Tabula Rasa

Chapter 77

The Twentieth Legion finally left for Deva on a blustery day in mid-November. While her husband was busy getting his patients loaded onto transport for the journey, Tilla ran down to the farm to say a last good-bye. When she started to cry, Senecio told her she must go with her husband: What was the point of all that effort to bless their marriage otherwise? But his words were blurred: He was weeping too.

She found Conn down in the bottom field checking on the sheep. “Twenty-three?” he said, asking her to confirm.

She counted, trying to mark their positions as they shifted about. “No . . . yes.” They both tried again to make sure. Then she said, “I want you to know something. It was not me who called the army when you took the soldiers to the hut, nor that skinny one who hurt his ankle.”

Instead of arguing, Conn said, “I know. Cata’s mother said you wouldn’t have had time.”

“Perhaps they were just passing.”

He shook his head. “I think we have an informer. I don’t know who it is, but that is not the first time the soldiers have known things they shouldn’t.”

She started to ask, “But who-” and then realized she did not want to know.

“I’ll find out,” he promised. “Somebody will be sorry.”

“You could try not doing anything worth the telling.”

The smile transformed his face.

She said, “And you could try smiling more often.”

“You should have met my brother Dubnus. You’d have liked him better.”

She said, “I shall learn to like you well enough. Find a wife, Conn. The old man will not last forever, and he wants grandchildren.”

“Any more orders?”

“I will be back with more in the spring,” she promised.

Pertinax swung himself toward the hospital wagon on his crutches, telling his anxious helpers to stop circling round him like bloody vultures: He wasn’t dead yet.

His daughter turned to Ruso and said, “Valens says you haven’t bought a horse with my money.”

“I’m still deciding,” he told her.

“He says you’ve never bought a horse in all the years he’s known you.”

“I’m taking some time to choose,” he admitted. “I’ll pay you back in Deva if I don’t go ahead.”

Serena shook her head. “You always were indecisive, Ruso. I don’t know how your wife puts up with- Not that way, Pa! Turn around! ”

Watching Pertinax pause and then shuffle round in a circle to park his backside on the floor of the wagon, Ruso said, “I’m not quite sure myself.”

“I don’t know how she puts up with that girl, either.”

Ruso glanced across the street to see Virana hurrying toward them. Her baby daughter was swathed in a thick golden blanket that had been a gift from . . . he still found it hard to refer to them as “Tilla’s family.” He was ashamed to say it, but she had been exclusively his for so long that he was jealous.

“Virana’s a friend,” he said. “She’s not coming back to Deva,” he added, with no pleasure. “She’s going home.” He had insisted they stick to her agreed departure date, but no matter how annoying she could be, he would miss her cheerful smile, her willingness to work, and her unwavering loyalty. And Tilla would miss the baby, because Tilla always found it hard to part with babies. She was, in that respect, the worst possible person to be a midwife. She had tried to channel her efforts into medicine for the sick and injured, but the babies kept coming and somebody had to deliver them.

He had no idea what Virana was doing in the fort, or who she had charmed on the gate to gain access. “Is everything all right?”

“I must talk to you, master.”

Ruso turned away from Pertinax, who had managed to bottom-shuffle his way into the wagon and was swearing because he had dropped one of his crutches in the street. Ruso now took little notice of his complaining. He had looked Ruso in the eye after Branan’s return and said, “Good man.” Ruso had left the room feeling three feet taller.

Virana said, “It’s about your wedding present for the mistress.”

“I haven’t organized one yet,” he confessed.

“I know. And I have spoken with Albanus, and we both think it is a good idea. But he says I must ask you first because you might say no, and then the mistress would be upset.”

He hoped whatever it was would not be expensive. He still had yet to find a way to recoup the cost of all the drinks and pastries the locals had enjoyed at Ria’s.

Virana held up the baby toward him. It was, like most babies, small and round and pink. It had wispy dark hair and a thin red scratch on its nose, probably made with its own fingernails. It smelled of milk and baby and nothing else at the moment, and it seemed to be asleep. It was, in short, as good as a baby was likely to get.

“Very nice,” he said, because he never knew what to say about babies.

“Your wife loves her very much already. She is no trouble. And if it was not for you, I don’t know where I would be.”

Tears welled up in the girl’s eyes as she was saying something about Tilla finding a nurse for the journey, and when she stopped talking he had no idea what else she had said or what to say in reply. Then she thrust the baby at him and he had to grab hold and press it against his chest for fear of dropping it, which meant that when she ran for the gates he could not give chase. He could only shout, “Virana, come back!”

She stopped, calling, “Will you look after her?”

“Don’t go!”

“Will you?”

“We’ll bring her to visit!”

Gods above, what was he saying? A man didn’t take on a child like he might a stray dog. He had to give it thought, to consider all the options, to find a suitable baby, to make preparations. To talk to his wife, although he already knew what Tilla would say.

“Virana!”

“Albanus will know where to find me!”

The shouting woke the baby up and it began to cry. He was wondering what to do with it when Serena climbed down from the hospital wagon and said, “Well! And Valens swore it was nothing to do with you! Hold its head, for goodness’ sake. Don’t you know anything?”

The baby was such a shock that he did not tell his wife about the other thing until the wide expanses of the border country were a distant memory and they were almost within sight of the familiar red walls of Deva. Tilla was sitting in the back of a wagon, cradling the baby, and the wet nurse had gone to see her man, who was an armorer with the first cohort.

Ruso said lightly, “The tribune’s being recalled to Rome in the spring.”

Tilla response of “Mm” made it plain she did not much care.

“He says he may need a good man.”

She looked up. “A doctor?”

“With some other duties. He’ll have a big household. He’ll be going into politics . . . or whatever they do after they come out of the army and before they get to be senators.”

“I hope he finds the right man, then. Politics is not for you.”

“It would be a chance to see Rome.”

“I have just found my family! And we have little Mara!”

“I know,” he said. “We have all winter to think it over.”

She kissed the baby’s fuzzy head. “Rome is very hot,” she warned, in that way she had of talking to the baby when she wanted to say something her husband might not want to hear. “And noisy, and crowded, and smelly. And full of criminals. Would you like to go there?”

“Or would you like to stay in Britannia in the rain?” Ruso asked her.

“It would be leaving everything I know behind,” Tilla said.

“We don’t have to go.”

“But then,” she added, “a lot of what I thought I knew was wrong anyway.”

Ruso grinned.

“That missing tooth shows when you smile.”

“Are you complaining?”

“Never,” said Tilla. “Well . . . only sometimes.”