by Ruth Downie
"Nice of you to ask, though."
She dared not move. She had thought the goddess would keep her safe. Now it seemed she was expected to manage on her own.
"Surprised to see me, are you?" he asked. "Stich took the girls out this morning."
Two women with baskets were standing chatting at the bakery counter across the street. Tilla announced loudly, "You are hurting my arm!"
One of them turned.
"I am not afraid of you!" she added, ashamed that the words were not true.
Bassus followed her gaze to where everyone had now stopped talking to watch what he was doing.
"If you hurt me," added Tilla, struggling to keep her voice level, "my master will have you punish with the law!"
There was a sharper stab as he pulled her against his chest. " 'Round here, girl," he hissed, "I am the law."
Before she could decide whether to scream, Bassus burst into laughter and released her. "It's all right, ladies," he called to the audience across the street, holding up both hands in mock surrender. "Just a lovers' tiff."
He turned back to Tilla. "Cheer up, gorgeous. You're worth too much to damage. Me and your doctor friend done a deal, did you know that?"
"You are lying."
"Am I? I'm going to introduce him to some people I know. We should get a good price for you."
She stared at the man's heavy, seamed face. She took a deep breath.
"My master will never deal with a man like you!"
Bassus shrugged. "Ask him yourself." He cocked his head to one side and examined her face. "What's the matter?" He smiled and shook his head. "Oh dear, oh dear. Gone soft on him, eh? You thought he was going to keep you, didn't you?"
59
HERE YOU ARE!" declared Valens, settling himself on the wooden lid of the row opposite Ruso in the hospital latrine. "I'll tell them I haven't seen you."
"Who?"
"Apparently the second spear wants your balls roasted on a spit."
Ruso washed the sponge out in the water-channel, shook it, and tossed it back into the bowl. "Any particular reason?"
"Seems he spent a whole afternoon looking for a kidnapped girl."
Ruso pulled his tunic straight and adjusted his belt. "Good. So what's the problem?"
"The problem, Ruso, is that when they found her she insisted she wasn't kidnapped at all."
Before he could reply, an orderly appeared in the doorway and exclaimed, "There you are, sir!" as if he too thought Ruso had reason to hide.
Ruso sighed and waited for what he knew must be coming. But instead of an urgent summons to report to the second spear, he was told there was a veteran waiting to see him at the east gate.
"Tell them to take a message," said Ruso.
"They said he wants to see you personally, sir."
"I'm busy. If he wants to see me he'll have to come back after the tenth hour."
The orderly disappeared. Ruso dipped his hands in the basin, shook off the water, and headed for the surgery.
Albanus handed him the record for the first patient and returned to perch on his stool by the door. Ruso surveyed the notes from the recruiting panel. Under "Lucius Eprius Saenus, age twenty, height five feet eight inches, medium build, distinguishing features, scar on left temple," the scribe of the recruiting panel had written: "general physique satisfactory, eyesight good, hearing good, teeth—three missing in upper jaw, two in lower, genitals normal, no sign of disease, feet not flat." The examining doctors at the recruitment panel had already done most of the work. Ruso's job was merely to prod Lucius Eprius Saenus in places he didn't wish to be prodded again, look at places he still wouldn't want looked at, and generally confirm that his health had not deteriorated since he had been confirmed fit to join the army. This performance would have to be repeated for the other twenty-two stubble-headed recruits lined up on the benches in the hall, all of whom would resent him by the end of the afternoon, but not as much as they would loathe and dread their centurions by the end of the week. Almost as much, in fact, as Ruso was dreading his next encounter with the second spear.
"Right," said Ruso, opening his case and extracting a tongue depressor. "Let's get started."
Albanus leaned out the door and said something to someone. An orderly who was evidently afraid the recruits had gone deaf bellowed, "FIRST MAN TO SEE THE DOCTOR!"
A pale and skinny youth in a loincloth appeared in the doorway and stood to attention.
"Come in," suggested Ruso. "I can't see much of you from out there."
The youth entered and stood to attention before the desk. His flesh was goosepimpled. His eyes roved over the array of instruments in Ruso's case.
"Lucius Eprius Saenus," said Ruso, closing the case. "Strip."
The youth looked at him as if he didn't understand the instruction.
Ruso gestured toward the loincloth. "The army needs to see all of you, Saenus."
"Yes, sir," agreed the youth, not moving.
"That's an order."
"Yes, sir."
"Well, what are you waiting for?"
The youth swallowed. "I'm not Lucius Eprius Saenus, sir."
Ruso glanced at Albanus. "You're not?"
"No, sir."
"Well why didn't you say that in the first place?"
"You didn't ask."
Ruso got to his feet and walked in a slow circle around the youth, who was clearly a couple of inches short of five feet eight. There was no sign of a scar on the temple. "Who are you, then?"
"Quintus Antonius Vindex, sir."
Albanus bent down and began to scrabble through the records box.
"Quintus Antonius Vindex," continued Ruso, "have you ever heard the expression, rhetorical question?"
"No, sir."
"No. Well, the correct answer to Why didn't you say so in the first place? was, Sorry, sir."
"Yes, sir. Sorry, sir."
Albanus had given up scrabbling and was now kneeling in front of the box, pulling the records out and heaping them onto the floor.
"Go and find Saenus," Ruso suggested to the youth. "I'll call you in when I'm ready."
They must have realized the mistake outside, because Ruso was still returning to his seat when the next man entered.
"Lucius Eprius Saenus?" inquired Ruso, rereading the description carefully and taking no chances this time.
"Do I look like it?" demanded a familiar voice.
Albanus leaped to his feet with the eagerness of a man seeing a chance to redeem himself. "You can't come in here!" he cried. "The doctor's busy!"
"I can go where I like 'round here, mate," retorted Bassus. "Know a lot of people, don't I?"
"It's all right," Ruso reassured Albanus, who had sized up Bassus and was moving toward the door to call for reinforcements. "Go and find Saenus, will you? I'll be back in a minute."
Safely beyond the front door of the hospital and overhearing ears, he turned to Bassus. "So you're the veteran who wants to see me. What's going on?"
Bassus frowned. "I come here to ask you that. We've had investigators crawling all over the bar like cockroaches and now I'm having to trail over to HQ with a bunch of slave documents. And what I'm wondering is, who was it told them they might find something?"
Ruso took a careful breath. He could feel his heart pounding. "Are you telling me," he said, "that you have the official ownership documents for that new girl?"
"I was right, then. I thought it was you. 'Course we have. Merula just couldn't find them this morning, what with the girls screaming and lads crashing around all over the place."
Ruso got to his feet and said quietly, "I owe Merula an apology."
"I wouldn't go near her right now, mate. Keep your mouth shut and stay out of the way. That's what I come to tell you."
"Thank you," said Ruso, not entirely sure why Bassus seemed to be defending him. "I will."
"Next time you got any problems, Doc, you talk to me first. We're business partners. Right?"
Ruso scratched his
ear. "I seem to have been misinformed."
"That's what I thought," said Bassus.
"I'll see to it that my informant is dealt with."
"Bloody women," sympathized Bassus. "Always stirring things up.
You can't believe a word they say. People think I'm hard on 'em, but they don't have to put up with it like I do."
Ruso nodded. There seemed to be nothing he could add.
60
BY THE TIME Ruso had formed the opinion that all twenty-three recruits were fit enough to be driven to exhaustion, despair, and finally to usefulness, the message he had been expecting had arrived. He was to report to the second spear.
One of the qualities needed for promotion through the centurionate was the ability to single-handedly compel eighty trained killers to do things they didn't much want to do, and to do them instantly. In this respect, as in many others, the second spear was generally reputed to be heading for the very top. As Ruso entered the man's office, he was conscious of adopting the stance of legionaries he had seen being humiliated on the parade ground: shoulders square, head high, eyes straight ahead, focused on nothing.
"Doctor Gaius Petreius Ruso, sir," announced the orderly.
The second spear ordered his man to wait outside. When the door was closed, he got to his feet. "Well, Doctor? What have you got to say for yourself?"
"I'm sorry about what happened, sir. I was misinformed."
"I'm not talking about that farce in the whorehouse, Ruso. All you did there was upset a local trader, waste my time, and make the army look ridiculous. The camp prefect will deal with all that. And if you're expecting me to go running around hunting down slave traders and hair dealers on your say-so, you're a bigger fool than you look."
"Yes, sir," said Ruso, wondering what else the second spear could want to talk about. He was staring at a point just to the right of the man's shoulder and silently bidding farewell to any hopes of the chief medical officer post when he was conscious of a sudden movement. A hand grabbed his throat. He was knocked backward. His head crashed against the wall. The second spear's face filled his vision. The mouth opened. "Give me one reason," it growled, "why you aren't about to have a very nasty accident."
Shocked, winded, struggling for air, Ruso attempted to wheeze, "Don't know what you mean, sir."
"Don't treat me like an idiot, son. You might be able to fool them down at that hospital but you're not fooling me." Each sentence that followed was punctuated by a tightening of the grip around his throat. "Thought you could get away with it, did you? Thought you'd try your luck? Thought she might talk me 'round?"
Realizing too late what this was about and that his rank was not going to protect him, Ruso mouthed, "No."
The second spear relaxed his grasp for a second and Ruso was gulping in air when the grip clamped back around his throat and his bruised skull was slammed back against the wall. Over the ringing in his ears, a voice roared, "Don't lie to me! You were seen!"
61
RUSO STUMBLED TH ROUG H the front door and across the room. He dragged a blanket off the couch and stretched out, laying his throbbing head on a cushion that smelled of dog and stale beer.
"Tilla!" he croaked. "Get me some water."
The sound of his head bouncing off the wall was still echoing in his skull. His throat felt as though the slightest twist would split his windpipe and crack his neck bones apart.
He had almost begged Tilla's goddess for help as the strength drained out of him like desert sand sifting through his fingers. A distant voice was shouting, "Sir! Sir, you'll kill him!" and finally the vice around his throat had loosened and he'd collapsed to the floor.
She had not heard his request for water. He couldn't call any louder.
He rolled onto his side and tried again, the word rasping in his throat and ringing through his aching skull.
"Tilla!"
Still no reply. Too tired to lift himself off the couch, he closed his eyes and waited for her to find him.
Something was jumping on his stomach. An African drummer was practicing on the inside of his skull. Something was bouncing on his chest. A chisel was being scraped up the inside of his throat. A rough tongue was licking his face. He lifted an arm and batted away a small warm body. The licking stopped. The body yelped as it landed.
A voice called, "Off, boys and girls! He doesn't want to play!" The bouncing ceased. The drumming and scraping didn't.
Ruso opened one eye to see Valens scoop up a whining puppy. "You're not hurt," Valens assured the puppy after a perfunctory check. He turned to the couch. "Are you all right there, Ruso?"
The water helped. He was less sure about the liniment. "I got it from one of the vets," explained Valens. "He says it's marvelous stuff. I've been waiting for a chance to try it out."
Ruso grimaced.
"Don't worry about the smell; you won't notice it after a minute or two. So, what happened?"
Ruso pointed to his throat and moved his head carefully from side to side.
"Write it down," suggested Valens. "Hold on, I'll find something . . . if the lovely Tilla hasn't chucked it all. . . Where is she, by the way?"
Ruso lifted both palms in an exaggerated shrug. Valens disappeared into his room and began throwing things about in his hunt for writing materials. Ruso hauled himself to his feet and shuffled across the floor.
The kitchen fire was dead. There was no sign of any attempt to prepare supper. The water jug was almost empty and there was no bread in the bin. The wretched girl must be up to her old tricks with the goddess. She could not possibly have the meal ready on time if the fire wasn't lit by now. He wondered if she knew what had happened at Merula's and was hiding from him.
Ruso wandered into his bedroom. Rubbing the lump on the back of his head, he stood in the doorway and tried to remember whether he had put his best cloak away or whether it was missing from the hook on the wall.
Valens appeared, clutching a slate. "So. Talk to me."
There were many things he wished to say to Valens, but the slate was not big enough. Instead he scrawled, "My throat hurts, my head hurts, I have no money, my servant has disappeared, and I am about to do ward rounds smelling like a sick horse."
"Ah." Valens reached for the slate. He licked his forefinger, rubbed out the word horse, and wrote, donkey.
Carefully, Ruso tipped his head back toward the pharmacy ceiling, gargled the last of the foul mixture, and spat. Watching it slide down the side of the waste bucket, he pondered the efficiency of military communications. It was a mystery why the army bothered with a signal system when its men were so good at gossip. He had left the second spear's house barely an hour ago, and just now the pharmacist, after expressing sympathy for his sudden cold, waited until the last patient had left to murmur between gargles, "Sorry to hear about the second spear's daughter, sir. That was bad luck."
Ruso turned to him and rasped, "What about the second spear's daughter?"
"If it's any consolation, most of us think she wouldn't be your type, sir."
"I'm not bloody interested in the . . ." Ruso paused and lowered his voice. "Any rumors about myself and the second spear's daughter are groundless. I'm sure she's a lovely young lady but I've never actually set eyes on her. So go back to whomever told you this nonsense, and tell them if they spread any more lies I'll deal with them myself."
Halfway through late-ward rounds, he met Valens in a corridor. "How's it going?" demanded Valens.
Ruso paused to insert another throat lozenge before strong-arming him into an empty isolation room and latching the door.
"Jupiter!" Valens wrinkled his nose. "You'd think that salve would have worn off by now, wouldn't you?"
"I've been thinking," said Ruso. "Have you been smarming around the offspring of the second spear?"
"I did have a pleasant chat with her the other day. Nice girl."
"Well, don't. Her father thinks you're me, and he doesn't like it."
"No? Well, I wouldn't either. Look at the st
ate of you. Your eyes are bloodshot, your hair's sticking up, and you smell like something they clean the drains with."
"I know. And it's your fault!"
"She hasn't complained to him, has she?"
"She hasn't. You were seen."
Valens smiled. "I didn't think she would. I knew she'd be a sensible sort of girl. She's got a sensible sort of nose."
Ruso opened his mouth to argue, then decided it would only make his throat worse.
"I'll tell you all about it later," suggested Valens. "Over tonight's supper served by the lovely Tilla."
"I can't find Tilla."
"Dear me. You are having a bad day."
"I am," growled Ruso. "But it'll improve when I kill you."
62
THE HOUSE FELT chilly as he entered. The dog offered him the briefest of greetings and then dodged past his legs and out the door. Ruso sniffed and glanced around at the floor. The puppies must have been locked in for hours.
The kitchen hearth was a blackened void where the fire should have been. Ruso sniffed again and crouched to inspect the floor. Beneath the table was a small brown turd.
Outside, he heard Valens whistle for the dog. Moments later there were footsteps on the gravel. The main door slammed and Valens appeared in the kitchen, surveying the empty shelves and the dead fire.
"Where is she?"
"I don't know. The dogs haven't been let out."
"So where's our dinner?"
Something in Ruso's expression must have told Valens that this was the wrong question.
"She's probably gone shopping," suggested Valens. "Met up with a friend or something. You know how women talk. Perhaps she's dropped around to Merula's."
"I'd be amazed if she'd gone there. Anyway, she'd know to come back by now."
"Well, I can't wait till she turns up. If you get the fire going, I'll go and talk nicely to the kitchen staff. See if they can sneak something past Priscus." Valens paused. "I wouldn't worry, old man. She's bound to show up before long."
"It's getting dark. Something's wrong."
"Then she'll be back any minute, won't she?" Valens grinned. "Cheer up. You'll be able to give her a good spanking."