Medicus

50

Valens returned full of tales of wild and wily tribesmen and how he had impressed both the locals and the officers by curing a fever in the hairy chieftain's youngest son. The next morning Ruso gave him a swift summary of the current hospital cases, told him to ask his friend at HQ if he wanted to know anything about the latest body, then escaped to enjoy some time off and catch up on some of the things he had been meaning to do for days. He did not want to waste most of the rare sunny weather standing in the line at the barber's, so while he waited for a shave he strolled down the street and dropped in to a weaver's shop to inquire about the cost of woolen trousers.

He pushed his foot down inside the hole for the second leg, disten-tangled his boot at the far end, and tugged the rough wool up around his waist. Holding everything in place with the spare fabric bunched in his fist, he tried a few experimental steps across the shop floor.

They seemed ludicrously baggy compared to riding breeches. "Are they supposed to be like this?"

"If you just fasten your belt around the top, sir…"

"I look like a bloody native."

"A lot of gentlemen lace their boots up around the legs and pop in a bit of sheepskin, sir. You'll find them very comfortable in the cold weather. Much warmer than leather."

Ruso rubbed his growth of beard and looked down at his toes. His ankles were hidden under the rust-colored wool that was already beginning to irritate his skin in unaccustomed places. He felt ridiculous dressed like this, but Valens had recommended this man and Valens, he had to admit, usually looked surprisingly well turned out for one so disorganized. Presumably when the cold set in, the two of them would look no more outlandish than anyone else.

He glanced out of the doorway in the vague hope of seeing someone dressed like himself. Instead, he saw a young woman walking past, carrying a faded blue military cloak draped over a loaded shopping basket. A young woman with curly fair hair, a bandaged arm, and bare feet. A young woman for whom he had only this morning asked the cobbler to set aside a pair of second-hand boots, and who needed to try them on. She was heading out of town and he guessed she was on the way to the laundry.

"I'll take them," announced Ruso.

"I can show you some other fabrics," offered the weaver, with the sudden anxiety of a man who suspects he could have sold something more expensive.

"They're fine. You can send me the bill care of the hospital." Payday was in less than a week, which was why Ruso now felt it was safe to buy a few small necessities.

"If you'd just like to slip them off-"

"I'll wear them," declared Ruso, pausing only to scribble his signature on the bill before snatching up his belt and hurrying out of the shop.

When he reached the street Tilla was already too far ahead for him to attract her attention without bellowing down the street like a drill sergeant. Acutely aware of the trousers flapping around his ankles with every step, Ruso decided to catch up with her when she stopped at the laundry, which was the only possible place where she could have any business out here. He passed the clanging din of a metalworker's shop where a display of pots and pans swinging in the breeze sounded a chaotic chorus over the steady rhythm of the hammer. Beyond it were a few tumbledown houses, which might have been pleasantly positioned on the edge of town were it not for the stench that was already hinting at the nearness of his destination. He stepped aside for an ancient veteran shuffling along on two sticks, then looked up and realized she must have crossed over to walk in the sunshine. She was hidden by a heavy cart rumbling past in the middle of the street.

The owner of the laundry was taking advantage of the sunshine too. The yard was crisscrossed with loaded washing lines. Navigating by smell, he ducked to avoid being slapped in the face by a sheet and turned left to make the customary contribution in the Vespasianus. Gazing down into the yellow depths, he reflected that the greatest of men could be brought low by one simple act of stupidity. The general who had conquered much of Britannia, stifled a Jewish revolt, and risen to the rank of emperor was chiefly remembered for his attempt to put a tax on public pisspots. His musings were interrupted by a more practical thought: He had not checked for any exit arrangements in the trousers. Perhaps he had better practice in private first. Turning on his heel, he ducked back around the flapping sheets and into the steamy atmosphere of the laundry to meet his slave.

The counter clerk shook his head and managed to look even more vacant than he had before Ruso spoke to him.

"She must be here somewhere," Ruso insisted. "I just saw her. Fair hair. Broken arm."

The youth scratched his head and then examined his fingernails, as if the information were hiding somewhere under his hair and he might have dislodged it.

"She's collecting my laundry," prompted Ruso, glancing around. The only other people he could see were laundry workers: a couple of well-muscled women wringing out towels and child slaves trampling the urine vats.

The clerk had picked up a ledger. "Name?"

Ruso told him. "Or it might be under hers. Tilla. Or Doctor. It's not the laundry I'm after, it's the girl."

The clerk ran a finger down the ledger, paused, squinted, and walked across to check the labels dangling from the necks of linen sacks lined up on the rack behind him. Then he went back along the rack and read them all again. Finally he returned to the ledger and said, "Medicus. Are you the doctor who-"

"No. You're quite sure you haven't seen her?"

"It's still wet. Only came in yesterday. You have to give us-" But Ruso was already out the door.

Back on the street, he spotted her immediately. Although she had been expressly forbidden to wander, Tilla had passed the laundry and kept walking. She was now a distant figure, moving briskly along the side of the road in the manner of a woman who knew exactly where she was going and was anxious to get there.

Ruso was conscious of the fact that there were plenty of things he should be doing this morning, most of which began with a shave and a haircut and none of which included trotting along the Eboracum road in a pair of ridiculous trousers, following a disobedient slave. Common sense dictated that he should shout to call her back now. Curiosity tempted him to continue just a little farther and find out where she was going.

She was approaching the cemetery. He was catching up with her. He wondered whether he had time to duck behind one of the grander gravestones and slip off the trousers. He had settled on a six-foot monument when the sound of wailing alerted him to a group of mourners approaching beyond a clump of trees, close enough to be offended.

Tilla was clearly in a hurry. She hardly bothered to step aside for a couple of cavalrymen trotting past: one of the horses, obedient to instinct rather than its rider, shied to avoid her at the last minute. The rider twisted in the saddle and appeared to shout something at her back. She took no notice. She bustled past a row of carts trundling into town under a weight of timber, and mercifully had the sense to cross to the opposite shoulder while a military road gang downed their picks to watch her pass. A voice bellowed at them to get back to work. Ruso was relieved. It meant they were too busy to gawk at his clothing.

Even if he had managed to put them on properly, it was entirely the wrong weather for trousers. He was beginning to understand why people said the climate here was as unpredictable as the natives. Yesterday the rain had been torrential. Today, sunlight flashed on the metal heads of the picks as the road gang swung back into action. The feathery seed heads of the grasses on the road's shoulder waved gently in a light breeze. His encumbered legs carried him along behind Tilla, feeling hotter with each movement.

He tried to imagine what his servant could be doing out here. Several possibilities came to mind, none of them reassuring. Despite the fate of Saufeia and now apparently Asellina, she could have taken it into her head to run away. But in that case surely she would have spent his grocery money on shoes. Whereas she seemed to be carrying a full shopping basket-which was puzzling in itself. If she was intending to return, why shop first and haul it all the way out of town? Unless, of course, she had used his money to stock up for her journey.

On the other hand, she could be on a repeat expedition to gather whatever she had found yesterday to put in that stinking medicine. In which case he would be faced with the uncomfortable task of punishing her.

He tried to remember what he had seen out here on the training run.

Beyond the stubbled fields where a couple of plough teams were now plodding muddily along behind their oxen lay an area where the road and its wide shoulder had been cut through thick woods. Beyond the woods he could remember very little. Pasture? Scrub? He knew there was a native settlement about four miles from the fort, because they had passed the milestone just before the broken ankle incident. Could she be intending to carry the shopping all the way out there?

A worse possibility occurred to him: that she was on the way to some sort of rendezvous. Surely she would have more sense than that? But Tilla seemed to have more faith in her goddess than in any of the practical steps he had suggested to keep herself safe, and any number of unsavory characters could have crawled into her confidence while she was at Merula's. If there really was a madman, he could have come back for a second-or was it a third? — victim, this time choosing an isolated spot away from the danger of witnesses. Well, whoever he was, he would be getting a surprise visit from the medical service.

She was still about fifty paces ahead, showing no sign that she realized she was being followed. This, he told himself, is ridiculous. If he had never downed that cup of fake Falernian, if he had never decided to interfere at the fountain, if he had kept his mouth shut and let events take their course, he would not now be wasting his morning running around after his own slave.

He was glad Valens couldn't see him now. Valens already thought he was crazy Valens had arrived home last night, tipped the contents of his kit bag onto his bedroom floor, and wanted to know where all his stuff had gone. Ruso had explained about Tilla moving in and he had grinned. "I thought you'd never get 'round to it. So, tell me. What's it like with a one-armed woman?"

Ruso had given him the look he usually gave malingerers. "She's a patient."

Valens crouched down and let the dog lick his face. "I suppose you could give her some interesting hand exercises."

"I told you, she's a-"

"You smell better," Valens informed the dog as he pushed her away so he could stand up. "Has somebody bathed you?"

Ruso shrugged. "I think Tilla took it for walks. Can you bathe a dog when you've only got one arm?"

"She seems to be able to do most things. You're a lucky man. She hasn't got a sister, has she?"

"I wouldn't introduce you if she had."

"Dear me, you are grumpy." Valens lifted the lid of the beer barrel. "I see you've developed a taste for this stuff at last."

Ruso peered into the empty barrel. "Tilla must have thrown it out," he said. "She wasn't too impressed with our housekeeping arrangements."

"I'll ask for wine next time." Valens dropped the lid back down. "Well done, Ruso. I knew I could rely on you to come up with a decent servant in the end."

"I told you, we're not keeping her."

"We're not keeping her," Valens had repeated in triumph. "There you are. She's become our housekeeper. Excellent! I'll chip in with the costs if you like. I promise not to bed her without asking first."

"Nobody's going to bed her!"

Valens had eyed him curiously before shaking his head. "Ruso, Ruso.

You are a good chap and I love you dearly, but you really must learn to relax and enjoy yourself a little."

Ruso scowled at the hems of his trousers. It was all very well for Valens to say he should relax. Valens didn't have the responsibility of shoring up a secretly bankrupt family in Gaul and finding a decent place for a slave over here. A slave who was, he now realized, too attractive for her own good.

Claudia had often complained that her maids were stupid and lazy but never once, as far as he could recall, that they weren't pretty enough. He was beginning to see that Bassus was right. There was a market for beautiful slave girls. It was not in the homes of happy families. He was not proud of it, but the people who depended on him were going to need the kind of price that market would pay

He glanced up. Apart from a group of cavalry horses approaching in the distance, the road ahead of him was empty. Tilla had turned left, crossed the ditch, and was making her way over the open expanse of the shoulder toward a patch of woodland.

If she had turned to look, she would have seen him step onto the heavy tree trunk that provided a dry foothold across the ditch, then scramble up onto the narrow, muddy path that led through the long grass. Instead she took not the slightest precaution, hurrying into the woods like a woman late for an appointment.

Anxious not to lose her among the trees, he lengthened his stride until there were only twenty or thirty paces between them. The path twisted and turned through the gloom of the woods. The road he had just left was out of sight. Moments later he could barely hear the shuffle of hoofbeats on gravel as the cavalry troop passed. His own boots padded along on mud made slippery by damp leaves. Knotted roots had broken through the surface of the path. Brambles snatched at his trousers. More than once he had to adjust his stride suddenly to avoid snapping a dead branch. Several times he stopped to listen, and was reassured that Tilla was making no effort to be silent. Whoever she had come to meet would know she was approaching. As long as he was careful, Ruso would be able to take him by surprise.

The sunlight filtering through the branches caught the blue of the cloak moving ahead of him. Ruso hurried on, stepping over another dead branch while his right hand moved to unlatch the knife at his belt.

It wasn't there.

In place of the knife was an uncomfortable bundle of trouser fabric. He was cursing himself for leaving the weapon on the counter back at the weaver's shop when he realized the path was leading into an empty clearing. Ahead of him lay open grass dappled with sunlight. The blue cloak was there, dangling from a branch. Tilla was nowhere to be seen.

Ruso stepped off the path and hid behind a broad tree trunk that trembled with ivy. He held his breath, straining unsuccessfully to hear the sound of footsteps. Peering though the ivy, he surveyed the clearing.

Grass. Bushes. Bracken. The folds of the empty cloak shifting slightly in the breeze. There seemed to be at least two paths leading away, but he could not believe she had had time to take either of them unseen and there was no sign of unnatural movement among the leaves. Nor was there any sign of anyone else. He would have heard if she had greeted a friend, and she could hardly have been attacked without him noticing. This was the woman who had planned to knock out a legionary with a soup bowl. She must be hiding somewhere, waiting for whomever she had come to meet. Or perhaps she had seen Ruso after all, and was hoping if she kept out of sight for long enough, he would give up and go away.

Somewhere ahead of him, he could hear the trickle of a stream running though the woods. He hoped Tilla's patience would give out quickly. He was due on duty at the seventh hour and it must be past noon by now.

A black bird with a yellow beak hopped across the clearing. Gently, slowly, Ruso shifted his weight into a more comfortable position. Undisturbed, the bird continued to stab at something in the grass. There was no other sign of movement.

Hiding behind a tree trunk with his back exposed to the rustling undergrowth, it occurred to Ruso that following a native into the woods unarmed had not been a sensible thing to do. He was beyond shouting distance from the road. If there were more than one man to deal with, or if that man were carrying a weapon, he was in trouble.

That was probably why the voice terrified him. Only for a second, though, as he assured himself later. Of course he had not believed for more than a glancing moment that he was hearing the triumphant war cry of a native about to hack him to pieces. Or that a vengeful ghost had come to steal his spirit away in the depths of the woods. He had known, as soon as he had recovered from the surprise, that the sound was nothing to fear. Unfortunately his head did not communicate this knowledge to his heart, which continued to pound against the wall of his chest as if he were being pursued through the forest by a pack of howling wolves, instead of leaning against a tree trunk listening to a woman singing.

Tilla's singing in the kitchen had never been like this. At first shrill and ululating and eerie, then gradually descending, becoming breathy and resonant and peculiarly intimate. Ruso moved slowly forward to peer through the leaves again. He could see her now. She seemed to be alone. He frowned with confusion before guessing she must be standing down in a dip, which was hidden by the undergrowth on the far side of the clearing. Her good arm was raised to the sky. Her face glistened with water. Darkened tendrils of wet hair stuck to her forehead. Her eyes were closed in concentration. The expression on her face was little short of ecstatic. He released a long breath. His servant had not ventured into the woods to meet a lover, but a god.

A thin trail of smoke rose into the air. The question of how Tilla had lit a fire in the middle of the damp woods merged in his mind with the question of what she had been carrying in the basket. He suspected he was now going to have to add "theft of firewood" to her list of misdemeanors.

The song rolled on. It was, in a peculiar barbaric way, beautiful. Sometimes there were strains of a tune Ruso felt he should recognize, then the notes soared away in unexpected directions. Sometimes the same tune seemed to repeat and tangle around itself before giving way to a different one. Another high eerie section gave way to huskiness and a tune that meandered about in a sequence he thought he remembered from the kitchen.

Ruso retreated behind the tree and surveyed the damage to his new trousers. They were now snagged in several places. The bottoms hung limp and muddy around his feet. As he watched, a beetle scurried across the front of his boot. He shifted his foot. The beetle scuttled off and buried itself under a leaf.

The song, or collection of songs, was still going on. Ruso began to experience a familiar sensation. It was the feeling that usually crept over him during the first few verses of after-dinner poetry recitals: the sense that time was slowing down around him and that this damned performance was going to go on all night. Tilla, however, seemed to be enraptured.

Although he could not share it, there were times when Ruso was jealous of the comfort other people seemed to draw from their religion. Patients who retained a calm hope in the face of desperate and painful situations. One man had even offered to pray for Ruso's soul while Ruso amputated two of his toes. So although he had troubling doubts about Aesculapius, very little faith in Jupiter and his ilk, and-usually-silent contempt for the so-called divinity of emperors, Ruso had a solid belief in the value of religion. Leaving aside the water engineer who had to be tied to his bunk until he lost faith in his ability to fly from the top of his aqueduct, even the craziest of beliefs seemed to do less harm than any effort to dislodge them. So he would, if asked, have given Tilla permission for some sort of religious worship. But he had not been asked, and now he was witnessing blatant disobedience of a kind he had never encountered in a servant before. He had excused the attack with the soup bowl as a mistake. The business of cooking up medicines in his kitchen had been more of a misunderstanding. This was nothing short of defiance. He was now obliged, for the first time in his life, to administer a serious beating.

He was not sure what to use. Claudia had usually marked her displeasure by snatching up whatever came to hand-a spoon, a hairbrush, a shoe. He would have to use his belt. To that end, and because he was uncomfortable in them anyway, he would let the singing warble on while he climbed out of the trousers.

He was out of one leg and easing the second boot through the tube of fabric when he felt something drop into his hair. Logic vanished. Both hands shot up to sweep away the scorpion before it stabbed him in the scalp. The movement threw him off-balance. He hopped sideways, grabbing at the tree trunk to stop himself from falling. A bird flew up, squawking in alarm, and as Ruso realized that the thing that had fallen on his head was an autumn leaf, the song stopped.

He flattened himself back against the trunk, scarcely breathing.

In place of the song came a peculiar chanting, as if she were repeating the words of a spell over and over again. The chanting grew nearer. She was walking toward him.

There was no point in trying to hide. He stepped out from behind the tree.

The chanting stopped. Tilla was staring at him. At his face. At his feet. At his trousers. Then at his face again.

"Tilla."

"My Lord."

"You are supposed to be at work."

"Yes, my Lord."

"Instead, you are here."

"Yes, my Lord." She lowered her gaze again. For a moment neither of them spoke. Then she said quietly, "My Lord's trousers are fallen down."

Ruso slowly unrolled the belt from his palm and buckled it around his tunic, trying not to speculate on his servant's perception of what he was up to behind the tree. The punishment would have to wait until he had recovered some dignity.