Tabula Rasa: A Crime Novel of the Roman Empire

by Ruth Downie

  When her husband announced, “From tomorrow morning I will be based at Ria’s snack bar,” the tribune looked at him in surprise, as if this was something they had not talked about.

  Conn wanted to know why, if the army was serious about the search, everyone was being forced to give up for the night because of the curfew.

  “Our patrols will be looking throughout the night,” Accius told him.

  Conn said, “But you don’t trust us near you in the dark.”

  “See?” put in Cata’s sister, taking Enica’s arm. “They say they care about Branan, but they care more about themselves.”

  This time, to her husband’s credit, he translated every word back to the tribune. Accius tried to wriggle out of it by saying the local searchers needed to sleep, whereas the soldiers had plenty of men and were used to patrolling through the night watches. Conn asked how he thought the farmers managed at lambing time, then.

  It was Enica who told him to be quiet. Accius looked relieved and suggested that searchers might go out together.

  “No, thanks,” said Conn in Latin.

  Tilla watched confusion spread as the conversation rolled by too fast for her husband to catch it and clothe it in a different tongue. Accius’s scowl deepened. He repeated that they wanted to find the boy. Then, glancing at each of the faces around the fire and lingering on Conn, he added that nobody should hinder the army’s search parties. Otherwise they might not be able to continue.

  Conn said in swift British, “They’re threatening to call off the search if our people don’t let them do anything they want.”

  “That is not what he meant at all!” Tilla burst out. “What he is saying is—”

  “Tilla, I can’t translate if you interrupt!”

  “But Conn is telling them all wrong!”

  “Stop!” The Medicus held up both hands and waited for silence. In slow and clear British—even to Tilla it sounded odd to hear a Roman with her own accent—he said, “What the tribune says is that if there is trouble between the local people and the army, both sides will be too busy defending themselves to look for the boy.”

  “Exactly!” said Accius in the same tongue.

  There was a moment’s stunned silence. It was hard to tell in the poor light, but Tilla was fairly sure that Accius’s fierce features had turned pink under the helmet.

  Conn said, “Where did that come from?”

  Accius did not reply.

  “I told you!” Conn exclaimed. “You can’t trust them. He knows our tongue. He’s been listening.”

  “Then he knows you mean no harm,” said Tilla.

  “How do we know they’re helping to find my brother? They might be hiding him.”

  “You do not know,” said Tilla. She looked at the two Roman officers standing unarmed in Senecio’s yard. At the old man’s one remaining son. At his pale wife. At the women who had been burned out of their home. Then she glanced back at the guards by the gate. “You do not know whether they can be trusted,” she said. “And nothing good that I can tell you about my husband will change what he did. But Enica’s son is missing, and Senecio has vowed not to touch food until he is returned. I have said this before. Only a fool will waste time fighting with men who have offered to help. I know you are bitter and ill-mannered, Conn, but I did not take you for a fool.”

  Afterward, when the Romans had gone to mount the horses and a thunder-faced Conn was fetching their swords, Tilla turned to Enica. “You must try to sleep tonight. Leave someone else to tend the fire and turn the lamb. Tomorrow will be a busy day.”

  “I pray he will be found before then.”

  “I will be here in the morning and together we will find the person who started that story.”

  “What if the man who hid the body gets there first?” There was no need to explain. Tilla had offered a possible story and Enica had believed it: There was a body in the wall, and whoever had buried it had stolen her son.

  “How can he get there first?” she asked. “He does not have all of us women on his side.”

  The smile was weak, but it was there. Tilla clasped the rough hand in her own.

  Enica said, “I said harsh things to you before.”

  “They are forgotten,” Tilla told her. “Tomorrow we will find the person who told that lie about your son. And if the gods are willing, we will bring Branan home.”

  Chapter 40

  Ruso would have offered to escort Tilla back from the farm to her lodgings, but his duty lay with the tribune. He was not worried: Most of the trip was on the main road, and his wife was used to fending for herself. So both he and she were surprised when Accius announced that she should walk back with them.

  Moments later Accius was calling out, “Not in between the guards! Walk on one side. You’re being escorted, not arrested!”

  Ruso stifled a smile. As he suspected, the offer was less for his wife’s protection than for the goodwill Accius might accrue by being seen to protect a native in public. Accius was no fool. He had not served in Britannia during the rebellion but he must know as well as Pertinax that this business of the kidnapped boy could very easily slip out of control. Especially since their inquiries into yesterday’s whereabouts of each member of the search team had gotten them nowhere: Everyone except the supposedly trustworthy optio had a firm alibi. He must also be aware that when news of any trouble was reported back in Rome, the unlucky name that would be associated with it was not that of the legate but of the man whom the legate had assigned to deal with it: Publius Valerius Accius. No wonder he had called Ruso in to help. Accius could do little about what they would say in Rome, but at least he could try to ensure that the name everyone in the Legion here would associate with failure would be somebody else’s.

  When they turned onto the main road, the stone walls of the fort and the thatched jumble of civilian buildings they could see beyond it were vanishing into the gloom of an early-autumn evening. A few lamps began to glimmer behind the translucent luxury of windows. A native cantered past on a shaggy pony, yelled, “Where’s the boy, you thieving bastards?” and did not wait for an answer. They were overtaken by a couple of mule carts whose drivers were hurrying to get in before the gates closed. Just a few moments away from the home of a family paralyzed with fear, others were coming to the end of an ordinary day and looking forward to supper.

  Accius insisted on escorting Tilla to the entrance of the snack bar. As she stumbled through the gap left by the one shutter that remained open, Ruso promised to join her later.

  The men turned and made their way back toward the fort. Now that Tilla was gone, Ruso could ask the question that had been troubling him for a while. “Sir, is there still any chance it might be an official arrest? Some undercover security unit that nobody knows about?” He hoped that nobody knows sounded better than you aren’t important enough to be told about.

  “The legate’s looking into that,” Accius confirmed, implying that there might be units of which even the legate knew nothing, although Ruso found it hard to imagine why they would arrest a nine-year-old. “What I’m still wondering is whether the Britons have done it themselves.”

  This was even more provocative from a senior officer than it had been from Fabius. “Sir, the family are genuinely—”

  “I didn’t say the family are in on it. It would only take two or three mischief-makers to set it up and then sit back and watch the fun.”

  “But why—”

  “They don’t like the wall?” Accius suggested. “They don’t like the old man? They like causing trouble? I don’t know. We don’t need to know why, we just need to put a stop to it.”

  It was becoming apparent to Ruso that if they could not put a stop to it and Branan was not rescued, then whatever the truth, the story would be put out that he had been kidnapped by his own people and the Army were the innocent victims of slander. He could imagine only too well the outrage that would cause among the locals.

  “Sir?” It was one of the guards. “Sir, I
think I hear something.”

  Accius raised a hand and the group drew the horses to a halt. There was indeed some sort of disturbance going on. Abandoning the gate in front of them, they turned left, then right, skirting around the corner of the fort between the outer ditch and the wall. There was a confusion of people and vehicles gathered around the south gate. Accius said, “Your Britons are back.”

  “Not as many this time,” said Ruso.

  There were eight or ten of them: both men and women as far as he could make out, clustered around the second of the two drivers who were still waiting to take their vehicles in. This time there was no chanting. Instead some sort of argument was going on in British. Accius shook his head. “I can’t follow it.”

  Ruso listened for a moment.

  “I think the locals are trying to persuade the driver not to deliver,” he said. “They want him to join them instead.” He paused. “ ‘You are bringing food to the soldiers,’ ” he translated, glad Tilla was safely behind the shutters of the snack bar. “He’s saying he has hungry children to feed. They’re calling him a traitor.”

  Suddenly the Britons noticed Accius and his men, and the complaints switched to Latin.

  “Give us Regulus!”

  “We want the child stealer!”

  The yells coalesced into a chant of “Regulus! Regulus! Regulus!”

  Accius rode forward a few paces and listened for a while as if he were accepting a hymn of praise. Then he raised one hand to call for silence, and to Ruso’s surprise it worked.

  “Regulus has been transferred elsewhere for punishment,” Accius announced. “He could not have taken the boy.”

  As he spoke, the cart jerked into motion, the driver perhaps hoping to take advantage of the distraction. One of the protesters shouted and they all abandoned Accius and rushed toward it.

  There was a brief scuffle around the head of the mule, with the driver lashing at his fellow Britons with his whip and yelling at them to let go. The cart lurched as the mule tried to back away.

  Behind him, Ruso heard the bark of an order and a swish of blades against leather as Accius’s men drew their swords. Half a dozen gate guards stepped out, shields up and spears raised. Caught between the two, the Britons abandoned the cart and scattered, yelling “Traitor!” and “Friend of the child snatchers!”

  Accius ordered his men not to give chase. Under the protection of the guards, they put away their swords and followed the cart under the archway. Once they were inside, the guards lowered their spears and put their shoulders to the gates. The sound of British jeering was overwhelmed by the screech of hinges.

  “Marvelous,” observed Ruso, temporarily forgetting that he was in the presence of a senior officer. “Now we’re protecting a wife beater.”

  “Yes,” said Accius. “But unfortunately he’s our wife beater.” He swung down from his horse. “If this goes on, we’ll have to clamp down on movement and gatherings and cancel market day.”

  Ruso handed the bay’s reins to the waiting groom. “It’s the Samain festival tomorrow, sir.”

  “Then they’d better start behaving themselves,” said Accius, just as a trumpet blast announced the curfew, “or they’ll find that canceled too.” He pulled off his helmet and tucked it under one arm. “Right. I hope my cook’s made it down here with my dinner. Go and get something to eat and then come over to HQ. We’ll work out where we are and decide on our next move.” He peered ahead to where a lone legionary stood in the street over what looked like a pile of rags. “What’s that noise?”

  They stopped to listen. Weaving its way through the usual clump of boots and shouts of orders, the distant clatter of spoons in mess tins and a sudden burst of laughter, came a thin, reedy voice that rose and fell in what Ruso recognized as one of Tilla’s tunes. Senecio was singing.

  “Doctor,” ordered Accius, “get that old fool under cover before he freezes to death.”

  Chapter 41

  Tilla’s thoughts were heavy with sorrow and her stomach weighed down with unwanted food. Enica was not hungry, so she had forced down most of what she had mistakenly piled on the platter and then realized she could not refuse some lamb from the sacrifice. Straightaway, instead of a quiet stroll back to her lodgings, she had been forced to hurry to keep pace with the horses. She stumbled as she made her way past the one open door shutter, entering the bar with more of a fall than a step. An elderly couple looked up from a corner table. They pushed their empty bowls away and got up to leave. The woman was frail and struggled to stand, clutching at her husband’s arm, while he stood patiently until she got up on the third attempt. Tilla, unable to tell them she was no more drunk than they were, straightened her skirts, squared her shoulders, and walked past them with as much dignity as she could manage.

  Ria came out to clear the bowls. The bar was empty apart from the two of them. “Hardly spent a thing,” Ria observed to the empty corner where the couple had sat. “What with the curfew and that missing boy, trade’s collapsed.” She clapped the empty bowls down on her tray and leaned across to wipe the table. “No news, I suppose?”

  Tilla shook her head and slumped down on a bench. She wanted peace and quiet, a cool beer, and then a warm bed. But first she needed to talk to Ria and to Virana.

  “At this rate we might as well not have had the new tables made. And if anybody asks me again if I’ve seen that boy . . .” Ria paused. “Well, they might have the decency to buy something while they’re in here.”

  Tilla cleared her throat and said, “You may have a lot more people coming in about the boy.”

  Ria took the news surprisingly well, which was explained when she continued, “Tell him I’ll want the cash up front. I’ve had promises from the army before.”

  “Cash?”

  “Well, there’s got to be a fee for him using the premises, girl! I’m running a business here, not a message service. It was bad enough before with all your patients coming in here, wanting to tell me about their aches and pains.”

  “Have there been any patients?” Tilla realized with a jolt that she had forgotten to check.

  She was torn between relief and disappointment when Ria said, “Not one. Oh, and your girl’s gone off in a huff. I told her, ‘Girl, this is a bar, you get called all sorts, take no notice,’ but in her condition it doesn’t take much.”

  “I need to talk to her.”

  “I have to say, I had my doubts about her from the start. But she’s a hard worker, and the customers like her, so I let it pass.”

  “Is she here?” Tilla asked, hoping she did not have a missing girl to worry about now as well.

  “I can’t give credit against the rent for a girl who doesn’t work, you know. Especially not now. I spent half the morning making a new savory cheesecake and I’ve still got most of it left over. I hope you’re hungry.”

  “No.”

  Ria rolled her eyes. “Another one!”

  “Perhaps just a little,” Tilla offered. “Where did Virana go?”

  The woman carried the tray of empty bowls to the back of the bar and swung one hip against the door to open it. “You can come out now!” she announced into the gap. “They’ve all gone and your mistress wants her dinner.”

  From somewhere behind it a voice called, “I am not coming out!”

  Ria let the door swing shut again and joined Tilla on the bench. “I’ll tell you what happened,” she said. “I doubt Madam will.”

  Tilla, too tired to argue, sat and waited.

  “Some locals came in and got mouthy with a few lads from the camp,” Ria explained. “The soldiers had orders to walk away from bother, so they got up and left without buying a thing. I wasn’t best pleased. Then the locals picked on your girl instead. Nasty bunch. Most of them from somewhere across the wall. When I told them to clear off home they said they were looking for the stolen boy. I said, ‘You won’t find him by sitting in a bar insulting people, will you?’ ”

  “Is she hurt?”

  “Only h
er pride.” The woman lowered her voice further. “They were making donkey noises, saying every man in the Legion’s ridden her. There was talk of shaving her hair off. You know the sort of thing. She ran into the back and she’s been there ever since.”

  Tilla pulled herself to her feet. She had tried many times to explain to Virana that there was a difference between how to get a baby and how to get a husband. Perhaps at last she understood. “I’ll talk to her.”

  The only light in the back room came from a small window paned with thick green glass that opened onto an alley between two buildings. Virana’s bed was in the shadows beyond the ladder. Even so, Tilla could see the girl’s swollen eyes and disheveled hair. In a voice that was blurred by tears Virana said, “I am not going out there again. You can’t make me.”

  “You do not have to,” Tilla assured her, moving across to sit beside her. “I am sorry the men were rude to you.”

  “Not just men. Girls too.” Virana pulled a strand of hair forward, twisting it around her fingers. “They said horrible things.”

  Tilla doubted anyone had called her any worse names than her own brothers had used back at her family’s farm, but the insults of strangers would be far more painful. “They are angry with the army and they think it is clever to hurt anyone who is friends with the soldiers.”

  Virana sniffed and blew her nose on a cloth. “Conn was there.”

  “Conn was a part of this?” Tilla felt her blood rise. “He has no right to insult you! I will make sure he apologizes.” She would work out how later.

  “It was not him who said those . . . things. He came in at the end.”

  “But did he tell the others to stop?”

  Virana shook her head. “He just looked at me.”