Tabula Rasa (24 page)

On the way out, Ruso visited the imprisoned quarrymen. They looked even glummer than before. Daminius was seated facing the wall with his elbows propped on his knees. Ruso asked Liber, the one whose alibi was “to snack bar VIRANA,” to make himself known. Ruso was pleased with what he saw. Not because the gods had favored Liber with a muscular build, a polite demeanor, a full complement of black hair, blue eyes, and white teeth, but because if a young man who looked like that had been seated at one of Ria’s tables yesterday, Virana would remember.

Chapter 36

Virana greeted Ruso with the sort of smile that cheered the weary heart and would have made him feel especially welcome if he had not known that she bestowed it on almost any man wearing a military belt. “I need to tell you something, master!” she cried, breaking off from wiping a table not ten feet away and waving the cloth at him in case he had trouble locating her. “Have you found Branan?”

“Not yet.”

“I’ve remembered the soldier!”

Ruso looked at her, wondering how she knew what he was about to ask, and then realized they were thinking of different soldiers. “Candidus?” He fingered the forgotten letter to Albanus, still tucked inside his belt.

“He was here, but they called him Perky. I thought that was his name. That’s why I didn’t tell you before.”

According to Nisus, one of the last things Candidus had said was that he was meeting someone for a drink.
A man he’d seen before . . . he didn’t know where.
Now, when Ruso did not have time to deal with it, the search for Candidus might be leading somewhere. He sat at a corner table and ordered a cup of spiced wine, noting the sidelong glance from a middle-aged woman across the room when he invited Virana to join him. “I need to know who Can—who Perky was with,” he said.

“He asked me to come and sit beside him but I told him I had to light the lamps.”

“Was he on his own?”

“I told him, master, I don’t go with just anybody.”

“Of course.”

Virana shifted one end of a bench to make more space for herself. “I don’t know why nobody believes me.”

“It must be very annoying,” agreed Ruso. “Who called him Perky?”

“Besides, I can’t keep getting up and down now unless I have to. Ria says I can sit by the bar as long as I get up when there’s serving to be done.” Virana collapsed onto the bench with a sigh, then lifted her skirts, stretched out pale bare legs, and circled her feet in midair.

Aware of the woman turning round to stare, Ruso took refuge in his wine.

“See?” Virana demanded. “It works. Not swollen like they were before. Ria says I can keep a stool by the bar.”

“Very good,” said Ruso, adding with deliberately clarity, “My wife will be very pleased.” He lowered his voice to ask, “What about Candidus?”

She pointed toward the woman. “He was sitting over there.” She stopped, as if this had answered the question.

“Virana, I’m in a hurry. Could you—”

“With some men from the fort here,” she added. “They were playing dice.”

This was new. “How many men? Do you know their names?”

She scratched her head, dislodging one of the pins that never held her hair in place for long. “I think there were two of them,” she said, shifting sideways and grunting with the effort of bending to pick the pin up. “I’m not sure. Is there one called Gallus with fair hair?”

“Gallus?” This was worrying. His deputy had not mentioned a social evening with Candidus.

“I know he works at the hospital,” said Virana, inadvertently confirming his identity. None of the other staff had fair hair. “And the other one was the hospital cook.”

This was even more unexpected. “So Candidus, Gallus, and the cook were playing dice,” he prompted. “Then what happened?”

“Then they finished the game and the other two went away. Perky wanted to talk to me. But I didn’t sit with him, because I don’t—” She registered the expression on his face. “Anyway, he carried the oil jar for me when I filled the lamps and we talked for a bit and then he finished his drink and he went back to the camp.”

“On his own?”

“I felt sorry for him. He said it was cold at night and his tentmates weren’t very nice.”

“Do you think he might have gone somewhere else instead?”

Virana frowned. “Where would he go?”

Where indeed? “Did he mention meeting anyone he hadn’t seen for a while?”

Virana’s face brightened. “When he first saw me he said, ‘Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?’ ” She looked puzzled. “But I don’t remember him, and he said he’s never been to Eboracum.”

“He was probably just making conversation,” Ruso told her, wondering if Candidus had also invited her to come and help him polish his equipment, or whatever euphemism they used these days. “Can you remember anything else at all? Did anyone follow him?”

Virana pondered this for a moment.

“This is important,” he explained. “You may be the last person who saw him before he disappeared.”

“Oh, no, master!” Her confidence was unexpected. “I am not the last person who saw him.”

It was all Ruso could do not to grab her and shake the rest of the pins out. “Then who is?”

Virana frowned. “I don’t know, master. Surely you saw him the next morning when he was working at the hospital?”

“You’re talking about . . .” He paused to think. “The day after market day? Not the day he disappeared?”

Virana said, “You didn’t say when. You asked if I saw him.”

Ruso let out a long breath and managed, “Yes. That’s true. Let’s see if you can remember somebody else.”

“Another soldier?”

“A man called Liber.”

Her face lit up. “He was in here yesterday. Did he say something about me?”

“No,” said Ruso. “I’m just trying to sort out who was where when Branan went missing. Can you remember when he arrived and when he left?”

“It was after the mistress had the headache,” said Virana. “She went upstairs, and then . . .” She thought for a moment. “You must have seen him yourself, master. He was sitting at table three when you came in.”

“I didn’t notice,” Ruso confessed.

“Then he had to go because he was on duty.” She pushed her hair back from her face, leaned across the table, and whispered. “I think he likes me!”

“I think he likes quite a few girls,” Ruso told her, wishing he did not have to disappoint her and wondering yet again why Virana’s experience had failed to conquer her optimism where good-looking young men were concerned. He downed the last of the wine. “I need to go. Thanks for your help.”

“I hope you find Branan soon. He’s a nice boy. I like him.”

He said, “We’re getting nearer,” because he had to say something, and because it might be true. For all he knew, the lad had turned up by now. In case he hadn’t, Ruso was about to visit the local brothel in the hope of meeting Larentia, Delia, and a blonde girl with a mole on her left buttock.

Chapter 37

The woman’s hair was dyed a harsh, unnatural fox-pelt red. Heavy makeup had collected in her wrinkles so the painted eyes in the artificially whitened face made him think of black beetles in a snowdrift. But she still had most of her own teeth, or someone else’s skillfully attached, and the smile that revealed them was professional. So was the disappointment when she realized Ruso had only come for information and was not intending to pay for it.

Yes, she had heard about the boy. It was a terrible thing.

“Do you have many customers who ask for boys?”

“Not often enough to warrant buying one,” she said, as if it were a matter of regret. “I send them to Vindolanda.”

“Do you know who those customers are?”

“I know who all my customers are.”

Ruso waited.

“Discretion, Doctor,” she explained. “I’m sure you understand.”

“And I’m sure you understand how urgently we need to know.”

The muscles holding the cheeks into a half smile relaxed, and the skin around her mouth fell to a slackness that betrayed her age. Ruso looked her in the eye until she pulled the smile back into place.

She remembered a tall gentleman with only one leg, and one who was short and stout and wheezy. She could hardly have invented anyone less like the man who had taken Branan.

“If you see either of them,” he said, “ask them to look out for him on their, ah . . . on their travels.”

“I’m sure they will,” she said, not in a way he liked. “Now. Who else can we offer you, Doctor?”

Chapter 38

Pertinax opened his eyes. “You.”

Still clutching the medical case, which was unlikely to have shielded his reputation when he was seen entering the brothel, Ruso said, “Good afternoon, sir.”

“I don’t know what’s bloody good about it. When am I going to get my crutches?”

Ruso restrained a smile of relief. He pulled up the stool and sat beside the bed. The room smelled normal and Pertinax’s grumbling was lucid, all of which was good news. He explained again about the dangers of postoperative bleeding as everything inside the wound grew back together and the stitches no longer held things shut. “So far it’s all healing up very nicely,” he said, having learned long ago not to say
better than I’d expected
, because the patient then concluded that his earlier words of encouragement had been a lie. “If you move about too much now, you’ll delay the recovery and you may end up a lot worse. Especially if you fall, which you will until you get used to a new way of walking.”

Pertinax closed his eyes and said, “Hmph,” but Ruso was not fooled. The man’s brow had smoothed, as if he were secretly glad to have the challenge taken away from him. Then Pertinax sniffed and his brow creased again. “Are there women around here somewhere?”

“Not that I know of, sir.”

“Then what’s that smell?” The eyes opened. “Not you, is it?”

Ruso plucked the shoulder of his tunic and sniffed. There was a faint whiff of Larentia, who had conveniently turned out to be a blonde girl with a mole in the right place; he had declined her invitation to inspect it. She could vouch for Mallius being fully occupied in the early afternoon and for Liber being in the brothel at the time when he had told Virana he was on duty. He cleared his throat. “I think it might be me, sir.”

“You smell like a cheap whore.”

It was too complicated to explain. “I must have picked up some woman’s scent in passing, sir.”

“Hmph. My late wife never fell for that one.”

Ruso, who was supposed to be reporting back to Accius, opened his mouth to say what he had come to say, which was that Valens was taking over, but Pertinax said suddenly, “Women. Don’t suppose you could have one sent in?”

“I don’t think that would be a good idea, sir.”

Pertinax grunted. “Shut away in here all day. No idea what’s going on. Half-baked stories about bodies in the wall. Some idiot came in here earlier and told me your father’s just died. I told him your father’s been dead for years. Left you with a lot of debts, didn’t he?”

“There’s been a misunderstanding, sir.”

“What was all that shouting after the horn? Sounded like natives.”

“Nothing to worry about, sir.”

Pertinax’s eyes snapped open and glared at Ruso as if he had been watching him through his eyelids. “I’ll decide what I want to worry about.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You’re just like the rest of them: looking at me lying here and thinking,
Poor old boy. He’s finished. No foot, no sense.
Is that what you think?”

“No, sir,” Ruso assured him.

“Accius wants to take you away for special duties. What for?”

“That’s what I came to tell you, sir. I won’t be around for a while, but—”

“I know that! I’m asking what for?”

It was some measure of Pertinax’s current ambiguous status that the tribune had paid him the courtesy of asking before taking one of his men, but had not thought it necessary to tell him why. It was a sign of how ill Pertinax was that he had not insisted on knowing at the time. “The locals have lost a child, sir. It looks as if one of our men’s taken him. They’re demanding him back. I’m needed to help with the search because I have native contacts.”

The lines on the prefect’s forehead deepened. “One of our men?”

“We’re questioning some suspects now, sir.”

“Good. Don’t pussyfoot about.”

“No, sir,” said Ruso. “Doctor Valens has offered to come and take over here.”

“Offered? My son-in-law never volunteers for anything.”

“He really did, sir,” Ruso insisted. “He’s a good doctor: you’ll be in safe hands.”

For once Pertinax did not argue. Instead he asked how long the child had been missing. When he was told, he shook his head. “All that work we did getting the Brits settled down,” he said. “Good men were lost. When I think of some of those lads . . . I can still see their faces.”

“Yes, sir,” said Ruso, who for months afterward had suffered bad dreams about the men he had failed to save. The natives had raised a much more spirited rebellion than anyone could have expected, and the casualty list had been horrendous.