seemed to doubt him. 'I'm perfectly sober,' he explained, steadying himself as he shifted to take the weight off his sore foot.
'I've just had a bit of a bang on the head.'
'Are you sure you don't need some help, sir?'
'No, I'm fine,' Ruso assured him, leaning closer to explain, 'I'm the doctor. I've prescribed myself something.'
He was starting to feel far more relaxed now. Confident that his command of the situation was secure, he began to half-drag and half-carry the man along the road, taking the shortest route up by the deserted scaffolding of the baths and around the corner past the streaks of light that marked the shutters of the senior officers' houses.
A couple of passersby offered to help, but he dismissed them with a cheery smile and a wave. There was no problem. He was enjoying himself. He really ought to learn to relax more. See the funny side of things.
When he finally let go the orderly slumped against a post at one end of the dark lane between two barracks blocks.
'You're a good man, sir.'
'Go and lie down, Decimus,' said Ruso.
'You don't know nothing about dogs, but you're a good man.'
The man staggered away into the gloom, leaning on the uprights of the portico for support. Finally he paused outside a door and fumbled with the latch. 'Drink plenty of water before you go to sleep,' called Ruso, feeling a rush of kindness toward the whole of humankind, encapsulated in this one drunken hospital porter, but the man was too busy falling through the doorway to hear him.
Ruso was still smiling when he climbed into his own bed, and so relaxed he decided not to bother taking his boots off.
22
Ruso shambled along to the kitchen wondering which was more painful: his sore head or his sore foot. Wretched woman. He needed a long cool drink of-
Damn. The jug was empty. Valens had thoughtfully moved it to weigh down the lid of the breadbin against invading mice but hadn't bothered to nip out and fill it first. Inside the bin was a chunk of bread so hard that the mice could have sharpened their teeth on it. There seemed to be nothing else edible in the kitchen. He chose the least dirty of the cups on the shelf and limped to the dining room. Beer would be better than nothing.
A gang of puppies bounced at his feet as he dipped the cup into the barrel. He was replacing the lid when there was a knock at the door. Still clutching the cup and with puppies licking up the drips in his wake, he went to explain to whoever it was that Valens was out.
The moment the door opened, the arm of the young soldier outside shot up in a salute.
Ruso transferred the beer to his other hand, put out his good foot to prevent a puppy escape and lost his balance slightly before returning an untidy salute and asking, 'What do you want?'
'Albanus, sir, reporting for duty.'
Ruso frowned, trying to imagine what the man's duty might be.
'Have you come to help out?'
'Yes sir.'
'Oh. Good. Well, you can start by getting some water. I've got a mouth like a sand dune and there's nothing to drink.'
The man looked puzzled. 'Water, sir?'
Ruso jerked a thumb over his shoulder. 'Jug's in the kitchen.'
He stepped aside, but the man did not move.
'Come in,' ordered Ruso. 'Shut the door before the dogs get out.'
'Sir?'
'What?'
'I'm your scribe, sir.'
Ruso stared at him and noticed the clues for the first time. The ink-stained fingers. The slight bulge to the eyes caused by peering at documents by lamplight. 'Oh.'
The man held up a satchel. 'I've brought my equipment, sir.'
'Well, you can take it away again,' said Ruso. 'I'm not on duty till this afternoon.' He paused. 'Report to me at the hospital at the seventh hour.'
'Yes, sir.' There was a pause. 'What would you like me to do until then, sir?'
Gods above, Priscus had sent him an enthusiast. 'Haven't you got some old records to copy?'
Yes, sir, he had.
'Then you can get on with that. Anything you can't read, ask me this afternoon. Don't make it up.'
'Yes, sir.'
The wretched man was still standing there.
'Anything else?'
'No, sir.'
There was a silence, then Ruso remembered to say, 'Dismissed.'
After another snappy salute Albanus spun around, sending his satchel swinging outward and crashing back against his side, and marched off in the direction of the hospital. Ruso shut the door, sniffed the beer, and decided it wasn't better than nothing, after all. He limped back into the kitchen to fetch the jug. He had the feeling Albanus would have copied all the records in triplicate by lunchtime and be pestering him for more work. He could have given him the Concise Guide to copy. It was a pity that most of it wasn't written yet.
Ruso was carrying the jug out the door when there was a crash and a skitter of paws across floorboards. He turned. Several puppies were running for cover. One was perched on a side table, peering over the edge at fragments of a cup lying in a spreading pool of beer.
Ruso shut the door quietly, limped down the street to the water fountain, and stuck his head under it.
23
Tilla could smell fresh bread. She pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders and peered out between the window bars. Across the street, a pigeon was perched on the roof of the bakery. Beneath it, someone swung back the first panel of the door shutters. A plump woman appeared in the gap, bending to apply her bottom to the rest of the shuttering. The panels shifted on their hinges and the pigeon swooped away as the whole apparatus began to screech back along its groove.
Tilla watched the pigeon until the frame of the window blocked her view. Then she returned to her bed, slid her hand underneath, and pulled out the iron key the healer had given her the night before. She had felt sorry for the healer, who had done nothing to deserve being smacked on the head and who should have had her beaten-since it seemed she did, after all, still belong to him. Evidently she was not yet the property of the ill-mannered bullies who had sauntered in yesterday with the clear intention of sizing her up for their own use.
The question was, what should she do now? She had the key. If she could find clothes, if she ate and built up her strength, if she could judge the right moment-she could escape. Or, she could choose not to eat, to cheat the work of the healer, and step forward toward her death. What honor, though, would she have in the next world if she had been offered a chance of freedom in this one and refused to take the risk?
A clunk from the loose board in the corridor warned her that someone was outside. Moments later there was a soft knock at the door. Tilla pressed her face against the door frame and squinted through the crack. She could just about make out a shape that was not tall enough to be either of the men.
'Daphne?'
