Ruso said, “Sorry if I woke you, sir.”
“I heard the horn.”
“There’s nothing much happening out there, sir.”
Without moving, Pertinax said, “You should have let me go. No bloody use to anyone now.”
Ruso had been expecting something like this. Pertinax had clung desperately to talk of his duties as if nothing had changed. Now the illusion had faded. He had begun the long struggle to adjust to a new reality.
“Are you in pain, sir?”
“No.”
“We can help if you are.”
“I can put up with a little pain, boy!”
“Can I take a look at the wound, sir?”
Ruso examined the stump. The swelling was no worse. He wondered how best to comfort a man who was no easier to console than the struggling cavalry stallion that had impaled itself on a fencing stake last month. The first vet who went to help had ended up in a hospital bed himself.
At least you could-allegedly-reason with a man. But the rational comfort offered by philosophy never seemed as useful in the face of real suffering as it did when you were reading about it at home after a good dinner. Reminding Pertinax that things could be worse was unlikely to help, and might well earn him a punch on the nose. In the end he said, “This is a very different challenge from anything you’ve faced before, sir.”
“Always thought I’d die with my boots on,” mumbled Pertinax. “Can’t even stand up to take a pee. And now the natives are playing up again.”
Trying to think of something encouraging, Ruso remembered the large newcomer in the office. “The clerk you asked for has arrived, sir. We all appreciate you putting in a word with the tribune.”
Pertinax grunted.
There was a soft knock on the door and a bald head appeared. “Visitors, sir,” it croaked.
Before the man could reply to Ruso’s “Who is it?” Pertinax growled, “Tell ’em to bugger off.”
The whisper of “The legate’s physician, sir” was not soft enough.
“I’m not bloody deaf,” Pertinax told him, “even if you are. I said, tell them to bugger off. All of them. Especially that one.”
The orderly shrank behind Ruso and croaked, “And your wife is waiting in the treatment room to speak to you, sir.”
“I’ll come and talk to them both,” Ruso promised, glad to hear that Tilla was safe from whatever was brewing outside, and wondering how she had managed to get past the gates. No doubt she believed that her reason for coming here was urgent enough to justify whatever disturbance she had caused, but he could not deal with civilian matters until he had finished work. He turned to the figure on the bed. “Sir, if you want anything, just ring the bell.”
Pertinax stretched out an arm. The bell tinkled. “I want my foot back,” he said.
The legate’s physician did not look pleased to be refused entry. Ruso considered offering a tactful excuse and then decided he was not going to take the blame for Pertinax’s decision, so he told the truth and was accused of being territorial.
“I wasn’t,” Ruso told him. “But I am now. I’m sorry you’ve had a wasted trip, but he’s my patient and my superior, and I promised him his wishes would be respected.”
Something about the physician’s nostrils seemed to tighten. “I shall have to report this to the legate.”
“Good idea,” said Ruso. “He and the prefect can fight it out between them.”
He passed several members of staff as he strode down the corridor to the treatment room. There was something unusually respectful in the way they acknowledged him. He squared his shoulders and lifted his head. It was, he decided, good for morale to be heard standing up for one’s patients.
Tilla’s news was indeed urgent, and deeply worrying. He understood now why the horn had been sounded, and his plans to ignore whatever she said until later had to be set aside. Putting his head round the office door, he asked, “Has anyone heard anything about a native boy being brought in?”
Gracilis’s eyes appeared above the wall of writing tablets. Nisus twisted round on his stool. Neither had heard anything. “I want to know straightaway if you do,” Ruso told them, aware that he had been asking the same sort of question about Candidus just now. Gracilis must be wondering what sort of outfit he had joined. “If anybody wants me, I’m going to see Fabius.”
As he was about to leave, Gracilis said, “We were sorry to hear the news from your wife, sir.”
“Yes,” said Ruso, surprised that Tilla had told these two strangers about Branan before she spoke to him. It showed just how desperate she was. “It’s very worrying.”
Chapter 28
“You can be the one to tell him,” Ruso told his wife as they approached the little building that served as the fort HQ.
“Me?”
“You’re a native. He’ll be frightened of you.”
Passing the guard, Ruso was surprised to hear, “Sorry about your father, sir.”
He stopped. “My father?”
“It is a great shock,” said Tilla, seizing him by the arm and moving him on.
When they were in the cramped entrance hall waiting for Fabius, he hissed, “What about my father?”
“I had to get in here to tell you about Branan. His family are desperate. Imagine if it is our son.”
It was bad enough to have no son-impossible to make the next leap, and to imagine the pain of losing one. Instead he said, “What’s this got to do with my father?”
“I said to the guards, ‘I have to see the Medicus. I have bad news. His father is dead.’ ”
He slumped back against the wall as understanding dawned. Mercifully, no one here was likely to know that his father had died before he and Tilla had even met.
“I did not lie to them,” she insisted.
“Oh. Well, that makes everything fine, then.”
“Yes,” she said. “That is what I think too.”
Fabius looked alarmed when he was told that there was another missing person and that a soldier was to blame, but Tilla gave him no time to feel sorry for himself. “I am thinking, sir, that this is a good chance for you to be a friend to the local people.”
“A friend?” He looked incredulous. “They are accusing one of our men-”
“That is why they will thank you for making a search,” she said, interrupting, “just as you did for your own man who is missing.”
Fabius glanced at Ruso as if hoping he would get his wife under control. Ruso remained impassive.
Fabius said, “We get malicious rumors all the time. How do we know this isn’t another one?”
“I know the family, sir,” Tilla assured him. “And I have spoken to the boy who saw it happen.”
Again Fabius looked to his fellow officer. “If your wife has been implicated in this alleged kidnapping, Ruso, she has a good reason to shift the blame onto my men.”
“My wife doesn’t lie.” Too late, he remembered how she had got past the guards.
Tilla straightened her shoulders. “I am here to find the missing boy, sir.”
Fabius rubbed the side of his nose. “This so-called soldier was probably some native dressed up, wanting to cause trouble.”
“The witness saw a man from this legion, sir,” she insisted. “Not a centurion, just an ordinary soldier. If he was a local man, the boys would know him and know it was some sort of trick.”
Fabius sighed and muttered, “Why me?” as if he were the one in trouble.
From somewhere outside, Ruso thought he could hear shouting.
“If you send messages to the other forts, sir,” said Tilla, “and ask them to question their men and make a search of their buildings and land, and stop all vehicles on the road and look inside, the local people will think you are on their side.”
“Why would I want to-”
“Otherwise they will be wanting to come in and search themselves. I am thinking you will say no, which is your right, and then there will be complaints to the tribune and the legate and-”