Ruth Downie: Tabula Rasa

It was usually best not to think about what Tilla would say.

He thought instead about Valens’s wife, and their boys, and how he would no longer be an honorary uncle but the man who had helped their grandfather to die rather than try to save him.

“I’m all right!” he called. Stretching up to the left, he managed to get a grip on the root of a tree that was buried in the mound of debris. “It’s Ruso, sir. Nearly there now.”

He hauled himself up and across, feeling the muscles burning in his arm and shoulder, and tried a tentative foothold on a broken scaffolding pole.

When he got there, Pertinax’s eyes opened for a moment and then closed again. His face was oddly striped where trickles of water had washed the mud away.

“It’s Ruso, sir,” he repeated, scanning for other injuries. “Can you tell me where it hurts?” He could see nothing else apart from scrapes and bruises, but then he could see very little under the muck, and he wasn’t about to start cutting clothing off. “Let’s get you out.” He untied the rolled cloak from around his waist and draped it over the prefect’s body. “I expect you’re a bit cold?”

Faintly, without opening his eyes, Pertinax mumbled, “Go away.”

The prefect’s skin was clammy. The man was deteriorating fast. Ruso looped the spare end of rope around the handle of his case before balancing it on the slope. He felt as clumsy as a child’s dancing doll suspended on the end of a wire. “Sir,” he said, opening the case and grabbing the probe that always slipped out of its clip, “your foot’s trapped between two rocks. I’m going to get you free now and then we can go back to the fort.”

“Uh. Too late.”

“No, sir. If we do this, there’s a very good chance-”

“Kill me.”

It was possible Ruso was about to do exactly that, but not in the way his patient wanted. “I can’t do that, sir.”

“Bloody useless. All of you.”

“Yes, sir.” Ruso blew away some loose grit from the skin of the unfashionably hairy leg. Searching for a topic to distract the patient, he discarded the weather as too trivial, the landslide as too frightening, and any mention of supervising the hospital as more likely to depress than inspire him. What Pertinax thrived on was challenge. “Sir, if you die, your daughter and your grandsons will be left in the care of your son-in-law.”

“What?”

“Valens will be looking after the family, sir.”

“Man’s an idiot.”

Ruso grinned. “You‘re absolutely right, sir.” He glanced up, inadvertently clunking the borrowed helmet against the rock above him. He held his breath. Nothing happened. He let the breath out again.

As if the gods were being deliberately perverse, the light changed. The sun went behind a cloud, making it even harder to see what he was doing down here under the gloom of the overhang.

The foot would be safely clamped in one place while he worked, even though it was at a difficult angle and he couldn’t get underneath it properly. But if Pertinax thrashed about, he could set the whole slide in motion again. Ruso scooped away some of the muck from beneath the man’s calf, then swabbed the skin with diluted vinegar. He needed an assistant up here to hold the patient. He didn’t have one. He set the dirty cloth aside, wiped his hands on a clean one, and reached for the scalpel.

“Keep absolutely still for me now, sir. This might sting a bit.”

It was even more of a lie than usual, but what else could he say?

Pertinax gasped and cried out.

“Sorry, sir. Well done.” He must keep him talking. “You can’t go killing yourself, sir. You can’t leave Valens in charge.”

“Unreliable.”

“Exactly, sir. Here we go. Keep still now.” Because if you don’t, I can’t tie this off and you’ll bleed to death as soon as you’re the right way up. “Nearly done.”

“Dunno what she-agh!”

“Well done, sir. Not long now. Have you seen your grandsons lately?”

He wiped the blood again, trying not to get mud in the wound. Trying to see exactly what he was doing.

A voice called, “Shall we come up, sir?” The stretcher had arrived.

“No, keep clear.”

He took out the bone saw, swore under his breath, and wrenched off the helmet that had tipped forward over his eyes. He flung it as far behind him as he could manage, safely away from the slide. “Nearly done now, sir. You’ll be free in a moment.”

Pertinax was rigid. His body was shaking with the effort of keeping unnaturally still when his every instinct must be to struggle and scream. Ruso felt the saw bite against the bone, and prayed.

It was lucky the leaves were still on the trees or the soldiers would have seen him by now. They had been so busy running around and shouting orders that nobody had noticed a boy creeping along beside the stream until he could get near enough to see the whole of the amazing thing that had happened in the quarry.

The one tied to the rope had made it across to the one who was stuck under the rock now. He moved very slowly, as if he were frightened. Aedic had never seen a soldier frightened before.

The one on the rope was . . . Aedic stretched out and parted the leaves with the tip of his finger. The one on the rope was hunched up right underneath the big rock, trying to do something to the other one’s . . . What was that in his hand? Surely he wasn’t going to cut the other one’s leg off? Aedic felt his mouth fall open, closed it again, and swallowed.

First the dead body, and today a Roman having his leg sawn off. It was the most exciting week he could remember since the day the soldiers turned up and threw everything out of the house and called it “helping.” This made up for not being able to tell the others about the body. Almost.

He still wasn’t sure he believed in the body himself.

He had been hiding in the tunnels his family’s sheep had made through the thick clump of bushes. In the middle the ground still smelled faintly of sheep, even though the flock was long gone, but around the edges was the sharp stink of wee. He didn’t like it, but you got used to it after a bit and at least it meant the soldiers who were building the wall had left these bushes here to use as a latrine instead of chopping them down along with everything else. Farther down the hill, the bramble berries were finished; everyone said you mustn’t pick them past the end of September and it was true-they were dull and shriveled-so he was even hungrier than usual. He had eaten all the cheese he had taken when Petta wasn’t looking, sucking it slowly to make the taste last longer, just like Mam used to tell him. It was nearly dark now, and it was starting to rain again, and still nobody had come to look for him. The patrol had gone past and wouldn’t be back for ages. He supposed he should get up and go home before Petta gave his share of supper to the dog.

He was rubbing his foot to get rid of the pins and needles when he heard . . . a gasp? A grunt? At the time he wasn’t sure what it was, but it wasn’t the wind in the leaves, and it was much too close.

So he had shifted carefully to one side, trying to get a better view out between the tangle of rough stems. The thing grunted again. A shape was moving up the hill away from him. If it had picked up his scent, it wasn’t interested. It wasn’t afraid, either. Too big to be a man; too upright to be a pony or a cow. He lost sight of it, and then it reappeared up by the black line of the wall. He could see its shape against the remaining light in the sky. Two legs. A man, then. But he was not tramping along, carrying a shield like the men on patrol. He was carrying something big and heavy on his back-something that he now let fall onto the ground.