Ruth Downie - Tabula Rasa

“I hope you find Branan soon. He’s a nice boy. I like him.”

He said, “We’re getting nearer,” because he had to say something, and because it might be true. For all he knew, the lad had turned up by now. In case he hadn’t, Ruso was about to visit the local brothel in the hope of meeting Larentia, Delia, and a blonde girl with a mole on her left buttock.

The woman’s hair was dyed a harsh, unnatural fox-pelt red. Heavy makeup had collected in her wrinkles so the painted eyes in the artificially whitened face made him think of black beetles in a snowdrift. But she still had most of her own teeth, or someone else’s skillfully attached, and the smile that revealed them was professional. So was the disappointment when she realized Ruso had only come for information and was not intending to pay for it.

Yes, she had heard about the boy. It was a terrible thing.

“Do you have many customers who ask for boys?”

“Not often enough to warrant buying one,” she said, as if it were a matter of regret. “I send them to Vindolanda.”

“Do you know who those customers are?”

“I know who all my customers are.”

Ruso waited.

“Discretion, Doctor,” she explained. “I’m sure you understand.”

“And I’m sure you understand how urgently we need to know.”

The muscles holding the cheeks into a half smile relaxed, and the skin around her mouth fell to a slackness that betrayed her age. Ruso looked her in the eye until she pulled the smile back into place.

She remembered a tall gentleman with only one leg, and one who was short and stout and wheezy. She could hardly have invented anyone less like the man who had taken Branan.

“If you see either of them,” he said, “ask them to look out for him on their, ah . . . on their travels.”

“I’m sure they will,” she said, not in a way he liked. “Now. Who else can we offer you, Doctor?”

Pertinax opened his eyes. “You.”

Still clutching the medical case, which was unlikely to have shielded his reputation when he was seen entering the brothel, Ruso said, “Good afternoon, sir.”

“I don’t know what’s bloody good about it. When am I going to get my crutches?”

Ruso restrained a smile of relief. He pulled up the stool and sat beside the bed. The room smelled normal and Pertinax’s grumbling was lucid, all of which was good news. He explained again about the dangers of postoperative bleeding as everything inside the wound grew back together and the stitches no longer held things shut. “So far it’s all healing up very nicely,” he said, having learned long ago not to say better than I’d expected , because the patient then concluded that his earlier words of encouragement had been a lie. “If you move about too much now, you’ll delay the recovery and you may end up a lot worse. Especially if you fall, which you will until you get used to a new way of walking.”

Pertinax closed his eyes and said, “Hmph,” but Ruso was not fooled. The man’s brow had smoothed, as if he were secretly glad to have the challenge taken away from him. Then Pertinax sniffed and his brow creased again. “Are there women around here somewhere?”

“Not that I know of, sir.”

“Then what’s that smell?” The eyes opened. “Not you, is it?”

Ruso plucked the shoulder of his tunic and sniffed. There was a faint whiff of Larentia, who had conveniently turned out to be a blonde girl with a mole in the right place; he had declined her invitation to inspect it. She could vouch for Mallius being fully occupied in the early afternoon and for Liber being in the brothel at the time when he had told Virana he was on duty. He cleared his throat. “I think it might be me, sir.”

“You smell like a cheap whore.”

It was too complicated to explain. “I must have picked up some woman’s scent in passing, sir.”

“Hmph. My late wife never fell for that one.”

Ruso, who was supposed to be reporting back to Accius, opened his mouth to say what he had come to say, which was that Valens was taking over, but Pertinax said suddenly, “Women. Don’t suppose you could have one sent in?”

“I don’t think that would be a good idea, sir.”

Pertinax grunted. “Shut away in here all day. No idea what’s going on. Half-baked stories about bodies in the wall. Some idiot came in here earlier and told me your father’s just died. I told him your father’s been dead for years. Left you with a lot of debts, didn’t he?”

“There’s been a misunderstanding, sir.”

“What was all that shouting after the horn? Sounded like natives.”

“Nothing to worry about, sir.”

Pertinax’s eyes snapped open and glared at Ruso as if he had been watching him through his eyelids. “I’ll decide what I want to worry about.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You’re just like the rest of them: looking at me lying here and thinking, Poor old boy. He’s finished. No foot, no sense. Is that what you think?”

“No, sir,” Ruso assured him.

“Accius wants to take you away for special duties. What for?”

“That’s what I came to tell you, sir. I won’t be around for a while, but-”

“I know that! I’m asking what for?”

It was some measure of Pertinax’s current ambiguous status that the tribune had paid him the courtesy of asking before taking one of his men, but had not thought it necessary to tell him why. It was a sign of how ill Pertinax was that he had not insisted on knowing at the time. “The locals have lost a child, sir. It looks as if one of our men’s taken him. They’re demanding him back. I’m needed to help with the search because I have native contacts.”

The lines on the prefect’s forehead deepened. “One of our men?”

“We’re questioning some suspects now, sir.”

“Good. Don’t pussyfoot about.”

“No, sir,” said Ruso. “Doctor Valens has offered to come and take over here.”

“Offered? My son-in-law never volunteers for anything.”

“He really did, sir,” Ruso insisted. “He’s a good doctor: you’ll be in safe hands.”

For once Pertinax did not argue. Instead he asked how long the child had been missing. When he was told, he shook his head. “All that work we did getting the Brits settled down,” he said. “Good men were lost. When I think of some of those lads . . . I can still see their faces.”

“Yes, sir,” said Ruso, who for months afterward had suffered bad dreams about the men he had failed to save. The natives had raised a much more spirited rebellion than anyone could have expected, and the casualty list had been horrendous.

“And now some twisted fool’s gone and stirred them up again,” said Pertinax. He lay back on his pillows and gave a graphic description of what he would do to the twisted fool when he was caught. “Very slowly,” he added. “In front of the natives.”

“I think that would be a popular move, sir,” said Ruso, wondering how many of the audience would faint.

“Hmph. But they’re not going to ask me what I think, are they?” He gestured toward the end of the bed. “No foot, no sense. Why haven’t we caught him yet?”

“We’re looking at several men, sir.”

“Who?”

At the sound of the first name Pertinax gestured toward his missing foot. “Anybody tell you why I was over at the quarry?”

“No, sir.” Ruso suspected he was not the only person who had wondered.

“Good. You’re not supposed to know.”

There seemed to be no answer to that.

“Don’t pass it on. I wanted to watch Daminius at work without that idiot Fabius getting in the way. He’s up for centurion. Or was.”