Medicus

18

The gray light of dawn was making its way around the shutters of a house that contained three people. Two were asleep. The third was grappling with the problem of women's underwear. Where could a man get hold of some? Discreetly? As if that were not bad enough, there would be the monthly business to deal with at any moment.

Ruso wished, not for the first time, that he had been blessed with a useful sort of sister. According to Claudia, a man's only role in the mystery of feminine hygiene was to purchase a capable maid and then stay out of the way. So, although his training had covered the theory, in three years of marriage Ruso had evaded the practice so diligently that he had never really been sure what arrangements were necessary. Valens, of course, was bound to know, but he was not going to ask Valens.

Ruso stared at a cobweb that was trembling in the draft from his bedroom window and thought: landlady. The girl couldn't stay where she was much longer anyway. The obvious answer was to find a room in a house with a sympathetic landlady. A dispenser of nourishing meals and womanly advice who didn't charge too much. A landlady was the thing. He would go out this morning and find one. In the meantime, he would wander into the kitchen and see if his property had woken up yet.

He had grasped his overtunic between finger and thumb and was about to give it a good shake when he remembered again that this was Britain, where there were no scorpions to creep into dark crevices during the night. Buckling his belt and wondering if he would ever entirely break the wary habits of Africa, he made his way toward the kitchen. The couch, which would have been the obvious place for the girl to sleep, was still being shared by one of Valens's cronies and the dog.

He opened the kitchen door quietly. Something ran across his foot and shot into the corner. He sighed, then started as his eyes adjusted to the shuttered gloom and he realized the hearth was empty. Instead, there was a figure curled up on the table.

"Good morning."

The girl stirred. A tangle of hair slid across her cheek. She blinked sleepily and stretched her good arm above her head. Ruso had a sudden urge to seize her and take her to his own bed, where she would be warm and sleepy and-since he owned her-obedient. He swallowed hard and pushed the thought aside, not wishing to ponder the level of desperation it revealed.

He said, "Why are you on the table?"

She stared at him for a moment, as if trying to remember who he was, and then gave a heavy sigh of recognition. She slid her good hand forward to grasp the edge of the table and leaned forward, surveying the floor.

Ruso followed her gaze. "Are you afraid of the mice?"

He saw her fist tighten. She looked up at him. "Mice do not hurt."

"No," he agreed, "but falling off the table will."

It was a question of simple economics. The longer her recovery took, the longer it would be before he saw his money. "You won't spend the night here again," he promised. "I'll find a proper room."

It was a promise he would regret by the end of the morning.

Several would-be landlords had chalked up advertisements on the amphitheater walls.

The smell of urine and old cabbage stew, which hit Ruso as soon as the first door opened, failed to mask the personal odor of the toothless crone who announced,

"He an't here, I dunno where he is, and he an't done nothing."

"I'll keep looking," said Ruso.

"Did have," said the next one. "We did have a room. Somebody should have rubbed the notice off."

The third room was still having its walls plastered, but the owner's wife promised it would be ready by nightfall.

"How much?"

She told him. Ruso laughed and walked away, and she let him go.

As the morning wore on and his boot studs wore down, it became clear to Ruso that he had a problem. He was here because Rome had decided that Britannia was worth the trouble of holding on to and had stationed just about enough troops here to crack together the skulls of any Britons who refused to cooperate. Side by side with the stick, however, went the carrot. Civilization. Not only the fort, but Deva itself was undergoing a massive modernization project. Every man not currently engaged in keeping an eye on the hill tribes had a trowel in his hand or a hod over his shoulder. It seemed the legion's orders were to hack out all the available stone, saw up all the local trees, and pipe water to every conceivable outlet. Until the last dog kennel had under-floor heating or the new emperor came up with a new plan, the Twentieth Valeria Victrix was to keep on building.

It was not the soldiers themselves who were causing Ruso's difficulties: They were either off skull-cracking or living in the barracks that they were slowly working their way around to modernization. It was the women and children, widowed mothers and spinster aunts the men collected around them. The women and children and mothers and aunts-not to mention the veterans with nowhere else to retire to, who had women and children of their own-all needed beds to sleep in. Then there were all the hangers-on who congregated wherever there were soldiers to be separated from their wages. Hangers-on needed beds too.

The wail of a trumpet from the other side of the fort wall announced that the morning was almost at an end. Ruso was on duty in an hour and he was still no nearer to keeping his promise to the girl. He was going to have to try Valens's suggestion after all.

Earlier that morning, he had pointed out that he had no intention of lodging his slave in a bar that was effectively a brothel.

"Ah, but it isn't," Valens had explained. "Not technically. We had a tax collector in here the other day. Broken wrist: fell off his horse.

Anyway, he said lots of those sort of places don't register their girls so they don't have to pay the tax on their earnings, and when anybody official asks why there's so many bedrooms then, they say that it's because that take in lodgers. It's worth a try. Just don't let her eat the oysters."

"A tax-dodging brothel. Marvelous."

"You could always have a nice chat with Priscus. I hear his new place is rather spacious. Perhaps he'll find you a spare room."

"Maybe I will," agreed Ruso, just to see the expression on Valens's face.

As Merula swayed across the empty barroom in another stylish silky creation, Ruso mused that this was not the sort of landlady he had envisioned.

The elegantly plucked eyebrows rose at his question. Evidently he was not the sort of tenant she was used to either.

"It's not for me," he explained.

"For a friend?"

"Not exactly." He was aware that he was scratching his ear again. He really must try to stop that. Claudia used to say she knew it meant he was lying, which showed how little they understood each other. He lowered his fist onto the barroom table just below the initials of one CLM, who had felt it necessary to carve not only the first letters of his name but a majestic phallus as well, and said, "I have a female slave whom I can't use at home and who is in need of lodgings. One of my colleagues suggested you might be able to find somewhere for her."

"Ah. An officer at the hospital?"

"Yes," said Ruso, suddenly seeing a way forward. "I believe you know him. He was here a short while ago and he had to have some time off work as a result."

Merula managed to look surprised, as if virulent food poisoning were something she could have hoped to keep secret. "So you know about, uh…?"

"I suggest we say no more about it."

Ruso was satisfied to see relief on the woman's face. He was right: She had been afraid Valens would sue. When she said, "I think we can find a place for her," his problem appeared to be solved.

His problem appeared to be solved until Merula asked, "Is the girl experienced in this kind of work?"

Ruso shook his head. "She can't work. She's sick."

"She can't work?" The painted eyes met his. "So why did your friend tell you to send her to me?"

"I can't have her at my place, she needs to recuperate, and I can hardly billet her in a barracks room."

Merula pursed her lips. "This sickness. Is it fever?"

"She's recovering from surgery on an injured arm."

"And before long you expect her to be fit to work."

"I see no reason why not. In the meantime all she needs is a quiet room and regular meals. You do rent out rooms?"

"Oh, yes!" After this confident assertion she paused. "We don't have anything very comfortable just at the moment…"

"But you do have a private room?"

"We do, but-"

He followed her up the open staircase and along the creaking wooden landing that looked down over the bar. Several of the upstairs doors were ajar, revealing small cubicles with beds covered in bright blankets and cushions. It all looked reasonably clean. Ruso consoled himself with the thought that at least he was doing business with the best possible class of tax-dodging brothel.

In the gloom at the end of the corridor was a closed door. Merula scraped a key into the lock.

The room was bare except for a bench against one wall and a mattress in the corner. Merula glided forward and unlatched the shutters.

Before he could remark on the bars across an upstairs window, she said, "We sometimes use this room for secure storage." The light revealed the rings of old drinks and drips of candle wax on the surface of the bench. Underneath, one leg had been replaced with a new chunk of yellow wood that was much too heavy and the whole thing had been clumsily nailed to the floorboards. Ruso crouched and turned over the stained mattress. The straw was even lumpier than the one he was borrowing from Valens and it didn't smell good.

Merula started to explain that the room had not been used for a while. He interrupted her.

"Do you have mice?"

She frowned. "The girl is on a special diet?"

"I don't mean on the menu. I mean running around. Wild mice."

As soon as she told him they didn't, he said, "Put in a clean bed and I'll take it."