Semper Fidelis (11 page)

^{ORINNA’S SON WAS}
lying motionless on the little bed in the alcove, his eyes closed and one plump bare arm flung above his head. Tilla bent over him, relieved when the faint rise and fall of the covers told her he was breathing. His skin was pink: His hand was warm. The poppy had done its work safely.

“I always check too.” Reassured, Corinna teased out more wool from the combed fleece by her stool and twirled the dangling spindle. “As soon as they are born, you worry about them.”

Tilla noticed again the soft burr of the Southwest in her voice. This girl was a long way from home. She left the curtain drawn back so they could see the little bed from where they sat talking in low voices by the hearth. It seemed the family lived in this one narrow rented room, with a loft above, a small plot behind where Corinna had planted a few vegetables, and an empty shop counter at the front under which they kept a stock of firewood that had almost run out. It was clean and homely and probably as good as anything they had grown up with. The child was bonny and Corinna seemed a gentle sort of girl. Wondering what could make a man leave all this behind, Tilla gave her the bag of dried honeysuckle leaves to help against weariness before passing on the news that she thought she had seen Victor at Calcaria two days before.

The girl’s eyes widened. “You know about him?”
“Virana told me.”
Corinna gave the wool a sharp tug. “I’ve had no message. There is nothing I can tell you.”

“The army are not chasing him, and if they were, I would keep silent unless you asked me to speak. Someone tried to help him, but he ran away.”
The girl laid the spindle in her lap. “How was he?”
“Bruised, but well able to run.”
“Hm.” Corinna did not seem to be sure whether she was pleased about that or not.
Tilla said, “It is not easy to be married to a man who is supposed to be married to the Legion.”
Corinna glanced over at her son again. “I thought at first that I could manage.”
“You are a strong woman. And your son will heal.”
“I want to go home.”
Tilla sat back in the battered chair. “Tell me about your home.”
“It is very beautiful,” Corinna said. “The army hardly bother us. The seas are wild around the rocks but there is good fishing. The land is rich for cows and good for crops if you lime it, but things do not change very fast. And Victor is a man who always thinks there is something better somewhere else.”
She picked up a rag from the wool basket and wiped the grease off her hands. “I tried to tell him it was a good life, but he wouldn’t listen. He is a fighter: a champion wrestler. In the old days he would have been a warrior, but of course at home he was not allowed to train for battle or carry weapons. He used to talk all the time about the legions—how he wished he had joined when he had the chance.”
“This was after you were married?”
“I doubt he meant it as an insult, but he kept saying I was the only thing that stopped him from joining. I knew the army would treat us as divorced, but he spoke of it so often that I was afraid he would run off and join anyway.”
“So it was better to agree than to lose him.”
“That is what I thought back then.” Corinna shrugged. “My mother said he was a fool, and so was I, but my father had a pair of soldier’s boots made for him as a gift. We traveled for weeks to get to this place of terrible winters. Then he was only allowed out for one afternoon every week, and when we saw him, all he wanted to do was quarrel or sleep.”
“I have met other women who say the same.”
“Perhaps it is different if your husband is an officer. The Legion was not the life he was expecting. The training is hard, even for a strong man. There were a lot of arguments.”
Tilla said, “Did he tell you he was leaving?”
The thin fingers rubbed a fold of her skirt. “He said we would slow him down. The soldiers came here to look for him, but I do not think they were sorry to see him go.”
“Was there something that happened that made him leave, Corinna?”
The girl eyed her steadily. “It was not for any reason they will tell you. That is all I can say.”
“Who hurt him?”
“Tadius.”
Tilla frowned. “I have been told wrongly. I thought Tadius was his friend.”
“He was. A good friend.”
“Then why—”
“There are things you don’t know.”
“Tell me.”
The pale lips twitched into a smile that did not reach the eyes. “If you don’t know, you are safe. You don’t have to decide what to do. You can keep quiet and not call yourself a coward, because you know nothing. And if you are a friend to my family, you will forget I have ever spoken to you of this.”
Tilla puzzled. “But if there is something wrong—”
“Don’t complain. Tadius complained. Victor wanted to.”
“About what?”
“About lots of things,” said Corinna. “But look what happened. The Legion always wins in the end.”

The orderly seized Austalis by his good arm and wrestled him back down onto the bed.
“No, no!”
Ruso raised his hands to show they were empty, but Austalis was too

frightened to care. The orderly kept him pinned down while Ruso retreated and leaned against the wall.
“No.”
“I’m not doing anything,” Ruso assured him, which at that moment was true.
The “No!” was more of a whimper now: Austalis had reached the end of his strength.
Ruso stood motionless, as he would have with a frightened animal. Eventually he said, “Would you like some water?”
“No.”
“You’re very ill, Austalis.”
“No.”
“The surgery would help.”
The voice was very weak now. “Don’t . . . cut.”
Ruso nodded to the orderly, who stood up, hitched his torn tunic back over his shoulder, and retreated to a corner. To Austalis he said, “You’re in a bit of a mess there. Shall I put your bed straight?”
There was no sign of Austalis caring one way or the other. Ruso straightened the bedding and poured a few drops of water between the cracked lips.
“Let me tell you about Clementinus,” said Ruso. “Clementinus used to be a vet in the Twentieth. Now he earns a good living as a dog breeder and he’s fathered two children. Or there’s Amandus the brewer. He’s got a wife and a son. Both men lost an arm at about your age, and I did the surgery.”
A whisper of “No.”
“We can give you something to dull the pain and I’ll be as quick as I can.”
“No.”
“If it’s the arm or you, I know which I’d choose.”
The silence was encouraging.
“It’s the best choice. We’ll get rid of the diseased—”
The door burst open and Geminus strode into the room. He loomed over the end of the bed, eyed the startled patient, and announced, “That arm’s coming off, then.”
“Out!” Ruso had him halfway to the door before he recovered his balance.
Geminus twisted free and blocked the exit. “He’s my man.”
“He’s my patient.”
Ruso was taller. Geminus was solid muscle. There was no sign of his shadows, but they were probably out in the corridor somewhere. Ruso said, “Not here.”
“You didn’t listen.”
“Not here!”
Ruso was conscious of a faint voice behind him. The words were in British. “Not my arm—no.”
“Don’t worry,” Ruso assured him in the same tongue, keeping his eyes fixed on Geminus. “Nothing will happen here unless I say so.”
“Outside,” growled Geminus, stepping back to let him pass.
Ruso murmured, “Stay here and keep him calm,” to the wide-eyed orderly, and gestured to Geminus to go first. He was not giving that man a chance to get near his patient again.

Ruso envied Aesculapius, whose tranquil gaze across the entrance hall was undisturbed by the centurion’s tone. He had brought Geminus here because if there was going to be a fight, he wanted witnesses. He also wanted help, but he doubted he would get any. Still, at least there was no sign of the two shadows. He said, “If you want to talk to my patient, you talk to me first.”

“I should have known you’d be trouble.”
“Did you have me followed?”
Geminus glanced around to make sure no one but the god was listening.

“My men have better things to do than get you out of places you shouldn’t get into.”
“You told me Tadius died at night.”
“I told you everything you need to know.” Geminus moved closer. He smelled of the sweat of the training ground. Ruso stood very still.
“When I heard you were coming,” Geminus said, “I asked some questions. And I got some very interesting answers. Why was it you left the Legion last time?”
Ruso knew now where this was heading, and he did not want to go there. “I was injured. By the time I’d recovered, my contract was over.”
“Nothing to do with your woman, then?”
Ruso took a slow breath. “That’s old news.”
“But I’ll bet it hasn’t reached the tribune, has it?”
“I’ve no idea.”
Geminus’s smile was even more fearsome than his scowl. “We’re all on the same side here, Doctor,” he said. “You leave me to get on with my business, and I’ll leave you to get on with yours.”

^{FTER LAST NIGHT’S}
costly mistake, Tilla did not order the evening meal until her husband turned up. At the same moment a local man and his nephew arrived to show him a limp and complain of a bellyache. Then the stew came, and he ate in silence, listening to his own thoughts. It did not seem the best time to ask for a slave so she could learn to be a medicus, so she said, “How is your difficult patient?”

“Mm?”
“Your patient. Austalis. How is he?”
“Desperate to keep the arm. I’m leaving him for one more night.” “Perhaps he will improve.”
“And perhaps I’ll have killed him.”
So that was what was troubling him. “I went to see Corinna’s boy again,”

she said. “He was asleep.”
“Mm.”
“She told me something I did not understand.”
He tore a chunk off the bread and dropped it into the liquid. “Shall I tell you what it was?”
“Uh—what? Yes.”
“She said Tadius and Victor were good friends, but then they had a fight.” He scooped the bread out on his spoon. “Friends fall out.” “She says there are things we don’t know.”
“Maybe we don’t need to know them.”
“Did you think about that centurion?”
He looked at her. “That centurion knows why we had to go to Gaul.” She put her spoon down. “But how—”
“Apparently he’s been asking around. It’s not exactly a secret, is it? Metellus circulates his security lists. That’s the point of them.”

Her throat was suddenly dry. “I thought that was all forgotten.” “So did I.”
“I always knew that centurion was—”
“I know what he is!”
The force of his reply startled her.
“Sorry,” he said. “Don’t worry. You’re none of his business, and Metellus

As she said, “I hope so. That man is a snake,” there was a rap on the door and a slave announced more visitors for the Medicus. Tilla sighed and put the bread platter over his bowl in the faint hope that the stew might not be stone cold when he finished.

The back sufferer turned out to have tried every remedy that was suggested and refused to believe that gentle exercise would help. The child who could not speak was deaf. She had devised her own gestures to communicate with her family, and seemed to have accepted the situation far more readily than they had.

Tilla had just lifted the bread platter from his bowl when they both looked up, uncertain. He called, “Come in!” and the movement of the latch confirmed that there was indeed somebody there.

A bent and wrinkled slave shuffled in. Tilla recognized the figure she had seen hoeing the weeds out of the rose beds, but when she greeted him with “You are the gardener!” he shrank away and begged them not to tell anyone he was there. The reason became apparent as he explained his symptoms: stiffness in the hips, painful knees, difficulty in movement, hot and swollen joints in the hands . . . None of these was desirable in a gardener. He was terrified of being sold and replaced with someone younger and fitter.

Tilla, seated on the bed and half heartedly scanning the poetry scroll in the poor light, reflected that any decent own er would buy a boy who could learn from the older slave and take over the heavy work. But while the old man had worked in the mansio gardens for as long as he could remember, managers came and went. And new men liked to make sweeping changes.

way he did when he was thinking. The treatment she had seen him recommend for this sort of thing would be of no use to a slave who was more likely to sleep in a damp bed than be able to lie in a hot bath. And if he managed to scrape together regular warm fomentations of bark and barley meal, where would he find the privacy to apply them?

Finally she heard “Tilla, can you get me the bottle of mandrake in wine, and a spoon?” and, to the patient, “Do you grow dill? And rue?”
“Dill, yes. Rue smells. I could find a patch outside.”
While Tilla rummaged inside the case, her husband explained how to boil the herbs together to make a medicine that was good for easing joint pain.
When she handed the bottle across, he checked the thin wooden label tied around the neck as usual and frowned. “Mandrake,” he repeated, handing it back.
She took it, glanced at the two bubbles near the base of the thick green glass, and offered it back to him. “Mandrake,” she confirmed.
Silently he pointed to the label.
“Mandrake,” she insisted.
He gave her a look of mild alarm that said,
You don’t read the labels?
and reached for the case himself, picking out one of the three remaining bottles he usually carried with him.
“That is iris, for purging!” she whispered, placing her hand over his. The patient, who was sitting on the end of the bed nearest the window, was beginning to look worried.
She placed both bottles on the table, pulled out a stopper, and sniffed before passing the bottle to him. He lifted it to his nose, paused, and turned to the patient. “Sorry about that. Have you finished work for the night?”
The man nodded.
“One and a half spoons in a cup, please, Tilla.” To the patient he said, “I don’t recommend you take a lot of this, but for once it should give you a decent night’s sleep.”
Tilla handed over the cup with a warm smile that defied any questions about whether this traveling medicus and his woman really knew what they were doing.
After the slave had drunk the medicine and gone, Tilla watched her husband line up all four bottles on the table and scowl at them. “You must be more careful, Tilla.”
“Me? I am the one who got it right!”
“Just as well.” Leaving the bottles on the table, he snapped the case shut and tightened the strap so that the buckle slid into the groove it had made in the leather.
The stew bowl was barely warm, although he had not had time to find that out when there was yet another rap at the door.
Tilla called, “The Medicus is eating! Come back tomorrow!”
“The tribune wants him.”
Tilla would have told the tribune to wait, but her husband was already on his feet. That was the sort of thing they were trained to do in the army: obey without question or delay. When they were ordered to swim across a swollen river, they did it. Or died trying.
“Can you sort those bottles out while I’m gone?”
“I did not tie the wrong labels on.”
“But it’s obvious you don’t read them.” He scooped a last mouthful of stew.
“Why bother when it is quicker not to?” She reached for the bottle of purgative and examined the knot in the twine. “This is someone else’s work, husband. I always leave a loop and an end so it undoes easily.”
He was not listening. “If there’s a message about Austalis, tell them where I am and tell them they absolutely must interrupt.”
And then he was gone.