Medicus (31 page)

67

P
AYDAY DAWNED AT last. There was still no sign of Tilla. Ruso spent the morning trying to do justice to the needs of his patients, which were as pressing as ever. Outside, however, it was apparent that the Twentieth was working itself up to a level of excitement that heralded a busy night for the medical service. The enthusiasm raised by the quarterly arrival of cash had been swelled by the anticipation of at least the first installment of Hadrian's bonus to his loyal troops. The bathhouse scaffolding was abandoned, its occupants presumably waiting in other jostling lines like the one he was now passing outside a centurion's quarters. A neglected noticeboard at the head of a barracks block announced an inter unit sports event this afternoon in the amphitheater—a gallant but probably doomed attempt to direct the Twentieth's payday energy into useful channels. If this unit was anything like any of the others Ruso had known, by evening the real entertainment would be in full swing. The bars would be overflowing with off-duty soldiers, and men who ought to know better would be doing things they would very much regret in the morning. If Tilla was still somewhere in the town, he hoped she would have the sense to stay behind closed doors.

Minutes later, he walked away from the camp prefect's office still staring at the bottom figure on the copy of his account.
Perhaps you'd
like to take some time to check the figures,sir.
This couldn't be right. There must be some mistake.

She had not miraculously returned to the house while he was out. He sat on his one chair and ignored the puppy that scrambled up his leg and danced around before settling on his lap. Outside, a shout of laughter echoed along the street from one of the barracks blocks. Ruso dipped his hand into the jar Valens had been given by a grateful patient and groped around for the last of the olives.

The figure at the top of the sheet was fine. The "Brought forward" figure was correct. Miraculously, the army had managed to send his records across two seas and two continents in time for the clerks to do the arithmetic. The down payment on the gift to celebrate the accession of the noble emperor Hadrianus was most welcome, except that a large chunk of it had been compulsorily diverted into his savings account. "Deductions," read the line underneath. That was where the trouble started.

Following all the usual deductions for his keep and the legionary celebration at Saturnalia was a figure for "Loan repayment"—they'd taken the whole advance back at once, of course—and an item called "Expenditure." The amount defied all his attempts to live frugally. The details were listed on a separate sheet and included "Meals taken at the hospital" and "Private use of hospital facilities."

Perhaps you'd like to take some time to check the figures,sir.
Ruso licked the olive brine off his fingers and began to count. Three attempts brought three confirmations of the impossible figure against "Makes a total of." Next he deducted the amount he owed the Aesculapian Thanksgiving Fund. Then he took off the sum he had arranged to be sent to Lucius. Finally he subtracted enough to cover his bill at Merula's.

Ruso leaned back in his chair and stared gloomily at the empty olive jar. What would remain in his purse was barely enough to see a civilized man through the next three weeks, let alone three months. No wonder men on basic pay resorted to stealing from Priscus's linen closets. He could not live for three months on this. He must take the time to find more private patients. He must get on with his writing. He must get promoted. He must find Tilla alive—and when he had, he must sell her.

As he framed this thought in his mind, two things occurred to him simultaneously. One was that he didn't want to sell her and he never had. The other was that today he had somewhere new to look.

Ruso had never bought a slave at a market. There had always been someone else—father, uncle, wife, other slaves—to deal with that sort of thing. The only time he had needed to buy his own staff was after his divorce, when he had taken the post in Africa. That had been a simple matter of moving into the house occupied by his predecessor and handing over a sum of cash to retain the slave couple who already worked there. He had, of course, bought Tilla, but that had not been a planned purchase. He had never been called upon to assess the suitability of strangers to join his household, and he had never paid any attention to how it was done. Which was why, he supposed, he was surprised to see that the notice announcing the arrival of the slave trader had now been amended to read, VIEWING FROM 6TH HR TODAY, AUCTION AT OTH HR.

Deva, being less a town than a collection of houses outside a fort, did not have a forum. Instead, the action had been crammed into the space between the amphitheater and the fountain. Peering above the heads of the shoppers, Ruso could make out stalls offering jewelry, EFFICIENT SCRIBE SERVICES, hot pies, FORTUNE-TELLING, and PORTRAITS PAINTED WHILE YOU WAIT. A succession of bright balls rising and falling in the air marked the passage of a juggler, and the area by the oil shop had been cordoned off to make a performance space for a dancing bear, currently sitting in its cage with its back to the crowds.

Ruso pushed his way toward the huge open-sided marquee that filled one side of the open space. From its roof swung a sign announcing L. CURTIUS SILVANUS, DEALER IN SLAVES: RELIABLE STAFF FOR THE DISCERNING EMPLOYER. The people crowded into it fell into four categories. The merchandise were the cheerless ones with chains around their ankles and labels around their necks. The customers were the ones peering and poking at the merchandise and asking them to open their mouths, flex their arm muscles, or prove they could speak Latin. The security staff appeared to be doing nothing at all, while a couple of clerks fluttered around a makeshift office formed by a row of folding desks.

Ruso shoved his way to the desks and arrived just as an African with a lined face and a thick gold rope around his neck pushed his way in through a flap at the back of the marquee.

"Are you the owner?"

The man bowed. "Lucius Curtius Silvanus, at your service."

Ruso explained about Tilla.

"I assure you, sir, my staff take great care. We very rarely buy in the street and only then with full documentation and references." He indicated the stock with a sweep of his arm. "All purchases come with a money-back guarantee for a full six months. We certainly wouldn't take on anything with an obvious injury."

Ruso nodded. "And is this everyone? Or do you have a special collection?"

The man smiled, revealing a wide gap between his two front teeth.

"Ah, sir, I'm afraid they are for inspection by appointment only. But all our present collection have been with us for at least ten days."

"Nevertheless—"

The man's expression hardened. He summoned a clerk and ordered him to show Ruso the list of the private collection. There were a couple of Greek tutors, a geometry teacher, a painter, a family physician (Ruso would have liked to meet that one), three "beautiful young boys" whose talents were not listed, and a set of fourteen-year-old twin girls, described as "very beautiful, black hair, green eyes, good figures, soft-spoken, and eager to please."

"How much are the girls?" he inquired, wondering what prices were like here.

"More than you can afford," said the clerk—evidently a sharp judge of character.

Nothing here seemed likely to lead to Tilla. He was about to leave when a woman's voice said, "Good afternoon, Doctor!" and he turned to find Rutilius's wife smiling at him.

"We heard about your housekeeper," put in Rutilia the Younger. "Have you come to buy another one?"

"Such a shame," sympathized her mother. "It's so difficult to find good staff."

The daughter said, "I hope the madman hasn't got her. Have you looked in the river?"

"Really, dear!" chided the mother. She was apologizing for her daughter's tactlessness when Ruso heard a distinct cry of "Doctor!" from somewhere across the marquee. "I'm sorry," he interrupted, relieved. "I have to go. Someone's calling me."

"Doctor!"

The boy was perhaps eight or nine years old. He had ginger-colored hair and his face was blotched with pink, as if he had been crying. He was dressed in a plain brown tunic. Like all the other slaves, he was barefoot. The iron cuff looked as though it could snap his thin white ankle. He was chained to a massive bearded native on one side and an elderly man with a bent back on the other. Ruso stared at him, trying to remember where he had seen him before.

The boy sniffed, wiped his nose on the back of his hand, and said, "It's me, Doctor. Lucco."

Ruso frowned. "Lucco? From Merula's?"

The boy nodded. "Yes, sir."

"What are you doing here?"

The boy's eyes glistened with tears. "I'm being sold, sir." He swallowed hard and squared his shoulders. "I'm a good worker, sir. And I'm quick to learn. Really I am."

Ruso gazed at the skinny form with a mounting sense of dismay, knowing he could not say what the boy was hoping to hear. What could a man with no money possibly say or do to reassure a child who was chained like an animal, waiting to be auctioned to the highest bidder? He closed his eyes and fought the urge to utter a curse on the spirit of his weak-willed father, on his spendthrift stepmother, on his half sisters, who combined the worst qualities of both. He wanted to lay a hand on Lucco's shoulder and assure him that all would be well. Only it probably wouldn't.

At least he could save the boy from being poked and peered at for a few minutes. He said, "Why are you being sold, Lucco?"

The boy eyed him for a minute, as if he was wondering what to answer. Ruso groaned inwardly as he realized his mistake. The child thought he was being interviewed for a job. "Lucco," he explained gently, crouching down to speak to him face-to-face, "I can't buy you. I'm sorry. I may look rich to you, but the truth is, I'm not."

The boy sniffed again. "Yes, sir."

The old man burst into a fit of coughing. In his efforts to stifle the cough he staggered backward, dragging the chain and jerking Lucco's ankle sideways. The boy winced and bent to rub his leg. The big native turned and growled something at the old man, who ignored him.

"Lucco," said Ruso, wishing he did not have to ask this, "you remember my slave, Tilla?"

"She used to feed her dinner to the birds."

"Well, now she's missing. I'm afraid that whoever hurt Saufeia might hurt her. If you know anything at all about what happened to Saufeia, or to Asellina, you must tell me. Nobody's going to punish you for talking now."

The boy shook his head. "I don't know nothing about Saufeia, sir. Everybody thought Asellina had gone to live somewhere nicer. All the girls cried when they found her."

"I see."

"I like it at Merula's," said the boy. "I don't want to go nowhere else."

"You're a bright boy, Lucco," said Ruso. "You'll do well wherever you go."

The boy replied politely, "Yes, sir."

Ruso stood up straight, glancing around him and wondering if it would be kinder to get out of the way and let potential buyers assess the boy's worth. The more the better. A slave for whom there were several bidders would fetch a higher price and logic dictated that a valuable asset would be well treated. The trouble was, logic rarely dictated what people did in the privacy of their own homes.

"Sir?"

He turned.

"Sir, please could you give my mother a message?"

"Your mother?"

"Please could you tell her Bassus told Merula about the oysters?"

Ruso frowned. "Bassus told Merula about the . . . ?"

"The oysters, sir. So Merula told him to take me to the trader." An energetic sniff was followed by, "Bassus said he was going to find a nice family for me, but now he's gone and told Merula about the oysters. My mother doesn't know."

Ruso was now thoroughly confused. "You mother doesn't know about the oysters?"

"She doesn't know I'm here." The boy glanced over at the clerks behind the desks. "Do you think they'll let me go and say good-bye?"

Ruso doubted it very much. "You are being sold because of oysters?"

The boy nodded. "I didn't mean to do it, sir. I mean, I didn't mean . . ." His voice tailed into silence.

Ruso scratched his ear. This story was beginning to sound familiar. He lowered his voice so they could not be overheard. "Wasn't Merula's last cook sold because of serving bad oysters?"

Lucco nodded, dumb.

"And now Merula's found out you were involved?"

Something approaching panic entered the boy's eyes. "Please, sir!" he muttered, barely audible above the hum of conversation in the marquee. "I won't ever do it again!"

"I'm not going to tell anyone, Lucco." If no one had seen to it that the damnation of "attempted poisoner" was written on the child's label, he was certainly not going to do it himself.

"I didn't mean it, sir," whispered Lucco. "Somebody said the officer from the hospital was there. I thought they meant the nasty one."

Ruso was having difficulty following him again. "Tell me about these oysters," he suggested.

"Cook had them on the side to throw away."

"And you sent them out to a customer?"

He nodded. "It was just a bit of a joke, sir."

A bit of a joke that could have ended in a charge of attempted murder and a gruesome execution for its perpetrator. As it was, Valens had suffered acute food poisoning and Ruso had been obliged to do the work of three men and had ended up so far out of his senses that he had bought a girl on a building site.

He put his hand back on the boy's shoulder. "I'll go and see your mother right away. Where do I find her?"

"She'll be working, sir."

"Yes, but where?"

The boy stared at him. "Where she always works, sir. At Merula's."

It was Ruso's turn to stare.

"You know her, sir," said the boy "They call her Chloe."

68

E
ARLIER THAT SAME morning, two young women in local dress were walking away from the huddle of native houses that Ruso had visited two days before. They were making their way down the track that led to the main Eboracum road. The taller of them was carrying a small sack over her shoulder.

Her companion turned to glance at her. "It's not too late. You could stay."

"And repay kindness with trouble?"

"No one knows you're here."

"Sabrann, sooner or later someone will talk. Now the worst they can say is that I came, and I went."

They walked on in silence for a few steps, then the smaller girl frowned. "Stop a moment." She reached up and tugged at her companion's hood. There had not been enough plant dye—or time—to disguise the whole of the hair. Brown wisps curled around the temples, but beneath the hood was a long blond plait. "You must remember to keep this forward," she warned. "I can't pin it any tighter. I don't know how you're going to manage tomorrow"

The taller girl shrugged. "Someone will be sent to help."

"You'll have to keep moving. It's a good fifteen miles and the state of the tracks will slow you down."

They reached the edge of the road. The only traveler they could see was leading an oxcart back in the direction of the fort.

"Do you have all you need?"

The hooded girl lowered the sack to the ground. "Bread, a comb, a blanket. Everything I asked for, and your mother gave me cheese and bacon."

Sabrann put a hand on her shoulder. "May the goddess walk beside you."

"And keep you ever in her gaze."

Their embrace was awkward, the hooded girl careful to keep her right arm concealed beneath her inconspicuous gray cloak. "I must go," she said, fingering her acorn necklace before raising the sack to her shoulder. "While the road is empty."

"Don't forget!" Sabrann waved an arm in an easterly direction, raising it to indicate distance. "Beyond the bridge, after the oak tree, take the track to the left. You must be careful not to stay on the road any longer than you have to."

The hooded girl stepped onto the gravel surface. When she turned, Sabrann was already on her way back to the houses. She was alone on the road once more.

Three days earlier, the walk to this place from Deva had tired her more than she had expected. She had been relieved to be offered water and, after the briefest of introductions, summoned to the big house to be inspected by the grandmother, who was head of the family

Led over to face a chair near the fire, she had knelt in the bracken that covered the floor. As her eyes adjusted to the familiar gloom of a house with no windows, she found herself being peered at by a wizened old woman with sparse white hair pulled back behind large ears.

"Darlughdacha," said the old woman, repeating the name that had been shouted into one of her ears by her interpreter, the girl Sabrann. The grandmother shared the girl's strangled accent and her speech was distorted by the absence of teeth to trim the ends of the syllables, but the name was clear enough. "Daughter of Lugh," continued the grandmother. "Why have you come to us? Do we know you?"

"I spoke with a woman who was born near here, grandmother!" shouted the young woman who had been Tilla for a few weeks, and before that had been nobody for so long that being addressed by her own name now made her feel that someone else must be kneeling beside her. "Her name is Brica! She told me I could find people of honor here!" It was difficult to shout without sounding angry.

"It's no good," said Sabrann. "I have to shout everything right into her ear."

The old woman, realizing that she was missing something, turned to Sabrann, then squinted at her and frowned. "Where is your hair, girl?"

Sabrann grinned. "I pinned it up!" she shouted, twisting to show the back of her head and miming a stabbing action with her fingers, then turning back to shout, "Hairpins!"

The grandmother shook her head in disbelief. "This will all come to an end when you have a husband and some proper work to do!" She aimed a forefinger at Tilla. "What did she say?"

Sabrann leaned close to the old woman again and shouted, "She has heard that we are people of honor!"

"Yes," snapped the old woman, "but who says so?"

Sabrann hesitated before shouting, "Brica, grandmother!"

"Aha!" The woman smacked one blue-veined hand onto the blanket that was tucked around her knees. "So, my brother's family remember what honor is!" The chin rose and the creased lips clamped together.

After a pause they opened again. "I hear Brica's man is losing his sight," she declared. "The gods are just."

Behind her back, Sabrann gave Tilla a look that was somewhere between weariness and apology. Tilla prayed silently to the goddess that she would not be turned away because of someone else's quarrel. She had nowhere else to go.

Sabrann bent down again. "She asks hospitality for nine nights!" she shouted. "Until her arm is healed! Then she will leave!"

"Why does she not go to my brother's family?"

"Because she seeks people of honor!" yelled Sabrann, clearly embarrassed at her grandmother's rudeness. "She does not want to stay with friends of the Romans!"

The grandmother plucked at the edge of the blanket, tugging it higher up on her lap, then returned her attention to the figure kneeling in front of her. "Tell me, daughter of Lugh," she said, "who are your family?"

Relieved, Tilla who was now Darlughdacha again had begun the business of naming her tribe, then her parents and her grandparents and her great-grandparents while the old woman frowned and put in occasional questions about brothers and cousins and who was married to whom and who had fought beside which warriors and eventually they found the connection they were both seeking: an obscure second cousin who had once sold cows to the old woman's late husband's brother. "Now we know who you are," declared the woman, nodding with satisfaction. "You are welcome to stay with us while your arm heals, Daughter of Lugh, child of the Brigantes. You may sleep with this one who stabs herself with hairpins."

Tilla inclined her head. "It is an honor, grandmother."

"She says it's an honor!" yelled Sabrann.

Extra bracken had been hauled from the drying racks and thrown down to make a bed on the floor of the small house where the unmarried girls slept. On that first night, comfortably fed, stretched out on a borrowed blanket, covered by the medicus's cloak—she would have to get rid of that, a problem she would think about later—Tilla had lain listening to strangers chattering in her own tongue. She rolled over to watch the glow of the firelight. A hound had wandered in earlier and settled close to the warmth. One of its ears twitched and it gave a sudden shudder as it dreamed. It occurred to her that there must be mice, and to her surprise it also occurred to her that she did not care. She took a deep breath, savoring the familiar smells of wool and wood smoke and muddy dog. As she thought, "I am happy," she was aware of a voice nearby in the darkness suggesting, "Perhaps she is sleeping."

"Are you sleeping, daughter of Lugh?" demanded a second voice.

"Shh, Sabrann!" urged a third girl. "Don't wake her!"

She closed her eyes and said nothing. She did not want to answer questions about where she had come from. She did not want to think about where she was going, or what she might find when she finally reached home. She wanted to lie here, in this bed, and remind herself over and over again:
I am free.

The questions had followed soon enough, though, as had the expressions of sympathy when they found out her family was dead and her arm had been broken when she tried to defend herself against a Roman merchant who had brought her down from the north to sell her.

It was as much of the truth as it was safe for them to know, and it would have satisfied them, if only a Roman officer had not arrived that afternoon on an elderly horse and announced that he had come to look for a woman.

The blank expressions with which he was faced were a defense the family had used many times. In truth several of them understood what he was saying and all grasped what he wanted, but none chose to reveal that the woman he sought was inside a house not ten steps from where he stood.

The Roman had finally given up and tramped back through the gateway. It was not until he was out of sight that the arguments started.

By this time the men had arrived, summoned from the fields by those nearest to home who had heard the dogs.

Their guest, it seemed, had lied to them. (Her objection of "I told no lies!" was ignored.) She was a runaway. It was against the law to harbor runaways. She must go.

No, insisted other voices, she must stay. She was a Brigante, true, but not a complete foreigner. She was nearly one of their own people. It was a matter of honor not to betray her.

Tilla, realizing she was not expected to be a part of this argument, slipped back inside the house and sat by the door, listening as indignation rose on both sides of the debate. A couple of the women tried to intervene. Nobody took any notice.

Someone cried that it was a disgrace to deny hospitality to an injured woman.

"Her master is a healer. Let him deal with it."

"Her master is a Roman!"

"She has brought the army to our doors!"

"One man on an old horse?"

"Romans are like rats. Where there is one there are more."

"What if they decide to search the houses?"

"What, for one slave?"

"Enough!" It was the voice of the old woman, quavering but loud enough to silence the debate. "Enough," she repeated. Tilla wondered who had gone to fetch her and how much they had managed to explain. "The girl will stay here tonight. We will discuss this matter after dark. You all have work to do. Go."

The arguers did not bother to mute their grumbling as they dispersed, and Tilla overheard someone say, "She's not his slave, you fool."

"He said
ancilla. Ancilla
means slave."

"Never mind what
ancilla
means. She's not his slave. She's his woman."

The evening meal was finished. The other girls had gone to mind younger brothers and sisters. The adults had carried rush lights across to the big house and closed the door behind them. Tilla was squatting by the fire in the girls' house, busying herself grinding corn while she waited to be told her fate. It was a job that could be done, albeit slowly, with one hand.

As the stone scraped and rumbled round on its base she thought about the people she had left behind. She thought about the girls at Merula's, and the boy Lucco, who did not know that it was forbidden to eat swan, and Bassus, and Stichus with the ginger-colored hair, and the woman she had got to know at the bakery. She thought about the pregnant Brica whose man might lose his sight, and the handsome doctor who always smiled at her, but mostly she thought about the medicus, who hardly smiled at all. She supposed he was smiling even less now. It served him right. Behind her back he had made arrangements to have her sold. At first she had not believed Bassus, but later she had arrived back inside the fort with the shopping and there he was, standing in the street outside the hospital, chatting to the medicus as if they were old friends. That was when she finally understood what the medicus had meant when he had told her she would be useful to him. He had mended her arm not out of kindness, but out of greed. Instead of going to his house to prepare supper, she had turned around, made her way back out through the east gate, and kept walking.

The dog lying beside her suddenly lifted his head and turned toward the door. Moments later, a hinge creaked and a figure slipped in.

"My cousins are seeing to the little ones," announced Sabrann. "And my aunt is shouting for the grandmother." She dropped the sack on the ground. "I brought you some more corn, daughter of Lugh."

"Thank you."

It was the first time they had been able to speak privately since the argument erupted. Sabrann said, "They are talking about you."

"I know."

"I would have you stay."

"Others would have me leave."

Sabrann reached a hand inside the sack and trickled a fistful of corn into the hole in the center of the stone. "He was quite good-looking," she observed.

Tilla tightened her grip on the handle and carried on swiveling the top stone back and forth in a half circle over the lower one. "Who?"

"Your Roman. And not as short as most of them."

"No," Tilla agreed, stilling her arm as the girl reached a hand forward to scoop up the speckled flour that was trickling out from between the stones to form little mounds on the cloth.

Sabrann dropped the handful of flour into the bowl.
"Are
you his slave?"

The stone began to move again. "He thinks so."

"Did you go inside the fort?"

"Yes."

"Is it true what they say about the granary?"

Tilla frowned. "The granary?"

Sabrann nodded. "Everyone says they have a great big building filled with enough corn to stuff themselves for a year."

"It's possible. They like making great big buildings."

"Can you imagine how many families that would feed? And still they take the taxes."

"Is this why your grandmother is angry with Brica?"

"It was bad enough my great-uncle's family chose to trade with the army. Now one of them allows a soldier to father her children." Sabrann paused to watch the stone's movement around and back. "They say," she said, "that most of them have to pay women to lie with them."

"They speak the truth."

"Why would any woman do that? I would never do it."

"If you thought they would kill you," said Tilla slowly, "you might consider it."

The stone ground away and back, away and back before the girl murmured, "Forgive me. Everyone says I speak before I think."

Tilla shook her head. "No need. The goddess was protecting me. The medicus is not like that."

"People are saying you are his woman."

There was a grating sound from the millstones. Tilla let go of the handle and flexed her stiff fingers. "People are wrong."