Semper Fidelis: A Novel of the Roman Empire

by Ruth Downie

  Ruso struggled to his feet and stood with his back straight and his knees bent. It was marginally more respectful than leaning against the wall with his legs stretched out, but much less comfortable.

  Clarus stepped into the cell. When Accius joined him, there was barely room to shut the door. Ruso, forcibly shortened and with his thighs already aching from the effort of his unnatural posture, looked up at them and waited while Clarus angled a wax tablet to catch the light from the small, high window. Accius glowered at a space somewhere above Ruso’s head. Normally a disciplinary investigation would be conducted by a tribune, but there were all sorts of reasons why Accius was the wrong man to investigate this, and Ruso guessed he had been forbidden to speak.

  “Gaius Petreius Ruso,” Clarus declared, looking up from his notes and addressing him as if he were making a speech in the Forum. “As you are known to the emperor, I will be making the inquiries relating to the accusation of murder that has been made against you.”

  “I didn’t do it, sir.”

  “I am instructed to inform you that if you confess, things will be easier for your wife.”

  “I have no wife, sir. I’m divorced.”

  Clarus looked down his nose at him for a moment, then continued. “Last night you were confined to quarters.”

  “I was called to a medical emergency, sir.”

  “Yes.” Clarus ran one finger over the notes until he reached the point he wanted. “And when the emergency was dealt with, you went out through the east gate disguised as one of my men.”

  This was not going well.

  “You were seen at the mansio asking for your wife.” Ruso swallowed.

  “There was blood on your hands.”

  “The blood was from a patient, sir.”

  Clarus let that rest. “There are some doubts about the loyalty of your wife, are there not?”

  “I have no doubts, sir.”

  “You wouldn’t deny that you asked to see her?”

  “I needed to inform her that our marriage was no longer legal, sir. Because I’d been demoted.”

  “But you still think of her as your wife.”

  The burning in Ruso’s thighs was becoming unbearable. “I didn’t kill Geminus, sir.”

  “Several people have told me that you had a grudge against him.”

  “Not him personally, sir. The things he did. He caused the deaths of three of his recruits and then made threats against me when I tried to look into it. I wasn’t the only person who—” He stopped just in time and finished with “who had trouble with him” instead of who wanted him dead.

  “The tribune here was already dealing with the business of the recruits.”

  “Yes, sir.” He could stand it no longer. He wriggled round until he could lean against the wall with his aching legs stretched out in front of him.

  Accius burst out, “Stand up straight!”

  Clarus shot him a warning glance while Ruso shuffled back to his original position. He turned to the prefect. “Sir, I’m not going to escape. Could I have the chains removed?”

  “Other men, perhaps,” said the prefect. “A man with your history, no.”

  “My history, sir?”

  “Your record of violence against fellow officers.”

  Ruso frowned. “What?”

  Clarus sighed. “You see, Ruso, we know a great deal about you.”

  Ruso closed his eyes, realizing at last what—or rather, who—was behind Clarus’s interest in him. “I once pushed Metellus into a river, sir. I did it because he deserved it.”

  “And did Geminus deserve what you did to him too?”

  “What happened to Centurion Geminus wasn’t justice, sir. And the person who did it is still free.” He took a chance. “I’ve worked as an investigator in the past, sir. I could help you track down the guilty men.”

  Clarus snapped his writing tablet shut. “Do the honorable thing and confess, Ruso. You don’t want to meet the questioners, and we don’t want to have to use them on a man of your former standing. It’s undignified.” He turned and thumped the door with his fist. “Guards! We’ve finished with this man.”

  Chapter 50

  “Where are your toes?” asked Tilla. “Can you show me where your toes are?”

  Lucios, seated on a rug on the mud floor, grasped the end of one chubby foot and looked up for approval.

  “Oh, clever boy!”

  It was hard to reconcile the grinning toddler with the red-faced, screaming creature she had seen thrashing about in his mother’s arms three days ago.

  “Now where is your hair? Where’s Lucios’s hair? Shall I show you?”

  The wispy blond hair was duly located and admired. “How about your ears? Oh, look! There they are! Two ears!”

  Tilla hoped his mother would be back soon. The child was barely old enough for stories, she was running out of games and she would be glad to get away from this place. Corinna had clearly not been pleased to come down and find her still here this morning, and was even less pleased when Tilla explained that her husband had told her to wait here for a message. So Tilla had promised to find lodging elsewhere, and although they both knew that rooms were as rare as fish feathers in Eboracum at the moment, Corinna had thanked her and offered to pass on the message when it came. Meanwhile, perhaps Tilla would wait behind and watch Lucios while she went out to buy bread?

  Tilla had duly noted that she was not to let the boy eat mud, or pull off his bandage, or go near the hearth or out of the gate (which was now barred) or up the ladder (a board was tied across the rungs to keep him off); and at the least sign of fidgeting or hiding in a corner, she was to insist that he sit on the pot.

  Corinna had been gone a long time. There must be queues at the bakery, and no doubt much gossip to be exchanged after the rioting last night. Perhaps Corinna was glad of the break: Caring for a small child all day and night must be tedious. Was that how it would be if they ever had children of their own? And where would “home” be if Accius had her husband thrown out of the Legion?

  She wished the message would come.

  “I think,” she said, “it must be time for your milk.”

  Lucios, easily contented, bounced with delight. While he slurped at the pointed spout—he insisted on holding the cup himself—she busied herself checking the repacked luggage. Essentials were in one bag and things that could be abandoned in the other, just in case she had to move quickly. The medicines would have to stay here until she could collect them. Corinna, whose son had benefited from them, would not begrudge her that.

  She divided her small stock of coins into three. Some went back into the purse that she would tie to her belt. She glanced up to make sure Lucios was still safely occupied, then slipped others into a little linen medicine bag slung on twine around her neck, hidden inside her tunic. Then she unrolled a bandage, knotted the last remaining coins inside it, and hitched up her skirts to tie it around her waist. It was difficult to form a knot by feel, especially with the skirt fabric getting in the way, and it took several attempts, but finally she was satisfied that if she found herself traveling alone, she had done all she could to fool anyone who wanted to rob—

  Lucios was not on the rug. Her heart beat faster. He was not in the room! Holy mothers, where—“Lucios?” she called, trying to sound calm. “Lucios!” She stopped. “How did you get up there?”

  The toddler was balanced on the top rung of the ladder, just out of her reach. He was holding on—loosely—with one hand. The thumb of his free hand was stuffed into his mouth.

  “Stay still!” she urged, untying the wretched board that was stopping her from reaching him. He must have bypassed it by climbing up the cupboard shelves. “Hold tight and don’t move, I’m coming!”

  By the time she reached the top of the ladder, he was waddling away across the gloomy loft, giggling as if this were a fine new game. “I can see you!” she declared, hoping her voice would frighten the rats into hiding. “Here I come!”

  There w
as no point in being cross. It was her own fault for not watching. She hoped she could get him safely down again before Corinna came home.

  The boy threw himself onto a striped bedcover laid out on the floor. She moved toward him, ready to make a grab if he tried to run but keeping a wary eye on the dark expanses under the eaves lest something should scurry out. A misshapen pile hidden by an old gray blanket looked particularly suspicious, but that thing poking out from it was not moving. It was only an old sandal …

  She stopped. There was nothing unusual about an old sandal in a loft, but this one had toes inside it.

  Lucios had tired of the game. He held his hands out toward her. She scooped him up, then retreated carefully down the ladder, holding tight as he wriggled under her arm. As soon as they reached the ground, she carried him out onto the sunny cobbles beside the vegetable patch and placed herself in a position where she could watch the back door of the house. She sat with him between her knees and sang him a please-go-to-sleep song—not too loud, in case she missed the sound of a messenger from the fort knocking at the front.

  She had heard nothing from either the door or the loft when Corinna returned. Lucios was finally asleep on a blanket in the shade, thumb in mouth and looking like a cupid in one of those dreadful paintings that decorated the stepmother-in-law’s dining room in faraway Gaul.

  “I am sorry I am so late,” whispered Corinna, gathering up her sleeping son. “The army are out on the streets arresting people. I had to hide until they were gone.”

  Tilla stabbed a finger toward the thatch and whispered back, “There is someone up there!”

  Corinna glanced at her, then carried the boy into the house and lowered him onto the little bed in the alcove. He wriggled and opened his eyes, then found his thumb and drifted back to sleep. She beckoned Tilla across to the dead hearth. “Please tell no one. He has nowhere else to go.”

  Tilla said, “It is not my business to tell. So there are no rats?”

  Corinna managed a weak smile. “Just the one big one with ginger hair.”

  “I will leave now,” said Tilla, wondering what he had overheard. “I will find somewhere else to stay.”

  Corinna shook her head. “You should not go yet,” she said, reaching for the wicker chair. “Something very bad has happened.” Sitting on the wooden bench by the ashes of the hearth, Tilla learned that the Twentieth were still here, and did not look likely to leave today.

  “Geminus is dead?” Tilla was stunned. This was not how it was supposed to end.

  According to Corinna, the army were stopping people to question them about last night. Anyone who did not answer in the way the soldiers wanted was being arrested and taken away.

  “What about my husband? Is there any news?”

  “I heard …” Corinna paused. “I heard that a doctor has been taken for the murder,” she said, adding hastily, “But it might not be him.”

  “Of course it is him! That is why he sent no message!” Tilla sprang to her feet, grabbing the bench before it toppled behind her. “I must go to the fort!”

  “Not yet.” A figure was climbing down from the loft. To his wife Victor said, “How do we know she won’t talk?”

  “She is a friend, husband!”

  It was hard to recognize this ginger-bearded man as the creature who had begged her for food and then fled across the river. The swelling had gone down and the bruises were yellow stains.

  “Her man’s accused of murder,” he said, placing himself between Tilla and the door to the street. “She knows I’m here, and everyone knows I had no love for Geminus. How do we know she won’t betray us to save him?”

  Tilla drew herself up to her full height, which was not much less than his own. “Because I give you my word,” she said.

  “She brought her husband to help Lucios,” urged Corinna.

  “And if it were not for us,” said Tilla, “what would have happened to you when they caught you at the river?”

  Victor continued to glare at her as if he were waiting for submission, then closed his eyes. “Forgive me,” he said quietly. “It is hard to know who to trust.”

  “Indeed,” agreed Tilla. “Now, may I leave my bags here while I try to help the man who saved you and tended your son?”

  “You may,” he said, stepping aside. “Holy Bregans go with you.”

  Chapter 51

  “No admission without a gate pass.”

  Tilla made another show of hunting through Corinna’s basket as she stood in front of the archway of the east gate. “I am sorry,” she said, scrabbling around under the onions and the wedge of cheese. “It was in here when I went out. I must have dropped it somewhere. What a nuisance.”

  “No admission without a gate pass,” repeated the man. He was wearing the blue tunic of the Sixth Legion, so he had arrived only yesterday.

  “No, of course,” she agreed. “If you do not know who I am, I will wait while you send a message to the tribune.”

  The guard glanced across at his comrades, but they were busy arguing with an old man whose donkey had shed a load of firewood and blocked most of the entrance. He said, “Tribune?”

  “Tribune Accius of the Twentieth Legion,” she explained. “Tell him his housekeeper Minna is at the gate and he will have a pass sent down straightaway. If you do not, his dinner will be late.”

  The guard’s eyes narrowed. “You look like a native.”

  “I am the tribune’s personal choice,” she assured him, leaving him to decide what that might mean if he annoyed her. The other guards were still busy insulting the old man, whose only hope of clearing up his scattered load any faster was for them to stop complaining and start helping. “You could ask at the Mansio,” she suggested. “Or at Headquarters. Everybody knows Minna.”

  The guard pursed his lips, then stepped aside. “Next time, make sure you’ve got your pass.”

  She flashed him a smile of thanks that was much more friendly than anything the real Minna would have given him, and strode into the fort past rows of loaded and abandoned vehicles as if she knew where she was going. Nobody challenged her. With all the recent comings and goings, everyone would assume that somebody else knew who she was. It crossed her mind that a Brigante woman intent on mischief might see her chance to set fire to those vehicles. Today she had more important things to think about.

  A slave carrying a basket of loaves on his head gave her directions to the hospital. A heavily built clerk told her that Medical Officer Ruso was not available but he would see if the deputy was free. While she waited outside the office, wondering what she was doing in the fort and how she was going to get back out again, an orderly arrived to deliver linen to the room opposite. She caught a glimpse of a pale figure propped up on pillows. She hoped it was Austalis, because as far as she could see, the figure still had both arms. When she found her husband, she must remember to tell him that. It would be a small piece of good news.

  A couple of men dragged a creaking basket of soiled linen all the way along the tiled corridor and disappeared around the corner at the far end. A group of Praetorian guards strolled past. They had the loud voices and confident laughter of men who thought they were more important than anyone they might be disturbing. Tilla kept her head down, and if anyone paid her any attention, she was not aware of it.

  The clerk had been gone a worryingly long time when a short young man with dark curls appeared and said, “I’m Pera. Were you looking for me?”

  There were times when it was necessary for a woman to shut herself in a room with a man who was not her husband, no matter how alarmed that man might look, and this was one of them. When she told him who she was, he looked even more alarmed. She said, “I need to know what has happened to him.”

  Pera reached up and rubbed the back of his neck as if it were aching. When he spoke, it was only to confirm her fears.

  She said, “Have they hurt him?”

  “I don’t know. They wouldn’t let me visit. I heard the Praetorian prefect’
s taken charge of the investigation.”

  “Perhaps he will be fairer than Accius.”

  “They’re talking about a trial before the legate in Deva.”

  “But he did not do it!”

  Before he could reply, the door crashed open. Four legionaries appeared. The one in front demanded, “Name?”

  Tilla had been expecting this. She told them who she was, and they marched her away down the corridor. Out in the street, she turned. Pera was standing in the doorway, still watching her.

  Accius was looking just as fierce as before, but this time there was no Minna pretending to darn socks in the corner: just the guard at the door, and some sort of secretary with a stylus at the ready.

  The tribune’s gaze wandered over her as if he were assessing an animal for breeding or slaughter.

  It was no good hoping he would be merciful. She had met ambitious men like Accius before. They were so busy watching every move of the people they were trying to impress that they did not notice who they were trampling on.

  Finally he spoke. “Were you both born fools, or has he become one because of you?”

  “Sir, I am sorry you have lost a relative. But my husband did not kill him.”

  The scowl deepened, as if he was not used to being spoken to frankly by women. “The Medicus has chosen his own fate,” he said. “You need not share it.”

  She was careful to keep her voice steady. “What do you advise, sir?”

  Accius rose from his chair and advanced toward her. “I advise you to obey me in future.”

  The secretary was so still against the wall that he might have been painted on it. Accius was only a pace away now. He reached out one hand and lifted a curl from her ear. His breath smelled of wine. “I have been watching you,” he said. “I am told that you native women will bed any man who takes your fancy, and have no shame.”

  Holy mothers, he must have spoken to Sabina! She must stay calm. She must think. He was trying to frighten her. If she gave way, what would it gain her? He was not the one in charge of the investigation, but he could still make trouble for them both. “Sir,” she said, “you were advise—” No, that was wrong. She tried again. “You advised me well before. My duty is to my husband.”