This dream was not about healing. It was full of barking dogs. In it he reached up and pulled the pillow around his ears. Dream or no, Valens would deal with it. It was Valens's job to get up, silence the dogs, and put out the-great Jupiter!
Ruso opened his eyes and scrambled out from under the covers. Fire!" he bellowed, grabbing his pillow and beating at the flames that were shooting up from the
foot of his straw mattress. "Fire! Valens! Wake up!"
36
The tunic was a pleasing color. Blue suited her. Rianorix from the next valley had told her so. Of course she had ignored him and walked on, because she could do better for herself than an apprentice basket maker and because the last time she had smiled at a compliment, the giver had burst out laughing and demanded payment from his friends. Her response had won him his bet. But Rianorix's words had stayed with her. "Blue is a good color for you, daughter of Lugh."
So when the woman they called Merula had held up three colors against her this morning and chosen the blue one, she was not surprised. The fabric was a coarser weave than anything she would have worn at home, and it had reached the patched stage at which she would normally have handed it on to one of the servants. But it was infinitely better than the scratchy rust red army tunic that was wide in all the wrong places and much too short, and in which she had always felt like a curious exhibit in a cage.
Tilla blew out the candle and lay down on the bed. She closed her eyes. It was the will of the goddess that she should escape: She saw that now. Her prayer was answered. People were being sent to help her. Merula had provided clothes. And now the medicus had told her the splints could come off in twenty days. In her own mind, in the plan he knew nothing about, that gave her eighteen days to find a good pair of shoes and a cloak with a hood to cover her hair. On the nineteenth day she would slip out, release her arm from the bandages, and walk away, just another pedestrian in the street, while the man who thought he owned her would be searching for a woman wearing a sling.
She had wondered where she would go, but today the outraged girl in the awful yellow and blue check had provided her the answer.
Before the medicus had interrupted and insisted on asking his own questions, Tilla had learned with very little prompting that not everyone around here was as progressive as this girl with her soldier boyfriend. Even some of the girl's own family were still trying to pretend the legion would go away if they ignored it. Whereas, although the signaler was a Briton by birth, he had chosen to join up and make something of himself. No man born a Roman citizen could have served the emperor with more dedication-and now the army had betrayed him.
Privately Tilla thought the girl should have known better than to involve herself with anyone from the Catuvellauni, a tribe who would sell their own grandmothers if the price was right. Nor was she interested in the woes of the boyfriend, who had probably done something he should be ashamed of to become a Roman citizen in the first place. What interested her was that the girl's family lived less than half a day's walk from here, and apparently they were not sympathetic to the army. She had her first destination.
She would have to be careful, though. There were few people in these streets who would recognize her, but she must make sure she did not run into the medicus who thought he owned her, or his goocUook-ing friend who was in love with himself, or, worst of all, the hideous Claudius Innocens. In the meantime, she must use her time here to watch and learn. She must find out how Asellina and Saufeia had managed to elude the men who guarded the doors. After that, she would be on her own. And in order to give herself the best possible chance, she needed to find out whether anyone here really did know what had happened to Saufeia.
37
Ruso's soot-smirched hand was shaking only a little as he placed the little ointment pot on the ledge of the mortuary window. "Rest in peace," he murmured, then backed out swiftly and closed the door behind him. As he strode away down the hospital corridor, the blue glass bead remained in the pot, safely inside the mortuary. As-he hoped-did any spirit who might be feeling attached to it.
He took another long drink of water before washing off the worst of the soot in the bathhouse, wondering what Priscus would have to say in the morning around the blackened state of the towels and the feathers floating around in the cold plunge. But minutes later, surveying the little hospital room that was his for the remainder of the night, he felt almost grateful for the administrator's insistence on cleanliness, tidiness, and the readiness of all beds at all times.
Ruso placed the candle on the table next to the cup of water and made sure it was steady. He sniffed at the trunk he had brought across with him from the house and wiped at a couple of feathers stuck to its wet surface. Apart from the odd dark trickle, the water did not seem to have penetrated inside. His books were safe, thank the gods. He left the lid open. He would have to put everything outside to air tomorrow. It would all dry sooner or later, but he would be living with the smell of smoke for weeks.
He delved into the trunk and took out one of his father's old letters. He placed it on the table beside the candle and thought how narrowly he had escaped joining him tonight. Then, finding the scroll he sought, he climbed into bed and pulled up the white hospital blankets. If anything could lull a man back to sleep, Hippocrates' musings On Airs, Waters, and Places was it.
The problem with Hippocrates, as Ruso realized some minutes later, was that he was not interesting enough to distract his reader from mulling over an eventful night.
After the scorched pillow had exploded in a snowstorm of feathers, Ruso had abandoned firefighting and dragged his burning mattress into the street. Yelling for help, he then rushed back into the house. Dogs raced around barking and yelping as he stamped out the wisps of burning straw the mattress had scattered in his wake. He wrenched open Valens's door, shouting into the darkness for him to get up and finally thumping him only to find his fist landing on an empty bed. As he ran back into the hall there was a commotion outside. Relieved, he hurried to greet the night watch and was hit in the face by a shock of cold water. Six men clutching buckets then stampeded past him into the house and proceeded to fling water around his bedroom in a manner that suggested they were enjoying themselves while he fought his way through them, desperate to save his books. Despite turning his bedroom into a swamp, the watch captain then insisted the house be abandoned for the night in case the fire should break out again.
"Well," said Valens as he and Ruso made their way to the hospital later, lugging as many of their valuables as they could carry, "it's a shame about the stink, but at least you managed to save most of the stuff. And your very fine self, of course."
"I can't understand it," confessed Ruso. "I went to bed as usual.."
"Ah well, it's easily done. And you have been rather busy lately, what with all your women."
"But I didn't leave anything burning!"
They stepped inside the hospital entrance hall, returned the greeting o? the surprised night porter, and paused to nod to Aesculapius. Over the sound of their boots in the empty corridor Valens said, "You'll have to take back everything you said about dogs, you know."