Valens leapt up. “I’ll be off, then.”
“If you run into my clerk-”
“I’ll slap his wrists and send him over.” With that, Valens slipped out of the room and moments later the outside door slammed.
Ruso thrust a myrrh pastille under his tongue in an attempt to sweeten his breath, and pulled his tunic straight. Then he shut the door to hide the chicken and went to head off the new arrivals before they all decided to visit Pertinax at once.
To his relief the legate decided to go in with only Ruso for company, leaving his trail of followers to wait outside.
Pertinax made an effort for his senior officer but Ruso could see he was struggling. The great man had the sense to leave after wishing the patient well, telling him he would send his personal physician, and assuring him that everything was under control. When he was gone Pertinax sank back on his pillow and closed his eyes with obvious relief.
Ruso watched the legate stride off down the street to rejoin his entourage, and decided to view the offer of the personal physician as a compliment to Pertinax rather than an insult to himself. If the next few days did not bring fever or hemorrhage or gangrene or any of the other horrors that could undermine a surgeon’s best efforts, the prefect would be fit to be sent across to Magnis. Valens could deal with him and with the legate’s physician too.
He was about to start his delayed ward round when a figure detached itself from the group. For a brief and unrealistic moment he thought it might be a sobered-up Fabius come to thank him for his efforts yesterday, but instead it was Fabius’s deputy, looking very different without the coating of mud.
Ruso unslung the lucky charm and handed it back. “Thank you.”
Daminius grinned. “I knew you’d be all right, sir. It’s never let me down yet.”
“Perhaps you should lend it to Pertinax. Is the quarry still closed?”
The grin faded. “The chief engineer’s inspecting it this morning, sir. Meantime the lads aren’t sorry to be out of it.”
“Nor am I,” Ruso assured him.
“We appreciate what you did, sir. If you ever need a favor, you know where we are.”
Ruso was not going to let the offer lie. “If you happen to hear of the whereabouts of a clerk called Candidus, just transferred over here from Magnis . . .”
“I met him when he arrived, sir. I’ll get the lads to keep an eye out. They’ll be spread around till we get back to work, so somebody might know something.” Daminius glanced at the legate’s party retreating down the street. “Mind you, there’s talk of shoring up and getting going again at the other end.”
It was clear from his tone what he thought of that. Ruso had already heard the suggestion that the accident had been caused by working saturated ground with haste rather than care, perhaps spurred on by the rumors that the Sixth were ahead of their building schedule and the Second Augusta were already finished and packing to march south to Isca for the winter.
An alarming thought slipped into Ruso’s mind: the thought that Candidus might have been making his way along the lip of the quarry just as Pertinax had been. That his missing clerk might even now be lying a few hundred paces south of the main road, buried under tons of rubble, while his feathered dinner lay slowly decomposing on his desk.
Moments later he left Pertinax’s room reassured that the prefect had been alone up there. Thinking rationally, he could see the utter improbability of Candidus vanishing for a couple of days and then returning to wander around in the sight of any senior officer, let alone one as fearsome as Pertinax. He was worrying about nothing. The lad had probably decided that the challenge of sorting out Pandora’s cupboard was too much for him and slipped away to Coria for a few days’ unofficial leave. He would stroll in one morning full of innocence and excuses, trusting that Ruso would pretend to believe him because his uncle was a friend. With luck, he would turn up before Albanus did.
Meanwhile, Ruso needed to get the kitchen to do something with that hen. Then there was a ward round to be done, and over at the camp a queue would already be forming outside the medical tent.
Chapter 9
Market days in the autumn meant a chilly start in the dark, but by the time they got there the sun had chased away the nip of frost and everyone had cheered up. His da went off with the other men, which meant he would stumble back in a good mood-or a very bad one. His stepmother went to catch the early bargains. Aedic was left in charge of Petta’s son, who was not yet old enough to notice that Aedic called him “the unbrother” when Petta wasn’t listening.
He took the unbrother down to the river and made him take his clothes off because Petta said if he came back with his clean tunic messed up again, there would be trouble. Everyone who wasn’t being made to help his parents was down there, and as Aedic had hoped, everyone wanted to hear the story of the soldier having his leg sawn off.
Everyone except Matto, who pointed out that he hadn’t actually seen the sawing happen. “Anyway,” Matto said, “am I showing you how to catch trout or not?”
The one-legged soldier was forgotten. Instead there was a lot of peering into the water and stumbling about on feet numb with cold. Nobody managed to find a trout, let alone tickle one. Matto said it was Aedic’s fault for bringing the unbrother. The unbrother couldn’t stay still or keep quiet. He had frightened the fish away.
“There weren’t any fish anyway,” Aedic told him, not seeing why he should get the blame just because Matto had bragged about something and then couldn’t do it. “I never saw one.”
“You don’t see them under there,” said Matto. “You feel them.”
“You have to see the tail.”
Matto said, “Don’t.”
“Yes you do. My da says.”
“What does your da know?” said Matto. “He’s a drunk.”
He was not going to get dragged into that. “My da’s caught hundreds of trout,” he said. “How many have you caught?”
“Liar!” said Matto, so quickly that Aedic knew he didn’t want to answer.
“Go on, how many?”
“Loads,” said Matto. “Anyway, you’re lucky we let you join in. After what everybody says about you.”
“You’re the liar!” was not much of an answer, but he didn’t know what Matto was talking about. What did they say about him?
“Ha!” said Matto, making sure everyone was listening, “Everybody knows you’re a soldiers’ bumboy!”
There were shouts of laughter as Aedic yelled, “I am not!”
The unbrother, excited by the argument, waved his arms about. “Bumboy! Bum-bum-bum-”
“Shut up!” he shouted. It was all the unbrother’s fault for squealing and splashing in the first place. “I am not!”
He was facing Matto now, each standing on a rock with the water gurgling in between. Matto was at least a handspan taller, and heavier, and his rock was higher. Everyone else had gathered round to watch the fight. “I am not!”
“Not what?”
“Not what you said. You take that back.”
“Everybody’s seen you. Hanging around, trying to talk to them.”
“I just do jobs for them!” Aedic wished he hadn’t stayed to try and catch the stupid trout. Matto’s family had been turned off their land too. The army had given them a farm miles away that the soldiers had stolen from its owners, but it was mostly rock and bog, and the family had nothing good to say about people who dealt with Romans. “Lots of people do jobs for them!”
“Ha! I bet you love the soldiers. I bet when nobody’s looking you kiss them!”
His shouts of “No I don’t!” were lost under shrieks of laughter and howls of “Kissy-kissy!” from the other boys. His face was hot. Matto’s “Look at him going red! It’s true!” just made it worse.
“Anyway,” he shouted, desperate to stop them before the whole world thought he kissed the soldiers, “I know something you don’t!”