Tabula Rasa (28 page)

Aedic wished he was still two winters old like the unbrother. The unbrother didn’t have to know anything about dead bodies and keeping secrets and telling lies and getting other people into terrible trouble. He didn’t know about the man who would murder Branan and find Matto and then come after Aedic and bury him in the wall. All he had to do was run about and shout and try not to fall in the fire or break things.

If only Mam were here. He could have told her all about it, and she would have known what to do. He might as well tell the dog as tell Da. He could hear Da now, over by the hearth, saying the things everyone had heard a hundred times before. You couldn’t trust the Romans and you couldn’t trust your own people, either. One of the uncles told Da to give it a rest: This wasn’t about him, it was about a missing kid, and why didn’t he think of somebody else for a change? And Da said, “It’s all right for you! They didn’t steal your farm!”

Aedic stuffed his fingers tighter into his ears and put his head down under the blankets until he could hardly breathe.

By the time he came up for air, the argument had stopped. He could hear the scrape of the fire being banked up, and the musical trickle of wee into the night bucket. One of the aunts said something about an early start, and the uncle said they would be searching over by Broken Crags in the morning, and the aunt said again that it was a terrible thing, and how must that poor family be feeling, going to bed knowing their boy was out somewhere in the cold?

Aedic wished everybody would stop talking about it. It was as if they had heard about something exciting and they all wanted to be part of it.

It wasn’t exciting. It was a snake that writhed inside your stomach and hissed that something very, very bad had happened, it was going to get worse, and it was all your fault.

Chapter 44

“I can’t make him go indoors, Tilla!”

“You are the army!” She leaned forward in the bed and retrieved the pillow from behind her. “It is your job to make people do things they do not want to do!” As if to illustrate how this was done, she gave the pillow a couple of hefty punches. “Why else are you here?”

Ruso’s left boot landed with a clump on the floorboards. “You complain when we don’t respect local wishes.” He tugged at the laces of the right boot and dropped it beside its partner. “And then you don’t like it when we do.” He aimed his socks into the dark beyond-the-lamp oblivion of the corner where he had stowed Candidus’s shield.

“But he is an old man!” She dropped the pillow back into place. “It is cold even in here. He will be dead by morning!”

“Perhaps.” It was not his fault that Senecio was a stubborn old goat.

Tilla looked as though she were about to raise another objection, so he said, “The sky’s clouded over now. It’s not as cold as it could be. Valens will make sure the night staff keep an eye on him.”

Tilla gave the sort of exaggerated sigh that said this would never have been allowed if somebody sensible had been in charge, then asked, “Do you think the army would lend us horses tomorrow?”

“ ‘Us’?”

“Me and Enica. We need to talk to the man who told Virana about the body. We have other names to follow too. We may have to go a long way to find these people.”

He pulled back the covers and slid in beside her. “I’ll ask,” he promised, doubting their efforts would lead to much, but having no better ideas to offer. “Light out?”

Instead of answering the question she said, “It has been a bad day. Did Virana tell you she was insulted?”

“Ah. She was looking a bit weepy when she let me in. She said she was upset about Branan.”

“That too. She said she used to look forward to seeing him.”

“Gods above.
Branan
?”

“Not like that, husband.”

From somewhere downstairs came the sound of raised voices. Female first, then the rumbling of male resentment. Tilla said, “Ria wants to pack up and move to Deva for the winter when the Legion goes. He wants to stay here where they have always lived.”

More argument from downstairs, the tone clear but the words indistinct. Ruso, who had hurried past Ria with a promise that he would talk about a fee for using the bar in the morning, was not sorry to know she was fully occupied.

“A man and a woman,” Tilla murmured. “It is not easy.”

“Mm,” he said. It seemed the safest thing. “Who insulted Virana?”

“Some local people. That is nothing new. But Conn let it happen.”

He said, “When this is over, we ought to make him apologize.”

In the silence that followed perhaps she too was thinking that if Branan was not found, there would never be a time when this was over.

“If I didn’t think he was fond of his father,” he said, “I’d have Conn first on the list of suspects. Hiding his brother somewhere just to cause trouble.”

Tilla rolled over to face him. “I have wondered this. Whether he is jealous of Branan.”

“The doted-on younger son, clever and popular, and the bitter older half brother . . .”

“His girl snatched away by the army.”

“What girl?”

She said, “Did you not know?” and proceeded to relay what she admitted was gossip about the girl’s rape by a soldier during the troubles, her refusal to have the baby taken away, and a broken betrothal. “They say that is why he is so angry.”

“Even so, why would he do this to his father?”

She said, “For liking Branan better.”

The reasoning made sense. The practicalities did not. “Branan was taken by a soldier.”

“Soldiers can be bribed,” she pointed out. “Or imitated. Perhaps there may be some captured equipment still hidden in secret places after the troubles.”

“Really?”

She said lightly, “Who knows?”

“Well, you do, clearly.”

“Not near here,” she assured him.

He let it pass. “If the soldier wasn’t really a soldier . . .”

“I am just thinking aloud.”

“We’ve got half the Legion chasing around searching, everybody suspecting everybody else, and the officers busy trying to work out where several thousand men were yesterday afternoon. I’d imagine if anything could make a man like Conn happy, that would be it. I’ll see what I can find out.”

“How will you do that?”

He had never told her that Conn was under surveillance, for the very good reason that she was not supposed to know. “Sorry. It’s been a difficult day. I mean, we both need to be aware of it.”

He wondered who was paid to inform on Conn, and whether the security people would be prepared to tell him. Suddenly Tilla said, “There is still no word of Candidus?”

“There’s some hint of him arranging to meet a man he’d seen before, but that could be anybody.”

“What if the same man stole both of them?”

He frowned. “We’ve gone from Conn being jealous to some villain who’s going around, abducting random people.”

She sighed. “Fear is a short rope. Every time I set off toward where Branan might be, I am pulled back by the feeling that I might have just turned my back on him.”

He remembered something else. “We’re checking everyone’s movements, so I suppose I need to confirm that my pharmacist really did go away on leave.”

“Did he know Branan?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Is he the one who said he would kill Candidus?”

“That was a misunderstanding.”

The argument downstairs seemed to have ended. She said, “I keep thinking about Branan.”

“Me too. It’s the not knowing.”

“And the fear that the knowing might be worse,” she said. “I feel as though I am swimming in a soup made of confusion. What does a child stealer look like?”

“If you could tell by looking, we’d have caught him already.”

He pictured Senecio lying out in the cold, worrying about his son. He tried to picture Branan but could not. He saw only the dark shape of the farm dog on the night they had first met, and heard the voice that had greeted him with,
Are you the doctor?
and then said with relief
, Now I can go in out of the rain.

He rolled across to her, wrapping himself around the warmth of her body. “I am sorry things went so wrong with the old man’s family.”

“So am I.”

He was drifting off to sleep when she wriggled.

“The lamp,” she explained, waving an arm across him and trying to reach it.

“I’ll do it.”

He was almost asleep when a thought drifted across the distant horizon of his mind. It vanished as he tried to focus on it, but to his annoyance he found himself awake and alert, convinced it was something important. If only . . . What had he been thinking about just a moment ago?

He didn’t know.

Beside him, his wife stirred and murmured something in her sleep.

It was definitely important. Something he should have queried earlier. If only he could get back to that state of half awareness . . .

By the time he woke, the gray morning light was filtering round the shutter that covered the excuse for a window. His wife was sitting up beside him. She crossed her arms and lifted off her night tunic, shuddering with the cold as she did so. He paused to enjoy the view. Then, when the most interesting parts had vanished under the wrapping of her breast binding, he said, “Tell me again what Virana said about Branan.”

Chapter 45

The legate’s attempts to reassure his centurions at the morning briefing were overridden by the alarming fact of his presence. Usually he was based elsewhere and was only ever seen at the various camps under his command later in the day. He invited Accius to outline the plan for the day’s search, then stepped up again and emphasized the importance of not being provoked by the locals. He had spoken with their leaders, who had agreed to ask the people to stay calm. Since Ruso had never heard the locals so much as mention any leaders, he doubted that would have much effect. He listened with interest as the legate dodged the question everyone wanted answered—what would happen if the boy was not found?—and went on to announce that the curfew would remain in place tonight but that Samain celebrations would be permitted as long as the locals stayed on their own property after dark.

It must have been a difficult decision to make. There would be no celebration in Branan’s home, but if he was not found, the Samain gatherings elsewhere would provide the ideal breeding ground for trouble. Especially once the fear of meeting the dead in the dark had been overcome by beer and bravado. On the other hand, banning them would stoke more resentment: It would be tantamount to punishing the locals for having one of their children stolen by the army.

Ruso was glad he was only responsible for the life of one man at a time.

Some of the other officers paused to offer a polite “Sorry about your father” to Ruso before leaving with their comrades to relay the day’s orders to the men. He waited until they had gone before he made his own contribution.

When they heard what he had to say, the three officers who were still there looked as though they wished he had kept it to himself.

“Why didn’t you say this before, man?” demanded the legate, who had the sort of rolling, fruity voice that only authority and an expensive education could bestow.

“I only found out late last night, sir.” The thing that had floated over the horizon of his mind was his wife’s statement that Virana looked forward to Branan’s visits.

“So what you’re saying,” said Accius, “is that any man who happened to have been in the bar when the boy delivered the eggs could have learned his name and made the link between him and your wife?”

“The barmaid remembers mentioning family matters to him, sir.” It was hard to imagine a nine-year-old boy being interested in a wedding blessing, but that would not have stopped Virana from chattering about it.

“Any man at all?” echoed Fabius, dismayed.

The legate said, “Why didn’t we think of this earlier?”

Fabius looked at Ruso, who in turn looked at Accius and said, “We relied too much on speculation from the natives, sir.”

Accius said, “We’re already getting every man to account for his movements, sir.”

“I’ll talk to the commanders of the other units,” the legate said. “The witness might have been mistaken about the kidnapper’s outfit. I’ll also put the word out amongst our own people that any man behaving suspiciously is to be reported to his centurion. Tribune, you can coordinate the lists of names.”

A list of names was necessary and it was sensible, and Ruso knew it. He also knew he didn’t like the sound of it. Tilla had once been put on a list of suspects, and it had proved almost impossible to get her name off it until the Emperor himself had intervened to wipe it clean. Who was to say what constituted “suspicious” behavior? What if the accuser was simply settling an old score? Once you started along that route, there was no telling what betrayals and jealousies it would let loose—as several deeply unpopular emperors and their terrified subjects had discovered.

Accius was speaking to him.

“Sorry, sir?”

“Pay attention, Ruso. See what more you can get out of the bar staff.”