Tabula Rasa

Chapter 44

“I can’t make him go indoors, Tilla!”

“You are the army!” She leaned forward in the bed and retrieved the pillow from behind her. “It is your job to make people do things they do not want to do!” As if to illustrate how this was done, she gave the pillow a couple of hefty punches. “Why else are you here?”

Ruso’s left boot landed with a clump on the floorboards. “You complain when we don’t respect local wishes.” He tugged at the laces of the right boot and dropped it beside its partner. “And then you don’t like it when we do.” He aimed his socks into the dark beyond-the-lamp oblivion of the corner where he had stowed Candidus’s shield.

“But he is an old man!” She dropped the pillow back into place. “It is cold even in here. He will be dead by morning!”

“Perhaps.” It was not his fault that Senecio was a stubborn old goat.

Tilla looked as though she were about to raise another objection, so he said, “The sky’s clouded over now. It’s not as cold as it could be. Valens will make sure the night staff keep an eye on him.”

Tilla gave the sort of exaggerated sigh that said this would never have been allowed if somebody sensible had been in charge, then asked, “Do you think the army would lend us horses tomorrow?”

“ ‘Us’?”

“Me and Enica. We need to talk to the man who told Virana about the body. We have other names to follow too. We may have to go a long way to find these people.”

He pulled back the covers and slid in beside her. “I’ll ask,” he promised, doubting their efforts would lead to much, but having no better ideas to offer. “Light out?”

Instead of answering the question she said, “It has been a bad day. Did Virana tell you she was insulted?”

“Ah. She was looking a bit weepy when she let me in. She said she was upset about Branan.”

“That too. She said she used to look forward to seeing him.”

“Gods above. Branan?”

“Not like that, husband.”

From somewhere downstairs came the sound of raised voices. Female first, then the rumbling of male resentment. Tilla said, “Ria wants to pack up and move to Deva for the winter when the Legion goes. He wants to stay here where they have always lived.”

More argument from downstairs, the tone clear but the words indistinct. Ruso, who had hurried past Ria with a promise that he would talk about a fee for using the bar in the morning, was not sorry to know she was fully occupied.

“A man and a woman,” Tilla murmured. “It is not easy.”

“Mm,” he said. It seemed the safest thing. “Who insulted Virana?”

“Some local people. That is nothing new. But Conn let it happen.”

He said, “When this is over, we ought to make him apologize.”

In the silence that followed perhaps she too was thinking that if Branan was not found, there would never be a time when this was over.

“If I didn’t think he was fond of his father,” he said, “I’d have Conn first on the list of suspects. Hiding his brother somewhere just to cause trouble.”

Tilla rolled over to face him. “I have wondered this. Whether he is jealous of Branan.”

“The doted-on younger son, clever and popular, and the bitter older half brother . . .”

“His girl snatched away by the army.”

“What girl?”

She said, “Did you not know?” and proceeded to relay what she admitted was gossip about the girl’s rape by a soldier during the troubles, her refusal to have the baby taken away, and a broken betrothal. “They say that is why he is so angry.”

“Even so, why would he do this to his father?”

She said, “For liking Branan better.”

The reasoning made sense. The practicalities did not. “Branan was taken by a soldier.”

“Soldiers can be bribed,” she pointed out. “Or imitated. Perhaps there may be some captured equipment still hidden in secret places after the troubles.”

“Really?”

She said lightly, “Who knows?”

“Well, you do, clearly.”

“Not near here,” she assured him.

He let it pass. “If the soldier wasn’t really a soldier . . .”

“I am just thinking aloud.”

“We’ve got half the Legion chasing around searching, everybody suspecting everybody else, and the officers busy trying to work out where several thousand men were yesterday afternoon. I’d imagine if anything could make a man like Conn happy, that would be it. I’ll see what I can find out.”

“How will you do that?”

He had never told her that Conn was under surveillance, for the very good reason that she was not supposed to know. “Sorry. It’s been a difficult day. I mean, we both need to be aware of it.”

He wondered who was paid to inform on Conn, and whether the security people would be prepared to tell him. Suddenly Tilla said, “There is still no word of Candidus?”

“There’s some hint of him arranging to meet a man he’d seen before, but that could be anybody.”

“What if the same man stole both of them?”

He frowned. “We’ve gone from Conn being jealous to some villain who’s going around, abducting random people.”

She sighed. “Fear is a short rope. Every time I set off toward where Branan might be, I am pulled back by the feeling that I might have just turned my back on him.”

He remembered something else. “We’re checking everyone’s movements, so I suppose I need to confirm that my pharmacist really did go away on leave.”

“Did he know Branan?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Is he the one who said he would kill Candidus?”

“That was a misunderstanding.”

The argument downstairs seemed to have ended. She said, “I keep thinking about Branan.”

“Me too. It’s the not knowing.”

“And the fear that the knowing might be worse,” she said. “I feel as though I am swimming in a soup made of confusion. What does a child stealer look like?”

“If you could tell by looking, we’d have caught him already.”

He pictured Senecio lying out in the cold, worrying about his son. He tried to picture Branan but could not. He saw only the dark shape of the farm dog on the night they had first met, and heard the voice that had greeted him with, Are you the doctor? and then said with relief, Now I can go in out of the rain.

He rolled across to her, wrapping himself around the warmth of her body. “I am sorry things went so wrong with the old man’s family.”

“So am I.”

He was drifting off to sleep when she wriggled.

“The lamp,” she explained, waving an arm across him and trying to reach it.

“I’ll do it.”

He was almost asleep when a thought drifted across the distant horizon of his mind. It vanished as he tried to focus on it, but to his annoyance he found himself awake and alert, convinced it was something important. If only . . . What had he been thinking about just a moment ago?

He didn’t know.

Beside him, his wife stirred and murmured something in her sleep.

It was definitely important. Something he should have queried earlier. If only he could get back to that state of half awareness . . .

By the time he woke, the gray morning light was filtering round the shutter that covered the excuse for a window. His wife was sitting up beside him. She crossed her arms and lifted off her night tunic, shuddering with the cold as she did so. He paused to enjoy the view. Then, when the most interesting parts had vanished under the wrapping of her breast binding, he said, “Tell me again what Virana said about Branan.”