Tabula Rasa (14 page)
He bowed his head. Senecio made no attempt to rise or to acknowledge him. Ruso thought he heard movement somewhere behind one of the screens.
Finally he heard, “Are you aware of what has happened here, and at the house of my sister?”
“I am, sir.”
“I am told that this began when one of your men mistreated my niece.”
“He should not have done that, sir.”
“True.”
From somewhere in the darkness came a thud, then a whisper and “Sh!”
If he heard, Senecio ignored it. “Your people need to learn a little respect.”
“Yes, sir.” They needed to learn a great deal of respect, but since they were usually the ones with the swords, it wasn’t likely.
“It seems you learned nothing from the falling of the rocks.”
Ruso did not reply. He was not going to get into a debate about whose gods were the more powerful.
“The man you have lost is not here, and we know nothing about him.”
“Yes, sir.”
“If you had asked, we would have told you. We would also have asked our neighbors.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I had hoped,” the old man continued, “that we could work together.”
“I would have liked that,” said Ruso truthfully.
“It is a pity you did not trust us.”
On the far side of the hearth, where orange glowed through ash, the sky-blue eyes were gazing into his own. This time it was harder to fight the urge to look away. Two nights ago Ruso had been offered the kind of tentative friendship that might have helped in the search for Candidus. But the moment there was a dispute, he had forgotten all about Senecio’s
We must find ways of working together
and lapsed into the old suspicions. He had, in short, acted like a fool.
Searching for some sort of concession if he could not offer apology, he said, “Sir, if anything was broken or stolen here by the soldiers, I will personally make compensation.” He could probably get a loan against his pay to cover what they had lost. There was no point in pretending he would go to the Legion. The army always assumed compensation claims were exaggerated—which they probably were, since the victims expected to be shortchanged—so that even if money was paid, it was rare for both sides to be satisfied.
“Will you be compensating my neighbors?”
“I can’t do it for everyone.”
“Then you will do it for no one.”
He was not going to insult the man by trying to change his mind. “I respect your decision, sir.”
Senecio inclined his head.
Ruso bowed. “Sir, my wife is very embarrassed. She had nothing to do with what happened.”
“She is your wife. She has made her choice. Do you have anything else to say?”
“No, sir.”
“We will see that you are safe as far as the road. Do not come back.”
Somebody had gathered
up the mess of records and writing materials and crammed most of them back into the cupboard. The surplus was piled into a wooden crate that had been shoved under the desk so there was no room for anyone’s knees underneath. This hardly mattered, since there was still no sign of the man whose job it was to sit there.
Ruso had removed Candidus’s kit to his own lodgings, but the chaos, like a fungus, now seemed to have spread to the stores. Gallus was standing in front of the shelves, pulling down a succession of boxes and rooting through them in search of linen suture thread. He interrupted the hunt to draw Ruso’s attention to an unopened message addressed candidus, clerk.
It was from Supplies. They could not understand why the hospital had sent urgent requests for buckets and blankets and bedstead repairs when the repairs were already in hand, six buckets had been delivered only last week, and all orders for woven materials had to be submitted a month in advance of the delivery date, by which time the Legion would be back in winter quarters at Deva. The orders had therefore been cancelled.
Ruso dropped the missive into the crate. “The idiots over in Supplies have thrown out all our orders. They say we’ve got buckets already.”
Gallus glanced up from the latest box. “Somebody did find some buckets at the gatehouse this morning, sir. But there were only two left by the time he tracked them down.”
“And has anyone come to start on the repairs?”
“Not yet, sir.”
Ruso sighed. “Tell me some good news.”
“The legate’s physician was here to see Prefect Pertinax earlier. He seemed quite satisfied.”
“Good,” said Ruso, not sorry he had missed the legate’s physician, a haughty Greek with a reputation for seeing his colleagues as competitors.
“He said no bathing until the stitches are out, only gentle massage, and don’t let him get up.”
“I’ll cancel the dancing lessons, then. Did you tell him we’ve no bath suite and the masseur only comes twice a week if we’re lucky?”
Gallus’s baby face looked even younger when he smiled. “No, sir. There were some instructions about diet that I’ve written down for you—ah!” He retrieved a spool of thread. “And Doctor Valens is here, sir. And, er . . .” He hesitated, passing the spool from one hand to the other. “Sir, I’ve been wondering whether I should mention something. It’s about the clerk. I hope I’m not wasting your time.”
Ruso waited.
“I wasn’t trying to listen, sir.”
“I see.”
“I’m sure it’s nothing, but I couldn’t help overhearing.”
“Now you
are
wasting my time.”
“Sorry, sir.” Gallus’s neck was turning pink to match his cheeks. “Sir, when the new clerk was here, I heard a conversation he had with Nisus.”
Nisus was the pharmacist who usually sat opposite the clerk’s desk. “And?”
“Candidus was rattling on about something—about freed slaves being allowed to join the army or something—and Nisus interrupted and said, ‘If you don’t stop talking, somebody around here is going to get killed.’ ”
Ruso stared at him. “Nisus?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And did Candidus stop talking?”
“I think he went to chat to somebody else, sir.”
Ruso scratched one ear with his forefinger.
“I’d have mentioned it before, sir, but you had men searching houses for Candidus, so I thought you must have had word that he was out there with the natives.”
“I see,” Ruso said, not wanting to dwell on the embarrassment of his mistake. “Well, I’m glad you’ve told me now. Don’t tell anyone else.” Conscious of the irony, he added, “We don’t want people jumping to wild conclusions.”
“I’ll keep it quiet, sir. I just thought you should know.”
“Do you think it was a serious threat?”
Gallus clutched the thread to his chest. “Honestly, sir?”
“Preferably.”
“Candidus was annoying, but I don’t really think anybody would kill him for talking too much.”
“Hm,” said Ruso, who had known men to be gravely injured in fights over a borrowed spoon, a habit of cracking the knuckles, and a stolen coin that had later turned up in the owner’s own pack. “I have to admit,” he said, “it’s hard to imagine Nisus getting seriously worked up over anything.” The pharmacist, a legionary of mature years and few words, seemed to have no ambition beyond weighing and measuring, drying and distilling.
“Perhaps I misheard, sir.”
“I think it’s more likely Nisus was telling him to shut up in words that he couldn’t fail to understand. When’s he due back from leave? I can’t remember how long I signed for.”
Gallus cast a glance at Pandora’s cupboard. “I could ask someone to look for it, sir.”
Ruso shook his head. “Don’t bother. He’ll be back before they—”
He broke off as the door opened. Valens strolled in, nodded to Gallus, and seated himself on the table of the absent pharmacist before announcing, “Prefect Pertinax is feeling very much better this morning.”
“He is?” Ruso asked.
“Oh, yes. He managed quite a long string of invective before he told me to get out.”
Gallus, stifling a grin, retreated.
Ruso said, “How long until Serena gets here?”
“Anytime from tomorrow.” Valens sighed. “You really know how to cheer a man up, Ruso.”
“I practice on my patients.” Ruso gestured toward the crate under the desk. “Supplies have just thrown out all our orders. How am I supposed to run a hospital when I end up chasing around for blankets and buckets?”
“Surely it can’t be that difficult?”
“You’d be amazed. We order basic items
from the stores two hours away and they take a week to turn up. If they get here at all.”
“Well, it’s no good complaining to me,” said Valens. “I’m on your side. I don’t have the faintest idea how these things work. But good luck sorting it out.”
“I need a clerk.”
“That reminds me,” said Valens. “I had a chat with your man’s centurion. That chap called Silvanus.”
“The one who wrote and told me Candidus was here.”
“Yes. Before he would say anything else, he wanted to know if Candidus was dead.”
Ruso looked up in alarm. “Why would he think that?”
“Because if he is, he was a bright, friendly lad and a sad loss.”
“Ah,” said Ruso, guessing what was coming.
“Otherwise he’s lazy, he talks too much, he’s fond of gambling, and he thinks he’s a comedian. Probably why the lads at Magnis called him Perky.”
“I see.” Ruso pulled open his purse and tipped the contents into his palm. Half a dozen small coins, a boot stud, a scattering of fluff, and two identical dice with the numbers carved as concentric rings in the bone.
“Silvanus said he couldn’t see why he would desert. As he put it, it’s not as if you were asking the lad to do any work. All he had to do was park his arse behind a desk all day.”
Ruso rolled the dice across the worn surface of Candidus’s desk. He rolled them a second time. Then he picked them up, examined each of them, and rolled them one by one before handing them to Valens. “You try.”
The legs of the table creaked as Valens shifted sideways to make space. The dice rattled across the ink-stained wood several times. Finally he selected one and tipped it back and forth in his palm. “This one’s weighted,” he said. “Six nearly every time.”
Ruso said, “He could have made enemies.”
“Silvanus says he was in debt to couple of people. Nothing major, but they didn’t expect to see their money back.”
“Anyone who owed money to him?”
“Nobody who would admit to it.”
Which was not the same thing at all. “Thanks anyway. You’d better get back to Magnis.”
“I’ll keep my ears open. Oh, and I’d steer clear of Pertinax for a while. He’s not impressed with having visits from three doctors in one morning. Especially when none of them will give him any crutches. And now somebody’s told him there’s a dead body in the emperor’s wall.”
“Oh, gods above. Who told him that?”
“I’ve no idea. You’ve heard it too?”
Ruso shook his head. “Unbelievable,” he said. The tale had reached a patient who had not left his bed for days. If this was sabotage, it was even more effective than its perpetrator could have hoped.
“You don’t think it might belong to your clerk?”
“I don’t think it exists,” said Ruso. He had once been in trouble for failing to obey Accius’s orders back in Eboracum and he was not going to make the same mistake again. Especially after the fiasco of the search. “I’m going to write to Albanus today and tell him his nephew’s deserted.”
“I thought you’d decided his disappearance was highly suspicious and he ought to be here collecting hens?”
“He probably acted on impulse,” said Ruso. “He’d already managed to seriously annoy people here, including me.”
Valens looked disappointed. “I was hoping this might turn into one of your escapades. Finding a body and going around accusing people of murdering it.”
“I haven’t found a body. Nobody has.”
Valens scrutinized him for a moment. “Pity,” he said. “You’ve been so much more entertaining since you met Tilla and adopted the native tendency to overdramatize.”
“I’m not the one who’s overdramatizing,” Ruso pointed out. “You are. Candidus is absent without leave. I’d imagine he’s either lazing in the baths at Coria, or he’s bought himself a trip south on an empty supply vehicle.”
“If you say so. I won’t tell Albanus it might have been you who drove him to it.”
“It wasn’t! Would you run away because I shouted at you?”
Valens slid down from the table. “Ah, but I would know you didn’t mean it.”
The chilly eastern
breeze that had blown the rain away was now plucking at the tents and flapping the bedraggled standards. The queue had curled itself around the back of the medical tent in search of shelter.
As soon as Ruso arrived, a bandy-legged man stepped out of the line and pushed to the front amidst much complaining. His reply of “I’m not sick!” did nothing to pacify his competitors.