Ruth Downie - Tabula Rasa

“Those are our neighbors out there,” Conn said. He pointed in turn to Ruso, Fabius, and the guards. “If you sons of whores will not give my brother back, our people will come in and find him.”

“We’re as keen to find him as you are,” Ruso told him, glancing at the guards, who looked as though they would like to take Conn outside and explain a few things to him.

“I doubt this. You sent one of my brothers to the next world. Now you have the other one.”

Tilla leaned close to Conn, lifted the straggly hair with one finger, and whispered fiercely in his ear. Ruso thought he caught the British words for insult and trying to help .

Conn scowled at her but reserved his contempt for the Romans. “We are not fools. We know how you can tell who my brother is. We know it must be one of the men from in here.”

Fabius was still determined to argue. “Your brother’s name has been associated with a malicious rumor.”

“Yes. You spread a lie about him, then you take him away. Where is he?”

“Are you denying that he claimed to witness an illegal burial?”

Conn hesitated, perhaps making sure he had unraveled the Latin correctly before deciding how to answer. He said, “My father’s people know nothing of this. We do not speak of a burial to anyone.”

Fabius sat forward. “Then who did?”

Someone knocked on the door as Conn demanded, “Why do you ask me? Look to your own men. Give us Branan back.”

The chair and Daminius had arrived at the same time. Instead of sitting, Senecio clung on to Conn’s arm and hissed in British, “That is one of them!”

“Are you sure?”

“I know it!”

While Fabius began to explain the situation to Daminius, Conn was whispering urgently to Tilla. Nobody was bothering with the old man. Ruso stepped forward and urged him into the chair before he fell. Senecio clutched his arm, still very agitated, and insisted in British, “He is one of them! He came to the farm!”

“Silence!” ordered Fabius. He sounded more petulant than authoritative. He turned to his deputy. “Optio?”

“I’ll have the men account for their movements yesterday, sir,” Daminius promised. “And we’ll have all the buildings and the quarry searched.”

“Wait!” Tilla cried. “Not yet!”

Ruso frowned. This was going too far. He reached for her arm. “A word in private, wife,” he urged, excusing them both and propelling her toward the door. Out in the entrance hall he whispered, “You can try telling Fabius what to do when nobody else is listening, but you can’t order his optio about in front of everyone. Daminius is a sensible man and he’s trying to help. What’s all the fuss about?”

“Daminius is the man who searched the farm.”

“Gods above, don’t your people ever let go of a grudge? He was only obeying orders! Now he’s been ordered to help find Branan.”

“This is not a grudge! Listen!” Tilla glanced around to make sure they were alone before putting her arms around him. To anyone passing through the hall, they might have been snatching a moment of un-Roman intimacy. Her breath tickled his ear as he heard, “Senecio has been thinking. What soldier will know to say to Branan, ‘The Roman lady wants to see you?’ He has been asking himself, ‘What Roman could know that Branan has met the Daughter of Lugh?’ Who has seen me and Branan together?” She paused, letting him think about that for a moment.

“The search party who went to the farm,” he said.

“Yes. And Daminius is one of them.”

One of the many disadvantages of having a minuscule HQ building was the lack of privacy. A bemused Daminius was sent to wait in the clerk’s office and the three Britons were left under guard in Fabius’s room while Ruso and Fabius glanced around the corridor, agreed that they might be overheard, and banished themselves to the middle of the street outside to hold a hurried conversation. The air was still pulsating with the angry chant from the Britons beyond the walls. Ruso tried to shut it out of his mind. “We have to take this seriously,” he said. “What the old man is saying makes sense.”

“This is absurd!” Fabius kept glancing over at the gates as if he was expecting wild natives to burst through them at any moment. “Why would Daminius have anything to do with stealing a child?”

“They’re not saying it’s him personally,” Ruso pointed out. “They’re saying he’s one of the eight men it could be.”

“I should never have left the Sixth,” muttered Fabius. “The gods have sent me nothing but bad luck ever since. Terrible weather, bodies in the wall, men kidnapped and tortured, natives complaining. No wonder I’m ill. I should never have listened to you about that missing clerk.”

“We need to check up on all the men who’ve met the boy,” said Ruso, wondering if he had been deliberately paired with Fabius by some senior officer whom he had managed to annoy.

The centurion lifted his head. “Can you hear that? Thanks to you, we’ve become a target for native revenge!”

“If you’d been sober enough to discipline Regulus properly in the first place, none of this would have happened!”

“It was you who prescribed the wine, Doctor!”

They stood glaring at each other in the street. Finally Ruso said, “This is getting us nowhere. We need the names of everyone on that search party straightaway, and we need to check where they were yesterday afternoon.”

“This is beyond our level. I’m not doing anything without authorization.”

“You don’t need authorization to talk to your own men. Get Daminius to give you the names, keep him here, and have the others rounded up.”

“But-”

Their conversation was interrupted by the arrival of the watch captain needing further orders on how to deal with the fifty or so Britons making that racket outside the south gate.

Fabius, whose job it was to give those orders, looked at Ruso and the watch captain and the closed gates as if searching for some hint about how to proceed. Ruso hoped he was not going to do something stupid. He wished the Britons would shut up. They were not helping.

Fabius asked if they were armed.

“Just a few farm tools, sir.” The watch captain’s growl made him sound more authoritative than his centurion. “And they’ve got women and children and old people out there.”

Fabius looked relieved. “Just ignore them unless they attack.”

The watch captain, who might have been hoping that his centurion would take charge of the situation, left with the paltry consolation that whatever went wrong from now on, everyone would know it was Fabius’s fault.

“Daminius is a decent man,” Ruso continued when the watch captain was out of earshot. “He’ll want to help you catch a child snatcher.”

“If there is one,” snapped Fabius. “If this isn’t some plot the natives have cooked up between them. Taking revenge on your ill-judged search party. I’ve had enough of your bright ideas, Ruso. I want some authorization. We’ll need to get a message through to the camp.”

“I’ll do that,” Ruso promised, wondering why Fabius was talking as if the fort were under siege. Since the riot outside the south gate could be seen from the main road, it was more likely to be the officers at the camp who were under siege, surrounded by passersby now clamoring to tell them about the excitement. “I’m going across there for a clinic anyway.”

Fabius’s eyes widened. “If you go out there, I can’t promise my men can protect you.”

“It’s only a rabble of native families,” Ruso assured him, wondering as he said it whether people had assumed the same thing about Boudica and her warriors. “If we send the father and brother home with a promise of action, they’ll probably disperse.”