Terra Incognita: A Novel of the Roman Empire

by Ruth Downie

  “Of course.”

  “That is bad news. I shall miss her unique style of household management.” Valens peered down at his dinner bowl and prodded at something with the end of his spoon. “I wonder what this was when it was alive?” He held it up toward the window to examine it, then flicked it off the spoon and onto the floor. One of the dogs trotted forward to examine it. “So,” continued Valens. “Where exactly is this unholy outer region?”

  “It’s a fort called Ulucium. Apparently you go up to Coria and turn left at the border.”

  “You’re going to some flea-bitten outpost beyond the last supply depot?”

  “I’m told the area’s very beautiful.”

  “Really? By whom?”

  Ruso shrugged. “Just generally . . . by people who’ve been there.” He took refuge in another sip of wine.

  Valens shook his head. “Oh, Ruso. When I told you women like to be listened to, I didn’t mean you should take any notice of what they say. Of course Tilla says it’s very beautiful. She probably wants to go home to visit all her little girlfriends so they can paint their faces blue and dance around the cooking pot, singing ancestor songs. You didn’t promise you’d take her home?”

  “It’s only for a few months. There’s a couple of centuries going up to help revamp the fort, fix their plumbing, and encourage the taxpayers.”

  “You did! You promised her, didn’t you?”

  Ruso scratched the back of his ear. “I think I may have,” he confessed. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  Ruso took another mouthful of cold pie and wondered whether he should have listened to Valens rather than Tilla. From what he could gather, the principal activities of Tilla’s tribe were farming and fighting, fueled by rambling tales about glorious ancestors and a belief that things you couldn’t see were just as real as things you could. None of this had mattered much down in the relatively civilized confines of Deva, but as they traveled farther north, Tilla’s behavior had definitely begun to deteriorate.

  Ruso glanced downward. Tilla’s muddy tunic was flapping heavily around her ankles. Thick brown liquid squelched out of her boots with every step.

  He sighed, and balanced the remains of the pie on the front of the saddle. He reached out and touched her cheek just above the scrape. “I’ll clean that up when we stop. Are you hurt anywhere else?”

  “It was a soft landing, my lord. I do not see him coming, or I would fight back.”

  Ruso was not as sorry about this as his housekeeper seemed to be.

  “Why didn’t you buy food before we set out this morning?”

  “There was a woman in labor in the night. I forgot.”

  “One of the soldiers’ women?”

  “Yes.”

  “What on earth was she doing traveling in that condition?”

  Tilla shrugged. “When a man marches away, who knows if he will come back? He might find a new woman. The army might send him across the sea. Then what will she do?”

  Ruso, who had no idea what she might do, said, “So what happened to her?”

  His slave jerked a thumb backward over her shoulder. “She is giving her daughter a bumpy welcome on a cart.”

  “She’s a very lucky woman,” observed Ruso.

  “The goddess has been kind to her.”

  Ruso retrieved the crumbling remains of the snack and passed them across. “It’s a bit dry. Sorry.”

  She wiped her mouth and hands on a clean patch of tunic before accepting it. “Thank you, my lord.”

  “There’s to be no more stealing from now on, Tilla. Is that quite clear?” He gestured toward the mud. “You see where it leads.”

  A smile revealed white teeth in the unusually brown face. “I know where it leads.” She patted the outside of her thigh. From beneath her clothing he heard the chink of money. Ruso was not impressed. “I had to pay that woman more than you saved to get you out of trouble,” he said.

  Tilla eyed him for a moment as if she were considering a reply, then crammed the remains of the food into her mouth, dropped into a crouch at the roadside, and began to scrabble about under her clothing. Ruso glanced around to see one or two people watching, and decided the most dignified reaction was to ride on and pretend he had not noticed.

  Moments later he heard her running up behind him. He turned. “Was that really necessary?”

  She nodded, and drew breath before announcing, “I have been waiting a long time to tell you something, my lord.”

  A sudden and deeply worrying thought crossed Ruso’s mind. A thought he had been trying to ignore for some months.

  He had been careful. Extremely careful. Far more careful than his slave, who on first being introduced to modern methods of contraception had fallen into a fit of disrespectful and uncontrollable laughter. He had insisted, of course, citing three years of successfully child-free marriage—something Tilla evidently thought was nothing to boast about. He had finally persuaded her to complete her part by squatting on the floor, taking a cold drink, and sneezing, but over the months Tilla had proved just as reluctant as Claudia to face the chill of a winter bedroom. Her sneezing too had shown a disappointing lack of commitment. He had given up trying to argue with her. Now he supposed he was going to have to face the consequences.

  The horse, sensing his tension through the reins, tossed its head.

  “Do you really think,” Ruso said, “that this is the best time to tell me?”

  “No, but you must know one day, and you will be happy.”

  “I see.”

  “Close your eyes, my lord.”

  “What for?”

  “It is nothing bad.”

  “But why—”

  “Is nobody looking.”

  Ruso glanced around to verify this before obeying. As the view faded away he was conscious of his body shifting with the pace of the horse. Something touched his thigh with a chink, and rested there.

  “Is for you, my lord.”

  He opened his eyes. Hooked over one of the front saddle horns was the leather purse he had given her for the housekeeping money. He felt the muscles in his shoulders relax. Whatever this was, it was not what he had feared.

  As he lifted the purse he glanced at his slave. Tilla was watching him, and looked very pleased with herself.

  He loosened the drawstring, slid two fingers into the pouch, and pulled out a large warm coin. “What’s this?”

  “A sesterce.”

  “I can see that.” He really must have a word with Tilla about this literal interpretation of questions. It was bordering on insolence, but so far he had failed to find a way to phrase the reprimand that did not suggest he could have worded his questions better. “Why,” he tried again, framing the sentence with care, “are you stealing when you have this much cash?”

  Her smile broadened. “I know my lord has no money.”

  “That’s my business, not yours. You aren’t going to help by pinching bread and getting into fights.”

  She pointed at the purse. “All for you.”

  Ruso tugged at the drawstring and peered inside.

  ‘Gods above!’ he exclaimed, weighing the purse in his hand again. He lowered it quickly as an army slave leading a string of pack ponies looked across to see what was happening. When the man had lost interest he investigated the contents of the purse again and leaned down to murmur, “This is a lot of money. Where did you get it?”

  Tilla’s shrug turned into an expansive gesture that suggested the coins had mysteriously fallen upon her in a rain shower.

  “This can’t possibly belong to you!”

  “I save up.”

  Ruso sat up and frowned. He had little spare cash. He had certainly not offered any of it to his slave. He assumed she was sometimes paid for helping to deliver babies, and it was quite normal for slaves to try and build up enough funds to buy their freedom. But why would she hand him her personal savings? Besides, this was too much for a handful of babies, no matter how grateful their paren
ts. He glanced at her. “Tilla, how have you . . .” The answer crept up on him as he spoke, stifling the final words of the question.

  Tilla had become his housekeeper not long after his arrival in Britannia. Since she knew more about shopping than he did—in fact, almost everyone knew more about shopping than he did—he had never bothered to inquire too deeply into the relationship between cash and catering. He had begun by insisting that she render a weekly account. But after the first week she seemed to have forgotten about it and he had been too busy to insist. In any case, what was the point of having a slave to look after the house if he still had to do all the thinking himself?

  A voice rose unbidden from the depths of his memory. For goodness’ sake, Gaius, it said. If it weren’t for me the staff would walk all over us!

  He was glad Claudia was not here to see him now.

  “Tilla,” he murmured, “Tell me you don’t make a habit of stealing.”

  She looked surprised. “Oh no, my lord.”

  “Good. So what is this?”

  “I am your servant,” she continued. “I will not let you be cheated.”

  “What?”

  “I make things fair.”

  “Are you telling me,” said Ruso, glancing around again to make sure he could not be overheard, “that if you don’t approve of the price you help yourself?”

  “Is not right that people grow fat on cheating when my lord is a good man and has no—”

  “That’s hardly the point, Tilla!” Ruso sat back in the saddle, frowned at the whiskery ears of his horse, and wondered how to explain something so fundamental it had never occurred to him to question it. “Ever since I began my work as a doctor,” he observed, “I have done my best to build up a good reputation.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “I want men to say, ‘There is Gaius Petreius Ruso, the medicus who can be trusted.’ ”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “ ‘He doesn’t pretend to know everything, but he does his best for his patients.’ ”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “This has been my ambition.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “If it ever becomes my ambition to have them say, ‘There is Gaius Petreius Ruso, the man who sends his servant out to steal for him,’ I will let you know.”

  “I understand this,” came the reply. “I am doing it before you tell me.”

  FELIX WAS GOING to have to do something about the native. The man had been pestering him for days. Now he had stepped right up to the table in front of everyone in Susanna’s and started jabbering again about honor. About the law. About compensation. Felix had explained, politely, that he couldn’t be breaking his promise, because he’d never made one.

  That was when the native had begun to shout about cows. Felix began to lose patience with him. He didn’t have one cow to hand over, let alone five, even if he’d wanted to. “Sorry, pal. It’s not that I don’t want to help, but it’s not really my problem, is it?”

  Any normal native would have shut up and slunk off home to his smoky house and his skinny children, glad that he hadn’t been taken outside for a beating. This one started yelling about gods and shame and vengeance.

  Felix held his hands up. “Look, pal, I’ve said it nicely. I’m sorry if you think I’ve been plowing your field, but she never said a word about you to me. You can have her. I’ll back off.”

  Instead of calming down, the native had tried to climb over the table and grab him. The other lads had thrown the man out into the street. What had he been thinking of? One basket maker taking on four Batavian infantrymen? Especially four Batavian infantrymen who found themselves in a bar where the beer had run out. When he came back for more, already with one eye swelling up and blood dribbling from a split lip, they were all so surprised that they burst out laughing.

  They were pretty soft with him, considering. They left him in a fit state to run away, still shouting to the street that everyone would see what happened around here to men who didn’t honor their debts.

  More beer arrived. They were still laughing and searching for imaginary cows under the table when they heard the trumpet announcing the approach of curfew. The others got to their feet. Felix glanced across to where Dari the waitress was showing more than a glimpse of cleavage as she stretched forward to clear tables. “I’ll be in later,” he said. “I’ve got some business.”

  When they had gone, Felix slid his arm around Dari’s waist. “You’re not going to let me down, are you?” he said.

  2

  FROM THE WAY the medicus was hunched over the writing tablet, Tilla guessed he was either making the wax speak to his brother across the sea, or doing his accounts. She restrained an urge to stride across the bedroom, wrench the stylus out of his hand, and poke him in the eye with it.

  As far as she had been able to work out, the medicus’s family lived in a fine house whose roof baked beneath the everlasting sunshine of southern Gaul, while its foundations stood in a deep and perilous pool of debt. When she had found this out she had felt sorry for him. She knew that he sent most of his money home to his brother, and she knew that it was never enough. In the same way, she knew, she could never fully repay what she owed him for saving her life. More than once, while he frowned over the latest letter from the brother, she had slipped away and brought out the purse from its hiding place, secretly adding up how much she had saved for him and imagining his pleasure when she presented it.

  But now he had taken the money that she had spent months building up for him and squandered half of it on the best room that the surprised innkeeper could offer. Worse, the smug expression on his face as he had patted the fine large bed suggested he expected her to be grateful. It was one of those moments when, no matter how loyal she knew she should feel toward this man, she found him utterly exasperating.

  She had squinted at the covers and said, “There will be bugs.”

  He had assured her that this room was usually kept aside for important travelers.

  “Rich men’s bugs,” she had said, surveying the painted walls.

  “Sleep on the floor, then,” he had replied. “The bugs and I will have a quiet night.” But she had seen him opening a bag from his medical case and sprinkling something under the bedding. As if that would make any difference.

  The water in which she was standing was like gritty brown soup. She balanced on one foot while she rinsed the other with fresh water from the jug. Brown smudges mingled with older, unknowable stains on the linen of the innkeeper’s towel.

  She did not want to curl up with the medicus in that borrowed bed, bugs or no bugs. She would rather have been outside in the yard, bedding down under the canopy of the hired cart in the company of the woman who had just had the baby. It was not wise for any woman to be left with only a boy driver for protection in a place like this. Especially not a woman with a new baby. But the medicus’s patience had been wearing thin today, and by the end of the journey she had felt too tired and dirty to point out to him that Lydia’s needs were just as important as his own.

  Instead she had waited obediently for him outside the army transit camp, feeling the mud stiffen on her skin, ignoring the curious passersby and the loudmouths who thought their comments were funny. By the time he had finished doing whatever it was soldiers did and they had walked down to the inn, the lamps were being lit.

  The inn’s bathhouse had turned out to be a small and not very clean set of rooms occupied by sweaty latecomers scraping off the dirt of their day’s journey. She had only paused long enough to collect water and towels. So now here they both were, trapped in a costly privacy neither of them seemed to be enjoying.

  The medicus was still sitting on the rented bed, scratching out his letters by the light of the lamp. He would certainly not be telling his brother how much money he had just handed over to the landlord of the Golden Fleece.

  Tilla reached for her clean undertunic and dragged it over her head. He had not thanked her for saving him from c
heats and liars. He had not even thanked her for the money. No matter what he used it for now, the gift was spoiled.

  She unwrapped the towel from around her hair. A silent blaze of white appeared around the window shutters. In less than a heartbeat it pulsed again and was gone.

  The Medicus glanced up. “Was that lightning?”

  “Yes.” There. Now she could not be accused of refusing to speak to him.

  He went back to his writing. He began adding up on his fingers and muttering. Accounts, then. That was one of the odd things about Romans. Everything was valued in useless metal discs.

  She had never stolen any real wealth. Nothing anyone could actually use—tools or cows or a winter seed store or clothes to keep the cold out. All she had done was to even up the barter occasionally so that the medicus got a fair deal. And yes, she had included the money she had been given for helping three new lives safely into this world. He had taken it without a thought, and wasted it.

  There was a distant rumble of thunder. She began to rub the wet snakes of her hair with the towel. She hoped Lydia and the baby were safe. Her man had rushed across to admire his new daughter this morning before the march set off, but now he would be sharing a tent with the other soldiers. He had promised the driver extra money to make sure the cart in which his new family was sleeping was parked somewhere secure overnight. The boy, who knew the road, had agreed to bring it into the yard at the inn.

  Tilla wrung drips out of the ends of her hair and felt ashamed. At the very least, she should have taken the trouble to check that the driver had followed his orders.

  She glanced at the big bed and the wooden chest in which her meager possessions would have fitted twenty times over. This was not right. She and the medicus, two healthy adults, had all this to themselves. They were safe from thieves behind a barred door. Meanwhile outside, a newborn baby and its mother were huddled under the canopy of a hired cart that smelled of old vegetables.

  Tilla got to her feet and tossed the damp towels into the corner. Behind the window, lightning flashed and vanished. Giving the bed a wide berth, she went across and unlatched the shutters. As she pushed them open, a crash of thunder made her flinch. She stretched one arm out between the window bars, flexing the stiff fingers of her right hand into the chilly air. The first drops of rain struck cold on her skin.