Ruth Downie - Tabula Rasa

“Well, we can invite her if you like.”

“We can’t,” said Ruso, well able to imagine Virana’s excitement at an invitation to dine inside the fort. “I have to go and meet some of Tilla’s people. And I’m late,” he added, knowing he could not put it off any longer.

Valens shook his head. “No good comes of mixing with the wife’s friends and relations.”

“I know.”

“If you’re eating somewhere decent, can you have some sent in for me? I can’t leave the father-in-law.”

Ruso cleared his throat. “Actually I’m going to the house.”

Valens’s eyes widened. “A native house? At this hour?”

“I’ll have Tilla as protection,” Ruso assured him. “We’re staying overnight.”

Having demonstrated his nonchalance, he paused with one hand on the door latch. A man on a dangerous mission should leave details of his plan with someone back at base. Just in case. “It’s only about half a mile. West on the main road, over the stream, up the hill, and turn left before you get to the camp.”

Valens looked even more surprised. “I thought the lovely Tilla had barely a soul in this world, and one of them lives just down the road?”

“I know,” Ruso confessed. “It struck me as a remarkable coincidence too. The old man’s a friend of the family. He saw her at market and mistook her for her mother.”

“Ah.”

He had begun now; he might as well edge toward the part that was really worrying him. “Have you heard about the old man who sings to trees?” The moment he had said it, he wished he had not.

“The crazy man?” Valens was going to be no help at all. He was enjoying this.

“Tilla says he’s not crazy. He’s just very traditional.”

“What does that mean?”

“That’s what I asked. She said, ‘You’ll see.’ ” He paused in the doorway. He could not tell Valens, any more than he could tell Tilla, about his discreet enquiries with Security. The old man was deemed to be harmless, as were two of his sons-one because he had been killed in the troubles a couple of years ago, and the other because he was only nine years old. But the name of Conn, the eldest, turned up in watch lists all over the place. He said, “I’m just not sure why he’s bothering to make such a fuss of her now when they never really knew each other.”

“Because she’s turned up practically on his doorstep?”

“Or because he thinks she’ll be useful to him in some way. You’re sure you don’t want to go back to Magnis tonight? I’ll stay here and see to Pertinax.”

“Absolutely not,” Valens assured him. “I want to hear what happens.”

Ruso pulled his hood down over his eyes and strode on, perhaps the only man on the wall who was glad that it was nearly dark and starting to rain yet again. The patrol who had just passed would not know that the figure turning down a track leading only to native farmsteads was one of their own officers.

He had so nearly escaped. In a few more days, the Legion would be on the march back to Deva. If the wall had run a couple of hundred paces farther south, the family would have been turfed off their land and ended up somewhere miles away. The old man might never have seen Tilla at the market and seized her by the hand, begging to know if she was Mara come back to him. Unfortunately, the wall was where it was, and the military zone had only sliced off a few of the family’s fields. They had stayed to eke out a living on their shrunken farm, hidden away down a slithery track that was almost impossible to make out under the gloom of the dripping trees. Ruso pulled his cloak tighter around him and trod carefully.

That was what he would have to do, metaphorically speaking, when he arrived there. Unable to explain his misgivings to Tilla, he would have to stay alert for any hint of suspicious activity or attempts to compromise either of them. If these people thought they could persuade him to become their tame Roman, they were very much mistaken.

Reaching what must be the fork in the pathways that Tilla had told him about, he followed the curve of the right-hand route, and eventually the shape of a gate loomed ahead. He paused. The locals let their dogs loose at night to repel thieving soldiers.

There was no barking, just the sighing of the breeze in the trees and a spatter of raindrops. He took a deep breath and called, “Is anyone there?” in the language his wife had taught him.

“I am,” said a young voice. For a worrying moment it seemed to belong to the large dog that was sniffing at his hand.

“Hello,” said Ruso, leaving the hand where it was and edging the rest of himself farther away.

“Are you the doctor?” asked the voice.

“Yes,” said Ruso, just able to make out the shape of a boy attached to the dog. This must be the youngest son.

“I’m Branan.”

“Ruso. Sorry I’m late.”

“Now I can go in out of the rain.” Leading him across the uneven cobbles, Branan shouted, “He’s here!” and moments later a glimmer of light appeared. A shadowy figure standing in the shelter of the porch handed the lamp to the boy and greeted Ruso with one word in British: “Weapons.”

Ruso had expected the request to be couched in politer terms. “Who are you?”

“Conn. Do not pretend you have never heard of me. Give me your weapons.”

The boy pushed back his hood. From behind a curtain of wet curls, dark eyes glanced from one man to the other.

“Is my wife here?”

“She is.”

Ruso raised his arms, not wanting to pick a fight before he was even through the door. He felt himself being searched, and the boy’s fingers tugging at the fastenings of the scabbard. Conn said something to the boy in their own tongue about not taking the blade out.

The familiar weight of the sword lifted and was gone, borne away by a native into the darkness. Ruso tried to ask, “Where’s he taking it?” but if Conn understood, he chose not to reply.

Walking out of the fort without his armor on had been a matter of choice. Handing over an eighteen-inch slice of razor-sharp iron to a hostile local was definitely against regulations and against common sense too. He hoped his wife really was here.

Tilla had assured him several times that her own family had never collected enemy heads, nor predicted the future from the entrails and death throes of murdered prisoners, nor crammed people they did not much like into giant men made of wicker and burned them alive. But he had seen some of the things natives had done to stray soldiers. When pressed to admit that such things happened, Tilla changed the subject, choosing instead to remind him instead of the evils she had seen in the amphitheater. Usually in a tone that suggested he was personally responsible for them. So it was a relief when Conn pushed the door open to reveal several figures seated around a central fire, and one of them rose and hurried across to him. “Husband!”

She reached up to unfasten the clasp of his sodden cloak. “I was afraid you might not come.”

“Of course I came,” he said, trying to sound as though he had been looking forward to it all day. When Conn walked away he murmured, “Watch out for that one.”

She put a hand over his. “These are my people. We have to trust them.”

We. As it struck him that she did not sound sure of them herself, she prodded him in the small of the back. He stepped forward into the firelight and she announced, “My man is here!”

The creature who exclaimed “Ah!” from the depths of the carved chair probably looked less alarming when he was not seated beside a steaming cauldron with his wild white hair and deep-set eyes lit from below by orange flames. At least he looked welcoming. The hand clutching the walking stick shook with the effort as he hauled himself up to stand. A young woman with broad shoulders, capable hands, and a serious expression stepped forward from behind his chair to help him. Ruso guessed she must be Conn’s wife. He had tried to stay awake while Tilla explained all this, but he had only been listening for the gaps so that he could grunt in the right places.