Ruth Downie - Tabula Rasa

“If you could tell by looking, we’d have caught him already.”

He pictured Senecio lying out in the cold, worrying about his son. He tried to picture Branan but could not. He saw only the dark shape of the farm dog on the night they had first met, and heard the voice that had greeted him with, Are you the doctor? and then said with relief , Now I can go in out of the rain.

He rolled across to her, wrapping himself around the warmth of her body. “I am sorry things went so wrong with the old man’s family.”

“So am I.”

He was drifting off to sleep when she wriggled.

“The lamp,” she explained, waving an arm across him and trying to reach it.

“I’ll do it.”

He was almost asleep when a thought drifted across the distant horizon of his mind. It vanished as he tried to focus on it, but to his annoyance he found himself awake and alert, convinced it was something important. If only . . . What had he been thinking about just a moment ago?

He didn’t know.

Beside him, his wife stirred and murmured something in her sleep.

It was definitely important. Something he should have queried earlier. If only he could get back to that state of half awareness . . .

By the time he woke, the gray morning light was filtering round the shutter that covered the excuse for a window. His wife was sitting up beside him. She crossed her arms and lifted off her night tunic, shuddering with the cold as she did so. He paused to enjoy the view. Then, when the most interesting parts had vanished under the wrapping of her breast binding, he said, “Tell me again what Virana said about Branan.”

The legate’s attempts to reassure his centurions at the morning briefing were overridden by the alarming fact of his presence. Usually he was based elsewhere and was only ever seen at the various camps under his command later in the day. He invited Accius to outline the plan for the day’s search, then stepped up again and emphasized the importance of not being provoked by the locals. He had spoken with their leaders, who had agreed to ask the people to stay calm. Since Ruso had never heard the locals so much as mention any leaders, he doubted that would have much effect. He listened with interest as the legate dodged the question everyone wanted answered-what would happen if the boy was not found?-and went on to announce that the curfew would remain in place tonight but that Samain celebrations would be permitted as long as the locals stayed on their own property after dark.

It must have been a difficult decision to make. There would be no celebration in Branan’s home, but if he was not found, the Samain gatherings elsewhere would provide the ideal breeding ground for trouble. Especially once the fear of meeting the dead in the dark had been overcome by beer and bravado. On the other hand, banning them would stoke more resentment: It would be tantamount to punishing the locals for having one of their children stolen by the army.

Ruso was glad he was only responsible for the life of one man at a time.

Some of the other officers paused to offer a polite “Sorry about your father” to Ruso before leaving with their comrades to relay the day’s orders to the men. He waited until they had gone before he made his own contribution.

When they heard what he had to say, the three officers who were still there looked as though they wished he had kept it to himself.

“Why didn’t you say this before, man?” demanded the legate, who had the sort of rolling, fruity voice that only authority and an expensive education could bestow.

“I only found out late last night, sir.” The thing that had floated over the horizon of his mind was his wife’s statement that Virana looked forward to Branan’s visits.

“So what you’re saying,” said Accius, “is that any man who happened to have been in the bar when the boy delivered the eggs could have learned his name and made the link between him and your wife?”

“The barmaid remembers mentioning family matters to him, sir.” It was hard to imagine a nine-year-old boy being interested in a wedding blessing, but that would not have stopped Virana from chattering about it.

“Any man at all?” echoed Fabius, dismayed.

The legate said, “Why didn’t we think of this earlier?”

Fabius looked at Ruso, who in turn looked at Accius and said, “We relied too much on speculation from the natives, sir.”

Accius said, “We’re already getting every man to account for his movements, sir.”

“I’ll talk to the commanders of the other units,” the legate said. “The witness might have been mistaken about the kidnapper’s outfit. I’ll also put the word out amongst our own people that any man behaving suspiciously is to be reported to his centurion. Tribune, you can coordinate the lists of names.”

A list of names was necessary and it was sensible, and Ruso knew it. He also knew he didn’t like the sound of it. Tilla had once been put on a list of suspects, and it had proved almost impossible to get her name off it until the Emperor himself had intervened to wipe it clean. Who was to say what constituted “suspicious” behavior? What if the accuser was simply settling an old score? Once you started along that route, there was no telling what betrayals and jealousies it would let loose-as several deeply unpopular emperors and their terrified subjects had discovered.

Accius was speaking to him.

“Sorry, sir?”

“Pay attention, Ruso. See what more you can get out of the bar staff.”

“I’ve already checked with them this morning, sir. They’re trying to remember who was there when the boy came in.” He hoped Ria was trying harder than she had been earlier. She did not seem to mind being woken before dawn with a peculiar question about egg deliveries, but she did object to not yet having an offer of compensation for filling her bar with time wasters.

Despite being wrapped in a blanket, Ria had stepped into her house shoes and pushed her tousled hair back as if she were preparing for battle. “They’ll come in here trailing wet mud across my swept floor and smelling of sheep. They’ll take up space at my tables and buy nothing.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” he had promised. Now he ventured, “Sirs, we need to pay a fee for the use of the bar.”

“Then find somewhere else,” said Accius. “Who do these people think they are? You’d think they’d be glad to help.”

Ruso had more success with a request for permission to seek out the latest intelligence on Conn, in case there was some native involvement.

“Exactly as I suggested yesterday,” put in Fabius.

Accius had the grace not to point out that he had said so too. “They may know something at Vindolanda.”

“So,” the legate continued, “yesterday we had eight suspects. Now we have several hundred. Is there any good news?”

“The old man’s still alive, sir,” put in Fabius. “We allowed him to sleep under the gate arch and gave him bedding, and Doctor Valens persuaded him to take some water.”

“Well done, man,” said the legate. “We don’t want him to die on us.”

Ruso fought down a childish demand for a share of the credit. “Are we confident the boy’s not in our custody, sir?”

“Our people assure me they haven’t got him,” said the legate. “Security are chasing up their informers.”

Ruso was not optimistic. Informers were mostly recruited for their ability to inform on the natives, not on the military.

Setting off across the duckboards to return to the fort, he found himself recalling the prospect of a native wedding, once so embarrassing, with a fond sense of innocence lost.

His nostalgia was pushed aside by a scrape of boots heralding the company of Fabius. He had expected conversation, but it seemed all Fabius wanted was not to be outside a set of ramparts on his own. They marched together in silence toward another day of searching for a stolen boy.