Terra Incognita: A Novel of the Roman Empire (28 page)

On the other hand, Metellus could have asked her that himself, and it seemed he had not. Maybe his investigation did need a little trampling upon.

“I’ll talk to Metellus,” he promised, reaching forward to slip a finger under a curl that was touching the corner of her eye.

“You must tell him Rian is innocent.”

“Yes. Now, since we’ve got a few minutes’ privacy . . .”

She grabbed his hand. “Not now. They will make me go before long and I have to explain to you why Rian is angry with this Felix.”

He stretched out along the bed and drew her toward him. “Tell me lying down.”

“You will not listen.”

“I promise.”

She rolled over to lie on top of him with her elbows dug into his ribs.

“Even when we are small,” she said, “my cousin Aemilia wants to marry an officer.”

Ruso closed his eyes and slid his hands down to cup the curve of her bottom. He had a feeling this was going to be a long story.

41

Y
OU’RE SURE YOU
haven’t let him out of your sight?”

The orderly hesitated. “I just went next door to use the pot, sir. But I was only gone a moment.”

“How long ago was that?”

“About an hour ago, sir.”

Ruso shook Thessalus again. He lifted one eyelid with his thumb, but in the poor light it was difficult to make out where the black of the pupil ended and the deep brown of the iris began. Standing over his patient, he watched the rise and fall of the blanket with each labored breath.

“Did he leave the room?”

“He sat reading after lunch, sir. Didn’t hardly move off the couch.”

So wherever it was, it must have been within easy reach.

Searching the room would be difficult, not only because it was cluttered and badly lit but because what he was looking for was small and probably as dark as the eyes of the man it had temporarily doped.

“Did you bring anything extra in here with you?” he demanded, ripping the cloth down from the window and letting in such light as the thick and dirty glass could offer.

“No, sir.”

Ruso shook the scrolls over the lunch tray he had inspected himself and crouched to run his fingers over the underside of the chair. “Did anybody deliver anything?”

“No, sir.”

“Keep trying to wake him.” Ruso bent to peer under the couch. He needed to confirm that Thessalus had taken poppy tears before beginning the messy business of forcing down whichever of the antidotes came first to hand:
wine, olive oil . . .

The medicine must have got in here somehow. And if there were any left, it would still be in here.

Vinegar, mustard . . . (mustard?! Was that right?) rose oil . . .
Would Gambax have rose oil somewhere? Olive oil would do. There must be plenty of olive oil in the kitchen.
Then induce vomiting.

He examined the tray. He tasted the water again. It was still water. “Thessalus, wake up!”

The wine had been drunk, but the gritty dregs were no more bitter than when he had tasted it earlier. Army-issue wine might not have inspired his patient, but it would not have prostrated him either.

He eyed the body on the couch. It had the definite appearance of being drugged, and its hands and feet were cold.

He turned to the orderly, who was chewing his lower lip. “Why didn’t you call me?”

“I thought he’d gone to sleep, sir,” protested the man. “I thought a doze would do him good.”

“He’s certainly gone to sleep,” agreed Ruso. “We’d better hope he wakes up again.” He scowled at Thessalus. All that talking, and they were no further forward. It was as if the man wanted to destroy himself.

He crouched, put his lips close to the pale ear, and said loudly, “Thessalus?”

No response.

“Thessalus, someone needs the doctor!”

The muscles around the man’s eyes twitched.

“Wake up. We need a doctor!”

Thessalus muttered something and tried to turn over, then halted halfway and winced. “Whaa?”

“Wake up!” called Ruso.

“Uh,” said Thessalus, raising a hand to rub his eyes. “Am I asleep?”

Relieved, Ruso helped him to a sitting position. “Drink of water?”

Thessalus blinked and nodded.

Ruso had the cup in one hand and was about to fill it from the jug when he paused. He carried it across to the window, upended it, and peered into the hollow of the base. There, stuck into the recess, was a little wad of brown resin. Dried poppy tears.

42

I
T WASN’T ME
, sir. Absolutely not.”

Ruso relaxed into his chair and reflected that this was the first time he had ever seen Gambax standing at attention. The man looked uncomfortable, as if he were not used to it.

“I was ordered not to give him anything, sir, and I didn’t,” continued Gambax.

When Ruso said nothing he added, “It was an
order
, sir. I never do anything I’m ordered not to do.”

“Hm,” said Ruso, suspecting that unless he were ordered to do it Gambax rarely did anything useful at all.

“I can show you where I wrote it down, sir,” added Gambax.

Ruso noted with some satisfaction that he was now beginning to sound genuinely worried. “You’re writing all my orders down?”

“Just the ones that contradict Doctor Thessalus’s orders, sir. So I can remember who said what when. In case there’s any query about it when he’s recovered.” Gambax risked a glance at him. “You said you wanted better record keeping.”

“So,” said Ruso, making a mental note to find more useful work for Gambax to do, “if it wasn’t you, who was it?”

Gambax swallowed. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know.”

“No, sir.”

“You haven’t by any chance decided to obey my order yourself while passing Doctor Thessalus’s order on to somebody else?”

The surprise in Gambax’s “No, sir” suggested that had he thought of that first, he might have tried it.

“Well, here’s my next order,” said Ruso. “Don’t stop to write it down, just do it. I want you to find every man who was on duty just before lunch and send them all in here one by one until I tell you to stop.”

The first candidate was Albanus, who denied all knowledge of tampering with Doctor Thessalus’s lunch. “I know,” explained Ruso, “but I have to treat everyone the same.”

Albanus did, however, have other information. First, Doctor Thessalus had not returned to the fort until just before dawn on the morning after the murder, and second, the gate guards had just taken a message from a man who had not left his name but who wished to speak with Doctor Ruso. He would be waiting at the bathhouse to meet him as soon as Ruso was free.

“Then he’ll have a long wait,” observed Ruso.

Next in was the cook, who denied interfering with Doctor Thessalus’s meals and demanded to know why whoever was complaining didn’t have the nerve to come and say it to his face.

“Nobody’s complaining,” explained Ruso.

“Well, they hadn’t better. I can only work with what I’m given, can’t I?”

“I’m sure everyone appreciates that. I haven’t heard any complaints about the food.” Although he had heard several personal remarks about the competence and parentage of the cook, who was now looking as though he was not sure whether to believe him.

Moments later he heard the cook summoning the next man into the room with the words, “Your turn. Waste of time. If that stew’s stuck on the bottom, it’s not my fault.”

The next man to waste his own time and Ruso’s was the orderly who had now removed the straw from his hair. He was less irascible than the cook but equally clueless. In the brief interval that followed, Ruso wondered whether he should have lined them all up first and made a speech designed to inspire terror and confession. But despite having spent years watching centurions in action, he was not sure that he knew either how to inspire or how to terrorize. He would just end up looking ridiculous.

A rap on the door interrupted his musings. Ingenuus bent under the door frame, closed the door behind him as instructed, and responded to, “Good morning, Ingenuus. Stand easy,” with, “It was me, sir.”

Ruso blinked. “What was you?”

“Put the poppy tears under Doctor Thessalus’s cup, sir.”

“I see. Did you know I had issued an order that he wasn’t to be given any?”

“You didn’t order me not to, sir, you ordered Gambax. And Doctor Thessalus asked me to do it when I went to collect his breakfast tray.”

Ruso rested his elbow on the arm of his chair, lowered his forehead into the palm of his hand, and closed his eyes. When he opened them the bandager was still standing there, supposedly at ease, but looking distinctly apprehensive.

“Ingenuus,” he said with all the patience he could muster, “why do you think I gave that order?”

“Because you don’t understand the situation, sir.”

This was proving to be a most surprising conversation. “Enlighten me.”

“I’m sorry, sir, I can’t.” At least the big man had the grace to blush.

“Are you telling me,” said Ruso, “that there is a situation of which I’m not aware but everyone else—you, Gambax, Doctor Thessalus, for all I know everyone else in the Tenth Batavians—is?”

“I couldn’t say, sir.”

“And what if I were to order you to say?”

Ingenuus swallowed. “Then you’d have to charge me with insubordination, sir.”

“I see.” Ruso scratched the back of his ear with one finger. “This is all rather difficult, isn’t it?”

Ingenuus’s blush deepened. “Sorry, sir. But Doctor Thessalus asked me—”

“Of course he asked you! He’d ask anybody who walked through the door! That’s his problem!”

“Yes, sir.”

“From now on, you are not to give him anything he asks for without consulting me first. Understand?”

“But sir—”

“Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir,” mumbled Ingenuus, his head bowed in misery.

Ruso leaned back in his chair, clasped his hands behind his head, and stared at the wall. He had never trusted Gambax. Now he could no longer trust Ingenuus. He was unlikely to get any sense out of Thessalus for a while and Metellus the aide was a self-confessed professional liar. Things had come to a fine pass when the only people he could rely upon were a clerk and a girl who was no friend of the army, and who believed she had meetings with gods in stable yards.

43

T
ILLA WAS BEGINNING
to know what to expect. There were the shriekers, the starers, and the believers like Rianorix who whispered, “Have you come to haunt me, daughter of Lugh?” Ness was a starer. Then she launched herself across the doorstep and held Tilla close, crying, “You are home, you are home! I knew you were alive! Oh mistress, the goddess has brought you home at last!”

“Ness!” gasped Tilla, hugging the bony creature who had been their family cook for years and had only been saved from the raid by being at a relative’s house nursing a broken ankle. “I thought I would never see you again!”

“I am not that old, mistress,” pointed out Ness, recovering from her uncharacteristic outburst of affection. “Although your uncle and cousin are doing their best to work me to death.”

“Are they here? I need to talk to my uncle. Rianorix was arrested.”

“We know. Your uncle is out on business. Your cousin is in her room. I will tell her you are here.”

Ordinary people grew thinner as the winter progressed, but the rich carried their weight through to the next harvest. So it was no surprise to see Aemilia plump and well fed. What was unusual was to see her pretty cousin confined to her bed with the sun still so far above the horizon, her wide blue eyes rimmed with red, and her fine clothes looking as though they had been slept in for several days.

“Cousin! Are you ill?”

“Daughter of Lugh!” Aemilia threw back the blanket, lurched to her feet, and flung her arms around Tilla. “Is it really you? Have the gods sent you to comfort me?”

Tilla’s return of the embrace was wary. The cousin she remembered as fastidious smelled stale. Her hair was clumped and greasy. When her grip showed no sign of slackening, Tilla patted her on the shoulder and stepped back. “Veldicca tells me you have troubles.”

“Everything has gone wrong!” Aemilia flung herself back onto the bed. “Where have you
been
? I have missed you terribly!”

Tilla opened her mouth to answer, but Aemilia carried on. “Everything has gone wrong, cousin, and I am all alone with nobody to help. Nobody understands!”

Tilla sat on the bed and eyed her cousin in the uneven light that entered the little room through the thick green window glass. “I am sorry to hear it.”

“Such horrible things have been happening. You cannot imagine. Felix is—oh, I cannot say it—and Ness says Doctor Thessalus has gone mad and Rianorix is arrested and the builders have gone away and I am not with child after all and Daddy says I was a disgrace at the funeral but I couldn’t help it, I really couldn’t!”