Terra Incognita

42

It wasn’t me, sir. Absolutely not.”

Ruso relaxed into his chair and reflected that this was the first time he had ever seen Gambax standing at attention. The man looked uncomfortable, as if he were not used to it.

“I was ordered not to give him anything, sir, and I didn’t,” continued Gambax.

When Ruso said nothing he added, “It was an order, sir. I never do anything I’m ordered not to do.”

“Hm,” said Ruso, suspecting that unless he were ordered to do it Gambax rarely did anything useful at all.

“I can show you where I wrote it down, sir,” added Gambax.

Ruso noted with some satisfaction that he was now beginning to sound genuinely worried. “You’re writing all my orders down?”

“Just the ones that contradict Doctor Thessalus’s orders, sir. So I can remember who said what when. In case there’s any query about it when he’s recovered.” Gambax risked a glance at him. “You said you wanted better record keeping.”

“So,” said Ruso, making a mental note to find more useful work for Gambax to do, “if it wasn’t you, who was it?”

Gambax swallowed. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know.”

“No, sir.”

“You haven’t by any chance decided to obey my order yourself while passing Doctor Thessalus’s order on to somebody else?”

The surprise in Gambax’s “No, sir” suggested that had he thought of that first, he might have tried it.

“Well, here’s my next order,” said Ruso. “Don’t stop to write it down, just do it. I want you to find every man who was on duty just before lunch and send them all in here one by one until I tell you to stop.”

The first candidate was Albanus, who denied all knowledge of tampering with Doctor Thessalus’s lunch. “I know,” explained Ruso, “but I have to treat everyone the same.”

Albanus did, however, have other information. First, Doctor Thessalus had not returned to the fort until just before dawn on the morning after the murder, and second, the gate guards had just taken a message from a man who had not left his name but who wished to speak with Doctor Ruso. He would be waiting at the bathhouse to meet him as soon as Ruso was free.

“Then he’ll have a long wait,” observed Ruso.

Next in was the cook, who denied interfering with Doctor Thessalus’s meals and demanded to know why whoever was complaining didn’t have the nerve to come and say it to his face.

“Nobody’s complaining,” explained Ruso.

“Well, they hadn’t better. I can only work with what I’m given, can’t I?”

“I’m sure everyone appreciates that. I haven’t heard any complaints about the food.” Although he had heard several personal remarks about the competence and parentage of the cook, who was now looking as though he was not sure whether to believe him.

Moments later he heard the cook summoning the next man into the room with the words, “Your turn. Waste of time. If that stew’s stuck on the bottom, it’s not my fault.”

The next man to waste his own time and Ruso’s was the orderly who had now removed the straw from his hair. He was less irascible than the cook but equally clueless. In the brief interval that followed, Ruso wondered whether he should have lined them all up first and made a speech designed to inspire terror and confession. But despite having spent years watching centurions in action, he was not sure that he knew either how to inspire or how to terrorize. He would just end up looking ridiculous.

A rap on the door interrupted his musings. Ingenuus bent under the door frame, closed the door behind him as instructed, and responded to, “Good morning, Ingenuus. Stand easy,” with, “It was me, sir.”

Ruso blinked. “What was you?”

“Put the poppy tears under Doctor Thessalus’s cup, sir.”

“I see. Did you know I had issued an order that he wasn’t to be given any?”

“You didn’t order me not to, sir, you ordered Gambax. And Doctor Thessalus asked me to do it when I went to collect his breakfast tray.”

Ruso rested his elbow on the arm of his chair, lowered his forehead into the palm of his hand, and closed his eyes. When he opened them the bandager was still standing there, supposedly at ease, but looking distinctly apprehensive.

“Ingenuus,” he said with all the patience he could muster, “why do you think I gave that order?”

“Because you don’t understand the situation, sir.”

This was proving to be a most surprising conversation. “Enlighten me.”

“I’m sorry, sir, I can’t.” At least the big man had the grace to blush.

“Are you telling me,” said Ruso, “that there is a situation of which I’m not aware but everyone else-you, Gambax, Doctor Thessalus, for all I know everyone else in the Tenth Batavians-is?”

“I couldn’t say, sir.”

“And what if I were to order you to say?”

Ingenuus swallowed. “Then you’d have to charge me with insubordination, sir.”

“I see.” Ruso scratched the back of his ear with one finger. “This is all rather difficult, isn’t it?”

Ingenuus’s blush deepened. “Sorry, sir. But Doctor Thessalus asked me-”

“Of course he asked you! He’d ask anybody who walked through the door! That’s his problem!”

“Yes, sir.”

“From now on, you are not to give him anything he asks for without consulting me first. Understand?”

“But sir-”

“Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir,” mumbled Ingenuus, his head bowed in misery.

Ruso leaned back in his chair, clasped his hands behind his head, and stared at the wall. He had never trusted Gambax. Now he could no longer trust Ingenuus. He was unlikely to get any sense out of Thessalus for a while and Metellus the aide was a self-confessed professional liar. Things had come to a fine pass when the only people he could rely upon were a clerk and a girl who was no friend of the army, and who believed she had meetings with gods in stable yards.