Tabula Rasa (9 page)

“We won’t let on!”

“But I made an oath—”

He couldn’t say the rest because Matto jumped on him. His knee smashed against hard rock and cold water rushed up his nose and into his throat. Then there were fingers jammed up his nostrils, wrenching his head back and pulling his mouth out into the air. He managed to stop coughing long enough to splutter, “Lemme go!”

“Who saw it?”

“Let go!”

“Tell us who saw it.”

“You got to swear not to tell! Ow!”

“Who was it?”

Aedic’s nose was being torn off his face. The pain was unbearable. He cast about inside his mind for the name of somebody no one saw very often. “Swear!”

Matto was shouting, “I swear!”

“Hope to die?”

“May the sky fall on me!”

Aedic gasped, feeling the pain ease as he named a boy who lived with a family on the other side of the wall. It wouldn’t matter. Da said they wouldn’t be seeing much of anybody over there from now on because the army were going to make everyone pay to go through special gates to get across, and they would search all the vehicles, so nobody would bother. He repeated the name, running his fingers gently across his face to check that his nose was still attached. “He saw it.”

“Saw what?” Matto pushed him away. “What did he see?”

They were all quiet now, wanting more. Aedic could hardly believe he had started this. The body was real now, even if it hadn’t been before.

He got up very slowly. He rubbed his nose again, sniffed, and spat. “He was hiding up there one night,” he said. “It was nearly dark and the patrol had gone past, and he saw a man carry a dead body up the hill and drop it in the middle of the wall. Then the man covered it up with stones and the next day the soldiers came and carried on building over the top of it.”

“What man? Who was it? What did he look like?”

“He didn’t say,” he said, thinking fast. “He said if he tells, the man’ll come and get him too.”

Matto scowled, as if he wasn’t sure whether to believe it.

One of the smaller boys said, “Will the man come and get us too now?”

“Don’t be stupid,” put in someone else. “We don’t know who he is.”

“We don’t know anything,” added somebody else.

“That’s why you mustn’t tell anyone about the body,” Aedic reminded them. “If you tell, he’ll know that you know.”

Would they keep their word? Or would they go chasing after the boy he had named next time they saw him, wanting to know whether it was really true about the dead body inside the Great Wall? That was what Aedic would have done.

“Hah!” Matto cried. “You’re in more trouble now. You broke an oath. You’ll die a horrible death and crows will eat your eyes and worms will go up your nose.”

“Back to you!” Aedic told him, but before it could all start again the unbrother slipped and landed in the water. The dead body was forgotten in the race to pull him out. After that, Aedic had a new problem: how to explain to Petta why the unbrother’s clothes weren’t wet and dirty but the rest of him was.

Chapter 10

Ruso’s entry to the big camp above the quarry was delayed by a troop of cavalry streaming out of the north gate toward the road. Then a full century of infantry marched past him. He knew better than to ask the guards where they were going. There were easier ways to find out.

He picked his way past banners and laundry that fluttered bravely above mud that wouldn’t dry out until next April, and arrived at the medical tent.

The landslide was yesterday’s news. The morning queue was buzzing with tales of a man from the Twentieth who had been kidnapped by the natives. Opinions differed on how it had happened—he had been collecting firewood, he had gone to a farm to buy a dog, or retrieve stolen property, or ask directions, or had been lured with promises of a woman—but one way or another, all were agreed that the unlucky legionary had been held captive overnight and only rescued at dawn when a passing road patrol heard his calls for help.

Everyone knew what those barbarians would get up to if they had the chance. Whatever had been done to him was so gruesome that it was being kept secret. The men Ruso had seen were going out to deal with the culprits.

“Do we know who it is?” Ruso asked, hoping it wasn’t Candidus.

The queue consulted itself for a few minutes before agreeing that no name had been mentioned, although, come to think of it, wasn’t there a clerk who had gone missing? Nobody could remember what he was called, but several were certain he was the victim. “They could have had him for days, then,” observed one glum soul.

“Poor sod.”

“Don’t bear thinking about.” There was a general grunt of agreement, and then silence while the queue thought about it anyway.

“We’ll find out more before long,” Ruso told them. “Until then, forget it. This sort of attack is designed to rattle us. Don’t give them the satisfaction.”

There was a dutiful chorus of “Yes, sir.”

For the next hour Ruso forced himself to follow his own advice and concentrate on minor injuries and ailments. The victim had been rescued. The hospital staff would send word from the fort if he was needed.

As soon as he had prescribed the last stomach pill and lanced an abscess for an ungrateful carpenter, he hurried across to the gates in search of the watch captain.

“It’s not your missing clerk, sir. I have it from a reliable source that he’s a plumber.” Perhaps sensing his anxiety, the man added, “I can show you where your man’s supposed to be, if you like.”

Together they picked their way down between the rows, past a sign that read, NO FIRES IN TENTS, because apparently a man intelligent enough to read might still be cold enough to suffocate himself or burn his tent down. In places the duckboards were only marginally less slippery than the mud beneath them. Someone unacquainted with the British climate had thought it would be a good idea to site a camp across the line of a stream, and despite Pertinax’s past efforts to see that the trackways were kept clear and the latrines under control, large areas that had started out as a gently sloping field in the spring had been reduced to stinking quagmire. In other circumstances Ruso would have complained about the effect of the conditions on the men’s health, but there was no point: Any other rain-sodden field would be almost as bad in a few days, and they were going home soon.

The shadowy interior of Tent V, Row VII contained a lone human form under a blanket: head at one end, feet—one sporting a fat linen bandage—poking out from the other. Beside him, bedding was stacked on top of a large wooden box that was in turn resting on two logs above the damp. A couple of shields in leather cases were propped against the upright at the far end. A limp and mildewed straw sun hat dangled from the ridgepole.

“Shift yourself, sunshine,” said the watch captain, applying a boot to the sleeper. “Got an officer here looking for a man called Candidus.”

The sleeper blinked, then scrambled hastily out of bed and attempted a salute. “I’m recuperating, sir,” he explained. “Doctor’s orders. Burned foot.” There was a moment of mutual recognition. “You remember me, sir. I trod in a bucket of lime.”

“I do,” agreed Ruso, remembering the sufferer’s foot better than his face. “How is it?”

“Not too bad, sir, thanks. I can manage on crutches. Or I could, if it wasn’t for—” He gestured toward the treacherous pathway outside the tent.

“Candidus,” the watch captain repeated. “Where is he?”

“Haven’t seen him, sir.”

“Not ever,” suggested the watch captain, “or just not lately?”

The man scratched his head, as if this were too subtle a question for one who had only just woken up.

“He arrived several days ago,” Ruso prompted. “He was assigned to this tent.”

“Ah,” said the man, apparently enlightened. “Him.” He pointed toward a leather bag resting on a shield by the goatskin wall that separated indoors from outdoors. On top of the bag sat a helmet speckled with rust. Next to it, shoved halfway out under the flap and onto the grass, lay an untidy roll of bedding. “That’s his kit, sir.”

Ruso leaned across and lifted the equipment out to where he could examine it. “Did you see him arrive?”

The man was looking apprehensive. “I’ve never seen him, sir. He turned up while I was in the sick bay.”

Ruso understood the soldier’s nervousness when he examined the contents of the bag: some musty undergarments, a crumpled tunic, three odd socks with holes in them, and a pen with a broken nib. He turned it upside down over the empty bed and shook it. Two dice tumbled out. He rolled them around on his palm for a moment, then threw everything back in.

An empty waterskin was tied to the strap on the shield cover. The shield itself turned out to have
CANDCSILXXVV
painted in uneven white letters at the base, covering the name of a previous owner.
Candidus in the century of Silvanus, Twentieth Legion Valeria Victrix
. He definitely had the right man. Or rather, he didn’t have him, and he had no idea who did.

Eyeing the meager collection of possessions, he said, “Where’s the rest?”

The man opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

“Food pan, cup, spoon?” Ruso prompted. “Weapons, armor?” Without the owner, he had no way of knowing what else was missing.

The man swallowed. Petty theft caused such disruption amongst men who had to live closely together that punishments ranged from flogging to dismissal. Small wonder, then, that he looked relieved when Ruso said, “If somebody else is looking after them for him, tell us now. I don’t want to waste time searching the tent.”

A scrabble in the box and the unraveling of bedrolls produced a bronze cooking pan with a folding handle, another pen in better condition, and a pottery inkwell. As Ruso expected, cand had been scraped or burned into each item by a soldier who was keen to guard against this very eventuality. These were followed by two tunics, two pairs of socks, and a neckerchief, none of which were labeled but would have been easily identified by their owner.

The man seemed confident that no spoon or eating implements of any kind had been removed for alleged safekeeping, nor had any weapons or armor. Since Candidus had taken the precaution of marking everything else, Ruso assumed he was telling the truth and that none had been found when the tentmates raided the absent newcomer’s belongings.

“Money?” he suggested, without much hope.

“No, sir,” said the man, knowing as well as he did that any coins that had vanished into someone else’s purse would be safely anonymous.

Ruso gathered up what he had managed to salvage of Candidus’s possessions. “If he turns up, tell him his kit is up at the fort hospital. Meanwhile I need to talk to anyone who might have seen him.”

When Ruso confirmed that he had no more questions, the watch captain eyed the invalid. “Aren’t you on cooking duty?”

“I was just about to start, sir.”

Outside, the watch captain shook his head. “Looks like your man’s deserted, sir.”

“In his armor?”

“You’d be surprised, sir. He’d look less suspicious that way. And he could always sell it later.”

Ruso sighed. “I promised his uncle I’d keep an eye on him.”

“I wouldn’t worry, sir,” the watch captain assured him cheerily. “A lot of the lone wanderers come back. It’s no fun out there on your own with the natives, as our plumber’s just found out.”

“What happens to the ones who don’t come back?”

The watch captain had no more idea than anyone else. “I’ll let you know straightaway when he turns up, sir.”

“In the meantime if you can find anyone who’s seen him—anyone at all—I want to talk to them.”

Ruso lashed Candidus’s possessions together, slung them over his shoulder, and squelched his way back toward the gates. Candidus’s new accommodation was a definite step down from the permanent quarters over at Magnis. Perhaps the tent—or its occupants—had frightened him off. He had not seemed the toughest of individuals, and Albanus had described him as not only sensitive but—and this was more believable—“rather easily led.” But where, in this land of wide rolling hills, wooded valleys, native huts, and building sites, could anyone have led him? And what if he had not been led but forced?

A stronger-than-usual smell of burning hung in the air as he made his way back to the comparative comfort of the fort. Glancing around, he saw thick columns of black smoke billowing up into the clouds on the western skyline. Even at this distance, he could make out glimmers of orange flame inside them. A cluster of four or five things that shouldn’t be burning were fiercely ablaze, and it was not difficult to guess what they were. The locals who had attacked the plumber would be long gone, but the stink of their homes going up in smoke would linger in the nostrils for days. It would be a lesson. Or another wrong to feel aggrieved about, depending on which side of the divide you were born. He could understand why Senecio, having lost one son and with another clearly spoiling for a fight, was doing his best to prevent any repeat of the vicious battles that had taken place around this border only a few seasons ago. It was a pity more of his countrymen did not feel the same way.

A squad of legionaries carrying shovels and picks were tramping past him. Their salutes were exemplary, but their gazes lingered a little too long. He glanced down at himself. Was there something unusual about him? Tunic caught up in his belt? Dirt on his nose? Something stuck in his hair? Then he realized. They were enjoying the sight of an officer carrying his own kit.