Ruth Downie: Tabula Rasa

“My clerk hasn’t reported for duty for three days. Nobody seems to know where he is.”

“Ask for another one.”

“It took me two months to get this one. Now he’s vanished.”

Valens surveyed the teetering piles of writing tablets stacked on every available surface. “He seems to have been very productive while he was here.”

“He was supposed to be sorting all this mess out. But he didn’t seem to know where to start.”

The table swayed as Valens leaned sideways to peer over the top of splayed wooden doors that were held together by only a taut length of twine around the handles. “There’s more in here.”

“Don’t touch that. The staff have taken to calling it Pandora’s cupboard. Open it and we’ll all be sorry.”

Valens said, “Perhaps he’s fallen on his sword.”

“I hope not. He’s Albanus’s nephew. I promised I’d keep an eye on him.”

“Not the one with the pungent bath oil?”

“That’s the one. Candidus.” They had both been introduced to Candidus some years ago, but the youth had-understandably-been more interested in watching passing girls than in meeting old army friends of his uncle. “Albanus wrote and said the boy was having problems settling in at Magnis,” he explained. “I asked for him here hoping he might have taken after his uncle.”

“And had he?”

“Well, he looks very much like him, but he’s not what you’d call a natural administrator.”

Candidus had followed Ruso on his ward rounds, dutifully scrawling on a wax tablet, never once asking him to repeat or spell anything and replying cheerfully, “Yes sir!” every time he was asked, “Did you get that?” It was an insouciance that Ruso had only briefly mistaken for competence.

“There’s only one Albanus,” Valens told him. “You were spoiled. Neither of my clerks is a patch on him.”

Ruso looked up. “You’ve got two clerks?”

“I know. It’s hopeless, really. For the number of beds, it should be at least three if not four.”

Ruso said nothing. Several months ago, when Valens was short of work and out of favor, Ruso had petitioned the Legion to take him back. Now Valens, who was no more skilled or experienced than he was himself, was in charge of a hospital with deputies and departments and flunkeys and rows of porters who lined the corridors and saluted as he passed. Or perhaps that only happened in Ruso’s imagination. But there was no escaping the fact that Valens had a comfortable post in a base at a major road junction while he himself was stationed at a makeshift unit in the toy-sized fort of Parva, with the added joy of a clinic in a tented camp that was slowly sinking into the mud.

Another man might have demanded of the gods what he had done to deserve this state of affairs, but Ruso already knew. This was what happened to upstarts who were known to be acquainted with the Emperor. Now that Hadrian had gone back across the sea to Gaul, Ruso was suffering the fate of teacher’s pet when Teacher had left the room. He supposed he was lucky his fellow officers hadn’t stripped his clothes off, tied him to a tree, and made him eat his homework.

Valens said, “I’ll ask around at Magnis, see if somebody knows where he’s gone. From the sound of it I can’t imagine anyone will have poached him.”

Ruso glanced past Valens at Pandora’s cupboard, and pictured again the words He is rather a sensitive boy in Albanus’s neat handwriting. It was hard to imagine how a sensitive boy could have lasted beyond the first week of basic training. Indeed, unless the bitten fingernails betrayed a nervous disposition, Candidus had shown no sign of sensitivity to anything except the dangers of hard work. At every opportunity, he had abandoned his duties and wandered around the hospital, chatting to people. Several of them seemed to have been given the impression that he was in charge. Ruso might have been almost glad to lose him, except that he had then done something unexpected.

Immediately after an exasperated Ruso had ordered him to get his backside on that stool and not move or speak until he had sorted out the orders for blankets and buckets and updated the repairs list, Candidus stood to attention behind his desk and said, “May I speak, sir?”

“Briefly.”

“I’ve made a bit of a mess of things so far, haven’t I, sir?”

“Yes,” said Ruso, surprised by the young man’s frankness.

“I’m sorry, sir. I’ve never been a clerk before, sir. I was hoping you wouldn’t notice and I’d just pick it up as I went along.”

“Then you should have stayed at your desk and listened to what you were told.”

Candidus swallowed. “Are you going to get rid of me, sir?”

Ruso sighed and leaned against Pandora’s cupboard. If the lad hadn’t had the same skinny build and innocent eyes and floppy black hair as his uncle, it might have been easier to be angry with him. “Just get those orders done. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”

“Thank you, sir. I’ll do them straightaway.”

“Good,” Ruso said, not sure if he was being taken for a ride. “If there’s anything you don’t understand, ask. Don’t guess.”

“Yes, sir. I will. And I won’t. And I’ll do better from now on, sir.”

But the next day Candidus did not turn up, and nobody had seen him since.

It was a moment before Ruso registered what Valens was pointing at. “Is there something underneath that chicken?”

Ruso reached underneath the soft feathers and drew out the thin slivers of another writing tablet. As he did so he felt a stab of guilt. He was already late. Tilla would be waiting, and the hen would still be dead when he got back tomorrow. On the other hand, he needed to check that it belonged to him, especially since he might run across the donor by accident and fail to thank them because he had not paused a few short moments to open a-

“Oh, hell.”

“From somebody you don’t like?”

“It’s from Albanus.”

“Albanus sent a dead bird all the way from Verulamium?”

Ruso scanned the letter. There was no mention of a hen, which he assumed must have come from somewhere else.

To Doctor Ruso, greetings.

I am happy to say that I hope to see you soon. Fortune has granted me a post as tutor to the children of a prefect who is currently stationed at Arbeia.

I shall try to call upon both yourself and Candidus, who I hope is settling in well. I cannot repeat too often how grateful I am to you for taking him in.

Thank you for your good wishes to Grata, which I regret I have been unable to convey to her. Believe me, sir, if you knew her as well as I now do, you would not have sent them.

I hope you are enjoying the best of fortune, along with your wife and Officer Valens and his family.

Farewell.

Valens said, “What do you think he’s found out about Grata?”

But Ruso was not interested in why Albanus had fallen out with his woman. What he wanted to know was where Candidus was, and he wanted to know it before the lad’s uncle arrived and asked the same question. The letter was dated two weeks ago. Albanus could be here at any moment.

“He’ll turn up,” said Valens. “If he doesn’t, Albanus can look for him. And I’ll see to Pertinax. You’re having a night out tonight.”

“I know.”

“You don’t seem very keen.”

“I’m not.”

“Stay here, then. We’ll get the food brought in. Invite the lovely Tilla and your, ah . . .” Valens paused. “I’ve never quite known what to call her.”

“Virana,” Ruso reminded him, although as to what she was . . . Ah was probably as good a word as any. Virana was neither a slave nor a freedwoman. She was most definitely not a concubine. Nor, at this rate, was she ever going to persuade some hapless legionary to call her his spouse. There was no word for a pregnant stray whom my wife took in without consulting me , and if there was a word for and she is worryingly attractive, which is why I try to avoid being alone with her , he was certainly not going to speak it out loud.