Ruth Downie - Tabula Rasa

Having ascertained that the man had not tried figs boiled in hyssop, Ruso glanced at his pharmacist. “When the cough mixture’s made up, let him have some. Gracilis, you’re to take one spoonful every morning and one before you lie down at night.”

He had expected Nisus to get straight back to his table, but instead of returning his attention to the pale green and mauve of the dried hyssop under the scale, the pharmacist was watching as the new clerk glanced over each document before adding it to the correct pile on the barricades around him. Finally Nisus said, “Better than the last one, sir.”

Ruso, taken aback by this unsolicited opinion, ventured, “Can you remember any conversation you had with the last one?

“I told him to stop talking or I would kill somebody.”

Behind the flimsy rampart of administration, Gracilis’s eyes widened.

“I thought you didn’t threaten him?”

“I was measuring out mandrake, sir.”

“Ah,” said Ruso, explaining for the benefit of the alarmed clerk: “Medicinal in small quantities, dangerous in large ones. And did that stop him?”

“He went away, sir.”

Ruso said, “Perhaps he misunderstood.”

The pharmacist might have been considering this possibility, or he might have been staring into space and hoping Ruso would go away so he could get on with measuring out the hyssop.

Ruso tried, “Can you remember anything of what he said?”

Nisus pondered his reply and finally offered, “I wasn’t listening, sir.”

“Well, try to remember what you weren’t listening to.”

Nisus let a long breath out through his nose. The hyssop stirred gently in the bowl with the movement of air. Nisus looked as though he might be about to open his mouth to speak when Ruso’s ears were assaulted with another bout of coughing.

This was how it would be as they went into the winter: sniffly conversations punctuated by involuntary bursts of noise. As if talking to Nisus were not difficult enough. Finally the pharmacist answered, “Something about meeting somebody for a drink.”

“On his last day?”

Nisus shrugged. “On my last day, sir.”

“Yes, of course. Sorry. Did he say who?” Perhaps he would not send that letter to Albanus just yet.

“A man he’d seen somewhere else, sir.”

“Where?”

Nisus did not know.

“Anything else he said that you can remember?”

Nisus paused. “Nothing relevant, sir.”

“Tell me anyway.”

“ ‘Doctor Ruso is just as miserable as my uncle.’ ”

“That,” Ruso assured him, “is a compliment.”

“He wanted a transfer back to Magnis.” Nisus gave a sniff of disapproval. “Said Doctor Valens would be more fun.”

Ruso said, “Not if you have to work for him.”

Nisus, now positively chatty, ventured another unsolicited opinion. “I was expecting better, sir.”

“So was I,” Ruso agreed. “Anything else?”

“Something about recruitment, sir.”

“What, exactly?”

Nisus opened his mouth, thought for a moment, then closed it again. Anything else he might have considered saying was lost beneath the sound of Gracilis coughing, leaving Ruso free to wonder how he was going to trace a drinking companion with no name and no description. Whoever he was, the man hadn’t yet come forward despite all the appeals for information. Which might mean that he was no longer here-or, worse, that he was here but he didn’t want to be found.

The hyssop had arrived not a moment too soon. A couple of the gate guards were pink-eyed and sniffing, and the watch captain’s voice had slid down several tones to an impressive growl. He too had heard the horn, and Ruso could tell from his expression that he knew what it meant. The guard had been put on alert, and remote work parties had been recalled, but so far nothing seemed to be happening. Certainly nothing that warranted Fabius putting in an appearance.

On the way back to the hospital Ruso reminded himself that there was a vast expanse of countryside out there within range of the horn, and the chances of anyone he knew being in the wrong part of it at the wrong moment were slim. Or they would have been, had the person not been Tilla.

Dodging an orderly carrying a stack of malodorous bedpans, he slipped into Pertinax’s room and closed the door behind him.

The prefect lay motionless, facing the wall. Holding his breath, Ruso stepped across to the bed and placed a hand lightly on the prefect’s ribs. He was reassured to feel a rise and fall, but it was not the steady rhythm of sleep. He bent closer and saw something glinting in the wrinkled skin around the man’s eyes. There was a faint damp patch on the pillow.

The food and drink brought in this morning had not been touched. Leaving the water jug and cup, he put the tray outside to be taken back to the kitchen. When he closed the door again, Pertinax must have thought he had gone. Otherwise there would never have been that low moan from the bed.

Ruso said, “Sorry if I woke you, sir.”

“I heard the horn.”

“There’s nothing much happening out there, sir.”

Without moving, Pertinax said, “You should have let me go. No bloody use to anyone now.”

Ruso had been expecting something like this. Pertinax had clung desperately to talk of his duties as if nothing had changed. Now the illusion had faded. He had begun the long struggle to adjust to a new reality.

“Are you in pain, sir?”

“No.”

“We can help if you are.”

“I can put up with a little pain, boy!”

“Can I take a look at the wound, sir?”

Ruso examined the stump. The swelling was no worse. He wondered how best to comfort a man who was no easier to console than the struggling cavalry stallion that had impaled itself on a fencing stake last month. The first vet who went to help had ended up in a hospital bed himself.

At least you could-allegedly-reason with a man. But the rational comfort offered by philosophy never seemed as useful in the face of real suffering as it did when you were reading about it at home after a good dinner. Reminding Pertinax that things could be worse was unlikely to help, and might well earn him a punch on the nose. In the end he said, “This is a very different challenge from anything you’ve faced before, sir.”

“Always thought I’d die with my boots on,” mumbled Pertinax. “Can’t even stand up to take a pee. And now the natives are playing up again.”

Trying to think of something encouraging, Ruso remembered the large newcomer in the office. “The clerk you asked for has arrived, sir. We all appreciate you putting in a word with the tribune.”

Pertinax grunted.

There was a soft knock on the door and a bald head appeared. “Visitors, sir,” it croaked.

Before the man could reply to Ruso’s “Who is it?” Pertinax growled, “Tell ’em to bugger off.”

The whisper of “The legate’s physician, sir” was not soft enough.

“I’m not bloody deaf,” Pertinax told him, “even if you are. I said, tell them to bugger off. All of them. Especially that one.”

The orderly shrank behind Ruso and croaked, “And your wife is waiting in the treatment room to speak to you, sir.”

“I’ll come and talk to them both,” Ruso promised, glad to hear that Tilla was safe from whatever was brewing outside, and wondering how she had managed to get past the gates. No doubt she believed that her reason for coming here was urgent enough to justify whatever disturbance she had caused, but he could not deal with civilian matters until he had finished work. He turned to the figure on the bed. “Sir, if you want anything, just ring the bell.”

Pertinax stretched out an arm. The bell tinkled. “I want my foot back,” he said.