Ruth Downie - Semper Fidelis

Ruso sniffed. “What have you been burning?”

“Old rubbish we don’t need to take to Deva, sir.”

“Medical records?” Ruso was on his feet. “Show me.”

The charred edge of the tablet that Ruso rescued with the end of a hoe almost certainly said Tad -but he was too late: the words inside had run away with the wax. He slid the hoe beneath it and tossed it back onto the foully smoking heap just as a voice said, “How was ward round, sir?”

Pera’s hair was even wilder than usual. His tunic had damp patches and there were smudges of black muck on his elbows that he had failed to quite wash off. Ruso said, “That idiot clerk’s just burned your postmortem report.”

Pera squinted at the untended bonfire, where it seemed only the hospital records were burning with any vigor. Thick smoke was pouring from the old bedstraw and worn-out rags that made up the rest of the pile. “I told the clerk to get rid of any useless junk, sir.”

“Not things you only did the other day.”

Pera was rubbing the back of his neck again. “I’ll have a word with him, sir.”

Ruso propped the hoe back against the wall, next to a bucket of water. “The ward round was fine apart from Austalis,” he said, glancing around to make sure that no one was close enough to listen before he went on to explain gravity of the situation. “I wasn’t impressed with the staff. They seem to be trying to avoid him.”

“I’ll have a word with them too, sir.”

Ruso eyed his disheveled state. “Who put you on sanitary inspection?”

“Geminus, sir.”

“Don’t you have engineers for that sort of thing?”

“I was with an engineer, sir. The sewer outlet’s out of bounds otherwise.”

Ruso wondered what possible reason Geminus could have had to send a medic crawling around the drains. Pera should not have needed to do any more than ask the engineers whether what went in at one end of the sewer was coming out at the other. It was hard not to suspect that he was being punished for something, and-given the timing-it was probably something that Ruso had ordered him to do.

He was wondering how to tackle the subject when the heavy figure of the clerk appeared, lugging the remains of a broken chair and a sack of something that proved to be old wood shavings mixed with floor dirt, some of them rich red-brown with the dried blood they had been scattered to absorb. They crackled and spat as he poured them over the flames.

“Go to the baths before ward round,” Ruso told Pera. “You’ll frighten the patients.”

“Clean men are healthy men, sir.”

Ruso grinned, recognizing his own words. “Name the deadliest enemy of an army.”

“The deadliest enemy of an army is disease, sir.”

When the clerk was safely out of earshot, Ruso said, “He didn’t seem to know that any report on Tadius existed before yesterday.”

“He didn’t see it, sir. He wasn’t on duty, so I put it away myself.”

“And then I brought it to his attention.”

Pera said nothing.

“It was a good report.”

“You always taught us to record everything, sir.”

“And the purpose of that was …?”

“In case we could learn something from it later.”

“It seems you were listening after all.”

“Thank you, sir. But we can’t learn anything from it now, can we?”

Ruso glanced at him. “If you’re going to fake a tone of regret, Pera, you’ll have to try harder than that.”

“I’m very sorry, sir.”

“That’s better. I’m sure between us we could remember most of it.”

“I can’t be of much help, I’m afraid, sir. And it’s not going to bring him back, is it?”

“That’s generally true of postmortem reports,” Ruso observed. “Was the clerk ordered to burn it?”

“Sir, please don’t ask. Nothing good will come of it.”

“Why not? Give me a good reason and I’ll leave it alone.”

“I–I can’t, sir.”

“I’ve wasted enough time on this. Perhaps I’ll get more sense out of Geminus.”

“Yes, sir. I expect so.”

“That’s the wrong answer, Pera.”

“Yes. I know it is, sir.”

A gust of wind sent thick smoke billowing down the street toward the hospital. They stepped apart to avoid choking. Ruso leaned on the wall beside the hoe, waiting for the air to clear.

“Let me tell you a better story,” he said through the smoke. “Tadius died as a result of a severe beating. There was a cover-up, which you cooperated with, because you were ordered to, but privately you were so outraged by what had happened that you recorded the truth. Then you hid it in the files, perhaps hoping to bring it out at Deva once you were safely clear of Eboracum.”

The breeze dropped almost as suddenly as it had risen. The buildings across the street began to reappear. Pera remained silent.

“Well?” Ruso squinted through the smoke.

The shape standing against the far wall was too big to be Pera. On either side of it stood two junior officers.

“Do us all a favor, Doctor,” said Geminus. “Leave the lad alone. He’s only doing what he’s told.”

Ruso felt his heartbeat quicken. He wanted to ask, How long have you been standing there? What he said was “Why did you send him off to inspect the sewers?”

“And the drains, and the water supply,” said Geminus affably. “Can’t have the Sixth thinking we’re dirty.”

A section of the fire collapsed, sending out a fresh gust of smoke. Geminus stepped round it. His henchmen moved to reposition themselves on either side of him. “I hear you’ve been inviting young Austalis’s pals in to visit him.”

Ruso had hoped to be better prepared for this discussion. “Just one,” he said. “It’ll do him good to have a visitor.”

Geminus shook his head sadly, as if such ignorance was a disappointment to him. He gestured for Ruso to follow him. “You and I need to have a word,” he said. “In private.”

When a centurion lived with female relatives, entering the house on the end of his barrack block was like visiting a family home where a couple of rooms were set aside for the work of keeping eighty legionaries in order. Geminus was a single man. The corridor was empty apart from scuff marks on the limewash. The office into which Ruso followed him bore no personal touches beyond the smell of dog and Geminus’s parade uniform with its white-crested helmet looming over them from a stand.

Geminus made a sign to a junior seated behind a plain desk, who hastily set down his abacus. His boots made a hollow sound across the floorboards as he went to join the two shadows outside.

Ruso heard the latch fall into place behind him and stifled the foolish thought that nobody could rescue him, because nobody knew where he was.

Geminus did not waste time with niceties like sitting down. From the middle of the room he said, “If you don’t like my orders, come and see me. Don’t cause trouble behind my back.”

“What’s the problem?”

“I’ve enough to do here without being undermined by some smart-arse fresh out from Deva. You need to listen to your men. Austalis was on his own because if I give the recruits half a chance to get together and stir each other up, we’ll have a whole lot more trouble. And before you ask, I do know why he took a slice off his arm.”

Ruso swallowed. Austalis might have been cheered by the visit, but Geminus had a point: Marcus had certainly been stirred up. Still, there was a principle at stake. “Where I come from,” he said, “the medics decide what goes on in the hospital.” If they were lucky.

Geminus appeared ummoved.

“I had a morning’s work lined up for Pera, and instead he went off looking at drains.”