Ruso and the Root of All Evils

3

‘Broken metatarsal?’ suggested Valens, leaning further over his colleague’s misshapen foot to view it from a different angle.

‘I think I felt it go.’ Ruso, whose rescuers had carried him up to the fort hospital as if they were heroes, shifted himself to a more comfortable position. The movement sent fresh waves of pain crashing up the outside of his leg.

‘Interesting. You’ve probably done a lot of other damage as well. What happens if you try to put weight on it?’

‘I don’t want to find out.’

‘Well, you know the drill.’

Ruso sighed. ‘This can’t be happening.’

‘No food tonight, fluid diet till the swelling goes down, and you’ll have to go easy on it for a good six weeks. No wine, of course.’

Ruso eyed the vanishing dimple that had recently been his ankle. ‘Could you try and sound a bit less cheerful about it?’

‘Well, there’s no point in both of us being miserable, is there? Want me to help you hop down to the dressing station?’

‘Who’s on duty?’

Hearing the name, Ruso winced. ‘Bring me the stuff and I’ll do it myself.’

‘Poppy?’ offered Valens.

‘Lots.’ There was no point in bothering with bravery.

Valens returned a few minutes later with a tray bearing a large bowl of cheap wine mixed with oil, and a smaller cup. Reaching for a wad of linen from the shelf, he observed, ‘So tell me. How exactly did you manage to fall in the river and break your foot at the same time?’

Ruso took a draught of bitter poppy from the cup. ‘Long story,’ he explained. ‘But I’ll be making a full report, believe me. There are five men who are going to be very — ’ He stopped. ‘Oh, gods. I told Tilla I’d be back in a minute. She won’t know where I am.’

‘Ah, yes,’ said Valens, dipping the linen in the bowl. ‘The lovely Tilla. I should have said. She came to the gate a while ago. Your dinner’s gone cold.’ Valens wrung out the compress. ‘And she’s been called out on midwifery duty and she’s not best pleased that some of our boys threw the messenger in the river before he got to her. So you might as well find a bed here tonight, because there’s nobody at home to kiss it better.’

Ruso reached forward and grabbed the compress. ‘Let me do that,’ he insisted, draping it gingerly over the swollen foot and wrapping it around. So that was why the boy had been lurking around the houses at dusk.

‘One more thing,’ said Valens, reaching for a bandage. ‘She left a letter for you.’

Since Tilla could neither read nor write, this seemed unlikely.

‘From your brother,’ explained Valens, nodding towards a sealed writing-tablet behind Ruso on the desk.

The word URGENT scrawled across the outside of the letter suggested that the latest financial crisis at home was even worse than usual. Ruso snapped the twine, flipped open the folded wooden leaves and braced himself to face the details.

To his surprise, the letter said very little. On the inside of one leaf, in his brother’s writing, was the date on which it had been composed: the Kalends of June. On the other, the briefest of messages:

LUCIUS TO GAIUS.

COME HOME, BROTHER.

Ruso frowned over it for a moment, then passed it to Valens. ‘What do you make of that?’

Valens studied the carefully inscribed letters and observed, ‘Your brother is a man of few words.’

‘But what am I supposed to do about them?’

‘Go home, I suppose.’

Ruso grunted. ‘Hardly convenient, is it?’

Valens stepped back to admire his bandaging. ‘It could be arranged,’ he said.