As the march set off once more, he slipped the leather tongue through the heavy silvered buckle with a sigh of relief. Without it, he had felt half-dressed. And without it, nobody would take him seriously as a soldier. Now he could face the Praetorians and …
And what? He had dismissed this question several times, telling himself that when the moment came, so would the inspiration. With luck, one of them would report sick. But the moment was here, the inspiration wasn’t, and the guards that had streamed out of Calcaria’s west gate ahead of the Twentieth all looked disappointingly healthy.
Still, he was not going to find anything out by spending the morning hanging around the hospital wagons of his own legion. “If anyone wants me,” he murmured to Pera, “I’ll be with the Praetorians.”
Pera grasped the significance of this immediately. “Do you need any help, sir?”
“Probably,” Ruso admitted. “But I think it’s best if one of us stays with the patients, don’t you?”
“A memorial to whom?” demanded the Praetorian officer, looking down on Ruso from the height of his horse, the gleam of his armor and the superiority of his education.
“Centurion Geminus,” repeated Ruso. The man could hardly have failed to hear about Geminus: He was just being deliberately awkward. “He used to be with the Guard in Rome. The tribune wants me to check the details with men who served with him. Probably just after the end of the fighting in Dacia.”
“Hm.” The officer eyed the case in Ruso’s hand. “And you say you’re a medical officer.”
Ruso saw himself as he must appear: a man with no armor whose wrists betrayed the fact that he had recently been chained up, and who had now appeared clutching a nonregulation case and asking to be allowed to move freely amongst the empress’s guards.
“You’re the one they locked up for murdering him,” observed the officer. “I heard you were insane.”
Ruso was very much wishing he had not started this. “I’m innocent,” he insisted, “and I’m as sane as you are. They’ve arrested one of his own men instead.”
“What’s in the case?”
Ruso unfastened it one-handed and held it up. The small probe slipped out of its clip as usual, and he noticed one of the scalpels was missing. How had that happened? He propped the lid awkwardly with his elbow and put the probe back. There was the empty bottle of cough medicine, clearly labeled. What had Tilla been thinking of? Come to that, what was he thinking of himself, bringing a case full of blades?
“Knives for cutting flesh,” observed the officer, who had obviously had the same thought. “Keep them sharp, do you?”
If he said no, he was a bad surgeon. If he said yes, he looked like an armed lunatic trying to get near to the empress.
“Very,” he said. “And they cost a small fortune, so I keep them where I can see them.”
The officer said, “Hm.”
Ruso closed the case. The horse plodded on.
“I heard you had a grudge. Why are you doing his memorial?”
“Because our tribune has a sense of humor,” said Ruso.
The man glanced over his shoulder at a subordinate. “Go and get Fabius,” he said. “We’ll see if he wants to talk about the old days.” He turned back to Ruso. “Fabius might remember more than I do,” he said. “All I can recall is that Geminus didn’t make very many friends. The tribune may not want that inscribed on his memorial.”
Chapter 69
The empress’s carriage had been parked on the verge at the crossroads and again screened so the sight of her protectors did not put the great lady off her lunch.
Ruso found Accius deep in conversation with Dexter. They were casting occasional glances at the recruits, seated just out of earshot. In return, several of the recruits were staring at their officers with expressions of glum resentment. Marcus was watching them intently over his waterskin as if he was trying to work out what they were saying.
Accius waved Ruso away with an impatient flick of the hand. Ruso was not sorry to make his way back to the hospital wagons. He was not sure how to tell Accius what he had found out.
The tribune appeared at the wagons a few minutes later. He paused to speak to the patients and had the sense to move well away from Austalis before remarking to Pera that the lad was looking very ill. To this Pera replied that had it not been for Doctor Ruso, he would be dead. Thus Pera unwittingly provided the cue for Accius to move on and engage Ruso in a conversation during which they strolled away from the others.
“So?” demanded Accius.
“Sir, could you just describe for me-without looking-the doctor and patient on the wagon?”
Accius’s scowl deepened. “What?”
“It’s important, sir.”
“Have you found out anything or not?”
“Yes, sir. If you could just describe for me-”
“The doctor had curly hair. The patient was all skin and bone, with bandages on his arm. Get to the point.”
“Hair color? Eye color? What were they wearing? What color was the blanket?”
“The mens’ blankets are gray. Get on with it.”
“Thank you, sir.” Without explaining, Ruso began with the easy part. There had been four Praetorians with Geminus as they marched out of the east gates. Two had been old comrades of his and one of those was currently traveling north with Hadrian, but he had spoken to the other one, a man called Fabius. Fabius said he had lost sight of Geminus just after they began to advance down the street. He had thought it would be wiser to stick together, but he assumed Geminus had gone to find the men from the Twentieth, and he was not concerned when he did not see him again.
Ruso could see that Accius was impatient for him to finish. The moment he stopped speaking, Accius demanded, “How exactly did you go about this conversation?”
“I told them I was researching Geminus’s life for a memorial, sir.”
“And they believed you?”
“No. They thought I was there trying to clear my name.”
“As long as you didn’t involve me.”
“No, sir. What was really interesting was what Fabius said next.” Ruso paused, hoping Accius was going to listen to all of it and not just what he wanted to hear. “He said he’s thought more about that evening and now he remembers seeing a native hanging about by the ditch, off to their left. He didn’t seem to be causing trouble so they left him alone. When I asked for a description, he explained that it was dark, but they were carrying torches and he thought the native had pale coloring and his hair was unusually short for a Briton.”
“Victor!” exclaimed Accius, as Ruso had known he would. “Excellent!”
It was not excellent for Victor, but Accius was not the sort of man to worry about that. “Then he referred me to the other two men who were there as well, sir. And this is where I think it all gets rather strange.”
“Never mind what you think. Tell me what they said.”
“The two men I spoke to gave exactly the same description as Fabius.”
“Good! A description of the murderer, and three witnesses. You’re a lucky man, Ruso.”
“It’s too good, sir.”
“How can it be too good?”
“Sir, Pera has dark hair and eyes and he’s wearing chain mail. Austalis is blond and blue-eyed and he’s got a green tunic over his good shoulder. The blanket isn’t gray, it’s white.”
“Get on with it!”
“People don’t remember things accurately. Were you present when Clarus interviewed his own men, sir?”
“Of course not! Otherwise I wouldn’t be-” Accius stopped. “There was no need for me to be there.”
So Accius’s interest in this was definitely unofficial. “Did he say anything about his men seeing a native?”
“His men must have seen dozens of people. He would hardly tell me about all of them.”
“Yes, sir. Yet these three all said exactly the same thing in the same order. It was as if they’d rehearsed it.” He paused to let that sink in. “I’m willing to bet that none of them remembered the native before Victor was arrested.”