Terra Incognita: A Novel of the Roman Empire (4 page)

Tilla got to her feet and tossed the damp towels into the corner. Behind the window, lightning flashed and vanished. Giving the bed a wide berth, she went across and unlatched the shutters. As she pushed them open, a crash of thunder made her flinch. She stretched one arm out between the window bars, flexing the stiff fingers of her right hand into the chilly air. The first drops of rain struck cold on her skin.

She would go and invite them in. The medicus, whose duty it was to help people, would not be able to turn them out in the storm. It would be a good use of the money. And it would serve him right.

“Close the window, will you?”

She fastened the shutters as ordered. Then, ignoring his “Where are you going dressed like that?” she snatched up her shawl and hurried out of the room.

3

B
Y THE TIME
Tilla had found the yard door and struggled with the latch, the storm was overhead. Rain was beating on the roofs and spluttering in the drains. No one else was about. Staff, guests, and slaves would be huddled in their rooms, praying for the storm to pass safely over them. From the shelter of the doorway she squinted out into the blustery dark, trying to distinguish the shapes of the vehicles lined up along the far side.

“Lydia?”

Another flash of lightning captured pale streaks of rain in mid fall and veiled everything beyond them. She had barely counted five paces when she had to clap her hands over her ears. She shook her head like a dog as the thunder drilled through her skull.

When it was over she shouted, “Lydia! Are you out here?”

There was no answer.

The spatter of raindrops on tarpaulin told her she was nearing the vehicles. She ducked around to shelter between the first hulk and the wall, and called in Latin, “Are you there? Lydia? Don’t be afraid. Is the midwife. Come indoors with me.”

Still no reply. She moved on, calling at the second shape and then waiting for more thunder to die away before trying the third. It seemed smaller, more like the cart her patient had hired, but in the dark it was difficult to tell. Whatever it was, no one was replying from inside. There was nobody else out here.

Tilla shivered. Her wet scalp felt as though it was shrinking in the cold. She pulled the shawl over her head and told herself the woman must be safe indoors with the baby. She had worried for nothing. Surely not even the most money grabbing of innkeepers would turn away a newly delivered mother in a storm. Only her guilt-ridden midwife was alone in the dark, getting wet. Unless, of course, the driver had not brought the cart into the yard at all. Lydia could be anywhere among the houses huddling around the army’s camp.

Wrinkling her nose at the stench of flooded drains, Tilla turned to splash back across the courtyard and stubbed her toe. Her feet were so cold that the pain took a couple of paces to register. When it did, it reached her mind at the same time as the thought that there was still one thing she could do to help the mother and baby.

Raising her hands to the gods roaring in the sky, she cried in the language they had given to her people, “Great Taranis, god of the thunder, come to visit us this night! I am your servant, here to greet you!”

The rain lashed at her face. She stood with her arms stretched out, trying not to shiver. Perhaps she had said the wrong things. Prayer was a difficult business at the best of times, and even harder when the worshipper was growing numb with cold. “Listen to me, great god of thunder!” she shouted into the rain. “I have no gift today, but I will make one if you keep safe the woman Lydia and the—”

She was silenced by a white flash that left her blinking, staring, wiping the water out of her eyes, unable to take in what she had just seen. Summoning her courage, she peered into the darkness and called, “Who is there? Speak to me!”

Something brushed against her. She shrank away, lost her footing, and landed with a splash. She lay with her hands over her ears as another crash of thunder buffeted the yard.

When the thunder god’s voice rolled away, she scrambled to her feet. Someone was calling out. It was not the strange creature she had seen in the lightning. It was a recognizable voice, speaking in Latin, and definitely not heavenly.

“Tilla, where the hell are you? What are you doing?”

She turned toward the medicus. “I am looking for someone who is not here!”

She heard the splash of approaching footsteps. She felt herself seized and lifted and pressed against his warmth as he carried her back toward the safety of the doorway.

He said, “Who were you talking to?”

Tilla closed her eyes, picturing the creature who had the form and face of a young man but growing from his head there had definitely been . . . “You will not believe me,” she said.

They both lurched sideways as the medicus kicked the door open. “Try me.”

She saw again the angles of the antlers in the harsh light.
Antlers.
The sign of Cernunnos, king of the beasts. But she had seen the hand on the wheel of the cart. . . . The wheel was the sign of Taranis, ruler of the thunder. She did not know whom her prayer had conjured in the yard. But she knew what. As the medicus stumped up the stairs, she whispered, “It is a powerful god.”

C
ENTURION
A
UDAX OF
the Tenth Batavians had stumbled over
nasty things in back alleys before, but none quite like this. He took a step
backward, unable to believe what he was looking at. Then, glancing around to see
if anyone else was watching, he unfurled his cloak and bent to drape it over what
remained of Felix the trumpeter.

The only sign of life in the street was the huddled figure of a woman making
an early start out of town with a bundle on her back. A swelling chorus of birdsong
was heralding a clear dawn. The rest of Coria was either still in bed or
yawning over its breakfast.

Audax rapped on the door of the butcher’s shop. “Go over to the fort,” he ordered
the bleary-eyed slave who finally responded to his knocking. “Tell them
Audax needs Officer Metellus down here right away. And tell him I said to come
alone.”

He tramped back through the stink of the alley and crouched beside the
body, pulling out a fold in the cloak to hide another inch of pale leg. It was
pointless, but until Metellus turned up he did not know what else he
could do.

It was a while before he noticed the drawing. Scratched in charcoal on the
plastered wall above Felix’s body was a crude sketch of a man. Audax
scowled. Whoever had done it wasn’t much of an artist. He supposed those
things that looked like two trees sprouting from the man’s head were meant to
be antlers. It was not a good picture, but that didn’t matter. It didn’t have to be
a good picture to make a great deal of mischief.

4

L
AST NIGHT’S STORM
seemed to have washed the sky clean but already a stiff breeze was blowing fresh clouds in from the west. Beneath them, a cavalry outrider had stationed himself in a dramatic pose on the top of a distant hill from whence he could see not only the column but also the approach of any potential marauders. Ruso, whose horse was ambling along as if it were asleep, wished he could join him. Instead he was expected to keep pace with infantry. The goods convoy the infantry was escorting on this last-but-one stage of their journey included a wagon carrying lead for replumbing Ulucium’s leaky latrines, so the pace of the column was excruciatingly slow.

Ruso rubbed at an itch on his elbow, muttered, “Pick your feet up, will you?” to the horse, and urged it into a trot. As he passed up the hill along the column he scanned the glum faces of the Twentieth. The prospect of drying out in Coria this evening seemed to offer little cheer. It occurred to him, not for the first time, that the man who invented a tent that could fend off rising as well as falling water would have a statue erected in his honor in every army camp in the empire.

Finally spotting the soldier he wanted, Ruso allowed his mount to relax into a walk. “ ’Morning, Albanus.”

A slight figure in a damp tunic looked up from the ranks. “Good morning, sir.”

The clerk did not look quite as weary today. Ruso suspected that Albanus had suffered on this march. No matter how keen a man might be, and how regularly he attended physical training, a life of writing letters and organizing medical records was poor preparation for carrying a full pack across the hills in all weather for days on end. Rubbing his elbow again, Ruso said, “Just as well nobody called me out last night, eh?”

“Very lucky, sir.”

He wondered what Albanus would think if he knew that he had been paid with Tilla’s stolen money for being willing to get up and fetch Ruso—who should have been in one of the tents—if a doctor were needed. “I don’t suppose you got much sleep anyway,” he ventured.

Albanus smiled. “Oh, I was fine, sir. My mother says I’ve always been the same. Once I’m off, nothing ever wakes—” He stopped.

Ruso hid his amusement. “I see.”

“I would have got up, sir, of course—”

“I’m sure you would,” said Ruso, truthfully. There was no fun in teasing Albanus. It was like poking a kitten with a stick. He slapped at his elbow. The itch shrank away for a few seconds, then crept back.

The road was still running along high ground, offering views to either side that would have been dramatic had there been anything new to look at. But even native house fires were no longer a novelty. There was another one now. A fresh plume of thick black smoke rushing skyward from a settlement in the middle distance. It was hardly surprising that people who insisted on lighting fires in the middle of thatched huts would have mishaps, but as they drew closer he could make out a squad of men clad in armor marching away down the valley, ignoring the frantic figures who were trying to beat out the flames.

It occurred to him that perhaps some of the other fires had not been accidents either. Everyone said the natives were more difficult to manage in the north.

Ruso yawned. He had not slept well. Tilla had finally consented to join him in the bed, but his efforts to warm her up had led to an unexpected cry of “Cernunnos!” at a crucial moment, and somehow despite her insistence that this was the name of the god she had seen in the yard, it had still put him off his stroke. Unabashed, she had proceeded to speculate about what this divine visitation might mean. His insistence on resuming his own more earthly visitation was greeted with tolerance rather than enthusiasm.

She had woken him again in the middle of the night, babbling in British. It was a moment before he realized she was talking in her sleep, no doubt to some god with antlers. After she fell silent he had lain awake in the dark, telling himself that it was completely irrational to be jealous of a trick of the light, and that he was only starting to wonder if she really had seen something because he was not properly awake himself.

Another itch had sprouted in the hollow between his shoulder blades. When the column stopped for water, he would have to dig out his baggage and try and find some calming ointment. In the meantime, his fingers slid up between two of the layers of iron plates, but they were now trapped at an awkward angle and he could not move them enough to have any effect. Twisting sideways, he tried plunging the hand down the back of his neck instead. The probing fingers fell just short of their destination.

Several instruments that would have done the job safely were in his medical case, but that was back on one of the carts. He tried grabbing the top and bottom of his tunic, and pulling it taut while wriggling against it like a cow trying to scratch itself on a gate. That did not work either.

Finally he thumped at his back with his fist before noticing that several of the legionaries tromping up the slope beside him were watching with interest. Among them was his clerk.

“Are you all right, sir?”

“Fine, thank you, Albanus.” He wondered whether to add, “Just doing some morning stretches,” but decided that would make it worse.

He urged the horse forward, musing upon the pointlessness of formal education. Instead of wasting time arguing over dilemmas unrelated to real life, bright young minds should be set useful questions. Questions such as:
A man is offered a chance to share a room with a bad-tempered woman
and several biting insects, or a tent with his comrades and a large quantity of rainwater.
Which should he choose?

Moments later he was level with a centurion whose nose appeared to have been attached to his face as an afterthought. This was Postumus, the man in whose tent he had failed to appear last night. Ruso was anticipating some cutting comment on his absence, but Postumus was busy scowling at the horizon.

“Little bugger,” Postumus observed.

Following the centurion’s gaze, Ruso saw the lone rider still silhouetted against the gathering clouds. “There’s something to be said for joining the cavalry,” he said.

“He’s not cavalry.”