Tabula Rasa

Chapter 20

Tilla cupped her hands and blew on them to warm them before calling again. Finally a man appeared from behind the house and told her that her patient, the young woman with the week-old baby, was not at home.

“But I have walked here. She knew I would be here today.”

The man shrugged. “She must have forgotten.”

On the way back, Tilla barely noticed the ivy in bloom, nor the rose hips, nor the puddle until she stepped in it. By the time she was back at Ria’s bar, the cold had spread beyond the leaks in her boots, and her damp socks were beginning to rub blisters on her toes.

“Nobody came for you, mistress!” Virana called as Tilla hurried past on the way to the loft in search of fresh footwear.

Wearing dry socks and her indoor shoes-she had indoor and outdoor shoes now: such luxury!-she returned to the bar carrying a scroll and her box of medicines. Then, keeping her shawl on, she sat by the entrance, nursing a warm cup of honeyed milk. She opened the scroll and began to run her forefinger along the letters, mouthing them softly to herself, putting the unfamiliar sequences together until they shaped themselves into words.

“These are necessary observances for the healthy person to take during pestilence.”

The best advice was to go abroad. Failing that, it was wise to be carried in a litter. After that there was a long list of instructions that included avoiding fatigue and not getting up early in the morning.

It was ridiculous. What normal person could do more than dream of any of those things? It was very difficult to learn anything from a book when she was constantly wanting to argue with its author.

She looked up hopefully as each customer came into the bar, but only two patients wanted to share her table for a quiet chat. One was a soldier’s girl worried about her baby’s cough, and the other a slave of a passing jeweler whose injured hand needed a fresh dressing. Neither was really a job for a medicus. Anyone with any common sense could have dealt with them.

She told herself it had been a quiet morning everywhere. Nobody wanted to go out in the cold. The fact that she had seen no local patients might have nothing to do with yesterday afternoon. Surely word could not have got around so quickly. Did everyone know she was the wife of a Roman who had sent men to search and threaten to burn down a house where he had been a guest?

She forced herself to struggle on with the scroll. So far it had been useless but it seemed to impress the patients, and besides, it was the only medical book her husband owned that was not in Greek. But even on a good day, she would have had trouble keeping her mind on this nonsense. Today it was hopeless. The letters kept sliding about in front of her eyes, her finger lost its place, and her careful mouthing of the words died away.

The first thing Enica and Conn and the others would do, she was sure, was to rush and tell all their friends about the outrages the army had caused: the burning of Cata’s family farm, which everyone would know about, and then the insult to their own home and family that had followed.

She released the edge of the scroll and let it roll back on itself. Then she tightened the roll, tied it, and slid it back into its case. She was not a Roman: Why try to look like one? She was not a local anymore, either. That had been made clear yesterday. At first she had thought there must be some terrible mistake, but the soldier had insisted that he really had been sent out to search by her husband. There was no point in trying to lie: The family understood enough Latin to know what he had said. She could do nothing but apologize and leave as fast as possible, and she knew they were glad she was gone.

There was a chilly draft here. No longer needing the light to read, she pulled her shawl tighter around her shoulders and carried her milk across to a table by the fire that had just been abandoned by a couple of men who looked like messengers of some sort. Then she sat there wondering what she would do all day now if none of her local patients trusted her anymore.

She would be glad to get back to Deva, where almost everyone was a foreigner and most people were either in the army or there because of it. Living in a place like this was much harder if you did not know exactly who you were any longer. The farmers could blame the army for everything that went wrong. The army could blame the farmers. She was caught in the middle, trying to make her husband understand what a terrible insult it was to mistrust people who had welcomed you to their hearth, and to explain to Senecio . . . Senecio had not wanted to listen to her. “You have made your choice, child,” he said. That was what had upset her the most. The old man and his family wanted nothing to do with her now. One of the last links with her parents was gone.

“You look sad, mistress. Shall I bring you some more milk?”

Tilla shook her head.

“I don’t suppose there will be a wedding blessing now, will there, mistress?”

“Have you no work to do, Virana?”

“Everybody’s served, mistress, and there’s nothing to wash yet. Is that why you’re sad: because that old man won’t give you a wedding blessing? Or is it because nobody wants to see you?”

Tilla put her head into her hands. “Virana, ask Ria to find you something to do. If she can’t, go and put your feet up. I have a headache.”

“I’m sorry, mistress. Can I help?”

“No, thank you. I’m going upstairs to have a sleep.”

Upstairs, Tilla pulled the cover over herself to keep warm in the chilly air of the loft. She lay back and listened to the timbers creaking in the wind.

Virana was right, of course. It was only two nights to Samain and she had to face the fact that there would be no wedding blessing. She needed to send a message to her cousin at Coria withdrawing the invitation. Perhaps she should take the news herself. It would be good to get out of here. It would mean two whole days away, though, unless she could get a fast horse. And there were still a few local patients she had promised to see.

She would stay. It was up to the patients whether they decided to come or not. In a couple of weeks she would be back in Deva. In the meantime she would not have anyone say that she had run away out of shame.

She arched her back and wriggled around a lump in the mattress. She would send the message to Aemilia tomorrow. Meanwhile she would lie here with her pretended headache, trying to stifle the memory of her mother’s voice. Nobody likes a girl who feels sorry for herself, Daughter of Lugh!

“I am not Daughter of Lugh anymore,” she whispered into the empty room. “I am Tilla, Roman citizen, wife of Gaius Petreius Ruso, a man from overseas who is very annoying. And do not tell me what you think of that, Mam, because I can guess.”