Tabula Rasa: A Crime Novel of the Roman Empire

by Ruth Downie

  At least he is not dead, she told herself. She had seen the hope flicker and fade in Enica’s eyes. She knows no more than we do.

  Enica clutched at Conn’s arm as he climbed down from the cart. “What did they say?”

  “They say they know nothing.”

  “Where is your father? Why is she here?”

  “My father has stayed to shame the Romans,” he told her. “They say they will question the men her husband sent here.”

  A few days ago this woman had looked more like Senecio’s daughter than his wife. Now she was pale and hollow-eyed. Her hair was lank and disheveled and her tunic was spattered with grease.

  “They have sent messengers to all the forts with a description of your son,” Tilla said. “Senecio asked me to see that you come to no harm while he is in the fort reminding the soldiers of what they need to do.”

  “You?”

  Before Tilla could answer, several women came out of the house with a gaggle of children tumbling around their skirts. She recognized a couple of the gossips from Ria’s bar, along with Cata, whose bruised cheek had turned from blue to purple, and her mother and sister.

  Conn called, “No news!” and their faces fell just as Enica’s had. They ushered him and the other woman inside, urging them to come and eat and tell everyone what they had heard and seen, even though he had told them the important part already. Cata’s mother called to Enica to come and join them, but Enica replied that she wanted to build the fire. If they wanted to help, could they please look after Conn? She would talk with the doctor’s wife.

  Tilla bent to help collect the scattered firewood. Enica flung a log into the basket. It landed with a thump. “They must know where he is!” she exclaimed. “They are always spying on people. Asking questions. We see the way they look at Conn at market. How can they not know?”

  It was a question Tilla could not answer. She tossed another log in on top of the others.

  “Why did my husband send you?”

  “Perhaps because I was all there was.”

  “I warned him to stay away from you!” Enica burst out. “Right at the beginning. I knew you would be trouble! The army never bothered us before you and that medicus came here.”

  “The army took half your farm before we came here,” Tilla objected. “And I never meant to be trouble.”

  Enica snatched up the basket. “He had this foolish idea about making things better between our people and yours.”

  Tilla followed her across the rough grass at the back of the houses to a blackened bonfire patch where she supposed the family had planned to celebrate Samain tomorrow. She wanted to say, “Those foreigners are not my people.” But then, who were?

  Enica crouched beside a small pile of kindling that had already been arranged in the middle of the patch. Her skirts trailed in the old soot. “Things had just settled down again after the troubles,” she said. “Then he saw you and he had to bring you and the Roman here. All that talk of weddings.” She placed a couple of logs on the pile. “ ‘No more killing,’ he said. As if it would bring his dead son back. Of course, nobody listened to him except you.”

  Tilla swallowed. “My husband—”

  “Him? I saw the look on his face when the wedding idea came up. I wasn’t a bit surprised when he sent men to raid us.”

  “That was a mistake.”

  “And now his people have taken my son. And all because of you, and my old fool of a husband, and his stupid—oh!” Enica raised the last log in the air and sent it crashing down onto the pile. The others tumbled and scattered, one or two rolling several feet away. She sat back in the ash and buried her face in her hands and wept. “How can I help him?” she wailed. “If I search in one place, what if he is in another and I am not there?”

  “I know—”

  “You know nothing! You have no child! Leave me alone!”

  Tilla recoiled, telling herself that Enica had only lashed out because she was in pain herself. She had not meant to hurt. “I am sorry.”

  “It is as though I have a limb torn off,” Enica muttered, almost as if she was talking to herself. “No. It is . . . it is beyond words. And you know what is the worst thing? It may never stop. What if we do not find him?”

  Watching her, it struck Tilla for the first time that at least the ache of being barren meant that she was spared a horror like this. You brought a child into the world and you gave a hostage to the gods. She tucked up her skirts to keep them out of the muck and crouched beside Enica. “I am not a mother,” she said, “But I know what it is to be torn away from your family. I will do everything I can to help you find your boy.”

  Enica snatched up a fistful of skirt and wiped her eyes. Then she sniffed, looked at the damp wool, and wiped her nose on it too. “I should not have said those things. Take no notice. ”

  Tilla said softly, “It may all still come right.”

  “Nothing is right!” The voice became a howl. “I want my son!”

  Tilla said, “I will fetch some food and we will think what to do.”

  “I know what to do.” Enica sniffed. “I have to sacrifice the best lamb.”

  “It is a good offering.”

  “I cannot remember the words. My husband does that sort of thing.”

  “The gods understand,” Tilla assured her, glad they were not Romans, whose gods demanded that mortals should get all the words right. It struck her that other families would be building their bonfires for tomorrow night’s Samain gatherings. This felt more like building a pyre. She put a hand on the woman’s shoulder. “Enica, when did you last take food?”

  “I am not hungry.”

  “Offering the lamb can wait. Come with me into the house and take some bread and put on some clean clothes.”

  “Nobody knows what to say to me. They keep pouring me drinks and telling me to eat.”

  Tilla said, “Do you want me to get rid of them for you?”

  She sighed. “They are very kind. They all brought things they could not afford to give.”

  “It is your house. You can say who stays here.”

  Enica wiped her eyes with the back of her fist. “I want them to stay. But do not make me talk to them.”

  Chapter 33

  Just as Tilla approached the house Conn came out, gnawing on a chicken leg and with a jug clutched in his other hand. Two women carrying waterskins and a sack pushed past her and followed him across to the cart. She guessed he was taking supplies out to the search parties.

  The faces around the fire seemed to lose interest when they saw her. Nobody moved to let her near the warmth. She hesitated, back to the wall, not wanting to retreat but not sure how to stay. Enica might think these people meant well, but she was not so sure.

  She felt a surge of relief when Cata’s mother appeared from the shadows. At least she had one ally here. “Daughter of Lugh, you must eat.”

  “Senecio asked me to look after Enica,” she said, wanting everyone to know that she had a right to be here.

  “You must eat.” The woman pointed to a low table that, even now, after Conn had taken so much away with him, still held bread and cheeses and hard-boiled eggs and ham and jugs of beer and several jars that might contain honey or preserves or salt.

  Each of the visitors must have sacrificed at least a week’s worth of supplies. Of course. She had forgotten how things were here. Yet there had been a time when she had thought people were the same everywhere. When they had their first civilian lodgings in Deva, she made the mistake of leaving some blackberries outside next door to share. The neighbor called round and offered to pay for them. She refused to accept, and they were both embarrassed.

  It was while she was gathering up food for herself and Enica that they started. They might not have known what to say to Enica’s face, but they had plenty to say behind her back. Tilla had a feeling they were only saying it because she herself was there. They had had all afternoon to talk about the terrible things that might be happening to Branan: Why go ove
r them all again now? As if she had not thought of them all herself.

  The searchers, they said, might be too late. Branan might be dead already, and buried, and would never be found. He might be held captive somewhere, alone and afraid, at the mercy of a madman. He might be sold to a brothel, where shameful things happened. Or he could be on the way to Rome as a slave or even a trainee gladiator. He might have been sold to the Northerners. With the wall being built, he could be lost forever. And on and on.

  Tilla wanted to clamp her hands over her ears and scream, “Shut up!” Instead she hacked the knife through ham she did not really want to eat, and piled more onto her wooden platter.

  Imagine never finding out, someone said. How terrible would that be for his family? Waiting every day for news. The old man might—they all might—die never knowing . . .

  Tilla turned away from the table, unable to stand this mischief-making nonsense any longer. “He will not be on the way to Rome,” she said. “The soldiers will check with the slave dealers. There must be laws against selling stolen children.”

  There was a moment of awkward silence before a voice pointed out, “A child stealer will not give a pig’s fart what the law says.”

  Someone else said, “Nor will those sort of buyers, if they smell a bargain.”

  Tilla bowed her head, feeling her face begin to redden. She had meant that it might be harder than they thought for the kidnapper to sell the boy, but now that she thought about it, what comfort would that be? If he could not be sold, it was more likely that he would be disposed of.

  It had been just as foolish as when she told Cata’s family to put in a complaint to Regulus’s centurion. How Roman she must seem to these people. She wanted to say, The world is different out there! In other places, you would be the ones who did not fit in! But they would never understand, and with all her traveling and her Latin and her fancy reading and writing, she knew no more about how to find Branan than they did.

  “That is not how things are here, Daughter of Lugh,” put in a kinder voice. She looked up to see Cata’s mother. “Perhaps they keep all the laws down in Deva, or even across in Coria where you come from, but it is different here.”

  “We trusted the Romans to deal with that scum who hit our Cata,” put in a voice, gesturing toward Cata’s injured face and bandaged hand, ignoring her protest of “He is not scum!” to add, “Instead of helping, they came and burned our house down!”

  To Tilla’s relief Cata’s mother took up the fight. “You are leaving out part of the story, girl. You and your brothers were told to leave him alone, and you did not.”

  “I told you too!” put in Cata. “I begged you all to let him go!”

  “He wasn’t hurt!” retorted her sister. “And it was the army’s fault for doing nothing about him. Then they followed us here and turned this place upside down as well.”

  The woman with the lisp joined in. “They didn’t even apologize after the old man complained. And now they have taken his boy.”

  “Sh!” hissed the woman beside her, pointing at Tilla.

  The woman with the lisp straightened her neck and raised her chin as if to show she was ready to suffer any blow for her honesty. “I do not care if there is a spy here,” she said. “I speak my mind. You all know what I’m saying is true.”

  “Complaining to the army just makes them worse,” put in the sister.

  “Exactly! Now that Senecio is making a fuss about them taking his son, he had better keep a good watch. You never know what they will do next.”

  Tilla put the platter down. “Most of the soldiers do not want trouble,” she said. “They just want to build a wall and go back to their base.”

  “That is not what I heard,” put in someone else. “I heard that none of the soldiers want the wall, either. They are saying in private that the emperor is weak and it is a sign of defeat.”

  “If the officers find anyone who says that,” said Tilla, knowing it was true and cross with herself for being sucked into this argument, “he will be very sorry. Soldiers are supposed to obey orders, not give opinions.”

  “Exactly!” said the woman, wagging a forefinger in the air as if Tilla had just proved her point. “Why do you think they started this rumor about the body in the wall? Because they don’t want to build it! They want it pulled down! But they cannot say so. This way they can put the blame on us and then they have a good excuse to arrest anyone they want. And they’ll get a good price for a strong young lad.”

  “But they are not saying anything about the rumor!” insisted Tilla, not sure where to start with such nonsense. “They think Branan has been taken by a criminal.”

  “You see? It is never their fault!”

  “I did not say that!”

  “Ah, you wait and see what they do to their own men when they question them,” said someone. “Wait and see if they flog them, or use the hot irons on them like they do with us.”

  “Of course they won’t!” said Cata’s sister. “Look what they did to that Regulus: a nice warm bed and a transfer to another unit.”

  Somebody said, “If I got my hands on them, they’d be singing like skylarks by now.”

  “Somebody else should have gone,” said the woman with the lisp. “The old man, bless him, he’s too trusting. We can’t waste time asking nicely. What good will he do, sitting there and starving? Every moment counts!”

  Tilla was tempted to demand, What good will you do, sitting around and complaining? But Enica was right: They meant well toward Branan and his family. So instead of arguing she filled a cup with beer, picked up the platter, and levered the door open with her foot.

  Chapter 34

  Enica had abandoned the bonfire and was gazing out over the gate. “I thought I heard horses,” she said. “And then I thought, I’ll ask Branan to climb the tree and look.”

  Tilla rested the cup and platter and on the gatepost. They watched in silence as a blackbird flew down onto the track and glanced round before stabbing at something in the mud. It flew up again at the sound of Enica saying, “That is a great deal of food.”

  For the first time Tilla looked at what she had piled onto the platter. Bread and cheese and ham and bean pottage and two chicken wings. Enough for four people. “I wasn’t thinking.” Back in the house, they would be saying she was greedy. She offered the platter to Enica. The hands that tore at the bread were rough and ingrained with dirt. Senecio was no fool, for all his singing to trees: He had married a hard worker. And perhaps he knew those other women well enough to know that Enica would need Tilla for support. It was good to think that someone, at least, had faith in her.

  Enica led her toward the old bench outside the house, the place where, in better weather, women might sit chatting in the sunshine, spinning fleece or preparing supper while they kept an eye on their children playing in the yard. The hens began to strut around them, stabbing at invisible food between the cobbles and watching for tidbits.

  Tilla balanced the cup on the bench and placed the food between them to share. “I have been thinking,” she said. “I do not know what the soldiers are doing beyond searching the forts and questioning their own men. But I am wondering if there is another way to search that nobody has tried.”

  Enica put down the slice of ham she was about to place in her mouth.

  Tilla hoped she was not about to give her a new threat to worry about. “If the story about the body in the wall is true,” she said, wondering how much of this Enica had worked out for herself, “then—”

  “Then your husband should look there for his missing soldier.”

  It was a good point, but not one Tilla wanted to discuss. “If it is true,” she continued, “then there is somebody who did it, and that person wants his name kept secret. If he heard that Branan had seen him, perhaps he took Branan to make sure he was not betrayed.” She moved swiftly on to the next part, not dwelling on the thought of Branan in the hands of someone who disposed of bodies in secret places. “But when he finds out
he has the wrong boy, and that Branan knows nothing, perhaps he will go looking for the person who really did see him.”

  “What will he do to Branan?”

  “If we can find the witness who really did see what happened at the wall,” said Tilla, not answering the question, “then perhaps that person will lead us to the man we should look for.”

  Enica looked up. “Or woman.”

  “It could be,” Tilla agreed, “but there is a man involved somewhere. Your neighbor’s boy saw him take Branan.”

  “How can we find this person? You may as well dig for the roots of a mountain as try to find the source of a rumor. Everyone will say it is the friend of a friend. Or a traveling tinker, or a stranger in an inn whose name they never knew.”

  “But whoever it is knows the name of your son,” put in Tilla, hoping that Branan’s name was not a piece of decoration that some gossip had added further down the chain. “We must think about who might want to place him in such a rumor.”

  Enica picked up the ham again. “Somebody who saw a body being laid where it could not rest.”

  Tilla said, “Somebody who wanted to tell but did not want to be punished for the telling.”

  “Somebody who can watch the wall when most of the soldiers are not around.”

  “Yes!” Tilla agreed. “Nobody could bury a body while the soldiers are working up there.”

  “Somebody who does not think kindly of my family.”

  “Or was just choosing a person to blame,” said Tilla. “How many people know your son?”

  Enica looked at her as if the question did not make sense. “Everyone,” she said. “All the neighbors. People at market. The shopkeepers outside the fort where he makes deliveries.”

  “The soldiers?”

  She nodded. “They come here to buy cheese and milk and sheepskins. Then they come here as guards with the tax collectors. Then your husband’s men, searching for the missing soldier.”

  Before Tilla could answer, Enica continued, “Conn thinks the soldiers made up the story and lied about Branan starting it to cause trouble for us. But I have been thinking: Why do that?”