
“Yes. It has also occurred to me that a doctor can move about freely amongst all classes of men. And since you are the senior medical officer on this march, you need not confine your attentions to your own unit.”
&nb
sp; “Yes, sir.” Or should that be No, sir? Was he being released? What the hell was Accius playing at?
“Do you think you could perhaps attempt the art of being discreet?”
“I’ll do my best, sir.”
“Good. I shall deal with your insubordination when we get to Deva. Meanwhile, just carry out your medical duties as usual.”
Tilla’s face brightened. Ruso looked from one to the other of them. “Thank you, sir.”
“I don’t want our men—or any of the men—more agitated than they already are. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. Should you happen to discover anything interesting in the course of your duties, I expect you to report it to me—and only me—immediately.”
So that was it. Accius didn’t trust Clarus, and Ruso the Insubordinate had become Ruso the Useful.
“If you get into trouble, you will deal with it yourself.”
And also Ruso the Expendable. He stifled What do you actually want, sir? There was no point: Accius would not—could not—tell him to make inquiries about the unknown Praetorians. If indeed that was what Accius wanted. It was certainly what Ruso wanted, so the vagueness of the instructions suited him nicely.
“Is that clear?”
No. You’re being deliberately evasive, you pompous, self-serving … “Absolutely, sir.”
“Good.”
“Just one thing, sir?”
Accius waited.
Ruso gestured toward a dish still half full of small cakes. “If you aren’t going to eat all of those, can I have them?”
“Haven’t they fed you?”
“They’re not for me, sir.”
Accius sighed. “Very well.”
As Ruso lifted the dish, something else occurred to him. “Sir, one more thing.”
“You’re not having the wine.”
“Am I right in thinking Centurion Geminus joined the Praetorian Guard straight after the return from Dacia, sir?”
“Yes.”
“So that would be … how long ago?”
“I was eight,” said Accius. “Sixteen years ago.”
“Thank you, sir. And when did he leave them?”
Accius frowned. “I can’t remember. He served in Judaea and then transferred to the Twentieth. Does it matter?”
“Probably not, sir.”
“Good. You can go.”
Ruso glanced at his wife.
“Not her,” said Accius. “She will be traveling with my household.”
Ruso tensed. “Sir—”
“You can’t expect me to release a prisoner and not retain a sign of good faith.” Accius turned to Tilla. “My guards will arrange for your vehicle to travel with mine. You will lodge with my housekeeper, and you will be treated with respect unless you make trouble, in which case my guards will restrain you.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You are not to speak to me again, do you understand? You have embarrassed me enough. Now, get out, both of you.” Accius reached back to slide his shoes on. “The staff need to clear up.”
In the lamplit corridor outside, at last able to rub his sore wrists, Ruso whispered, “Are you all right?”
She nodded.
“You were right about the betting. Geminus got what he deserved.” Before she could reply, a gang of slaves who had been waiting somewhere discreet bore down upon them carrying trays and cleaning cloths. He said, “Cough medicine?”
“A mistake.”
“What if it had been the mandrake?” he demanded. “You must read the labels, Tilla!”
Chapter 68
Ruso rolled onto his back, realized where he was, and smiled to himself. He spread his fingers wide and stretched up into the cool morning air. His fingertips brushed the cover of the wagon. He moved them about, pushing against the rough underside of the leather. He had never before thought to celebrate such a simple freedom. It did not matter that he had spent the night adjusting his sleeping position around the hard corners of boxes of hospital supplies. Briefly, nothing else mattered except the fact that his hands were under his own control once more, and seemingly undamaged.
Several things would matter in a moment, not least the question of how he was going to worm information out of the Praetorians—if indeed the soldiers he wanted were here, and not marching north with the emperor and Valens. But first, he must make himself look like a man who was supposed to be carrying a medical case, rather than a man who had just stolen one.
He dealt with his hair by running both hands through it and with the stubble by ignoring it, a habit that had helpfully come into fashion with a bearded emperor. Most of his kit could stay with Tilla and the girl that he was sure he recognized from somewhere, but he needed his belt. He had not seen it since they took it from him at the guardhouse in Eboracum.
It took half an hour of negotiation and the last three slightly stale cakes from the empress’s dining table (Victor had eaten the rest) to get it back.
As the march set off once more, he slipped the leather tongue through the heavy silvered buckle with a sigh of relief. Without it, he had felt half-dressed. And without it, nobody would take him seriously as a soldier. Now he could face the Praetorians and …
And what? He had dismissed this question several times, telling himself that when the moment came, so would the inspiration. With luck, one of them would report sick. But the moment was here, the inspiration wasn’t, and the guards that had streamed out of Calcaria’s west gate ahead of the Twentieth all looked disappointingly healthy.
Still, he was not going to find anything out by spending the morning hanging around the hospital wagons of his own legion. “If anyone wants me,” he murmured to Pera, “I’ll be with the Praetorians.”
Pera grasped the significance of this immediately. “Do you need any help, sir?”
“Probably,” Ruso admitted. “But I think it’s best if one of us stays with the patients, don’t you?”
“A memorial to whom?” demanded the Praetorian officer, looking down on Ruso from the height of his horse, the gleam of his armor and the superiority of his education.
“Centurion Geminus,” repeated Ruso. The man could hardly have failed to hear about Geminus: He was just being deliberately awkward. “He used to be with the Guard in Rome. The tribune wants me to check the details with men who served with him. Probably just after the end of the fighting in Dacia.”
“Hm.” The officer eyed the case in Ruso’s hand. “And you say you’re a medical officer.”
Ruso saw himself as he must appear: a man with no armor whose wrists betrayed the fact that he had recently been chained up, and who had now appeared clutching a nonregulation case and asking to be allowed to move freely amongst the empress’s guards.
“You’re the one they locked up for murdering him,” observed the officer. “I heard you were insane.”
Ruso was very much wishing he had not started this. “I’m innocent,” he insisted, “and I’m as sane as you are. They’ve arrested one of his own men instead.”
“What’s in the case?”
Ruso unfastened it one-handed and held it up. The small probe slipped out of its clip as usual, and he noticed one of the scalpels was missing. How had that happened? He propped the lid awkwardly with his elbow and put the probe back. There was the empty bottle of cough medicine, clearly labeled. What had Tilla been thinking of? Come to that, what was he thinking of himself, bringing a case full of blades?
“Knives for cutting flesh,” observed the officer, who had obviously had the same thought. “Keep them sharp, do you?”
If he said no, he was a bad surgeon. If he said yes, he looked like an armed lunatic trying to get near to the empress.
“Very,” he said. “And they cost a small fortune, so I keep them where I can see them.”
The officer said, “Hm.”
Ruso closed the case. The horse plodded on.
“I heard you had a grudge. Why are you doing his memorial?”
&nbs
p; “Because our tribune has a sense of humor,” said Ruso.
The man glanced over his shoulder at a subordinate. “Go and get Fabius,” he said. “We’ll see if he wants to talk about the old days.” He turned back to Ruso. “Fabius might remember more than I do,” he said. “All I can recall is that Geminus didn’t make very many friends. The tribune may not want that inscribed on his memorial.”
Chapter 69
The empress’s carriage had been parked on the verge at the crossroads and again screened so the sight of her protectors did not put the great lady off her lunch.
Ruso found Accius deep in conversation with Dexter. They were casting occasional glances at the recruits, seated just out of earshot. In return, several of the recruits were staring at their officers with expressions of glum resentment. Marcus was watching them intently over his waterskin as if he was trying to work out what they were saying.
Accius waved Ruso away with an impatient flick of the hand. Ruso was not sorry to make his way back to the hospital wagons. He was not sure how to tell Accius what he had found out.
The tribune appeared at the wagons a few minutes later. He paused to speak to the patients and had the sense to move well away from Austalis before remarking to Pera that the lad was looking very ill. To this Pera replied that had it not been for Doctor Ruso, he would be dead. Thus Pera unwittingly provided the cue for Accius to move on and engage Ruso in a conversation during which they strolled away from the others.
“So?” demanded Accius.
“Sir, could you just describe for me—without looking—the doctor and patient on the wagon?”
Accius’s scowl deepened. “What?”
“It’s important, sir.”
“Have you found out anything or not?”
“Yes, sir. If you could just describe for me—”
“The doctor had curly hair. The patient was all skin and bone, with bandages on his arm. Get to the point.”
“Hair color? Eye color? What were they wearing? What color was the blanket?”
“The mens’ blankets are gray. Get on with it.”
