Ruth Downie - Semper Fidelis

“I was trying to keep him away from you.” The gray eyes traveled slowly over Ruso, who was reminded of times when he had been summoned to his father’s study. Geminus gave a “Hm,” as if he had just reached a decision. He reached for a stool and nodded toward another. “I was hoping to keep you out of all this, but now that you’ve insisted on poking your nose in, you’ll have to know too.”

Ruso sat. He felt as though he had shrunk since he entered the room.

Geminus let out a long breath and began. “You want to know what happened to Tadius.”

“What people are saying doesn’t make sense.”

“What’s it to do with you?”

“I’m concerned about what’s happening to the men.”

“And you think the rest of us aren’t.”

Ruso shifted position on the stool. “You didn’t seem keen to defend them at dinner last night.”

Geminus grunted. “You saw what they did to Tadius.”

Ruso stared at him. “Tadius was killed by the other recruits?”

“Who did you think it was? Me?”

The question hung between them, unanswered.

“There was some native festival a few nights back. I forget what; you’ll have to ask your wife.”

Ruso did not ask how Geminus knew about his wife.

“A bunch of my lads take it into their heads to play this tribal hunting game. They name one man as the stag and then they chase him all over the fort. Things get out of hand. I get there with Dexter and a couple of my men and find the stag dying from a beating in a back street and the rest running away in the dark.”

He paused, perhaps to let Ruso imagine the scene.

“There could have been fifteen or twenty of them; we could only pick out two. One was a lad called Victor. We think he hid out somewhere and then went over the wall.”

“Ginger hair?”

“Silly bugger should have worn a hood if he wanted to get up to mischief.”

“I ran into him just outside Calcaria,” admitted Ruso. “He escaped into the woods.”

“Did you report it?”

Ruso said truthfully, “I didn’t realize he was one of yours.”

“The other one was Sulio.”

So that was why Dexter had not cared whether he jumped.

“And now you’re wondering why I haven’t chained the rest of them up and flogged the truth out of them.”

“Why haven’t you?”

“And then what?”

Ruso scratched one ear thoughtfully.

“I can’t kick that many men out of the Legion without authority from higher up.”

“Can’t they be tried at Deva?”

“We’ve got to get them there first. Five days’ march at least. Do your arithmetic, Doctor. Forty-seven Brits, fit young lads who’ve just had a bloody good training in the use of weapons. Then count the men we can rely on if they turn ugly and divide it by four, because the auxiliaries are staying here and a lot of the maintenance crews are going north in a day or two to help with the wall. Between you and me, they’re a bunch of lazy lard-arses anyway. Whatever happens, there’ll be plenty of stitching practice for your boys afterward.”

It occurred to Ruso that, being Britons, the recruits were unlikely to agree amongst themselves for long enough to organize a full-scale mutiny. But they could certainly cause trouble if they turned violent, and the opposite problem-a mass desertion-would be seriously embarrassing.

“Nobody’s going to send us any help,” continued Geminus. “We need to keep them calm and get them to Deva.” Geminus was a tough man, but he was no fool. He was not going to sacrifice himself for a legion that he would be leaving behind in a matter of weeks. “Once they get there they’ll have a shock coming, but they’re not bright enough to guess and nobody’s going to tell them, are they?”

“I see.”

“See lots of things now, don’t you?”

“Did the hospital clerk alert you to the postmortem report?”

“Young curly was trying to be too clever,” said Geminus. “You medics need to know when to stop. Leave it to us.”

Ruso was rapidly reassessing his understanding of what was going on here. If what Geminus said was true, then he had contradicted and undermined a centurion who was already in a difficult position. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

“Yes. Stay out of it, and keep your mouth shut.”

Virana said, “It was here.”

Tilla stood on the edge of the landing stage and watched the river drifting past the heavy oak posts below her. At the moment it would be a tricky jump down into the little flat-bottomed boat moored up with its ropes at full stretch. The ferryman assured her that in a few hours the boat would have risen and it would be an easy step.

Leaving Virana to chatter to the ferryman-both seemed flattered by the attention-Tilla tried to picture the scene when the centurion had ordered two of his men to swim across. She had been nervous when the wagon driver’s mules had stopped on the ford in mid-river. The two recruits would have been contending with much deeper water and no animals or vehicle to hold them steady. What had the centurion been thinking? That a man thrown into fast-flowing water would suddenly discover that he could swim? It might work with dogs, although even that was doubtful. It had not worked for Dannicus.

She was pondering the stupidity of the order when shrill screaming cut across her thoughts. It was not a scream of anger or excitement. It was the relentless, terrified, out-of-control shrieking of a child in serious trouble.

Tilla hitched up her skirts and ran toward the sound, with Virana following her up the street toward the east gate, shouting, “Wait for me!”

People were already clustering around the shop. A sheep’s carcass swung wildly beneath the awning as a mostly female crowd elbowed past the cheeses and cabbages. From somewhere inside, the child’s cries rose above a woman’s wailing and shouts of “Put him in the river!” and “Fetch a healer!”

“The washing cauldron,” a woman was announcing as Tilla pushed her way toward the front. The listeners gasped in sympathy. “Boiling linen all over himself, poor little beggar. Scalded like a pig.”

Tilla stopped. She was not a medicus. She was just someone who delivered babies as best she could for women who knew they were in danger anyway. She had thought that nothing could be worse than the sight of those warriors hacked apart by the army. She had been wrong. Boiling linen all over himself. Scalded like a pig.

She was not a medicus, and she did not want to be one.

“The doctor’s woman is here!” cried Virana.

Other voices took up the cry. “The doctor’s woman!”

“Let her through!”

Hands reached out to seize her. She was hustled forward.

She opened her mouth to explain that she was not what they needed, but nobody was listening.

This is like helping to bring out a baby. Stay calm. Keep your mind on what needs to be done. Do not be put off by the screaming. And never, ever show that you are afraid too.

“Corinna, the doctor’s woman is here!”

Tilla paused in the doorway, glimpsing a small struggling form between the cluster of women gathered around it. She took a deep breath. She was not what they needed, but for the moment she was all they had.

“Everyone out!” she yelled over the din.

Nobody moved.

She seized two of the women who had been pushing her forward. “You, clear the room except for the child’s mother. You, send to the fort for Medical Officer Gaius Petreius Ruso and tell him his wife needs help with a scalded child.”

“I’ll go,” insisted a third woman. “She’s too fat to run.”

“What?” demanded the plump one. “I’m not-”