Terra Incognita: A Novel of the Roman Empire (35 page)

“Like a man in a helmet in the dark. I got rid of him.”

“Did he leave a message?”

“No.”

“There is an officer I know,” she confessed. “A medicus. It might have been him.”

“It was very late.” Ness was sounding defensive now.

“He is sometimes delayed by his patients.”

“I am not here to let men in and out late at night. What sort of a house do you all think this is?”

Tilla grinned, drained her milk, and made her way out of the back door into the gray of a drizzly morning.

The yards of the house and the brewery were linked by a tall gate that was not locked. Pushing it open, she entered the brewery yard and paused to marvel at how much her uncle’s business had expanded in just three years. Instead of a few sacks of homegrown barley and a collection of buckets and fat-bellied cauldrons beside the hearth, he now had a whole building devoted to the production of beer. Not only that, but at the far end of the yard, well away from the main building, the rain was dripping off the thatch of a little square house that had a narrow blackened tunnel disappearing under one wall. The soldiers must be drinking so much beer that her uncle had built a special hot floor to dry the sprouted barley.

A surly-faced boy emerged from the back door of the brewery with a bucket in each hand. He stared at Tilla for a moment, then dunked the buckets into the water trough. When he lifted them out, the trickle of water of which she had been vaguely aware became louder. She looked on in amazement as she realized that the sound came from a metal spout over the trough. Clear water was trickling out of the spout and refilling the trough. When the boy had carried the buckets back in, she went across to examine what she had seen and found another pipe leading away from the trough in the direction of the house latrine. She thought of the endless trips down to the stream on days when her mother told her to go and help Ness. The aching shoulders on the long climb back up to the house. The fingers numb with cold. The effort not to tip the buckets lest she should waste the water and have to traipse back down and fetch more. Now, her uncle’s servants did not even have to leave the house. The hot floor was nothing compared to this. Catavignus had his own water pipe in the yard and a latrine that cleaned itself.

“Niece!” exclaimed a voice from the back door of the brewery. “Come in out of the wet.”

She made her way across the damp paving stones and into the gloom. The surly boy was pouring the water into a hissing cauldron set over a charcoal fire. Her uncle did not introduce them.

The surroundings had changed, but the smell of the boiling mash was still the same. The smoke and steam made her cough as Catavignus led her down through the building past stacks of barrels and grain sacks. A gnarled old man who looked as though he had worked there for centuries paused from hooking down a bunch of dried flowers from the rafters when Catavignus yelled in his ear, “My niece, back from a long journey!”

The man nodded and grinned at Tilla, exposing both of his teeth.

“We just add the meadowsweet for the flavor these days,” explained Catavignus, indicating the brittle bunches of flowers above her. “Demand is so high that everything is drunk before we need to think about preservation.” He pushed open a side door. “We can talk in my office.”

The only light slid in on a cold draft from a window that was open onto the wet street.
Office,
Tilla observed, was a grand name for a cramped storeroom with a desk that looked suspiciously like a military castoff under the window. She seated herself on the proffered stool and pointed to a glossy orange inkwell sporting a feather quill.

“Have you learned to read and write, Uncle?”

The crease between her uncle’s brows deepened. “Of course. But I rarely find the time. I have a man who comes in to deal with that sort of thing.”

“You are doing very well,” she observed. “You have . . .” she counted on her fingers. “Ness, a boy, the old man, a man who does the writing you are too busy for, the woman and her husband up at the old house—”

“You have been to the old house?”

“Yesterday. Six servants, two houses, and a brewery with a hot floor and a water pipe!”

“The gods have been kind to me.” The bow of acknowledgment was modest. “Coria is a good place to do business. I have formed a guild of caterers. Things are moving forward.”

Forward.
The word he had used in all those shouting matches with her father.
You must move forward. Seize the opportunity. Rome is the future.
As if the wisdom of the ancestors were of no value. Now, with Da gone, there was nobody to disagree with him.

She said, “I see you are trying to build a grand Roman house in a place that will never succeed.”

For a moment he hesitated, then his face split into a warm smile that reminded her painfully of her father. “You have your da’s directness,” he said. “He would be proud.”

Tilla wondered if that were true.

“If only we had known you were alive! But there was no ransom demand. We thought you were lost in the fire. Then last year we heard a rumor that you had been seen in the southern plains. I went down there to look for you. They told me a girl with your name had gone back to Deva to live with a soldier.”

The words hung in the air, innocent enough, but clad in the armor of old arguments.

“I said nothing to your cousin,” he added. “In case the rumors were not true.”

She said, “They were true.”

He nodded. “We all have to make changes, child. Your father was a fine man, but he was not always right about everything.”

“The man I lived with is not a proper soldier,” she insisted, conscious of evading the gaze that reminded her of Da. “Not really. He is a healer.”

“I see.”

“The family would have learned to like him.” Perhaps. Or perhaps they would have refused to have anything to do with her, just as Rianorix’s family had shunned Veldicca when she had rejected their chosen blacksmith and set up home with a soldier who had more patience with his bees than his woman.

Catavignus said, “Is this healer traveling with the Twentieth Legion?”

“Medicus Gaius Petreius Ruso.”

Her uncle nodded approval. “I have met him. A good man. An officer. You have done well.”

“Do you think so?”

“Your cousin will be jealous.”

“I am not his wife,” she pointed out. “I am his slave.”

“His slave?” Catavignus frowned. “Well. We shall have to do something about that.”

“We?”

“From now on, daughter of Lugh, we must look after each other. As family. You, me, Aemilia—and in time, if the gods are willing, your officer.”

“Aemilia is not well,” said Tilla, eager to change the subject.

Her uncle nodded. “She needs some womanly advice.”

“Yesterday I advised her to get out of bed, wash herself, and eat properly. Today I shall advise her to go for a walk.”

“Good. Did she tell you why she is behaving in this way?”

“Not exactly,” said Tilla, not sure what Catavignus was supposed to know.

“She entangled herself with a very unsuitable young man. It has ended badly, as I knew it would. I told her at the time that she could do better, but what do I know? I am only her father. It is not easy for a man to raise a daughter on his own.”

Tilla bit back the observation that he hadn’t done it on his own: What about the succession of honorary aunties? The fat one with the wart. The one with the slit up one side of her tunic that showed her thigh. The one who was always cleaning and who liked to grab passing children and wipe dirt off their faces with the cloth she had just spat on. None had stayed long, but there had been plenty of them. And now he had Ness to limp around after them both.

He was still talking. “We must make the most of you while we have you,” he said. “They tell me your medicus will be moving on in a few days.”

Tilla looked her uncle in the eye. “He will be moving on,” she agreed. “I may go with him. Or I may not.”

54

R
USO THREW HIS
blanket aside and concluded that floors these days were harder than they used to be. “I’ll get some men to clean things up in here after breakfast,” he said. “They’ve had plenty of practice now that I’ve had them scrub up the wards.”

Thessalus reached stiff arms outside his bedding, stretched them toward the rafters, and sucked in a sharp breath. “Gambax kept promising me he’d get them to clean up, but he never—” He stopped. “Did I really hear you say last night that Rianorix didn’t do it?”

“I said I’ve been told he didn’t. It’s not the same thing.”

“But who else could it be?”

“That’s the problem. Metellus is determined to have a culprit to present to the governor, and at the moment, guilty or not, Rianorix is his easiest option.”

Thessalus dangled one arm over the edge of the couch and groped for his cup of water. “If he’s really innocent, and we can prove it, I could get out of here. It’s not much fun sitting here in the dark thinking up new lies to tell you. Especially when you take away my poppy tears.”

Ruso leaned across to put the water in his hand, and gave him another dose of poppy. “Sorry about that.”

“So who told you he was innocent?”

It was clear that Thessalus had not heard Ruso’s final observation last night about his own strained relationship with Tilla and Rianorix. “It was an unreliable source.”

“But we must follow it up!”

“I’ve tried.”

Thessalus put the water down and tried to pull himself up to a sitting position. “Tell me everything. There must be something else we can try.”

“We?”

“We can’t see an innocent man executed!”

Curled up together like kittens.
“Are we talking about you or Rianorix?”

“Either of us. Try harder. Please. I’m not brave, Ruso. I want to end my life in Veldicca’s house, drifting away on the poppy tears. I don’t want to be executed. I’m only doing this because I have to.”

“I could save you from that right now by telling the truth about you.”

“I’m a patient. You would be breaking a confidence.”

“What confidence? You’re in the army.” Ruso sighed and folded up his blanket. Then he shifted the pile of scrolls out of the chair and told Thessalus everything he knew about the murder of Felix the trumpeter.

When he had finished, Thessalus said, “So. I’m asking you to help me save the man who’s sleeping with your girl.”

“A man who may well be guilty anyway.”

“Please, Ruso.”

Ruso put his blanket under one arm and pointlessly tucked in a stray corner. “The more I think about this,” he said, “the less I like it. If you take another man’s punishment, what about the others? What if he tells his friends and they all get the idea it’s all right to butcher anyone who’s offended them?”

“I don’t think he’ll go around boasting about it. Anyway, I’m not responsible for the peace of the province, Ruso, and neither are you. I’m responsible for my family. And I’d feel a lot easier in my mind if I knew you’d help me.”

“I’m not promising to lie to the prefect.”

Thessalus smiled. “I’ve already done it. It’s not too difficult.”

Ruso scratched one ear. “I’m sorry about the ease of your mind,” he said, “But all I’m going to promise is that I’ll keep trying to find out what happened. Then I’ll decide what I’m going to do about it.”

“What if the governor gets here before you find out?”

“I don’t know,” said Ruso, heading for the door and feeling like a coward. “I can’t talk about it now. I’ve got to go to work.”

55

R
USO HAD BARELY
got past “Days to Governor’s Visit II” and established that Valens was still asleep in his bed when three men attempted to crowd into the treatment room at once.

First in was an overweight cavalryman with fuzzy splashes of blood seeping into the weave of his damp blue tunic who declared, “It’s not me, it’s him.”

“Him” was a staggering comrade with a rag clutched against his arm. He too had been out in the rain and had blood on his clothing. It was also smeared on his face, on his fingers, and down one leg.

“Sit him down,” ordered Ruso, turning to the third member of the trio, a flush-faced Ingenuus. “What have we got?”

“Sword cut, sir. Accident.” Ingenuus glared at the friend. “I’ve already offered to help.”

“He needs a doctor,” insisted the bulky one. “Are you a doctor?”

Ingenuus squared his shoulders. “I’m a fully trained bandager!”

“Well, when the doctor’s finished, you can bandage it, can’t you?”

Ruso looked the man in the eye. “Thank you for bringing him in. Go and wait outside.”

“But I’m his mate!”

“We’ll call you when he’s ready.”

The man eyed him for a moment as if considering defiance, then appeared to think better of it and instead crouched beside his injured comrade. “You’ll be all right,” he assured him. “This one’s a proper doctor. From the legions. He does this stuff all the time. That’s nothing more than a scratch to him.”