Medicus mi-1

by Ruth Downie

  Instead of being worried, he should be pleased. He owed it to his family to sell her, but he had not been looking forward to it. Now she had solved his dilemma by running away. The tale about Phryne had been a cover for some sort of primitive good-luck potion she was cooking up for herself. Tilla had fled from Deva and was safely on her way to the hilly lands of the Brigantes.

  Valens came wandering into the kitchen, rubbing his eyes. "No breakfast, then?"

  Ruso shook his head. "Can you manage without me this morning?"

  Valens's eyes squeezed shut and his mouth widened in a lopsided and unstifled yawn that displayed a couple of missing teeth and distorted his agreement into something like, "Yuhhhh."

  Ruso wished the girls who called him "the good-looking doctor" could see him now.

  "Wretched girl might have bothered to send a message," remarked Valens.

  "I think she might have run off," confessed Ruso.

  "Even so."

  Ruso nodded. His relationship with the girl had been awkward, hesitant, and frequently bad tempered, but he thought they had developed some level of mutual respect.

  "You did fix her arm for her," Valens continued, voicing Ruso's own thoughts.

  "And paid money for the privilege," he grumbled. Damn it, if he hadn't rescued her from Innocens there might well have been a third dead girl found in Deva.

  Immediately he wished he had not brought to mind the image of those bodies: the one strangled and bloated and the other barely recognizable as human. Why would Tilla have chosen to leave before her arm was healed? He had no evidence that she was on her way back to the Brig-antes. Her soul could already have begun the journey to a darker place. If that was true, then he wanted to know. He wanted to bury her himself. And then he would not only hunt down whoever had killed her: He would seek out the people who should have investigated the previous deaths, and hadn't. The trouble was, he was one of them.

  He turned abruptly. "I'm going out," he announced.

  In the gloom of his bedroom, he pulled on his overtunic without thinking once about scorpions. He flung his old cloak around his shoulders and paused to run a finger over the smooth, cold hilt of his knife.

  63

  Once he had passed the cemetery, Ruso urged the borrowed horse into a canter. It was a broad-backed beast, recently retired as the mount of a tribune, who, according to the groom, was not the steadiest of horsemen. It was mild-tempered, comfortable, and too staid to be in great demand. It was the ideal horse for a man who needed an animal that could carry an extra rider.

  He slowed it to a trot to pass a string of heavy carts, then wove around a road gang and a couple of mounted men leading a string of shaggy ponies. A local family was heading into town carrying baskets of vegetables. Half a dozen legionaries were heaving against the tilted side of a vehicle that had one wheel in the ditch, evidently determined to right it without unloading it first. A couple of them glanced hopefully up at him, realized he was an officer, and bent back to their task.

  Farther out, the traffic grew lighter. Sheep were grazing beside the road, watched over by a small boy with a large stick. Ruso concentrated on the opposite shoulder, looking out for the path that led across to the woods.

  The horse seemed surprised at being asked to jump the ditch-evidently the tribune had demanded very little of it-but it landed on the other side in a reasonably tidy fashion. A couple of birds flew up from the trees in alarm as it approached. Apart from birds, the woods appeared to be deserted. The horse slowly picked its way forward along the narrow path, apparently unperturbed by its rider's occasional lurch forward to lie along its neck as they passed under overhanging branches.

  There was no smell of smoke among the trees: only that of damp earth and rotting leaves. A better tracker than Ruso would have known whether anyone had passed this way recently. Unable to read the signs, he concentrated on making his way safely through the undergrowth and strained to catch any sounds beyond the brush of leaves, the creak of the saddle, and the warble of distant birdsong.

  He emerged from the woods picking twigs out of his hair and circled the horse around the clearing, trying to look into the trees and over the bracken to the muddy patch where the spring originated. There was no sign of her.

  "Tilla!"

  His shout died away into silence. The birdsong had stopped.

  "Tilla! Can you hear me?"

  He tried several times, twisting in the saddle to call in different directions, waiting each time for a response that did not come.

  He swung down off the horse and left it to graze while he pushed his way through the bracken to the spring. The remains of a small fire lay in the grass, sodden and cold. The fire could have been lit on her last visit or last night: He had no way of knowing. What was certain was that it had not been active this morning.

  Ruso got to his feet, took a deep breath, and shouted, "Tilla! Where are you?" one last time.

  He turned to face the spring. He raised one hand in the air as he had seen his servant do. Glad that no one but the horse could hear him, he offered a prayer to the goddess of the spring, asking her to keep safe her faithful servant whose name was… he pulled the document from his tunic and read out, "Dar… lugh… dach… a," and then added, "but who is known to me as Tilla."

  His approach to the native houses was announced by several excited dogs. As he drew closer, chickens scuttled to safety under a gate on which a small boy sat staring with his mouth open. A couple of squawking geese made experimental runs at the horse. It flattened its ears but plodded forward.

  Ruso dismounted and led the horse toward the gate. The boy scram bled down the other side of the gate and fled into the houses. Women appeared in the doorways. An old man emerged from behind a haystack and shouted an order. The dogs, which to Ruso's relief were tethered, fell silent.

  When he turned after fastening the gate, the occupants of the houses had all gathered in a silent line. Several women had their arms folded. One, white up to the elbows with flour, rested a reassuring hand on the head of the small boy, who was now hiding behind her skirts. To the right of the people, swinging gently in the morning breeze, Ruso saw the reason why the dogs were tied up. The carcass of a freshly slaughtered sheep dangled, still dripping, over a tub of thick blood. As the natives stared at him in silence it struck him that the outer skin of civilization was very thin here. He had no doubt that not so very long ago, these people would have slaughtered him with as little compunction as they had killed the sheep, and cheerfully nailed his severed head to the gatepost.

  Surveying the eight pairs of eyes watching his every move, he wondered where the men and the rest of the children were. The girl whose appearance had distracted the First Century on its training run was nowhere to be seen. There must be people still hiding in the houses. He wondered if he should have unlatched the safety strap on his knife. He wondered if he could vault onto the horse before they reached him. He wondered whether the horse could clear the gate. Then he began.

  "My name," he announced, "is Gaius Petreius Ruso, Medicus with the Twentieth Legion. I have come here to look for a woman." He stopped. It was, he realized, an unfortunate start. Worse, his audience showed no sign of understanding it. Faced with impassive stares, he asked, "Does anyone here speak Latin?"

  The small boy blinked. There was no other response.

  "I am looking for the woman who is my servant," he said, pulling out the sale document. "Her name is…" He read out the complicated name again, suspecting that he was pronouncing it all wrong. "She is missing. She has curly fair hair"-with a twirling motion he indicated his own, which was indeed hair, but entirely the wrong color-"and her arm is-" He made a chopping motion with his left hand on his lower right arm, and then mimed winding a bandage around it. "Her arm is broken." Although by now they probably thought he was threatening to chop it off. "I want her to know that if she comes home she will not be punished." Even though, he wanted to add, she very much deserves it.

  He cleared his throa
t. "I am anxious to know that she is safe," he said.

  A cockerel strutted across the mud that separated him from his audience. The small boy tried to stuff a fistful of his mother's skirt into his mouth. Without taking her eyes off Ruso, the woman crouched and gathered the child into her floury arms.

  "I want to know that she is safe," Ruso repeated. He surveyed the blank faces. "If I had any money," he continued, "I would be offering a reward. But I don't, so I can't. And if I thought any of you understood a word I was saying, I would tell you that even if I can't find Tilla, I'd like to find out what the condition is underneath that splint. I'd like to find out because I want to know whether there's anything I've done since I came to your miserable country that has made it worth the bother of coming here. So. There you are. Well, thank you all for being so tremendously helpful."

  As he tramped out through the mud in the gateway-he was not going to pick his way around the edge as if a Roman officer were afraid of getting dirty-the dogs began to bark again. This time no one tried to stop them. A few yards beyond the gate he looked over his shoulder.

  They were still watching.

  64

  There was no sign of her at the house, where he only stopped long enough to clean off the mud before going to the hospital. There he found two messages: Albanus was trying to track him down, and Priscus wanted an urgent meeting. Ruso managed to find Albanus first. As they entered the surgery the clerk asked,

  "Any word on your housekeeper, sir?"

  "Nothing. What did you want me for?"

  "Officer Priscus says-"

  "Yes, I know. Urgently Was that it?"

  "No, sir, not entirely." Albanus checked to make sure the surgery door was closed. "It's about that delicate matter, sir," he began. "I told them at HQ that I'd lost a document and it was all rather embarrassing, and they let me have a private hunt through the post records. You'd be amazed at the volume of correspondence, sir."

  "And?"

  "I've been through every list for the last two months, but I can't find a letter from a Saufeia anywhere."

  "Damn," muttered Ruso.

  "Would you like me to go back any farther, sir?"

  Ruso shook his head. "There's no point."

  "If there's anything I can do to help you find your housekeeper, sir…"

  Ruso settled himself on the corner of his desk and folded his arms. There were things he needed to know, but he was more likely to acquire a broken jaw from the second spear than any information. Valens had offered to sound out his friend in civilian liaison, but the only sounds forthcoming were negative ones. Ruso was going to have to consult a source he despised: army gossip.

  "Albanus," he said, "who or what do the men think was responsible for the deaths of those two girls?"

  Albanus's eyes widened. "Do you think the same person might have taken your housekeeper, sir?"

  "I hope not. But I'm running out of other ideas."

  Albanus thought for a moment. "To be honest, sir, nobody seems to know. Most people just think there's a madman around who likes killing women."

  "I've been through that. Why two from one bar?"

  "It could be a very important customer. Somebody the management is scared of."

  "How important?"

  Albanus scratched his head. "I can't see the legate or any of the tribunes frequenting there, to be honest, sir, can you? It's more likely somebody with a grudge against the management."

  "Right. How many people would that include?"

  "If you count all the men who've ever been thrown out of Merula's?

  Quite a lot, sir. That's before you consider the staff there."

  Ruso decided not to mention doctors who had been poisoned by the food. Even if both the girls had been victims of one man with a grudge, that grievance must have been incurred long before his own arrival in Deva. His chances of discovering the right complainant-and quickly-were slim.

  "Of course, there might be no connection at all, sir."

  "Do you think Asellina really did try to run off with a sailor?"

  "To tell you the truth, sir, most people think she led poor old Decimus on a bit of a dance. It would have taken him years to save up enough to buy her. And he's still got fifteen years to serve, so he couldn't run away with her instead-not unless he deserted, and then what would they have had to live on? So, she decided to go with the sailor instead."

  "Does anyone know anything about this sailor? Nobody seems to have seen him."

  Albanus frowned. "I don't know, sir. It was all looked into at the time. Then it all blew over and everybody forgot about it. Except Decimus, of course. And I suppose the people at the bar." He glanced up. "Perhaps that was why Saufeia thought she'd give it a try, sir. Because she thought Asellina had gotten away with it."

  It suddenly occurred to Ruso that he might have been looking in the wrong place for a letter. What if Saufeia had been trying to contact the last successful runaway? "Do you happen to know," he said, "whether Asellina could read and write?"

  Albanus shook his head. "I shouldn't think so, sir. From what I hear, Saufeia was a bit unusual."

  "She certainly doesn't seem to have been as popular as Asellina."

  "No, sir. Of course there are the other theories about Saufeia."

  Ruso was beginning to suspect that the hospital staff had spent more time considering this case than the official investigators. "Tell me."

  "Well, one is that her own people killed her because of the shame she'd brought on the family by working at Merula's, sir. Which does sort of make sense, because what was a girl who could read and write doing in a place like that?"

  "I don't know. From what I hear, she'd probably been hanging around with soldiers for years. Anything else?"

  "I did hear a rumor that it was one of the married officers who'd had a fling with her and didn't want his wife to find out what he was up to."

  "No name, I suppose?"

  "No, sir. But most people seem to think she wandered off, then had an argument with a client who didn't want to pay and he turned nasty."

  "Hm," said Ruso. "Well, that seems to cover every possibility."

  "Cheer up, sir. If it was any of those, then your housekeeper's disappearance has nothing to do with the others, does it?"

  "No," agreed Ruso, scratching his ear. "It doesn't." The thought should have been reassuring, but it wasn't, because it left him with nowhere to look.

  "Unless there really is a madman, of course."

  "Yes. Thank you, Albanus."

  "Sorry, sir. I didn't mean to-"

  There was a rap on the door. Albanus opened it and a familiar voice said, "Didn't you get my message, Ruso?"

  "Ah," said Ruso. "Priscus. There you are."

  Glaring at Albanus, Priscus added, "I specifically stressed that this was most urgent."

  "I was just sending him to find you," said Ruso, noting inwardly that his ability-and readiness-to tell lies had improved dramatically since he had come to Britannia. He dismissed Albanus, then motioned the administrator to a stool, while he himself remained seated on the corner of his desk, reversing their usual positions. "How can I help?"

  "I haven't come here to ask for help, Ruso. I have come here to tell you how I am going to help you out of a very awkward situation."

  Ruso, wondering which of his many awkward situations Priscus had found out about, raised his eyebrows and waited.

  "Your missing servant," Priscus continued, unaware of the relief these words offered to his listener. "I take it she hasn't been found?"

  "Not yet."

  "Very well. I have had notices drawn up. They are being distributed as we speak."

  Ruso found himself scratching his ear again. "Notices?"

  "Missing slave notices. The usual sort of thing. I'm surprised you haven't done it yourself."

  "I was hoping she would turn up," said Ruso, feeling he probably should have.

  "Frankly, Ruso, I was also surprised not to be notified of her loss. As custodian of
the Aesculapian fund."

  Ruso looked him in the eye. "The loan will be paid in full," he insisted. "On the due date."

  Priscus inclined his hair in his usual careful manner, and said, "Of course."

  Ruso remembered that hair sticking out in a wild clump during his visit to Priscus's house, which it seemed the administrator was going to pretend had never happened. "So, from your point of view," he continued, forcing himself to concentrate, "the girl is irrelevant."

  "Nevertheless, as a responsible custodian-"

  "Priscus, the auditors can't hold you responsible for my slave running off."

  The hand that smoothed the hair trembled slightly, and for the first time Ruso wondered if the man was genuinely frightened of the imperial auditors. "Nevertheless," Priscus was repeating, "as a responsible custodian I should be seen to be taking precautionary measures."

  "Very thorough of you," said Ruso, wondering if the administrator stuck his nose this far into everyone's affairs, or whether he was particularly unlucky Surely this couldn't still be revenge for the linen closet? Standing up to terminate the interview, he said, "I seem to be in your debt, Priscus. Let's hope your notices will do the trick, eh?"

  65

  A nother night passed, and still there was no sign of Tilla's return. During a brief lull in morning surgery Albanus ventured to ask whether his officer was feeling all right.

  "Perfectly well, thank you," replied Ruso crisply. "Is there a problem?"

  "No, sir," said his clerk, too tactful to point out what Ruso already knew: that several times he had asked patients the same question twice. Sometimes it was because he had forgotten the answer. At other times it was because he had not only failed to register the answer, but had forgotten that he had already asked the question.

  By the end of surgery and ward rounds he had seen forty-two patients and had made at least three final and utterly contradictory decisions about where Tilla had gone and what he should do about it.