Terra Incognita (20 page)
He surveyed the blank sheet and wished he had written the greeting in larger letters. Finally he settled on,
Bogs very pleasant at this time of year, and chest getting a fine tan. Tilla looking lovely in blue.
There was still plenty of blank space. It would be a waste not to use it. Maybe he would feel more inspired tomorrow.
He placed the letter on top of the barrel, blew out the lamp, lay down, and wondered where Tilla was sleeping tonight. He hoped wherever it was, it was better than this. An experimental shuffle up the bed confirmed that with his head pressing against the wall, his feet were almost on the mattress. He had just closed his eyes when a sudden idea made him fling back the covers and crawl down to the end of the bed on all fours. He groped about in the darkness, lifting the trunk off the chair and maneuvering it around so that the longest side was pressed against the end of the mattress. Then he rearranged the blankets. Finally he settled back down and stretched his feet experimentally past the end of the bed.
Ruso smiled to himself. At least one problem was solved.
T
ILLA WAS RETRIEVING
her share of the narrow blanket when the door caved in.
For an absurd moment she thought it was the medicus come to wreak revenge on them. Then she knew Trenus had come back to kill her, yelling, “Don’t move!”—in
Latin
?
Something fell over with a crash. Torches advanced, light glancing off the straight lines of weapons and curves of helmets. The point of a sword was cold against her throat. Next to her, Rian tried to get up and was pushed down again.
“Rianorix the basket maker?” demanded a quiet voice from beyond the torchlight.
His agreement was hoarse.
“Get up. And tell us where it is.”
“He has done nothing wrong!” cried Tilla, grabbing his arm and trying to hold him down beside her.
Soldiers had seized the other arm. Rianorix, naked apart from the gleaming white stripes of bandage, was on his feet. She heard the rattle of chains.
“Don’t hurt him!”
The soldier with his sword at her throat hooked the toe of his boot under the blanket. “Move over, love.”
Rianorix’s shout of “Leave her alone!” was followed by a sickening crack as someone swung a weapon against the side of his head. The basket maker reeled. The quiet voice said, “Where is it?”
Tilla said, “Where is what?”
A couple of the soldiers were pulling down baskets from the creaking stock pile and flinging them aside. Others were clambering through them to prod the thatch with spears. Someone tipped over the beer barrel and the contents hissed and spat and stank across the hearth in the middle of the floor.
The soldier was grinning down at Tilla. The blade was withdrawn from her throat. She scrambled upright, pulling the blanket around herself and wishing she were wearing proper clothes instead of one of Rian’s old shirts. The soldier, still keeping the sword pointed toward her, kicked apart the pile of bracken that had made the bed. “Where is it, eh?”
“What?”
“What you took.”
“We have done nothing wrong!” She was about to say, “I will tell my master how you have behaved!” when she realized that if she told them who her master was, they would tell him where they had found her. Instead she said, “Please do not hurt him, sir.”
“That’s better,” said the soldier, patting her bottom with the flat of his sword. “Now, save yourself a lot of bother and tell the nice officer where it is.”
Another man in a better uniform stepped forward. The torchlight made the blond in his hair gleam. When he spoke she knew he was the quiet one in charge. “I remember you,” he said. “You used to live here.”
She did not care whether he thought he knew her or not. “Why are you arresting us?”
“Not you,” he said. “We only want the basket maker. And what he has stolen.”
“But he is a good man! He pays his taxes, he keeps the law—” At least, she supposed he did. More or less. It could not be illegal to fast against someone, surely?
“He is accused of the murder of a member of the emperor’s auxiliary forces.”
As Tilla was protesting that they were wrong, she heard Rian’s voice from the doorway. “Felix? Felix is dead?”
“You should know,” said the quiet one.
“Yes!”
The chains rattled as Rianorix tried to fling his hands in the air, was pulled up short, and stumbled sideways. It did not stop him from laughing. “He’s dead, daughter of Lugh! Dead! The gods have answered!”
“Get out!” retorted one of the soldiers, giving him a kick in the direction of the door.
Tilla ducked around the soldier who was supposed to be guarding her and ran across to cling to Rianorix, pretending to kiss him good-bye. A couple of the soldiers cheered.
“It worked!” whispered Rianorix as more hands reached in through the entrance of the house and dragged his pale form away into the dark while others held her back.
“The gods killed that soldier!” she shouted after them. “They will kill all of you if you hurt their favored one!”
“Oh, those lads won’t hurt him, miss,” her guard assured her. “We’ve got experts back at base who do that.” He seized her bruised arm and pushed her backward, his foul breath in her face. “Back to bed, eh?”
“Leave her,” ordered the quiet one.
“Won’t be a minute, sir.”
“I said, leave her.”
The man flung Tilla down on the bracken bed and growled, “Tart.”
The officer was already out of the house by the time the soldier kicked a brand out of the fire and into the jumble of baskets by the door.
She would have run after them, but by the time she had put out the flames and rescued what remained of Rian’s stock, she was exhausted and the soldiers were long gone.
She had used the blanket to beat out the fire. Now she retrieved her damp clothes from the chair, wriggled into them, and huddled by the hearth, afraid to sleep lest the scorched thatch begin to smoulder again.
There was a long cold night ahead. The only very small consolation was that under the guise of that desperate kiss, she had managed to slip the last apple into Rianorix’s hand and whisper, “No need to fast now. You are right. The gods have woken.”
T
HE ASHES OF
Felix’s pyre were still smoldering on one side of the road as the flames rose from the brushwood stacked beneath the body of the carpenter on the other. The man’s eyes had been opened so that he could see the heavens as his comrades watched the smoke rising into the pale morning sky. Ruso stood at attention with the men of the Twentieth, uncomfortable in the knowledge that many of them would be blaming him for the death. The civilians who had traveled up from Deva with them were huddled together, silent and grim faced. One or two of the women were weeping. Lydia stood impassive, a dark shawl covering her head, one hand patting the back of the child mewling over her shoulder. Next to her Ruso recognized Susanna from the snack bar, stolidly attending her second funeral in two days. To his surprise, Tilla was not with them.
As soon as the ceremony was over, Postumus’s men shouldered their packs and marched westward, leaving a squad of eight legionaries to stand guard over the pyre. Most of the civilians loaded up their belongings and set off after them. Susanna patted Lydia on the shoulder and hurried away to open up. Lydia seated herself on the ground in front of the collapsed pyre. As Ruso crouched beside her, he could see the glint of the flames in her dark eyes.
“We will catch the person who did this, Lydia.”
“Ask him to give me my man back,” she said, not looking at him.
As he returned to the fort, he passed a makeshift potter’s stall at the roadside. A linen merchant was setting out his wares and two old women were squabbling as they hung up a display of leather bags and belts. Someone had laid four scraggy cabbages on a cloth beside a crate containing a hen. He stepped aside to allow a girl to pass with a clumsy handcart loaded with bread. Today was market day, and everyone else’s life would go on.
Ruso dropped in to see Thessalus on the way back from the funeral, and discovered him hunched over his breakfast. Gambax seemed to have taken a more conventional approach to delivery this time, and the crockery was intact. Ruso stole a sip of the wine. Thessalus, drizzling oil onto a hunk of bread with an unsteady hand, did not seem to notice him. The wine tasted the same as last night: army vinegar laced with something that shouldn’t be there.
Ruso hoped Gambax knew what he was doing with the dosage. He said, “I’m on the way to the infirmary. Any advice?”
“Lock the door,” said Thessalus, drizzling the oil in a circle. “Keep them out. You can’t do anything for them.”
“Thanks,” said Ruso. “I’ll bear that in mind. I came to tell you: There’s good news. Metellus has arrested a native for the murder of Felix. Whatever you dreamed up, Thessalus, you have nothing to feel guilty about. Just concentrate on getting well. I’ll be back to see you as soon as I can.”
To his surprise, when Thessalus looked up from the bread his eyes were glistening with tears. “I told you this would happen,” he said. “They will find someone else to blame. Now I have killed two men.”
This was not the reaction Ruso had expected to his good news. Wishing he had kept quiet until later, he knelt beside Thessalus and handed him a cloth. “Courage, brother.”
“Don’t touch me! Don’t come near me!”
Ruso backed away. “Sorry. Would you like anything to read? Something else to eat?”
“I want to sleep with no dreams.”
“We will make you well,” Ruso promised, although he was not entirely sure how.
T
HE TWIN GODS
guarding the infirmary door (which now read: “Days to Governor’s Visit III”) had been busy overnight. Miracles had been performed. The four malingerers had all enjoyed sudden cures and been discharged back to their units, and Gambax had actually managed to complete a rota before heading off to some administrative meeting or other at headquarters.
The newly vacated ward was descended upon by orderlies bearing scrubbing brushes and buckets and bedding in a manner that suggested intention if not efficiency. Ruso put his head around the door frame and declared their efforts to be splendid.
Only slightly less miraculously, the splinted leg still had no inflammation. The man with the shoulder wound was still pessimistic, and the morning sick parade offered the usual coughs and stomach complaints, bad backs, sore eyes, and dodgy knees. All seemed genuine. Ruso chose not to ask if any of their owners was under the command of Audax.
He sent a junior officer with a wrecked knee hobbling out, moved his chair into the treatment room, and was reading
The Varieties and Uses of the Poppy
when Albanus came to tell him that Gambax had returned. Ruso put his scroll aside and braced himself for a difficult interview.
“You wanted to see me, sir.” Gambax’s expression as he appeared in the doorway of the treatment room suggested the summons was very inconvenient.
“Shut the door, Gambax.”
The man glanced back into the corridor as if hoping to find an excuse to go somewhere else, then dropped the latch.
“Will this take long, sir? I’ve got a list of—”
“That depends on how long you take to tell me the truth.”
Alarm showed in Gambax’s eyes, but only for a moment.
“When I asked you what was wrong with Doctor Thessalus, you told me you thought he was just in need of a rest.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Is there anything you’d like to add to that?”
“No, sir.”
“No ailments that you’re aware of?”
“No, sir.”
“How long have you been giving him poppy tears?”
A blink was the only betrayal of emotion. “About three months, sir, off and on.”
“But you don’t think there’s anything wrong with him?”
“I was obeying orders. He asked me for them.”
“And you didn’t think to wonder whether this was a good idea?”
There was pause before, “I respect the doctor’s judgment, sir.”
“I see. What would you think of an orderly who shouted at a patient and threw a meal tray at him?”
Gambax’s throat moved as he swallowed. “I didn’t throw it at him, sir. I threw it on the floor.”
“Why?”
“I was trying to help him, sir.”
“What?”
“I was trying to shock him back into sanity.”
“By telling him to stop messing about and threatening not to bring his happy juice anymore?”
“It probably wasn’t a good idea, sir.”
“Cutting down his supply would have been a good idea months ago. You’re supposed to be both pharmacist and record keeper here. You’ve kept doling out powerful medicine to a man you know isn’t sick—or wasn’t when you started—and not even bothered to keep a note of it.”
When the man did not reply, he prompted, “Haven’t you?”
“He said it helped him sleep, sir.”
“At breakfast?”
Ruso sighed.
The Varieties and Uses
had warned against using poppy tears in the eyes, and everyone knew that too much would be fatal. But the author was only one of several authorities who recommended poppy as a miracle cure for all kinds of ailments. Many remedies included it in small doses. He often prescribed it himself to relieve pain, and it would certainly help the patient sleep. However, for a healthy man to be taking regular and heavy doses of poppy over a period of three months was surely abnormal, and Gambax must have known that. The deputy had deliberately lied to him.
In other circumstances, Ruso would have relieved him of duty. But as the sole pharmacist, Gambax was a necessary evil. And the last thing Ruso wanted was to suggest to a man in charge of dangerous medicines that he had nothing to lose.
“While the staff are sorting out the wards,” said Ruso, “I want that mess around the pharmacy table tidied up. I want everything properly and clearly labeled. I want a complete, up-to-date record of everything you’ve got there, and I want you to make a list of what gets dispensed every day. I’ll be inspecting the area and checking the records on a regular basis. In the meantime you’re not to go near Thessalus without me present. If I hear that you’ve so much as looked at barrack block two, I’ll have you charged with insubordination. Is that clear?’