“Oh, he didn’t jump in. He was there anyway.”
When Tilla looked puzzled, she said, “He hurt his knee while he was on one of those long marches they do, and Dann stopped to help him, and then they had to get back across the river. Well, that’s what they’re saying.”
Tilla frowned. “Why did they not use the ferry?”
The girl began to fiddle with the beads again. “I wasn’t there myself.”
“You can tell me the rest of the story while we walk back to town.”
The string had twisted and hooked over one bead, making a loop. Virana frowned as she tried to straighten it. “If I tell you, will you tell your husband?”
“My husband is a medicus. He understands about secrets.”
The bead was finally disentangled. “I only know what I heard.”
“That will be fine.”
“You must swear on the bones of your ancestors that you won’t say who told you.”
“I swear.”
The path was only wide enough for one. Tilla’s skirts brushed through the overhanging grass while Virana’s voice sounded in her ears.
“The river is always cold,” the girl said, “and it rises with the tide. It’s worse after a new moon. And it had rained a lot, so the water was almost at the top of the landing stage.”
Tilla could not remember much about the landing stage; she would have to go down and take a look. “So it was dangerous to cross?”
“Even the ferrymen don’t like it when it’s like that. Anyway, they were late back and the centurions were waiting for them and somebody heard Geminus shout across to them that he wasn’t going to send the ferry because it was their own fault. And he told them to swim.”
“Did he not see it was dangerous?”
“Dann was never any good at swimming.”
What had her husband said? I’m surprised more haven’t deserted. She was beginning to see why.
She did not need to ask why the recruits had obediently entered deep fast-flowing water. She had spent long enough in and around army camps to know that they would not dare to refuse an order, in case something worse happened to them.
Virana said, “They got sticks to keep themselves steady and they tried to cross hand in hand, but the current was pushing them, and then Dann lost his footing and they both went under. Then Geminus dived in on the end of a rope and they got Sulio out.”
“But not Dannicus?”
She shook her head. “The ferrymen found him washed up on the north bank the next day. He was a long way downstream.”
There was only one question left now. “Did the centurions know that Dannicus couldn’t swim?”
“Well, I knew,” said Virana. “And my friend knew. And I heard the other boys teasing him about it. So I should think everybody did, wouldn’t you?”
Chapter 21
Ruso was searching the office in vain for the postmortem report he had read only yesterday when he was startled by a rap on the door. He shoved the box onto the nearest shelf and turned just as a young man burst in wearing a sweat-stained tunic, exuberant tattoos, and an anxious expression.
“Can I help you?”
In Ruso’s experience, recruits were perpetually hungry, but this one seemed to have given up the battle with the chunk of tough barley bread clutched in his hand. He also seemed to have forgotten how to speak.
“The clerk’s gone to find some lunch,” continued Ruso, who had chosen this moment to visit the office for that very reason. “I’m the doctor.”
The man glanced down at the bread, then tried to hide it behind his back before more or less standing to attention.
“Are you looking for somebody else?”
“No, sir.”
“So,” said Ruso, wondering if his visitor was also on a mission to sneak into the records while the clerk was absent, “why are you here?”
“I was told to come and see Austalis, sir.”
“Ah,” said Ruso, helping himself to a seat. “Stand easy, er …”
“Marcus, sir.”
A man called Marcus who spoke Latin with that accent had probably been given one of the few Roman names his parents knew. Ruso guessed he was a full-blooded native son of some sort of local chief. “You’ll find him in the room opposite. Don’t stay too long: He’s very weak.”
“I have seen him already, sir. He looks terrible.”
Ruso said, “We’re doing everything we can.”
“I think he will die.”
“Not necessarily.”
Marcus ran a hand back through his hair, inadvertently giving Ruso a better view of the blue horse rearing up his right arm. “He was fine just a few days ago.”
“I’ve been wondering why a man who was fine would deliberately take a slice off his own arm.”
The young man hesitated.
“There are safer ways to remove tattoos.”
His visitor’s face brightened: Ruso had guessed well. “Are there, sir?”
“Nothing’s completely safe, but I’d suggest burning them off slowly with a caustic potion.”
“Can you do these?”
“Turn around and let me see.”
A serpent slithered down the other arm toward the left wrist.
“If you had a slave brand,” he said, “I could understand it. But as tattoos go, those are rather good. Marcus, haven’t I seen you somewhere before?” Or his arms, at least.
“You were one of the doctors who said I could join the army, sir.”
“I imagine that seems a long time ago.”
“A whole life, sir. What is in the potion? Can you do it before we go to Deva?”
Ruso angled himself on the stool so that it was resting on the back two legs, and dismissed a distant echo of his first wife’s warnings about ruining the furniture. “First,” he said, dodging the first question lest the patient should decide to slap lime all over himself, “tell me why you would want to bother.”
Moments later he was recalling a conversation with a young lawyer in Antioch who had insisted that he was not ashamed of his own people. “I simply want to go to the baths and not be noticed, Doctor. It’s bad for business. Other men get Oh, look, there’s the lawyer. Or: There’s the man who won the Stephanus case. Or: There’s a man who looks reliable. I strip off and I get Oh, look, there’s a Jew.”
Ruso had explained the difficulties of the surgery, the inevitable pain, the possible consequences of serious inflammation at the operation site, and the fact that nothing would fully restore what had been lost. The lawyer, who seemed to think he was bargaining, begged him to reconsider and offered more money. That evening Ruso’s ex-wife, who had recommended him through an acquaintance, demanded to know why he had embarrassed her by refusing the case.
“Because it’s unnecessary, nasty, and dangerous.”
“But it must work or people wouldn’t do it.”
“True.”
“And if you get a good reputation for doing this epispasm thing, he’ll send all his friends, and-”
“I don’t want any sort of reputation for surgery people don’t need.”
“But he thinks he needs it! Now he’ll have to go to somebody who’s not as good as you. And when his thing drops off, it’ll be your fault.”
Sometimes Ruso thought it was a wonder he and Claudia had stayed married for as long as they did. They had still been arguing when the earthquake struck. The lawyer was only one of a great number of people he had never seen again.
Now he was facing a man with a similar problem. The trouble with tattoos, apparently, was that when legionaries of any rank saw them they thought, Oh, look, there’s a Briton, and lowered their expectations accordingly.
“It’s bad enough to be in an unlucky unit, sir, but if the rest of the Legion think we are no good because we are barbarians …”
“Do they?”
Marcus twisted the rough bread between his hands. A shower of crumbs fell to the floor. “I am a Roman citizen, sir,” he insisted. “Just like the rest. My father has a copy of the citizenship order. Signed by the emperor Trajan himself.”