Tabula Rasa

Chapter 14

Somebody needed to grease those hinges. They sounded like two flocks of seagulls having a fight. Or like a set of hefty gates in the charge of some very sloppy soldiers. They shouldn’t be closed before curfew, either.

Ruso, returning from afternoon rounds at the camp, was about to shout when two shawled figures seemed to detach themselves from the fort wall and hurried toward him. Behind them, the screech of iron on stone died away.

“There you are!” cried the slimmer of the two women in a cloud of frosted breath. Ruso stared at them. “What are you two doing here?”

His wife stabbed a finger toward the gates. “I am here because those men will not let me in!”

“And I am here because the mistress is very upset,” said Virana, taking Tilla’s arm as if she needed physical as well as moral support. “The people at the farm were nasty to her.”

The guards saluted from beneath the archway, but they were taking no chances. “Password, sir!”

Stepping forward, he murmured, “Morning star,” to the guards and then returned to his wife. “There’s a security alert,” he explained, secretly relieved that Tilla’s short friendship with the local family seemed to be over. “They won’t let anyone in. You should have left a message.”

“This is too important for writing down!” Tilla insisted. “I am shamed! Why are you sending soldiers to Senecio’s house?”

“I haven’t . . .” Even as he denied it, light dawned.

Tilla said, “They are looking for your clerk and taking names and burning people’s farms down!”

“They’re what?”

“They are burning houses!” insisted Virana. “Did you not see the smoke in the sky?”

“They searched the houses and the cow barn,” said Tilla. “They knocked over the loom and the fire irons and licked the honey spoon and drank the beer and broke some eggs. They said they might set fire to everything. If I had not told them I was your wife, who knows what they would have done? And then they told everybody that you had ordered them to do it!”

“Are you sure it wasn’t Daminius and the boys from the quarry? They’re-”

“You see! You do know about it! What were you thinking? You eat at their hearth, the old man offers the honor of a blessing, and now you send soldiers to insult him!”

“The mistress is very upset!” Virana seemed to have run out of new things to say.

The trumpet finally wailed the curfew from beyond the ramparts. The guards, too far away to hear the conversation, were enjoying the sight of their medical officer being harangued by two outraged women. “There’s been some trouble,” he explained. “One of our plumbers has been kidnapped and knocked about by the locals. Albanus’s nephew is still missing and I’m worried the same thing’s happened to him. I need to be sure he isn’t-”

“Albanus’s nephew is not in Senecio’s house!”

“No,” he agreed, scratching one ear and wondering whether he ought to go over there and apologize. “But the burning was nothing to do with me. That was punishment for the kidnappers.”

“But it is to do with you, husband! It was the house of Senecio’s sister and they were invited to our wedding blessing and the daughter is one of my patients!”

“Oh, gods above!” He felt his shoulders drop. “Wife, why did you get yourself involved with these people?”

“Conn went over to try and help. The houses are gone. All their winter stores are burned or stolen and the land has been salted. Conn found no bodies, but in the burning, who knows?”

Recalling the size of the force leaving the camp this morning, he said, “They probably saw our men coming and ran away.”

“And if they are not dead, how will they live through the winter with no stores?”

He was not going to attempt to answer that one.

“And then Senecio’s house is full of soldiers, and when I ask them to stop making a mess, they say you sent them!”

“I came with the mistress to find you,” put in Virana. “We came but you were not here!” Evidently she felt this compounded his guilt.

He hoped that at least their potential wedding guests had been the real culprits. It was entirely possible that the centurion in charge, having failed to find the guilty natives, had allowed his men to wreak revenge on the nearest ones instead. But he could not say that in front of either of these women. “We didn’t start this,” he said. “One of our men was attacked.”

Tilla said, “What did they do to him?”

“I can’t discuss it.” He was still puzzled by the nature of Regulus’s injuries, but leaving a naked man hanging upside down in a tree was an insult that could not be ignored.

She said, “What is his name?”

“His name? What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Do you know it?”

“Regulus.”

To his surprise, his wife bowed her head and covered her face with her hands. “No, no!” she was saying. “I told them to wait; I told them-”

A wave of guilty relief swept over him. “You knew they were planning this?”

She looked up. “Of course not! But I know of this man. His woman is my patient. They argued. He knocked her down-this is not the first time-and kicked her and stamped on her fingers. I told her to leave him. I told the family to put in an official complaint to his centurion.”

“And did they?” He very much hoped not, because he could not imagine Fabius doing anything useful about it. Already he was seeing Regulus’s injuries from a new perspective.

“I do not know.”

“I don’t remember you telling me about this patient.”

Tilla pulled her shawl tighter around her shoulders. “I did not tell you.”

That was good. He was afraid it might have been another of those times where he wasn’t really listening.

“I did not tell you because when I tried to help that family who had their goat stolen, you told me you are not a messenger boy for disgruntled natives.”

He took a long breath. Valens was right: Women’s memories really did have a special place for storing up phrases they might want to fling back at you later. He said, “Well, you did the right thing.”

“I have told Senecio you will apologize.”

“I see.”

“It is a great insult, master!” repeated Virana. “If you do not make things right, there might be no wedding blessing!”

It was a tempting prospect. “Aren’t you supposed to be at work?”

Virana, as usual, had an answer. “Everybody has gone home early. Because of the curfew.”

Reminded, he said, “You should both get inside. I’ll walk you back to the bar.”

Tilla turned her back on him. “We can find our own way. It is only a hundred paces.”

He was not going to leave it like that. He called to the guards that he would be back in a moment. As he said it a late delivery cart rolled up, so the men had something more useful to do than grumble behind his back about officers who couldn’t make their minds up.

Meanwhile, Tilla’s frosty silence made the hundred paces seem more like a thousand. He made an unwise effort to break it with, “What was I supposed to do, tell them not to go to that particular farm because I’ve eaten there?” But if she knew the answer to that, she chose not to divulge it.