Tabula Rasa

Chapter 42

Getting the old man under cover was not easy, but Ruso finally managed to persuade Senecio that nobody would see his protest in the dark. The deep arch of the east gateway was not exactly indoors, so he could honorably shelter there from the rain and wind. This led in turn to an argument with the watch captain, who was afraid the old man might open the gates to hordes of murderous tribesmen under the cover of darkness.

Ruso’s “Not unless your lads go to sleep” did not go down well.

With Senecio installed under the glare of the torches and of the watch captain, Ruso went to raid the hospital stores.

It seemed Doctor Valens had arrived earlier, dealt with a couple of casualties, and headed over to the centurion’s house to introduce himself. Ruso went down to the office to get the key to the bedding store and check for messages, took one look at Nisus still stoically pounding leaves into green pulp by lamplight, and remembered, “Figs!”

“Figs, sir,” agreed Nisus in a tone that suggested he might as well have asked for the golden apples of the Hesperides, because he would have stood about as much chance of getting them.

“I’ll go for them in a minute,” Ruso promised. He needed to try Fabius’s kitchen anyway. The hospital cook, having been told that Doctor Ruso was no longer on duty, had fed his dinner to a friend’s dog.

Nisus went back to pounding.

Ruso was less of a disappointment to the new clerk. Gracilis looked pleased to be complimented on the reduction of the former shambles to two small piles of documents on the desk and one large one propped against the wall behind Pandora’s cupboard. Observing that the door handles were no longer tied shut, Ruso wondered if the man had removed half the contents and burned them, and noted with mild interest that he no longer cared.

“If you have a moment, sir? Just one or two queries.”

“I’m not really on duty here now,” Ruso told him, reaching up to where the key hung on a nail. “You need to ask Doctor Valens.”

Gracilis, a man who could wrestle order out of chaos, was not going to be put off that easily. “He won’t know the answers, sir.”

“I’m on the way to see the tribune,” Ruso explained. “But I’ll have a quick look.”

Gracilis’s one or two queries turned out to be only a fraction of the large Ask the Doctor pile behind him. Apart from the usual difficulty in deciphering handwriting, he needed advice on how to deal with one man who seemed to have three different names, three men with the same name but different conditions, and several conditions with no name at all or some tantalizingly useless piece of information such as Bed XI. Had they not been in his own handwriting, Ruso would have sworn he had never seen most of them before. Some wax tablets contained two sets of records: the top one apparently created by Candidus and below it the remains of the one he had half obliterated in order to have something to write on. If any of them held the name of the mystery man Candidus had set out to meet, it was impossible to know which. Ruso set aside four difficult questions, resolved three easy ones, deduced that Bed IV Wobbly Legs was carpentry rather than medicine, and promised to take a proper look before long.

His raid on the hospital stores produced a couple of clean blankets and a reasonably clean straw mattress, which he lugged over to the east gate. “You gave me hospitality,” he explained. “Now it is my turn.”

Senecio made no attempt to take them. “Why should I have a comfortable bed when my son has none?”

“Because,” Ruso said, his patience giving way, “if you do not stay warm, your son will have no father, either. Use the mattress and put those blankets around you. We have enough to worry about already.”

Accius need not have worried about his dinner: His cook was indeed at the fort and was now in Fabius’s kitchen, poking at something that crackled and spat back at him over the hot coals. Meanwhile Fabius’s cook had his back to him and was hacking up carrots with a force that suggested they had just insulted his mother. Both glanced up to see who had come in, ascertained that it was nobody important, and went back to the tasks of sharing a kitchen and ignoring one another. Ruso was put in mind of two cats pretending not to notice each other rather than fight. He was wondering how best to scrounge both figs and dinner when he heard a familiar voice saying, “Allow me!” To his left, the door swung open and revealed a beaming Valens. Tottering in beneath his outstretched arm was Fabius’s kitchen maid clutching a tray of dirty crockery.

“Lovely girl,” Valens observed as the crockery was placed on the table. “Just served me the most marvelous spiced pork. I had no idea you lived so well over here.”

“We manage,” Ruso told him, wishing he had arrived earlier.

“Any news about the boy?”

“None.”

“Your centurion’s offered me a very decent room. Come and see.”

The reason Valens wanted to show him a very plain bedroom with a damp stain under the window and a dead wasp on the sill only became clear when they were alone. Valens heaved one of his bags of luggage off the bed and indicated a trunk for Ruso to sit on. “I saw the father out there. I’d say his mind’s going.”

“He’s desperate.”

“If somebody took one of my boys . . .”

“He’s too lame to go out searching,” Ruso explained. “He’s exercising the last freedom left to him: the freedom to be bloody awkward. Have someone keep an eye on him overnight, will you?”

Valens nodded. “You need to make sure somebody knows about the patients I saw just now. One’s a Ninth Batavian with a broken nose and bruising. He’s gone back to his quarters.”

Ruso waited to be told why anyone should care about a Ninth Batavian’s nose.

“He was taking a shortcut to join up with the Epiacum road and got stopped by a bunch of natives who wanted to search his vehicle in case he had the missing boy in there.”

“Why didn’t he just let them?”

“Some of the load was his own. He thought they were thieves.”

Ruso sighed.

“I’ve also admitted a blow to the left temple who started vomiting. That was a Briton-on-Briton fight. Somebody looked at somebody’s wife the wrong way over a water fountain.”

“They’re fighting each other?”

“Different tribes,” Valens explained. “Three locals against a lad from somewhere in the south who’s serving with the Legion. From what I can gather, the Southerners hold the view that the tribes here are like herds of wild animals.”

“I believe so.”

“The locals accused him of being soft and collaborating with child stealers. I’m told the locals are going around armed with sticks, allegedly for beating down vegetation while they search for the boy they think we’ve stolen.”

Ruso shook his head. How had things got so out of control so quickly? It was like the landslide: The underlying situation must have been far more unstable than anyone suspected.

“Oh, and your centurion wanted to tell me about his palpitations.”

Ruso looked at him blankly. Palpitations were one of the few symptoms he could not recall Fabius ever mentioning.

“He also said that you don’t listen and just tell him there’s nothing wrong with him.”

“What’s wrong with him,” Ruso explained, “is that he reads medical books.”

“I thought so.”

“So what did you tell him?”

“I gave him an examination that left no possibility unexplored.”

“I’m sure that pleased him.”

“Then I told him he was a fascinating case and in the circumstances he’s lucky to be alive at all.”

Ruso said, “Considering the amount of medicinal wine he’s drunk, that’s true.”

“He thinks I’m marvelous.”

“You won’t feel so marvelous when he drops in for a diagnosis in the middle of the night. Why do you think I refused to share this place with him?”

“Ah, but he won’t. I’ve told him that the latest thinking is completely different to anything he’s heard before. His only hope is to build himself up with lots of fresh air and exercise during daylight and rest in his bed throughout the hours of darkness. For a man like him, indoor air during the day is poison.”

“What did he say?”

“He did look a bit stunned,” Valens confessed. “But he said he was very grateful and he wished he’d consulted me before.”

“If that fails, try putting him in a room with your father-in-law. That should buck him up.”

Valens grimaced at the mention of Pertinax. “I’ll go and see him in a minute,” he promised. “Incidentally, in between symptoms, Fabius told me how difficult it was to find out where all his men were yesterday now that some chap called Daminius has been confined to working in the quarry.”

“He’s Fabius’s optio,” Ruso explained, “and he’s confined for his own protection, in case the natives get hold of him. He’s a useful man. That’s how Fabius has got away with doing next to nothing for so long.”

“The optio’s fallen out with the natives?”

Ruso explained about the search party and the list of alibis.

“It must be this Daminius. You’ve discounted everybody else.”

Ruso scratched one ear with his forefinger. “If I were intending to commit a crime, I’d make sure I could prove I wasn’t there at the time.”

“Perhaps he did it on the spur of the moment.”

“Perhaps it isn’t him. And perhaps he genuinely didn’t stop to talk to anyone.”

“So if it’s not him, who is it?”

“If I knew that,” said Ruso, getting to his feet and feeling a sudden pang of hunger, “I wouldn’t be here. In fact, I shouldn’t be here anyway.” He paused in the doorway. “It’s good of you to come over. I appreciate it.”

Valens grinned. “Just occasionally, I like to confound the wife’s low opinion of me. Meanwhile, if there’s anything else I can do, just say.”

The loss of the boy seemed to have brought out a sudden generosity in Valens. Perhaps the impending arrival of his wife had helped. It occurred to Ruso that he might as well benefit from this magnanimous mood while it lasted. “Our pharmacist’s running short on figs for cough mixture,” he said. “And I haven’t had any dinner. Do you think you could charm something out of the kitchen?”