Tabula Rasa(41)

The first thing Enica and Conn and the others would do, she was sure, was to rush and tell all their friends about the outrages the army had caused: the burning of Cata’s family farm, which everyone would know about, and then the insult to their own home and family that had followed.

She released the edge of the scroll and let it roll back on itself. Then she tightened the roll, tied it, and slid it back into its case. She was not a Roman: Why try to look like one? She was not a local anymore, either. That had been made clear yesterday. At first she had thought there must be some terrible mistake, but the soldier had insisted that he really had been sent out to search by her husband. There was no point in trying to lie: The family understood enough Latin to know what he had said. She could do nothing but apologize and leave as fast as possible, and she knew they were glad she was gone.

There was a chilly draft here. No longer needing the light to read, she pulled her shawl tighter around her shoulders and carried her milk across to a table by the fire that had just been abandoned by a couple of men who looked like messengers of some sort. Then she sat there wondering what she would do all day now if none of her local patients trusted her anymore.

She would be glad to get back to Deva, where almost everyone was a foreigner and most people were either in the army or there because of it. Living in a place like this was much harder if you did not know exactly who you were any longer. The farmers could blame the army for everything that went wrong. The army could blame the farmers. She was caught in the middle, trying to make her husband understand what a terrible insult it was to mistrust people who had welcomed you to their hearth, and to explain to Senecio . . . Senecio had not wanted to listen to her. “You have made your choice, child,” he said. That was what had upset her the most. The old man and his family wanted nothing to do with her now. One of the last links with her parents was gone.

“You look sad, mistress. Shall I bring you some more milk?”

Tilla shook her head.

“I don’t suppose there will be a wedding blessing now, will there, mistress?”

“Have you no work to do, Virana?”

“Everybody’s served, mistress, and there’s nothing to wash yet. Is that why you’re sad: because that old man won’t give you a wedding blessing? Or is it because nobody wants to see you?”

Tilla put her head into her hands. “Virana, ask Ria to find you something to do. If she can’t, go and put your feet up. I have a headache.”

“I’m sorry, mistress. Can I help?”

“No, thank you. I’m going upstairs to have a sleep.”

Upstairs, Tilla pulled the cover over herself to keep warm in the chilly air of the loft. She lay back and listened to the timbers creaking in the wind.

Virana was right, of course. It was only two nights to Samain and she had to face the fact that there would be no wedding blessing. She needed to send a message to her cousin at Coria withdrawing the invitation. Perhaps she should take the news herself. It would be good to get out of here. It would mean two whole days away, though, unless she could get a fast horse. And there were still a few local patients she had promised to see.

She would stay. It was up to the patients whether they decided to come or not. In a couple of weeks she would be back in Deva. In the meantime she would not have anyone say that she had run away out of shame.

She arched her back and wriggled around a lump in the mattress. She would send the message to Aemilia tomorrow. Meanwhile she would lie here with her pretended headache, trying to stifle the memory of her mother’s voice. Nobody likes a girl who feels sorry for herself, Daughter of Lugh!

“I am not Daughter of Lugh anymore,” she whispered into the empty room. “I am Tilla, Roman citizen, wife of Gaius Petreius Ruso, a man from overseas who is very annoying. And do not tell me what you think of that, Mam, because I can guess.”





Chapter 21

It had not been a good day. The tribune thought he was an idiot, and if the natives were to hold a Least Popular Roman competition, he had no doubt he would win it.

Even worse, no matter how much Ruso reassured everyone else, he was convinced that something bad had happened to Candidus.

He had to wait for his eyes to adjust before he could see his way across the gloom of the loft. Downstairs, the clatter from the kitchen died away as somebody closed a door. He pulled off his boots, lowered himself down next to the figure on the bed, and closed his eyes. Then he opened them in alarm as something cold flopped onto his head. He retrieved what seemed to be a wet sock and let it fall to the floor, suddenly reminded of the medic from the Second who used to take hot stones from beside the hearth and wrap his dirty socks around them to steam them dry overnight. The man had been dead for a couple of years now—not suffocated by the smell but speared through the throat when he had ridden out with a rescue party to help the victims of a native ambush. There was a lot of sense to building a wall.