The sunlight filtering through the branches caught the blue of the cloak moving ahead of him. Ruso hurried on, stepping over another dead branch while his right hand moved to unlatch the knife at his belt.
It wasn't there.
In place of the knife was an uncomfortable bundle of trouser fabric. He was cursing himself for leaving the weapon on the counter back at the weaver's shop when he realized the path was leading into an empty clearing. Ahead of him lay open grass dappled with sunlight. The blue cloak was there, dangling from a branch. Tilla was nowhere to be seen.
Ruso stepped off the path and hid behind a broad tree trunk that trembled with ivy. He held his breath, straining unsuccessfully to hear the sound of footsteps. Peering though the ivy, he surveyed the clearing.
Grass. Bushes. Bracken. The folds of the empty cloak shifting slightly in the breeze. There seemed to be at least two paths leading away, but he could not believe she had had time to take either of them unseen and there was no sign of unnatural movement among the leaves. Nor was there any sign of anyone else. He would have heard if she had greeted a friend, and she could hardly have been attacked without him noticing. This was the woman who had planned to knock out a legionary with a soup bowl. She must be hiding somewhere, waiting for whomever she had come to meet. Or perhaps she had seen Ruso after all, and was hoping if she kept out of sight for long enough, he would give up and go away.
Somewhere ahead of him, he could hear the trickle of a stream running though the woods. He hoped Tilla's patience would give out quickly. He was due on duty at the seventh hour and it must be past noon by now.
A black bird with a yellow beak hopped across the clearing. Gently, slowly, Ruso shifted his weight into a more comfortable position. Undisturbed, the bird continued to stab at something in the grass. There was no other sign of movement.
Hiding behind a tree trunk with his back exposed to the rustling undergrowth, it occurred to Ruso that following a native into the woods unarmed had not been a sensible thing to do. He was beyond shouting distance from the road. If there were more than one man to deal with, or if that man were carrying a weapon, he was in trouble.
That was probably why the voice terrified him. Only for a second, though, as he assured himself later. Of course he had not believed for more than a glancing moment that he was hearing the triumphant war cry of a native about to hack him to pieces. Or that a vengeful ghost had come to steal his spirit away in the depths of the woods. He had known, as soon as he had recovered from the surprise, that the sound was nothing to fear. Unfortunately his head did not communicate this knowledge to his heart, which continued to pound against the wall of his chest as if he were being pursued through the forest by a pack of howling wolves, instead of leaning against a tree trunk listening to a woman singing.
Tilla's singing in the kitchen had never been like this. At first shrill and ululating and eerie, then gradually descending, becoming breathy and resonant and peculiarly intimate. Ruso moved slowly forward to peer through the leaves again. He could see her now. She seemed to be alone. He frowned with confusion before guessing she must be standing down in a dip, which was hidden by the undergrowth on the far side of the clearing. Her good arm was raised to the sky. Her face glistened with water. Darkened tendrils of wet hair stuck to her forehead. Her eyes were closed in concentration. The expression on her face was little short of ecstatic. He released a long breath. His servant had not ventured into the woods to meet a lover, but a god.
A thin trail of smoke rose into the air. The question of how Tilla had lit a fire in the middle of the damp woods merged in his mind with the question of what she had been carrying in the basket. He suspected he was now going to have to add "theft of firewood" to her list of misdemeanors.
The song rolled on. It was, in a peculiar barbaric way, beautiful. Sometimes there were strains of a tune Ruso felt he should recognize, then the notes soared away in unexpected directions. Sometimes the same tune seemed to repeat and tangle around itself before giving way to a different one. Another high eerie section gave way to huskiness and a tune that meandered about in a sequence he thought he remembered from the kitchen.
Ruso retreated behind the tree and surveyed the damage to his new trousers. They were now snagged in several places. The bottoms hung limp and muddy around his feet. As he watched, a beetle scurried across the front of his boot. He shifted his foot. The beetle scuttled off and buried itself under a leaf.
The song, or collection of songs, was still going on. Ruso began to experience a familiar sensation. It was the feeling that usually crept over him during the first few verses of after-dinner poetry recitals: the sense that time was slowing down around him and that this damned performance was going to go on all night. Tilla, however, seemed to be enraptured.
Although he could not share it, there were times when Ruso was jealous of the comfort other people seemed to draw from their religion. Patients who retained a calm hope in the face of desperate and painful situations. One man had even offered to pray for Ruso's soul while Ruso amputated two of his toes. So although he had troubling doubts about Aesculapius, very little faith in Jupiter and his ilk, and-usually-silent contempt for the so-called divinity of emperors, Ruso had a solid belief in the value of religion. Leaving aside the water engineer who had to be tied to his bunk until he lost faith in his ability to fly from the top of his aqueduct, even the craziest of beliefs seemed to do less harm than any effort to dislodge them. So he would, if asked, have given Tilla permission for some sort of religious worship. But he had not been asked, and now he was witnessing blatant disobedience of a kind he had never encountered in a servant before. He had excused the attack with the soup bowl as a mistake. The business of cooking up medicines in his kitchen had been more of a misunderstanding. This was nothing short of defiance. He was now obliged, for the first time in his life, to administer a serious beating.
He was not sure what to use. Claudia had usually marked her displeasure by snatching up whatever came to hand-a spoon, a hairbrush, a shoe. He would have to use his belt. To that end, and because he was uncomfortable in them anyway, he would let the singing warble on while he climbed out of the trousers.
He was out of one leg and easing the second boot through the tube of fabric when he felt something drop into his hair. Logic vanished. Both hands shot up to sweep away the scorpion before it stabbed him in the scalp. The movement threw him off-balance. He hopped sideways, grabbing at the tree trunk to stop himself from falling. A bird flew up, squawking in alarm, and as Ruso realized that the thing that had fallen on his head was an autumn leaf, the song stopped.
He flattened himself back against the trunk, scarcely breathing.
In place of the song came a peculiar chanting, as if she were repeating the words of a spell over and over again. The chanting grew nearer. She was walking toward him.
There was no point in trying to hide. He stepped out from behind the tree.
The chanting stopped. Tilla was staring at him. At his face. At his feet. At his trousers. Then at his face again.