Ruth Downie - Tabula Rasa

“Let us have them!” put in Conn. “We’ll find out.” There was a chorus of agreement.

When he could make himself heard, Accius explained that the men had been questioned and their stories were being checked. Meanwhile other searches would continue. “We need to coordinate our efforts.” He placed a hand on her husband’s arm as if to introduce him. “All messages will go through Medical Officer Ruso. He will keep you informed. If you have anything to tell us, speak to him.”

When her husband announced, “From tomorrow morning I will be based at Ria’s snack bar,” the tribune looked at him in surprise, as if this was something they had not talked about.

Conn wanted to know why, if the army was serious about the search, everyone was being forced to give up for the night because of the curfew.

“Our patrols will be looking throughout the night,” Accius told him.

Conn said, “But you don’t trust us near you in the dark.”

“See?” put in Cata’s sister, taking Enica’s arm. “They say they care about Branan, but they care more about themselves.”

This time, to her husband’s credit, he translated every word back to the tribune. Accius tried to wriggle out of it by saying the local searchers needed to sleep, whereas the soldiers had plenty of men and were used to patrolling through the night watches. Conn asked how he thought the farmers managed at lambing time, then.

It was Enica who told him to be quiet. Accius looked relieved and suggested that searchers might go out together.

“No, thanks,” said Conn in Latin.

Tilla watched confusion spread as the conversation rolled by too fast for her husband to catch it and clothe it in a different tongue. Accius’s scowl deepened. He repeated that they wanted to find the boy. Then, glancing at each of the faces around the fire and lingering on Conn, he added that nobody should hinder the army’s search parties. Otherwise they might not be able to continue.

Conn said in swift British, “They’re threatening to call off the search if our people don’t let them do anything they want.”

“That is not what he meant at all!” Tilla burst out. “What he is saying is-”

“Tilla, I can’t translate if you interrupt!”

“But Conn is telling them all wrong!”

“Stop!” The Medicus held up both hands and waited for silence. In slow and clear British-even to Tilla it sounded odd to hear a Roman with her own accent-he said, “What the tribune says is that if there is trouble between the local people and the army, both sides will be too busy defending themselves to look for the boy.”

“Exactly!” said Accius in the same tongue.

There was a moment’s stunned silence. It was hard to tell in the poor light, but Tilla was fairly sure that Accius’s fierce features had turned pink under the helmet.

Conn said, “Where did that come from?”

Accius did not reply.

“I told you!” Conn exclaimed. “You can’t trust them. He knows our tongue. He’s been listening.”

“Then he knows you mean no harm,” said Tilla.

“How do we know they’re helping to find my brother? They might be hiding him.”

“You do not know,” said Tilla. She looked at the two Roman officers standing unarmed in Senecio’s yard. At the old man’s one remaining son. At his pale wife. At the women who had been burned out of their home. Then she glanced back at the guards by the gate. “You do not know whether they can be trusted,” she said. “And nothing good that I can tell you about my husband will change what he did. But Enica’s son is missing, and Senecio has vowed not to touch food until he is returned. I have said this before. Only a fool will waste time fighting with men who have offered to help. I know you are bitter and ill-mannered, Conn, but I did not take you for a fool.”

Afterward, when the Romans had gone to mount the horses and a thunder-faced Conn was fetching their swords, Tilla turned to Enica. “You must try to sleep tonight. Leave someone else to tend the fire and turn the lamb. Tomorrow will be a busy day.”

“I pray he will be found before then.”

“I will be here in the morning and together we will find the person who started that story.”

“What if the man who hid the body gets there first?” There was no need to explain. Tilla had offered a possible story and Enica had believed it: There was a body in the wall, and whoever had buried it had stolen her son.

“How can he get there first?” she asked. “He does not have all of us women on his side.”

The smile was weak, but it was there. Tilla clasped the rough hand in her own.

Enica said, “I said harsh things to you before.”

“They are forgotten,” Tilla told her. “Tomorrow we will find the person who told that lie about your son. And if the gods are willing, we will bring Branan home.”

Ruso would have offered to escort Tilla back from the farm to her lodgings, but his duty lay with the tribune. He was not worried: Most of the trip was on the main road, and his wife was used to fending for herself. So both he and she were surprised when Accius announced that she should walk back with them.

Moments later Accius was calling out, “Not in between the guards! Walk on one side. You’re being escorted, not arrested!”

Ruso stifled a smile. As he suspected, the offer was less for his wife’s protection than for the goodwill Accius might accrue by being seen to protect a native in public. Accius was no fool. He had not served in Britannia during the rebellion but he must know as well as Pertinax that this business of the kidnapped boy could very easily slip out of control. Especially since their inquiries into yesterday’s whereabouts of each member of the search team had gotten them nowhere: Everyone except the supposedly trustworthy optio had a firm alibi. He must also be aware that when news of any trouble was reported back in Rome, the unlucky name that would be associated with it was not that of the legate but of the man whom the legate had assigned to deal with it: Publius Valerius Accius. No wonder he had called Ruso in to help. Accius could do little about what they would say in Rome, but at least he could try to ensure that the name everyone in the Legion here would associate with failure would be somebody else’s.

When they turned onto the main road, the stone walls of the fort and the thatched jumble of civilian buildings they could see beyond it were vanishing into the gloom of an early-autumn evening. A few lamps began to glimmer behind the translucent luxury of windows. A native cantered past on a shaggy pony, yelled, “Where’s the boy, you thieving bastards?” and did not wait for an answer. They were overtaken by a couple of mule carts whose drivers were hurrying to get in before the gates closed. Just a few moments away from the home of a family paralyzed with fear, others were coming to the end of an ordinary day and looking forward to supper.

Accius insisted on escorting Tilla to the entrance of the snack bar. As she stumbled through the gap left by the one shutter that remained open, Ruso promised to join her later.

The men turned and made their way back toward the fort. Now that Tilla was gone, Ruso could ask the question that had been troubling him for a while. “Sir, is there still any chance it might be an official arrest? Some undercover security unit that nobody knows about?” He hoped that nobody knows sounded better than you aren’t important enough to be told about .

“The legate’s looking into that,” Accius confirmed, implying that there might be units of which even the legate knew nothing, although Ruso found it hard to imagine why they would arrest a nine-year-old. “What I’m still wondering is whether the Britons have done it themselves.”