“Not long. I had to use the latrine.”
“Again?”
“I heard you ask Rhiannon to visit the hospital,” the lad persisted. “May I go with you? I promise not to get in your way.”
Demetrius let out a long-suffering sigh. “Go back to your studies, young Marcus. The hospital is rife with fever. Your father would have my head if you were to fall ill.”
Rhiannon exited the house with the healer. The wide, graveled path beyond the door was no wilderness trail, but the rush of freedom Rhiannon felt upon stepping into the open air was keen. A slice of sky arched over the road. Swallows were diving dizzy circles through it, their plaintive cries carrying on the breeze.
A pair of soldiers strolled by, eyeing Rhiannon curiously before nodding to Demetrius and moving on. The healer guided her past a massive building he described as the fort’s headquarters. Two guards stood at attention before its gated entrance.
“What lies beyond the headquarters?”
“Barracks to the north,” Demetrius replied. “To the south, granaries, stables, and workshops.” Rhiannon fixed the location of each building in her memory. Such information might prove useful.
“The fort village lies beyond the south gate,” Demetrius said.
She knew as much from Cormac’s description. “Do the soldiers guard the village as well as the fort?” she asked casually.
Demetrius nodded. “Many have families living there. Not legally, mind you, since only officers may marry. Ah, here we are.”
The hospital was a wide, squat structure in the shadow of Vindolanda’s western gate. Inside, the odor of illness hung in the air. The groans issuing from the sickrooms roused Rhiannon’s sympathy. She’d never been able to shield her heart from others’ suffering. It mattered not that the afflicted were her enemies.
A soldier hurried forward to meet Demetrius, sparing Rhiannon the briefest of glances. “Medicus, the man you examined yesterday is worse.”
Demetrius’s brows furrowed. “In what way?”
“He shakes, then goes rigid. His skin is covered with welts as fine as sand and he burns with fever.”
“Did you place him away from the others as I ordered?”
“Yes, Medicus. This way.”
Demetrius waved Rhiannon back when she started to follow. “You need not accompany me—see to the garden.” He indicated an open gate, beyond which lay an unkempt plot. “I will come to you when I finish with my patient.”
Rhiannon hesitated. The medic had described an illness similar to one that had swept through her village last summer after a traveling peddler had taken ill. Perhaps she could be of help.
But Demetrius had already turned away. Rhiannon stifled the urge to go after him. The health of a Roman soldier was no concern of hers—indeed, she should wish for his demise rather than his recovery. But though the faceless man was her enemy, Rhiannon found she could not despise him.
She passed through the gate into the walled court that enclosed the hospital garden. The layout was smaller and more utilitarian than the courtyard in Lucius’s residence and boasted no fountain. Rhiannon was relieved to see no soldiers about.
Judging from the condition of the plots, the garden received few visitors. Weeds overran the herbs and choked the narrow paths. Rhiannon waded through the chaos, picking out familiar remedies—coltsfoot and horehound for cough, foxglove for chest pain, mugwort to purify the sickroom. Silverweed for fever, but when the peddler’s illness had afflicted the dun, silverweed alone had not been sufficient to quell both the fever and convulsions. Only mistletoe cut from the sacred grove had eased the malady. Even so, several of the elders and two of the children had died.
Footsteps crunched on the gravel behind her. She turned, expecting to see Demetrius, but the newcomer was not the healer returning from his ministrations. A soldier stood watching her, his eyes shaded by the jutting visor on his helmet. He was tall and broad-shouldered—of a size with Edmyg, Rhiannon guessed. His mail shirt molded his torso as if it were a part of him. His beard was clipped short, but its relative neatness did little to quell the subtle threat Rhiannon perceived in his stance. He projected the menace of a predator waiting to pounce.
A shudder raced through her. She straightened, holding her ground as he approached, his step quiet despite his bulk. When at last he stood before her, the glint of a gold torc at his neck caught her attention. It was old and finely wrought with terminals in the shape of horned serpents’ heads. A symbol, along with the stag, of the Horned God, Kernunnos.
She blinked in astonishment. “What manner of Roman soldier wears the torc of a Celtic king?”