to the hospital to see his private patient.
The girl was still asleep. He did not wake her. Valens would check on her during ward rounds.
The words CLOSED FOR IMPROVEMENTS had now been chalked on the main fort baths for so long that they had grown faint with age. Apparently half the builders had been called away on more pressing peacekeeping duties. The rest were clearly determined not to be accused of rushing their work. The height of the weeds growing around the feet of the scaffolding struts suggested to Ruso that it would be weeks before they got around to fixing the hospital roof. Months until they demolished the old centurion's house in which he now lived, which Valens had somehow persuaded them to leave standing when the adjoining barracks block was flattened for rebuilding. The rebuilding hadn't even been started. The reopening of the main military baths was surely far more urgent, but even that didn't seem likely to happen this month-let alone this morning.
Using the hospital baths was out of the question. The thought of being trapped naked with a roomful of patients comparing their symptoms made him shudder. He would go out to the public baths. This early, there would be no lines. With no mistreated slave girls to distract him, he should soon return clean, invigorated, and ready to make progress with the Concise Guide to Military First Aid.
First he needed a decent breakfast. Recent disappointments at other shops had confirmed that it was worth the trouble of walking across to the bakery opposite Merula's, where he savored the smell before handing over his cash for a fresh roll. The crust crackled as he tore it. Steam rose into the cool morning air. He sat on the bench, leaned back with his legs stretched out over the pavement, and took a mouthful.
The streets were as quiet as was usual in the mornings: so quiet that he could catch the occasional bellow of orders from the parade ground, where most of the legion would be sweating their way through daily training. So far his name had not appeared on the training rota: an oversight that would no doubt be rectified when the administrative officer returned.
A couple of women went into the bakery to load their shopping baskets. A small boy passed down the street, bumping along a cartload of apples cushioned in straw. A settled hen squawked in annoyance as a woman emerged from the doorway where it was sitting and batted it out of the way with a broom. Across the street, the shutters were still closed. Ruso gazed idly at the advertisements on Merula's whitewashed walls.
Beneath a picture of a bowl and a jug, BEST FOOD IN DEVA and FINE WINES, LOW PRICES had been daubed in red for long enough to fade and be refurbished-not very accurately, so the faded paint still appeared at the edges of some of the letters. He was surprised to see Saufeia's name still listed under BEAUTIFUL GIRLS!: a bizarre memorial in sharp fresh paint. Asellina and Irene had evidently moved on and been wiped away with a single coat of white, which left them still faintly legible. Chloe was listed, along with someone called Mariamne, but not the nervous and pregnant Daphne. Customers had scrawled comments next to the names. Most were predictable. Something that looked very much like JUICY! was inscribed next to Chloe. Someone had attempted to scrub off Saufeia's only testimonial, but it was still possible to make out the faint scrawl of SNOOTY BITCH.
An elderly man with one leg was lurching toward the bakery on crutches, managing to balance despite a bulging sack tied over one shoulder. Seeing Ruso's interest in the bar he called, 'You're too hasty, boss!'
Ruso turned, but his scowl failed to stop the cackle of laughter and the announcement that, 'Them girls don't get up till it's time to go to bed!'
The last thing Ruso wanted this morning was a close encounter with them girls, or indeed with anything female. He was about to leave when another handcart came rumbling along the street. It paused outside Merula's. Its owner, a whistling man in a paint-spattered tunic, unloaded a box and put it down in front of the shutters.
'Don't get up till it's time to go to bed, hah!' chortled the one-legged man for the benefit of anyone who had missed it the first time, and lurched off down the street.
Ruso sat down again. For reasons he could not articulate, he wanted to see the dead girl's name removed from that wall.
The painter fetched a cloth out of the box and cleaned the word SAUFEIA and the scrubbed patch next to it. Then he stepped back and surveyed the rest of the wall.
Ruso stepped across to join him. 'You need to take that name off, not clean it up.'
The painter squinted at the wall. 'Mariamne Bites. That'd better go too.' He stepped forward again and rubbed at the words, which had been scratched on with charcoal. 'Keeping me busy, this lot are. Can't keep the staff, see?'
He bent over the box and lifted a brush. He paused to finger a silver charm in the form of a phallus which was slung around his throat, then, with one stroke, he reduced Saufeia's name to a red shadow showing through the white.
'Bad luck, having that up there,' he observed. 'Might as well finish off the other one too.'
'Other one?'
'The one that run off with the sailor.' He reached up and obliterated the faint outline of ASELLINA with a fresh brushstroke of white paint. 'She won't be back.'
'I think I've met somebody who knew her,' said Ruso. It had not occurred to him that the porter's missing girlfriend might have worked in a place like this.
The man grinned. ' 'Round here, you'll have met quite a few.'
Asellina had probably weighed the offers of several admirers, and the luckless porter had not been at the top of the list.
The painter stepped back and squinted at the wall. 'Looks a bit patchy, don't it? I told 'em the whole lot wants doing again, but her inside won't part with the money Knew that Saufeia, then, did you?'
'No.'
'Something funny going on there. I reckon she had a premonition.'
Ruso, who spent much of his professional life battling against superstition, could not resist asking, 'Why?'
'I never took much notice at the time, but she stuck her head 'round the door while I was working, took one look, and said in that posh voice of hers, 'You've spelt me wrong.' I'd gone and put two f's in, see? So I went to put it right and she said, 'You really needn't bother; I shan't be here much longer.' '
The man touched the charm again, then recharged the brush and ran it across the wall again. In its wake, Saufeia's name, correctly spelled with one 'f,' grew fainter still. 'Course, I changed it anyway,' he said. 'I like to do a proper job.' He put the brush back in the pot. 'Might as well not have bothered.'
He picked up the red brush. 'Here's something to cheer the lads up.' In the space where MARIAMNE BITES could still faintly be read, he sketched out in large letters the words NEW COOK.
'Merula says I got to put it in big letters,' he explained, 'So everybody knows. She don't want a bad name after them oysters.'
'She's sacked the old cook?' said Ruso.
'Packed her off to the dealer. Lucky that doctor didn't drop dead, or they'd all be facing the inquisitors.'
'How many people were ill?'
'Just the one,' replied the painter, frowning with concentration as he led the brush down the first stroke of the 'N.' 'That were lucky, weren't it?'
'Not for the doctor.'
'That's what they're saying,' agreed the painter. 'Peculiar, like, just him and no one else. Anyway, won't happen again. New cook, see?'
10
It had been a day where everything was more complicated than it should have been. When he reached the baths Ruso found he was the wrong sex and had to wait outside ('Women only till the sixth hour, sir-it is on the door, sir…') This afternoon a signaler who had been sent to have a head cut stitched turned out to have tripped on something he hadn't seen. Alerted by the young man's reluctance to meet his gaze, Ruso had insisted on checking his eyesight after the wound was treated. Within seconds he had discovered not only the advancing shadow of cataract in both eyes, but some inkling of the desperate and complex cover-up undertaken by the man and his comrades. Blindness would be the end of any soldier's career, but a signaler with failing eyesight would be invalided
