Scanning the painted merchant ships tied up along the jetty, Ruso wondered which had brought the remains of his belongings, and how many years it would be before he could load them up again and have them sent to a posting back in civilization. The bars and the whorehouses would be the same wherever soldiers were stationed, but they didn't have to be set in a chilly place where gray sloppy waves retreated twice a day to leave the land and river separated by glutinous brown mud flats. No wonder the hospital was stocking up on cough mixture for the winter. Unfortunately the nature of the Britons was such that the army wouldn't let him prescribe a mass transfer of the legion to a healthier climate.
Valens's letters had made Britannia sound entertaining. The islands, apparently, were bursting with six-foot warrior women and droopy-mustached, poetry-spouting fanatics who roamed the misty mountains stirring up quarrelsome tribesmen in the guise of religion.
His own observation of Britannia now led Ruso to suspect that Valens had deliberately lured him here to relieve the boredom.
The bizarre movements of the British seas had been a novelty, but not one with which he desired a better acquaintance. When his ship had docked in Rutupiae, the captain had offered him the chance to stay on board and sail to Deva. He had declined, taken a lift as far as Londinium with an eye surgeon who was on the way to operate on the governor's wife, then hired a horse and spent several days riding north. He had, he now realized, probably passed Chief Administrative Officer Priscus traveling in the opposite direction on his way to discuss contracts for army medical supplies. Had he but known, he would have seized Priscus and wrested the hospital keys from his grasp. As it was, the trip had been an interesting introduction to his new province.
It had been hard to imagine the lush meadows and busy little towns of Britannia as the setting for the ghastly massacres witnessed by the old and toothless who could remember the rebellion. But by the fifth day of traveling, the hills had become steeper, the military traffic heavier, and the towns less welcoming. Here it was easier to see the problem with keeping order. The road passed through stretches of dark woods where the occasional column of smoke in the distance might have signaled charcoal burning or someone cooking breakfast or an unwary tax collector being ambushed. The farmland was rich still, but the houses were primitive: mud-plastered round huts squatting under mushrooms of thatch and not a window or a water tap in sight. At one point he passed a knot of grim-faced civilians being marched along the road under guard from a squad of auxiliaries, and half a day's ride farther north there was a double crucifixion at the roadside. More civilians huddled weeping underneath the bloodied figures, while a military guard gazed on with studied indifference, and an officer's horse, the only creature at the scene who was definitely innocent, raised its head and whinnied to Ruso's mount in the apparent hope that someone had at last come to take it away.
The only trouble he had encountered on the journey north was a minor brawl in a roadside inn, but the civilians Ruso met on the road looked as sullen as the weather when they stepped aside to let him pass.
And these were supposed to be the friendly tribes. Still, many a man had made his reputation at this moist and chilly frontier of empire, and Ruso, who had needed a change for reasons he wasn't intending to confide to anyone here, was happy to let it be thought that he considered Britain a smart career move.
'Fresh fish, sir?' A woman who was out of breath from pushing a cart up the slope lifted a cloth to display glistening silver bodies. She grinned, showing a gap where her front teeth should have been. 'Just caught in time for dinner!'
Ruso shook his head.
In the space of a hundred paces he also declined a bucket of mussels, a jar of pepper, a delivery of coal, a set of tableware, an amphora of wine, a bolt of cloth to make the finest bedspread in Deva, some indefinable things in the shape of small sausages, and an introduction to an exotic dancer. Stepping onto the quay, he dodged a trolley being pushed by a small boy who couldn't see over it. Behind him a voice shouted, 'Tray of plums, sir?'
It was comforting to know that he still had the appearance of a man with money to spend.
The quay stank of fish with undertones of sandalwood. Somebody must have dropped something expensive. The crews were rushing to load cargoes while the tide was in, shifting crates and sacks and baskets of whatever it took to maintain civilization in this corner of the empire before the tide forced the captains to move their vessels farther out or be stranded in the mud. Ruso wove his way between carts and trolleys, skirting a pile of slate that must have come from the western mountains and would probably be someone's roof by the end of the week. The stack of jars labeled SALINAE would be loaded up and shipped out. He knew that not because he was interested in exports but because one of the legionaries guarding the salt springs had somehow managed to impale himself on a fencing spike, and Ruso had made him talk about his duties in great detail as a distraction from the efforts to remove it.
A wide-eyed brown monkey peered at him from a crate, its childlike fingers wrapped around the bars of its prison. Farther along he passed a pale group of chained slaves. They looked even less thrilled to be here than the monkey was. A couple of them seemed to be gazing at the water heaving against the legs of the jetty and wondering whether to fling themselves into it. He hoped they would have enough sense to realize that since they were chained, they would only be fished out again
and revived to have TENDENCY TO SUICIDE written on their sale tags. A warning to buyers that might as well read, PLEASE WORK ME TO DEATH.
None of the ships moored along the quayside was the one he sought. Ruso turned and added his footsteps to the dull thunder of boots making their way along the jetty.
The second ship out bore the name Sirius in jaunty blue letters, and beside it Ruso recognized the figure leaning back on a chair with his feet up on a small upturned table.
'Bad news,' said Valens, rising to greet him. 'Some sort of mixup.' He waved one hand toward the carved chair he had been sitting on. It was facing two large trunks, on top of which the table had been upended. Ruso saw his name, and the words LEG XX DEVA BRIT chalked on each item. 'You'll have to talk to them,' said Valens. 'I can't make any sense out of them. They keep telling me this is all there is. Jupiter knows where they've sent the rest of it.'
Ruso knelt and checked the seals on the trunks. 'No, it all seems to be here.' Valens looked blank. 'Where's your furniture?'
'Termites,' explained Ruso, who had anticipated the question.
'Africa's full of them.'
'Termites?' Valens scratched his head and stared at the table. 'Termites ate the Lucky Earthquake Bed?'
Ruso shrugged. 'Turn your back for a moment over there and the damn things eat everything.' Of all the items that were gone, he would miss that bed the most. It had been a reminder of a time when he had, briefly, been mistaken for a Divine Being. Now the Divine Being was reduced to telling lies to explain his lack of furniture.
Valens was leaning down and peering at the locked trunks. 'You don't think you've brought any with you, do you?'
'They'll have fumigated it,' Ruso assured him. 'They'd have to. Long voyage, wooden ship…'
'I'll go and get a cart,' Valens offered, moving hastily away from the articles that looked like trunks but might turn out to be Trojan horses.
Ruso lowered himself into his chair to wait, and wondered who was now sleeping on the Lucky Earthquake Bed. It had been a wedding present from his father and stepmother. In conventional respects it hadn't been a great success. The only time the earth had truly moved in it for him and Claudia, it had also moved for the rest of Antioch. They had clung to each other under the heavy oak frame while roof beams smashed down on top of it and tiles shattered all around them. When the shaking seemed to be over, they crawled out to find that others had not been as lucky. All around was confusion: screams of pain, shouts for help, people scrabbling at piles of rubble, calling the names of their loved ones, and the smell of smoke in the dusty air as fires took hold in the ruins. Had he but known it, the earthquake had signaled the final collapse of his marriage.
He managed to send Claudia to safety with friends who were heading for the countryside. Then he headed back toward the nearest army base: They would surely be organizing rescue parties.
Moments after he set out, the earth shook again. He flung himself to the ground with his hands over his head and hoped Claudia was somewhere out in the open.
The shaking stopped. For a moment all was silence, save the creak and rumble of more buildings collapsing. Ruso lifted his head. A man close by was calling for help.
No one else seemed to have heard the voice, which was coming from an ornate building that was still
