by Ruth Downie
Albanus interlaced his fingers around his wine cup. “It is kind of you to suggest it, but is he not safely inside a barracks somewhere?”
“I mean it,” she insisted. “Before the tribune gets the message in the morning and has a chance to cover anything up.”
Albanus stared into the dregs of his wine. “Even if we are able to speak with him, we have no power to investigate, and he has no incentive to tell us anything.”
It was true. Whoever had caused Candidus’s disappearance must have lied repeatedly since then: Why would he stop now? They did not even know what they were accusing him of. They could hardly stand in front of the man like angry parents, demanding, “Is there something you would like to tell us?”
They could not speak to him at all if he was on one side of a military wall tonight and they were on the other. “We have Candidus’s kit,” she said, thinking aloud. “Are you about the same size?”
Albanus shook his head. “Much of what is here used to be mine,” he admitted, “but I’m afraid nobody is likely to mistake me for a legionary with no armor or belt or weapons. And there is the matter of the password.”
The ladder creaked as Tilla got to her feet. “I am going outside to make an offering to the goddess,” she told him. “Perhaps she will help.”
She bought three perfect white eggs from Ria, who was busy making sure all the slops were cleared out of the kitchen and the hearth fire was raked. Even in town it was wise to follow the Samain customs.
The yard was almost dark but she felt oddly safe kneeling under the apple tree, hearing the horse shifting about in the stable and surrounded by the high fence with the gate barred against thieves. The gods were listening tonight, she was sure of it. They had already answered one prayer, even if it was not in the way that she had wanted. She had asked to see her family; she had been shown Aemilia.
Scraping a little hole between the roots of the tree, she said the new prayer and then poured out the contents of the eggs one by one. As the glistening liquid sank away into the earth, the idea came to her.
Back in the privacy of the storeroom, with the youth gulping down a late supper in the bar, Albanus was not impressed with what he heard. It was not, he felt, an approach that her husband would recommend.
“Perhaps not,” Tilla agreed. “But my husband is not here. Do you want the man who killed Candidus to be punished or not?”
Albanus shifted his position on the lid of the barrel. “That apparently simple question is rather difficult to answer,” he said. “You see, those are not valid alternatives.” He raised and lowered his hands in parallel, as if he were shaping the argument he was about to present to her. “The premise behind your question is that my misgivings about your plan indicate an unwillingness to pursue the disappearance of my nephew. Whereas what I am questioning is—”
“If you have a better plan, I will be glad to hear it.”
The hands dropped. “No.”
“So,” she continued, wondering if Albanus’s nitpicking was one of the reasons Grata had called off their betrothal, “we know that we cannot make this man confess anything. We know we may never find out the truth. But if this works and he is guilty, the memory of tonight will haunt his waking fears and punish him in his nightmares. If he is innocent, we will all go home to bed and it will be just another strange story of Samain.”
Albanus, as she expected, raised objections, but he could come up with nothing better.
“So,” she said, “will you help me or not?”
Chapter 64
Getting past the curfew was simple enough: All Tilla had to do was to wait until the patrol had passed the bar and count very slowly to twenty. The soldiers were not her main concern tonight. She pulled the hood forward to hide her hair and slunk down the deserted street in the moonlight, clutching her bag against her chest and with her fist closed around the little pouch of snakeskin she had hung around her neck for protection. She did not want to be noticed, and thus have to risk replying to a greeting. This was not, as far as she knew, one of the places where those who had left this world could pass back into it. But everyone knew about the dead pretending to befriend the living, and few of the stories ended well. That was why, when she offered up her regular Samain prayer for a sight of her family, she had always added, “And let us know each other.” Then tonight the goddess had shown her Aemilia, which was not what she had wanted at all.
She tried to tread lightly, but as she passed the gloom of a doorway a burst of ferocious barking spurred her to run, hugging the bag tighter to stop the bottles clinking.
It was a relief to reach the solid gates of the fort. The gods were kind: One of the guards from earlier was still on duty and it was surprisingly easy to get in, even at this hour and without the password. With the bag of medicines, nobody questioned her story that she had been asked to visit a patient.
She understood why when she finally found herself in the comfortable warmth of Fabius’s kitchen. She did not need her carefully prepared excuse for a private word with the kitchen maid: Even in the dim lamplight she took one look and simply told the cook she needed to inspect the girl’s injuries. When she saw the bruises hidden beneath the drab tunic, she wanted to get hold of Fabius’s vine stick and beat him with it until he looked even worse than his victim. Instead all she could do was offer salve and sympathy as the girl gave a broken account of what had happened. Now she understood why Daminius had hinted that he would be leaving.
“Where can I find him tonight?”
The girl blinked at her through eyes swollen with crying. “I am not allowed to go near him. I should not speak or even think of him.”
“Just tell me where he might be,” said Tilla. “I think he can help me find out who stole the boy.”
“But he knows nothing! Why does nobody believe him? He was with me!”
Tilla put her hand over the girl’s. “I believe you both,” she said, “but I need to talk to him. Someone has come who will help us, and if this works, it could make things better for him.”
And if it didn’t, he would be in worse trouble. All of which made her feel doubly anxious as she strode down the paved street in the moonlight, carrying her bag at her side and following the girl’s directions to the black hulk of the barrack block. The last door on the left. Do not look nervous. Act as if knocking on the doors of soldiers’ quarters at night is a perfectly respectable thing for a married woman to do. If it goes wrong, you can always scream.
She did not get as far as the doors, because the steady tramp of boots and the jingle of metal strap ends on a military belt grew louder and a voice said, “Are you lost, miss? That’s the barracks.”
Do not sound anxious. Or friendly.
“I need to speak with Optio Daminius.” The effort of holding her voice down from a squeak made it oddly gruff, as if she were trying to talk like a man.
Whoever this was let out a long breath. There was a scrape of gravel as his feet shifted. She mouthed a silent prayer to Christos and any other god that might be listening and lifted her bag, hoping the man could see what it was in the stark light. “I am the wife of your medicus. I need to ask Daminius for an escort to visit a patient.”
He said, “Is it true the boy’s been taken to Coria, miss?”
“It is,” she said, not wanting to share the bad news about the fur traders. “My husband has gone to look for him.”
“That’s good,” he said, probably wondering whether her absent husband knew what she was up to. “Wait there, miss.”
Moments later she overheard, “You got Daminius there, mate? Tell him it’s his lucky night.”
Chapter 65
The moon had turned the world into silver with inky shadows. Ruso could make out the road stretching ahead, but the only things he could confidently identify in front of him were the pale peaks of the mare’s ears. On either side, beyond the skeletons of trees, orange pinpoints of Samain bonfires appeared and vanished again as he passed the hills.
W
ith luck, the fur traders would have stopped for the night. He would still be gaining on them even though he needed to let his tired mount slow to a walk for a while. He peered at the verges, searching for the next milestone and hoping he had not missed it. In this light it might be hard to tell the Three Oaks from any other building.
A couple of hundred paces farther on, he urged the mare back into a trot, but only for a few strides. He knew what to expect from this horse now, and this wasn’t it. He tried again. The mare responded, but the regular lurch was still there, and he saw her head dip each time the offside front leg went forward.
Ruso swore under his breath.
He was in the dark, miles from anywhere, on a lone hunt for men who killed for a living, and now he had a lame horse.
There was nothing for it but to get down and walk. Catching himself thinking that at least it wasn’t raining—gods above, he was starting to think like a Briton—he loosened the girth and ran one hand down the mare’s nearside leg, but he could neither see in the dark nor feel through the muck of the road. He wiped his fingers in the mare’s mane and began to lead her up the road.
He need not have worried about seeing the Three Oaks: If he had not spotted the sparks rising into the sky from the bonfire, he would have heard the wailing pipes and the shouts of people cheering on the dancers. Of course. They would be celebrating Samain here too, rejoicing in being alive as they frightened each other with stories about the dead walking.
The Three Oaks was set well back from the road. Its land was surrounded by a ditch, with a bank of earth on the far side and a fence on top. The gates were shut and nobody seemed to be about, so he scrambled across the ditch. Through a gap in the fence, he could see a crowd circling the flames more or less in time to the music, yelling one of those British chants that he never associated with anything good. Beyond the fire, leaning against the side of the building, was a knot of men with dark shapes over their shoulders that could be animal skins.
The racket the dog made at his arrival must have been heard, but it was a while before anyone made a response. He had to bang on the gate three times before a voice cried out in British, wanting to know who was there.
“I am a stranger in need of water and rest!” he replied in the same tongue, hoping his grasp of the traditional request for hospitality might earn him some native respect. “My horse went lame.”
In response he heard only the chanting and the music. Then it struck him that he had chosen the worst possible way to approach a lone gate slave on the one night of the year when the Britons’ heads were full of tales about dangerous strangers prowling around after dark. It was just as well he had not announced that he was looking for a boy. Switching to Latin, he shouted, “Medical Officer Gaius Petreius Ruso, Twentieth Valeria Victrix! Open up!”
The gate creaked open an inch, then another inch, and then far enough for him to get his boot in the gap. The slave stammered in rough but comprehensible Latin that Sir could come in, but he would have to share a bed, and there was no food except what was being roasted.
“Better than being on the road,” said Ruso as the gate was slammed shut behind him and the bar scraped into place.
He surrendered his sword and led the limping mare across the cobbles. The ostler did not look pleased to see him: Ruso seemed to have interrupted the after-dark guided tour of the stables that he was giving to a very giggly girl.
He was too late for the baths, which was just as well, as he had no intention of wasting time in them—although what he was going to do instead, he did not know. Glancing across to confirm that the men in animal skins were still lounging against the wall, he went to join the crowd.
The fur traders were still keeping to themselves on the edge of the celebrations, clutching drinks and watching the dancers. He could not see a boy with them. His gaze followed the track of one small figure after another, but he recognized no one.
There was no reason for the men to suspect he was pursuing them, so he had no hesitation in working his way around the edge of the dance to stand nearby. It was not difficult: nobody here seemed keen to stand next to a soldier, especially one who had been on the road without bathing for as long as Ruso had. Finally he was no more than five paces away.
There were half a dozen of them: big men with shaggy hair and thick animal pelts around their necks that made their shoulders look even bigger. But it was the shape he now saw on the ground at their feet that caught his attention. The light from the fire came and went but finally he made out the figure of a boy, curled up asleep like a puppy. Ruso took a sharp breath.
He had found Branan.
He could not remember any other evening taking so long to pass. Alone in the dark amongst a strange tribe, his previous confidence that everyone was united against a child snatcher had waned. He was hungry, exhausted, and sore from riding, and not sure he could trust his own judgment. There seemed to be no other Roman guests, and no obvious surveillance, either. Did that mean that these people could be trusted, or that the local commander did not want to pick a fight? This was not a mansio, a safe haven for traveling Romans. If he told the staff who that slave boy was, would they back him up? Or would they bundle him aside, not wanting trouble with their customers? If he got it wrong, and Branan was lost tonight, he could be lost forever.
While Ruso argued with himself, the fur traders’ capacity for drink seemed to be enormous and they clearly had no intention of going to sleep until it was filled. A couple of them went forward to join the dance, but the one with the boy at his feet stayed propped against the wall, talking to his companions, sometimes cupping one hand around his mouth to shout over the pipes and the chanting.
After the dancing the storytellers got to work while everyone else sat around the fire and ate. Ruso crouched down and accepted a share of the roast meat. These days he could understand much of what was being said, which made the storytelling marginally less tedious than it had been in the past, but tonight he was not interested in the tangled and strangely inconclusive affairs of the British dead. Just a few paces away, Branan still seemed to be asleep. He hoped they had not drugged him. The gods alone knew what had happened to the boy over the last three days, and his trials were not over yet. Even if Ruso managed to creep up and rescue him while the men were asleep—so far he had no better plan—they would have to escape on foot.
He was pinching himself to stay awake when something scratchy and malodorous pushed up against his neck from behind. He shifted away but someone seized his arm and a gruff voice spoke in his ear. It took him a moment to disentangle the accent. “You speak our tongue, Roman?”
“Some.”
“My brother wants to know if you like small boys.” The man’s other hand pointed directly at Branan.
Ruso swallowed. “I might be interested.”
“We know. You keep looking at him. How much will you offer?”
He could hardly believe his luck. “Let me have a look at him first.”
The blow knocked him sideways. It was a moment before he could lift himself above the fuzziness and work out that the shrieking and slapping were coming from a woman in whose lap he had landed. Apologizing, he got up and staggered, stumbling over several more people and rubbing his ear. All the fur traders were gathered together now, shouting at him and pointing. He remembered what he had heard just before the blow. “Child snatcher! Leave his son alone!”
Others voices had taken up the cry: “Child-snatcher!”
“Get him!”
“Trying to steal that man’s son!”
“It’s the child snatcher!”
Somewhere a voice was shouting for calm but hands were pulling at him, hauling at his armor and his tunic and grabbing his hair. Someone punched him in the head and he stumbled, lunging for something to grab onto to keep his balance. If he went down now he would not get up.
“Branan!” he yelled. “Branan, wake up, it’s the Medicus!”
“Ask him what he did with the boy!” shouted someone.<
br />
“There he is!” he yelled, wrenching an arm loose and struggling to climb over his tormentors. “That boy is stolen! Branan, wake up! It’s the Medicus, come to take you home!”
“Child snatcher!”
“Liar!”
Then it was all fists and boots and elbows and yelling and pain, the stink of sweat and the tang of blood in his mouth. When he fell, he was still shouting Branan’s name, and he barely saw the flash of firelight on the blade.
Chapter 66
Tilla lengthened her stride to stay between the two soldiers, who were keeping up a smart military pace along the moonlit road. The breeze snatched at her clothes and sent cold fingers down her neck. There must be Samain bonfires all around, but they were hidden on the left by the whispering black woods, and on the right by the rise of the land and the half-built wall that ran in silhouette along its crest.
She had guessed well: She had been able to persuade a bitter Daminius to help her, and to her relief he still had enough influence to bring Mallius with him, which was the whole point of asking. So here she was, a healer with two legionaries kindly guarding her as she answered a nighttime call to a patient who did not exist. At the time it had seemed like a clever plan. But now wandering spirits sighed in the trees with every gust of wind. All of Albanus’s objections made sense, and she wished she was back by the fire at Ria’s.
Seeing her glance at the woods, Daminius said, “All right, miss?”
“I thought I heard something.”
“A fox or a badger, miss,” he said, loud enough for Mallius to hear. He chuckled. “Or one of your ghosts.”
“You should not show disrespect. You do not know who is listening.”