Ruth Downie - Terra Incognita

“No, I can’t say I have.”

Thessalus tapped his chest. “Greek, you see. The race of thinkers. Romans do; Greeks think. And write rather good books.”

“My grandfather was Greek,” said Ruso.

“Ah, you understand! Welcome, philosopher! Well, a quarter of a philosopher. Torn between thought and action, I suppose.”

Ruso cleared his throat. He needed to take charge of this conversation. “How long have you been stationed at Coria, Thessalus?”

“Ah, the Roman practicality. Back to the facts. Take the patient’s history. To tell you the truth, I arrived here some time ago and I’ve been at a junction ever since. Of course, if we don’t hold firm at the join we might as well all go home.” Thessalus paused. “Do you ever find you wake up in the wrong bed, Doctor? Or is that just me?”

“The wrong bed?”

“You wake up and the bed’s wrong, the walls have moved, you can smell things that shouldn’t be there, the sounds are different, and you think, Where am I? Who’s put me here?”

Worryingly, Ruso could recall exactly that sensation. “I think it’s when you’ve been dreaming about a place where you used to live-”

“Ah, you think that. But how do you know? How does any of us know? Who’s to say that while our bodies are resting, our souls don’t go wandering somewhere else? Back into the past? What about the future? Do you ever have the feeling that you’ve seen something before, even when you know you can’t have? What if our souls travel into the future before our bodies do, Doctor? Have you thought of that?”

Ruso suspected that Thessalus’s soul often went on trips unaccompanied by his body. He said, “Do you find this happening a lot?”

“Oh dear me, no.” Thessalus clasped his hands together. The dark eyes narrowed and his head tilted slightly on one side in a way that implied concern. “Do you?”

Ruso wondered whether he adopted the same pose himself, and whether his patients found it as unnerving as he now did. “Not often, no.”

“It’s so nice to be able to chat with a fellow medic, you know. Such a joy to talk to someone who understands. Between you and me-” Here the young Greek leaned forward to the point where the stool was about to overturn and seized Ruso’s left knee, digging his fingernails into the flesh-“I think I’ve been alone here far too long. My triangles are getting blunt.”

“Ah-very possibly,” said Ruso, prizing the fingers off his knee and wondering if the prefect and Metellus might be wrong about the man being incapable of violence. “It can be a lonely job.”

“Oh!” Thessalus, motionless, was staring at his hand as if he were seeing it for the first time. He withdrew it, sat back on the stool, and glanced into his palm as if to check that nothing else unexpected was lurking inside. “Dear me. Sorry about that. And I was going to try my new approach.”

“New approach?”

“Talking. You must never touch the patient. You just talk to him until he feels better.”

“Look, is there anything I can do to help?” said Ruso, not optimistic. “The prefect said something was worrying you.’

“To help? Well, that’s very decent of you. But no, not really. I’m absolutely fine. If you really want to help somebody, you might find a few men in the infirmary. I think I left some behind in there.”

Ruso got to his feet. He could no longer remember any of the questions he had wanted to ask Thessalus. “I’ll see to the men,” he promised. This patient did not seem to be in need of any immediate help. In fact, despite being as mad as a bee in a bottle, he was the most cheerful person Ruso had met since arriving there.

“Do come back and see me again, Doctor.”

“I will,” he promised, not adding, And I’ll be better prepared.

“Excellent!” Thessalus smiled. “Next time, make sure you remember the fish!”

Ruso intercepted his luggage on its way into the infirmary and extracted a clean tunic and his bathing kit. Then he went out through the fort gates, past more tethered horses, and into the civilian street. On his left a gang of grubby children eyed him from a doorway. Opposite was a shop front bearing crude pictures of a saucepan, a shoe, and what might have been a cabbage beneath the flaking legend, We Sell Everything. A cockerel was poised to strut inside the shop when a man emerged from the doorway, aimed a kick at the bird, and sized up Ruso before deeming him worthy of a gap-toothed smile. Ruso nodded an acknowledgment. The shopkeeper was too dark to be a native. He wondered how far the man had traveled to end up selling everything on the edge of the empire, and why he had bothered.

In front of the next shop, a crippled boy was flapping a branch over a carcass to keep the flies off it while an angular woman and a man in a blood-smeared leather apron were haggling in a Latin that was clearly the first language of neither.

It had just struck him that the narrow passageway between the two shops must be the scene of the murder, when a squad of soldiers appeared, marching a scruffy pair of civilians toward the fort. Butcher and customer glanced around briefly and then went back to haggling. One of the children shouted something and the others giggled. Evidently the sight of locals under arrest was nothing unusual. As soon as they had passed, Ruso followed his curiosity into the alley.

He had imagined the murder scene as a backstreet, but the gap between the buildings was only about three feet wide. A few weeds straggled down either side of a worn strip of mud, and the place was gloomy even in daylight. Why the victim would have chosen to walk down here late on a night when he had already been threatened with violence was a mystery.

Ruso sniffed. The usual alleyway stench of urine and dog droppings was blanketed by heavy layers of incense and rose oil. Evidently the priests had been around to purify the place. Even so, he suspected it would be a long time before many people ventured down this unlucky shortcut again.

About ten paces in, he paused. Behind him, a couple of small windows overlooked the passageway. Ahead, the sides of the buildings were blank. Another five or six paces and he guessed the freshly scrubbed walls and the battered state of the weeds at their feet were the only remaining indicators of the murder site. If there had been any evidence, either Audax or last night’s storm had done another fine job of destroying it. Ruso bent and picked up a broad flat stone about as big as his fist. If the cause of death really were head injuries, it was a plausible murder weapon, unhelpfully washed clean by the centurion or by the rain. The bang-on-the-head theory would, he supposed, explain why the victim had not been heard to shout for help. No doubt Tilla would say he had been struck dumb by a native god.

Ruso dropped the stone, lengthened his stride, and emerged into the street at the far end of the alley. He passed a crowded bar, ignored a brothel, nodded to a gaudy and surprisingly busy shrine honoring a god he didn’t recognize, and walked on in pursuit of a cheering aroma that told him someone was cooking sausages.

The bathhouse, a big building gleaming with fresh lime wash, was the most-in fact, the only-impressive structure outside the fort. At the back, it must have a pleasant view across the meadows towards the river. A barber’s shop was tucked into the frontage, and on the corner opposite was a snack shop. He had found the source of the cooking smell. He had also found something else.

Seated at one of the tables beneath a sagging canvas awning were two women. The one clutching a baby-shaped bundle was Tilla. The dark-skinned girl now scrambling to her feet was the carpenter’s girlfriend.

“Sir! Is there news?”