Tabula Rasa(118)

“For what? Is this what you want Branan to come home to? Burned houses and memories and ghosts?” She knelt beside his chair. “Am I worth less to you because I was not raised in your home? Or because I am a woman? Will you lose your only daughter too?”

“Enough!” Conn roared, seizing Tilla by the arm and dragging her away from Senecio’s chair. “You talk too much.”

“I am trying to help!”

Conn shoved her so hard she stumbled and fell. He told Enica to get the bread ready and his men to strip the victims.

“You call yourselves heroes and warriors?” Tilla shouted from the shadows by the hut wall, seeing a dark stain of urine spreading on the front of Mallius’s tunic as they cut his bonds ready to drag off his clothes. “You cowards torment two helpless men while a real warrior has gone to rescue Branan! Why are you not riding to join him? Why—”

But nobody was listening to her, because the door had crashed open and a voice was yelling in British with a Roman accent, “Nobody is to move!”





Chapter 70

Too late, Ruso realized he had just scooped up somebody else’s son in an enormous hug. He was not given to displays of affection; the closest physical contact he usually had with children was when his nieces and nephews leapt on him uninvited. And now here he was, with a boy helpless in his arms. How long should one hold on before letting go? Branan was surprisingly heavy and beginning to slide out of his grasp. Ruso lowered him to the floor, aware that various parts of himself that had stopped hurting were now starting again. He patted the boy on the shoulder, cleared his throat, and said, “I’m glad you’re safe.”

Branan retreated to a safe distance and peered at Ruso’s battered face in the lamplight with unashamed curiosity. Then the boy said, “Are you not going to thank me for rescuing you?”

Ruso sat down on the bed, hoping the room would stop dancing around him. “Did you?”

“I shouted at them not to hurt you,” Branan explained. “I kept on shouting, ‘Help me, I’ve been stolen!’ and the horrible man with the furs round his neck said he would slit my tongue if I didn’t shut up. And then a lady said, ‘Are you the missing boy?’ and I said, ‘I’m Branan,’ so she started telling everybody who I was. And then most of them stopped hitting you.”

“Then I thank you very much,” he said, trying to focus on the boy’s face and remind himself that his jaw was not broken: It was only toothache. “Very much indeed.”

Branan bowed his head graciously. At that moment an orderly poked his head around the door and asked if he could come in. He turned out to be the advance guard for a squad of hospital staff who all wanted to see the famous Branan. “Everybody knows about you,” they told him. A couple of them pressed small gifts into his hand. One was a honey cake.

The boy grinned, showing the gap in his teeth. Ruso thought he had never seen such a fine sight.

“Shall we go home now?”

“I’ll see to it,” Ruso promised.



Ruso was aware that he was behaving just like his most annoying patients: the sort who had no time for doctors, always wanted to do too much too soon, and refused to listen to advice. At last, he felt, Pertinax had a reason to be proud of him. The man himself could not have done a better job of complaining about his confinement. Finally the local doctor agreed to let him leave on the first carriage that would take him tomorrow morning, but only after Ruso had promised that nobody here would be blamed if he dropped dead on the road. “The only other problem is,” Ruso confessed, “I’ve got no money.”

“We’ll club together,” the medic assured him. “It’ll be worth it to get rid of you.”

Ruso attempted a smile and wished he hadn’t. He suspected it came out as more of a lopsided leer. Then, remembering, he said, “I left a lame horse at the inn.”

“They’ll sort it out. It’s a decent place. They would have helped you get the boy back if you’d asked.”

“I didn’t know who to trust.”

“No?” The medic grinned. “Welcome to the border, soldier.”





Chapter 71

There was a collective gasp and a shuffle of confusion as people fell over each other in their haste to get away from the door. Tilla heard the word “Traitor!” breathed in her ear.

“Nobody move!” yelled the soldier again. “Give us our men!”

Tilla heard the swish of swords being drawn, and Conn’s command of “No weapons!”

Her opinion of him rose. In a confined space like this, weapons were useless. They might hold the soldiers at bay, but he would know that none of his people could escape even if they broke the walls down. The soldiers were not fools. They would have the place surrounded. The doorway was wide enough only to show a couple of iron helmets in silhouette, but there were torches blazing outside in other hands. The dim-witted lookout and the man sent after the soldiers must have been captured.