Terra Incognita

18

Ruso returned to the infirmary to find that little had improved in the few hours since he had performed the amputation at the roadside. The carpenter had woken but was weak and incoherent, which did not bode well. He wondered whether he should send for the girlfriend tonight. When Tilla turned up-what was taking her so long? — he would ask her to fetch her.

The malingerers had taken to their beds. Albanus was diligently walling himself into a corner behind stacks of half-sorted record tablets and Gambax was sitting beside the chaotic pharmacy table apparently doing nothing at all.

Ruso beckoned Albanus out from behind the wall. “That can wait,” he said, summoning him out into the corridor. “Go and sort your quarters out and finish the records tomorrow. Otherwise you’re going to end up being given a scrubbing brush.”

Albanus grinned and left. Gambax was still sitting by the pharmacy table as if he was waiting to be told to move.

“Well?”

“I’m stuck, sir.”

Ruso went across and picked up a writing tablet that read, Patients must wash Air Floors and walls Mattresses

“Is this as far as you’ve got?”

“I couldn’t remember the other thing, sir. So I was waiting to ask you. I didn’t want to get it wrong.”

“Bedding,” said Ruso, understanding why centurions were equipped with solid and knobby vine sticks and wondering whether he could borrow one to goad Gambax into action. “Next time, get on with what you can remember.”

Gambax’s “Yes, sir!” made it sound as though Ruso had just made a brilliant suggestion that had never occurred to him before.

“I’ve been to see Doctor Thessalus,” continued Ruso. “He was very confused. Has he been like this before?”

“Confused, sir?”

“Confused,” confirmed Ruso, aware that Gambax’s habit of repeating the question rather than answering it, combined with the secrecy of Thessalus’s confession to murder, was going to make it extremely difficult to find out anything useful.

“I wouldn’t say he was confused, sir. Not really.”

“Was he all right when he was on duty last night?”

Gambax shook his head. “I don’t know, sir. We take turns doing night duty.”

“So when was the last time you saw him, apart from taking his food across?”

“He was all right when we came back from Susanna’s.”

“And that was last night?”

“Yes, sir. It was my birthday. Doctor Thessalus took a few of us out to celebrate. He’s very good to his staff, sir.”

“And when you came back here, was he all right then?”

“I don’t know. I went to my quarters and Doctor Thessalus went out on an emergency call.”

“Out? Outside the fort?”

“I don’t know where,” said Gambax, anticipating the next question. “You’d have to ask him that.”

Ruso managed to establish that an emergency summons from a patient living out in the civilian housing would have to be delivered as a message at one of the fort gates. Beyond that, Gambax’s mind seemed to be as blank as his face. He decided to try a different approach.

“Gambax, do you know anything about Doctor Thessalus and fish?”

The deputy considered this for a moment, then offered, “He’s partial to a bit of fish, sir.”

“He didn’t seem to want to eat it,” said Ruso. “He seemed to want to do something-ah!” He paused, rerunning the conversation in his memory. A fish around the head. A fish on a dish around the head until it’s… “Have you heard of the torpedo fish?”

“I don’t think so, sir.”

“It gives a shock to the nerves. I’ve heard of it being prescribed for headaches. And it’s quite successful with gout, apparently.”

“A fish that gives a shock to the nerves, sir?”

“Yes,” insisted Ruso, aware that he was sounding almost as delusional as his patient.

“Some sort of poison, sir?”

“No, just a sort of-shock. A jolt. Like lightning. Only not as big, obviously.”

“No,” agreed Gambax. “I suppose not. And it’s definitely a fish?”

“Yes,” said Ruso.

“You won’t find it around here, sir.”

“Does he suffer from headaches?”

“Not particularly, sir.”

“Gout?”

“Not as far as I know.”

Ruso scratched one ear. “He must have read about it in a book.”

“I don’t think so, sir,” said Gambax. “We don’t have that sort of book here.”

Ruso was beginning to wonder why Thessalus’s strange fantasies about murder had not fixed themselves upon Gambax. “I hear there’s a public clinic over at the baths tomorrow,” he said. “Will you be deputizing for Thessalus?”

“Me, sir?” A faint smirk appeared, as if Ruso had just suggested something ridiculous. “’Fraid I can’t help you there, sir. Army medical training. I don’t know anything about women and children. But don’t you worry. I’ll find you a good bandager to help out.”

The main thing Ruso knew about the ailments of women and children was that he wasn’t very confident with them either. “I’ll think about it,” he conceded. “And you’ll have time to supervise the cleanup back here. Is my room cleared?”

To his surprise the reply was, “All done, sir.”

“Good. If my housekeeper turns up, show her to it. You haven’t seen her, have you? Blond girl. Local.”

Gambax’s brief flash of helpfulness had faded. The smirk reappeared. “Sorry, sir,” he said. “Can’t help you there.”

Finally, he was alone. A shaft of late afternoon sunlight revealed a sparkle of dust motes dancing in the space above a narrow bed. It also illuminated the fat barrel that blocked access to the rest of the room. Bed and barrel fit perfectly into the space provided, but with the barrel in its present position, the only way to reach the chair at the far end of the room was to clamber across the mattress, and the only way Ruso could sit on the chair and still have room for his feet was to remove the trunk resting on the seat and place it on top of the bed. On the other hand, if he shifted the barrel to the far end of the room everyone would have to climb over his furniture to reach the beer. This had not been one of his better ideas. Unfortunately, it was too late to back down now.

He surveyed the small space into which his belongings were crammed and wondered how he was going to fit Tilla into it as well. He would have to explain to her that one of the first steps in restoring the infirmary to working order was to establish control of the beer supply, and what better way to do so than to have it under his own personal supervision? Besides, she would probably want to spend most of the few days they were here with her remaining family.

He would insist on more comfortable arrangements down the road at Ulucium. Maybe Postumus would save him a decent place. On reflection, maybe not. Definitely not, if he’d followed Ruso’s recommendation to visit Festinus the barber.

Ruso made the necessary furniture removals to get to his chair. The room looked no better from this end than the other. There was not even room to rock the chair onto its back legs, which was a pity, because he needed to do some serious thinking.

There were several things he did not want to think about. One was the question of exactly who, or what, Tilla had seen in the yard of the inn. Another was what the sulkers and skulkers might at this moment be doing with the head of Felix the trumpeter. Ruso shuddered. He was not going to like the north of Britannia very much.

What he did need to think about was Doctor Thessalus. Apparently Thessalus knew the dreadful details of the murder even though they seemed to be a secret from everyone else-but the prefect and Metellus were adamant that he was not guilty. The chances of getting any sense out of Thessalus himself were minimal. He needed to track down the guard who had taken that urgent call for a doctor and find out from him where Thessalus had gone that night after he returned from the bar. In the meantime, if he was to stand any chance of sorting out the infirmary before the governor’s new medic arrived, he needed to find a way of spurring Gambax into action.

That barrel would be better six inches nearer the door. Ruso got to his feet and gave it an experimental shove. It did not move. He turned and braced his back against it with his feet on the floor beneath the chair, and heaved. The barrel gave way suddenly, tipping away from him and almost overturning to block the door as he tried not to fall backward. As he recovered himself it landed back into place with a thud. He was wondering whether to call for reinforcements when there was a knock on the door. The bandager from the Twentieth was worried about the carpenter.