by Ruth Downie
Merula had gone shopping while Bassus escorted the girls back to the bar and ordered Daphne and Chloe to open up. As he took up a position by the door, Stichus emerged from the kitchen and looked Phryne up and down. He glanced across at Bassus, who shrugged indifference. Stichus seized Phryne by the wrist and dragged her toward the stairs.
Before she could consider the wisdom of it, Tilla had shouted, "Leave her alone!"
The room fell silent. For a moment the only sound was the crackling of the fire under the hot drinks counter. Stichus, still keeping a grip on Phryne's wrist, looked at Bassus as if waiting for guidance. Everyone had stopped what they were doing to watch.
Tilla squared her shoulders. Still addressing Stichus, she said, "She is only a child."
Bassus's stool scraped the tiles. He made his way across the room, a slow smile spreading across his face. Tilla took a deep breath and stood her ground.
Bassus reached out a forefinger and lifted her chin. "And you," he said quietly, "are only a slave. Who won't always have that nice doctor around to look after her." He withdrew the finger. "Remember that."
Stichus jerked Phryne toward the stairs. Tilla felt an arm around her shoulders. "Into the kitchen," urged Chloe. "Cook needs you."
Tilla plunged the knife into another cabbage and tried not to think about Phryne, or how easily the girl's fate might have been her own. She would not wait to find out what might happen when she did not have the doctor to look after her. In fifteen days, she would be gone.
Since the few windows that opened onto the street were barred against burglars, there were only two ways out of Merula's. The main entrance was shuttered and locked at night and guarded by Bassus or Stichus-or both-during the day. The kitchen door led to a gloomy yard from which a door in a high wall opened onto a side street. The door was barred except when kitchen deliveries came in, and the bar secured with a padlock whose key swung from Merula's belt. Even if she managed to steal the key, she would have to fiddle with the padlock in full view of the kitchen window, the upstairs cubicles (not that much window-gazing went on up there), and the row of private rooms occupied by Merula and the doormen, which ran all along the opposite side of the yard to join the building behind. The front entrance was the only realistic way out. She would have to find an excuse to go out into the bar in the evening, wait until the doorman was distracted, and slip away into the night. Most people seemed to think this was the route Asellina and Saufeia had taken, although no one had actually seen them leave.
Strangely enough, it might be easier to escape now that Asellina had been found. The other girls had said little about the circumstances of her death, but they were clearly shocked and frightened by it. And, though only Chloe had dared to say so, upset to realize how little they would be mourned if the same fate befell them. The doormen would not be expecting anyone to venture out alone now.
A door opened behind her. She did not look up.
"Tilla!"
She twisted around, looked up into Merula's painted eyes for a moment, then put down the knife and scrambled to her feet. There was no one else in the kitchen.
"Tilla," said Merula, folding her arms. "I don't suppose for a moment that's your real name, is it?"
"My master says I am Tilla."
"Don't stare at me like that, girl! Haven't you learned anything?"
Tilla lowered her gaze and stared at the rings that looked too heavy for Merula's thin fingers.
"You look well, Tilla."
"I am well, Mistress."
"Many people have helped you to recover. You should be grateful to them,"
"Yes, Mistress."
Merula reached forward and raised a tangle of untidily shredded cabbage. "Is that the best you can do?"
"Yes, Mistress."
"If you were one of my girls, you would be better trained."
Tilla resisted the urge to look her in the eye. "I am not one of your girls, Mistress."
The cabbage fell back onto the table. "No," agreed Merula. "None of my girls would dare to question the actions of her superiors, or to speak of what did not concern her."
"No, Mistress."
"Learn this for your own good, Tilla. Slaves who cannot control their tongues may lose them."
"Yes, Mistress."
"Remember my advice. Now go and collect your things. Your master has come to fetch you."
44
Ruso glanced back to make sure the girl was keeping up. He was glad to get her away from that place. He had explained that he was in a hurry and since they had not yet added up the bill for Tilla's lodgings, Merula had agreed to have it sent over to the hospital. On the way out Bassus had given Tilla a smile that she did not return, said he was sure that they would meet again, and said, "You won't forget us, will you?"
Tilla looked him in the eye and said, "I will not."
Bassus turned his attention to Ruso. "When d'you think she'll be fit?" "Not for some time."
Bassus's grin reappeared. "You doctors. Never commit yourself, do you?
"Not if we can help it," said Ruso.
He was swerving out into the street to avoid the painter's ladder when he heard the approaching rhythm of boots on gravel.
He looked up to see a unit of infantry whose front men had now begun to clatter along the flagstoned street behind him. Ruso turned and called, "Step back!" to Tilla. She might not know that a tired column within sniffing distance of its barracks had all the braking ability of a boulder rolling down a mountain. The painter, seeing their approach, wisely scrambled down his ladder and moved its base closer to the house. A wandering hen jerked its head up, glared at the disturbance, and scuttled out of the way
Tilla stood with her back to the wall as the column began to pass. Judging from the mud, the sweat-streaked hair, and the volume at which the centurion and his optio were berating the stragglers, these men were returning from the regulation twenty-mile full-kit training march.
Several men were looking across at Tilla and grinning. One or two winked at her. Instead of lowering her head like a modest woman, Tilla folded her good arm over her bandaged one and stared back boldly Ruso moved to stand next to her just as the centurion spotted what was happening and bellowed, "Eyes front!"
"Look away!" Ruso ordered her.
He surveyed the grimy faces of the legionaries trudging past. Any of them could have squeezed the life out of the unlucky Saufeia.
"Tiger stripes," said Ruso to the gate guard without being asked, swiftly followed by, "So, have there been any calls for the doctor?"
"Not a thing, sir."
Ruso handed the man a coin. He beckoned the girl in past the heavy studded gates and led her under the arch. "I'll organize a gate pass for you so you can do the shopping," he said. "Do you understand what your duties are?"
She nodded. "I cook and clean and mind the dogs."
"Good." He unhooked the front door key from his belt and handed it to her. "What can you cook?"
She looked at him. "Soup?"
"Fine," he agreed.
"What in soup?"
Ruso thought about that for a moment. There was unlikely to be much in the kitchen, and if there was, the mice would have found it by now.
"Something tasty," he said, untying his purse. He picked out three coins and put them into her hand. "Buy something for breakfast as well."
Tilla picked up the coins and examined them on both sides as if she wasn't sure they were genuine. "Soup should start in the morning," she remarked.
"Well, do your best," he said. "I won't be back before dark anyway"
They passed into the main street of the fort. "This is the sort of route you are to take back and forth," he instructed her, sweeping one arm in the general direction of the legate's residence. "No exploring, you understand? Deva is not a place for a young woman to wander around on her own."
Tilla's head rose. "If a soldier touch me, my Lord, he will be punished."
"Perhaps," said Ruso, without a great deal of confidence, "bu
t by then it will be too late. Listen to me. Both inside and outside the fort, you are to stick to busy streets where there are plenty of people. If a man pays attention to you, walk away. Don't try to put him in his place. You may get away with boldness wherever you come from, but it won't work around here."
Tilla said, "I pray to the goddess to protect me."
"Well, help her by using a little common sense. Two lone girls have died and I assume you know that at least one of them was murdered?"
"The goddess will punish that man, my Lord. I have put a curse on him."
"I see."
"Also, I will put a blessing on my Master."
"Let's hope your goddess is listening, then."
The girl smiled. "She is listening, my Lord. You see already what she do to Claudius Innocens."
45
The heavy door of the hospital swung shut and the latch dropped with a clank. The skies had cleared into a chilly night. Ruso nodded to the guards as he passed the legate's house. The great man himself was away, but his family would be asleep beyond that grand entrance. In moments of weakness, Ruso envied men who lived in married quarters: men who went home every night to a home-cooked meal and the pleasure of a woman to warm the bed. In such moments he usually took a firm hold of his imagination and brought it to heel by picturing the woman to be Claudia. Tonight, he had no cause for envy. He was going back to warm lodgings and hot food. There would be no one in his bed-he had told the girl to use Valens's room-but there would be no one nagging him in the morning, either.
What a lot of things a man doesn't need.
He shivered, and turned to head toward his supper.
The house was pleasantly cozy, but only the dogs came to greet him. Evidently his servant had gone to bed. He lifted the lamp that had been left burning by the door, and sniffed. Leeks? Onions? It was hard to say. He carried the lamp into the kitchen. Then he cleared a space on the table, laid out the wooden bowl, the spoon, and some bread, which had been placed in the box with the lid weighted down, and settled down to enjoy his first home-cooked meal in Britannia.
The soup was lukewarm.
It was watery.
It was bland.
He took a mouthful of bread and then tried again.
This time the spoon brought out something rounded and hard. Exploring it with his tongue, he found peculiar soft strings attached to it. He returned the object to the spoon and held it up to the lamp to examine it. In the yellow light he saw the top of a carrot with most of the leaves still attached.
Gaius Petreius Ruso sighed deeply and pushed the bowl away. Truly, he was alone in a barbarian land.
46
The bedroom door was wide open but she sidled in, singing softly to keep her courage up. Her eyes scanned the floor as she moved forward with the broom held out in front of her. Satisfied that the floor was clear, she ran clumsily in the medicus's big boots, twisted around, and landed on the bed with her feet in the air, the boots still on. Then she laid the boots and the broom on the bed and crawled around the mattress on her knees, bending to check that none of the covers were hanging down. Finally safe, she turned to the dog standing in the doorway, and said, "Are you ready?"
The medicus had told her to sleep in this room last night. It was the room of the other doctor, the friendly one, who had gone away. She had not slept well. To begin with she had lain rigid in the dark, listening for the sound of the medicus coming home and wondering if he would bed her, because he was a man, or beat her, because she was not a cook, or both.
Instead of the medicus's footsteps she had heard a faint pattering that she tried to tell herself was the sound of her own fear. As soon as she moved, it stopped. As she was drifting off to sleep, it began again. Then it squeaked. Fear might patter, but it did not squeak. So she had to keep listening, moving at short intervals, rolling over, kicking her legs or sighing, hearing the trumpet blowing the watches just as she had on bad nights in the hospital and trying to reason with herself that all houses had mice. No one died because of mice. She had grown up in a house where mice crept through crevices in the walls and nested in the thatch. At night she had heard them rustling the bracken on the floor, and she had gone to sleep with the blanket over her head, knowing that Bran would protect her. But Bran was dead, and the dog in this house was not as fast. Even the Romans, with all their organization, could not control mice.
It was past the middle hour of the night when the medicus came home. She watched a bright line appear and fade around the door as he carried the lamp into the kitchen. He did not spend long there. As soon as she heard his bedroom door scrape across the floor, she counted to ten, flapped the blankets to frighten the mice into their holes, and fled on tiptoe to the dining room, where the dog-after some shoving on both sides-had finally assented to sharing the couch. She had lain beside it, pondering the strangeness of Romans.
When she had first been carried into this house-before he had taken her to Merula's-she had been too weak to observe much beyond that the place smelled bad and looked cluttered. She had assumed that the servant was lazy, or away, or perhaps ill. It had come as a surprise to find that there was no servant except herself. It seemed that despite being surrounded by all this wealth, Roman doctors lived in poverty.
A healer among her own people would be better treated. Her mother was given gifts. Eggs or a hen. A pot of honey. A shawl. A goat. A mirror and comb set. Beer. Once, when she had safely delivered a son to an elder whose wife had been in labor for three days, a pregnant cow. They had lived well. They had a cook and a herdsman. Even when the harvests had failed, she could count on one hand the number of times the family had gone hungry. Whereas this medicus, with all his skill and authority, lived in a vermin-infested ruin and was reduced to bargaining for an injured slave in a back street. Small wonder that Romans had no respect for different tribes. They still had to learn respect for one another.
She must have fallen asleep on the couch, because the next thing she could remember was the sound of someone moving around in the kitchen. She rose to find the medicus helping himself to the bread rolls she had bought for breakfast.
"That soup," he said, without looking up.
She swallowed. "Is-good?"
"Is that the sort of thing you eat over here?"
"Britannia cooking, Master," she ventured.
"Gods above. With that and the weather, I wonder you people have the will to live." He had given her more coins and said, "I haven't got time to go into it now. Get something from a shop for supper. Not a British shop. Understood?" When he left he was clutching his case in one hand and an apple in the other.
Now she was back in the bedroom, determined not to pass another night like the last one. She had already used the broom handle to pull out the clothes that had been thrown under the bed. She had found among them a dish with greasy remains bearing small teethmarks and two cups with fluffy green pillows growing inside them. Now, from the safety of the bed, she bent and jabbed the broom at what looked like an old linen saddlecloth stored underneath the cupboard in the corner. Nothing happened. She pushed the broom farther in and began to slide the saddlecloth sideways, out from between the legs of the cupboard. The dog moved forward to sniff at it. A couple of puppies wandered in to see what was happening. The linen, once red and now faded at the folds to orange, was gathering a rising tide of gray fluff and little black mouse droppings around its leading edge as it moved.
How could anyone live like this? Once she had cleared this last corner, she would give all the floors a good sweep and block all the holes where the boards had warped or knots had fallen out or the mice had gnawed their way in.
She pulled the broom out from under the cupboard, repositioned it on the folded fabric that had emerged, and began to push sideways again. The fabric strained but did not move. It was snagged on the base of the cupboard. She crawled farther up the bed and poked at it from a better angle, putting more of her weight behind the stick. Soon there would be no hiding places left. Tonig
ht, if she brought the dog in and sealed the gap under the door, she might be able to get a better night's-
It was so fast she barely saw it. As the dog shot under the bed in pursuit, the broom jerked in her hand and the fabric pulled clear. Tiny gray shapes leaped out of a tangled nest and scattered in all directions. The broom clattered to the floor. Puppies yelped and skidded. Tilla clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle her scream.
The narrow lane was empty. Tilla twisted the key in the lock and tested the door. Shut. She was safe now. Out of that horrible house. Before long, her heart would stop pounding and her breath would calm down.
Out here, the sun was shining and a fresh breeze brought the smell of the tide over the wall of the fort. A gull wheeled overhead, screaming. Somewhere in the distance was the clang of a blacksmith at work. She tied the key on to her belt like a proper housekeeper, picked up the empty shopping basket, and hooked it over her injured arm. Then she slid the loop of the dog lead down from where she had secured it in the crook of her elbow. Grasping the lead firmly in her hand, she drew in a deep breath of the clean air and looked around her.
The house was set on its own at the end of a long open space that separated the hospital and the next barracks block. In the space, nettles had sprouted through what looked like the angular footprints of vanished buildings. The nettles might be useful, although it was late in the season now. Thistles, groundsel, dandelions, and scattered tufts of broad-bladed grass had poked through the black of an old bonfire patch. In the middle of the graveled alley that led past the front door was another scorched area. It seemed an odd place for a bonfire. She supposed it had something to do with the smoke stains and the burned smell in the medicus's house.
The lead pulled against her hand. The dog strained toward the open area and promptly squatted to add its own contribution to the collection of droppings dotting the ground. Tilla wrinkled her nose and decided not to bother gathering the nettles.