partially standing. Squinting through the dust and cupping one hand over his nose, Ruso picked his way around the ruins. The only door he could find had most of a wall collapsed against it. Finally he managed to squeeze himself in through a small window.
The room stank of burning oil. Black smoke was seeping through cracks in one elegantly painted wall. A smartly dressed body was sprawled on the floor. Blood was seeping from beneath a heavy cabinet that lay where the head should have been.
'Over here!' called the voice. 'Under the table!'
Through the murk, Ruso saw a corner of a table sticking out from under a pile of plaster and brick. Trying to move quickly without pulling more masonry down on top of himself, he managed to clear a way through to the gap beneath. A figure gray with dust crawled out, grabbed his arm, and started to thank him just as the floor gave a sickening heave. 'Move!' yelled Ruso, dragging the man across the room and pushing him headfirst out the window before scrambling after him.
Behind them, what was left of the building seemed to groan in despair before finally crashing in on itself. They were still peering at it through the clouded air when a voice cried, 'Your majesty! Oh my Lord, you're safe!' and someone fell at the feet of the man Ruso had just rescued. The man reached down and helped the servant up, still staring at the ruins from which he had so narrowly escaped. That was when Ruso realized why he looked vaguely familiar. He wasn't a half-remembered patient after all. Ruso had just rescued the emperor Trajan.
Over the next few days and nights the tremors had continued, claiming more victims from the rescuers trying to reach people trapped under the rubble. Ruso struggled to save the dying and patch up the injured with no equipment, no water, no sleep, and nowhere to turn for advice. Rumors abounded: that the whole country had been devastated, that nowhere outside the city had been hit, that the army was bringing elephants to clear the streets, that plague had broken out, that Antioch was being punished by the gods, that a man crushed to death had come back to life and that a mysterious being, surely a god, had entered the building where the emperor Trajan was trapped and spirited him out through the window. It never occurred to Ruso to try and set the record straight. For the first time in days, he had found something to laugh about.
Claudia, with whom he unwisely tried to share the joke, later cited it as one of her reasons for leaving. Following you abandoned me in the earthquake! was You had a chance to make something of yourself with the emperor and you refused to do anything about it!
Three weeks after Claudia moved out, Ruso had signed up to a fresh start in Africa with the army. Now he stared at his pathetic collection of furniture and wondered if his wife had been right.
Valens was back, bringing a gnarled creature who had evidently spent all his money on blue tattoos and couldn't afford to bathe.
'I suppose you'll want to carry on using the spare bed, then?' inquired Valens as the tattooed one moved the table aside, lifted both trunks at once, and set off with them down the jetty.
Ruso picked up the chair. 'Just until I get sorted out.'
Valens reached for the legs of the table and swung it up over his head like a large sunshade. 'With what these people charge,' he said, 'we ought to give up medicine and take up moving furniture.'
They reached the end of the jetty. The trunks had been loaded onto a cart that smelled of old fish and appeared to be held together with greasy twine and dirt.
Valens wrinkled his nose and stepped back from the cart. 'Were you serious about those termites?'
'The smell from that cart should finish them off.'
'You're not in some sort of trouble, are you?'
Ruso watched the man roping down all that remained of his furniture, and said, 'No, of course not.'
'You won't find much to buy over here, but we've got a few decent carpenters. I'm thinking of having a proper dining room set made.'
'For that house?'
'No. I told you, that one's supposed to have been flattened weeks ago. I mean in my new rooms. The ones I'll get when they promote me to CMO.'
'So he's definitely not coming back?' Ruso was aware that no one expected the hot springs of Aquae Sulis to rejuvenate the present chief medical officer, but so far there had been no official word of his retirement.
'He's bound to go before long,' said Valens. 'I'll save him the bother of trailing back up here and have his things sent on.'
'And you think they're promoting you to CMO?'
'Why not?'
'Because they might choose me.'
'Bollocks.'
'I've got combat experience.'
'But you don't know anybody yet, Ruso. Anyway, you don't need the money like I do.'
'No?'
'I thought you were supposed to inherit from your father. Aren't you the oldest son?'
'There were a lot of expenses,' said Ruso. 'You know what funerals are like.'
'Didn't he have land in Gaul?'
'My brother's looking after it. The farm has a lot of people to support.'
'Giddyup!' The driver gave one of the beasts a flick with his stick and the cart lurched forward. They followed its creaking progress up the slope.
'What you need,' said Valens suddenly, 'is a rich widow.'
Ruso noted this suggestion to add to his list of things he didn't need at all. He had no intention of explaining to Valens that what he did need was either the CMO's salary or a collection of lucrative private patients and some peace and quiet to get on with his writing. Now that he was living in a backwater with no earthquakes or family members or ex-wife to distract him, he hoped to complete the work he had already started and abandoned several times. G. Petreius Ruso's Concise Guide to Military First Aid would be detailed enough to be useful in the field, and short enough to be copied onto very small scrolls that would fit into a soldier's pack. The copying would be expensive, but once those copies had been sold, there would be a double profit-one in cash, and one, he felt sure, in lives and limbs saved. What he didn't need was Valens making helpful suggestions, or worse still, taking up the idea himself.
'Did I tell you,' Valens continued, bringing Ruso back to the subject at hand, 'I'm thinking of proposing to the second spear's daughter?'
'Is she a rich widow?'
'Gods, no. She's sixteen. Rather attractive, actually, considering what her father looks like.'
Whatever the second spear looked like, he must have been on centurion's pay for some years before he had been promoted to a command in the top cohort. He would be a wealthy man.
'Only child, I suppose?' ventured Ruso.
Valens grinned. 'Divorce has turned you sadly cynical, my friend.'
'Not divorce,' said Ruso. 'Marriage.'
9
Ruso lay in the darkness and listened to the scurry of the mice in the dining room, and then to the patter of the dog. There followed some skidding and squeaking and a crash, then a long silence. It was finally broken by the wail of third watch being blown, and the creak of his bed as he rolled over and vowed to move out of this madhouse as soon as he could afford it.
By the time he woke again, Valens had gone on duty. The house was quiet. As soon as he had breakfasted and bathed (there would be no time later), he would be able to make some progress with his writing.
Ruso wandered into the kitchen and picked up half a loaf of bread and a chunk of cheese that had been left out on the kitchen table. There were, he observed with relief, no mouse droppings on the table this morning. Then he glanced across at the little box on the windowsill and saw that the pile Valens was collecting had grown considerably. Abandoning the idea of food, Ruso strode back to his room, pulled on his overtunic, and went across
