Terra Incognita

8

"The hospital, sir? ”

Ruso had unfastened his armor, slung his riding breeches over one shoulder, and was clad in a creased and sweaty tunic whose edges were splattered with mud and bloodstains. The Batavian soldier from whom he had just asked directions looked at him with mingled concern and confusion, then glanced up and down the busy street of the fort in the apparent hope that he might spot a building he had failed to notice before. Since the stronghold at Coria had turned out to be extremely small-an energetic sentry atop the timber turret of the east gate could have held a shouted conversation over the clang of the smithy with one on the west-this did not seem likely.

“I think the nearest hospital’s at Vindolanda, sir,” the man suggested. “Shall I go and ask somebody for you?”

“Vindolanda?”

“Out on the west road, sir. You could be there by dinnertime on a fast horse.”

“But you must have a hospital!” insisted Ruso. “The gate guard told me it was next to headquarters. I’ve got an injured man arriving any minute.”

The man frowned. “Not more trouble, sir?”

“Traffic accident,” explained Ruso.

The man pointed to a long low wood-framed building across the road. “They must have meant the infirmary. You won’t find a medic there now, though, sir. Not at this time of day.”

“I am the medic,” explained Ruso. The man did not look entirely convinced.

The closed door of the infirmary had painted carvings of gods nailed up on either side. The uglier of the two must be some sort of protector that the Tenth Batavians had brought with them from wherever Batavia was. The other, with a snake curled around his stick, was Aesculapius, the god of healing. At least the carpenter would find a familiar helper here. The artistic effect was spoiled by an untidy message chalked on the door: “Days to Governor’s Visit” was followed by a cloudy blur slashed over with a white “IV.”

Ruso stepped forward, rapped on the wood, and lifted the latch. The door did not budge. Squinting at the latch to see if it were jammed in some way, he knocked again. Surely the Batavian had not meant that in the absence of the doctor, nobody at all would be running the infirmary?

Somewhere beyond the building the tramp of boots grew louder. An order was bellowed and the tramp changed rhythm. Evidently “Days to Governor’s Visit IV” was inspiring some serious marching practice.

He knocked again.

From inside came a shout of, “We’re closed. Come back in an hour.”

Ruso slammed the flat of his hand three times against the door. From somewhere within came a roar of “Answer the bloody door, Gambax!”

There was the scrape of something being removed from the latch. A slack-jawed creature with lank brown hair appeared and stopped chewing for long enough to say, “What do you want?” in the same fluent but guttural Latin as the other men Ruso had met on the way through the fort.

“Gaius Petreius Ruso, medicus with the Twentieth. There’s an urgent casualty coming in. Didn’t you get the message?”

The soldier pulled open the door and managed something that might have been a salute. “Gambax, sir. Deputy medic. What message?”

Ruso stepped into the dingy corridor. At the far end he could make out a square soldierly shape planted outside one of the doors. The shape showed no interest in him as he followed Gambax into a cramped and ill-lit room that seemed to be both an office and a pharmacy.

“I was just having some lunch,” explained Gambax.

“At this hour?”

“Busy morning, sir.” The man scooped up the remains of a raisin pastry and brushed crumbs off the desk. “We’ve had a murder. The body was brought in this morning.”

“Sorry to hear that,” said Ruso, noting that it did not seem to have affected his appetite. “Where’s the doctor?”

“Gone sick, sir.”

This was not good news. “I’ve done an emergency amputation on the road. Crushed femur, and I think there are broken ribs and bruising to the lungs. He’ll be here any minute. Where is everybody?”

“The lads have gone off to get a bite to eat, sir.”

Ruso took a deep breath and reminded himself that he was not in Deva now. He could not expect a country outpost serving six hundred men to be run in the same way as a legionary hospital serving five thousand.

“Don’t you worry, sir,” Gambax assured him, reaching for a cup and swilling the pastry down with something that smelled very much like beer. “The watch’ll give them a shout when your lads come in over the bridge. How about a drink while you’re waiting?”

“No thanks,” said Ruso. He glanced across at what must be the pharmacy table. Above it, a cobweb billowed gently in the breeze from the open window. Three shelves held a jumble of pots and bottles and bags and boxes. A few had labels indicating their contents, written in a large untidy script. Most did not. The table itself held a weighing scale and an abandoned mortar bowl containing some sort of brown paste. Beneath it were a couple of wine amphorae-medicinal wine, he assumed-and a wastebasket crammed with wilted greenery. The basket was topped with a selection of broken pots projecting from a pale crusted mass of green slime. Some of the slime had dripped down the side of the basket and hardened into a small semicircular pancake on the floorboards. Ruso said, “Who’s the pharmacist?”

“That would be me, sir.”

Somehow this was not a surprise. “What medicines have you got for pain relief and postoperative treatment?”

“All the basics, sir. And plenty of poppy tears and mandrake.”

Ruso hoped the man knew which containers they were in. He glanced down at the desk. A few stray crumbs remained. Black inkstains had spread themselves along the grain of the wood, running into the circular imprints of cups bearing drinks long ago consumed. A wooden tablet addressed in the same large hand as the medicines lay to one side.

“I keep the records as well, sir.”

“I thought you might.”

“Yes, sir. We’re an auxiliary unit here. We don’t have lots of staff like you’re used to in the legions. Would you like to take a look at the treatment room, sir? Just through that door, next on the left.”

Now that Ruso’s eyes had adjusted to the gloom he could make out that the figure at the end of the corridor was a squat centurion with a savage haircut. The man’s glare suggested that whoever was behind the door he was guarding was not receiving visitors.

Evidently Gambax was not in charge of the treatment room, where two cobweb-free glass windows allowed the surgeon enough light to see what he was doing on the operating table. This was good news, but within seconds the warmth from the brazier in the corner had reawoken the itches on Ruso’s back and ribs along with the smell of horse in his clothing. He placed his medical case on the side table, slid a bronze probe down his spine, and enjoyed a few blessed moments of relief.

His concentration was interrupted by a voice from the doorway.

“Everything to your liking in here, is it, sir?”

“Very good,” said Ruso, hastily removing the probe. “Is there usually a centurion in the corridor?”

“That’s Audax, sir,” said Gambax, adding, “It’s one of his men lying murdered in the mortuary. Would you like to see the rest of the facilities?”

The rest of the facilities consisted of a steamy kitchen containing a ruddy-faced cook with a limp and two fingers missing, a couple of untidy storerooms, the smaller of which contained a vast barrel, and a latrine with the usual stench defying the usual effort to mask it. The mortuary was behind the centurion, and thus inaccessible. These were the facilities to service four smelly and stuffy wards containing seventeen beds and fifteen patients, four of whom were sitting around a table with a jug of beer. Judging by the speed at which they concealed the evidence of gambling when Ruso appeared, the four were not terribly sick.

One of the patients in the next room looked up from a board game with his neighbor and offered Ruso an unexpectedly warm welcome. “A doctor! Good to see you, sir! How’s Doctor Thessalus?”

“About the same,” put in Gambax from the doorway.

“What’s the matter with him, sir?”

“He’s ill,” said Gambax.

“Doctor Thessalus saw to both of us, sir,” said the man, indicating his comrade, whose shoulder was heavily bandaged. “But we haven’t seen anybody since.” He leaned forward and flung back the blankets to reveal a splinted leg. “Would you like to start with me, sir?”

“Not just now,” said Ruso, not wanting to trespass uninvited on a colleague’s territory. “I’ve got a casualty arriving in a moment.”

“Ah!” said the man, nodding, as if that explained the state of Ruso’s attire. He lowered his voice. “Wasn’t that Stag Man again, was it, sir?”

“Traffic accident,” said Ruso, then, realizing there was no hope of swearing 170 legionaries to silence, added, “There was a rider who’d put some sort of animal thing on his head. But he was nowhere near the accident.”

The man and his friend exchanged glances. “You want to be careful around here, sir,” he said. “He’s just left one of our lads dead in a back alley.”

“He’s got powers,” put in the man with the shoulder injury. “The locals are saying the gods have sent him from the Other World.”

Ruso said, “Well, when I saw him, he was very firmly in this one.”

Back in the office, the Batavians’ deputy medic was still keeping company with his beer. “Have you called the staff in, Gambax?”

Gambax looked at him over the rim of the cup. “Don’t you worry, sir. Your lads aren’t over the bridge yet.”

“I need men here now. I need a room scrubbed out and aired and a fresh mattress brought in.”

“What-right now, sir?”

“Right now. And while they’re doing it maybe you could find me some calamine, or alum in honey?”

There was a slight twitch at one side of Gambax’s mouth as he said, “You didn’t happen to stay at the Golden Fleece last night, sir?”

“Never again.”

“Yes,” said Gambax. “That’s what they all say.”