Tabula Rasa: A Crime Novel of the Roman Empire

by Ruth Downie

  “It does not seem likely,” Tilla agreed, glad the women from the house were not here; no doubt they would say that if something bad could be done, the soldiers would do it. “So it is most likely one of our own people who started the rumor. We have a place to start.”

  “Maybe a hundred places,” said Enica, ripping the ham into shreds. “Maybe five hundred.”

  Put that way, it did not sound so good.

  Enica flung the scraps of meat out into the yard and there was a flurry of eager wings and beaks. “I cannot understand why someone would want to blame a child.”

  “Perhaps they thought a child would come to no harm,” Tilla suggested. “Or would never find out.”

  “Perhaps they chose a name and it happened to be my son’s.”

  Tilla looked up. “Or perhaps because this rumor maker is a child too.”

  “A child? Another child is behind all this?” Enica sounded horrified. “A child we know?”

  “It is just an idea.”

  “We must get there first,” Enica said, getting to her feet, “before whoever who made the burial finds this child for himself. I will talk to the neighbors.”

  It might not last long, but Tilla was glad to see Enica’s renewed energy as she hurried across the yard.

  Chapter 35

  It was a mystery to Ruso why his late arrival for a clinic often seemed to be greeted by more patients than usual. Surely some should have given up and gone away? Lately he had come to the conclusion that for every man who decided—or was told by his centurion—that he was not ill after all, there were another two who simply saw a queue and joined it. The longer the queue stood in place, the greater the effect. The wait might also account for the number who presented him with one complaint and then proceeded to offer several others while I’m here. By the time he had escaped from the camp and hurried back to the fort, it was well past midday. Remembering the order to smarten up, he straightened his tunic, adjusted his bootlaces so they were even, and ran his fingers through his hair before making his way across to the HQ building. The guard standing in the middle of the road saluted as if he were not aware of the old man huddled on a blanket at his feet or of the voice crying out in Latin, “Where is my son?”

  Ruso paused to crouch beside Senecio. Apart from his hair, the man looked smaller and thinner than before. The hair was a cloud of white, as if all his anxiety and alarm had pushed it out farther from his head. Ruso’s “How are you, grandfather?” was in British, but the reply came in Latin.

  “Where is my son?”

  Ruso lifted the cup that someone had placed beside him. “You should at least drink water.”

  “Where is my son?”

  “Everyone’s looking for him.”

  “Where is my son?”

  Maybe he was crazy after all. Ruso left him and hurried on into the wrong room.

  Fabius’s office was warm and stuffy because it was full of men. Most were crammed together at the far end. They were sitting on the floor in their dirty work clothes and harboring expressions that ranged from boredom to resentment. Ruso recognized Mallius, the formerly blond purveyor of hens, and the thickset man who had tied the rope around him during the rescue, and assumed these were the quarrymen who had raided Senecio’s farm on the ill-fated search for Candidus. They were under the supervision of three guards. One of the guards stepped forward to impede his progress while the others continued to stare at the prisoners as if they had orders to stab the next man who moved. Ruso was pleased to see that they were enforcing the order that the men should not speak to each other.

  Ruso said, “Where’s the tribune?”

  Without taking his eyes off the prisoners, one of the guards said, “Tribune Accius is in the clerk’s office, sir.”

  Accius was indeed in the clerk’s office, as was Fabius—something Ruso could have deduced without being told, from the shout of “You must be able to remember somebody!” Several of the quarrymen looked up. One or two glanced at each another. Ruso was surprised too. He had never considered Fabius to be a man who shouted at people except on the parade ground, where behaving like a real centurion was unavoidable.

  Ruso found the two officers seated behind the clerk’s desk, which had been pulled into the middle of the room. Judging by their expressions, Optio Daminius—who was standing facing them—had not come up with a satisfactory answer.

  “Ruso!” exclaimed Accius, the warmth of his greeting suggesting that he was glad to be interrupted. “Come in. What news?”

  “None that I know of, sir,” said Ruso, putting his medical case on the floor. While he had been listening to wheezy chests, pulling teeth, and examining an inguinal hernia, he had heard officers barking orders for all tents to be opened up for inspection. The entire camp had been searched. The boy had not been found.

  Ruso had not expected that he would be; it was more a case of convincing both the men and the locals that they were taking this business seriously. A stolen child was much more likely to be hidden on a vehicle, or in a remote shelter, or somewhere in the rolling countryside that stretched for miles in every direction. He said, “My replacement’s on his way, sir.”

  To his relief, there had been a message from Valens at the gate. Valens had agreed to leave his own unit in the care of his many underlings and brave the scorn of Pertinax.

  Accius said, “Good,” and returned his attention to the man in front of them. He folded his arms on the clerk’s desk, and leaned forward. Beside him, Fabius was slightly red in the face. Now that the tribune had occupied the desk space, Fabius did not seem to know what to do with his hands. Eventually he put them behind his back.

  Daminius carried on staring at a point on the opposite wall just above the officers’ heads. The good-luck charm was still strung around his neck, but for once it did not seem to be working. Ruso saw a muscle twitch above his jaw.

  “The optio and several of his men had a free afternoon yesterday,” Accius explained.

  This was not good news. Since the fort had no proper bathhouse, each man was given one afternoon a week to visit one of the bigger bases nearby. No account of movements was normally expected, and if a man chose to do something else, nobody usually cared.

  “Optio, tell the doctor where you were.”

  “I went for a run, sir. On my own.”

  “Tell him where.”

  “I went east along the road to Vindolanda. Then north, up across the building line, west past the lakes, and along the bottom of the cliffs and down through the gap by the stream. I got back here not long before curfew when the gates were still open.”

  “And in all that time you managed to speak to nobody nor see anyone who might be able to remember you?”

  “Sorry, sir.”

  “What about natives?” Fabius prompted, as if they were a species not covered by the tribune’s previous question.

  “I may have seen some, sir. I can’t remember.”

  Accius said, “And you say you didn’t call in at Vindolanda?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Oh, gods above, man!” exclaimed Fabius. “You can do better than that! We’ve a child to find.”

  “I’m very willing to help, sir.”

  “Then tell us something useful!” snapped Fabius. He sounded more desperate to clear Daminius’s name than the man was himself. He had come to rely heavily on his optio.

  Ruso was puzzled. In other circumstances, if a man had gone for a run preoccupied with some worry or other, the story might have been almost plausible. But the restrictions on lone travel away from the main roads were still in place—something an optio would know very well. Any legionary running across fields on his own would be both conspicuous and cautious. He said, “Tell us what you know about the native family.”

  “The father and the eldest son are on the list to watch, sir. The father because he used to stand around chanting to stir up his gods while we were working. The son fought with the rebels in the last troubles. He’s got a short temper and a
big mouth. Also I believe they’re connected to the family that kidnapped Regulus.” He swallowed. “And they’re friends of your wife, sir. I’m sorry about the boy, sir.”

  “Thank you. What can you tell me about him?”

  “I only saw him the once, sir. Eight or nine years old, I should think. Brown hair, gappy front teeth.”

  “When did you see him?”

  “When we searched the house, sir.”

  “Do you have any personal connection with the family?”

  “No, sir.”

  “You would have no reason to visit them except on official business?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Did you have any official business there yesterday morning?”

  The muscle above the jaw twitched again. “No, sir.”

  “So why were you there?”

  Daminius blinked and swallowed. Nobody else moved.

  Ruso, who liked Daminius and had very much been hoping that he was wrong, said, “You were aware of orders not to go onto native property unaccompanied?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “So?”

  Daminius looked him in the eye. “I wanted to go and apologize, sir.”

  “Apologize?” demanded Fabius.

  “I wasn’t happy about the way I’d led the search the day before, sir. Not after I found out what really happened with Regulus.”

  Ruso said, “But you didn’t apologize, did you?”

  “I saw you coming, sir. I wasn’t supposed to be there and I didn’t have time to wait till you’d gone.”

  Accius said, “Even if you had been allowed there, you had no authority to apologize on behalf of the Legion.”

  “No, sir. Only on my own behalf.”

  Fabius sighed. Ruso reflected that if this was true, then Daminius had more courage than he had himself. If less sense.

  “May I speak, sirs?”

  Accius leaned back against the wall. “Please do.”

  “I’m sorry to be wasting your time, sirs. I swear I don’t know what’s happened to the boy. I’d like to help look for him.”

  Accius glanced at his fellow officers. “Any more questions?” There were none. “Thank you, Optio. That will be all for now.”

  When the man had been taken back to join the others, Accius said, “Well?”

  Ruso said, “The apology story is plausible.”

  “Well, we know he was hanging about there for some reason. Why didn’t you mention that before?”

  “It was a lucky guess, sir. I thought I caught a glimpse of someone in the woods when I went to try and smooth over this business of the raid with the old man; I didn’t know it was him.”

  Accius grunted. “What about the run in the countryside?”

  Fabius said, “He’s very clear about the route.”

  “He would be,” said Ruso. “It’s one of the standard circuits for training runs.”

  Accius shot Fabius a glance. “Is that correct?”

  Fabius agreed that it was, although since Daminius dealt with all that, Ruso assumed he was guessing.

  Ruso said, “I think the run sounds a bit odd, sir. Especially since nobody’s supposed to be wandering about on his own out there. But that doesn’t mean he took the boy.”

  Accius nodded. “I’ll see if I can find his old centurion. See what he thinks. Let’s look at the others for a moment. Fabius, show him the list. Ruso, I’ll need you to help with checking their stories.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Fabius passed a wax tablet to Ruso, who read:

  Daminius running alone to Vindolanda and back

  Mallius to brothel LARENTIA and DELIA then sleeping in barracks.

  Maternus Vindolanda with H and F and PEREGRINUS CONFIRMED

  Liber to snack bar VIRANA then to brothel blonde girl mole on left buttock

  Festus To Vindolanda baths with H, P, Mat then woman TOTIA lodges with leatherworkers

  Quintus on duty

  Habitus Vindolanda with MATand F and P CONFIRMED

  Pollio on duty

  The others should be easy enough to check, although it was a pity Mallius had decided to sleep off his afternoon’s exertions, presumably alone.

  “I’ve sent to Vindolanda for someone to question this Totia woman,” Accius said. “With luck we’ll be able to cross Festus off the list soon.”

  “I’ll talk to Virana,” said Ruso. “She’s part of my household.”

  “Call in at the brothel while you’re out there,” Accius told him. “Fabius is having Mallius’s messmates brought in to see if anyone saw him asleep.”

  “My clerk is making sure we have no men unaccounted for,” said Fabius, “and that anyone off base was where he was supposed to be.”

  Ruso noted that the presence of the tribune seemed to have cured most of Fabius’s ailments, including the inability to do anything.

  “Let’s hope we get somewhere with one of them,” said Accius.

  He did not need to say why. If no other obvious culprit came to light, they would very urgently need a better story out of Daminius. Soldiers were supposed to be protected from professional questioners, but if there was any question hanging over the optio, Accius would have to decide whether he was going to uphold the law or get some answers.

  The tribune said none of this. Instead he got to his feet and lifted his chair with both hands, placing it carefully back against the wall. “Ruso, when you’ve spoken to all those women, come and find me and report. Fabius, chase your clerk and see how he’s getting on with pinning everyone else down.” Perhaps in case they were wondering what he would be doing, Accius added, “I’ll be tracing Daminius’s history and reporting to the legate. He’s asked to be kept informed. Oh, and we’ve heard back from the slave trader’s agent at Vindolanda. Nobody’s tried to sell the boy so far.”

  On the way out, Ruso visited the imprisoned quarrymen. They looked even glummer than before. Daminius was seated facing the wall with his elbows propped on his knees. Ruso asked Liber, the one whose alibi was “to snack bar VIRANA,” to make himself known. Ruso was pleased with what he saw. Not because the gods had favored Liber with a muscular build, a polite demeanor, a full complement of black hair, blue eyes, and white teeth, but because if a young man who looked like that had been seated at one of Ria’s tables yesterday, Virana would remember.

  Chapter 36

  Virana greeted Ruso with the sort of smile that cheered the weary heart and would have made him feel especially welcome if he had not known that she bestowed it on almost any man wearing a military belt. “I need to tell you something, master!” she cried, breaking off from wiping a table not ten feet away and waving the cloth at him in case he had trouble locating her. “Have you found Branan?”

  “Not yet.”

  “I’ve remembered the soldier!”

  Ruso looked at her, wondering how she knew what he was about to ask, and then realized they were thinking of different soldiers. “Candidus?” He fingered the forgotten letter to Albanus, still tucked inside his belt.

  “He was here, but they called him Perky. I thought that was his name. That’s why I didn’t tell you before.”

  According to Nisus, one of the last things Candidus had said was that he was meeting someone for a drink. A man he’d seen before . . . he didn’t know where. Now, when Ruso did not have time to deal with it, the search for Candidus might be leading somewhere. He sat at a corner table and ordered a cup of spiced wine, noting the sidelong glance from a middle-aged woman across the room when he invited Virana to join him. “I need to know who Can—who Perky was with,” he said.

  “He asked me to come and sit beside him but I told him I had to light the lamps.”

  “Was he on his own?”

  “I told him, master, I don’t go with just anybody.”

  “Of course.”

  Virana shifted one end of a bench to make more space for herself. “I don’t know why nobody believes me.”

  “It must be very annoying,” agreed Ruso. “Who c
alled him Perky?”

  “Besides, I can’t keep getting up and down now unless I have to. Ria says I can sit by the bar as long as I get up when there’s serving to be done.” Virana collapsed onto the bench with a sigh, then lifted her skirts, stretched out pale bare legs, and circled her feet in midair.

  Aware of the woman turning round to stare, Ruso took refuge in his wine.

  “See?” Virana demanded. “It works. Not swollen like they were before. Ria says I can keep a stool by the bar.”

  “Very good,” said Ruso, adding with deliberately clarity, “My wife will be very pleased.” He lowered his voice to ask, “What about Candidus?”

  She pointed toward the woman. “He was sitting over there.” She stopped, as if this had answered the question.

  “Virana, I’m in a hurry. Could you—”

  “With some men from the fort here,” she added. “They were playing dice.”

  This was new. “How many men? Do you know their names?”

  She scratched her head, dislodging one of the pins that never held her hair in place for long. “I think there were two of them,” she said, shifting sideways and grunting with the effort of bending to pick the pin up. “I’m not sure. Is there one called Gallus with fair hair?”

  “Gallus?” This was worrying. His deputy had not mentioned a social evening with Candidus.

  “I know he works at the hospital,” said Virana, inadvertently confirming his identity. None of the other staff had fair hair. “And the other one was the hospital cook.”

  This was even more unexpected. “So Candidus, Gallus, and the cook were playing dice,” he prompted. “Then what happened?”

  “Then they finished the game and the other two went away. Perky wanted to talk to me. But I didn’t sit with him, because I don’t—” She registered the expression on his face. “Anyway, he carried the oil jar for me when I filled the lamps and we talked for a bit and then he finished his drink and he went back to the camp.”

  “On his own?”