“Carry on.”
“She wanted it all right, sir. She never said she didn’t. Then they started saying I had to pay them money and marry her.” He squared his shoulders as if he had committed an act of bravery. “I told them it was against regulations for a man of my rank, sir.”
“So when you hit her,” said Ruso, recognizing the curious British expectation that a man should pay for his bride, “was that before they asked for money, or after?”
Regulus stuck out his chin. “She was already my girl! We had an agreement! And then she acted like she didn’t want to know me.”
“So you thought if you kicked her and broke her fingers, that would help.”
“A man’s got to be master in his own house, sir!”
“Absolutely,” said Ruso, who agreed with the principle but had never found out how this happy state of affairs could be achieved in practice. “Remind me again: Whose house was it?”
“I know I went a bit too far, sir.” Regulus scratched one hand with the other. “But I told her I was sorry. I promised I won’t do it again. She said it was all right.”
According to Tilla’s account, there had been more than one beating. Ruso let it pass, strangely fascinated by this tale of self-justification.
“But they still went and put in a complaint,” Regulus continued, “and I got hauled up in front of Fab—” He caught Ruso’s look. “Centurion Fabius,” he corrected. “And he told me to pay compensation to the family, and that’s not fair, is it? I wasn’t even on duty when it happened!”
“And were you ordered to stay away from her?” Ruso asked, glad that Fabius had at least attempted some discipline.
“He never said that, sir. He just said I had to pay them five denarii.” Regulus was indignant. “I don’t suppose five denarii means a lot to you, sir, but to an ordinary man like me with a poor old widowed mother back home, it’s a fortune.”
Ruso was not going to be drawn into a competition to see whose family back home was the more demanding. His stepmother and sisters and innumerable nephews and nieces would leave Regulus’s widowed mother in the dust. “And then what happened? Don’t tell me you were left hanging upside down all night, because you weren’t.”
That was what had struck Ruso as odd earlier. Hanging from his feet all night might well have done enough damage to prevent Regulus walking, but the foot had moved perfectly when he had used it to scratch his opposite leg.
Regulus was busy scraping at a red lump on his neck. “Perhaps not all night exactly, sir.” He looked up. “But it was a long time.”
“And before that?”
“They said they were sorry for causing me trouble, sir. They said never mind about the money and to stay for a beer. So I said all right, just a drop. It would have been rude to say no, wouldn’t it? But I reckon they put something in it. I went to sleep in the cowshed and I woke up freezing cold with this stink in my nose and my feet hurting and everything upside down.”
Ruso sighed. The alleged kidnap was more of a drunken prank than a serious attempt to do damage, but the situation was beyond salvaging now. Even though Fabius had been too slow-witted to ban Regulus from visiting the girl, and must have known that he had provoked the assault, it had not tempered the reprisals. Doubtless, an example had to be made. No Briton could be allowed to think that he could humiliate the military and escape unpunished.
“So you see, sir,” Regulus continued, scratching furiously at his groin, “it wasn’t my fault. You can’t trust the Brits.”
“Stay away from their women, then,” said Ruso.
Regulus looked aggrieved. “There aren’t any other women round here, sir. Only raddled old tarts.”
Not all the prostitutes offering their services in the area were raddled or old, although he was not going to say so. According to Tilla, some of them were as young as eleven or twelve. But, like the stupidity of Regulus, it was a problem he could do nothing about.
Fabius’s door was sticking with the damp. It was finally wrenched open by a petite and pretty girl whom Ruso recognized as the kitchen maid. She was sorry that the centurion was unavailable this evening. He was very unwell and had gone to bed early.
“I’m his doctor.”
“He’s asleep, sir.”
“Yes,” said Ruso, turning away in disgust. “That’s the problem.”
Lying in the cramped on-call bed after the evening ward round, Ruso was definitely not sleeping. Instead he was holding Albanus’s original letter up to the lamp and rereading: