Ruth Downie - Semper Fidelis

As if to reinforce what she said, the sound of raised voices came from the street. Corinna looked up from stirring something that smelled good, and sighed. “It was noisy last night too. All these new people arriving. You must stay here until your husband comes to take you to the fort.”

Tilla ripped a chunk off the bread. “I sent a message. I hope someone will give it to him.”

She had managed to snatch a word with the lame gardener, who had been sympathetic but able neither to help nor to explain. He did whisper, though, that he thought the order to throw her out had come from the tribune. He did not know why, and Tilla could only guess. Was it something to do with what her husband had said about Geminus? Surely they were not being thrown out because she had stared at the empress?

She glanced up, startled by a sound that seemed to come from the top of the ladder leading to the boarded loft under the thatch. “What is that?”

Corinna took a sip from the spoon and said calmly, “Just the rats. A nuisance, but last night they put off two ambassadors from Baetica who banged on the door demanding beds. If we stay here, I must find a cat.”

Tilla shuddered and hoped the message would get through quickly. She had thought about asking if she could spend the night here, but how could anyone sleep with rats running about the house? Was nowhere safe? She needed to be settled somewhere else before dark. She needed the Medicus.

Someone banged on the door, but it was only a mansio porter bringing her luggage, just as the embarrassed manager had promised. She checked the contents, only too aware of how easy it would be for a slave to hide something and sell it quietly later on. When she had finished, she sank down onto the stool by the hearth.

Corinna said, “Is it all there?”

She nodded.

Corinna wrapped a cloth around her hands and poured broth from the pan into the two bowls she had set on the table. “Eat,” she said, wiping the drips from the metal rim of the pan. “We will think of something more cheerful. Tell me about the empress.”

“You know about that?”

“This is a small place. People talk.”

“She wanted to meet a Briton,” said Tilla. “I think I was a disappointment to her.”

“So is it true what they say about them? That he prefers boys and they hate each other?”

Tilla looked up from her bowl. “They hate each other?”

Corinna dipped a piece of bread into the broth, shook off the drips, and tested the temperature before handing it to her son. “I hear he was always more friendly with his mother-in-law than his wife.”

Tilla’s spoon came to a halt as she heard an echo of her own voice. I can tell you that no woman of my people would lie with a man she does not like. She hoped the empress had not thought it was a deliberate insult. “Perhaps that is why she has no children,” she said. “I thought she might have sent for me because she wanted medicine, but she did not ask.”

“They say she makes sure she will never give him children. I heard that she says any child of his would harm the human race.”

Tilla stared at her in mounting alarm. “Are you sure?”

“Who knows?” Corinna shrugged. “That is what I heard.”

“Perhaps you heard wrongly,” said Tilla, feeling her intestines writhe as she recalled the sound of laughter following her around the courtyard. So that was why the empress had said, Do not pray too hard.

She had spoken with the best of intentions. She had tried to be kind. She hoped the empress realized that. Still, no matter what the empress realized, the words were out now. There is always hope . And then she had made it worse by gabbling about the patient who had been married for seventeen winters.

Tilla pushed a chunk of bread under the surface of the broth with her spoon. She was no longer hungry. She had made a fool of herself. It should not be any worse because it was in front of the wife of the most powerful man in the world, but it was.

“So what did she say to you?”

Tilla watched the brown liquid soak up into another piece of bread. It was bad enough to be laughed at without having to relive the embarrassment every time someone asked. “I can’t tell you,” she said, shoving the second piece of bread down below the surface. “It was a secret.”

Nobody seemed to know how the fighting started, but for once it was impossible to blame the recruits. Despite putting on a remarkably good show for the emperor, they had been ordered to celebrate within the walls of the fort. Outside, there was talk of a local trader quarreling with men from the Twentieth about settling their bills before heading west; but the putative trader seemed to have fled, and if the departing legionaries were involved, they were not going to admit it. There was talk of a fight erupting between the Sixth and some of the maintenance crews, who did not take kindly to being called old men who could piss off now that the professionals were here. That version had the Praetorians trying to restore order. Other accounts had the Praetorians involved from the start, with comrades on all sides weighing in to defend each other and nobody attempting to halt the spread of the mayhem until a gang of centurions and their staff charged out of the east gate, beating their sticks on their shields. By this time teeth and noses were broken, furniture had been dragged into the street as weaponry, and someone’s roof was on fire.

In the confusion, it was a while before anyone noticed the soldier from the Sixth who was leaning quietly against the wall of the temple of Mithras, clutching both hands to his head and staring in puzzlement at the dark liquid dripping into his lap.

Meanwhile Ruso, denied access to the bathhouse, had resorted to washing by stripping off beside the nearest water trough and tipping several buckets of water over his head. He had then dunked his stinking tunic and loincloth into another bucket and given them several rinses before hanging them outside the crumbling barrack room where he would spend the night alone, since no one wanted to share with him. Those were the only clothes he had with him, and he supposed they would still be wet in the morning, but a man had to keep up some sort of standards.

He untied his boots, which he had slung around his neck after a bathhouse slave had taken pity on him and slipped him a pair of wooden sandals. In a reversal of the usual practice, he now put the boots on to go indoors.

He had been allowed the concession of a straw mattress, although not a clean one, and a thin gray blanket into which he now rolled his aching and chilled body. Stretching out on the mattress, he reminded himself that virtue was sufficient for happiness.

The man who thought that one up evidently had no need of clothes. Or a fire. Or dignity. Or dinner. Or a wife, who might or might not get the message that he had paid one of the bathhouse slaves to give to a friend who might or might not be going to the mansio.

He hoped Accius would leave Tilla alone. He hoped Pera would make sure the staff didn’t neglect Austalis. He hoped the emperor would get to hear about the plight of his old comrade from Antioch and order his immediate reinstatement. He hoped he wasn’t becoming as deluded as his stepmother. After that, he could think of nothing else to hope for, so he closed his eyes and attempted to enter the last refuge of the desperate: sleep.

He had almost made it when someone crashed open the door and started shouting about needing a doctor.

“I’m not on duty.”

“You are now,” said Dexter. “Get out of bed. Jupiter’s arse, something stinks in here. One whiff of you’ll kill the poor bastard anyway.”

“On my way,” said Ruso, flinging the blanket round his naked shoulders.