Tabula Rasa: A Crime Novel of the Roman Empire

by Ruth Downie

  “I thought you’d decided his disappearance was highly suspicious and he ought to be here collecting hens?”

  “He probably acted on impulse,” said Ruso. “He’d already managed to seriously annoy people here, including me.”

  Valens looked disappointed. “I was hoping this might turn into one of your escapades. Finding a body and going around accusing people of murdering it.”

  “I haven’t found a body. Nobody has.”

  Valens scrutinized him for a moment. “Pity,” he said. “You’ve been so much more entertaining since you met Tilla and adopted the native tendency to overdramatize.”

  “I’m not the one who’s overdramatizing,” Ruso pointed out. “You are. Candidus is absent without leave. I’d imagine he’s either lazing in the baths at Coria, or he’s bought himself a trip south on an empty supply vehicle.”

  “If you say so. I won’t tell Albanus it might have been you who drove him to it.”

  “It wasn’t! Would you run away because I shouted at you?”

  Valens slid down from the table. “Ah, but I would know you didn’t mean it.”

  Chapter 19

  The chilly eastern breeze that had blown the rain away was now plucking at the tents and flapping the bedraggled standards. The queue had curled itself around the back of the medical tent in search of shelter.

  As soon as Ruso arrived, a bandy-legged man stepped out of the line and pushed to the front amidst much complaining. His reply of “I’m not sick!” did nothing to pacify his competitors.

  Ruso addressed the rest of the queue. “I’ll just have a quick word with . . . ?”

  “Lucius, sir.”

  “With Lucius here. I can see he’s keen to get back to work.” As the queue avenged itself with jeers and some questioning of whether Lucius knew what work was, he led the man under the shelter of the examination area.

  “Two things to tell you, sir. I was supposed to be sharing cook duty with Perky the other night, only he never turned up at the tent and nobody’s seen him since.”

  “Didn’t anyone question it?”

  “Only me, sir. There’s always people coming and going. But nobody can remember seeing him after that, and I heard they’ve found a body in the wall.”

  “Take no notice,” Ruso assured him. “It’s nonsense. I’m only chasing Candidus as a favor because his uncle’s a friend of mine. If you see him, tell him to report to me before he gets himself into real trouble. What was the other thing?”

  “A mate of mine called Olennius wants to hand something in to you, sir. He’s on stone-laying duties up at the wall. Shall I tell him to come and find you tonight?”

  “No,” said Ruso. “I’ll go and see him when I’ve finished here.”

  What had been a chilly breeze down in the camp was an icy blast on the crest of the hill. The Legion would not be able to work up here for much longer—not because of the discomfort to the men, which was irrelevant, but because if the wet mortar was not washed out of the joints by the winter rains, then the frost would creep into it and destroy it. Damp, freshly quarried stone would flake. Standing water would freeze, and they would have to find extra wood for fires to melt it before the lime could be mixed. Then there would be the snow. Mud made the transport of materials difficult; snow would make it impossible.

  Already vanity had been sacrificed to comfort. Woolen caps were pulled down over ears. Layered tunics and leggings of all colors had taken on matching hues of earth and pale lime. The centurion who was currently shouting at someone to get a move on looked as though he had just waded through a bog.

  “That’s him there,” the man said when Ruso asked for Olennius. They both watched for a moment as a fresh bucket of mortar was delivered. Olennius slapped a trowel-load onto his board, chopped it, formed a sausage, rolled it, and flicked it off the trowel into the space where the next stone would fit. It was like watching a cook at work.

  A disgruntled patient who was the son of a stonemason had once told Ruso that the wall was a hasty, messy effort where speed was valued over quality. According to him, an ape could do the straight parts. Skilled men like himself, in constant demand for constructing corners and gateways and arches, were rarely given time to do what he called “a proper job.”

  Ruso watched as Olennius bedded in a roughly squared stone, tapped it with the end of his trowel, squinted at the line, tapped it again, and reached out for the next chop of mortar. He made it look easy. Perhaps an ape could do it, but it certainly wouldn’t want to. Not up here.

  The centurion cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled, “Olennius!” into the wind.

  The man turned. “Boss?”

  “Medic to see you!”

  Olennius put the trowel down and gave a quick salute before slapping his gloved hands together to try and warm them. The trowel caught the wind, tumbled off the stonework, and landed at his feet.

  “I’m trying to track down the property of a man called Candidus!” shouted Ruso. It was the sort of weather that made every conversation sound like an argument. “Also known as Perky!”

  Olennius nodded with the enthusiasm of a man who did not want to be flogged for stealing. “I’m glad you’ve come, sir! I was going to hand it in tonight!” He removed a glove and reached into a little pouch that hung from his belt. After some fumbling he retrieved a folding knife about the size of Ruso’s index finger. The uneven letters cand were burned into the wooden hilt.

  Ruso gripped the blunt side of the blade and pulled it out. It was well oiled and the edge was rough against the tip of his finger. “Where was it?”

  The man pointed west to where wooden scaffolding was being erected. “Over there, sir!”

  “Show me!”

  The man set off with confidence across the flattened grass, but as they approached the scaffold he began to falter, glancing down to his left at a clump of bushes shuddering in the breeze. “It was around here somewhere, sir,” he said, pausing in the shelter of the wall to rub his head with a gloved knuckle and turn slowly in a half circle. “I can’t say exactly. But about this far out.” He measured out five paces away from the stonework. “Lying in the grass.”

  “Open or shut?”

  “Shut, sir. It was a bit stiff and damp, but I got it dried out and oiled it and it was fine.” Just in case Ruso should be in any doubt, he said, “I asked around but nobody knew who ‘Cand’ was, so I’ve been looking after it.”

  “How long for?”

  “Just since yesterday afternoon, sir.”

  “Next time,” grunted his centurion, “hand it in and let me find the owner.”

  Ruso reached down and slid the knife into the top of his boot lining. “Thanks. I’ll give it back to him when I find him.”

  Olennius said, “Sir, has this missing man got anything to do with . . .” Ruso followed his glance toward the wall.

  “No,” said Ruso and the centurion together.

  “He’s given himself a holiday.” Ruso explained, repeating the line about Candidus’s uncle being a friend. “I’m trying to get him back before his uncle turns up.” It was the truth, but it sounded like an excuse. Olennius was sent back to work. Ruso gazed down at the track that ran alongside the stream, both of them following the course of a boggy natural dip that passed through the line of the wall. To the south, the stream flowed under the road, skirted Senecio’s farm, and went down past the quarry. He pointed north. “What’s up there?”

  “Camp nine,” said the centurion. “After that, just native farms. HQ might have a scout who can tell you more.”

  Candidus’s knife had been found at least a hundred paces away from the track. The lad had not struck him as someone who relished unnecessary fresh air and exercise, and it seemed unlikely that a man absent without leave would break away to scramble up a hill, lose his knife, and come back down again to continue his journey. He—or someone else—could possibly have thrown the knife up here, although it was hard to imagine why. Perhaps someone else had borrowed or sto
len it and dropped it. Perhaps Candidus had lost it himself while he was up here earlier for some reason that had nothing to do with his disappearance. Perhaps . . .

  Perhaps there were even more obscure possibilities, but eventually Ruso would have to face the thought that Candidus might have been near the wall when he vanished.

  His gaze drifted to the scaffolding. The uprights now lashed in place gave some sense of the full height to which the stonework would rise. From where he was standing, anything to the north would soon be invisible. You could not see through a wall. You could not see into it, either.

  Leaving the centurion with “Let me know if you hear anything of him, will you?” he made his way swiftly back to where Olennius was slapping down another bed of mortar.

  “Sir?”

  “The truth,” Ruso said. “When did you find it?”

  Olennius held on to the trowel this time. “I told people I’d got it, sir. I wasn’t stealing.”

  “I know that. Your centurion may not need to hear the exact truth, but I do.”

  The man counted on his gloved fingers with the point of the trowel. “About four days ago, sir.”

  Ignoring the hard stare of the usurped centurion, Ruso headed back down to the road. When he was halfway there he stopped and turned. The teams were back at work, mortaring heavy stones into two parallel faces. The wide unfilled hollow between them reminded him of nothing so much as a vast, elongated stone tomb.

  Chapter 20

  Tilla cupped her hands and blew on them to warm them before calling again. Finally a man appeared from behind the house and told her that her patient, the young woman with the week-old baby, was not at home.

  “But I have walked here. She knew I would be here today.”

  The man shrugged. “She must have forgotten.”

  On the way back, Tilla barely noticed the ivy in bloom, nor the rose hips, nor the puddle until she stepped in it. By the time she was back at Ria’s bar, the cold had spread beyond the leaks in her boots, and her damp socks were beginning to rub blisters on her toes.

  “Nobody came for you, mistress!” Virana called as Tilla hurried past on the way to the loft in search of fresh footwear.

  Wearing dry socks and her indoor shoes—she had indoor and outdoor shoes now: such luxury!—she returned to the bar carrying a scroll and her box of medicines. Then, keeping her shawl on, she sat by the entrance, nursing a warm cup of honeyed milk. She opened the scroll and began to run her forefinger along the letters, mouthing them softly to herself, putting the unfamiliar sequences together until they shaped themselves into words.

  “These are necessary observances for the healthy person to take during pestilence.”

  The best advice was to go abroad. Failing that, it was wise to be carried in a litter. After that there was a long list of instructions that included avoiding fatigue and not getting up early in the morning.

  It was ridiculous. What normal person could do more than dream of any of those things? It was very difficult to learn anything from a book when she was constantly wanting to argue with its author.

  She looked up hopefully as each customer came into the bar, but only two patients wanted to share her table for a quiet chat. One was a soldier’s girl worried about her baby’s cough, and the other a slave of a passing jeweler whose injured hand needed a fresh dressing. Neither was really a job for a medicus. Anyone with any common sense could have dealt with them.

  She told herself it had been a quiet morning everywhere. Nobody wanted to go out in the cold. The fact that she had seen no local patients might have nothing to do with yesterday afternoon. Surely word could not have got around so quickly. Did everyone know she was the wife of a Roman who had sent men to search and threaten to burn down a house where he had been a guest?

  She forced herself to struggle on with the scroll. So far it had been useless but it seemed to impress the patients, and besides, it was the only medical book her husband owned that was not in Greek. But even on a good day, she would have had trouble keeping her mind on this nonsense. Today it was hopeless. The letters kept sliding about in front of her eyes, her finger lost its place, and her careful mouthing of the words died away.

  The first thing Enica and Conn and the others would do, she was sure, was to rush and tell all their friends about the outrages the army had caused: the burning of Cata’s family farm, which everyone would know about, and then the insult to their own home and family that had followed.

  She released the edge of the scroll and let it roll back on itself. Then she tightened the roll, tied it, and slid it back into its case. She was not a Roman: Why try to look like one? She was not a local anymore, either. That had been made clear yesterday. At first she had thought there must be some terrible mistake, but the soldier had insisted that he really had been sent out to search by her husband. There was no point in trying to lie: The family understood enough Latin to know what he had said. She could do nothing but apologize and leave as fast as possible, and she knew they were glad she was gone.

  There was a chilly draft here. No longer needing the light to read, she pulled her shawl tighter around her shoulders and carried her milk across to a table by the fire that had just been abandoned by a couple of men who looked like messengers of some sort. Then she sat there wondering what she would do all day now if none of her local patients trusted her anymore.

  She would be glad to get back to Deva, where almost everyone was a foreigner and most people were either in the army or there because of it. Living in a place like this was much harder if you did not know exactly who you were any longer. The farmers could blame the army for everything that went wrong. The army could blame the farmers. She was caught in the middle, trying to make her husband understand what a terrible insult it was to mistrust people who had welcomed you to their hearth, and to explain to Senecio . . . Senecio had not wanted to listen to her. “You have made your choice, child,” he said. That was what had upset her the most. The old man and his family wanted nothing to do with her now. One of the last links with her parents was gone.

  “You look sad, mistress. Shall I bring you some more milk?”

  Tilla shook her head.

  “I don’t suppose there will be a wedding blessing now, will there, mistress?”

  “Have you no work to do, Virana?”

  “Everybody’s served, mistress, and there’s nothing to wash yet. Is that why you’re sad: because that old man won’t give you a wedding blessing? Or is it because nobody wants to see you?”

  Tilla put her head into her hands. “Virana, ask Ria to find you something to do. If she can’t, go and put your feet up. I have a headache.”

  “I’m sorry, mistress. Can I help?”

  “No, thank you. I’m going upstairs to have a sleep.”

  Upstairs, Tilla pulled the cover over herself to keep warm in the chilly air of the loft. She lay back and listened to the timbers creaking in the wind.

  Virana was right, of course. It was only two nights to Samain and she had to face the fact that there would be no wedding blessing. She needed to send a message to her cousin at Coria withdrawing the invitation. Perhaps she should take the news herself. It would be good to get out of here. It would mean two whole days away, though, unless she could get a fast horse. And there were still a few local patients she had promised to see.

  She would stay. It was up to the patients whether they decided to come or not. In a couple of weeks she would be back in Deva. In the meantime she would not have anyone say that she had run away out of shame.

  She arched her back and wriggled around a lump in the mattress. She would send the message to Aemilia tomorrow. Meanwhile she would lie here with her pretended headache, trying to stifle the memory of her mother’s voice. Nobody likes a girl who feels sorry for herself, Daughter of Lugh!

  “I am not Daughter of Lugh anymore,” she whispered into the empty room. “I am Tilla, Roman citizen, wife of Gaius Petreius Ruso, a man from overseas who is very annoying. And do not tell
me what you think of that, Mam, because I can guess.”

  Chapter 21

  It had not been a good day. The tribune thought he was an idiot, and if the natives were to hold a Least Popular Roman competition, he had no doubt he would win it.

  Even worse, no matter how much Ruso reassured everyone else, he was convinced that something bad had happened to Candidus.

  He had to wait for his eyes to adjust before he could see his way across the gloom of the loft. Downstairs, the clatter from the kitchen died away as somebody closed a door. He pulled off his boots, lowered himself down next to the figure on the bed, and closed his eyes. Then he opened them in alarm as something cold flopped onto his head. He retrieved what seemed to be a wet sock and let it fall to the floor, suddenly reminded of the medic from the Second who used to take hot stones from beside the hearth and wrap his dirty socks around them to steam them dry overnight. The man had been dead for a couple of years now—not suffocated by the smell but speared through the throat when he had ridden out with a rescue party to help the victims of a native ambush. There was a lot of sense to building a wall.

  A voice beside him said, “I am not asleep.”

  He rolled over and kissed her gently on the tip of the nose. “Hello.”

  “Why are you not under the covers? You will get cold out there.”

  He removed the other wet sock from the pillow. “I didn’t want to disturb you.”

  “But I am not sleeping.”

  He unbuckled his belt and joined her. “Virana said you had a headache.”

  “I said that to stop her talking.”

  “She can talk as much as she likes.” Her thigh was warm and smooth under his hand. “As long as she stays out of here for a while.”

  She drew away.

  “Uh?”

  “Not now.”

  “Surely it’s not time for—”