Ruth Downie - Tabula Rasa

It was easy to believe that the rain threw itself at you personally; hard not to feel persecuted and aggrieved when it found its way into your boots no matter how much grease you slathered on them. It blew in veils across the sides of the hills, whipped along the crests, and cascaded in streams down the valleys. The river had burst its banks, and the meadows beside it mirrored the gray sky. Turf squelched underfoot and supply carts sank into the mud, so that whole gangs who should have been building spent the short daylight hours sloshing about, clearing drains and filling potholes. Men pulled hoods over their heads to stop the wet from going down their necks and then had to keep pushing them back to see properly. Inevitably, there were accidents.

Up at the wall, the rain made earth heavier to shift and washed white streaks of fresh mortar out of the day’s build. In the quarry, hammers skidded off the heads of chisels. In the camp, tools and armor went rusty overnight. Doors stuck, leather was clammy, firewood was hard to light, and bedding smelled of damp wool and mold.

And then, after another long night in chilly beds, serenaded by a ragged chorus of coughing and snoring, the builders woke to an innocent morning full of birdsong. The sun rose in a sky that had been rinsed clean. Crisp views stretched for miles across hills that rolled like waves toward the north. Men nodded greetings to each other as they lifted the sides of tents and hung everything out to dry.

Some even dared to hope that the worst was over. Most knew it wouldn’t be. This was October, and the weather was only going to get worse. Already a strategic retreat was planned for the end of the month: The legions would march south to hunker down in their winter quarters, leaving the permanent garrison to tough it out here along the line of the emperor’s Great Wall until the next building season. If the garrison troops were bored or cold up here, there were-as the legionaries were happy to remind them-plenty of ditches to be dug.

And then it happened .

It was a tearing, gut-wrenching roar, like a thunderbolt crashing into the depths of the underworld and shaking the ground beneath their feet. Medical Officer Gaius Petreius Ruso ducked and clamped his hands over his ears, but the cry of “Earthquake!” died in his throat. The noise wasn’t how he remembered it. Besides, this was Britannia, not known for earthquakes, and whatever it was had stopped.

Ruso and his assistant straightened up, glancing at one another as if to confirm they had not imagined it. Beyond the stone wall, a panicked flock of sheep was racing across the hillside. Dogs had begun to bark, sounding the alarm in the surrounding scatter of native farms.

Ruso bent to retrieve his medical case, wiping off the mud on the grass at the side of track. Several loose pack ponies bolted past him, narrowly avoiding men who were sprinting down from the camp while grimy and breathless figures were hurrying up to meet them. Somewhere over the chaos, a trumpeter was sounding the call to assemble.

Ruso was already heading downhill when a wild-eyed man in a rough work tunic grabbed him by the arm. “Sir, they need a medic in the quarry!”

The quarry, even when it was full of legionaries cutting stone for the emperor’s Great Wall, had always seemed relatively peaceful. The tink-tink of hammers on wedges rang out like the pecking of metal birds above the gurgling of a stream that was swollen by summer rain. Everything brought in by the army-men, tools, work sheds, lines of plodding ponies, lifting gear, wagons-was dwarfed by the raw cliff face that loomed above them.

But now, as Ruso followed the quarryman down the track to the foot of the cliff, he could see that the far end of the rock face had collapsed into a steep chaos of mud and boulders. He winced, reminded of the devastation caused by the Antioch earthquake. Hundreds of collapsed buildings. Voices calling for help from beneath wreckage too heavy to shift.

The quarrymen were lucky: They had only just retreated to eat their midday bread and cheese in the rare sunshine when the land slipped. Another head count was being conducted, just in case; but as far as anyone knew, the quarry was now empty apart from himself, the half-dozen men of the rescue team, and one unfortunate officer. Ruso’s assistant was already hurrying back up to the camp to fetch two sensible orderlies, a light stretcher, straps, and warm blankets.

While the rescuers were checking their ropes and ladders, Ruso eyed the full extent of the slide. At the top, a couple of trees hung over the edge as if they were looking down to see where the ground had gone. Below them, torn branches and splintered wooden scaffolding poles lay on the surface or stuck out at odd angles. Several huge rocks had come to rest partway down the slide, as if they were waiting for some fool to free them with a careless movement so they could tumble down and smash into the others at the bottom.

Daminius, the optio in charge, rubbed his forehead with his fist, adding another streak of grime. Then he raised the arm to point. “See that big boulder there, sir, just past the fallen tree?”

Ruso gulped. He had naïvely assumed that the trapped officer would be lying at ground level. Instead, the limp and muddy shape that he now saw to be a human being was lying head-down on the slope, out of reach. His left leg was scraped and bloody. The right vanished under a massive lump of rock that teetered directly above him.

“Are you sure he’s alive?” Ruso murmured, clutching at the hope that they might be too late.

The optio called, “It’s all right, sir, hold on! The medic’s here.”

“I don’t n-need a bloody medic,” said a voice that Ruso had never heard waver before. “Give me a knife.”

Ruso stared. “Pertinax?”

“ Prefect Pertinax . . . to you, Ruso.” He might be seriously injured, but he was still the man who had terrified Ruso ever since one of them had been a very new medic with the Twentieth Legion and the other had already reached the exalted post of second spear.

“Sorry, sir.”

“Don’t worry, sir,” called Daminius. “The lads’ll get you down. Just hold on a moment and we’ll get them organized.”

“I don’t want . . .” Pertinax’s voice cracked. He tried again, weaker this time. “Can’t risk . . . more men. My leg’s gone.” One bloodstained and filthy hand grasped vainly at the air. “Give me a knife.”

Daminius nodded to a man who was approaching with a dripping waterskin tied to a scaffolding pole. Ruso recognized the grubby bandage around a minor sprain of the left wrist, and noted that its owner had abandoned the vanity of being blond since stumbling into the fort hospital a while ago with one eye full of vinegary hair coloring.

Daminius called up, “We’re going to get some water to you now, sir. Try not to move about too much.”

“A knife.” Pertinax repeated. “That’s a . . .” He stopped, as if he could not remember the word. “That’s an order.”

Daminius instructed his man in a voice too low for the prefect to hear, “Gently, eh? If anything moves, drop it and run.”

The no-longer-blond man nodded and adjusted his grip on the pole.

“The water’s just coming up now, sir.”

Pertinax groped toward the skin. Water cascaded down his face before he managed to clamp the opening against his mouth.

Daminius drew Ruso aside. “You see the problem, Doctor?”

“How long has he been asking for a knife?”

“Ever since he realized how things stand.”