Ruth Downie - Tabula Rasa

“Branan saw nothing.”

The youth considered this for a moment. Then he turned round, propped the axe against the stump, and cupped his mouth with his hands to bellow, “Worm! Where are you?”

A couple of chickens sidestepped away from the sound. A goat paused in its efforts to reach under the hurdles that fenced off the vegetable patch. “Worm! Come out, you’re wanted!”

A woman appeared in the doorway of the nearest house, wiping her hands on her skirts. “If you tried calling your brother by his name, boy-Enica! Is there news?”

Enica shook her head.

“We searched everywhere here. We are all very sorry.”

“He was here just now,” Lucano was saying. “Where is he?”

The woman’s cry of “Matto! Where are you?” was sharp and fearful.

“Don’t worry,” called the brother, heading round behind the house toward a wooded area. “I’ll find him.”

They waited. The piebald horse shambled over to crop a tuft of grass sprouting at the foot of one of the houses. He seemed not to notice Enica tugging on his reins.

Dismal approached, smacked the piebald on the rump with his stick, and led it back.

The mother said, “You must come and sit by the hearth. There is not much, but what we have-”

Enica thanked her but explained that she could not dismount. The woman managed a smile but instantly glanced away, looking for her boy.

A shriek from the woods alarmed the guests and their horses more than the mother. It was followed by a shout of “Let go! Let me go! Mam, he’s hurting me!”

“Come when you’re called, Worm! Think I don’t know where you hide?”

“I never heard you!”

“Liar!”

With that Lucano reappeared, dragging a younger boy by the ear. “See? You’ve worried Mam now!”

Matto had contorted his body to follow the twist in his ear. “I didn’t do anything!”

“You got us into trouble, you little liar. You know who this is?”

Unable to lift his head, Matto circled round crabwise until he could see the visitors through the tangled hair that had fallen over his face. “I didn’t do anything!”

“Liar!” Lucano gave the ear an extra twist to make his point. Matto’s shrieks drowned his mother’s protests. Just as Tilla swung down from her horse to intervene, the older brother let go. The younger one dropped into a crouch with both hands clamped over his ear. Lucano seized the back of his brother’s tunic as if he were holding the collar of a dog. “You said,” he said, bending down, “that Branan saw somebody hiding a body in the emperor’s wall.”

“He did!”

“Now he’s gone missing and his mam wants to know why you were telling lies about him!”

“I didn’t lie!”

Tilla stepped forward and touched Lucano on the arm. “May I speak to him?”

Lucano looked at Enica for guidance, then shrugged and stepped back.

Tilla crouched beside the boy and spoke into his good ear, which was no cleaner than the rest of him. “We are not cross with you,” she explained. “We just need to know what happened because we think it might help us find Branan.”

Matto sniffed and wiped tears away with a grimy fist. He said, “It’s not my fault. I thought it was true.”

“Who told you?”

“Aedic started it. He was the one who told everybody.”

“Do you know who told Aedic?”

“He said it was Branan. He said nobody was supposed to know.”

“Why was that?”

Matto hesitated for a moment, then said, “Dunno.”

“Did anybody ask Branan if it was true?”

Matto paused to sniff again. “I was going to. When I saw him. But now the man’s got him.”

“Which man?”

Matto looked at her as if it was a silly question. “The man who put the body in the wall. He came and got Branan, like Aedic said he would.”

“Do you know who this man is?”

Matto shook his head. “Will he get me now?”

“You must stay at home with your family so you’ll be safe,” Tilla told him. “I will warn your mother and brother. Now tell me about Aedic.”

“Face it, Ruso,” Valens said, checking the apple for maggot holes before chopping it in two on the scarred surface of the operating table and handing half of it over. “You’re not thinking straight. I grant you he’s not the friendliest of characters, but it’s a bit much to imagine he spent his leave abducting and murdering people.”

“I’m not imagining anything,” Ruso told him. “The orders are to pin everyone down. Nisus left on the day that Candidus disappeared, and he came back the day after Branan vanished. I’ve already sent a message to the Phoenix. I’m just asking you to keep an eye on him.”

Valens flicked an apple seed onto the floor. “There must be a quicker way to do this than eliminating several thousand men one by one. Gallus has already wasted half the morning asking all the staff where they were the day before yesterday and then checking it. Besides, what if the chap who took the boy has deserted? It’s not much use knowing his name if we don’t know where he is.”

“There would be a quicker way,” Ruso told him, “if Virana could remember who was in the bar when Branan delivered the eggs.”

“Will it help if I ask her?”

“No, thanks. I’ve just come from there and she’s upset enough as it is.” Although she had been pleasantly surprised by Conn’s visit to thank her for her help. “He’s not nasty, really,” she explained while marveling at his change of heart. “It’s just that nobody understands him.”

“I have to say,” Valens observed, leaning back on the sill of the window, “that it’s lucky I was over at the baths with about forty people when the boy went. I’m not sure how well I could account for my movements most of the time. Could you?”

Ruso, his mouth full of apple, was chewing his way through to stating, “I’m never alone!” when it occurred to him that this was not true. Most of the time he felt besieged by patients and staff and rarely escaped except to fall asleep or spend time with his wife-often both at the same time. But he frequently traveled alone from one place of work to another. Although his time, like that of everyone else, was marked by the trumpet calls, anything between them was guesswork. How could he prove that he had gone straight from one location to another? Conversely, if he chose to “lose” some time in between two of them, who would notice?

“It’s a messy business,” he observed. “And all the time we’re looking, the boy could be getting further away.”

“Do you remember playing that game with the blindfold?” Valens asked. “You know, the one where you blindfold someone and tell him to find certain people in the room, but everybody keeps tiptoeing about from place to place, so that no matter how hard he tries, he never finds them unless they want him to?”

“No,” said Ruso, trying to picture Valens as a child.

“Really?” His friend sounded genuinely surprised. “Of course, it was much more fun when there were girls playing.”

“I can imagine.”

“And plenty of wine.”

“Is this happy memory supposed to help?”

“I thought it might help to express the situation you find yourself in.”

“Not just me,” Ruso pointed out. “All of us. Except that one of us is only pretending to wear the blindfold.”

Ruso stood in the street outside the hospital and realized he had done everything he could think of. There had been no new messages at the bar to follow up on. No wife, either, but waiting for him instead was a very large bill that he promised to deal with later. Deal with . Not pay . Ria could make of that what she would.