Tabula Rasa (11 page)

Chapter 13

Tilla left her patient’s house feeling at peace with her world. Last night’s meeting had not been as bad as she had feared. Conn had been rude and Enica cold, but old Senecio had made them welcome and her husband had agreed to his blessing. Perhaps it would do some good: Who knew? Besides, it would be a change to have something cheerful at Samain. It was a time when she missed her family. Every year she slipped away to gaze out into the night in the hope of seeing her own dead walking toward her, but they never came.

Meanwhile the sun was shining, the trees were turning golden, the hedge was dotted with red rose hips and pale green globes of ivy blossom, and the mother and week-old baby she had just visited were doing well. When she got back to Ria’s she would have some privacy to practice her reading: Virana would be busy serving downstairs, continuing her last-ditch attempt to snare the man of her dreams before she had to carry a fatherless baby home to face the disapproval of her family.

Tilla pursed her lips. She was not going to feel guilty about saying good-bye to Virana. That had always been the arrangement.
You can stay until you have the baby. Then you must go home.
Her husband would have sent the girl back straightaway, but Tilla had won him over, as she knew she would. So he confined his complaining to insisting that this must not happen again.
We are not taking in any others. After this we’ll buy a slave and live like a normal family.
She had been tempted to say,
A normal family plants in spring and is still there to harvest in summer. A normal family has children.
But she had chosen a soldier, and neither of them had chosen the emptiness where children should have been, so there was nothing to gain by pouring vinegar into the wound.

A robin flew up from the side of the track as she approached, and sat watching her from the safety of a hawthorn. She stopped, then moved slowly forward, obliged to skirt round a puddle to keep her distance. It crossed her mind that a Roman would probably try to throw a net over it and roast it for supper. She was almost level with it now. Perhaps she could pass without frightening it.

Too late. It fluttered up, over the hedge and—

Tilla stopped again and felt her heart quicken. Felt the dread tightening her stomach. How long had that been there? How could she have failed to notice it? Over toward the fort, the perfect sky was marred by soaring billows of thick black smoke.

She ran down to the road, her skirts gathered up in her fists and her bag clamped under one elbow to stop it swinging about. By the time she was halfway back she could see it was not the fort, nor the camp. It was too far away to be Senecio’s house, but it was definitely someone’s farm dying below the writhing smoke, and the separate columns said it must be deliberate.

She barely heard the mule cart over the rasp of her own breath, but the local voice shouting, “Want a lift, missus?” caught her attention. Soon she was seated behind a weaver and his wife, listening to them arguing about which of their neighbors’ houses was on fire. They did nothing to calm her rising fear that it was the home of one of her patients.

She jumped down from the cart at the turn to Senecio’s house and started running again. She was almost at the gate when she saw the soldier standing guard.

For a moment they stared at each other in surprise, then he lifted the loop of rope and held the gate open for her, stretching out his other arm to guide her as if she were a sheep being ushered into a pen. She said in Latin, “What is happening?”

“Go on in, miss. Just routine. Nothing to worry about.”

“Why are you here? Where is the family?”

“Just go on in, miss.”

She heard voices. Stepping forward, she could see past the oak tree to where some of the family seemed to be lined up in the yard, facing a couple more soldiers.

Behind her the guard shouted, “Adult female coming in!”

Senecio’s chair had been brought out, but he was standing, supported on one side by Enica and on the other by the small form of Branan. Conn was nowhere to be seen. Nor was the one-eyed man or the tall, skinny one. A couple of the children were crying.

One of the soldiers facing the family motioned her to join them. She heard men’s voices inside the house as she crossed the yard.

The woman with the lisp moved to make space. As she passed in front of her, Tilla murmured, “Where are the men?”

“Safe,” came the soft reply. Tilla took her place in the line next to Branan. The soldier in charge pointed at her and looked as though he were waiting for something.

She had seen that face beneath the helmet before. He sometimes ate in Ria’s bar. He was a junior officer of some kind. For once, she wished Virana were here. Virana knew what all the soldiers were called.

“Tell them your name,” Branan whispered.

She told him her local name. The other one made some attempt to write it down.

“We here,” the officer announced in very bad British, “to look for man. Soldier man. Him lost. You tell.”

The family showed not a trace of understanding or amusement. She knew most of them would have understood him if he had spoken his own tongue, but it was a small form of revenge to make him struggle like that: perhaps the only one they could exact without getting themselves into trouble.
We do not speak Latin in this house.
Perhaps they would share the joke later.
Him one ugly man.
Him think we as stupid as he is.
Meanwhile she spoke up in the forbidden but very useful language of Rome: “If you describe him, sir, perhaps we can help.”

His relief showed on his face. “We don’t want trouble,” he told her. “We want a missing soldier. Name of Candidus. Five feet three inches tall, thin, dark hair. Been gone three days. You tell me if you’ve seen him or know anything about him.” He jerked his thumb toward the smoke. “That’s what happens if I think you’re lying.”

Tilla had begun to translate when there was a metallic crash inside the house and someone swore. It sounded as if the fire irons had been tipped over. “Careful, mate,” called a voice. “Yeah,” put in someone else. “That could have landed on your toe.”

She said, “If there is damage, I will speak to my husband and we will make a complaint.”

The soldier squinted at her. “Don’t I know you?”

“I am the wife of Medical Officer Ruso of your own legion.”

The face brightened for a moment. “Ah! I thought so.” He broke off to yell, “Steady on, lads! Officer’s wife present!” then returned his attention to Tilla. “You can tell your husband all about it when you get home, miss. He’s the one who ordered the search.”

Chapter 14

Somebody needed to grease those hinges. They sounded like two flocks of seagulls having a fight. Or like a set of hefty gates in the charge of some very sloppy soldiers. They shouldn’t be closed before curfew, either.

Ruso, returning from afternoon rounds at the camp, was about to shout when two shawled figures seemed to detach themselves from the fort wall and hurried toward him. Behind them, the screech of iron on stone died away.

“There you are!” cried the slimmer of the two women in a cloud of frosted breath. Ruso stared at them. “What are you two doing here?”

His wife stabbed a finger toward the gates. “I am here because those men will not let me in!”

“And I am here because the mistress is very upset,” said Virana, taking Tilla’s arm as if she needed physical as well as moral support. “The people at the farm were nasty to her.”

The guards saluted from beneath the archway, but they were taking no chances. “Password, sir!”

Stepping forward, he murmured, “Morning star,” to the guards and then returned to his wife. “There’s a security alert,” he explained, secretly relieved that Tilla’s short friendship with the local family seemed to be over. “They won’t let anyone in. You should have left a message.”

“This is too important for writing down!” Tilla insisted. “I am shamed! Why are you sending soldiers to Senecio’s house?”

“I haven’t . . .” Even as he denied it, light dawned.

Tilla said, “They are looking for your clerk and taking names and burning people’s farms down!”

“They’re
what
?”

“They are burning houses!” insisted Virana. “Did you not see the smoke in the sky?”

“They searched the houses and the cow barn,” said Tilla. “They knocked over the loom and the fire irons and licked the honey spoon and drank the beer and broke some eggs. They said they might set fire to everything. If I had not told them I was your wife, who knows what they would have done? And then they told everybody that you had ordered them to do it!”

“Are you sure it wasn’t Daminius and the boys from the quarry? They’re—”

“You see! You
do
know about it! What were you thinking? You eat at their hearth, the old man offers the honor of a blessing, and now you send soldiers to insult him!”

“The mistress is very upset!” Virana seemed to have run out of new things to say.

The trumpet finally wailed the curfew from beyond the ramparts. The guards, too far away to hear the conversation, were enjoying the sight of their medical officer being harangued by two outraged women. “There’s been some trouble,” he explained. “One of our plumbers has been kidnapped and knocked about by the locals. Albanus’s nephew is still missing and I’m worried the same thing’s happened to him. I need to be sure he isn’t—”

“Albanus’s nephew is not in Senecio’s house!”

“No,” he agreed, scratching one ear and wondering whether he ought to go over there and apologize. “But the burning was nothing to do with me. That was punishment for the kidnappers.”

“But it
is
to do with you, husband! It was the house of Senecio’s sister and they were invited to our wedding blessing and the daughter is one of my patients!”

“Oh, gods above!” He felt his shoulders drop. “Wife, why did you get yourself involved with these people?”

“Conn went over to try and help. The houses are gone. All their winter stores are burned or stolen and the land has been salted. Conn found no bodies, but in the burning, who knows?”

Recalling the size of the force leaving the camp this morning, he said, “They probably saw our men coming and ran away.”

“And if they are not dead, how will they live through the winter with no stores?”

He was not going to attempt to answer that one.

“And then Senecio’s house is full of soldiers, and when I ask them to stop making a mess, they say you sent them!”

“I came with the mistress to find you,” put in Virana. “We came but you were not here!” Evidently she felt this compounded his guilt.

He hoped that at least their potential wedding guests had been the real culprits. It was entirely possible that the centurion in charge, having failed to find the guilty natives, had allowed his men to wreak revenge on the nearest ones instead. But he could not say that in front of either of these women. “We didn’t start this,” he said. “One of our men was attacked.”

Tilla said, “What did they do to him?”

“I can’t discuss it.” He was still puzzled by the nature of Regulus’s injuries, but leaving a naked man hanging upside down in a tree was an insult that could not be ignored.

She said, “What is his name?”

“His
name
?
What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Do you know it?”

“Regulus.”

To his surprise, his wife bowed her head and covered her face with her hands. “No, no!” she was saying. “I told them to wait; I told them—”

A wave of guilty relief swept over him. “You knew they were planning this?”

She looked up. “Of course not! But I know of this man. His woman is my patient. They argued. He knocked her down—this is not the first time—and kicked her and stamped on her fingers. I told her to leave him. I told the family to put in an official complaint to his centurion.”

“And did they?” He very much hoped not, because he could not imagine Fabius doing anything useful about it. Already he was seeing Regulus’s injuries from a new perspective.

“I do not know.”

“I don’t remember you telling me about this patient.”

Tilla pulled her shawl tighter around her shoulders. “I did not tell you.”

That was good. He was afraid it might have been another of those times where he wasn’t really listening.

“I did not tell you because when I tried to help that family who had their goat stolen, you told me you are not a messenger boy for disgruntled natives.”

He took a long breath. Valens was right: Women’s memories really did have a special place for storing up phrases they might want to fling back at you later. He said, “Well, you did the right thing.”

“I have told Senecio you will apologize.”

“I see.”

“It is a great insult, master!” repeated Virana. “If you do not make things right, there might be no wedding blessing!”

It was a tempting prospect. “Aren’t you supposed to be at work?”

Virana, as usual, had an answer. “Everybody has gone home early. Because of the curfew.”