Ruso and the Root of All Evils mi-3

by Ruth Downie

  Ruso reached forward and grabbed the compress. ‘Let me do that,’ he insisted, draping it gingerly over the swollen foot and wrapping it around. So that was why the boy had been lurking around the houses at dusk.

  ‘One more thing,’ said Valens, reaching for a bandage. ‘She left a letter for you.’

  Since Tilla could neither read nor write, this seemed unlikely.

  ‘From your brother,’ explained Valens, nodding towards a sealed writing-tablet behind Ruso on the desk.

  The word URGENT scrawled across the outside of the letter suggested that the latest financial crisis at home was even worse than usual. Ruso snapped the twine, flipped open the folded wooden leaves and braced himself to face the details.

  To his surprise, the letter said very little. On the inside of one leaf, in his brother’s writing, was the date on which it had been composed: the Kalends of June. On the other, the briefest of messages:

  LUCIUS TO GAIUS.

  COME HOME, BROTHER.

  Ruso frowned over it for a moment, then passed it to Valens. ‘What do you make of that?’

  Valens studied the carefully inscribed letters and observed, ‘Your brother is a man of few words.’

  ‘But what am I supposed to do about them?’

  ‘Go home, I suppose.’

  Ruso grunted. ‘Hardly convenient, is it?’

  Valens stepped back to admire his bandaging. ‘It could be arranged,’ he said.

  4

  ‘This is ridiculous,’ growled Ruso, eyeing the cup of milk he had just insisted on pouring for himself and wondering how he was going to carry it across to the bed so he could sit down and enjoy his late breakfast. He had already discovered this morning that, since the lodgings he shared with Tilla were upstairs, the only safe way to reach them was to hook the crutches over one arm and hitch himself upwards on his bottom.

  She stepped forward and took the cup. ‘Go and sit.’

  Ruso adjusted his grip on the crutches, assessed the distance to the bed and swung across to stand in front of it. Then he hopped and clumped until he had turned around, stuck his bandaged foot out in front of him and collapsed backwards on to the blankets.

  ‘Gods and fishes!’ he muttered, dropping the crutches on the floor and swivelling to swing his feet up on to the bed. ‘What am I supposed to do for six weeks like this?’

  Tilla handed him the cup and retrieved the crutches. ‘Go home.’

  ‘It’s too far,’ he explained, realizing a Briton would have no concept of that sort of distance. ‘The south of Gaul’s over a thousand miles away, Tilla. Imagine how long it takes to get back down to Deva from here. Then imagine you’ve only done about a tenth of the trip.’

  Tilla yawned and sat beside him on the bed with her back propped against the wall. He realized she must have slept even less than he had the previous night. ‘I know how to do adding up,’ she said. ‘What I do not know is why your brother says to come home.’

  Ruso retrieved the letter from beneath the pillow and examined the leaves on both sides. The outsides bore nothing beyond the usual to-and-from addresses and the alarming URGENT inked in large letters thickened with several strokes of the pen.

  Lucius’ letters usually held either a desperate request for money or a fresh announcement of a happy arrival for him and his wife, Cassiana. Sometimes both. There were times when Ruso had wondered whether the family fortunes — precarious at the best of times — would finally be ruined not by demands to repay his late father’s massive borrowings, but by the need to feed and clothe all his nephews and nieces.

  Lucius’ requests for cash were always couched in careful terms, lest they should fall into the wrong hands: the sort of hands whose owner would blab about one creditor to another. He usually gave just enough clues about the latest crisis to spur Ruso into doing something about it. But this message was exceptionally cryptic.

  Was the date a code? Was there something significant about the Kalends of June? If so, he could not think what it was. He turned the leaves upside down to see if there was some message concealed in the script that was only visible from the opposite direction. He tried warming the letter over a lamp flame in search of secret ink. He succeeded only in scorching the wood.

  ‘It’s no good,’ he conceded. ‘I don’t know what it means.’

  ‘It means,’ said Tilla, ‘Come Home.’

  ‘I wouldn’t get there before mid-September,’ he pointed out. ‘By the time I wanted to come back I’d be lucky to find a captain willing to take a ship out. I might not get back till the seas open again.’ He lifted his foot in the air. ‘This isn’t going to earn me that much leave.’

  ‘It is a very big bandage. Valens can tell lies about what is underneath.’

  ‘But I’ve got patients to see, men to train …’

  ‘Other doctors can see the patients and train the men. There is not so much for you to do now, and you have a broken leg.’

  ‘Foot.’

  She did not reply. There is not so much for you to do now was one of the rare allusions which either of them had made to the Army’s apparent success in crushing a native rebellion far more ferocious than anyone had expected. The casualty figures had been kept secret, but while Ruso was on duty behind the battlefront she must have seen the wagonloads of Roman wounded arriving back at the fort. More than once during the worst of the fighting she had disappeared for days at a time and returned with sunken eyes and dried blood beneath her fingernails. He had asked no questions. That way, she did not have to pretend she had been away delivering babies and he did not have to pretend he believed her.

  As if to reassure him, she said, ‘The baby was a girl. Born at first light. She is very small, but I think she will live.’

  ‘What did this lot pay you with?’

  Tilla’s smile was triumphant. ‘Guess.’

  He glanced around the bare little room. Tilla’s skills as a midwife had been less in demand since the start of the rebellion. Most of the sensible locals had fled at the height of the troubles last year, dragging their wide-eyed children by the hand, burdened with cooking pots and blankets and hens in baskets. Those who remained paid her in whatever way they could manage. Eggs and apples were always useful. The first smelly fleece had been bartered for a new pair of boots: the second was still stashed away in a sack under the bed. There were no new offerings on display.

  ‘It’s not another goat, is it?’

  ‘No, but I can buy a goat if I want. Look!’ She untied her purse. Shiny bronze coins cascaded on to the bed. ‘All earned by working!’ she added.

  He was pleased. Tilla had never fully subscribed to his own view that it was wrong to help oneself to other people’s property, but at least she seemed to have learned to respect it. The money was only small change, but he picked up one of the coins to admire it all the same. Within seconds all thoughts of congratulation had gone. He said, ‘Oh, hell.’

  ‘No, they are real.’

  ‘I don’t doubt they’re real.’ He passed her the coin. ‘Look at the back of it. Not Hadrian’s head, the other side.’

  ‘Is that supposed to be a woman?’

  ‘It says BRITANNIA. Have you ever seen a coin like that before?’

  ‘No.’

  Neither had he. It was very obviously fresh from the mint, and the only way it could have reached here was on the ambushed wagon.

  He cleared his throat. ‘It’s my duty to ask who gave you this money, Tilla.’

  There was no need to explain: the news of the stolen pay chest had been impossible to suppress. Finally she said, ‘What if I do not tell you?’

  He had to say it. ‘If you refuse to tell me, it will be my duty to report this to HQ.’

  A cart with a squeaking wheel was passing outside the window. When the sound had faded down the street she said, ‘I will not tell you.’

  ‘I never thought you would.’ He reached for the crutches. ‘I’m going to talk to Valens. When I get back, either you or that money will have to b
e gone. If you’re still here, we’ll start packing to go home.’

  5

  Ruso stretched out his legs, leaned his back against the rail of the ship and gazed up at a seagull perched on the mast. He felt queasy. The roll of the vessel did not combine well with the smell of the fleece Tilla had insisted on bringing with her, and which she was now contentedly spinning beside him in the afternoon sunshine.

  How, he wondered, did seagulls keep themselves so clean? Compared with the bird, the white bandage that encased his leg from hip to toe was disgustingly grimy. It was also much bigger than necessary, and Ruso had wondered as it went on whether Valens was going too far. What he wanted was convalescent leave, not an irrevocable medical discharge from the Army. Valens, however, had been confident.

  ‘Three months to recuperate, two months’ winter leave, that takes you to … some time in December. And don’t worry about leaving us in the lurch: I’ve said I’ll do extra nights if they need the cover.’

  Ruso blinked. ‘Really?’ He could only remember one occasion on which Valens had offered to do extra night duty, and that was because he was trying to hide from a fierce centurion with a grudge. ‘Can’t they get one of the new men in?’

  Valens tied the end of the bandage and tucked it in. ‘I’m a married man these days. You must remember what it was like.’

  ‘I try not to.’

  ‘It wasn’t too bad when it was just her,’ said Valens. ‘But now she’s got the twins.’

  ‘Well, that’s your fault.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Valens agreed. ‘But a chap has to sleep sometime, doesn’t he? And it’s not as if she’s on her own with them. That nursemaid cost me a fortune. I’m not the sort of husband who shirks his responsibilities, you know.’

  ‘So you come to work for a rest?’

  ‘Just as well, now you’ve gone and let everybody down by dancing about in the river. Did you know your rescuers have all been put on latrine duty for a month? Drunk and disorderly.’

  Ruso was about to remark that they had got off lightly when there was a knock at the door.

  ‘Ah, here’s the chap who’s going to sign for you.’ Valens retrieved a writing-tablet from the desk and handed it to a fresh-faced young doctor who must have arrived with the latest batch of reinforcements. ‘Here you are. Sign in the space at the bottom.’

  The man glanced at the impressive bandaging, ran one finger over what had been written on the document and signed without making any attempt to verify it. ‘Sorry I can’t stop to chat,’ he said to Ruso. ‘I have to go and take a leg off. Oh, and thanks for the chair.’

  ‘Chair?’ inquired Ruso after he had gone.

  ‘Well, you won’t be taking it with you, will you?’ said Valens. ‘So I assumed you’d be offering it to me, but as you’re in need of a favour I’ve told him he can have it.’

  ‘My chair? The one I’ve had since Antioch?’

  Valens’ handsome face looked pained. ‘I could hardly ask him to sign without offering him something, could I? Don’t worry, I’ve told him you’ll need it when you get back.’

  ‘I’m not sure I’ll be coming back. It depends what’s going on at home. My contract with the Legion runs out in January.’

  For once Valens looked genuinely shocked. ‘You mean you’ve got me arranging all this just so you can desert me?’

  ‘I might decide to sign on again.’

  ‘You will,’ Valens had assured him. ‘You’ll miss all this fun when you’re down on the farm, you know.’

  At the time Ruso had insisted he would be glad to get back to a civilized country. It was something he had been saying ever since he arrived in Britannia. But now, sprawled on the deck of a troop ship that had brought over reinforcements and was now carrying back wounded, he realized he would miss Britain’s misty green hills and the chilly streams that never ran dry. There had been many times during the horrors of the rebellion when he had wished himself almost anywhere else, but he knew now that he would be sorry to leave the Army too.

  He shook his head. At this rate he would soon be imagining he missed Valens.

  The seagull launched itself off the mast, gave one lazy flap and was soon left behind by the speed of the ship. Beside him, Tilla’s left arm rose to draw out the brown fibres while her right thumb and forefinger set the spindle twirling.

  Ruso allowed himself a brief moment of self-congratulation. He had removed Tilla from the control of an ignorant oaf back in Deva in the full expectation that, even if she survived, the injury the man had inflicted on her arm was so serious that he would have to amputate. Instead, she had surprised everyone, not only by surviving but by dragging Ruso into an investigation of the mysterious deaths of the local bar girls.

  As he watched the hand that he had saved twist the woollen fibres into a neat thread, it occurred to Ruso that Tilla was about to become a surprise once again. He really should have found a way to mention her to his family while he was serving in Britannia. It was too late now. A last-minute letter could travel no faster than they were travelling themselves. He would have to make some hurried explanations when he arrived.

  Perhaps the one good thing about this mysterious family crisis was that nobody would have time to worry about the arrival of an unexpected Briton.

  Seeing him watching, she said, ‘The wool will be a gift for your stepmother. Does she like to weave?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Ruso, imagining Arria’s horror at the prospect of making her own clothes. ‘But I’m sure one of the staff will be able to make it up for her.’

  ‘What does she like to do?’

  Ruso shifted to get a better view of the horizon. ‘She’s very keen on home improvements.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘It’s a big house,’ he added, not feeling well enough to explain that, to a woman like Arria, Home Improvements involved far more than a pot of wild flowers on the table and a patched scarlet curtain between the bed and the cooking space.

  Tilla said, ‘It is good she has your sisters to help her.’

  Ruso grunted something noncommittal. It was hard to imagine his sisters helping anyone, but perhaps they had improved in his absence. He tried to take his mind off the way his stomach was moving independently of the ship by telling Tilla about brilliant blue summer skies and air filled with the song of cicadas. About the olive groves and the vineyards. About his brother’s precious winery, and about his sister-in-law, the one who sent presents from home and produced all the nephews and nieces.

  Tilla said, ‘I think I will like your home.’

  Ruso felt another pang of guilt about his failure to mention her to his family. ‘To be honest,’ he said, ‘I don’t know what we’ll find after that letter. Something must have gone badly wrong.’

  ‘How wrong can it be? There is sunshine, and trees that grow oil, and no soldiers.’

  ‘Soldiers are one problem we don’t have at home,’ he agreed. ‘Narbonensis has been practically part of Italy for generations.’ A thought occurred to him. ‘You’ve never really seen what peace is like, have you?’

  When they docked on the west coast of Gaul, the last of the genuinely maimed veterans who had travelled with them left for their own destinations. Ruso removed the extra dressings. He gave one of the crutches to a surprised beggar and then regretted it when he realized how feeble his leg muscles had become during their enforced rest. Still, it was a relief to feel the fresh summer breeze on his chafed thigh and to see the limb that had been the colour and shape of a giant maggot return to a normal-sized leg. He now wore only a long sock of bandage and, provided he was careful, could put his heel down to the ground without instant regret.

  He clambered without assistance on to the river barge that would take them on the next stage of their journey. The joy of independence was only slightly diminished by Tilla’s observation that he now had one brown leg and one that looked as though he had just got it out of winter storage.

  Following the river as it wound its leisurely way acros
s the flat lands of south-west Gaul, their lives settled into a pleasant rhythm. He taught her to play board games and discovered she was a shameless cheat who laughed when she was caught. At last he made a serious effort to learn to speak British, and she discovered that there was a language that resembled it called Gaulish, which he tried to teach her in return. They squabbled over space in the tiny bunk, tried sleeping top to toe and quickly decided that was worse. He bought her a straw hat to keep the sun off, and she adorned it with the wild flowers she picked on the riverbank.

  As they left the barge behind in Tolosa and climbed into the carriage to make the last stage of the journey through the mountains by road, it occurred to Ruso that there were whole days now when he hardly thought of the dreadful events they had left behind in Britannia. He abandoned the last crutch for a stick as his body began to heal along with his mind. He could not remember a time when he had been happier.

  It was a pity he knew it wasn’t going to last.

  6

  ‘Brother! What are you doing here? What’s the matter with your foot?’

  ‘Aren’t you supposed to be in the Army, Gaius?’

  ‘Uncle Gaius! Did you kill all the barbarians?’

  The greetings and hot embraces filling the painted hallway gave no hint of the crisis that had brought him home.

  ‘Gaius, dear, is it really you? What a surprise!’

  ‘Mother!’ he said to Arria. He had practised the word until he no longer had to grit his teeth to say it. He thought it came out rather well.

  ‘You’re wounded!’

  ‘It’s nothing much,’ he assured her, and took Tilla by the arm. ‘Arria, this is — ’

  ‘Uncle Gaius! Uncle Gaius, I’ve got a loose tooth!’

  He bent awkwardly, leaning on the stick. ‘Want me to pull it out for you, Polla?’

  His niece frowned and backed away. ‘I’m not Polla, Uncle. That’s Polla.’ She pointed at a bigger sister. ‘I’m Sosia.’