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Tabula Rasa(129)

By:Ruth Downie


“I haven’t organized one yet,” he confessed.

“I know. And I have spoken with Albanus, and we both think it is a good idea. But he says I must ask you first because you might say no, and then the mistress would be upset.”

He hoped whatever it was would not be expensive. He still had yet to find a way to recoup the cost of all the drinks and pastries the locals had enjoyed at Ria’s.

Virana held up the baby toward him. It was, like most babies, small and round and pink. It had wispy dark hair and a thin red scratch on its nose, probably made with its own fingernails. It smelled of milk and baby and nothing else at the moment, and it seemed to be asleep. It was, in short, as good as a baby was likely to get.

“Very nice,” he said, because he never knew what to say about babies.

“Your wife loves her very much already. She is no trouble. And if it was not for you, I don’t know where I would be.”

Tears welled up in the girl’s eyes as she was saying something about Tilla finding a nurse for the journey, and when she stopped talking he had no idea what else she had said or what to say in reply. Then she thrust the baby at him and he had to grab hold and press it against his chest for fear of dropping it, which meant that when she ran for the gates he could not give chase. He could only shout, “Virana, come back!”

She stopped, calling, “Will you look after her?”

“Don’t go!”

“Will you?”

“We’ll bring her to visit!”

Gods above, what was he saying? A man didn’t take on a child like he might a stray dog. He had to give it thought, to consider all the options, to find a suitable baby, to make preparations. To talk to his wife, although he already knew what Tilla would say.

“Virana!”

“Albanus will know where to find me!”

The shouting woke the baby up and it began to cry. He was wondering what to do with it when Serena climbed down from the hospital wagon and said, “Well! And Valens swore it was nothing to do with you! Hold its head, for goodness’ sake. Don’t you know anything?”



The baby was such a shock that he did not tell his wife about the other thing until the wide expanses of the border country were a distant memory and they were almost within sight of the familiar red walls of Deva. Tilla was sitting in the back of a wagon, cradling the baby, and the wet nurse had gone to see her man, who was an armorer with the first cohort.

Ruso said lightly, “The tribune’s being recalled to Rome in the spring.”

Tilla response of “Mm” made it plain she did not much care.

“He says he may need a good man.”

She looked up. “A doctor?”

“With some other duties. He’ll have a big household. He’ll be going into politics . . . or whatever they do after they come out of the army and before they get to be senators.”

“I hope he finds the right man, then. Politics is not for you.”

“It would be a chance to see Rome.”

“I have just found my family! And we have little Mara!”

“I know,” he said. “We have all winter to think it over.”

She kissed the baby’s fuzzy head. “Rome is very hot,” she warned, in that way she had of talking to the baby when she wanted to say something her husband might not want to hear. “And noisy, and crowded, and smelly. And full of criminals. Would you like to go there?”

“Or would you like to stay in Britannia in the rain?” Ruso asked her.

“It would be leaving everything I know behind,” Tilla said.

“We don’t have to go.”

“But then,” she added, “a lot of what I thought I knew was wrong anyway.”

Ruso grinned.

“That missing tooth shows when you smile.”

“Are you complaining?”

“Never,” said Tilla. “Well . . . only sometimes.”