Tabula Rasa: A Crime Novel of the Roman Empire

by Ruth Downie

“I felt sorry for him. He said it was cold at night and his tentmates weren’t very nice.”

  “Do you think he might have gone somewhere else instead?”

  Virana frowned. “Where would he go?”

  Where indeed? “Did he mention meeting anyone he hadn’t seen for a while?”

  Virana’s face brightened. “When he first saw me he said, ‘Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?’ ” She looked puzzled. “But I don’t remember him, and he said he’s never been to Eboracum.”

  “He was probably just making conversation,” Ruso told her, wondering if Candidus had also invited her to come and help him polish his equipment, or whatever euphemism they used these days. “Can you remember anything else at all? Did anyone follow him?”

  Virana pondered this for a moment.

  “This is important,” he explained. “You may be the last person who saw him before he disappeared.”

  “Oh, no, master!” Her confidence was unexpected. “I am not the last person who saw him.”

  It was all Ruso could do not to grab her and shake the rest of the pins out. “Then who is?”

  Virana frowned. “I don’t know, master. Surely you saw him the next morning when he was working at the hospital?”

  “You’re talking about . . .” He paused to think. “The day after market day? Not the day he disappeared?”

  Virana said, “You didn’t say when. You asked if I saw him.”

  Ruso let out a long breath and managed, “Yes. That’s true. Let’s see if you can remember somebody else.”

  “Another soldier?”

  “A man called Liber.”

  Her face lit up. “He was in here yesterday. Did he say something about me?”

  “No,” said Ruso. “I’m just trying to sort out who was where when Branan went missing. Can you remember when he arrived and when he left?”

  “It was after the mistress had the headache,” said Virana. “She went upstairs, and then . . .” She thought for a moment. “You must have seen him yourself, master. He was sitting at table three when you came in.”

  “I didn’t notice,” Ruso confessed.

  “Then he had to go because he was on duty.” She pushed her hair back from her face, leaned across the table, and whispered. “I think he likes me!”

  “I think he likes quite a few girls,” Ruso told her, wishing he did not have to disappoint her and wondering yet again why Virana’s experience had failed to conquer her optimism where good-looking young men were concerned. He downed the last of the wine. “I need to go. Thanks for your help.”

  “I hope you find Branan soon. He’s a nice boy. I like him.”

  He said, “We’re getting nearer,” because he had to say something, and because it might be true. For all he knew, the lad had turned up by now. In case he hadn’t, Ruso was about to visit the local brothel in the hope of meeting Larentia, Delia, and a blonde girl with a mole on her left buttock.

  Chapter 37

  The woman’s hair was dyed a harsh, unnatural fox-pelt red. Heavy makeup had collected in her wrinkles so the painted eyes in the artificially whitened face made him think of black beetles in a snowdrift. But she still had most of her own teeth, or someone else’s skillfully attached, and the smile that revealed them was professional. So was the disappointment when she realized Ruso had only come for information and was not intending to pay for it.

  Yes, she had heard about the boy. It was a terrible thing.

  “Do you have many customers who ask for boys?”

  “Not often enough to warrant buying one,” she said, as if it were a matter of regret. “I send them to Vindolanda.”

  “Do you know who those customers are?”

  “I know who all my customers are.”

  Ruso waited.

  “Discretion, Doctor,” she explained. “I’m sure you understand.”

  “And I’m sure you understand how urgently we need to know.”

  The muscles holding the cheeks into a half smile relaxed, and the skin around her mouth fell to a slackness that betrayed her age. Ruso looked her in the eye until she pulled the smile back into place.

  She remembered a tall gentleman with only one leg, and one who was short and stout and wheezy. She could hardly have invented anyone less like the man who had taken Branan.

  “If you see either of them,” he said, “ask them to look out for him on their, ah . . . on their travels.”

  “I’m sure they will,” she said, not in a way he liked. “Now. Who else can we offer you, Doctor?”

  Chapter 38

  Pertinax opened his eyes. “You.”

  Still clutching the medical case, which was unlikely to have shielded his reputation when he was seen entering the brothel, Ruso said, “Good afternoon, sir.”

  “I don’t know what’s bloody good about it. When am I going to get my crutches?”

  Ruso restrained a smile of relief. He pulled up the stool and sat beside the bed. The room smelled normal and Pertinax’s grumbling was lucid, all of which was good news. He explained again about the dangers of postoperative bleeding as everything inside the wound grew back together and the stitches no longer held things shut. “So far it’s all healing up very nicely,” he said, having learned long ago not to say better than I’d expected, because the patient then concluded that his earlier words of encouragement had been a lie. “If you move about too much now, you’ll delay the recovery and you may end up a lot worse. Especially if you fall, which you will until you get used to a new way of walking.”

  Pertinax closed his eyes and said, “Hmph,” but Ruso was not fooled. The man’s brow had smoothed, as if he were secretly glad to have the challenge taken away from him. Then Pertinax sniffed and his brow creased again. “Are there women around here somewhere?”

  “Not that I know of, sir.”

  “Then what’s that smell?” The eyes opened. “Not you, is it?”

  Ruso plucked the shoulder of his tunic and sniffed. There was a faint whiff of Larentia, who had conveniently turned out to be a blonde girl with a mole in the right place; he had declined her invitation to inspect it. She could vouch for Mallius being fully occupied in the early afternoon and for Liber being in the brothel at the time when he had told Virana he was on duty. He cleared his throat. “I think it might be me, sir.”

  “You smell like a cheap whore.”

  It was too complicated to explain. “I must have picked up some woman’s scent in passing, sir.”

  “Hmph. My late wife never fell for that one.”

  Ruso, who was supposed to be reporting back to Accius, opened his mouth to say what he had come to say, which was that Valens was taking over, but Pertinax said suddenly, “Women. Don’t suppose you could have one sent in?”

  “I don’t think that would be a good idea, sir.”

  Pertinax grunted. “Shut away in here all day. No idea what’s going on. Half-baked stories about bodies in the wall. Some idiot came in here earlier and told me your father’s just died. I told him your father’s been dead for years. Left you with a lot of debts, didn’t he?”

  “There’s been a misunderstanding, sir.”

  “What was all that shouting after the horn? Sounded like natives.”

  “Nothing to worry about, sir.”

  Pertinax’s eyes snapped open and glared at Ruso as if he had been watching him through his eyelids. “I’ll decide what I want to worry about.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You’re just like the rest of them: looking at me lying here and thinking, Poor old boy. He’s finished. No foot, no sense. Is that what you think?”

  “No, sir,” Ruso assured him.

  “Accius wants to take you away for special duties. What for?”

  “That’s what I came to tell you, sir. I won’t be around for a while, but—”

  “I know that! I’m asking what for?”

  It was some measure of Pertinax’s current ambiguous status that the tribune had paid him the courtesy of asking before taking
one of his men, but had not thought it necessary to tell him why. It was a sign of how ill Pertinax was that he had not insisted on knowing at the time. “The locals have lost a child, sir. It looks as if one of our men’s taken him. They’re demanding him back. I’m needed to help with the search because I have native contacts.”

  The lines on the prefect’s forehead deepened. “One of our men?”

  “We’re questioning some suspects now, sir.”

  “Good. Don’t pussyfoot about.”

  “No, sir,” said Ruso. “Doctor Valens has offered to come and take over here.”

  “Offered? My son-in-law never volunteers for anything.”

  “He really did, sir,” Ruso insisted. “He’s a good doctor: you’ll be in safe hands.”

  For once Pertinax did not argue. Instead he asked how long the child had been missing. When he was told, he shook his head. “All that work we did getting the Brits settled down,” he said. “Good men were lost. When I think of some of those lads . . . I can still see their faces.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Ruso, who for months afterward had suffered bad dreams about the men he had failed to save. The natives had raised a much more spirited rebellion than anyone could have expected, and the casualty list had been horrendous.

  “And now some twisted fool’s gone and stirred them up again,” said Pertinax. He lay back on his pillows and gave a graphic description of what he would do to the twisted fool when he was caught. “Very slowly,” he added. “In front of the natives.”

  “I think that would be a popular move, sir,” said Ruso, wondering how many of the audience would faint.

  “Hmph. But they’re not going to ask me what I think, are they?” He gestured toward the end of the bed. “No foot, no sense. Why haven’t we caught him yet?”

  “We’re looking at several men, sir.”

  “Who?”

  At the sound of the first name Pertinax gestured toward his missing foot. “Anybody tell you why I was over at the quarry?”

  “No, sir.” Ruso suspected he was not the only person who had wondered.

  “Good. You’re not supposed to know.”

  There seemed to be no answer to that.

  “Don’t pass it on. I wanted to watch Daminius at work without that idiot Fabius getting in the way. He’s up for centurion. Or was.”

  “Do you think he could have taken the boy?”

  Pertinax grunted. “If he did, my judgment must be going. Who else?”

  Pertinax did not recognize the other names whose movements were being checked. “Whoever it is, he’ll make a mistake before long,” he said. “He’s scared. Must be. Have they checked the rolls to see who’s missing?”

  “It’s being done, sir. There are search parties and roadblocks, and local forts and slave traders have been notified. Nothing’s come up so far.”

  The eyes closed, and Pertinax let out a long sigh. “And I’m lying in bed.”

  Ruso watched him for a moment, then picked up his case and tiptoed toward the door. His hand was on the latch when he heard a voice behind him. “I’m not asleep,” it said. “Tell them to find that boy. They must find that boy, alive and well, or everything our lads fought and died for will be thrown away.”

  Chapter 39

  The sacrifice was done, perhaps with the right words and perhaps not, but the smell of roasting lamb drifted off into the woods and the neighbor’s dog was hanging around, looking hopeful. Most of the visitors were long gone, promising to search and offer prayers for Branan and to visit their neighbors and try to track down the real source of the body-in-the-wall rumor. They had seemed quietly relieved to go home. There were cows and goats to be milked, hens to be shut away before the fox came, and husbands and children to be fed. They had been given a good excuse to go and do all those things without looking as though they were abandoning Enica with neither husband nor son.

  Enica had gathered names of rumor-mongers, promising everyone that whatever came to light would be kept secret from the soldiers: Nobody will be punished. Tilla had kept silent. The soldiers had been accused of child stealing. They would do their best to find out everything, and when they did, there was no telling what they would do. You couldn’t blame them. They had put a lot of work into that wall only to find themselves with enemies on both sides of it.

  Tomorrow they would chase the rumor. Tonight, the day was coming to a close with Branan still not found. The remaining women stood around the fire: Enica with the dried blood of the slaughtered lamb dark on her forehead. Cata with her bruised face and bandaged fingers. Even the woman with the lisp had nothing to say. There was no sound around the fire but the crackling of the wood and the odd hiss as the lamb’s fat dripped into the flames. Somewhere beyond the gate, a blackbird was singing his close-of-day song. Tilla felt as though she could reach out and touch the absence of people who should have been there. Branan, of course. Senecio. The dead brother she had never met. Conn and the other men who were out searching.

  She pulled her shawl tighter around her shoulders and repinned it. She felt guilty about leaving Enica but she too had something to do. “I will speak to Virana,” she promised. “She will know if there are any fresh stories about the body in the wall. If there is any news—” She broke off. Everyone was looking toward the road. The blackbird had sounded the chack-chack of a warning cry, and almost straightaway the soldiers appeared.

  It seemed Tribune Accius had ridden his gray stallion down the long track to the farm with only four guards in attendance. Beside him, on a bay horse whose coat needed brushing, was Tilla’s husband. The horses stopped outside the gate. Enica hurried forward to greet them.

  Tilla did not need to see the men’s faces under the helmets. She could tell from the way they moved as they swung down from the horses that there was no good news.

  A mule cart drew up on the track behind the riders: Conn and the other searchers from the house. They too looked weary. She guessed both groups had already spoken on the way here.

  Her husband unfastened his sword, then murmured something to Accius. They seemed to be arguing. Finally Accius handed over his weapon. Leaving the cart to his companions, Conn slung both swords over his shoulder and went into the house without a second glance, as if he disarmed legionary tribunes every day. Tilla wondered what role he had played in the troubles.

  Enica stood back, allowing the soldiers to enter. Leaving the guards outside, the officers walked into the yard. The tribune’s gaze darted about as if he were assessing the location and looking out for threats and escape routes. Tilla wondered if he had ever been to a native farm before.

  She stood back as her husband introduced the tribune and Enica to each other. After a quiet conversation the two men walked up to the fire, bowed, and threw herbs into the flames as a mark of respect. Then they stepped back and waited as the scent of rosemary and bay wafted into the air. Enica went to fetch Conn and the others. They emerged from the house, several of them carrying drinks. Conn wrapped a cloth around his hand and hacked some untidy slices from the outside of what remained of the lamb now that the proper portions had been burned for the gods. None was offered to the soldiers.

  Accius was still glancing around, taking it all in. Tilla guessed he would rather have spoken privately with the man in charge than face a group of locals whose language he neither spoke nor understood. But the man in charge would have been Senecio, who was not here, and even if Romans had been good at negotiating with women—which they were not—Enica was in no fit state to deal with him. She had wisely called everyone together, and he was outnumbered.

  In spite of all the Army’s weapons and armor and discipline and shouting, and despite the Great Wall that would help them to control everybody’s movements, they had been unable to stop one of their own people committing a terrible wrong. Yet, the disgrace of having a child snatcher in the ranks did not seem to have taught Accius humility. Tilla listened as he introduced himself, and then to her husband’s translation of it. Accius regretted
that he had brought no news. He had just spoken to Senecio, who was well, and he had come to say personally how sorry he was that the boy was missing.

  Tilla felt they could have worked out for themselves that he had come personally. He could only be speaking of it because he wanted to make sure that they understood what an honor it was. Then he told them that the army was taking “this allegation” very seriously indeed.

  Her husband did not translate it as she would have done. Allegation was a cautious word but not a good one. It suggested that the tribune thought somebody here might be lying. Her husband translated it as “bad news.” Either he did not know the word, or he knew the offense it would cause. She wondered how many of the Britons had noticed.

  After that, the tribune told Enica that the army was doing everything in its power to find her boy alive and well. He seemed annoyed when, instead of falling at his feet and thanking him, Enica interrupted.

  “She says,” Tilla interpreted before her husband had the chance, “the boy has no coat with him.”

  Accius replied that they knew what the boy was wearing.

  That was not what Enica had meant, though. She was worrying about her son out there, enduring a second night with no warm covering.

  “The description of the boy has been sent out with despatches to all military establishments in the province together with official posting stations,” the tribune announced, “and the legate has ordered a reward to be offered for his safe return.”

  Tilla left her husband to translate that into British.

  The Britons looked unimpressed. Conn was more interested in what had happened to the soldiers who had come to search the farm.

  Accius told him they were now under arrest.

  “Then why are you here?” Enica demanded. “Why are you not making them tell you where my son is?”

  “Let us have them!” put in Conn. “We’ll find out.” There was a chorus of agreement.

  When he could make himself heard, Accius explained that the men had been questioned and their stories were being checked. Meanwhile other searches would continue. “We need to coordinate our efforts.” He placed a hand on her husband’s arm as if to introduce him. “All messages will go through Medical Officer Ruso. He will keep you informed. If you have anything to tell us, speak to him.”