Ruth Downie - Terra Incognita

She had assured the medicus that this valley was beautiful, but in truth the memory of its beauty had faded with use. Now, seeing it basking in the afternoon sun, with the skylarks spilling music into the air like silver and the yellow splashes of gorse on the hillsides celebrating her return, she wanted to shriek with delight and run laughing down the road, leaving behind the sour-faced soldiers still tramping in their miserable column like a row of iron wood lice.

Instead she took in a deep breath of the precious air and told herself, “I am home!” before walking on, keeping pace with the baggage train. She had a duty to make sure Lydia was safe. Lydia would not be running around laughing today. Her man would not be running for a long time. Perhaps never. This morning he had been a healthy young Roman with a new daughter and a steady trade as a carpenter with the legion. By midday he had become a body lying in a cart with a crushed leg that the medicus had covered up so as not to frighten him. She tried not to think about what the medicus might have done to him while other men held him down. She had assured Lydia that her master was a fine doctor. This had seemed to comfort her. Evidently the girl knew very little about surgery.

She shifted her bruised arm to ease the ache that echoed the blows from the centurion’s stick. She would ask the medicus for some salve tonight. Perhaps she would also ask him to explain to the centurion that she had nothing to do with the accident, and that she was not in league with Cernunnos the horned god or with Taranis the god of thunder against anybody. The figure had simply appeared to her in answer to her prayers for another woman’s safety. It was not her fault if he had come back the next day and brought about a terrible accident. And if he had a face that was vaguely familiar, what of it? She must have seen him in a dream.

“Is that it?” Lydia was clutching the side of the cart with both hands and peering at the buildings on the low rise beyond the river.

“Yes.” Tilla followed her gaze, seeing the familiar mud brown rectangle of the fort and the jumble of thatched houses that spread out from it like a stain. The clang of a smithy echoed across the valley, interrupted by the distant whinny of a horse.

“It’s very small.”

Tilla had to agree. Yet the fort had not seemed small when she lived here. It had seemed massive and ugly and overwhelming.

She could make out tiny figures moving along the streets outside the fort. She wondered if she knew any of them. How many of the girls she had grown up with had been seduced by Roman money? What had happened to the girls who should have married her brothers?

She would not think about her family. She would not think about them because when she did, the sparkling river and the birds and the splendid yellow of the gorse became a hollow joy: a reminder of all that she had lost.

The civilians who had traveled with the Twentieth were barely across the bridge when a gaggle of residents-mostly women of assorted ages, sizes, and colors-surged down the slope to greet them. Bags were grabbed, with or without the owners’ permission. A blather of multi-accented Latin promised fine rooms, dry rooms, cheap rooms, rooms with no bother with the neighbors, rooms with good views of the river, snug and secure rooms, nice quiet rooms, rooms handy for the shops, rooms only a short stroll from the waterspout… Nobody, Tilla noticed, even bothered to try the local tongue. These women were living their lives on the land her own people had farmed for generations, yet now it was she who was the stranger.

The mule’s bridle was seized by a shawled woman with badly bleached hair who assured them in Latin that she had a very comfortable loft room, and they should hurry now before someone else took it. “Close to the baths, over a very respectable eating house,” she assured them, tugging the animal past an official-looking inn and up the slope toward the houses while the driver protested in vain.

She did not release her grip until she had led them past the wooden ramparts of the fort, taken another turn down a side street and reached the grand doors of a gleaming white bathhouse. She waved an arm toward a snack bar opposite with an awning sagging over a couple of outside tables. “A week’s rent in advance,” she said, “and the back of the loft is yours.”

“I have no money,” whispered Lydia.

“Don’t worry,” Tilla assured her. “I know who has.”

Ruso returned from delivering his weasel-worded report to headquarters to find the infirmary office crowded with men and smelling of beer and stale sweat. He gave them a cursory glance and went across the corridor to visit the amputee.

The man was horribly pale. Ruso checked his pulse, which was as fast and faint as he expected. The man’s hands and remaining foot were cold. Ruso renewed the compresses on the rib cage and sat watching the labored breathing for a few minutes. “There isn’t much more we can do at the moment,” he said to the bandager. “Get the cook to feed you. I’ve got to go to a funeral this evening, but I’ll take over after that. Fetch me right away if there’s any change.”

After a swift visit to the bedridden patients in the four scruffy wards (four! Seventeen beds should present no challenge to a man who was used to supervising dozens…), Ruso went to inspect the state of the treatment room.

As he stepped into the room he realized he was not alone. A large man crawled out from under the heavy operating table, scrambled to his feet and performed a salute that would have looked more impressive had he remembered to let go of the brush first.

“Stand easy,” said Ruso, recognizing the big Batavian who had helped with the carpenter that afternoon: a man who seemed to be perpetually stooping to duck under a lintel that wasn’t there.

The man’s arm returned to his side and the brush clattered onto the floorboards.

“Remind me of your name.”

“Ingenuus, sir.”

Ruso nodded. “Do the bandagers usually sweep the floors here, Ingenuus?”

The man looked flustered. “Sorry, sir. Only I thought in case the room was needed-”

“And nobody else here is getting on with it?”

Ingenuus glanced toward the door and muttered, “Well, somebody’s got to do it, sir.”

The table had been scrubbed, the instruments and bowls washed and dried, the shelves restacked with linen bandages and dressings, the restraints neatly coiled and put to one side.

“Very good,” said Ruso. “You can leave it there. Are you on duty this evening?”

“No, sir.”

“If you weren’t here, what would you be doing?”

Ingenuus thought about that for a moment. “We’re getting ready for the governor’s visit, sir. So I’d be doing a little polishing.”

“Right. Come down to the office for a moment, then you can go and polish.”

Ruso shouldered his way into the office past a couple of men who were lolling against the doorposts. “Gentlemen,” he announced, glancing around to make sure all the members of staff slumped against the furniture were gathering themselves into upright positions. Several cups were quietly put down or concealed behind backs, but the smell of beer lingered in the air. “Thank you for your help this afternoon.”

The murmurs of appreciation were decidedly wary. Ingenuus, unable to get his bulk past the men in the doorway, was listening in the corridor.

“I think we did as well as could be expected,” continued Ruso, aware that he was supposed to be making a motivating speech and that he had no idea how to make one. “The patient’s made a good start. Now, as you all know, Doctor Thessalus is out sick. In the meantime the prefect has asked me to take over temporary responsibility for the medical service.” He let that sink in for a moment before adding, “I’m looking forward to working with you.” He suspected this sounded like the lie it was, and certainly it did not seem to inspire his audience. There were more murmurs of something that might or might not have been assent. It occurred to him that some of these men were the ones he had seen gambling in the ward that afternoon.