Tabula Rasa (39 page)
“North?” Tilla put a hand to her mouth. She remembered being taken away by strangers from another tribe. The thought of something like that happening to a child made her shudder. “Who went with the Medicus?”
The youth shrugged. “That’s all I know. I came as fast as I could. Thought I’d never get here. There’s patrols out.”
“You are very brave, coming all that way,” Virana told him. “Especially tonight.”
“And now you’ll be wanting a drink and some supper,” put in Ria, as if he had arrived specially to inconvenience her.
The youth grinned. “Thanks, missus. And the horse too.”
Virana pointed out that he would need a bed for the night as well, but the youth said he would be happy to sleep in the stable. Ria told Virana to bring food and went to rouse her husband to deal with the horse. When she was gone, Virana said, “Are you all right, mistress? You look very tired.”
“You should rest,” Albanus agreed. “There is nothing we can do tonight.”
Tilla stared at them both. “Rest?” she demanded. “My husband will be murdered by foreigners, and Branan will be taken up into the mountains and never seen again! How can I rest?”
Albanus gulped. “Are you quite sure?”
She subsided onto a bench. “No. Of course not. I am sorry.” She pressed her eyelids with her fingertips to relieve the tiredness.
“Why has the tribune got to look at Mallius?” asked Virana.
“I don’t know.” Tilla opened her eyes and blinked the dryness away. “Don’t tell anyone.”
“Has he done something bad?”
“I am not even sure who he is,” she admitted.
“Oh, you know!” Virana insisted. “The one who used to make his hair lighter. The one who hurt his wrist. He likes wine and not beer.”
None of those things was a reason for the tribune to take an interest in him.
“You must have seen him,” Virana continued. “He was one of the ones who went to search the farm and they upset everybody looking for Candidus, and then people thought one of them might have stolen Branan and then they didn’t.”
The youth had gone to see to the horse, Virana was in the kitchen fetching his food, and Tilla was alone with Albanus in the bar. He looked as downcast as she felt. She tried to think of something hopeful to say but could not. Finally he said, “Your husband is a good man.”
“I know,” she said, ashamed of wishing that sometimes he would be a little less good and a little more safe. She had no idea how she would sleep tonight after hearing Susanna’s message. She must try to think about something else. “We should look at this Mallius ourselves,” she said. “He might know what happened to Candidus.”
Albanus interlaced his fingers around his wine cup. “It is kind of you to suggest it, but is he not safely inside a barracks somewhere?”
“I mean it,” she insisted. “Before the tribune gets the message in the morning and has a chance to cover anything up.”
Albanus stared into the dregs of his wine. “Even if we are able to speak with him, we have no power to investigate, and he has no incentive to tell us anything.”
It was true. Whoever had caused Candidus’s disappearance must have lied repeatedly since then: Why would he stop now? They did not even know what they were accusing him of. They could hardly stand in front of the man like angry parents, demanding, “Is there something you would like to tell us?”
They could not speak to him at all if he was on one side of a military wall tonight and they were on the other. “We have Candidus’s kit,” she said, thinking aloud. “Are you about the same size?”
Albanus shook his head. “Much of what is here used to be mine,” he admitted, “but I’m afraid nobody is likely to mistake me for a legionary with no armor or belt or weapons. And there is the matter of the password.”
The ladder creaked as Tilla got to her feet. “I am going outside to make an offering to the goddess,” she told him. “Perhaps she will help.”
She bought three perfect white eggs from Ria, who was busy making sure all the slops were cleared out of the kitchen and the hearth fire was raked. Even in town it was wise to follow the Samain customs.
The yard was almost dark but she felt oddly safe kneeling under the apple tree, hearing the horse shifting about in the stable and surrounded by the high fence with the gate barred against thieves. The gods were listening tonight, she was sure of it. They had already answered one prayer, even if it was not in the way that she had wanted. She had asked to see her family; she had been shown Aemilia.
Scraping a little hole between the roots of the tree, she said the new prayer and then poured out the contents of the eggs one by one. As the glistening liquid sank away into the earth, the idea came to her.
Back in the privacy of the storeroom, with the youth gulping down a late supper in the bar, Albanus was not impressed with what he heard. It was not, he felt, an approach that her husband would recommend.
“Perhaps not,” Tilla agreed. “But my husband is not here. Do you want the man who killed Candidus to be punished or not?”
Albanus shifted his position on the lid of the barrel. “That apparently simple question is rather difficult to answer,” he said. “You see, those are not valid alternatives.” He raised and lowered his hands in parallel, as if he were shaping the argument he was about to present to her. “The premise behind your question is that my misgivings about your plan indicate an unwillingness to pursue the disappearance of my nephew. Whereas what I am questioning is—”
“If you have a better plan, I will be glad to hear it.”
The hands dropped. “No.”
“So,” she continued, wondering if Albanus’s nitpicking was one of the reasons Grata had called off their betrothal, “we know that we cannot make this man confess anything. We know we may never find out the truth. But if this works and he is guilty, the memory of tonight will haunt his waking fears and punish him in his nightmares. If he is innocent, we will all go home to bed and it will be just another strange story of Samain.”
Albanus, as she expected, raised objections, but he could come up with nothing better.
“So,” she said, “will you help me or not?”
Getting past the curfew was simple enough: All Tilla had to do was to wait until the patrol had passed the bar and count very slowly to twenty. The soldiers were not her main concern tonight. She pulled the hood forward to hide her hair and slunk down the deserted street in the moonlight, clutching her bag against her chest and with her fist closed around the little pouch of snakeskin she had hung around her neck for protection. She did not want to be noticed, and thus have to risk replying to a greeting. This was not, as far as she knew, one of the places where those who had left this world could pass back into it. But everyone knew about the dead pretending to befriend the living, and few of the stories ended well. That was why, when she offered up her regular Samain prayer for a sight of her family, she had always added, “And let us know each other.” Then tonight the goddess had shown her Aemilia, which was not what she had wanted at all.
She tried to tread lightly, but as she passed the gloom of a doorway a burst of ferocious barking spurred her to run, hugging the bag tighter to stop the bottles clinking.
It was a relief to reach the solid gates of the fort. The gods were kind: One of the guards from earlier was still on duty and it was surprisingly easy to get in, even at this hour and without the password. With the bag of medicines, nobody questioned her story that she had been asked to visit a patient.
She understood why when she finally found herself in the comfortable warmth of Fabius’s kitchen. She did not need her carefully prepared excuse for a private word with the kitchen maid: Even in the dim lamplight she took one look and simply told the cook she needed to inspect the girl’s injuries. When she saw the bruises hidden beneath the drab tunic, she wanted to get hold of Fabius’s vine stick and beat him with it until he looked even worse than his victim. Instead all she could do was offer salve and sympathy as the girl gave a broken account of what had happened. Now she understood why Daminius had hinted that he would be leaving.
“Where can I find him tonight?”
The girl blinked at her through eyes swollen with crying. “I am not allowed to go near him. I should not speak or even think of him.”
“Just tell me where he might be,” said Tilla. “I think he can help me find out who stole the boy.”
“But he knows nothing! Why does nobody believe him? He was with me!”
Tilla put her hand over the girl’s. “I believe you both,” she said, “but I need to talk to him. Someone has come who will help us, and if this works, it could make things better for him.”
And if it didn’t, he would be in worse trouble. All of which made her feel doubly anxious as she strode down the paved street in the moonlight, carrying her bag at her side and following the girl’s directions to the black hulk of the barrack block.
The last door on the left. Do not look nervous. Act as if knocking on the doors of soldiers’ quarters at night is a perfectly respectable thing for a married woman to do. If it goes wrong, you can always scream.
She did not get as far as the doors, because the steady tramp of boots and the jingle of metal strap ends on a military belt grew louder and a voice said, “Are you lost, miss? That’s the barracks.”
Do not sound anxious. Or friendly.
“I need to speak with Optio Daminius.” The effort of holding her voice down from a squeak made it oddly gruff, as if she were trying to talk like a man.
Whoever this was let out a long breath. There was a scrape of gravel as his feet shifted. She mouthed a silent prayer to Christos and any other god that might be listening and lifted her bag, hoping the man could see what it was in the stark light. “I am the wife of your medicus. I need to ask Daminius for an escort to visit a patient.”
He said, “Is it true the boy’s been taken to Coria, miss?”
“It is,” she said, not wanting to share the bad news about the fur traders. “My husband has gone to look for him.”
“That’s good,” he said, probably wondering whether her absent husband knew what she was up to. “Wait there, miss.”
Moments later she overheard, “You got Daminius there, mate? Tell him it’s his lucky night.”
The moon had turned the world into silver with inky shadows. Ruso could make out the road stretching ahead, but the only things he could confidently identify in front of him were the pale peaks of the mare’s ears. On either side, beyond the skeletons of trees, orange pinpoints of Samain bonfires appeared and vanished again as he passed the hills.
With luck, the fur traders would have stopped for the night. He would still be gaining on them even though he needed to let his tired mount slow to a walk for a while. He peered at the verges, searching for the next milestone and hoping he had not missed it. In this light it might be hard to tell the Three Oaks from any other building.
A couple of hundred paces farther on, he urged the mare back into a trot, but only for a few strides. He knew what to expect from this horse now, and this wasn’t it. He tried again. The mare responded, but the regular lurch was still there, and he saw her head dip each time the offside front leg went forward.
Ruso swore under his breath.
He was in the dark, miles from anywhere, on a lone hunt for men who killed for a living, and now he had a lame horse.
There was nothing for it but to get down and walk. Catching himself thinking that at least it wasn’t raining—gods above, he was starting to think like a Briton—he loosened the girth and ran one hand down the mare’s nearside leg, but he could neither see in the dark nor feel through the muck of the road. He wiped his fingers in the mare’s mane and began to lead her up the road.
He need not have worried about seeing the Three Oaks: If he had not spotted the sparks rising into the sky from the bonfire, he would have heard the wailing pipes and the shouts of people cheering on the dancers. Of course. They would be celebrating Samain here too, rejoicing in being alive as they frightened each other with stories about the dead walking.
The Three Oaks was set well back from the road. Its land was surrounded by a ditch, with a bank of earth on the far side and a fence on top. The gates were shut and nobody seemed to be about, so he scrambled across the ditch. Through a gap in the fence, he could see a crowd circling the flames more or less in time to the music, yelling one of those British chants that he never associated with anything good. Beyond the fire, leaning against the side of the building, was a knot of men with dark shapes over their shoulders that could be animal skins.
The racket the dog made at his arrival must have been heard, but it was a while before anyone made a response. He had to bang on the gate three times before a voice cried out in British, wanting to know who was there.
“I am a stranger in need of water and rest!” he replied in the same tongue, hoping his grasp of the traditional request for hospitality might earn him some native respect. “My horse went lame.”
In response he heard only the chanting and the music. Then it struck him that he had chosen the worst possible way to approach a lone gate slave on the one night of the year when the Britons’ heads were full of tales about dangerous strangers prowling around after dark. It was just as well he had not announced that he was looking for a boy. Switching to Latin, he shouted, “Medical Officer Gaius Petreius Ruso, Twentieth Valeria Victrix! Open up!”