Tabula Rasa: A Crime Novel of the Roman Empire

by Ruth Downie

  When they found Inam, it was obvious he could not describe the soldier who had taken Branan. Between his father urging him to make more of an effort and his mother begging the father not to shout, he began to tremble and then burst into tears in the middle of the yard. “I don’t know!” he sniffed. “I thought—I thought he must be your medicus!”

  “No, the Medicus was with me.”

  “They do all look alike under those helmets,” said his mother.

  Inam’s round eyes and stuck-out ears reminded Tilla of a weasel. His bare feet reminded her that not everyone could afford boots. She said, “Did Branan know the soldier?”

  Inam shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything.”

  “Of course you know something!” thundered his father, smacking one of the weasel ears as if that would shake a memory loose. As he shouted, “Stop sniveling and think!” Inam’s mother stepped in between them. “Frightening him will not help!”

  Tilla reached for the boy’s grimy hand. “Why don’t we go for a walk?” she suggested. “Just you and me.” Dumb, Inam nodded and followed her without resistance.

  As she pushed open the gate she heard Enica say, “Will you let her steal your son too?”

  Senecio’s reply was short and impossible to make out. When she turned, the men were in earnest conversation. Both mothers were watching her departure, and she had a feeling that wherever she took the boy, they would not be far behind.

  Inam shambled along beside her, rubbing his reddened ear. Tilla said, “Can you show me the place where you met the soldier?”

  To her surprise he shook his head.

  “Why not?”

  He said nothing.

  “Were you somewhere you were not supposed to be?” she guessed.

  He shrugged and carried on gazing at his feet in the mud, which was still crisp with frost.

  “I won’t tell them,” she said. “But we need to find Branan, and you are the only one who can help.”

  Silently, the boy led her up the track that joined with the one leading to Senecio’s farm. On the way Tilla turned to see if anyone was following them, but the women had the sense to keep their distance. She said, “Did Branan tell you about something he’d seen at the wall lately? Something surprising?”

  The boy seemed puzzled.

  “Something that might be a secret?”

  Inam was saying he didn’t think so when an approaching figure began to run toward them. It was Conn, and instead of a greeting he was shouting, “What are you doing with that boy?” More time was wasted while he took Inam away to confirm that she was not lying. He did not ask her pardon for the insult, and there was only bad news to exchange. Nobody had seen Branan.

  Virana had confirmed to Conn that Branan had not been to the bar. The gate guards at the fort and the camp had been told about a missing boy but nobody had seen him. They said they would give a message to the centurion. Conn had arranged to have the horn sounded to call for help, and the family would organize a search.

  He looked down at Inam. “You said it was that medicus who took him.”

  The boy stammered something.

  “He is not sure now,” Tilla explained. “And I know it wasn’t the Medicus, because he was with me.”

  Conn eyed Tilla for a moment, then turned aside and spat. “Swear to me you don’t know where my brother is.”

  “I swear,” Tilla told him. “I swear by the sky and the earth and the bones of my ancestors that I do not know where Branan is.”

  “That man of yours owes it to us—”

  “I will tell him,” she promised. “He will do all he can.”

  At that moment they all heard the unearthly wail of the horn calling the people together. Inam’s eyes widened and his gaze darted around as if he were expecting warriors to come crashing out from between the trees at any moment.

  Tilla could remember the excitement of hearing the horn as a child. Men and boys would be running across the fields toward the sound now, clutching whatever tools could be used as weapons. Women free of small children would be setting aside their work and snatching up coats and shawls and knives and fire irons.

  The horn sounded again. Conn pointed at Tilla. “You,” he said. “Finish with this boy, quickly. I’ll be watching.”

  “If you want to find your brother,” Tilla warned him, “you will watch from a long way away and not frighten him.”

  Conn looked at her as if he were not going to be told what to do, then shrugged and stepped back.

  Gathering up her skirts, she crouched down beside the boy. “You are a very important person today, Inam.”

  He sniffed, not looking very pleased about being important.

  “You are not in trouble. None of this is your fault.”

  “Will Branan be all right?”

  “We are doing everything we can to make sure of that,” she promised. “Why don’t you take me to where you saw him last, and then I can start to think about where he might be?”

  Chapter 25

  When they reached the main road, Inam turned left and led Tilla along the rough grass verge before stopping a couple of paces back from the roadway. The sun was fully up now, and the frost was retreating into the shadows. She heard the muffled hoofbeats of a couple of local riders cantering toward them, perhaps in response to the horn. Conn hailed them from some distance away, and they stopped to speak to him.

  She said to Inam, “You were here?”

  He nodded.

  “And the soldier came along the road?”

  He nodded again.

  “Which way did he come from?”

  The boy pointed past Conn and the riders, in the direction of the little fort and the scattering of buildings where Tilla was lodging.

  “Then what happened?”

  Inam resumed his interest in his feet. It was so cold, she doubted he could feel them.

  “Did he talk to both of you, or just to Branan?”

  After a pause, he mumbled, “Branan.”

  “Can you remember what he said?”

  A shake of the head.

  “Did he seem friendly?” When he did not reply she tried, “Was he cross?”

  A pause, then a shrug.

  “Did he have a beard? Or a big nose, or bandy legs, or a limp, or—anything?”

  “Don’t know.”

  Tilla took a slow breath and gazed down the road. She could see a carriage approaching in the distance. “When my brothers were your age,” she said, “they used to walk along the side of the road with their hands full of pebbles. They would wait till someone rode past, and if nobody was watching, they threw pebbles at the horse’s rump to see if they could make it shy.”

  Inam looked up. “Did they get caught?”

  “Once or twice. When they hit the rider by mistake.”

  “I would never do that.”

  “I’m sure you wouldn’t.”

  Finally the boy pointed at the opposite verge. “Branan was over there.”

  “And you were here?”

  He started to cry again. “It wasn’t my idea!”

  She put her arm around him. Everything about this child looked and felt as though it might snap at any moment. “Nobody is blaming you. Your father only got angry because everyone is worried about Branan.”

  Finally Inam confessed. It had been a simple prank: The boys would crouch in the grass on either side of the road and wait until a rider or vehicle was approaching at speed. At the last minute they would rise up together, reaching out as if each was holding one end of an invisible rope blocking the carriageway. She could imagine the effect it would have on anyone about to rush past them. They were lucky no nervous guard had loosed a javelin at them.

  “Branan was over there because he can run faster than me.”

  If a victim was not amused, the prankster on the farm side would be able to flee into the shelter of the woods. Whoever was on army land would have to dodge his angry pursuers and get back across the road to safety.<
br />
  “So you couldn’t hear what they were saying over there?”

  The nod was more enthusiastic this time.

  “But somebody told you Branan was going to see me?”

  “He said, ‘I’ve got to go: Our Roman lady is looking for me.’ And I waited till it was getting dark and he didn’t come back and it was cold, so I went home.”

  “Did he say he would come back?”

  The boy thought about it for a moment. “He said, ‘See you later.’ ”

  “Can you remember which way they went?”

  Again the small hand rose and pointed. Tilla squinted into the low sun. The soldier had gone east in the direction of the little fort. “Did they run or walk?”

  “Walk.”

  “Do you think they were talking to each other?”

  Another shrug.

  “When they walked away,” she said, indicating a vertical space of about a foot with her hands, “was the soldier this much bigger than Branan?” She trebled the gap. “Or more like this much?”

  Inam picked a height in between the two. The soldier was from the Twentieth; he was sure of that and she did not doubt him. It was the sort of thing local boys knew. They were seduced by the glamour of banners and weapons and shiny armor, no matter what their families said about the men who bore them. The soldier had worn armor over a red tunic and he had a helmet on. Yes, the lorica, the jointed plates of armor—not chain mail. No, he could remember no crests or decorations. No, the man’s legs were not especially fat or thin. He might have had a beard or he might not. Probably . . . not. But he might. Inam began to chew his lower lip. “I couldn’t see.”

  Tilla waited while the carriage rumbled past them. The driver looked down at her and winked. She pretended not to notice, just as she had pretended not to see the flash of blue in the woods that was exactly the shade Inam’s mother was wearing. It seemed the women did not trust Conn as a protector. “We’ll go back to your house. Your mam will be waiting.”

  The boy began to sniffle again. “Will you tell my da?”

  “I shall tell him,” Tilla promised, “that you are a sensible boy and you have been very helpful.”

  “Will you find Branan now?”

  “I will do my best.”

  Once Inam was safely home, she would go straight to the fort. It was possible that Conn had been fobbed off at the gates and that Branan had indeed been seized for spreading malicious rumors. Yet, why send only one man, and why trick the boys into thinking it was not an arrest? It was not the Legion’s way of doing things.

  Something about it was very, very wrong.

  Chapter 26

  “Ah!” exclaimed Ruso, pleased to see the familiar figure getting up from the stool by the pharmacist’s table. “It’s today you’re back.”

  Nisus, a man who parted with words as if he were obliged to pay a fee for each one used, responded to this statement of the obvious with silence.

  “How was leave?”

  “Good, sir.”

  “Sit down, man. I need a word with you.”

  Nisus perched back on the stool with his body slightly turned toward his table, as if he were waiting for the conversation to end so he could get on with his work.

  “Our clerk’s gone missing. I’m hoping you know where he is.”

  “I see, sir.”

  Remembering Nisus’s tendency to answer the question you asked rather than the question you meant, he said, “Any idea where he might have gone?”

  “Far away, I hope, sir.”

  “Any particular reason?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Perhaps you could tell me . . .” Ruso paused, then rearranged the sentence. “Why is that, Nisus?”

  “He talked too much.”

  “Did you tell him that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Did you, ah . . . threaten him in any way?”

  “No, sir.”

  “You’re quite sure?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Ruso left it there for now. He needed to know about the supplies that Nisus had agreed to try and pick up while he was over in Coria.

  “Did you get hyssop?”

  Nisus pointed to the bowl he was weighing on the scale.

  “And honey?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Rue?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Fortunately, when not obliged to converse, Nisus was very good at his job. It was not surprising that he had been irritated by Candidus’s slapdash attitude and incessant chatter. Ruso said, “Figs?”

  “Some, sir.”

  “Enough?”

  “No, sir.”

  “We’ll have to wheedle a few out of somebody’s kitchen.”

  Nisus assumed an expression like a wet winter afternoon. Ruso said hastily, “I’ll do it.” He had never thought of himself as a man with charm—that was Valens’s job—but even he could do better than that.

  To his relief, the struggling conversation was put out of its misery by a barrage of noise from behind the office door. It sounded much as Ruso imagined a large bear might sound if it were trying unsuccessfully to dislodge something disgusting stuck in its throat. He peered around the door to see a huge soldier standing by Candidus’s rickety stool and trying not to knock over stacks of writing tablets and scrolls arranged in a semicircular wall around him as he coughed and waved one arm in an attempt at a salute.

  When the man had finally regained control and snatched a drink from his waterskin, Ruso asked, “Who are you?”

  “I’m your new clerk, sir. Gracilis.” The man looked Ruso in the eye as if daring him to laugh. Ruso remained solemn, largely because Gracilis had the sort of physique that would be useful for hiding behind in the event of an oncoming cavalry charge. If his parents had chosen to call him “Slender,” it was none of anybody else’s business. “Sorry I didn’t notice you before, Gracilis. Welcome. We’re not used to having anybody sitting there, as you’ve probably guessed.”

  The reply of “Don’t worry, sir, I’ll sort all this out” was the sweetest sound Ruso had heard in a long time.

  It was swiftly followed by another sound, one that made the muscles of his abdomen clench: the distant wail of a native horn summoning reinforcements. He had not heard it for a couple of relatively peaceful years, but it was a sound that no soldier who had served during the last rebellion would ever forget.

  Tilla had insisted on going to the farm alone. He should have made her promise to take someone. Anyone. Better still, anyone and a large dog. Relations with the locals had gone seriously downhill, and now it sounded as though they were gathering to make trouble.

  “Sir?”

  He returned his attention to the clerk. “Sorry. What did you say?”

  “Is there anything I shouldn’t touch, sir?”

  “Very possibly,” Ruso told him, “but none of us would know. Just don’t go near anything that isn’t a document. How long have you had that cough?”

  “Four weeks and two days, sir.”

  Having ascertained that the man had not tried figs boiled in hyssop, Ruso glanced at his pharmacist. “When the cough mixture’s made up, let him have some. Gracilis, you’re to take one spoonful every morning and one before you lie down at night.”

  He had expected Nisus to get straight back to his table, but instead of returning his attention to the pale green and mauve of the dried hyssop under the scale, the pharmacist was watching as the new clerk glanced over each document before adding it to the correct pile on the barricades around him. Finally Nisus said, “Better than the last one, sir.”

  Ruso, taken aback by this unsolicited opinion, ventured, “Can you remember any conversation you had with the last one?

  “I told him to stop talking or I would kill somebody.”

  Behind the flimsy rampart of administration, Gracilis’s eyes widened.

  “I thought you didn’t threaten him?”

  “I was measuring out mandrake, sir.”

  “Ah,” sa
id Ruso, explaining for the benefit of the alarmed clerk: “Medicinal in small quantities, dangerous in large ones. And did that stop him?”

  “He went away, sir.”

  Ruso said, “Perhaps he misunderstood.”

  The pharmacist might have been considering this possibility, or he might have been staring into space and hoping Ruso would go away so he could get on with measuring out the hyssop.

  Ruso tried, “Can you remember anything of what he said?”

  Nisus pondered his reply and finally offered, “I wasn’t listening, sir.”

  “Well, try to remember what you weren’t listening to.”

  Nisus let a long breath out through his nose. The hyssop stirred gently in the bowl with the movement of air. Nisus looked as though he might be about to open his mouth to speak when Ruso’s ears were assaulted with another bout of coughing.

  This was how it would be as they went into the winter: sniffly conversations punctuated by involuntary bursts of noise. As if talking to Nisus were not difficult enough. Finally the pharmacist answered, “Something about meeting somebody for a drink.”

  “On his last day?”

  Nisus shrugged. “On my last day, sir.”

  “Yes, of course. Sorry. Did he say who?” Perhaps he would not send that letter to Albanus just yet.

  “A man he’d seen somewhere else, sir.”

  “Where?”

  Nisus did not know.

  “Anything else he said that you can remember?”

  Nisus paused. “Nothing relevant, sir.”

  “Tell me anyway.”

  “ ‘Doctor Ruso is just as miserable as my uncle.’ ”

  “That,” Ruso assured him, “is a compliment.”

  “He wanted a transfer back to Magnis.” Nisus gave a sniff of disapproval. “Said Doctor Valens would be more fun.”

  Ruso said, “Not if you have to work for him.”

  Nisus, now positively chatty, ventured another unsolicited opinion. “I was expecting better, sir.”

  “So was I,” Ruso agreed. “Anything else?”

  “Something about recruitment, sir.”

  “What, exactly?”

  Nisus opened his mouth, thought for a moment, then closed it again. Anything else he might have considered saying was lost beneath the sound of Gracilis coughing, leaving Ruso free to wonder how he was going to trace a drinking companion with no name and no description. Whoever he was, the man hadn’t yet come forward despite all the appeals for information. Which might mean that he was no longer here—or, worse, that he was here but he didn’t want to be found.