Ruth Downie - Semper Fidelis

“I don’t know. He said it was a secret.”

“Do not lie to me!”

“I am not lying. I was told to get rid of Centurion Geminus in a way that would not be traced back.”

“And who wanted him dead?” If the murder had been ordered by the emperor’s trusted secretary, it could have nothing to do with the recruits. Nor with an old grudge amongst the Praetorians.

“I–I think my poor empress …”

He must have felt the startled shift of the blade. “The empress?”

“I may be wrong! Tranquillus is the only one who knows.”

“Tranquillus is not here. You are.” Was it possible that Sabina interfered in her husband’s business after all?

“Oh, my poor lady! To end in a place like this!”

“Tell me about the empress.”

“You will all die for this!” said Clarus, recalling his dignity. “The emperor will take such a revenge on your tribes that-”

“If he does, you will not live to see it.” She had to get rid of this man and pass on the news. She hoped the recruits had listened to Marcus and taken prisoners. She could leave this one with the rest. “Move slowly and do as I say. If you do anything that makes me think you are trying to escape or call for help, I shall kill you. Do you understand that?”

“Yes.”

The men guarding the entrance to the dining room stepped aside to let them pass. At the sight of Clarus, four men lined up across the far corner snapped to attention: Praetorians, looking half-dressed without their armor and their weapons. Beyond them, a couch had been tipped over and pushed into the corner. Several heads popped up from behind it. A voice cried, “Clarus!”

Clarus stopped dead. Tilla almost stabbed him in the back of the neck by accident.

“Clarus,” cried the voice again. “Thank the gods! Where are the rest of my guards?”

“Madam! Oh, my lady, I thought-”

He did not say what he thought, perhaps because he now realized Tilla had never exactly told him the empress was dead.

“Clarus, whatever is happening? These ghastly natives are all over the place!”

As Tilla pushed him forward, she heard Minna cry out, “Do not trust that woman, sir! She is one of them!”

The Praetorians took a pace toward her. A couple had armed themselves with chair legs.

“Tell them to stand back,” Tilla said. “They should guard the empress, not waste their lives trying to defend you.”

Clarus did not sound pleased to be reminded of his duty, but he gave the order.

Tilla stepped away from him. “Now go and join the others.”

She retreated to talk to the nearest man on the door. To her surprise, he raised his sword. She whispered in British, “I am with you. I am a friend of Corinna and Victor. What is happening?”

“Buggered if I know,” he said. “I just got told ‘Don’t kill nobody and don’t let nobody out.’”

“That doesn’t mean me, you fool!”

“Nobody,” he repeated.

Perhaps it was safest to wait here for a moment. There were, or there should be, armed men all over the building. In the dark, it would be easy for one of them to make a mistake. Tilla nodded for the benefit of the watching Romans, as if she and this idiot had just been having a discussion rather than an argument. “If they come near me,” she murmured, “it will be your job to defend me, since you made me stay here.” She left him to think about that. Still clutching the scalpel, she walked across to peer through a crack in the window down to the courtyard below. She was almost as much of a prisoner as the Romans now, but she was not going to let the Romans know it.

A couple of fast-moving flares in the distance traced the progress of the search along tracks that the Britons might have taken. Meanwhile, the peace of the camp was a distant memory. A volley of shouts was followed by silence: Someone sensible had decreed that the searchers should allow themselves time to hear any replies to the cry of

“Dex-ter!”

As they approached he saw lights bobbing about above the ditch, picking out the shapes of soldiers hunting for a man who, not half an hour ago, had been sitting by a campfire, eating bacon.

Ruso felt sick.

He should have told Dexter that Marcus was wandering around where he shouldn’t be. Instead he had pointed out that the captain of the watch was slacking, mentioned vaguely that the recruits seemed restless, and then left the centurion to deal with forty-six armed and resentful men while he wandered off to look for his wife.

Someone arrived to tell Accius that several guards had been found dumped under a hedge.

Ruso felt his stomach shrivel.

“Dead?” demanded Accius, voicing his own fear.

“Just knocked about a bit, sir.”

Clinging to this small shred of comfort, Ruso followed the tribune to the hospital wagons and joined Pera and the orderlies in checking the injured men as best they could by the light of the one remaining lantern. To Ruso’s relief, none of the victims was seriously hurt, although there was an impressive amount of blood and all had nasty rope burns around their necks. It struck Ruso that their accounts of the attack were as graphic as any man might offer if he were trying to avoid being flogged for not paying proper attention on guard duty. They must have been negligent. How else could the deserters have managed to overpower, tie up, and gag all half a dozen of them without anyone noticing?

Accius’s eager questioning revealed nothing new. None of the guards knew anything about Dexter. He told them they would be dealt with in the morning, and left them to worry.

Ruso got up to leave with him. None of this was helping to find either Dexter or Tilla, and now he was afraid for both of them. What the hell had Marcus meant when he said she would come to no harm?

“Sir?” Ruso hurried to catch up with the tribune, who was doing a good job of striding purposefully about and looking as though he knew what to do next. Ruso felt almost sorry for him. “Sir, has anyone checked the inn?”

“They haven’t popped out to dinner, Ruso. Just thank the gods the empress is well away from all this.”

“Just a thought, sir.” He was going to have to explain. But not truthfully. Not now. Besides, he might be wrong. Marcus’s promise might not mean they were planning to enter the building Tilla was in. But if it didn’t mean that, what did it mean? Had they disappeared into the night and taken her with them?

Accius was still pointing out the stupidity of his first idea. “The empress has a guard, and I was there myself just a few minutes ago.”

“Sir, they could have taken Dexter as a hostage in the hope of doing a deal. And that’s where they think the officers are.”

“The place is packed with staff, man!”

Ruso did not want to have to say it, but it was true. “Most of the staff will be natives, sir.”

It was scant satisfaction to be proved right. The native recruits were not only in the inn: They had taken control of it. Outside, at a safe distance from anything that might be thrown from the roof, the centurion of the Praetorians was briefing his junior officers. In the absence of his commander he seemed to have taken it upon himself to do whatever was necessary. What he deemed necessary was a diversion, so that a small party of his best men could climb over the stable walls and open up from the inside. Accius’s few remaining men from the Twentieth could provide one of the diversions by storming the front steps. Clearly the Praetorians were excited at the prospect of some real action.

In response to Accius’s question he retorted that, yes, he had tried negotiation already. The only response had been a hail of insults and roof tiles. “How many of your barbarians are in there?”