Ruth Downie - Semper Fidelis

Tilla surveyed the chaos of broken furniture and cabbage leaves. “I am sorry for your troubles.”

The heroine of the chamber pot appeared from somewhere at the back of the shop. “It could be worse.” She retrieved an onion and a shoe from under the counter. “Anything worth having was already sold, and they didn’t stay long enough to find the money.”

“We didn’t mean to hurt him,” the man said.

The woman said, “ I did.”

The man ignored her. “We don’t want to lead off on the wrong foot with the new legion.”

“I think,” said Tilla, “that he and his friends will say nothing. They know they should not have been here.”

“That’s what I told him,” the woman agreed. “But he likes to worry.”

“But they will ask you about the dead centurion,” Tilla warned them. “You need to have the girl better trained. Never mind what she is not to say. Think what they might ask, and get her to practice what she will answer.”

As she was leaving she heard the woman’s voice rise from the back of the shop, “What do you mean, ‘much too hard’? Next time, you do it!”

Ruso shifted in the chains, wincing as the stiff muscles in his neck and shoulders were forced into movement. He wriggled his fingers to bring the blood back, then wriggled them again to disperse the stabs of pain as the feeling returned. What if the injury was permanent? What use was a surgeon with damaged fingers? What use were any sort of fingers if they cut his head off? He shifted his elbows, shrugged his shoulders up toward his ears, clenched and unclenched his fists, and wondered what time it was.

Daylight still bloomed around what passed for a window, but from where he sat with his back against the cold wall, it was as distant as the stars. He closed his eyes. There was nothing to do in here but worry and drift into a fitful sleep, and he knew which he preferred.

Sometime later, as he was floating back to reality, it dawned on him that there were two sandaled feet on the floor in front of him. The pain in his neck and shoulders as he looked up should have jerked him awake, but when he saw who the feet appeared to belong to, he realized this was one of those deceitful, half-coherent dreams that seemed like waking: the sort that the mind sometimes recalled as real even when reason proved they could not be. He blinked. The figure was still there.

“Valens?” The sound of his own voice startled him. Could a man hear his own voice in his dreams?

His old friend and colleague looked down at him with an expression of pity. “Gaius.”

This was definitely wrong: Valens was up on the border with the procurator, and nobody outside the family ever called him Gaius.

He tried closing his eyes and opening them again. Above him, the light from the window caught lines on the handsome face that Ruso had never noticed before. Valens looked tired and anxious. That was all wrong too.

Ruso squirmed against the wall and felt the ridges of the stones. If this was not a dream, what was it? A vision? Why a vision of Valens, of all people? Why not a god, or someone useful? Struck by a sudden fear, he said, “Are you dead?”

“No.”

This was not entirely reassuring. Valens was alive, and he himself was seeing things.

The vision spoke again. “I’ve come to try and help you.”

“Can you take these chains off?”

It shook its head. “Sorry, old chap. I did ask, but they said no.”

Ruso supposed that an apparition’s claim to have had a chat with his guards was no more surprising than its initial appearance.

It crouched in front of him. A pair of bleary dark eyes looked deep into his own as if they were searching for his soul. “Gaius, do you realize-”

“Why are you calling me Gaius?”

“Sorry. Ruso. I just thought, since you were a little confused, the family name might-”

Ruso said, “I know what my name is!” before it struck him that if he was rude to the vision, it might disappear. “Sorry.”

It brushed away the musty straw with a remarkably realistic swish of a hand and sat on the floor beside him. “You do realize, don’t you, that the way you’ve been behaving lately is rather … odd?”

“It seemed like the right thing at the time.”

“Of course. Look, old chap, you probably don’t know this, but your mind has gone.”

“Has it?”

“Yes. You’re quite crazy. But don’t worry. These things often pass with the seasons. In the meantime I’ll tell them that you’re not quite yourself at the moment.”

Ruso closed his eyes and recalled several patients who had seemed to be living in a different reality from everyone else-a reality that, to them, had been utterly reasonable.

How would you know?

The vision got to its feet. “I’ll get them to bring you some decent food. How about some fresh air? Shall I recommend to Clarus that they let you out for a walk?”

Ruso scratched one ear and wondered whether a vision that believed it could hold conversations with the Praetorian prefect was therefore as deluded as he was. “Yes,” he said. It could do no harm.

“Excellent!” said the vision, with more of Valens’s characteristic cheeriness. “And don’t worry, old chap. We’ll get you sorted out.”

Instead of vanishing, the vision banged on the door and called, “I’m done!”

Ruso scrambled to his feet. “It is you! You’re real! What the-Bugger these things!” The chains had jerked him to a halt.

Valens paused in the doorway. The anxious expression had returned. “Ruso, old chap … who or what did you think you were talking to just now?”

“I didn’t murder Geminus. And I’m as sane as you are!”

Valens’s very best reassuring smile would have been more reassuring if Ruso had not seen the circumstances in which he usually used it. “Of course you are, old chap. Or at least, you soon will be.”

“I’m sane now! I was just half-asleep and I thought-Don’t leave me here! Valens! Come back!”

But he had gone. Ruso was a lone prisoner in chains shouting at an empty space.

The hammering on the door was louder the second time, which was just as well, because it covered the sound of Lucios shouting, “Dada! Dada gone!” as Victor vanished into the loft. Tilla grabbed the child and swept him up into the air, whispering, “Time to play bears sleeping in the trees!” while Corinna tried to peer through a crack between the planks.

“Some Roman,” announced Corinna, stepping back. “It’s all right, he’s gone.”

Tilla wanted to say, What if it is a message for me? but when she opened the door, there was no one there.

They were about to sit down when someone rattled the back gate and a voice shouted in Latin, “Hello! Anyone in?”

The sleeping bear came down from the trees faster than he expected. Tilla paused to kiss him on the forehead, then rushed out of the back door, leaned across the gate, and flung her arms around the visitor. “Valens! Oh, Valens, it is good to see a friend!”

He stepped back, holding her by the shoulders and looking at her. “Tilla, dear girl, you look exhausted.”

“It is not me who is in trouble, it is-”

“I know, I know. I’ve just seen him.”

Tilla turned to introduce him, but Corinna had slipped back into the house.

Valens said, “They don’t seem awfully welcoming around here. I just went to ask for you at the mansio and the chap couldn’t get rid of me fast enough. Where can we talk?”

The owner of the bar brought them very watered wine with a drop of honey and some sort of hard, flat cake. He apologized for the lack of choice, but his man had gone out of town in search of supplies: The locusts had stripped everything else last night. When he had gone, Tilla leaned across the table. “You have seen him. How is he?”