Medicus (10 page)

17

T
HE LAMPLIGHT PIC K E D out the white sling resting on top of the gray army blanket. Beneath it, the girl lay asleep on Ruso's borrowed bed. He watched the sling lift softly with each breath. Four days ago, this sight had been cause for celebration. Now it was cause for concern. By now she should either have died or perked up. Instead, apart from the brief revival sparked by his attempt to chop her hair off and the smile wheedled out of her by Valens's bedside charm, the girl had shown little interest in anything. Not even her own recovery.

He had not been entirely sorry to see Valens proved wrong about the comb ("Ruso,
all
women are interested in their hair!"), but his own tactics had been no more successful. His inquiries about native cuisine had reassured him that she would be no stranger to gruel. Yet despite his carefully prescribed convalescent diet—following which his notes recorded disappointingly scant use of the bedside bucket—the girl was recovering neither strength nor spirit. Nor was she putting on weight. Ruso frowned. Tomorrow, he would repeat the worm treatment. Tonight, he had other things to think about.

He leaned back, relishing the familiar creak of his favorite chair as the front two legs lifted off the ground. He banished a fleeting regret. Claudia would never find out that he had now been sitting on this chair exactly how he liked for the past two years, and he still hadn't broken it.

He stared at the box he had just collected from the porter's desk at the hospital, trying to guess what might be inside. Figs? Olives? Not peaches. Peaches would still be in season, but they wouldn't travel. If he'd had any money, he would have paid well for the simple pleasure of a tray of peaches. To feel the flesh pop between his teeth . . . the rich flavor flood onto his tongue . . . the sticky juice run down his chin . . .

He cleared his throat and reminded himself that if he had been born this far north he would never have tasted a peach. A peach was one of those things he didn't need.

What else would he find? A letter. There would definitely be a letter. And some gloves. His sister-in-law had promised gloves for the British winter, and his nieces a picture for him to hang on his wall. Since his nieces were only four and five, that should be interesting.

He expected nothing from his stepmother, a woman whose interests were restricted to personal grooming and home improvements, about which she knew everything except how they were paid for.
Publius dealt with all that, dear.
Nor was he expecting a greeting from either of his half sisters, since he was not in a position to buy them anything they were likely to want.

Ruso had already missed his father's funeral when the news of the death came. The sea passage from Africa was a tricky one and it had taken him almost a month by ship via Athens, Syracuse, Ostia . . . Under different circumstances, it would have been an interesting sight-seeing cruise. As it was, by the time he reached Gaul, Lucius had started to unravel their father's affairs—or, more accurately, their father's affairs had begun to unravel around him.

According to their stepmother, Publius had "investments." The family had always assumed these investments were funding the very grand—and currently half-built—shrine to Diana the Huntress, which Publius had commissioned for the center of the town. "Investments," however, turned out to mean "loans." Examining the documents stored in the trunk to which he had kept the only key, Publius Petreius's sons soon discovered that everything their father did had been done on an elaborate system of credit.

Initially the brothers tried to keep their dreadful discovery secret while they quietly shored up the loans. But they found themselves in the position of the children Ruso had seen playing on a British beach on the day he arrived, building dams against the incoming tide: Every time they secured one area, chaos broke out in another.

Valens's letter telling him about the vacancy with the Twentieth at Deva had come as a gift from the gods. It was all arranged by post with surprising speed. Using the excuse of the move, Ruso sent instructions to have all his surplus belongings sold. A suitable buyer was found for both his housekeeper and his valet. When the deals were complete Ruso withdrew as much money from his account as the army would allow (they insisted on keeping enough to bury him, just in case) and used it to pay off one of the few creditors who genuinely needed the money.

While he was making these arrangements Lucius paid all the small-but-irritating debts. Then the brothers visited each of the large creditors individually, pointing out that slow payment was better than no payment, that the farm would produce a steady income, and that Ruso was earning a good salary. If they wanted their money back they must keep quiet, keep faith and keep funding the building of the shrine to Diana, which the brothers were obliged to finish as it was their father's dying wish.

This last was a lie. The truth was that six different lenders thought they were funding the building of a shrine, when in fact most of them had been funding personal grooming and home improvements. No wonder Publius Petreius's heart had given out under the strain. Within days of his return home, Ruso was glad he had missed the funeral. His grief was frozen beneath a hard layer of anger.

He clunked the chair back onto all four legs, cracked the seal on the box, and prized it open with his knife.

Over on the bed, the girl stirred, sighed, and settled back into sleep.

Ruso groped in the rustling straw. His fingers closed over a jar. He drew it out. OUR OLIVES was chalked on the side in Lucius's hand.

The next find was a rolled piece of white fabric showing a smeared charcoal sketch. It was a wobbly oval topped with a pile of sticks—or perhaps a range of mountains, or a storm at sea. The center of the oval contained an arrangement of blobs and in one corner of the fabric were two outlines of small hands. Ruso turned the picture to several different angles and could make no sense of any of them.

Next out: a pair of thick brown lambskin gloves. He brushed the straw off them and slid his right hand into the soft embrace of the fleece. Cassia had measured well.

Finally, the expected letter. Despite being sealed into the box, the writing tablet had also been closed and sealed individually.

"Greetings, brother," announced black letters so closely crammed onto the thin wood that Ruso had to lean toward the lamp to make them out. "I hope this finds you well. Cassia and the children send their good wishes and our stepmother . . . " Ruso ran his forefinger hastily along the formalities and slowed down for, "On the subject which concerns us all, you will be pleased to hear that there are no further adverse developments." So, no more debts had come crawling out from dark corners. "The girls have drawn a picture of you, which I trust you will enjoy." That was him? Heavens. He must get his hair cut. "The harvest has been as good as we hoped," continued the letter, "and you will be as delighted as I am to know that Cassia is expecting another child in the spring."

As delighted as I am,
indeed. A neatly ambiguous statement from the man who had earnestly requested the latest advice on contraception after the birth of the last baby.

"I pray that you remain in good health despite the climate in Britannia," continued Lucius, "and hope you will write soon, brother!" The final sentiments, having reached the bottom right-hand corner too early, performed a sharp turn and twisted up a narrow column of space between the ends of the previous lines and the edge of the letter. "Do not forget our arrangement," Ruso deciphered, turning the page sideways. The way the pen had skidded and fallen off the cut edge of the wood while forming the tails of the longer letters somehow added to the urgency of, "We all depend upon you. Farewell."

Ruso glanced around the shadowy walls of his small but relatively private bedroom, and knew he was lucky
Do not forget our arrangement.
Lucius was in charge of four children, a wife, a farm, a stepmother, and two goose-brained half sisters, and now there was another baby on the way. All Ruso had to do was carry out his work and send home all the money he could muster every quarter to help keep a roof over his family's head.

Outside, the trumpet sounded the change of watch. It was getting late. Ruso stood to put the box away. Then he lifted the unconscious slave girl and carried her to the kitchen, where he laid her on a rug beside the warm embers in the hearth. She hardly stirred as he slid a cushion under her head and put his own cloak over her for a blanket.

He leaned against the wall with his arms folded and gazed down at her. The surgery had been the easy part. If she perked up, she would have to be fed and sheltered through a long—and possibly unsuccessful—recuperation.

It was not difficult to see why some people threw out useless slaves.He had wondered briefly whether that was what Merula had done with Saufeia—the girl who "wasn't really suitable for this kind of work"— but that would not have made sense. Merula had not suggested that the girl was physically incapable of working, just that her attitude was poor. There were all sorts of jobs that a fit slave could be coerced to do, whatever her attitude. The girl would have been salable to somebody, and her flight and subsequent death must have meant a financial loss to the business. Merula had received the news calmly not because she was indifferent, but because she had expected the worst and prepared herself.

Merula had made one effort to claim compensation—the complaint about the hair—but when that had failed, it seemed she had given up. Since the army provided most of her income, he supposed it was a wise decision. In fact the only person who had shown any interest at all in the question of who had murdered Saufeia was the girl with the ankle chain, the one they called Chloe. He had wished he could promise her that the army would find the culprit and punish him. But if Merula was not going to make a fuss, it was unlikely anyone else would make any effort to narrow down the suspect list from the several thousand men currently in Deva. Besides, now that he thought about it, the murderer might have been a woman.

The girl shifted and murmured something in her sleep.

Ruso's collecting women.

He was glad he didn't have to explain any of it to Lucius.

18

T
HE GRAY LIGHT of dawn was making its way around the shutters of a house that contained three people. Two were asleep.The third was grappling with the problem of women's underwear. Where could a man get hold of some? Discreetly? As if that were not bad enough, there would be the monthly business to deal with at any moment.

Ruso wished, not for the first time, that he had been blessed with a useful sort of sister. According to Claudia, a man's only role in the mystery of feminine hygiene was to purchase a capable maid and then stay out of the way. So, although his training had covered the theory, in three years of marriage Ruso had evaded the practice so diligently that he had never really been sure what arrangements were necessary. Valens, of course, was bound to know, but he was not going to ask Valens.

Ruso stared at a cobweb that was trembling in the draft from his bedroom window and thought:
landlady.
The girl couldn't stay where she was much longer anyway. The obvious answer was to find a room in a house with a sympathetic landlady. A dispenser of nourishing meals and womanly advice who didn't charge too much. A landlady was the thing. He would go out this morning and find one. In the meantime, he would wander into the kitchen and see if his property had woken up yet.

He had grasped his overtunic between finger and thumb and was about to give it a good shake when he remembered again that this was Britain, where there were no scorpions to creep into dark crevices during the night. Buckling his belt and wondering if he would ever entirely break the wary habits of Africa, he made his way toward the kitchen. The couch, which would have been the obvious place for the girl to sleep, was still being shared by one of Valens's cronies and the dog.

He opened the kitchen door quietly. Something ran across his foot and shot into the corner. He sighed, then started as his eyes adjusted to the shuttered gloom and he realized the hearth was empty. Instead, there was a figure curled up on the table.

"Good morning."

The girl stirred. A tangle of hair slid across her cheek. She blinked sleepily and stretched her good arm above her head. Ruso had a sudden urge to seize her and take her to his own bed, where she would be warm and sleepy and—since he owned her—obedient. He swallowed hard and pushed the thought aside, not wishing to ponder the level of desperation it revealed.

He said, "Why are you on the table?"

She stared at him for a moment, as if trying to remember who he was, and then gave a heavy sigh of recognition. She slid her good hand forward to grasp the edge of the table and leaned forward, surveying the floor.

Ruso followed her gaze. "Are you afraid of the mice?"

He saw her fist tighten. She looked up at him. "Mice do not hurt."

"No," he agreed, "but falling off the table will."

It was a question of simple economics. The longer her recovery took, the longer it would be before he saw his money. "You won't spend the night here again," he promised. "I'll find a proper room."

It was a promise he would regret by the end of the morning.

Several would-be landlords had chalked up advertisements on the amphitheater walls.

The smell of urine and old cabbage stew, which hit Ruso as soon as the first door opened, failed to mask the personal odor of the toothless crone who announced,

"He an't here, I dunno where he is, and he an't done nothing."

"I'll keep looking," said Ruso.

"Did have," said the next one. "We did have a room. Somebody should have rubbed the notice off."

The third room was still having its walls plastered, but the owner's wife promised it would be ready by nightfall.

"How much?"

She told him. Ruso laughed and walked away, and she let him go.

As the morning wore on and his boot studs wore down, it became clear to Ruso that he had a problem. He was here because Rome had decided that Britannia was worth the trouble of holding on to and had stationed just about enough troops here to crack together the skulls of any Britons who refused to cooperate. Side by side with the stick, however, went the carrot. Civilization. Not only the fort, but Deva itself was undergoing a massive modernization project. Every man not currently engaged in keeping an eye on the hill tribes had a trowel in his hand or a hod over his shoulder. It seemed the legion's orders were to hack out all the available stone, saw up all the local trees, and pipe water to every conceivable outlet. Until the last dog kennel had under-floor heating or the new emperor came up with a new plan, the Twentieth Valeria Victrix was to keep on building.

It was not the soldiers themselves who were causing Ruso's difficulties: They were either off skull-cracking or living in the barracks that they were slowly working their way around to modernization. It was the women and children, widowed mothers and spinster aunts the men collected around them. The women and children and mothers and aunts—not to mention the veterans with nowhere else to retire to, who had women and children of their own—all needed beds to sleep in.Then there were all the hangers-on who congregated wherever there were soldiers to be separated from their wages. Hangers-on needed beds too.

The wail of a trumpet from the other side of the fort wall announced that the morning was almost at an end. Ruso was on duty in an hour and he was still no nearer to keeping his promise to the girl. He was going to have to try Valens's suggestion after all.

Earlier that morning, he had pointed out that he had no intention of lodging his slave in a bar that was effectively a brothel.

"Ah, but it isn't," Valens had explained. "Not technically. We had a tax collector in here the other day. Broken wrist: fell off his horse.

Anyway, he said lots of those sort of places don't register their girls so they don't have to pay the tax on their earnings, and when anybody official asks why there's so many bedrooms then, they say that it's because that take in lodgers. It's worth a try. Just don't let her eat the oysters."

"A tax-dodging brothel. Marvelous."

"You could always have a nice chat with Priscus. I hear his new place is rather spacious. Perhaps he'll find you a spare room."

"Maybe I will," agreed Ruso, just to see the expression on Valens's face.

As Merula swayed across the empty barroom in another stylish silky creation, Ruso mused that this was not the sort of landlady he had envisioned.

The elegantly plucked eyebrows rose at his question. Evidently he was not the sort of tenant she was used to either.

"It's not for me," he explained.

"For a friend?"

"Not exactly." He was aware that he was scratching his ear again. He really must try to stop that. Claudia used to say she knew it meant he was lying, which showed how little they understood each other. He lowered his fist onto the barroom table just below the initials of one CLM, who had felt it necessary to carve not only the first letters of his name but a majestic phallus as well, and said, "I have a female slave whom I can't use at home and who is in need of lodgings. One of my colleagues suggested you might be able to find somewhere for her."

"Ah. An officer at the hospital?"

"Yes," said Ruso, suddenly seeing a way forward. "I believe you know him. He was here a short while ago and he had to have some time off work as a result."

Merula managed to look surprised, as if virulent food poisoning were something she could have hoped to keep secret. "So you know about, uh . . . ?"

"I suggest we say no more about it."

Ruso was satisfied to see relief on the woman's face. He was right: She had been afraid Valens would sue. When she said, "I think we can find a place for her," his problem appeared to be solved.

His problem appeared to be solved until Merula asked, "Is the girl experienced in this kind of work?"

Ruso shook his head. "She can't work. She's sick."

"She can't work?" The painted eyes met his. "So why did your friend tell you to send her to me?"

"I can't have her at my place, she needs to recuperate, and I can hardly billet her in a barracks room."

Merula pursed her lips. "This sickness. Is it fever?"

"She's recovering from surgery on an injured arm."

"And before long you expect her to be fit to work."

"I see no reason why not. In the meantime all she needs is a quiet room and regular meals. You do rent out rooms?"

"Oh, yes!" After this confident assertion she paused. "We don't have anything very comfortable just at the moment . . ."

"But you do have a private room?"

"We do, but—"

He followed her up the open staircase and along the creaking wooden landing that looked down over the bar. Several of the upstairs doors were ajar, revealing small cubicles with beds covered in bright blankets and cushions. It all looked reasonably clean. Ruso consoled himself with the thought that at least he was doing business with the best possible class of tax-dodging brothel.

In the gloom at the end of the corridor was a closed door. Merula scraped a key into the lock.

The room was bare except for a bench against one wall and a mattress in the corner. Merula glided forward and unlatched the shutters.

Before he could remark on the bars across an upstairs window, she said, "We sometimes use this room for secure storage." The light revealed the rings of old drinks and drips of candle wax on the surface of the bench. Underneath, one leg had been replaced with a new chunk of yellow wood that was much too heavy and the whole thing had been clumsily nailed to the floorboards. Ruso crouched and turned over the stained mattress. The straw was even lumpier than the one he was borrowing from Valens and it didn't smell good.

Merula started to explain that the room had not been used for a while. He interrupted her.

"Do you have mice?"

She frowned. "The girl is on a special diet?"

"I don't mean on the menu. I mean running around. Wild mice."

As soon as she told him they didn't, he said, "Put in a clean bed and I'll take it."