Ruth Downie - Tabula Rasa

“Absolutely. I’m here because I’m the link. I need to know if he’s got any other contacts within the army or if he knows anyone who can impersonate a legionary.”

“The former, not that we know of. The latter . . . perhaps. If they got hold of the kit.”

“Plus I’d like to know where he was two days ago, between the sixth and twelfth hours.”

The security officer sighed. “We use local informers, Doctor. We don’t send men to follow ‘persons of interest’ about all day. Nobody’s that interesting.”

“Who’s our informer?”

The man pursed his lips and indicated the permit. “You’d need more than that. Especially since you’re personally involved.”

“I need a clear picture of who knows what about the family.”

“The man who took the child wasn’t our informer, if that’s what you’re thinking. I can tell you that for certain.”

“How do you know?”

The officer sighed. “Listen to me, Doctor. The man who took the child wasn’t our informer.”

Ruso said, “Ah.”

“I shouldn’t even have said that much.”

“That’s not to say your informer didn’t pass something on to him. Is this woman reliable?”

“We deal in a world of shadows and tricks of the light,” the officer said, “but mostly hard cash. They get paid, or we have some way of pressuring them.”

“And can Conn exert counterpressure on her to keep her mouth shut?”

“He doesn’t know it’s open.”

It was about midday when Ruso rescued the Vindolanda stable lads from the horse, which the groom described as a vicious bugger. Feeling oddly protective toward it, Ruso observed that it was temperamentally unsuited to being with the Legion and would probably be happier in a permanent home.

“That’s what I tell my centurion, sir,” observed the groom. “But I get no sympathy.”

Away from the busy streets, Ruso turned the horse’s head back toward the west. He felt no better informed now than he had been when he set out. It was still possible that Conn was implicated in the disappearance of his brother but the security report confirmed what, at heart, he had suspected: that Conn was angry rather than vicious. It did not suggest a man who would mastermind a kidnap-and besides, what would he do with the boy afterward?

What would anyone do with the boy?

The horse tossed its head and Ruso was brought back to the present. He wasn’t going to answer that question no matter how long and hard he stared at it. Instead he would leave the main road and head up the farm track that was part of the short training run, the route Daminius said he had followed on the afternoon Branan went missing. The route on which Daminius could not remember seeing anyone at all.

He turned off the track onto a flattish expanse of rough grazing, following a broad muddy swath that indicated the passage of many studded boots. A couple of sheep lifted their heads and stopped chewing to stare at him as he passed. On a whim, he aimed the horse at a clump of nettles. It leapt over them without objection.

The route was a favorite because it ran through striking scenery. Long, narrow lakes and reed beds shivered at the base of spectacular cliffs, whose natural defenses would soon be crowned with a long line of wall. Waving cheerfully up to a clutch of small figures waving at him from the top, it occurred to him that they were probably trying to tell him that the north side of the wall was not the most sensible place for a lone man to go for a ride. Luckily he was too far away to be identified. As he left the water behind, the track was less clear and it occurred to him that Daminius could have taken a different path, closer to the wall line or farther north, and that anything he saw now might not be relevant. But when he turned left to follow the stream, he was confident that he was on the right route. It was the only crossing from north to south of the wall here.

That was unfortunate, because instead of facing a clear passage he found himself riding toward a mass of yellowed greenery dangling from branches that stuck upward at the wrong angle. Several Britons were clambering in amongst the branches and he heard the rasp of saws punctuated by the thud of an axe. Someone was looping chains around a broad trunk. It was an old ash, and no doubt as soon as the locals had done the work, the army would commandeer the wood for making weapons to keep them in order. But for now it was an obstruction, and beyond it a team of oxen was stationed, ready to drag it out of the way.

The man setting the chains paused to usher him around to the left. Ruso coaxed the horse through the narrow gap. There was a tangle of black roots grasping at the air on one side, and on the other the deep hollow in the bank that they had failed to cling on to. He nodded his thanks and asked in Latin, “When did this fall?”

“It will be gone very soon.”

“But how long has it been here?”

Instead of answering, the man called to a companion in a brown woolen hat and repeated the question in British, prefaced by “The officer wants to know . . .”

To Ruso’s surprise the companion was a woman. “Tell him yesterday!”

He looked at the drooping leaves, yellow rather than autumn gold, and the way the rain had washed the mud off the roots, and observed in British, “It looks like longer.”

The woman put down the axe and scrambled between the branches until she was close enough to sit on the trunk, level with Ruso. “We had to get a team together,” she said. “There is only me and my son to work the land here. And then your people told us to go and look for a lost boy.”

“It may help me to find the lost boy if you think very hard about when this tree fell.”

She scratched her head through the wool and then carefully straightened the hat. “Now that I have thought,” she declared, “It was market day. Then it rained the next day when we started cutting it, then we had to search for the boy. Does this matter?”

“It might,” Ruso told her. “Thank you.”

He rode on. He doubted the business of the tree would help find Branan but at least it might help consolidate Daminius’s alibi so that he could be restored back to his full duties.

And if it wasn’t Daminius and it wasn’t Conn, who had taken the boy? Now that Virana had unwittingly extended the suspicion to the entire Legion, he had no idea how anyone was going to find out fast enough. The task of examining every possible suspect was overwhelming.

He would have to begin with the small things he could do, and then think about the rest later. He would ask at the bar for messages. He would make sure Senecio was all right. He would tell Accius about the fallen tree on Daminius’s route, and while Accius dealt with that, he would think how to check the alibi of the one suspect for whom he was responsible, even if it did seem ridiculous that Nisus might have moved far or fast enough to kidnap anybody. Or wanted to. Ruso would do it because nobody knew what a child snatcher looked like.

Several miles farther north, another axe swung down and landed with a thunk. Two halves of log flew apart and tumbled onto the yard. The young man retrieved one and tried to balance it back on the tree stump. It fell sideways. He upended it, and this time it stayed. The axe swung again; the process was repeated.

It was only when the dog started barking that he noticed the approaching riders. Axe still in hand, he shouted, “Mam! People!” Then he recognized Enica and opened the gate. “Is it about Branan?”

“We have looked but found nothing,” Enica told him. “Now we are looking in a new way. We need to find out who saw the body being put in the emperor’s wall.”

Lucano, whose upper lip was only faintly fluffy despite his muscular build, looked puzzled. “But I thought-”