by Ruth Downie
Valens grinned at Ruso. "One of us would," he agreed. He gestured toward the bird. "This duck is excellent," he said. "Which reminds me, does anyone know somebody wanting to hire out a good cook?"
Neither of the ladies could suggest anyone. "It is terribly hard to get good staff here," sympathized the wife with the chins.
"This is the best meal we've had in ages," said Valens. "When we're off duty we tend to eat out, but you never know what you're getting when you eat in public bars. The other day I was nearly killed by a dish of oysters."
Encouraged by the interest this aroused, Valens went on to explain the effect of the oysters in the sort of detail that demonstrated another reason why people didn't socialize with doctors. Ruso took a long drink of well-watered wine. He was praying for a medical emergency that would require his immediate presence when he heard Paula suggest, "Perhaps they used poisoned oysters to murder that girl in the river."
Rutilia shot his wife a look as the sister retorted, "Don't be silly. She was strangled."
Before anyone could reply, the wife said brightly, "Girls! It has been lovely to have you dining with us but unfortunately—"
"Is it true she was bald?"
"—it's time for bed," continued her mother, gesturing toward the slave. "Atia will take you to your room."
The sharp-faced woman stepped forward and Ruso heard the elder girl hiss to her sister, "Now look what you've done!"
"Lovely girls!" enthused the woman with the chins after they had been ushered out of the room.
"Huh," grunted their father. "Need some discipline." He turned to Ruso. "Sorry about Rutilia Paula. I'll be having words with her."
There was a pause and Ruso realized he should say something. "Your daughter is . . ." he began, "she's, ah—very, ah . . ." The woman with the chins emitted a burp. A servant reached forward and removed an empty dish. "She's actually quite funny," he said.
The man scowled. "I'm not raising a comedian: She needs to learn to behave herself." He turned to his wife. "How did she get hold of that business about the murder?"
The earrings swayed and sparkled as she shook her head. "This is a very small place, dear. People talk."
"It's nothing for you ladies to go worrying about," put in the second spear. "Just a runaway barmaid."
"I wouldn't be surprised if it was her own people," said the woman with the chins, "They have some very odd ideas here, you know." She leaned closer to Ruso and her voice dropped to a loud whisper. "I didn't like to mention it with the girls here, but some of them share their wives."
"Really?" said Ruso. "Who with?"
The woman gave an alarming giggle that suggested she thought he was flirting with her. "Each other, of course."
Ruso, sensing that some reaction was needed, said, "Glad I'm not a native."
"Some of them," she continued, "don't like the girls mixing with our men. You see, the truth is, Doctor, our men are a much better prospect than theirs." She turned to her husband. "Aren't they, dear?"
"Much."
"Our men have education and training and discipline, you see. Not that theirs couldn't join the auxiliaries if they wanted to, but most of them are too lazy to work their way up. I suspect she was strangled by a jealous native."
Ruso scratched his ear. The idea that Saufeia had been killed because the locals were jealous of the army's suave sophistication was something he had not considered.
Their hostess leaned forward. "Wasn't there another girl from a bar who went missing?"
"It was the same bar," put in Valens.
"Really?" demanded the woman with the chins. "The same bar?
Perhaps there's a madman lurking there, pretending to be a customer!"
"Must be mad if he goes to the bother of getting them out past the doormen," put in her husband.
"Perhaps he is one of the doormen. You never can tell with those types."
The man ignored her. "If he wants to murder women why doesn't he just snatch 'em off the street?"
Their hostess looked alarmed. "We make sure our girls never, ever go out without a chaperone."
"We're not talking about daughters of decent families," pointed out the second spear. "And the bar's just having a run of bad luck. The owner reckons the first one eloped with a sailor."
The woman with the chins assured the second spear that he was bound to catch the murderer soon.
He took a sip of wine and said, "We'll see. Trouble is, nobody's got time to turn the place upside down looking for him. It's not as if the girl was anybody important."
"Not to us, perhaps." The words were out before Ruso had thought about them. Suddenly he was aware of a silence and the eyes of everyone around the table were trained on him. "What I mean is," he continued, realizing this apparent questioning of the second spear's judgment was just the sort of thing that would have annoyed Claudia, "she must have been important to somebody, once. She had some education."
Valens grinned. "Ruso's been making inquiries."
"Really?" The eyes above the chins were wide.
"No," he said, glaring at Valens, who had now managed to imply that he didn't trust the second spear to investigate properly. "I just happened to pick it up in conversation."
"Well, you have to expect these things from time to time," observed the husband of the woman with the chins. "We've got three or four thousand men stationed here at the moment. We don't pick them to be country gentlemen."
"What a very sad end," murmured their hostess. "The doctor's right.
Somebody must have cared about her."
"Somebody ought to ask the servants what happened to her," ventured the plump woman, dabbling her fingers in the bowl held by a patient slave and drying them on the towel over his arm. "Servants always know everything, you know. It's amazing."
As Ruso dipped his hands into the warm water, he glanced at the face of the slave holding the bowl. The man's expression gave nothing away.
26
RUSO HAD JUST persuaded his stomach to calm down after the unaccustomed riches of a good dinner when the answer to his prayers arrived, much too late. He was woken with the message that he was needed at the hospital. The unlucky patient had been on the way back to barracks from guard duty. In the dark he had tripped, landed badly, and dislocated his shoulder. He was finally drugged into semi-consciousness, then painfully and forcefully reshaped and bandaged. Ruso trod the couple of hundred steps back to his bed with more care than usual, only to be summoned an hour later to prescribe medicine for a man having a seizure. On return he left the message slate propped against his bedroom door with SLEEPING IN, DO NOT DISTURB scrawled across it.
Thus it was with neither joy nor enthusiasm that he opened the front door to urgent knocking shortly after dawn and found his clerk calling to ask whether there was anything he wanted done.
"What I want done," explained Ruso, summoning all the patience he could muster and wondering what sort of a clerk could fail to understand a staff rotation, "is for you to push off and not bother me until I tell you to. Is that clear?"
"Yes, sir."
"Dismissed."
"Yes, sir," replied the man, saluting, but instead of pushing off as ordered he remained on the doorstep.
"I said, dismissed."
"Yes, sir."
"So?"
"Are you ordering me not to come, sir?"
"Of course I'm ordering you not to come! Is there something the matter with your hearing?"
"No, sir."
Ruso leaned against the door frame and yawned. "Albanus," he said, "are you deliberately trying to annoy me?"
The man looked shocked. "Oh no, sir."
"Do you want to be charged with insubordination?"
"Oh no, sir!"
"Then what is the matter with you?"
Albanus's shoulders seemed to shrink as he glanced around to make sure there was no one listening in the street. "Officer Priscus's orders, sir."
"Officer Priscus," explained Ruso, "has seconded you to m
e. So you do what I tell you."
"Yes, sir."
"So what's the problem?"
"Sir, he's my superior. So when he tells me to report to you in the morning, I have to do it."
Ruso sighed. "He only meant the first morning."
Albanus shook his head. "No, sir. He told me again yesterday."
Ruso ran a hand through his hair. "I'll talk to him. Now get lost."
Albanus nodded eagerly. "Shall I get lost anywhere in particular, sir?"
27
PRISCUS SNAPPED OPEN one of the folding chairs and held it out to Ruso before inserting himself behind the polished desk. As he sat down Ruso noticed two things: that the glass eyes of the wolf pelt were now glaring up at a coat of fresh limewash instead of a damp patch and that the chair he had been given had surprisingly short legs. He was obliged to look up at Priscus in order to speak to him, although since the administrator was busy aligning his bronze inkwell against the edge of the desk, there did not seem to be much point in starting yet.
Priscus lifted his hands and held them just above the inkwell, as if poised to catch it should it try to jump back to its original position. Finally satisfied, he smoothed his hair, which did not seem quite as black today. "Really," he remarked, "one would think that most men were capable of obeying a simple order to leave things where they find them." Finally he looked at Ruso. "Oh dear. I seem to have given you the wrong chair. Would you like to . . . ?"
Ruso lounged in the chair, tipping it onto its back legs. "This is fine," he assured Priscus, enjoying the look of disapproval.
"I'm glad you've come to see me," said Priscus. "I need a word."
"Albanus," suggested Ruso.
Priscus's eyebrows rose in a surprise that might have been genuine. "Are you dissatisfied with his work?"
"His work is fine. He's keen, he knows Latin and Greek, and he's the only clerk I've ever met who could spell phthisis right without asking."
"Excellent. I thought you would find him useful."
"He's too useful. He follows me around like a shadow. I can hardly take a pee without him being there to record the event."
"Ah." Priscus inclined his head slowly as if he were afraid any sudden movement might dislodge the hair. "This will be the result of my reassigning his other duties so he can concentrate on helping you settle in."
"Fine. He's assigned to me. Agreed?"
"Indeed."
"So I should be giving him his orders."
Priscus entwined his fingers and leaned forward across the desk. "Is there some difficulty of which I'm not aware?"
"I think we've just sorted it out."
"Excellent. We try and run a tidy administration here, Ruso, but I do appreciate that the complexities are a little hard to grasp. So if there are any difficulties with which Albanus can't help you, I hope you won't hesitate to come straight to me."
Ruso saw the man watch as he lowered the chair back onto all four legs. "There is one thing," he said.
"How can I help?"
"We'd be able to use the supplies much more efficiently if the staff didn't have to keep finding you to ask for keys."
Priscus placed both hands on the edge of the desk. "The men are not permitted to help themselves to supplies," he said. "If I expect to be away for any length of time, I arrange for adequate stocks to be available."
"But. . ."
"Sadly, Ruso, this a policy we have been forced to adopt. There are people in and out of the building at all hours and even the staff are not always above reproach, so I find it wisest not to tempt them. Lock it or lose it, I'm afraid."
"I've never had this problem before."
"No. But there was an unfortunate incident with an inventory check some time ago, and the chief medical officer was . . . " He hesitated, appearing to grope for a word. "Most dissatisfied. My predecessor was given a dishonorable discharge. Not wishing to follow him, I instigated a policy of supervised access to storage areas."
As he spoke there was a knock on the door. Having nothing further to say, Ruso started to get up. Priscus motioned him to sit. "If you wouldn't mind waiting, Ruso? Just a couple more things . . ."
Ruso contemplated the wolf as its killer countersigned dockets for orders to the pharmacy and questioned the need for a new set of scales.
When the pharmacist had gone—leaving behind his request for the scales on a substantial pile labeled FURTHER CONSIDERATION—Priscus turned back to Ruso.
"I do apologize for the interruption," he said. "I'm sure you must be rather busy at the moment."
"I'm told it will improve when we have a CMO."
Priscus raised one eyebrow. "Someone in this room, perhaps?"
"I'm the second medicus," Ruso pointed out.
"But only in terms of date of arrival, surely?" Priscus attempted a smile. "I hear you have combat experience. I would imagine that would stand you in good stead."
Ruso, wishing to discuss neither the ghastly mess of the Jewish rebellions in Cyrenaica nor his own job prospects, said, "What was the other thing you wanted to see me about?"
The administrator turned to one side and pulled a file down from the shelf. "Just a couple more small matters that need to be straightened out in time for the auditors . . . " He flipped open the file and ran his finger down the columns. "Yes, here we are. Charge for private use of isolation room and facilities, five days, immediate payment requested. Perhaps the bill has been mislaid?"
"I don't think I've ever had one."
"Really? I shall have to look into it. This is exactly the sort of slackness the auditors will pick up on."
"Let me have the bill and I'll take care of it."
"Thank you. I am sorry to have to mention it, but we must tighten up on expenses. Otherwise we may be forced to cut back on the services the hospital offers."
"Ah," said Ruso, wondering which service Priscus would be proposing—reluctantly, of course—to cut.
"In fact, I was hoping to have a word with you and Doctor Valens about some suggestions for cutting costs."
"Well, here I am."
"Simple economies, Doctor. Matters which I assure you will add no burden at all to the medical staff." Priscus spoke with an intensity that reminded Ruso of the gleam in the glass eyes of the wolf. "For example, by insisting that most of the hospital business is conducted during the daylight hours, we could save a considerable amount on candles and lamp oil over the course of a year."
"So I imagine," said Ruso, who had often wished he could find a way to stop people from inconveniently falling ill during the night.
"Small savings soon add up, provided one makes a thorough budget first," continued Priscus, moving his hands in a parallel motion as if caressing a small saving in the air above his desk. "Let me give you a simple example. Boiling dressings in larger quantities gives an economy of scale, but we need to invest more in stock in order to keep the supply up. Short-term expense against long-term gain. Which is why . . ."
Ruso braced himself.
"We are instigating a system that will account for the resources each individual uses."
"How many man-hours will it take to add that up?"
"That's the beauty of it, Ruso." Priscus seemed genuinely enthusiastic. "The men are here anyway. It's simply a matter of putting them to the best possible use. A short-term concentrated expenditure analysis will allow us to set consistent spending policies. Which will in turn make it possible to exercise some form of budgetary control."
"Are you telling me the army's running out of money?"
"Oh dear me, no! But we should be making the best use of available resources, don't you agree?"
"I suppose so."
"And these days the idea that everyone has the authority to order whatever strikes his fancy just won't do. If everyone just' orders in one thing extra, the budgets are out of control. Let me give you an example. Only yesterday I caught one of the orderlies changing pillows between patients."
"Aren't they supposed to?"
&n
bsp; Priscus positively beamed at him. "The stock of pillows and covers," he explained, "is calculated to balance with the timing of the laundry. Unless they are noticeably soiled, pillows are changed on Fridays. Yesterday was Tuesday."
"I ordered the change."
Priscus looked surprised. "Desirable, no doubt, but surely not medically necessary?"
Ruso frowned. It probably hadn't been necessary, but he was not prepared to concede that to Priscus. "Fresh beds cheer people up. People get better quicker when they aren't miserable. It's a medical decision."
"But one that has an effect on the laundry bills." Priscus sighed. "I appreciate your point, but the next time there is a major call on our resources—an epidemic, or a serious accident, or more trouble with the locals—if the budget has been frittered away on inessentials, we'll have no contingency funds to deal with the crisis."
Ruso scratched his ear. "Well, if a plague or a war breaks out, won't someone in Rome notice and send us some more cash?"
Priscus shook his head sadly. "Unfortunately, things are never quite that simple. But of course, nobody takes the trouble to discover the real reasons for difficulties: instead everybody blames the administrators. The fundamental problem we have, you see, is that the people who do the spending are not the ones who have to explain it to the camp prefect. I have to do that. And very shortly the camp prefect will have to explain it to the imperial audit inspectors, and believe me, Ruso, no one wants to fall out of favor with the imperial audit inspectors. They go through the books like terriers hunting a rat."
"Hospital administrators hunting a wolf," suggested Ruso.
"You may have heard that the hospital administrator of the Second Augusta fell on his sword after one of their visits."
"Wasn't he the one who was selling the medicines and keeping the cash?"
Priscus looked offended. "All I ask, Ruso, is that if you make decisions affecting my budgets, you should clear them with me first."
"You want me to prescribe whatever's cheapest?"
"The medical decisions are yours," Priscus assured him. "But I would be grateful if you would keep me informed. Perhaps we could ask Albanus to copy any relevant items from your notes."