Ruth Downie - Semper Fidelis

“A waste of a life,” he said, feeling as though he should make some comment.

“Yes, sir.”

Still, Sulio’s mother was not his problem. The medical service was. The clerk was watching him: he must make a good show of inspecting the records.

“Right,” he said, wishing as he always did at this stage that his own clerk-who genuinely loved this sort of thing-were still in the army, instead of hanging around down in Verulamium while a local woman decided whether or not she wanted to marry him. “Show me what you’ve got here, will you?”

Moments later a set of extralong wooden tablets listing admissions was laid out before him on the desk. Running a finger down the entries, he noted the acceptance of a body into the mortuary some weeks ago: Dannicus. Dead on arrival. Drowned . After that he could trace the seasonal transition from cold-weather coughs and catarrh to stomach problems and runny eyes and fevers. Something else was apparent too.

“What can you tell me about the training regime here?”

This was clearly not a question the clerk was expecting. “You’d have to ask Centurion Geminus about that, sir.”

“I will. But first I’m asking you.”

“Well, it’s just … basic training, really. Drill and military pace, learning the commands, physical training … jumping and vaulting, that sort of thing.”

“I see.”

“Use and maintenance of weapons,” added the clerk, evidently keen to show that he had not forgotten.

“So-”

“Throwing missiles, sir. And swimming in the river.”

“So would you say it’s significantly different from your own training?”

“Running, sir. That’s another one. Plenty of running. Long-distance marches with full kit twice a week.”

“So nothing unusual?”

“I don’t think so, sir.”

“There seem to be a lot of training injuries.”

“It’s the recruits, sir,” said the clerk cryptically.

“The recruits?”

“They keep having accidents, sir.”

It might not be as ridiculous as it sounded. Hadrian’s promise of reinforcements had aroused fears amongst senior officers in Britannia that they would be fobbed off with all the idlers and troublemakers that none of the other legions wanted. The consequent pressure for hasty recruitment was bound to result in some bad choices. This bunch might be clumsy rather than cursed. Still, that did not explain either of the bodies in the mortuary.

He found the second death two sheets further on. The entry was dated the day before yesterday. The word Deceased was written next to Tadius’s name. Squeezed above it in a different hand, a word that could plausibly have read Postmortem was followed by a squiggle that must be a signature.

When he asked to see the postmortem report on Tadius, the clerk looked blank. “There isn’t one, sir. Dead on arrival.”

Ruso pointed to the register. “Whose signature is that?”

The clerk peered at it. “It’s hard to say, sir.”

“Where would I find the records for Tadius?”

Moments later the clerk was apologizing as he fumbled with the twine holding the postmortem report together. “I can’t understand how it got there without me seeing it, sir. They usually just leave everything in a heap on the desk for me to put away.”

On separating the pair of wax-coated leaves, Ruso was gratified to see a full set of neatly written notes covering both sides, dated the same day as the admission. His insistence on the value of record keeping had not been wasted. The hurried scrawl by the admission notice had belonged to Pera.

There was, of course, no mention of the nonsense about falling off the stretcher. It was a thorough report detailing the injuries he had seen just now: injuries sustained by a man who had died from a blow to the head following the sort of fight that should never have been permitted to take place on a training ground.

Pera had recorded the evidence, yet for some reason he had taken the matter no further himself and seemed desperate to keep Ruso out of it too.

Ruso closed the report, handed it back to the clerk for filing, and sighed. Eboracum should have been such a simple trip. If only Pera had come up with a good reason for silence, he would have been happy to collude with it, on the grounds that whatever they did, the man would still be dead. But Pera had not.

Meanwhile, the recruits seemed to believe that they were cursed. And the glum recruit with the broken wrist had been right: If the story reached Deva, he and his comrades would not get a warm welcome.

Ruso left the office deep in thought. He was not an investigator now. He could leave the business of Tadius’s death alone and decide it was someone else’s problem. But it involved the medical service, which was his responsibility, and what was the point of inspecting if he was not going to act on what he found?

Nodding to the statue of Aesculapius in the hospital entrance hall, he could not help wondering if the gods had noted his decision to avoid all the fuss and bother of Hadrian’s visit and decided to have some fun with him.

As Ruso hurried down the hospital steps, the wind snatched at his cloak and spattered cold rain down his legs. He paused to get directions to the mansio from a gate guard who looked as though he had just swum to his post, then sped past the luxuriant weeds waving in the fort ditch and tried to dodge the worst of the puddles as he sprinted down the street.

One of the potted trees beside the mansio entrance had fallen over. He paused to set it upright before entering. He was stamping his clammy boots on the mat when he heard the thud of the wretched thing blowing over again.

The manager confirmed that, yes indeed, the Medicus’s wife was here, and rang a bell to summon a servant. While he was waiting to be taken to the room, Ruso was treated to the sight of another visitor tottering up the steps toward the entrance hall.

The girl was clothed in a style that was appealing rather than appropriate. Below the look-at-us-boys cleavage, the flimsy pink dress that appeared to have been shrunk onto her was grubby and mud spattered.

This was as much as Ruso saw before the door slave stepped into his line of vision. “Guests only.”

She craned to see past. “Is he the Medicus? It’s urgent.”

“This is an inn,” the slave pointed out, “not a doctor’s house.”

“Well, that’s not very nice! I just picked your tree up for you!”

Ruso moved away from the doors and stood examining his damp boots and his conscience. It had been a long day. Now he needed to tell Tilla that he had been invited to dine with the tribune this evening, while she had not. Experience had taught him that women did not like this sort of news, even if they had never wanted to go in the first place. He was also fairly confident that the last thing Tilla would want to hear next was that his best kit needed to be polished before tomorrow morning and that he didn’t have time to do it himself, because he could neither arrive at dinner smelling of horse nor keep the tribune waiting, so he needed to rush off to the bathhouse straightaway.

Meanwhile, the young woman outside was urgently seeking a doctor.

“It’s all right,” he said, noting the unkempt hair and the wide eyes peering over the door slave’s outstretched arm. The body was mature but the face above it was that of a child. “You can let her in.”

The slave withdrew the arm and the unescorted girl stumbled past him, too busy taking in her surroundings to look where she was going. Noting the expression on the manager’s face, Ruso drew her away from the desk and into a corner beside a shrine garlanded with wilting flowers. “I’m the Medicus,” he explained. “But I can’t-”