Terra Incognita: A Novel of the Roman Empire (8 page)

“The lads have gone off to get a bite to eat, sir.”

Ruso took a deep breath and reminded himself that he was not in Deva now. He could not expect a country outpost serving six hundred men to be run in the same way as a legionary hospital serving five thousand.

“Don’t you worry, sir,” Gambax assured him, reaching for a cup and swilling the pastry down with something that smelled very much like beer. “The watch’ll give them a shout when your lads come in over the bridge. How about a drink while you’re waiting?”

“No thanks,” said Ruso. He glanced across at what must be the pharmacy table. Above it, a cobweb billowed gently in the breeze from the open window. Three shelves held a jumble of pots and bottles and bags and boxes. A few had labels indicating their contents, written in a large untidy script. Most did not. The table itself held a weighing scale and an abandoned mortar bowl containing some sort of brown paste. Beneath it were a couple of wine amphorae—medicinal wine, he assumed—and a wastebasket crammed with wilted greenery. The basket was topped with a selection of broken pots projecting from a pale crusted mass of green slime. Some of the slime had dripped down the side of the basket and hardened into a small semicircular pancake on the floorboards. Ruso said, “Who’s the pharmacist?”

“That would be me, sir.”

Somehow this was not a surprise. “What medicines have you got for pain relief and postoperative treatment?”

“All the basics, sir. And plenty of poppy tears and mandrake.”

Ruso hoped the man knew which containers they were in. He glanced down at the desk. A few stray crumbs remained. Black inkstains had spread themselves along the grain of the wood, running into the circular imprints of cups bearing drinks long ago consumed. A wooden tablet addressed in the same large hand as the medicines lay to one side.

“I keep the records as well, sir.”

“I thought you might.”

“Yes, sir. We’re an auxiliary unit here. We don’t have lots of staff like you’re used to in the legions. Would you like to take a look at the treatment room, sir? Just through that door, next on the left.”

Now that Ruso’s eyes had adjusted to the gloom he could make out that the figure at the end of the corridor was a squat centurion with a savage haircut. The man’s glare suggested that whoever was behind the door he was guarding was not receiving visitors.

Evidently Gambax was not in charge of the treatment room, where two cobweb-free glass windows allowed the surgeon enough light to see what he was doing on the operating table. This was good news, but within seconds the warmth from the brazier in the corner had reawoken the itches on Ruso’s back and ribs along with the smell of horse in his clothing. He placed his medical case on the side table, slid a bronze probe down his spine, and enjoyed a few blessed moments of relief.

His concentration was interrupted by a voice from the doorway.

“Everything to your liking in here, is it, sir?”

“Very good,” said Ruso, hastily removing the probe. “Is there usually a centurion in the corridor?”

“That’s Audax, sir,” said Gambax, adding, “It’s one of his men lying murdered in the mortuary. Would you like to see the rest of the facilities?”

The rest of the facilities consisted of a steamy kitchen containing a ruddy-faced cook with a limp and two fingers missing, a couple of untidy storerooms, the smaller of which contained a vast barrel, and a latrine with the usual stench defying the usual effort to mask it. The mortuary was behind the centurion, and thus inaccessible. These were the facilities to service four smelly and stuffy wards containing seventeen beds and fifteen patients, four of whom were sitting around a table with a jug of beer. Judging by the speed at which they concealed the evidence of gambling when Ruso appeared, the four were not terribly sick.

One of the patients in the next room looked up from a board game with his neighbor and offered Ruso an unexpectedly warm welcome. “A doctor! Good to see you, sir! How’s Doctor Thessalus?”

“About the same,” put in Gambax from the doorway.

“What’s the matter with him, sir?”

“He’s ill,” said Gambax.

“Doctor Thessalus saw to both of us, sir,” said the man, indicating his comrade, whose shoulder was heavily bandaged. “But we haven’t seen anybody since.” He leaned forward and flung back the blankets to reveal a splinted leg. “Would you like to start with me, sir?”

“Not just now,” said Ruso, not wanting to trespass uninvited on a colleague’s territory. “I’ve got a casualty arriving in a moment.”

“Ah!” said the man, nodding, as if that explained the state of Ruso’s attire. He lowered his voice. “Wasn’t that Stag Man again, was it, sir?”

“Traffic accident,” said Ruso, then, realizing there was no hope of swearing 170 legionaries to silence, added, “There was a rider who’d put some sort of animal thing on his head. But he was nowhere near the accident.”

The man and his friend exchanged glances. “You want to be careful around here, sir,” he said. “He’s just left one of our lads dead in a back alley.”

“He’s got powers,” put in the man with the shoulder injury. “The locals are saying the gods have sent him from the Other World.”

Ruso said, “Well, when I saw him, he was very firmly in this one.”

Back in the office, the Batavians’ deputy medic was still keeping company with his beer. “Have you called the staff in, Gambax?”

Gambax looked at him over the rim of the cup. “Don’t you worry, sir. Your lads aren’t over the bridge yet.”

“I need men here now. I need a room scrubbed out and aired and a fresh mattress brought in.”

“What—right now, sir?”

“Right now. And while they’re doing it maybe you could find me some calamine, or alum in honey?”

There was a slight twitch at one side of Gambax’s mouth as he said, “You didn’t happen to stay at the Golden Fleece last night, sir?”

“Never again.”

“Yes,” said Gambax. “That’s what they all say.”

9

A
S SOON AS
the cart rumbled in beneath the wooden towers of Coria’s west gatehouse, the slave who had been driving the runaway cart was marched to the fort lockup and the groaning carpenter carried into the infirmary. His breathing was definitely worse, although nothing seemed to have penetrated the lungs.

Ruso did what he could to ease the breathing, cleaned up the minor cuts and scrapes, and supervised the dressing of the amputation site. He had just finished settling his patient into a hastily cleaned room under the care of the bandager from the Twentieth when he received a summons to report immediately to the prefect of the Tenth Batavians.

The yelling and clatter of weapons practice and the arrhythmic clang of the forge barely seemed to disturb the peace of the prefect’s courtyard. Ruso waited in a space between two tall amphorae that the household staff had reused as plant pots, and wished he had taken the time to borrow some clean clothes. In front of him, marooned on a stone plinth in a rectangular pond, stood a two-foot-high statue of a nymph whose skimpy attire was no more appropriately designed for life in the north than the house surrounding her. Ruso wondered what it must be like for the prefect and his family—assuming he had one—to have to scuttle from room to room via an open walkway in the depths of a British winter. He was eyeing the nymph with some sympathy when one of the doors under the walkway opened and he was summoned to enter the prefect’s office.

Prefect Decianus turned out to have all the finest qualities of Roman manhood except that he wasn’t—by blood—a Roman. His jaw was square, his shoulders were broad, and he had the air of solid dependability more reliably found in centurions than in the aristocratic holders of high office. When he said, “Doctor. You’re traveling with the vexillation from the Twentieth Legion?” his Latin had only the faintest of Batavian accents. Evidently he was one of those provincial leaders who were permitted to command their own troops overseas in the service of Rome.

“I was sorry to hear about the accident,” the prefect continued. “I’m told the men from the Twentieth will camp here tonight, then move up the road to Ulucium in the morning. Will your casualty be fit to travel by then?”

“No, sir.”

“What do you think about trusting him to our medical service?”

“I hear your regular medic is ill, sir,” said Ruso, hoping not to have to venture an opinion on the patchy regime at the infirmary and wondering if the silent man sitting at Decianus’s elbow was something to do with it.

“And you don’t want to leave your man in the care of our deputy,” observed Decianus.

Ruso looked him in the eye. “I think the patient needs experienced supervision, sir.”

“Good.” The prefect settled back in his chair and folded his arms. “Our own medic is due to move on in a few days,” he said. “His replacement is traveling up here with the governor. I’m told he’s keen to see military experience. I suppose that means he wants to explore the insides of my men. In the meantime we have nobody to fill the gap. I’m putting in a request to keep you until then.”

So unless Postumus objected—which was unlikely—it seemed Ruso would be here for at least the next four days. He would be able to look after the carpenter. That was good. He would have to work with Gambax. That wasn’t. He said, “Thank you, sir.”

“Don’t thank me. I want you to do a job of work. Our man Thessalus has not been . . .” the prefect paused, searching for a word. “He has not been on top of things for some time. One of our escorts was attacked by bandits the other day and it took three hours to organize a team to operate on the wounded. My men deserve better than that. You’re with the Legion, so you must be reasonably competent. While we have you, I want you to sort out the shambles that calls itself a medical service.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Ruso, less sincerely than before and realizing that the room was beginning to smell as though he had brought his horse in with him.

“Are you a hunting man, Ruso?”

Perhaps the prefect had noticed it too. “Not really, sir.”

“A pity. Never mind. The other thing I want you to do is connected with the body now under guard in the mortuary. I expect you’ve been told that one of our trumpeters was found murdered this morning.”

Ruso, who had often felt the urge to murder an enthusiastic trumpeter first thing in the morning, reminded himself that this was a serious matter. “I’ll have the postmortem report ready by the end of the day, sir,” he promised.

“What? We don’t need you to go near the body.”

“No?” What did they want him for, then?

“Sorry to disappoint. I know how much you medics enjoy the chance for a dig about, but any fool can see how he died and we already know who did it.”

Afterward, Ruso blamed the bedbugs. He would normally have kept his mouth shut. But today he had woken up tired, he had witnessed a shocking accident, performed harrowing surgery, seen a strange creature he did not believe in, and worst of all, despite Gambax’s ointment— alum boiled in cabbage juice, apparently—he was still itchy. He was used to his profession being insulted, but today he was not in the mood to put up with it.

“I don’t enjoy it, sir,” he insisted. “I’ve got better things to do. I was only offering because a close inspection of the body might offer you some more evidence for the murder case.”

The prefect’s eyebrows rose. “Evidence?”

“What sort of weapon was used,” said Ruso, improvizing wildly. “Whether the victim put up a fight and might have injured the attacker. Whether he was killed where he was found, or whether he was moved afterward. That sort of thing.”

“I see.”

A soft voice pointed out, “We already know what the weapon was, sir.”

The prefect glanced at the man beside him. “But the rest might be useful, don’t you think, Metellus?” He returned his attention to Ruso. “You can do all that?”

“Sometimes, sir,” said Ruso, realizing he had now advanced too far to retreat. “It depends on the circumstances.”

The man leaned across and whispered something in the prefect’s ear. Moments later Ruso found himself admiring the nymph from the shelter of the covered walkway while the prefect and the other man were arguing on the other side of the office door. He hoped the prefect would lose. He didn’t want to meet a dead trumpeter. He wanted to go and check on the amputee and then track down a good masseur followed by a hot meal. Preferably washed down with a glass of decent wine.

When he was summoned to return the prefect said, “You can examine the body and report your findings back to Metellus.”

“Yes, sir.”

“The circumstances are unusual,” said the prefect.

As Ruso wondered what the usual circumstances of murdered trumpeters might be, Decianus confirmed most of the gossip he had already picked up at the infirmary: that the body of a Batavian soldier had been found this morning about a hundred paces outside the fort, in an alleyway between a butcher’s shop and a general store. “At the moment,” continued Decianus, “relations with the natives are tense, and a rumor has gone around that this death was something to do with the rebel horseman I’m told you saw this afternoon. Metellus has investigated, and it turns out to be a simple brawl outside a bar. The culprit is a native who will be arrested very soon and tried by the governor when he arrives in four days’ time. In the meantime I don’t want my men unsettled. Any suggestions that the murder is something to do with the local gods are to be firmly denied.”