Ruso and the Root of All Evils

4

‘This is ridiculous,’ growled Ruso, eyeing the cup of milk he had just insisted on pouring for himself and wondering how he was going to carry it across to the bed so he could sit down and enjoy his late breakfast. He had already discovered this morning that, since the lodgings he shared with Tilla were upstairs, the only safe way to reach them was to hook the crutches over one arm and hitch himself upwards on his bottom.

She stepped forward and took the cup. ‘Go and sit.’

Ruso adjusted his grip on the crutches, assessed the distance to the bed and swung across to stand in front of it. Then he hopped and clumped until he had turned around, stuck his bandaged foot out in front of him and collapsed backwards on to the blankets.

‘Gods and fishes!’ he muttered, dropping the crutches on the floor and swivelling to swing his feet up on to the bed. ‘What am I supposed to do for six weeks like this?’

Tilla handed him the cup and retrieved the crutches. ‘Go home.’

‘It’s too far,’ he explained, realizing a Briton would have no concept of that sort of distance. ‘The south of Gaul’s over a thousand miles away, Tilla. Imagine how long it takes to get back down to Deva from here. Then imagine you’ve only done about a tenth of the trip.’

Tilla yawned and sat beside him on the bed with her back propped against the wall. He realized she must have slept even less than he had the previous night. ‘I know how to do adding up,’ she said. ‘What I do not know is why your brother says to come home.’

Ruso retrieved the letter from beneath the pillow and examined the leaves on both sides. The outsides bore nothing beyond the usual to-and-from addresses and the alarming URGENT inked in large letters thickened with several strokes of the pen.

Lucius’ letters usually held either a desperate request for money or a fresh announcement of a happy arrival for him and his wife, Cassiana. Sometimes both. There were times when Ruso had wondered whether the family fortunes — precarious at the best of times — would finally be ruined not by demands to repay his late father’s massive borrowings, but by the need to feed and clothe all his nephews and nieces.

Lucius’ requests for cash were always couched in careful terms, lest they should fall into the wrong hands: the sort of hands whose owner would blab about one creditor to another. He usually gave just enough clues about the latest crisis to spur Ruso into doing something about it. But this message was exceptionally cryptic.

Was the date a code? Was there something significant about the Kalends of June? If so, he could not think what it was. He turned the leaves upside down to see if there was some message concealed in the script that was only visible from the opposite direction. He tried warming the letter over a lamp flame in search of secret ink. He succeeded only in scorching the wood.

‘It’s no good,’ he conceded. ‘I don’t know what it means.’

‘It means,’ said Tilla, ‘Come Home.’

‘I wouldn’t get there before mid-September,’ he pointed out. ‘By the time I wanted to come back I’d be lucky to find a captain willing to take a ship out. I might not get back till the seas open again.’ He lifted his foot in the air. ‘This isn’t going to earn me that much leave.’

‘It is a very big bandage. Valens can tell lies about what is underneath.’

‘But I’ve got patients to see, men to train …’

‘Other doctors can see the patients and train the men. There is not so much for you to do now, and you have a broken leg.’

‘Foot.’

She did not reply. There is not so much for you to do now was one of the rare allusions which either of them had made to the Army’s apparent success in crushing a native rebellion far more ferocious than anyone had expected. The casualty figures had been kept secret, but while Ruso was on duty behind the battlefront she must have seen the wagonloads of Roman wounded arriving back at the fort. More than once during the worst of the fighting she had disappeared for days at a time and returned with sunken eyes and dried blood beneath her fingernails. He had asked no questions. That way, she did not have to pretend she had been away delivering babies and he did not have to pretend he believed her.

As if to reassure him, she said, ‘The baby was a girl. Born at first light. She is very small, but I think she will live.’

‘What did this lot pay you with?’

Tilla’s smile was triumphant. ‘Guess.’

He glanced around the bare little room. Tilla’s skills as a midwife had been less in demand since the start of the rebellion. Most of the sensible locals had fled at the height of the troubles last year, dragging their wide-eyed children by the hand, burdened with cooking pots and blankets and hens in baskets. Those who remained paid her in whatever way they could manage. Eggs and apples were always useful. The first smelly fleece had been bartered for a new pair of boots: the second was still stashed away in a sack under the bed. There were no new offerings on display.

‘It’s not another goat, is it?’

‘No, but I can buy a goat if I want. Look!’ She untied her purse. Shiny bronze coins cascaded on to the bed. ‘All earned by working!’ she added.

He was pleased. Tilla had never fully subscribed to his own view that it was wrong to help oneself to other people’s property, but at least she seemed to have learned to respect it. The money was only small change, but he picked up one of the coins to admire it all the same. Within seconds all thoughts of congratulation had gone. He said, ‘Oh, hell.’

‘No, they are real.’

‘I don’t doubt they’re real.’ He passed her the coin. ‘Look at the back of it. Not Hadrian’s head, the other side.’

‘Is that supposed to be a woman?’

‘It says BRITANNIA. Have you ever seen a coin like that before?’

‘No.’

Neither had he. It was very obviously fresh from the mint, and the only way it could have reached here was on the ambushed wagon.

He cleared his throat. ‘It’s my duty to ask who gave you this money, Tilla.’

There was no need to explain: the news of the stolen pay chest had been impossible to suppress. Finally she said, ‘What if I do not tell you?’

He had to say it. ‘If you refuse to tell me, it will be my duty to report this to HQ.’

A cart with a squeaking wheel was passing outside the window. When the sound had faded down the street she said, ‘I will not tell you.’

‘I never thought you would.’ He reached for the crutches. ‘I’m going to talk to Valens. When I get back, either you or that money will have to be gone. If you’re still here, we’ll start packing to go home.’