Tabula Rasa(27)
“Make urgent inquiries of our local informers,” Ruso told him, wondering why Fabius’s fellow centurions had not arranged for him to be transferred to the lead mines. “And have the kidnappers questioned, assuming we’ve got them. If you send a request to HQ, they can start this afternoon.”
“Yes. Yes, I suppose they could.”
Ruso had intended to ask only for official notices to be sent to the other forts, but Fabius’s attitude so annoyed him that he added, “And if the quarry work is on hold until the landslide’s sorted out, there must be spare men who could go out to search.”
“Ah.” Fabius turned to his clerk again. “I should think you could draft a suitable sort of letter to HQ, couldn’t you? Tell them we’ve lost somebody.”
Wishing he had the authority to order it himself, Ruso said, “What about a search?”
Fabius pondered that for a moment, then seemed to find inspiration. “Daminius!” he said. “He’s your man. Daminius will have nothing to do while the quarry’s closed. Why don’t I ask him to see to it?”
“Yes,” agreed Ruso, finding himself mimicking the tone. “Why don’t you?”
Fabius turned to his clerk. “Could you find out where Daminius is, do you think?”
“He’s doing something for the chief engineer in the quarry, sir. Then he’s due to report to you afterward.”
Fabius’s face brightened even further. “Excellent! When he gets here, tell him to go straight to the doctor instead. They can all go and look for this missing man.”
Chapter 13
Tilla left her patient’s house feeling at peace with her world. Last night’s meeting had not been as bad as she had feared. Conn had been rude and Enica cold, but old Senecio had made them welcome and her husband had agreed to his blessing. Perhaps it would do some good: Who knew? Besides, it would be a change to have something cheerful at Samain. It was a time when she missed her family. Every year she slipped away to gaze out into the night in the hope of seeing her own dead walking toward her, but they never came.
Meanwhile the sun was shining, the trees were turning golden, the hedge was dotted with red rose hips and pale green globes of ivy blossom, and the mother and week-old baby she had just visited were doing well. When she got back to Ria’s she would have some privacy to practice her reading: Virana would be busy serving downstairs, continuing her last-ditch attempt to snare the man of her dreams before she had to carry a fatherless baby home to face the disapproval of her family.
Tilla pursed her lips. She was not going to feel guilty about saying good-bye to Virana. That had always been the arrangement. You can stay until you have the baby. Then you must go home. Her husband would have sent the girl back straightaway, but Tilla had won him over, as she knew she would. So he confined his complaining to insisting that this must not happen again. We are not taking in any others. After this we’ll buy a slave and live like a normal family. She had been tempted to say, A normal family plants in spring and is still there to harvest in summer. A normal family has children. But she had chosen a soldier, and neither of them had chosen the emptiness where children should have been, so there was nothing to gain by pouring vinegar into the wound.
A robin flew up from the side of the track as she approached, and sat watching her from the safety of a hawthorn. She stopped, then moved slowly forward, obliged to skirt round a puddle to keep her distance. It crossed her mind that a Roman would probably try to throw a net over it and roast it for supper. She was almost level with it now. Perhaps she could pass without frightening it.
Too late. It fluttered up, over the hedge and—
Tilla stopped again and felt her heart quicken. Felt the dread tightening her stomach. How long had that been there? How could she have failed to notice it? Over toward the fort, the perfect sky was marred by soaring billows of thick black smoke.
She ran down to the road, her skirts gathered up in her fists and her bag clamped under one elbow to stop it swinging about. By the time she was halfway back she could see it was not the fort, nor the camp. It was too far away to be Senecio’s house, but it was definitely someone’s farm dying below the writhing smoke, and the separate columns said it must be deliberate.
She barely heard the mule cart over the rasp of her own breath, but the local voice shouting, “Want a lift, missus?” caught her attention. Soon she was seated behind a weaver and his wife, listening to them arguing about which of their neighbors’ houses was on fire. They did nothing to calm her rising fear that it was the home of one of her patients.