This was in sharp contrast to Tilla, who had dismissed the only Latin medical text Ruso possessed as useless. Her patients could not indulge themselves with special diets eaten at particular hours of the day, arranged round gentle walks and set rest periods. Most of them were lucky to have food at all.
Unfortunately there was no one in the fort who had the authority to tell Fabius to be ill on his own time and not the Legion’s. Ruso’s assertions that there seemed to be nothing wrong with him had been met with surprise: Surely a modern doctor like himself was aware that looking healthy could be a sign of impending sickness? Did he not realize that Fabius had already cheated death several times by taking to his bed and giving up work, food, and sex at the first sign of symptoms?
Faced with this unassailable evidence, and suspecting the kitchen maid would be glad of the rest, Ruso had given up arguing and done his best to avoid him. But today there was no choice. While Fabius settled on his day couch, Ruso gave him the news that Regulus was as comfortable as could be expected.
“I would have gone to visit him,” said Fabius, looking almost genuinely sorry, “But the tribune doesn’t want him disturbed.”
“I don’t think he meant you,” Ruso said, but Fabius was too busy thinking up a better excuse to notice the tone. Not optimistic, Ruso explained about Candidus: “I thought he must have just gone absent without leave, but I’ve been through his kit and he hasn’t taken the things you’d expect. Plus, he’d made commitments.” In the shape of a chicken.
“Perhaps he left on impulse.”
“Your man was kidnapped. It’s possible mine is also being held somewhere against his will.”
Fabius leaned sideways and straightened the fringe on his rug. “Surely the quarry camp should be looking for him?”
“They can’t find him. And he’s supposed to be working for me, here.”
Fabius ordered his clerk to make a note of the name, but instead of writing, the point of the stylus remained poised half an inch above the wax. “Candidus,” Ruso reminded him.
“Full name, sir?” enquired the clerk.
“No idea.”
Fabius frowned. “We do want to be looking for the right man, Doctor.”
It was commonly assumed that the Sixth had offered Fabius’s services to the undermanned Twentieth in order to get rid of him. Possibly his family had felt the same way, since he seemed to have been lowered into the centurionate from a great social height, rather than battling his way up to it through the ranks. With luck he would soon be given a medical discharge from the Legion. Unfortunately soon did not mean this morning.
“Since he’s my man,” Ruso pointed out, “he’s technically under the command of Prefect Pertinax. So I’ll be keeping the prefect informed about the inquiry while he’s in the hospital.”
Even lying gravely injured in a hospital bed, Pertinax had the power to impress. Fabius said, “Ah,” as if he were seeing the situation in a new light. He examined his interlaced fingers for a moment, then looked up. “What do you think we should do?”
“Make urgent inquiries of our local informers,” Ruso told him, wondering why Fabius’s fellow centurions had not arranged for him to be transferred to the lead mines. “And have the kidnappers questioned, assuming we’ve got them. If you send a request to HQ, they can start this afternoon.”
“Yes. Yes, I suppose they could.”
Ruso had intended to ask only for official notices to be sent to the other forts, but Fabius’s attitude so annoyed him that he added, “And if the quarry work is on hold until the landslide’s sorted out, there must be spare men who could go out to search.”
“Ah.” Fabius turned to his clerk again. “I should think you could draft a suitable sort of letter to HQ, couldn’t you? Tell them we’ve lost somebody.”
Wishing he had the authority to order it himself, Ruso said, “What about a search?”
Fabius pondered that for a moment, then seemed to find inspiration. “Daminius!” he said. “He’s your man. Daminius will have nothing to do while the quarry’s closed. Why don’t I ask him to see to it?”
“Yes,” agreed Ruso, finding himself mimicking the tone. “Why don’t you?”
Fabius turned to his clerk. “Could you find out where Daminius is, do you think?”
“He’s doing something for the chief engineer in the quarry, sir. Then he’s due to report to you afterward.”
Fabius’s face brightened even further. “Excellent! When he gets here, tell him to go straight to the doctor instead. They can all go and look for this missing man.”
Chapter 13
Tilla left her patient’s house feeling at peace with her world. Last night’s meeting had not been as bad as she had feared. Conn had been rude and Enica cold, but old Senecio had made them welcome and her husband had agreed to his blessing. Perhaps it would do some good: Who knew? Besides, it would be a change to have something cheerful at Samain. It was a time when she missed her family. Every year she slipped away to gaze out into the night in the hope of seeing her own dead walking toward her, but they never came.
Meanwhile the sun was shining, the trees were turning golden, the hedge was dotted with red rose hips and pale green globes of ivy shy;blossom, and the mother and week-old baby she had just visited were doing well. When she got back to Ria’s she would have some privacy to practice her reading: Virana would be busy serving downstairs, continuing her last-ditch attempt to snare the man of her dreams before she had to carry a fatherless baby home to face the disapproval of her family.
Tilla pursed her lips. She was not going to feel guilty about saying good-bye to Virana. That had always been the arrangement. You can stay until you have the baby. Then you must go home. Her husband would have sent the girl back straightaway, but Tilla had won him over, as she knew she would. So he confined his complaining to insisting that this must not happen again. We are not taking in any others. After this we’ll buy a slave and live like a normal family. She had been tempted to say, A normal family plants in spring and is still there to harvest in summer. A normal family has children. But she had chosen a soldier, and neither of them had chosen the emptiness where children should have been, so there was nothing to gain by pouring vinegar into the wound.
A robin flew up from the side of the track as she approached, and sat watching her from the safety of a hawthorn. She stopped, then moved slowly forward, obliged to skirt round a puddle to keep her distance. It crossed her mind that a Roman would probably try to throw a net over it and roast it for supper. She was almost level with it now. Perhaps she could pass without frightening it.
Too late. It fluttered up, over the hedge and-
Tilla stopped again and felt her heart quicken. Felt the dread tightening her stomach. How long had that been there? How could she have failed to notice it? Over toward the fort, the perfect sky was marred by soaring billows of thick black smoke.
She ran down to the road, her skirts gathered up in her fists and her bag clamped under one elbow to stop it swinging about. By the time she was halfway back she could see it was not the fort, nor the camp. It was too far away to be Senecio’s house, but it was definitely someone’s farm dying below the writhing smoke, and the separate columns said it must be deliberate.
She barely heard the mule cart over the rasp of her own breath, but the local voice shouting, “Want a lift, missus?” caught her attention. Soon she was seated behind a weaver and his wife, listening to them arguing about which of their neighbors’ houses was on fire. They did nothing to calm her rising fear that it was the home of one of her patients.