Tabula Rasa

Chapter 29

One of the many disadvantages of having a minuscule HQ building was the lack of privacy. A bemused Daminius was sent to wait in the clerk’s office and the three Britons were left under guard in Fabius’s room while Ruso and Fabius glanced around the corridor, agreed that they might be overheard, and banished themselves to the middle of the street outside to hold a hurried conversation. The air was still pulsating with the angry chant from the Britons beyond the walls. Ruso tried to shut it out of his mind. “We have to take this seriously,” he said. “What the old man is saying makes sense.”

“This is absurd!” Fabius kept glancing over at the gates as if he was expecting wild natives to burst through them at any moment. “Why would Daminius have anything to do with stealing a child?”

“They’re not saying it’s him personally,” Ruso pointed out. “They’re saying he’s one of the eight men it could be.”

“I should never have left the Sixth,” muttered Fabius. “The gods have sent me nothing but bad luck ever since. Terrible weather, bodies in the wall, men kidnapped and tortured, natives complaining. No wonder I’m ill. I should never have listened to you about that missing clerk.”

“We need to check up on all the men who’ve met the boy,” said Ruso, wondering if he had been deliberately paired with Fabius by some senior officer whom he had managed to annoy.

The centurion lifted his head. “Can you hear that? Thanks to you, we’ve become a target for native revenge!”

“If you’d been sober enough to discipline Regulus properly in the first place, none of this would have happened!”

“It was you who prescribed the wine, Doctor!”

They stood glaring at each other in the street. Finally Ruso said, “This is getting us nowhere. We need the names of everyone on that search party straightaway, and we need to check where they were yesterday afternoon.”

“This is beyond our level. I’m not doing anything without authorization.”

“You don’t need authorization to talk to your own men. Get Daminius to give you the names, keep him here, and have the others rounded up.”

“But-”

Their conversation was interrupted by the arrival of the watch captain needing further orders on how to deal with the fifty or so Britons making that racket outside the south gate.

Fabius, whose job it was to give those orders, looked at Ruso and the watch captain and the closed gates as if searching for some hint about how to proceed. Ruso hoped he was not going to do something stupid. He wished the Britons would shut up. They were not helping.

Fabius asked if they were armed.

“Just a few farm tools, sir.” The watch captain’s growl made him sound more authoritative than his centurion. “And they’ve got women and children and old people out there.”

Fabius looked relieved. “Just ignore them unless they attack.”

The watch captain, who might have been hoping that his centurion would take charge of the situation, left with the paltry consolation that whatever went wrong from now on, everyone would know it was Fabius’s fault.

“Daminius is a decent man,” Ruso continued when the watch captain was out of earshot. “He’ll want to help you catch a child snatcher.”

“If there is one,” snapped Fabius. “If this isn’t some plot the natives have cooked up between them. Taking revenge on your ill-judged search party. I’ve had enough of your bright ideas, Ruso. I want some authorization. We’ll need to get a message through to the camp.”

“I’ll do that,” Ruso promised, wondering why Fabius was talking as if the fort were under siege. Since the riot outside the south gate could be seen from the main road, it was more likely to be the officers at the camp who were under siege, surrounded by passersby now clamoring to tell them about the excitement. “I’m going across there for a clinic anyway.”

Fabius’s eyes widened. “If you go out there, I can’t promise my men can protect you.”

“It’s only a rabble of native families,” Ruso assured him, wondering as he said it whether people had assumed the same thing about Boudica and her warriors. “If we send the father and brother home with a promise of action, they’ll probably disperse.”

“And if they don’t?”

“They’ve got children with them,” said Ruso, who was not going to encourage any hint of using force. “I doubt they’ll want to stay long.” He hoped he was right. It made sense to him that any self-respecting mother would want to get her children home for supper and bedtime. The trouble was, women-even self-respecting ones-did not always behave in the way one predicted. “Can you get Daminius’s search party assembled for questioning and make sure they don’t talk to anybody?”

“You seem to think I’m some sort of incompetent, Ruso.”

“Can you?”

“Of course.”

“Good. By then I’ll have spoken to the tribune and we’ll know what he wants us to do.”

With luck, it would be something useful.