Ruth Downie - Tabula Rasa

Afterward he had lain pondering her reply, wondering what British concept she had intended the Latin words to convey. In the end he had said, “You just told me your hair wakes you up.”

“Yes.”

“Your hair ?”

“I forget to tie it back. When I turn over, the hair is caught under my shoulder. Or yours. I must wake up to move the hair so I can move my head.”

“I knew you should have let me cut it off.”

He was glad she hadn’t.

It was raining again. He could hear it dripping off the thatch. “I’m sorry about the wedding blessing.”

“I do not think so.”

“Well, I’m sorry for you.”

No reply. He wondered whether it was worth trying again, or whether that would just make things worse. “It must be lonely for you sometimes, trailing around after me.”

She said, “Yes.”

“I’m glad you do.”

It was too much to hope that she might say she was glad too, but after a pause he felt a hand groping for his own. She said, “I’m hungry.”

He drew the hand up to his lips and kissed it. “Can you wait?”

“How long?”

“Half an hour?”

Afterward, when they were dozing in each other’s arms amidst a tangle of bedclothes, he heard, “That was not half an hour.”

“Are you complaining?”

She giggled. “No.”

They lay listening to the world outside, in no hurry to join it. Feet scurried across the room below them. Conversation rose and faded as the bar door was opened and closed. There was more dripping. Boots marched down the street. Someone whistled for a dog.

She said dreamily, “Can you stay here tonight?”

“I wish I could,” he said, guiltily remembering that he was supposed to be asking her about the body-in-the-wall rumor, and then remembering Candidus’s knife. “Night duty.”

“You are always on night duty!”

“Not the night we went to Senecio,” he pointed out. “Although I might as well have been.”

She sighed. “I know. ‘It is a small hospital. There is only one doctor.’ ”

“It’s the truth.”

“They should give you a proper clerk.”

“Not after we carelessly lost the last one.”

“He has caused a lot of trouble.” She nuzzled his ear. “Tell Albanus he must look for him himself.”

“I’d rather Albanus didn’t find out. I don’t want to upset him even more after Grata.”

She propped herself up on one elbow. “What about Grata?”

“He and Grata have fallen out. No marriage.”

“When did you hear this? Why did you not tell me?”

“I forgot,” he admitted.

“What happened?”

“I don’t know. I’m more worried about his nephew.”

“You are hopeless,” she told him. “And I am still hungry. At least stay to eat.”

As they groped for their clothes she said, “It is Albanus’s own fault. He should never have told you that such a silly boy was a good clerk.”

“I’m not sure that he did,” Ruso admitted. “He was just doing his best to look after him.”

“Albanus knows nothing of people,” she told him, pointing one slender foot in the air and hiding it inside a sock. “He spends too long with words and writing. He thinks I am bad for you.”

“I’m sure he’s never said that.”

“He thinks I lead you into trouble.”

“You do.”

By way of reply, Tilla dragged a shawl off the end of the bed and gave it a vigorous shake.

He said, “Have you heard any rumors about the wall?”

“Which rumor would you like?” she offered, flinging the shawl around herself and ramming in the pin. “It will fall down when the snow comes. It will be fifty feet high. People on opposite sides will have to pay money to visit their families. It is an abomination and the gods will have revenge. They have already started in the quarry.”

“About a dead person.”

She thought for a moment. “Was there not a man over near Banna whose friend fell off the scaffolding and landed on top of him and killed him?” she said. “Then there was a carter bringing supplies who was trampled by his own oxen, and in the summer a man fishing in the dark river found a body that was so rotted away that only the hair told them it was a woman.” She pulled her skirts straight. “Are you trying to find out something for the army?”

“There’s a new rumor about a body and they want to know how it got started.”

“Who is it?”

“I don’t know.”

“A Roman or one of the people?”

“I don’t even know that,” he admitted. “Nor where’s it’s supposed to be.”

“Are you sure it is dead?”

“It might not exist at all. It’s rather like one of our centurion’s ailments.”

She shook her head. “That is a rumor with no legs or wings, husband.”

He said, “I’m not supposed to spread it.”

“Ah, a secret rumor.” When he did not tell her more, she said, “I do not care. This time I cannot do any spying for the Legion even if I want to. Because of you, nobody will talk to me.”

“That’s more or less what I told Accius.”

There was a creak on the ladder. An unsteady glow rising from the square of the hatch signaled a lamp being carried up toward them.

“Tell me something sensible and I will see what I can find out,” Tilla said as Virana’s head appeared at floor level. “And then I will decide whether to tell you.”

Virana heaved herself up through the opening. “Is that you, master?”

“It is,” agreed Ruso, wondering who else she thought it might be.

“There are still seventeen sausages and eight tarts left because of the bad weather and the curfew. Ria has gone to visit her brother, so her husband says you can have some half price as long as nobody tells her. What will you find out, mistress? Can I help?”

“You already help us by working,” Ruso assured her.

“I like working.” Virana grinned. “You find out all sorts of things in a snack bar. Did you know there is a dead body buried in the emperor’s wall?”

Husband and wife exchanged a glance. He said, “It’s just a wild rumor, Virana. It isn’t true.”

“But it must be!” she exclaimed. “If Branan over at the farm will still talk to you, you can ask him yourself. He saw a man put it there.”

Ruso shed his cloak and shook off the worst of the water outside the hospital entrance. He hung it on a nail and went to find Gallus just as the curfew sounded.

The evening ward round was quiet, and he had more time than he wanted to think. The rumor of the body was surely no more than an attempt at sabotage: a tale spread in anger and guaranteed to feed on existing fears, especially with Samain coming up. It was certainly feeding on plenty of fears of his own. What was Candidus’s knife doing up at the wall?

Meanwhile, while he was worrying instead of concentrating on dietary advice to combat chronic wind, Candidus might have spent the day relaxing in a warm bathhouse, eating honey cakes, glad he had escaped Nisus’s terrifying threats to murder him and wishing he had brought his loaded dice.

If only he had known earlier that Senecio’s youngest son had been spreading the rumor. He could have confronted the old man about it this morning. As it was, Tilla had agreed to try and talk to the family tomorrow. They were unlikely to tell her anything, let alone the truth. But she had a better chance than anyone else he could think of, and until he knew the tale about the body was a lie or until Candidus turned up, he knew he would be uneasy. She would go there on the pretext of warning them to prepare for another visit from the soldiers, who would soon be there demanding to know what Branan had seen. After that . . . “If you’re going to say or do anything you shouldn’t,” he told her, “then don’t tell me about it.”