Tabula Rasa: A Crime Novel of the Roman Empire

by Ruth Downie

  “You did not ask. Anyway, I thought, it is only sitting.” She tried to shift positions and winced. “Just at this terrible angle, and being shaken about . . . And wearing my stepson’s trousers.”

  “We will stop and eat,” Tilla declared. “You can rest.”

  Enica shook her head. “If I get down now, I will never get back up. Turn left here. It is no more than a mile. I want to talk to those boys.”

  Chapter 48

  “Run all day, this one will, sir,” said the man, whacking the nose of the only remaining animal in the stable as it attempted to bite him. “He’s a good horse.”

  Ruso watched as the leggy bay was led out into the yard. Its ears were flattened back against its head and the whites of its eyes were showing.

  “I’ll be honest, sir, I wouldn’t have gave him to your wife, but you won’t have no bother with him. Not once you’re up. You’re further from his teeth back there.”

  It was this horse or no horse, and at least when he turned it east toward Vindolanda and urged it forward, it sprang into a willing canter. He wondered whether Tilla and Enica had managed to track down the source of the rumors. He would never have spoken it out loud, but he hoped they were wasting their time. He didn’t want there to be a body in the wall. He didn’t want to have to worry about whether it was Candidus, and besides, Branan had been missing for two nights now. A boy who had been kidnapped in order to be silenced was not likely to be found alive after that long. And they very much needed to find Branan alive. Not only because he was innocent and friendly and nine years old, and because his family—well, his father—had tried to make strangers welcome, but because Pertinax was right: If they didn’t, the fragile peace with the locals would break down again. Everything our lads fought for will be thrown away. And Senecio, who wanted no more killing, would see his people swept up into fury and bloodshed once more.

  He had done his best to keep the peace by sharing information with Conn. The Britons were following up the sightings however they thought best, with the promise that if help was needed, they were to ask. The army was investigating the whereabouts of every single man on the afternoon that Branan had disappeared.

  What he had not told Conn was that he was going to Vindolanda to find out what information Security had on Conn himself. Ruso still had a nagging suspicion that the elder brother might have set this whole thing in motion. Clearly the irony of the army turning itself inside out on behalf of a native family was not lost on him. “We’ll help you round up all your men and beat them,” Conn had suggested, with a bitterness that belied any suggestion of humor. “You always think it works on us.”

  Vindolanda’s well-worn main street was busy, as usual, and Ruso had to steer the horse between groups of pedestrians who would have moved out of the way a lot faster if they had considered the size of its teeth. The wooden fort at the end of the street was currently housing three times the number of men it was built for, and the cavalrymen queuing outside the stables glared at him before parting to let this unknown officer forward to hand over his horse. When he was finally inside the inconspicuous corner of the HQ building occupied by Security, Ruso showed the permit Accius had signed.

  The clerk squinted at it, turned it upside down, held it level to examine it for something or other, and finally agreed to let him pass.

  The security officer placed a stack of five or six writing tablets on the desk and kept hold of them. “Give me the name again.”

  “Conn,” Ruso said. “Son of Senecio.”

  “Interesting. I think we had a question about Senecio the other day.”

  Ruso, whose enquiries about Senecio had been strictly unofficial, said nothing.

  The tablets were parceled up with twine. The officer pulled the strand to one side and bent his head to reveal thinning hair combed across a bald patch. “Conn, son of Senecio, resident on a farm with three buildings seven hundred and fifty paces southwest of the fort known as Parva.”

  “That’s him.”

  The officer picked at the knot in the twine. Finally he opened the top document and read, giving the occasional “Hm” as he reached an interesting point. Ruso said, “I don’t want to waste your time. I can look for myself and let you know when I’ve finished.”

  The man shook his head and said, “If only it were that easy.”

  Ruso refrained from pointing out that it would be that easy if he handed them over.

  “Facts are not intelligence, Doctor. Intelligence is what we sift from the random facts that accumulate in our reports.”

  Ruso waited. Finally he was rewarded with “ ‘Conn. Served as a leader in the troubles. Younger brother Dubnus killed in a skirmish with a unit from the Twentieth.’ ”

  There was not time to dwell on the news that the men who had killed Senecio’s second son were from his own legion.

  “ ‘Father still alive, mother dead, father remarried, one half brother, Branan.’ ”

  “Branan is the one who’s missing,” said Ruso, hoping to speed things up.

  “No wife or children listed. ‘Other occupants of the farm . . .’ ” He paused, “There are cross-references. Do you want me to look them up?”

  “Stay with Conn for now.”

  “ ‘Thought to retain contact with remaining rebels . . . mostly social . . . Suspicious activities much curtailed since executions of ringleaders after the troubles . . . No associates currently known in other tribes . . .’ Some trouble with one of our men over a woman now married to another cross-reference . . . ‘Tendency to speak before he thinks . . .’ ” Ruso could vouch for that.

  “Ah. There’s a new female associate called . . . holy gods, these people’s names . . . Dar—”

  “Darlughdacha?”

  “Could be.”

  “It means Daughter of the God Lugh. Also known as Tilla.”

  The man’s eyes widened. “ ‘Married to an officer of whom he doesn’t approve.’ ”

  “That’s me.”

  The security officer glanced at the permit again and looked up. “Are you sure you’re supposed to have access to this?”

  “Absolutely. I’m here because I’m the link. I need to know if he’s got any other contacts within the army or if he knows anyone who can impersonate a legionary.”

  “The former, not that we know of. The latter . . . perhaps. If they got hold of the kit.”

  “Plus I’d like to know where he was two days ago, between the sixth and twelfth hours.”

  The security officer sighed. “We use local informers, Doctor. We don’t send men to follow ‘persons of interest’ about all day. Nobody’s that interesting.”

  “Who’s our informer?”

  The man pursed his lips and indicated the permit. “You’d need more than that. Especially since you’re personally involved.”

  “I need a clear picture of who knows what about the family.”

  “The man who took the child wasn’t our informer, if that’s what you’re thinking. I can tell you that for certain.”

  “How do you know?”

  The officer sighed. “Listen to me, Doctor. The man who took the child wasn’t our informer.”

  Ruso said, “Ah.”

  “I shouldn’t even have said that much.”

  “That’s not to say your informer didn’t pass something on to him. Is this woman reliable?”

  “We deal in a world of shadows and tricks of the light,” the officer said, “but mostly hard cash. They get paid, or we have some way of pressuring them.”

  “And can Conn exert counterpressure on her to keep her mouth shut?”

  “He doesn’t know it’s open.”

  It was about midday when Ruso rescued the Vindolanda stable lads from the horse, which the groom described as a vicious bugger. Feeling oddly protective toward it, Ruso observed that it was temperamentally unsuited to being with the Legion and would probably be happier in a permanent home.

  “That’s what I tell my centurion, sir,” observed the groom. “But
I get no sympathy.”

  Away from the busy streets, Ruso turned the horse’s head back toward the west. He felt no better informed now than he had been when he set out. It was still possible that Conn was implicated in the disappearance of his brother but the security report confirmed what, at heart, he had suspected: that Conn was angry rather than vicious. It did not suggest a man who would mastermind a kidnap—and besides, what would he do with the boy afterward?

  What would anyone do with the boy?

  The horse tossed its head and Ruso was brought back to the present. He wasn’t going to answer that question no matter how long and hard he stared at it. Instead he would leave the main road and head up the farm track that was part of the short training run, the route Daminius said he had followed on the afternoon Branan went missing. The route on which Daminius could not remember seeing anyone at all.

  He turned off the track onto a flattish expanse of rough grazing, following a broad muddy swath that indicated the passage of many studded boots. A couple of sheep lifted their heads and stopped chewing to stare at him as he passed. On a whim, he aimed the horse at a clump of nettles. It leapt over them without objection.

  The route was a favorite because it ran through striking scenery. Long, narrow lakes and reed beds shivered at the base of spectacular cliffs, whose natural defenses would soon be crowned with a long line of wall. Waving cheerfully up to a clutch of small figures waving at him from the top, it occurred to him that they were probably trying to tell him that the north side of the wall was not the most sensible place for a lone man to go for a ride. Luckily he was too far away to be identified. As he left the water behind, the track was less clear and it occurred to him that Daminius could have taken a different path, closer to the wall line or farther north, and that anything he saw now might not be relevant. But when he turned left to follow the stream, he was confident that he was on the right route. It was the only crossing from north to south of the wall here.

  That was unfortunate, because instead of facing a clear passage he found himself riding toward a mass of yellowed greenery dangling from branches that stuck upward at the wrong angle. Several Britons were clambering in amongst the branches and he heard the rasp of saws punctuated by the thud of an axe. Someone was looping chains around a broad trunk. It was an old ash, and no doubt as soon as the locals had done the work, the army would commandeer the wood for making weapons to keep them in order. But for now it was an obstruction, and beyond it a team of oxen was stationed, ready to drag it out of the way.

  The man setting the chains paused to usher him around to the left. Ruso coaxed the horse through the narrow gap. There was a tangle of black roots grasping at the air on one side, and on the other the deep hollow in the bank that they had failed to cling on to. He nodded his thanks and asked in Latin, “When did this fall?”

  “It will be gone very soon.”

  “But how long has it been here?”

  Instead of answering, the man called to a companion in a brown woolen hat and repeated the question in British, prefaced by “The officer wants to know . . .”

  To Ruso’s surprise the companion was a woman. “Tell him yesterday!”

  He looked at the drooping leaves, yellow rather than autumn gold, and the way the rain had washed the mud off the roots, and observed in British, “It looks like longer.”

  The woman put down the axe and scrambled between the branches until she was close enough to sit on the trunk, level with Ruso. “We had to get a team together,” she said. “There is only me and my son to work the land here. And then your people told us to go and look for a lost boy.”

  “It may help me to find the lost boy if you think very hard about when this tree fell.”

  She scratched her head through the wool and then carefully straightened the hat. “Now that I have thought,” she declared, “It was market day. Then it rained the next day when we started cutting it, then we had to search for the boy. Does this matter?”

  “It might,” Ruso told her. “Thank you.”

  He rode on. He doubted the business of the tree would help find Branan but at least it might help consolidate Daminius’s alibi so that he could be restored back to his full duties.

  And if it wasn’t Daminius and it wasn’t Conn, who had taken the boy? Now that Virana had unwittingly extended the suspicion to the entire Legion, he had no idea how anyone was going to find out fast enough. The task of examining every possible suspect was overwhelming.

  He would have to begin with the small things he could do, and then think about the rest later. He would ask at the bar for messages. He would make sure Senecio was all right. He would tell Accius about the fallen tree on Daminius’s route, and while Accius dealt with that, he would think how to check the alibi of the one suspect for whom he was responsible, even if it did seem ridiculous that Nisus might have moved far or fast enough to kidnap anybody. Or wanted to. Ruso would do it because nobody knew what a child snatcher looked like.

  Chapter 49

  Several miles farther north, another axe swung down and landed with a thunk. Two halves of log flew apart and tumbled onto the yard. The young man retrieved one and tried to balance it back on the tree stump. It fell sideways. He upended it, and this time it stayed. The axe swung again; the process was repeated.

  It was only when the dog started barking that he noticed the approaching riders. Axe still in hand, he shouted, “Mam! People!” Then he recognized Enica and opened the gate. “Is it about Branan?”

  “We have looked but found nothing,” Enica told him. “Now we are looking in a new way. We need to find out who saw the body being put in the emperor’s wall.”

  Lucano, whose upper lip was only faintly fluffy despite his muscular build, looked puzzled. “But I thought—”

  “Branan saw nothing.”

  The youth considered this for a moment. Then he turned round, propped the axe against the stump, and cupped his mouth with his hands to bellow, “Worm! Where are you?”

  A couple of chickens sidestepped away from the sound. A goat paused in its efforts to reach under the hurdles that fenced off the vegetable patch. “Worm! Come out, you’re wanted!”

  A woman appeared in the doorway of the nearest house, wiping her hands on her skirts. “If you tried calling your brother by his name, boy—Enica! Is there news?”

  Enica shook her head.

  “We searched everywhere here. We are all very sorry.”

  “He was here just now,” Lucano was saying. “Where is he?”

  The woman’s cry of “Matto! Where are you?” was sharp and fearful.

  “Don’t worry,” called the brother, heading round behind the house toward a wooded area. “I’ll find him.”

  They waited. The piebald horse shambled over to crop a tuft of grass sprouting at the foot of one of the houses. He seemed not to notice Enica tugging on his reins.

  Dismal approached, smacked the piebald on the rump with his stick, and led it back.

  The mother said, “You must come and sit by the hearth. There is not much, but what we have—”

  Enica thanked her but explained that she could not dismount. The woman managed a smile but instantly glanced away, looking for her boy.

  A shriek from the woods alarmed the guests and their horses more than the mother. It was followed by a shout of “Let go! Let me go! Mam, he’s hurting me!”

  “Come when you’re called, Worm! Think I don’t know where you hide?”

  “I never heard you!”

  “Liar!”

  With that Lucano reappeared, dragging a younger boy by the ear. “See? You’ve worried Mam now!”

  Matto had contorted his body to follow the twist in his ear. “I didn’t do anything!”

  “You got us into trouble, you little liar. You know who this is?”

  Unable to lift his head, Matto circled round crabwise until he could see the visitors through the tangled hair that had fallen over his face. “I didn’t do anything!”

  “Liar!”
Lucano gave the ear an extra twist to make his point. Matto’s shrieks drowned his mother’s protests. Just as Tilla swung down from her horse to intervene, the older brother let go. The younger one dropped into a crouch with both hands clamped over his ear. Lucano seized the back of his brother’s tunic as if he were holding the collar of a dog. “You said,” he said, bending down, “that Branan saw somebody hiding a body in the emperor’s wall.”

  “He did!”

  “Now he’s gone missing and his mam wants to know why you were telling lies about him!”

  “I didn’t lie!”

  Tilla stepped forward and touched Lucano on the arm. “May I speak to him?”

  Lucano looked at Enica for guidance, then shrugged and stepped back.

  Tilla crouched beside the boy and spoke into his good ear, which was no cleaner than the rest of him. “We are not cross with you,” she explained. “We just need to know what happened because we think it might help us find Branan.”

  Matto sniffed and wiped tears away with a grimy fist. He said, “It’s not my fault. I thought it was true.”

  “Who told you?”

  “Aedic started it. He was the one who told everybody.”

  “Do you know who told Aedic?”

  “He said it was Branan. He said nobody was supposed to know.”

  “Why was that?”

  Matto hesitated for a moment, then said, “Dunno.”

  “Did anybody ask Branan if it was true?”

  Matto paused to sniff again. “I was going to. When I saw him. But now the man’s got him.”

  “Which man?”

  Matto looked at her as if it was a silly question. “The man who put the body in the wall. He came and got Branan, like Aedic said he would.”

  “Do you know who this man is?”

  Matto shook his head. “Will he get me now?”

  “You must stay at home with your family so you’ll be safe,” Tilla told him. “I will warn your mother and brother. Now tell me about Aedic.”