Tabula Rasa: A Crime Novel of the Roman Empire

by Ruth Downie

  Ruso folded his arms and closed his eyes. Think.

  This had been the problem all along. Not knowing which way to turn. But it was no good circling in one place and trampling it bare like a tethered goat. Sooner or later Branan would head for home. Ruso would leave Coria to Susanna and the local force and spread the word at the farms and roadside stations on the way back to Parva.

  He opened his eyes and saw his own folded arms. How could a man end up with his left arm paler than his right? Nobody carried a shield for that long. But . . . there had been that time when he had an injured leg strapped up for weeks, and when the dressings had come off . . .

  He was almost back up at the west gate when a dispatch rider came out at a canter. Ruso held up both hands, waving wildly as he stepped into the road, shouting, “Stop, I need to send a message!”

  This rider was better-mannered than the others. Instead of running Ruso down, he swerved, waving cheerily back. If he heard Ruso yelling, “Tell the tribune at Parva to look again at Mallius!” he showed no sign of it.

  Mallius, the sometime-blond soldier who had passed the water up to the stranded prefect in the quarry. Mallius, the supplier of a dead hen of unknown provenance. Mallius, who had been part of the search party that had seen Branan and Tilla together at the farm. Mallius, whose wrist and forearm must have been bandaged for at least a month and which, even in this climate, would have emerged more sun-starved than the rest of him.

  The same Mallius who had been fully occupied at the brothel, and then certifiably asleep, on the afternoon of the kidnap, and who had no reason that Ruso knew of to steal and sell a child.

  Ruso shook his head. Accius, if he got the message, would have to puzzle that one out for himself. Ruso had a boy to find.

  He was halfway to Susanna’s when he saw her careering down the street, waving one hand in the air and holding her skirts out of the mud with the other. There was news! He ran to meet her, feeling a smile escaping his caution.

  And then it froze.

  Gasping for breath, Susanna managed to get the story out. “He was seen! Lupus’s man met some fur traders. On the bridge. They took the boy north. I think he’s been sold.”

  Chapter 58

  At last Tilla had some use for her escort. With Dismal following her, and the military brands on the horses, nobody dared to question her right to ride down the track that crossed the line of wall where the soldiers were working. The weary Enica pointed toward the rough slopes where Aedic’s family had lived. At the top, Tilla could see the builders tidying up, ready for the end of the day’s work. They were leaning out from the scaffold to throw covers over the freshly laid stones and gathering their equipment together, ready to carry it back down to the camp. Tilla swallowed. This looked very much like the place where her husband had described Candidus’s knife being found. But there was no sign of a boy, and no one answered their cries of “Aedic!”

  There was little news to exchange on either side when they delivered Enica home. Dismal had clearly been hoping the search would be abandoned for the day, and his face fell even further when Tilla explained that they were now going to retrace their steps to the wall and carry on hunting for Aedic. Instead of following her, he turned his horse the other way and peered across the fields below the house to where the trees marked the passage of the stream.

  “What is it?”

  “Be quicker down that way and through the quarry, miss.”

  Tilla let him lead her down past a half-ruined farm building. After some exploring, during which Dismal appeared to be lost but was not going to admit it, they found a place where they could jump the horses over a tumbled section of wall. They scrambled down a bank and cantered north, following a broad track that was in unusually good repair along the course of the stream. After a couple of hundred paces it curved into a large cleared area where the side of the hill had been hacked away. Part of the cliff had tumbled into a steep slide of loose earth and rock. She held the horse back, gazing up at it. This must be what her husband had climbed across to rescue Valens’s father-in-law.

  How simple everything had seemed just a few days ago, when the biggest problem of her afternoon had been the thought that her husband would be late for supper. Now they were both out hunting for other people’s missing children and she had no idea where he was or whether anything would ever be quite the same again.

  “Miss!”

  The voice made her jump. She recognized the man who had led the search party: What was his name? Daminius. But instead of telling her to clear off out of the quarry, he was slipping his work hammer into a loop on his belt and asking, “Any news about the boy, miss?”

  “They would have sounded the horn,” she told him. Since he was free, she supposed they must have decided he had nothing to do with Branan’s disappearance. “Have you seen my husband?”

  “I heard he was going to Vindolanda.” There was something about the man’s expression that said there was more, but all he said was “Keep well clear of the landslide, miss. Just in case.”

  She explained about the search for Aedic, and he nodded. “There’s a big clump of bushes up toward the wall where they’ve got the scaffolding. About a hundred paces east of the stream. He sometimes hides there.”

  “You know him?”

  “Warn him to watch out. Most of the lads know he’s harmless, but my replacement might think he’s a spy.”

  “Your replacement? Are you being sent away?”

  The optio shrugged, and she thought there was a slight flinch, as if he had disturbed a forgotten injury. “This is the Legion, miss. You never know.”

  “I wish you well,” she said, and meant it. She was about to ride on when she noticed what was hanging around his neck. “Did you lend that to my husband?”

  He picked up the little winged phallus and grimaced. “I don’t know what he did to it,” he said. “I’ve had nothing but bad luck ever since he got his hands on it. Miss, are you the one who helped Fabius’s kitchen maid?”

  He was a man full of surprises. How did he know that? She wondered whether he knew about the girl’s plea for a charm against pregnancy. “I have met her. Why do you ask?”

  From across by the little hut, a voice shouted, “Hey! Are you working or talking?”

  “You might not see her again,” he said. “Her master might send her away. I thought I should tell you she was very grateful.”

  Then, before Tilla could ask what was going on, he said, “I hope you find both those boys soon, miss,” and went back to work, twisting the hammer out of his belt as he walked.

  Chapter 59

  Tilla crouched down in front of the bushes, which stank of urine. “I know you’re there,” she said gently. “I can see your foot.”

  The foot was snatched back out of sight.

  “I just want to talk to you,” she said.

  There was a scuffling from somewhere amongst the leaves. Dismal shouted a warning and she sprang to her feet, catching sight of a small figure scrambling away from her up the hill, then veering to the left as if he were trying to get down to the stream. She grabbed fistfuls of skirt and ran after him. Dismal rode round to cut him off. The boy realized the danger and changed course like a startled animal, running back across the slope, trying not to get trapped against the wall. Tilla managed to intercept him and there was one of those silly dodging games with him feinting to one side and then trying to run in the opposite direction. Dismal closed in. Finally she flung herself at the boy and they ended up rolling down the damp hillside in a flurry of arms and legs and skirts.

  When they had disentangled themselves Tilla said, “Your knee is bleeding. Let me look.”

  The boy did not even spare a glance at the hole in his trousers. He was keeping a wary eye on Dismal. He whispered, “Is that him?”

  “Who?”

  The boy did not answer.

  “You must be Aedic. I am Darlughdacha. Tilla for short.”

  Again, no answer.

  She said,
“That man is with me. Does he look like someone you’re afraid of?”

  The boy nodded. That was progress.

  “You are safe with me,” she assured him, but he was still watching Dismal’s every move and bracing himself, ready to run. Tilla called to Dismal not to come any closer. “You see?” she told Aedic. “He won’t hurt you while I’m here.”

  “I didn’t do anything.”

  “I know,” she told him. “Is the man you are afraid of one of the soldiers?”

  For a moment she thought he was refusing to answer again. Then she heard, “He got Branan. Now he’ll come for me.”

  “Who is coming for you? That man there, or someone like him?”

  He said, “He put a body inside the wall.”

  “You saw him do it?”

  “I didn’t mean to! It wasn’t my fault!”

  “I know,” said Tilla, placing one hand over his. “Tell me about the man.”

  “I can’t,” the boy mumbled. “I don’t know anything. I don’t know what he looks like. It was too dark.”

  Tilla felt her shoulders slump. She had spent a whole day tracing the source of the rumor, and now she had found him, he knew nothing that was of any use at all. “Why did you say it was Branan who saw him?”

  The boy became agitated. “I didn’t mean to do it! I didn’t mean any harm! He was hurting me!”

  “The man?”

  The boy shook his head violently. “Matto.”

  “So you told Matto something to make him stop hurting you?”

  “Mam said you shouldn’t tell lies. But Mam’s in the next world and there’s only Petta, and Petta doesn’t like me.”

  “I don’t think it’s just you,” said Tilla, who had the impression that Petta didn’t like anyone.

  He said, “Is it true people can pass through from the next world at Samain?”

  “I have never seen it,” Tilla confessed. The meeting she longed for with her own family had never happened. No one could tell her how to find the hills that opened at Samain to let the living go inside. All she could truthfully say was, “I think they can see us and they watch over us.”

  “Do you think Mam can see me?”

  “I’m sure she can,” Tilla assured him. “My family are all gone to the next world too. Perhaps they have met.”

  He said, “I thought she might come tonight.”

  “And so you wait for her here, where you used to live.”

  He nodded.

  “I think she will know where to find you wherever you are,” she told him, pushing away the fear that she had deserted her own ghosts by following the army. There was no time to dwell on that now. “But she may not be able to come to you. Were you here waiting for your Mam when you saw the man with the body?”

  He shrugged. “I s’pose.” He looked at her. “All of your family?”

  “All of them. The Northerners came raiding.”

  There was no need to explain further: Even a child of this age had heard the stories. He said, “Are you still sad?”

  “It is an ache that I carry inside me wherever I go,” she told him. “But I am still glad I have my life here. I do not want to join them before my time comes.”

  He nodded thoughtfully. They sat in silence for a while. Dismal, still keeping his distance, allowed the horses to graze. The sun was sinking in a clear sky and a chilly breeze rattled the bushes.

  “We must go,” said Tilla, getting to her feet. “I should have taken you back to your family before. They will worry about you, out alone tonight.”

  “No they won’t,” he said, and she was afraid it was true.

  “I will get someone to take you back.” She was sure the Legion would help. She had visited Aedic’s family on a military-branded horse, with an escort from the fort, and the last thing the army wanted was any whiff of their being involved in the disappearance of another boy. “Do you want to ride my horse?”

  He nodded, eager. “I’ve never been on a horse before.”

  She gave him a leg up into the saddle, ignoring Dismal’s obvious disapproval, and led the animal down toward the little fort. Halfway there the boy interrupted her gloomy thoughts about being no closer to finding Branan with “Tilla can’t be short for Darlughdacha.”

  “It’s a long story,” she told him.

  Chapter 60

  The fur traders had apparently left Coria at midday, heading north on their mountain ponies. There was very little daylight left now. No time to round up helpers. No time to leave messages with anyone except Susanna, whose warnings to be careful were barely necessary. Ruso suspected he was about to do one of the stupidest things he had ever done in his life, so he was definitely going to do it as carefully as possible.

  Turning the mare’s head north, he urged her into a canter up the long gradient. He wished he still had the bay. Biting was a minor problem. This one’s gait was like riding a cart down a flight of steps. The bay would have been less conspicuous too. The gray would be highly visible against everything except fog, and to his left the sun was drifting downward in a clear sky. Under tonight’s full moon, she would shine like a beacon.

  He pressed on, because there was nothing else to do but sit easy and try not to bounce as the mare carried him past the first milestone. He let her relax into a trot for a while as he passed the second. Many of the names engraved on the stones were of places much farther north: destinations no Roman was ever likely to see again. He had met veterans who could remember tramping south down this road, part of a disgruntled withdrawal of troops that left the northern tribes rejoicing as they settled down into their old domestic rivalries. Still, there were some scattered military outposts up here, left behind to keep an eye on the border tribes whose territories straddled the wall. With luck, he would run into one of the patrols from Habitancum or Bremenium on the way up. If he did not, and the traders got the boy beyond the reach of Rome, he had no idea what he would do. He urged the mare back into a canter.

  He saw no patrols: just locals, some carrying piles of firewood. People joining their neighbors for tonight’s celebrations, untroubled by any curfew beyond the one they imposed upon themselves because their heads were full of ghost stories. Occasionally a group contained an elderly person clinging on to a donkey or wrapped in blankets and being jolted along in a cart.

  Four milestones. The road was rougher up here, although the potholes had been filled with rubble and it was flanked with wide grass verges, a comforting reminder that he was not yet completely out of civilization. He tried to keep an eye on his surroundings, but the sun was sliding down behind the western hills, and every time he looked to the left he was dazzled. Soon it would be dark. If Susanna had managed to let the CO at Coria know that Ruso had rushed off alone in pursuit of the missing boy, it seemed no support had been arranged. There was no sign of any cavalry galloping north to join him, and he doubted they would signal ahead. He would be alone on the road with no protection beyond his weapons and his armor, which were already attracting the wrong sort of attention. He had seen the looks on the faces of other travelers and the way men in the fields stopped work to stare as he passed. He wondered about pausing to hide his kit and picking it up on the way back, but he knew that, close up, he could no more pass for a native than the horse could. He would just look like a deserter, despised by both sides.

  And then he reached the fork in the road. He slowed the mare to a walk and stopped to ask a couple of small girls lugging a bucket of water whether they had seen the Northerners go past on their ponies. They stared up at him, openmouthed. One of them let go of the handle and fled as the water sloshed all over the remaining child’s feet. She stood as if paralyzed, her eyes wide with shock. Ruso backed the horse away from her. When the scream finally came, she flung the bucket toward him and ran. Struggling to steady the frightened horse, Ruso debated briefly whether to stay and explain or get away. The sounds of angry voices and footsteps crashing through the woods told him that he and the horse were of one mind. Behind hi
m, the shouts of “Leave our kids alone!” died away and then there were only the hoofbeats and the voice in his head asking, What if the traders went the other way? And even if they had not, the question remained: What are you going to do when you find them? Reason with them? Appeal to their sense of natural justice? Offer them money? He had very little with him, but if they agreed to come to the nearest army base (how likely was that?), he might be able to talk his way into borrowing some. On the other hand, since they had just sold their furs, they might not be interested in money. After all, they had just given some of it away to buy a slave.

  His courage was fading with the light. What had he been thinking, back there on the bridge in Coria? That he could tackle half a dozen tribesmen by himself? That the fur traders would be businessmen like Lupus, pretending to respect the law and eager to retain a little goodwill in exchange for the army’s protection? That he could catch up with them and say, Can we have our boy back, please?

  Ahead of him, a figure was pulling up the staked chain of a pony that had been grazing on the grass verge. Keeping his distance this time, Ruso asked his question. He was in luck. The old man looked him up and down for a moment as if deciding whether it was wise to speak, and then admitted that he had seen the fur traders pass by some time ago. They might have had a boy with them. No, he did not know what sort of boy. He had not taken much notice. It was best not to have anything to do with the fur traders if you could help it.