Semper Fidelis

Chapter 24

Virana said, “It was here.”

Tilla stood on the edge of the landing stage and watched the river drifting past the heavy oak posts below her. At the moment it would be a tricky jump down into the little flat-bottomed boat moored up with its ropes at full stretch. The ferryman assured her that in a few hours the boat would have risen and it would be an easy step.

Leaving Virana to chatter to the ferryman-both seemed flattered by the attention-Tilla tried to picture the scene when the centurion had ordered two of his men to swim across. She had been nervous when the wagon driver’s mules had stopped on the ford in mid-river. The two recruits would have been contending with much deeper water and no animals or vehicle to hold them steady. What had the centurion been thinking? That a man thrown into fast-flowing water would suddenly discover that he could swim? It might work with dogs, although even that was doubtful. It had not worked for Dannicus.

She was pondering the stupidity of the order when shrill screaming cut across her thoughts. It was not a scream of anger or excitement. It was the relentless, terrified, out-of-control shrieking of a child in serious trouble.

Tilla hitched up her skirts and ran toward the sound, with Virana following her up the street toward the east gate, shouting, “Wait for me!”

People were already clustering around the shop. A sheep’s carcass swung wildly beneath the awning as a mostly female crowd elbowed past the cheeses and cabbages. From somewhere inside, the child’s cries rose above a woman’s wailing and shouts of “Put him in the river!” and “Fetch a healer!”

“The washing cauldron,” a woman was announcing as Tilla pushed her way toward the front. The listeners gasped in sympathy. “Boiling linen all over himself, poor little beggar. Scalded like a pig.”

Tilla stopped. She was not a medicus. She was just someone who delivered babies as best she could for women who knew they were in danger anyway. She had thought that nothing could be worse than the sight of those warriors hacked apart by the army. She had been wrong. Boiling linen all over himself. Scalded like a pig.

She was not a medicus, and she did not want to be one.

“The doctor’s woman is here!” cried Virana.

Other voices took up the cry. “The doctor’s woman!”

“Let her through!”

Hands reached out to seize her. She was hustled forward.

She opened her mouth to explain that she was not what they needed, but nobody was listening.

This is like helping to bring out a baby. Stay calm. Keep your mind on what needs to be done. Do not be put off by the screaming. And never, ever show that you are afraid too.

“Corinna, the doctor’s woman is here!”

Tilla paused in the doorway, glimpsing a small struggling form between the cluster of women gathered around it. She took a deep breath. She was not what they needed, but for the moment she was all they had.

“Everyone out!” she yelled over the din.

Nobody moved.

She seized two of the women who had been pushing her forward. “You, clear the room except for the child’s mother. You, send to the fort for Medical Officer Gaius Petreius Ruso and tell him his wife needs help with a scalded child.”

“I’ll go,” insisted a third woman. “She’s too fat to run.”

“What?” demanded the plump one. “I’m not-”

“Water,” Tilla told her. “We need lots of cold water-quickly. And then the whites of eggs.” And then a miracle.

She began to shake only when it was all over and she was sitting on the faded red cushion back in their quiet room in the mansio.

“You did well,” he said.

She watched the surface of the water tremble as she lifted the cup. “I wanted to run away.”

“So would anyone.”

She let him think he had said something comforting. She did not tell him about her wavering resolve to become a medicus. He would have stayed no matter what he felt like doing. She had only stayed because she’d had no choice: Virana had announced her. She said, “If he really had been scalded all over, what would I have done?”

“Exactly the same as you did.”

“He would be dying now.”

He said, “Yes.”

“That neighbor needs a good slap for telling lies.”

Her husband did not seem to share her outrage. “People panic.”

In a better light Tilla had been able to see the angry red scald down one side of the struggling child’s leg, and secretly rejoiced at the healthy skin everywhere else.

She knew her husband had worried about putting too much poppy inside such a small body, and then about not giving enough to dull the pain. Whatever he did, the child would not feel as lucky as he undoubtedly was. The mother, who lived next door, had been baking and did not want him near the oven, so she had left him playing in the yard. He had crawled under the gate into the back of the shop and tried to stir the washing cauldron.

She put the cup down. “I do not like this place.”

“I don’t think anybody likes this place.” He pulled off the tunic that was splattered with water and the egg white they had smoothed over the angry red skin.

“Your Jupiter has not defeated the curse.”

“There is no curse, Tilla. Just a mother who didn’t know her child could get under a gate.”

“Corinna has many things on her mind,” Tilla explained. “She is the wife of Victor, who deserted.”

“That explains it, then. She’s distracted.”

“Did you know people are saying your centurion drowned one of his men?”

When she had finished telling him, he carried on buckling his belt in silence. Then he said, “Your secret informer-it wasn’t the scalded-like-a-pig woman, was it?”

“No!”

“But this person didn’t see it happen.”

“Lots of people saw it. My informer says they are too scared to talk.”

Instead of answering, he pulled the tunic straight, then bowed his head and ran both hands through his hair several times as if that would improve it.

She said, “Why would somebody make up things like that?”

“Why,” he said, “would a centurion deliberately drown his own man in front of witnesses?”

“You don’t believe me?”

“I didn’t say that. But they might not have understood what they saw. And it’s none of our business. I’m not an investigator now.”

“Be careful of that man.”

He picked up his case. “I need to get back. I’ve got a critical patient to keep an eye on.”

“I will pray for him.”

“Tell the gods his name is Austalis.” He leaned forward and kissed the top of her head. “You did well with the boy.”

“What will you do about the centurion?”

“I’ll think about it.” He paused in the doorway. “What festival did you miss while we were on the road here?”

She frowned. “Festival?”

“Some native tradition, or a god of some sort? Might have something to do with hunting?”

“I have not heard of it.”

“Ah. Just for men, perhaps.”

She wanted to say, And you think that means a woman would not know of it? but he was gone.