Terra Incognita: A Novel of the Roman Empire (31 page)
“The native didn’t say what he would do to Felix?”
Susanna shook her head. “I’d have remembered.”
“And then what?”
She shrugged. “And then nothing. Felix and his friends settled down, the merchant complained about the disturbance, the wagon drivers started shouting for beer, and Thessalus must have persuaded Gambax it was time to go. Thessalus is a good man, sir. I think it says a lot for a man when he’s kind to his staff like that. Taking someone out on his birthday and seeing him home. Even when you could see he wasn’t enjoying it much.”
Ruso tried to imagine himself paying for a fun evening with Gambax, and failed.
“Was Thessalus acting strangely?” he asked. “Drinking too much?”
Susanna shook her head. “He was a bit quiet. That’s all. I didn’t see him again until he came in the next day. He was in a terrible state by then. His hands were shaky and his hair was all over the place. He came up to the counter and told me he’d killed somebody. He asked whether I thought he should confess to the prefect. I told him to go back to the barracks and lie down.”
“Did you mention this to anyone else?”
“No!”
“Nobody at all?”
She fiddled with her shawl. “Well . . . when they arrested Rianorix later on, I thought they would know the doctor hadn’t done it. I may have mentioned it to one or two people after that.”
So that was how the story had escaped. Ruso decided not to tell Metellus that it was Susanna who had wrecked his plans for an easy conviction.
“But I told them not to tell anybody.”
“Of course.”
“He didn’t say it was a secret,” she added.
“If it was a secret,” said Ruso, feeling sorry for her, “he wouldn’t have told you, would he?”
She looked relieved.
He said, “I heard Felix was talking to Dari late that evening.”
“Dari? She didn’t have anything to do with what happened.”
“Did you mention her to Metellus?”
“I didn’t want to waste his time.”
“Humor me for a moment,” said Ruso. “Waste mine.”
Susanna paused to pull the shawl forward over her hair and repin it. She said, “I think Dari owed him money. She gave him something, and I saw him get his note tablet out. Then I got rid of him. I didn’t know Rianorix was lying in wait for him, did I?”
“Of course not.”
“In the end I told him to go or he’d miss curfew.” She cleared her throat. “To tell you the truth, doctor, I was annoyed. I’ve had to speak to Dari before about standing around chatting when she’s supposed to be working.”
“So Felix was a nuisance?”
Susanna folded her arms. “I didn’t say that,” she said. “I don’t imagine he was much of a soldier, but he was good company. He had a way of talking to you as if you were the most important person he’d ever met.” She wrinkled her nose. “ ’Course, I didn’t fall for it at my age.”
“Of course not,” agreed Ruso, then wondered if he had said the wrong thing.
“Anyway,” Susanna continued in a tone that suggested he was right, “we never had any bother with him. And frankly, I’d rather have him than some of the so-called heroes we get in here trying to bully my girls.” She got to her feet. Now, gentlemen, can I get you something to eat? There’s plenty left.”
After Susanna had gone in search of food, Ruso swilled the last drop of Aminaean at the bottom of his cup and said, “Why do you think Susanna thought Gambax was telling her to hide this?”
Albanus looked blank. Ruso explained about Susanna’s belief that Gambax had told her not to serve the wine in the presence of Doctor Thessalus.
With an uncharacteristic lack of charity Albanus said, “I expect Gambax was lying because he wanted it for himself.”
Ruso grinned. “Travel has certainly changed you, Albanus.”
“Well, sir, as Socrates would have said—”
“Ruso! There you are! I’ve been waiting in that miserable bathhouse for
hours
!”
Ruso never found out what Socrates would have said. Standing in Susanna’s doorway was a man who should have been somewhere else entirely.
V
ALENS! ” SAID RUSO
. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“I’m taking some leave. Move over.” Ruso’s former housemate edged around the table and collapsed next to him on the bench.
“You’re taking leave from the hospital? While I’m away?”
A weary grin spread across Valens’s handsome and unshaven face. “You’re not completely indispensable, Ruso. They’ve brought a replacement in on a temporary contract. And I have to say, he’s no fun at all. So I started to wonder how you were getting along up here in the wilds.”
Ruso did not believe a word of this, but did not want to say so in front of Albanus. “He turned to his clerk. “Perhaps you could go to the kitchen and see if they can find Officer Valens some—”
“Anything,” said Valens. “Anything at all. I’m starving.”
The moment they were alone, Ruso said, “Right. Now tell me.”
“It’s not my fault,” insisted Valens. “Really it isn’t. None of this would have happened if you and Tilla hadn’t pushed off and left me on my own in the house.”
“None of what?”
“You remember the Second Spear?”
“Not with pleasure.”
“Well, you know he had a daughter?”
“Gods above! Tell me you haven’t?”
“Do listen, Ruso. It wasn’t my fault. She found out you’d gone and I was at home alone and bored, and she started popping ’round to see me.”
“With no encouragement from you, of course.”
“Ruso, she’s a rather attractive young lady—”
“Who stands to inherit all of the Second Spear’s money.”
Valens looked pained. “Money does not come into this. Anyway, you’re quite right, it wasn’t a good idea. So I told her it had to stop before her father found out. And that’s when the trouble started. Are you going to finish that bread or can I have it?”
“What trouble?”
Valens sighed, and Ruso saw signs of the strain he must have been under for the last few days. “It’s all a bit of a mess,” he conceded. “I wasn’t intending it to go quite like this.”
“You were allowing a single girl to pop ’round and visit. Completely unchaperoned, I suppose. How did you think it would go?”
“I didn’t sleep with her, Ruso. I swear.”
“You might as well have.”
“That’s what she said.”
“What else did she say?”
“I don’t want to remember. You know what her father’s like?”
The memory of one particular clash with the Second Spear made Ruso shudder.
“Well, she’s inherited it. She’s terrifying, Ruso. She’s like . . .” Valens searched for a simile. “She’s like a one-woman cavalry charge. I had to take to sleeping in the hospital to avoid her. That was when she went and told her father.”
“Oh,” said Ruso, needing no further explanation. “So what are you going to do?”
Valens shook his head. “I really don’t know. I am genuinely on leave, by the way. It cost me a fortune to wangle it, which is why I can’t afford a shave, and I’m going to have to ask you to pay for my supper, but I wouldn’t have lived to spend the money anyway.”
“And you really haven’t touched her?”
“Of course I’ve
touched
her. I just haven’t done anything irrevocable.”
“You could try going back and telling him that.”
The dark eyes widened. “Ruso, he’s bigger than me. And so are all the men with swords who’ll do whatever he tells them. I’ve been on the road for days. Sleeping in wagons in case he had people searching the inns.”
“So now what are you going to do?”
“I was hoping I could stay up here with you for a while. Just until he calms down. I could help out with . . . well, with something or other. Anything, really.” Valens brightened. “I could do your night duties!”
Ruso tried to remember any previous occasion upon which Valens had offered to do someone else’s night duties. This simple offer was more alarming than all the fear and exhaustion betrayed by his friend’s face.
He lowered his head into his hands. “Well,” he said, “thanks for involving me in all this.”
“I’m sorry. But you’re my best friend. How much longer is your clerk going to be with that food?”
“I think he’s taken a fancy to the waitress,” said Ruso. “He’s scrubbed the ink off his fingers and he’s wearing hair oil. It’s a dangerous time, spring.”
Ruso circumvented the difficulty of explaining Valens’s arrival at the fort by not bothering to try. He announced that an officer had arrived from the Twentieth and a gate pass was issued without question.
There was only a night porter on duty at the infirmary. “It’s evening,” explained Ruso to his bemused colleague, who was staring around the office in dismay.
“Gods above, Ruso, is this really how they do things up here?”
“No,” said Ruso. “This is how it looks now that I’ve gotten them to sort it out.” He was about to offer to take Valens around and introduce him to the patients when he heard the soft closing of the outside door. Metellus glided into the office and asked to have a word with him in private.
T
ILLA FELT HERSELF
go rigid in the darkness. Something had woken her. Something bad. There it was again. That scrabbling sound.
Mice?
No . . . mice did not sniff and sigh and mutter and bounce around enough to make the bed shake. Not mice. Aemilia was hanging over the side of the bed, groping for something under the mattress.
“What are you doing, cousin?”
Another sniff. “I can’t tell you.”
“Well, can it not wait until morning?”
There was a choking sound, then a sob. “It can wait forever!” wailed Aemilia. “It is no good now! What am I going to do?”
Tilla fought down an urge to shove her cousin out of bed. “Go to sleep,” she suggested. “Or lie still so that I can. And be glad that Rianorix is no longer in chains because of you.”
“You don’t understand.”
“You don’t explain.”
Another sniff, then a movement that led Tilla to suspect her cousin was wiping her nose on the sheet. “I suppose it doesn’t matter now,”
said Aemilia. “Put your hand out.”
After a moment of confusion in the dark Tilla felt something small and hard being pressed into her palm.
“Don’t drop it,” urged Aemilia. “It’s very precious.”
Tilla’s fingers explored what seemed to be a metal ring with a complicated pattern that made the surface deeply uneven.
“Gold,” Aemilia whispered. “With my name on it.” Another sniff, another wipe.
“Who gave you this?”
“Felix.”
Tilla yawned. “He gave you a gold ring?”
“It was our secret.”
Tilla slid it onto her third finger. She had never worn a gold ring before. She did not expect to wear one again. It was a pity there was no light by which to admire it.
“Do you think I will see him in the next world, cousin? He said he didn’t believe in that sort of thing, but you don’t have to believe in something for it to be true, do you?”
“I suppose not,” said Tilla, who privately thought that if the next world was reserved for people with honor, any soldiers who managed to make it there would be very lonely. “Is the ring the reason Rianorix was jealous of him?” Rianorix could make baskets all day and all night and still have no hope of affording a gold ring.
“No, no, cousin! The ring made everything all right. And then that horrible doctor went mad and . . . and . . .”
Tilla reached for Aemilia’s hand and placed the ring on her finger. “I am sorry for you, cousin,” she said. “Truly.”
“I am going to wear it,” announced Aemilia. “I know what everyone thinks. But he gave me a ring with my name on it. I will show them!”
“Tomorrow,” agreed Tilla, snuggling back under the blanket. “Now we must go back to sleep.”
“I will show them all.” Aemilia flung herself back down on the mattress and sniffed.
“Good night, cousin. Sleep well with your beautiful ring.”
“Good night, cousin.”
“Cousin?”
“Yes, cousin?”
“One last thing. Do not wipe your nose on the sheet when I am in the bed.”
R
USO STOOD IN
Metellus’s very ordinary office in the headquarters building. Clearly this was not the room to which Tilla had been taken for questioning. There was nothing frightening about three folding stools, a table, a cupboard, and the rather fine bronze lampstand that was enabling him to see them all.
“Wine?” offered Metellus, gesturing toward a flagon and a set of three matching glasses. “It’s rather good. I have an arrangement with the people down at the inn.”
Ruso declined.
