Terra Incognita: A Novel of the Roman Empire

by Ruth Downie

  “In need of a fish. A fish around the head. A fish on a dish around the head until it’s dead.” Thessalus giggled, then clamped a hand over his mouth before indicating a chair and saying with exaggerated politeness, “Do sit down, Doctor.”

  Ruso cleared away a scatter of scroll cases, upon some of which he could just make out the names of medical writers. Turning, he found Thessalus perched on the edge of a folding stool.

  “Now,” said Thessalus, rocking the stool toward him with his hands clasped together but remaining out of reach. “How are you feeling today? Is it any better?”

  Ruso sniffed the air in the untidy room, picking up a waft of wine mingled with the hair oil. It was clear he was not going to get much help—or even sense—from Thessalus. “I am well. Are you feeling ill?”

  Thessalus giggled again. “No, I’m lovely. Are you? You look tired. It’s tiring being a medic, isn’t it? All those problems. All that misery. They all want a miracle, don’t they?”

  “True.”

  “I’ve run out of miracles. I told them. I looked in the miracle jar and, oh dear, someone’s left the stopper off and all the miracles have flown out.”

  “I heard you went to see the prefect today.”

  “Did I really?” This seemed to be a great surprise. “Is he ill?”

  “I heard you went to talk about a man called Felix.”

  “Felix? Oh dear, you want to stay away from him. There’s nothing you can do for him now.”

  “Where is he?”

  Thessalus frowned. “Where’s who?”

  “Felix.”

  Thessalus looked around the room. “He isn’t here, is he?”

  Knowing Metellus had searched the rooms, Ruso could say with confidence that he was not. “I’m told you might know where he is.”

  Thessalus shook his head. “Doctors don’t know all the answers, you know. What color is time? Where do the thoughts of the dead go? How is it diseases spread but miracles don’t? Have you ever thought of that?”

  “No, I can’t say I have.”

  Thessalus tapped his chest. “Greek, you see. The race of thinkers. Romans do; Greeks think. And write rather good books.”

  “My grandfather was Greek,” said Ruso.

  “Ah, you understand! Welcome, philosopher! Well, a quarter of a philosopher. Torn between thought and action, I suppose.”

  Ruso cleared his throat. He needed to take charge of this conversation. “How long have you been stationed at Coria, Thessalus?”

  “Ah, the Roman practicality. Back to the facts. Take the patient’s history. To tell you the truth, I arrived here some time ago and I’ve been at a junction ever since. Of course, if we don’t hold firm at the join we might as well all go home.” Thessalus paused. “Do you ever find you wake up in the wrong bed, Doctor? Or is that just me?”

  “The wrong bed?”

  “You wake up and the bed’s wrong, the walls have moved, you can smell things that shouldn’t be there, the sounds are different, and you think, Where am I? Who’s put me here?”

  Worryingly, Ruso could recall exactly that sensation. “I think it’s when you’ve been dreaming about a place where you used to live—”

  “Ah, you think that. But how do you know? How does any of us know? Who’s to say that while our bodies are resting, our souls don’t go wandering somewhere else? Back into the past? What about the future? Do you ever have the feeling that you’ve seen something before, even when you know you can’t have? What if our souls travel into the future before our bodies do, Doctor? Have you thought of that?”

  Ruso suspected that Thessalus’s soul often went on trips unaccompanied by his body. He said, “Do you find this happening a lot?”

  “Oh dear me, no.” Thessalus clasped his hands together. The dark eyes narrowed and his head tilted slightly on one side in a way that implied concern. “Do you?”

  Ruso wondered whether he adopted the same pose himself, and whether his patients found it as unnerving as he now did. “Not often, no.”

  “It’s so nice to be able to chat with a fellow medic, you know. Such a joy to talk to someone who understands. Between you and me—” Here the young Greek leaned forward to the point where the stool was about to overturn and seized Ruso’s left knee, digging his fingernails into the flesh—“I think I’ve been alone here far too long. My triangles are getting blunt.”

  “Ah—very possibly,” said Ruso, prizing the fingers off his knee and wondering if the prefect and Metellus might be wrong about the man being incapable of violence. “It can be a lonely job.”

  “Oh!” Thessalus, motionless, was staring at his hand as if he were seeing it for the first time. He withdrew it, sat back on the stool, and glanced into his palm as if to check that nothing else unexpected was lurking inside. “Dear me. Sorry about that. And I was going to try my new approach.”

  “New approach?”

  “Talking. You must never touch the patient. You just talk to him until he feels better.”

  “Look, is there anything I can do to help?” said Ruso, not optimistic. “The prefect said something was worrying you.’

  “To help? Well, that’s very decent of you. But no, not really. I’m absolutely fine. If you really want to help somebody, you might find a few men in the infirmary. I think I left some behind in there.”

  Ruso got to his feet. He could no longer remember any of the questions he had wanted to ask Thessalus. “I’ll see to the men,” he promised. This patient did not seem to be in need of any immediate help. In fact, despite being as mad as a bee in a bottle, he was the most cheerful person Ruso had met since arriving there.

  “Do come back and see me again, Doctor.”

  “I will,” he promised, not adding, And I’ll be better prepared.

  “Excellent!” Thessalus smiled. “Next time, make sure you remember the fish!”

  15

  RUSO INTERCEPTED HIS luggage on its way into the infirmary and extracted a clean tunic and his bathing kit. Then he went out through the fort gates, past more tethered horses, and into the civilian street. On his left a gang of grubby children eyed him from a doorway. Opposite was a shop front bearing crude pictures of a saucepan, a shoe, and what might have been a cabbage beneath the flaking legend, We Sell Everything. A cockerel was poised to strut inside the shop when a man emerged from the doorway, aimed a kick at the bird, and sized up Ruso before deeming him worthy of a gap-toothed smile. Ruso nodded an acknowledgment. The shopkeeper was too dark to be a native. He wondered how far the man had traveled to end up selling everything on the edge of the empire, and why he had bothered.

  In front of the next shop, a crippled boy was flapping a branch over a carcass to keep the flies off it while an angular woman and a man in a blood-smeared leather apron were haggling in a Latin that was clearly the first language of neither.

  It had just struck him that the narrow passageway between the two shops must be the scene of the murder, when a squad of soldiers appeared, marching a scruffy pair of civilians toward the fort. Butcher and customer glanced around briefly and then went back to haggling. One of the children shouted something and the others giggled. Evidently the sight of locals under arrest was nothing unusual. As soon as they had passed, Ruso followed his curiosity into the alley.

  He had imagined the murder scene as a backstreet, but the gap between the buildings was only about three feet wide. A few weeds straggled down either side of a worn strip of mud, and the place was gloomy even in daylight. Why the victim would have chosen to walk down here late on a night when he had already been threatened with violence was a mystery.

  Ruso sniffed. The usual alleyway stench of urine and dog droppings was blanketed by heavy layers of incense and rose oil. Evidently the priests had been around to purify the place. Even so, he suspected it would be a long time before many people ventured down this unlucky shortcut again.

  About ten paces in, he paused. Behind him, a couple of small windows overlooked the passageway. Ahead, the sides of t
he buildings were blank. Another five or six paces and he guessed the freshly scrubbed walls and the battered state of the weeds at their feet were the only remaining indicators of the murder site. If there had been any evidence, either Audax or last night’s storm had done another fine job of destroying it. Ruso bent and picked up a broad flat stone about as big as his fist. If the cause of death really were head injuries, it was a plausible murder weapon, unhelpfully washed clean by the centurion or by the rain. The bang-on-the-head theory would, he supposed, explain why the victim had not been heard to shout for help. No doubt Tilla would say he had been struck dumb by a native god.

  Ruso dropped the stone, lengthened his stride, and emerged into the street at the far end of the alley. He passed a crowded bar, ignored a brothel, nodded to a gaudy and surprisingly busy shrine honoring a god he didn’t recognize, and walked on in pursuit of a cheering aroma that told him someone was cooking sausages.

  The bathhouse, a big building gleaming with fresh lime wash, was the most—in fact, the only—impressive structure outside the fort. At the back, it must have a pleasant view across the meadows towards the river. A barber’s shop was tucked into the frontage, and on the corner opposite was a snack shop. He had found the source of the cooking smell. He had also found something else.

  Seated at one of the tables beneath a sagging canvas awning were two women. The one clutching a baby-shaped bundle was Tilla. The dark-skinned girl now scrambling to her feet was the carpenter’s girlfriend.

  “Sir! Is there news?”

  He nodded, approaching the table so they could not be overheard. “He’s as well as can be expected,” he said, and explained about the amputation. “The next few days will be dangerous. There are other injuries inside that we can’t see.”

  “But he is alive!”

  “I told you,” said Tilla, who had not bothered to stand, despite the presence of her master. “That one is a good medicus.”

  “May I see him?”

  “Tomorrow,” promised Ruso. “I’ll arrange a gate pass.”

  “I will pray for him to Apollo.” The girl reached down and took the baby from Tilla’s arms. “Please tell him his daughter is well.”

  The girl retreated indoors. When she had gone, Ruso found himself faced with an interesting social dilemma. He was standing. Tilla was still sitting at the table. If he sat down to eat next to her in public, it would be tantamount to declaring her his social equal. If he didn’t, he would look ridiculous: the master dancing attention on the slave. He considered asking her to stand, but there was a strong chance she would not cooperate, and being defied in public would be even more awkward. In the end he compromised by perching himself on the end of the rough table, and vowed to have words with her later. “I hear Postumus wanted to see you,” he said.

  “That man is not as funny as his nose.”

  “What did he want?”

  Instead of replying, she pushed up her sleeve and revealed a heavy purple and red bruise.

  Ruso ran a finger over the surface of the arm whose shattered lower bones he had pieced back together, and from which he had cut off the copper slave band. He frowned. “Postumus did this to you?”

  “He thinks slaves tell more truth when you beat them.”

  “I’ll talk to him. He was probably angry about the accident.”

  “I did not make the accident, the gods did.”

  “I’ll put some salve on that bruise later,” he promised, aware that it would be futile to argue about the gods. “What did he want to know?”

  “He says somebody has seen me in the yard with the cart. He asks what I am doing. So I tell him about the god who appears when I pray, and he hits me for lying.”

  “I’ll talk to him,” Ruso repeated, knowing an apology would be out of the question. “I came to tell you we’ll be here for a few days. I want to keep an eye on Lydia’s man, and while I’m here they’ve asked me to run the infirmary.”

  Her expression brightened. “Because you are a good medicus.”

  “Because the one they have is crazy,” he explained, “And his deputy is spectacularly idle.”

  The woman approaching with the tray was plump, dark, and, judging by her cheerful expression, had forgiven her hairdresser for the very bad bleaching job that the shawl failed to hide.

  “Wine,” he said. “Something decent if you have it. And what’s quick to eat?”

  “Lamb pies, sir? Beef sausages? Raisin pastry? We have some very good stuffed hens’ eggs.”

  He chose the eggs.

  Instead of going to fetch them, the woman said to Tilla, “Did you ask him?”

  Ruso hoped whatever ailment the woman was about to describe to him was not going to delay the eggs.

  “My lord,” said Tilla, “I have said you will pay Susanna the money for Lydia’s rent.”

  “Ah.” She did not want advice. She wanted cash.

  “Her man cannot give anything,” continued Tilla. “She only has a room because I promised Susanna an officer from the legion would pay.”

  Their eyes met. He knew she had not approved of the way he had spent her savings at the inn. They both knew how much was left. He reached for his purse. “Of course,” he said, as if she had offered him a choice.

  When the woman had gone, he said, “So. You are back home.”

  “Home is across the hill,” Tilla said, pointing north. “And I think much is changed.” It was a reminder, had he needed one, about the loss of her family.

  “Do you still have friends here?”

  She shrugged. “Perhaps. I have an uncle and a cousin, if they are still alive.”

  He said, “I am sorry about your family, Tilla.” The words seemed stiff and inadequate. He wanted to hold her hand, but they were in a public snack bar and the woman was arriving with the food. “You can stay with me in the infirmary,” he said. “It’s a bit of an odd arrangement, but nobody approves of me anyway, so I don’t suppose it’ll matter.” He took a sip of the wine, swilled it around his mouth, stared into the cup, lifted it again, and sniffed. In this remote valley, miles from civilization, he had just been served the best wine he had tasted since he left Gaul.

  “This is Aminaean,” he said, impressed. “It’s very good for you. Just the thing for colds. I haven’t had this since . . .” he paused. Finally he said, “I can’t remember.” This was not true, but it was better than, Since the night my wife threw a jug at my head and told me I was impossible to live with.

  Tilla was chewing her lower lip. “Do you think my family will see me going into the soldiers’ fort?”

  Ruso took another sip of the surprising wine and decided Tilla would not be interested in knowing that it was good for bowel trouble too. “I don’t know,” he said. “Why, do you think they wouldn’t approve?”

  “My uncle has been inside the fort many times,” she said. “My uncle is a friend of the army.”

  This was good news. He had wondered what Tilla’s remaining friends and family would make of their relationship. Evidently it was not going to be as awkward as he had feared.

  “Your family ought to be pleased,” he said. “You’ll be safer in the fort.”

  “I am safe here,” she assured him. “Trenus would not dare to come here.”

  Ruso busied himself spooning filling out of the egg while he tried to remember who Trenus was. One of the many difficult things about women was that they tended to pick the most unsuitable times to tell you something they considered to be important, and then became irrationally upset when you failed to remember it. On the other hand, they sometimes dropped oblique hints about something they were eager to tell you, expecting you to show an interest. When you failed to take the hint, instead of simply saying what it was they wanted you to know, they were upset because you had not asked.

  Consequently he was rather pleased with the ambiguity of “Tell me more about Trenus.”

  “Trenus,” said Tilla, evidently glad to be asked, “is a man without honor. He has the body of a bea
r, the brain of a frog, and he makes love like a dying donkey with the hiccups.”

  Ruso inhaled a lump of egg by mistake and began to cough.

  Tilla placed the wine cup in his hand and carried on talking about Trenus while he gasped for air. He was not listening.

  “It’s not that simple now, Tilla,” he said, recovering his composure and taking another drink of soothing wine. “You’ve become a friend of the army yourself. There are people who won’t like that.”

  Tilla stood up. Those eyes looked into his own. “You are a good medicus,” she said, “And a good man. But you are mistaken about this. I am not a friend of the army. Now if you have no work for me, I am going to talk with Lydia.”

  16

  RUSO COMPLIMENTED THE woman on the wine when he went to pay for his food. She shook her head sadly. “It’s the last we’ll get, sir. We lost our supplier today. A terrible, terrible thing.”

  “Felix?” he guessed.

  She nodded. “Did you know him?”

  “Not really.”

  “He’ll be missed,” she said. “Always a friendly face. Whatever they say about him, we never had any trouble with him. It’s a sad way to lose a young man, like that.”

  “It is,” agreed Ruso, wondering how much information had escaped from the fort. “What did happen to him, exactly?”

  The woman hesitated.

  “I just don’t want to say the wrong thing to his friends,” he explained.

  “He was hit over the head,” she said. “His centurion found him in an alleyway over by the fort first thing this morning.”

  “So have they caught the man who did it?”

  She looked at him oddly. “I don’t think so,” she said, and bent down to pick up something from behind the counter. Ruso took the hint.

  Across the road, a middle-aged native with a cascade of iron gray hair was sitting outside the barber’s in the late afternoon sun, having his mustache trimmed by a barber’s slave. In the gloom of the shop behind him, a man and a woman were staring silently at the floor. The way their chairs were turned toward each other reminded Ruso of those awful social occasions—usually instigated by Claudia—where he and some stranger had run out of conversation but could not find an excuse to move apart.