Semper Fidelis (24 page)

^{HE TRIBUNE WAS}
a guest in the commanding officer’s house at Calcaria, as presumably was the empress. Ruso, whose request to wash had been refused, was led into a dining room whose décor made him think of the insides of a raw chicken: yellow fat, cream skin, pink flesh, red blood. In the midst of this lay Accius, propped on one elbow on a yellow couch. He was surrounded by the debris of a formal dinner. Standing in front of one of the tables was Tilla, looking alarmingly pale. He glanced from her to Accius, slightly reassured by the fact that she was fully clothed and her hair was no more ruffled than usual.
Her eyes widened when she saw him. The quick pout and lift of the eyebrows told him only that he should have learned to interpret her facial expressions by now.
“Ah,” said Accius with the languor of a man who had eaten too much and did not want to shake it up with an animated conversation. “Ruso.” “Sir.”
“I have decided,” declared Accius, “that it is a waste of skill to have a doctor marching in chains.”
Ruso let out a secret sigh of relief and offered the obligatory “Thank you, sir” as if it were not Accius’s fault he had been chained in the first place. This was probably the nearest he would get to an apology. “I find myself,” said Accius, “in something of a quandary.” Ruso glanced at the scattered remains of the meal. He could smell wine and fish and spice and lavender. He looked at Accius’s soft leather house shoes dangling from the end of the couch, and thought of Victor crouched in a malodorous cell not two hundred paces away. It was hard to sympathize with the tribune’s quandary.
“I have been informed by this annoyingly persis tent young woman”— here Ruso exchanged another uncommunicative glance with his wife— “that there may be further information about the murder of Centurion Geminus. If I tell you that none of this information is to leave this room, do I have the faintest chance of you obeying me this time?”
“Absolutely, sir. Whatever it is, it’s confidential.” Since Ruso already knew what it was likely to be, this was not a difficult promise to make. Accius turned to Tilla. “Tell him what you told me.”
Tilla looked at them both, opened her mouth, swayed, and grabbed at a table for support. Ruso seized her and lowered her onto one of the couches. “Head between your knees,” he ordered, feeling her forehead for fever and scanning the tables for a water jug.
“It is nothing,” Tilla insisted in a muffled voice.
“Of course it’s something!” Ruso glared at Accius. “What did you do to her?”
“I haven’t touched her.”
From between her knees Tilla said, “I drank too much cough medicine.” Ruso decided he must have misheard. “You drank too much? Has he been giving you wine?”
“Cough medicine,” she repeated, making no more sense than before. “It made me vomit. Can I come up now?”
When she did, he gave her a look that was intended to mean he wanted to continue this conversation later and that they would be discussing more than medicine, but it was too complicated a message for a simple look to convey.
Restored, Tilla perched on the edge of the dining couch and relayed the account of her anonymous witnesses from Eboracum. Three or four Praetorians, recognizable by the scorpions on their shields, and Geminus talking to them about going into action together again. Then the sound of a struggle and someone landing in the ditch.
When she had finished, Accius said, “Some of us believe in knowing all the facts before we draw our final conclusions.”
Ruso bit back
Then why did you send me down the sewers?
and said, “I thought the Praetorian prefect was in charge?”
“Prefect Clarus is in overall charge, yes.”

A misdemeanor in the Legion would normally be dealt with by a tribune. Possibly Accius had not taken kindly to having the investigation snatched away from him.

“It has come to my notice, Ruso, that you seem to have the knack of persuading men to confide in you.”
“It’s my job, sir.”
“Yes. It has also occurred to me that a doctor can move about freely amongst all classes of men. And since you are the senior medical officer on this march, you need not confine your attentions to your own unit.”
“Yes, sir.” Or should that be
No, sir
? Was he being released? What the hell was Accius playing at?
“Do you think you could perhaps attempt the art of being discreet?”
“I’ll do my best, sir.”
“Good. I shall deal with your insubordination when we get to Deva. Meanwhile, just carry out your medical duties as usual.”
Tilla’s face brightened. Ruso looked from one to the other of them. “Thank you, sir.”
“I don’t want our men—or any of the men—more agitated than they already are. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. Should you happen to discover anything interesting in the course of your duties, I expect you to report it to me —and only me—immediately.”
So that was it. Accius didn’t trust Clarus, and Ruso the Insubordinate had become Ruso the Useful.
“If you get into trouble, you will deal with it yourself.”
And also Ruso the Expendable. He stifled
What do you actually want, sir?
There was no point: Accius would not—could not—tell him to make inquiries about the unknown Praetorians. If indeed that
was
what Accius wanted. It was certainly what Ruso wanted, so the vagueness of the instructions suited him nicely.
“Is that clear?”
No. You’re being deliberately evasive, you pompous, self-serving . . .
“Absolutely, sir.”
“Good.”
“Just one thing, sir?”
Accius waited.
Ruso gestured toward a dish still half full of small cakes. “If you aren’t going to eat all of those, can I have them?”
“Haven’t they fed you?”
“They’re not for me, sir.”
Accius sighed. “Very well.”
As Ruso lifted the dish, something else occurred to him. “Sir, one more thing.”
“You’re not having the wine.”
“Am I right in thinking Centurion Geminus joined the Praetorian Guard straight after the return from Dacia, sir?”
“Yes.”
“So that would be . . . how long ago?”
“I was eight,” said Accius. “Sixteen years ago.”
“Thank you, sir. And when did he leave them?”
Accius frowned. “I can’t remember. He served in Judaea and then transferred to the Twentieth. Does it matter?”
“Probably not, sir.”
“Good. You can go.”
Ruso glanced at his wife.
“Not her,” said Accius. “She will be traveling with my house hold.”
Ruso tensed. “Sir—”
“You can’t expect me to release a prisoner and not retain a sign of good faith.” Accius turned to Tilla. “My guards will arrange for your vehicle to travel with mine. You will lodge with my house keeper, and you will be treated with respect unless you make trouble, in which case my guards will restrain you.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You are not to speak to me again, do you understand? You have embarrassed me enough. Now, get out, both of you.” Accius reached back to slide his shoes on. “The staff need to clear up.”
In the lamplit corridor outside, at last able to rub his sore wrists, Ruso whispered, “Are you all right?”
She nodded.
“You were right about the betting. Geminus got what he deserved.” Before she could reply, a gang of slaves who had been waiting somewhere discreet bore down upon them carrying trays and cleaning cloths. He said, “Cough medicine?”
“A mistake.”
“What if it had been the mandrake?” he demanded. “You must read the labels, Tilla!”

^{USO ROLLED ONTO}
his back, realized where he was, and smiled to himself. He spread his fingers wide and stretched up into the cool morning air. His fingertips brushed the cover of the wagon. He moved them about, pushing against the rough underside of the leather. He had never before thought to celebrate such a simple freedom. It did not matter that he had spent the night adjusting his sleeping position around the hard corners of boxes of hospital supplies. Briefly, nothing else mattered except the fact that his hands were under his own control once more, and seemingly undamaged.
Several things would matter in a moment, not least the question of how he

was going to worm information out of the Praetorians—if indeed the soldiers he wanted were here, and not marching north with the emperor and Valens. But first, he must make himself look like a man who was supposed to be carrying a medical case, rather than a man who had just stolen one.

He dealt with his hair by running both hands through it and with the stubble by ignoring it, a habit that had helpfully come into fashion with a bearded emperor. Most of his kit could stay with Tilla and the girl that he was sure he recognized from somewhere, but he needed his belt. He had not seen it since they took it from him at the guardhouse in Eboracum.

It took half an hour of negotiation and the last three slightly stale cakes from the empress’s dining table (Victor had eaten the rest) to get it back. As the march set off once more, he slipped the leather tongue through the heavy silvered buckle with a sigh of relief. Without it, he had felt halfdressed. And without it, nobody would take him seriously as a soldier. Now he could face the Praetorians and . . .

And what? He had dismissed this question several times, telling himself that when the moment came, so would the inspiration. With luck, one of them would report sick. But the moment was here, the inspiration wasn’t, and the guards that had streamed out of Calcaria’s west gate ahead of the Twentieth all looked disappointingly healthy.

Still, he was not going to find anything out by spending the morning hanging around the hospital wagons of his own legion. “If anyone wants me,” he murmured to Pera, “I’ll be with the Praetorians.”

Pera grasped the significance of this immediately. “Do you need any help, sir?”
“Probably,” Ruso admitted. “But I think it’s best if one of us stays with the patients, don’t you?”

“A memorial to whom?” demanded the Praetorian officer, looking down on Ruso from the height of his horse, the gleam of his armor and the superiority of his education.

“Centurion Geminus,” repeated Ruso. The man could hardly have failed to hear about Geminus: He was just being deliberately awkward. “He used to be with the Guard in Rome. The tribune wants me to check the details with men who served with him. Probably just after the end of the fighting in Dacia.”

“Hm.” The officer eyed the case in Ruso’s hand. “And you say you’re a medical officer.”
Ruso saw himself as he must appear: a man with no armor whose wrists betrayed the fact that he had recently been chained up, and who had now appeared clutching a nonregulation case and asking to be allowed to move freely amongst the empress’s guards.
“You’re the one they locked up for murdering him,” observed the officer. “I heard you were insane.”
Ruso was very much wishing he had not started this. “I’m innocent,” he insisted, “and I’m as sane as you are. They’ve arrested one of his own men instead.”
“What’s in the case?”
Ruso unfastened it one-handed and held it up. The small probe slipped out of its clip as usual, and he noticed one of the scalpels was missing. How had that happened? He propped the lid awkwardly with his elbow and put the probe back. There was the empty bottle of cough medicine, clearly labeled. What had Tilla been thinking of? Come to that, what was he thinking of himself, bringing a case full of blades?
“Knives for cutting flesh,” observed the officer, who had obviously had the same thought. “Keep them sharp, do you?”
If he said no, he was a bad surgeon. If he said yes, he looked like an armed lunatic trying to get near to the empress.
“Very,” he said. “And they cost a small fortune, so I keep them where I can see them.”
The officer said, “Hm.”
Ruso closed the case. The horse plodded on.
“I heard you had a grudge. Why are you doing his memorial?”
“Because our tribune has a sense of humor,” said Ruso.
The man glanced over his shoulder at a subordinate. “Go and get Fabius,” he said. “We’ll see if he wants to talk about the old days.” He turned back to Ruso. “Fabius might remember more than I do,” he said. “All I can recall is that Geminus didn’t make very many friends. The tribune may not want that inscribed on his memorial.”

Ruso found Accius deep in conversation with Dexter. They were casting occasional glances at the recruits, seated just out of earshot. In return, several of the recruits were staring at their officers with expressions of glum resentment. Marcus was watching them intently over his waterskin as if he was trying to work out what they were saying.

Accius waved Ruso away with an impatient flick of the hand. Ruso was not sorry to make his way back to the hospital wagons. He was not sure how to tell Accius what he had found out.

The tribune appeared at the wagons a few minutes later. He paused to speak to the patients and had the sense to move well away from Austalis before remarking to Pera that the lad was looking very ill. To this Pera replied that had it not been for Doctor Ruso, he would be dead. Thus Pera unwittingly provided the cue for Accius to move on and engage Ruso in a conversation during which they strolled away from the others.

“Sir, could you just describe for me—without looking— the doctor and patient on the wagon?”
Accius’s scowl deepened. “What?”
“It’s important, sir.”
“Have you found out anything or not?”
“Yes, sir. If you could just describe for me—”
“The doctor had curly hair. The patient was all skin and bone, with bandages on his arm. Get to the point.”
“Hair color? Eye color? What were they wearing? What color was the blanket?”
“The mens’ blankets are gray. Get on with it.”
“Thank you, sir.” Without explaining, Ruso began with the easy part. There had been four Praetorians with Geminus as they marched out of the east gates. Two had been old comrades of his and one of those was currently traveling north with Hadrian, but he had spoken to the other one, a man called Fabius. Fabius said he had lost sight of Geminus just after they began to advance down the street. He had thought it would be wiser to stick together, but he assumed Geminus had gone to find the men from the Twentieth, and he was not concerned when he did not see him again.
Ruso could see that Accius was impatient for him to finish. The moment he stopped speaking, Accius demanded, “How exactly did you go about this conversation?”
“I told them I was researching Geminus’s life for a memorial, sir.”
“And they believed you?”
“No. They thought I was there trying to clear my name.”
“As long as you didn’t involve me.”
“No, sir. What was really interesting was what Fabius said next.” Ruso paused, hoping Accius was going to listen to all of it and not just what he wanted to hear. “He said he’s thought more about that eve ning and now he remembers seeing a native hanging about by the ditch, off to their left. He didn’t seem to be causing trouble so they left him alone. When I asked for a description, he explained that it was dark, but they were carrying torches and he thought the native had pale coloring and his hair was unusually short for a Briton.”
“Victor!” exclaimed Accius, as Ruso had known he would. “Excellent!”
It was not excellent for Victor, but Accius was not the sort of man to worry about that. “Then he referred me to the other two men who were there as well, sir. And this is where I think it all gets rather strange.”
“Never mind what you think. Tell me what they said.”
“The two men I spoke to gave exactly the same description as Fabius.”
“Good! A description of the murderer, and three witnesses. You’re a lucky man, Ruso.”
“It’s too good, sir.”

“How can it be too good?”
“Sir, Pera has dark hair and eyes and he’s wearing chain mail. Austalis is blond and blue-eyed and he’s got a green tunic over his good shoulder. The blanket isn’t gray, it’s white.”
“Get on with it!”
“People don’t remember things accurately. Were you present when Clarus interviewed his own men, sir?”
“Of course not! Otherwise I wouldn’t be—” Accius stopped. “There was no need for me to be there.”
So Accius’s interest in this was definitely unofficial. “Did he say anything about his men seeing a native?”
“His men must have seen dozens of people. He would hardly tell me about all of them.”
“Yes, sir. Yet these three all said exactly the same thing in the same order. It was as if they’d rehearsed it.” He paused to let that sink in. “I’m willing to bet that none of them remembered the native before Victor was arrested.”
Accius sighed. “I should know better than to listen to a doctor. You people see a pimple, call it a deadly disease, and prescribe six weeks in bed with daily visits.”
“They’re hiding something, sir.”
“They’re describing the same man! Besides, they couldn’t have known you were going to come asking. Why would they all get together and make something up?”
It was a fair point, and one Ruso had already considered. “Sir, think back to your childhood. When my brother and I did something we weren’t supposed to, we agreed what we’d say in case we got caught.”
“I wouldn’t know,” said Accius. “I don’t have any brothers.”
Ruso was struck by a picture of the lonely young Accius wandering through a large house, wishing he had somebody to play with, and suddenly thrilled by the attentions of a storybook war hero. No wonder he had been determined to defend him. “The point is, sir,” he said, “we only ever did it when we knew there was something to cover up. And the more clever we tried to be, the more likely we were to trip up. If they said they hadn’t seen anyone—which I imagine they told Clarus—they’d have been fine. But they decided to embellish their cover story when Victor was arrested.”
“Or they could have discussed their memories around the campfire one night.”
“Then they would have gone to Clarus, sir. And Clarus would surely have told you that he had evidence against one of your men.” “Hm.”
“One of the other veterans told me that Geminus wasn’t popu lar when they served together. I think this may go a lot further back than we realize.”
The silence that followed was interrupted by the trumpet signaling time to move on.
“Well,” said Accius, “that’s something to think about.” He took a step back toward the road. “Thank you, Ruso. You will now forget everything you have just told me.”
“Yes, sir. Sir, the recruit under arrest is—”
“He’s none of your concern. If you want to do something useful, help us get the rest of them to Deva.”
“What about my wife, sir?”
“Just stop her from making any more trouble.” Accius strode away to deal with more important matters, leaving Ruso wondering how to carry out that most challenging order of all.

^{USO WAS TRYING}
to find out who he should ask about borrowing a horse when he found Dexter riding alongside him. The man had never been friendly, so he was surprised to hear a greeting. He was even more surprised when Dexter said, “You did a good thing, Doctor.”

“I did?”
“Somebody should have done it way back.”
“Geminus?”
“Me, I was never happy about him. You just turned up and dealt with it.

Like that.” He snapped his fingers. The horse tossed its head. “I didn’t do it.”
“Shame about young Victor, but he’s not the sharpest tool in the box, is

he?”
“He didn’t do it, either.”
“I bet you’re thinking,
How did the old man get away with it for so long?
” “
Sports Night
?” said Ruso, unable to keep the disgust out of his voice. “You know, then?”
“Where did you think you were, the amphitheater?”
“It was just a bit of harmless fun to start with. But the old man didn’t

know when to stop. And I didn’t have the authority to stop him.” “Men were being injured!”
“They weren’t my men.”
Perhaps not, but Dexter must have been betting on them.
“Then he went and lost that lad in the river. Even Geminus could see

he’d gone too far there.”
“But by then he’d implicated everyone else,” Ruso surmised. “He was a clever bastard.”
“Was it you who told the maintenance crews to follow me?” “We had to know what you were up to. They were keen enough to help.

Nobody likes an inspector.”
“You could have backed me up!”
Dexter shrugged. “What’s done was done. The old man said if we talked,

we’d all be thrown out with no payoff. Or worse. So we decided to keep the lid on it.”
And they said centurions were the bravest men in the army.
“You don’t how it was,” continued Dexter, as if he had guessed what was in Ruso’s mind. “You weren’t there.
“I got the general idea from his dog. Where is it, by the way?”
“Still with him,” said Dexter unexpectedly. “We couldn’t have a dangerous dog on the march, so it went on the pyre.”
Ruso pictured the wolf dog standing calmly alongside its master and felt more kindly disposed to it in death than he had in life. “Bella,” he said, as if he felt he should mark its passing by naming it, and then tightening the muscles in his leg so that the stitches pulled. “How much does the tribune know?”
Dexter shrugged. “That’s what he’ll be trying to decide, ready for telling his story at Deva.” He paused. “Nobody meant it to end like it did, you know. It was just a bit of fun.”
“I didn’t kill Geminus,” Ruso repeated. “Neither did Victor. So where were you that night?”
Dexter was staring ahead to where the recruits were marching in ragged lines four abreast. “Busy knocking heads together,” he said. “But if that’s the way the wind’s blowing, maybe I’ll take the credit.” Urging his horse into a trot, he moved forward to ride alongside his men.
Ruso watched him trim the lines and fall in beside some of the other junior officers. According to Pera, Geminus’s shadows had managed to get themselves sent north with Hadrian, but he supposed most of the officers had been tainted by Sports Night in one way or another. No wonder they were keeping a close eye on the recruits. They were terrified of them.

^{HE TRIBUNE’S GUARDS}
had shown little interest in Tilla, but Minna seemed to be taking the duty very seriously. Her approach to guarding a hostage who might yet turn out to be an officer’s wife was to travel behind, watching her every move, ask from time to time if she was quite comfortable, and then do very little about it if she wasn’t.

Tilla was bored, frustrated, and still feeling faintly queasy from the cough medicine. Only the fear of causing more trouble for her husband had kept her in her seat all day, watching the land gradually begin to rise and fall as the convoy trudged toward the hills at the speed of the slowest ox in front.

From time to time she had sent Virana to find out what was going on. There was no good news. The Medicus was busy. Victor was spending another day limping along behind a supply wagon. He must be in agony: Already his wrists were rubbed raw and his feet would be blistered where he had been unable to shake the grit out of his boots yesterday. The medics had bound them up, but another day of marching must have made them much worse. There were at least eighty thousand paces between here and Deva, and Victor would feel every one of them.

The sun was well past its midday height when the convoy ground to a halt yet again for no apparent reason. Tilla had had enough. Without glancing back at Minna, she and Virana jumped down and went forward to see if there was anything interesting happening.
By the time they got there, the empress’s painted carriage had been unhitched and was propped on stacks of wood by the side of the road. The front wheels lay in the grass. As was the way with breakdowns, there were a lot of men standing around pointing at various parts of the carriage and telling each other what had gone wrong and how to fix it. Several more were crouching by the props to hold them steady, and offering advice to the one man underneath who was actually trying to do something. As Tilla approached, a loud and very rude word suggested things were not going well down there.

“Really!” Minna, of course, had not been able to resist following them. “Fancy speaking like that in front of the empress!”
The empress, seated on a folding stool under a parasol held by one of her slaves, looked weary rather than shocked. Minna managed to corner another of her slaves and ask if there was anything the tribune’s house hold could do to help, and that was how, somehow, the empress, the parasol, and the first slave ended up in Celer’s smelly cart while Tilla and Virana walked behind them the mile to the Falcon’s Rest.
Tilla remembered the Falcon’s Rest from their journey to Eboracum. It was the sort of inn that was only there because it was on the way to somewhere else. It squatted on a minor crossroads and scowled down from its high barred windows at any travelers who might be approaching in search of a meal and fresh horses. Its defensive stance had made her feel oddly cheerful. It was a reminder that, without soldiers to hide behind, the Romans were frightened people.
There was no fort here, and the air was already filled with of the clatter of mallets on tent pegs by the time Celer delivered his important passenger to the front door of the Falcon’s Rest and Tilla and Virana scrambled back in for the short drive past a straggle of smaller eating houses to the stable yard at the back. Tilla had already worked out that there would be a shortage of beds, and she was not going to risk being turned away.
As soon as they were in, she sent Virana off to buy something to eat and looked around for somewhere better than the cart to spend the night. The main mansio building formed one side of the stable yard: two stories pierced with more mean little windows, those of the better rooms glassed to protect the guests from smells and flies and drafts. By the time the empress and her hangers-on were installed, there would not be much room in there. The rest of the yard was surrounded by stables with what must be stores above.
She thought about mice and rats. Then she thought about sharing a room with Minna.
She climbed down so Celer could unhitch the mule, and slipped a couple of coins to a stable hand. He directed her to the corner of a hayloft and then went back to dealing with more horses than they probably saw in a month.
Tilla was unloading their luggage and wondering whether it had been wise to send Virana out on her own with money when Minna arrived to ask if she had found a comfortable place to spend the night. Finding that Tilla would be out of her sight, she promised to come and visit her again very soon. Meanwhile she would “ask the stable hands to keep an eye on you,” as if it were a kindness.
By the time all the luggage was hidden in the hay, Tilla was beginning to wonder whether Virana was coming back at all. So it was a relief when the girl finally reappeared with a triumphant smile, four sausages, two apples, and a jug of beer. “The Medicus says,” said Virana, lifting one hand out of habit to push away hair that was no longer in her eyes, “he will talk to the tribune as soon as he can.”
“You have seen him?” asked Tilla, wriggling to get comfortable on the hay and reaching for the beer. “How is he?”
“He is still walking around free. And he made me swear to tell him truthfully whether the tribune is trying to bed you. I said he was not, and he said he was glad you are safe.”
“What use is being safe? I have wasted a whole day with that woman watching me!”
“He says he knows it is very annoying for you.”
Then why, Tilla wondered, did he not speak to the tribune straightaway and demand her release? Corinna must be frantic with worry about Victor. She could be doing something to help. Instead, here she was, sitting in the cozy gloom of the hayloft drinking beer, because the master of that stupid Minna had the power to have her husband locked up again. Maybe she could sneak out after dark.
“But the Medicus is doing things!” said Virana brightly. “He has been talking to the Praetorians and trying to find out what they know about the murder.”
Tilla frowned. “Who told you that?”
Virana took a bite of apple and paused to chew it before saying, “Everybody knows.”
“ ‘Everybody?’ ”
There followed a list of names, some of which Tilla vaguely recognized as the putative fathers of Virana’s baby.
“They’re very cross. They don’t want to go to Deva. They think something horrible is going to happen.”
It was doubly annoying to be stuck here when Virana was able to wander about, spreading gossip. “What makes them think that?”
“Marcus complained to the centurion about being watched by guards, and the centurion said, ‘This is nothing. You wait till you get to Deva.’ ”
“Perhaps he meant things would be better at Deva.”
Virana shook her head. “That is not the way Marcus heard it. It was ‘You wait till you get to Deva and then it will be much worse.’ So Marcus asked him what was going to happen at Deva and he didn’t answer.”
It might be something; it might be nothing. Tilla said, “If the recruits are under guard, how were you talking to them?”
Virana grinned. “The guards are very nice if you’re friendly. They let me talk to Marcus. He’s the one I like best. And he still talks to me, so when we get to Deva—”
Tilla put her head in her hands.
Virana paused. “Are you all right? Is it the cough medicine again?”
“No.”
“Are you sad about Victor? Corinna says he can hardly walk and please, please, can you tell the tribune again that he really didn’t kill Geminus?”
“Virana, I am supposed to be looking after you for your family.”
“I thought I was here to help you.”
“Yes, but . . . I am older! I am responsible! You must stop going round the camp, being friendly with the soldiers! What will—” Tilla stopped. Virana would not care what her mother thought. “Marcus won’t want to marry you if he sees you with other men.”
Virana’s mouth rearranged into a pout. “You think I am stupid.”
“Yes.”
“Well, I am not. I made sure Marcus didn’t see us.”
Tilla fought back a wish to fling herself backward into the hay and scream. As calmly as she could manage, she went back to her first question. “Who made the recruits think that the Medicus has been talking to the Praetorians, Virana? Was it you?”
Virana squared her shoulders and gave a little wriggle like a hen settling down over her eggs. “I shan’t tell you things if you get cross with me.”
“If you don’t tell me anything useful,” said Tilla, “I shall have you dumped at the side of the road and you can walk home.”
“It is not my fault you are stuck here with that woman! Why is everyone horrible to me?”
“Because you are very annoying. Do you know who told the recruits, or not?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“One of them heard some of the Praetorians talking at the latrines. They said the Medicus was snooping around, asking questions, but it was all right: The native would get the blame. Now Marcus and the others are all arguing about what to do.” She glanced up. “They told me to go away. But I’ll go back if you like. If you give me my dress—”
“No,” said Tilla. “It’s bad enough that you go wandering alone amongst the soldiers, without wearing that.” Seeing Virana’s face fall, she added, “But you have done well, and I thank you.”
Again Virana’s expression changed to one of pleasure and surprise. It was as if nobody else had ever taken the trouble to encourage her.
Tilla pushed aside a faint sense of foreboding. Virana had been told she would be sent home after this. That was what was going to happen. She would worry about how to do it later on.