side street, weaving unsteadily around the legs of scaffolding poles. The scrape and slop of shovels mixing mortar announced yet another row of new shops. Ruso strode around the far side of the building site, entered the street from the opposite end, picked his way down past a burned-out building awaiting demolition, and came face-to-face with the shuffling threesome.
'The Bridge road is the other way!' he shouted over a sudden burst of hammering, stabbing his forefinger in the direction from which they had just come.
The girl opened her eyes and looked at him.
She couldn't see him, of course. It was an illusion. The eyes were blank; like the eyes of a sleepwalker. For the first time Ruso noticed the delicate shape of her nose, the tiny dimple in an earlobe where jewelry had once hung. And those eyes. The color of-what were they the color of? Like… like the clear deep waters of… Ruso's tired mind groped for a description that didn't sound like the work of a bad poet, and failed to find one.
The merchant was still talking. The youth was examining the toe straps of his sandals. Only Ruso seemed to be interested in the girl.
'If you don't get help for her soon, this slave is going to die.'
He realized it was a mistake as soon as he had said it. The trader bent forward and dragged down the girl's lower eyelid with a dirty thumb.
Then he forced her jaw open and peered into her mouth. He was clearly not a man to waste two sestertii on dying livestock.
'It's not the state of her teeth you need to worry about.'
Innocens turned and looked at him curiously 'You wouldn't be a medical man yourself, by any chance, sir?'
Ruso glanced up, wishing he believed in the sort of theatrical gods who swooped down from the heavens at difficult moments and set humanity to rights. But the gods, if they were watching, were hiding in the gray British clouds beyond the scaffolding poles, leaving him to his fate. And then, as if inspired by something beyond himself, Ruso had an idea.
'You said she isn't worth anything.'
Innocens paused. 'Well, not the way she is, sir. After she's been cleaned u p — '
'I'll take her off your hands.'
'She's a good strong girl, sir. She'll perk up in a day or two. I'll knock a bit off the price for that arm.'
'What price? You told me she was lazy and useless.'
'Useless at cleaning, sir, but an excellent cook. And what's more …'
Innocens raised his free arm to steady the girl as he leaned forward in a haze of fish sauce and bellowed over more hammering-'just the thing for a healthy young man like yourself, sir! Ripe as a peach and never been touched!'
'I'm not interested in touching her!' shouted Ruso, just as the noise stopped.
Someone sniggered. Ruso looked up. A couple of men were leaning down over the scaffolding. One of them said something to the other and they both laughed. The youth holding the girl glanced up and grinned.
It would be all over the fort by morning.
You know that new doctor up at the hospital? The one that's been telling the boys to stay out of whorehouses?
What about him?
Hangs around back streets. Tries to buy women.
Innocens was smiling again. Ruso suppressed an urge to grab him by the neck and shake him.
'What would you like to offer, sir?'
Ruso hesitated. 'I'll give you fifty denarii,' he muttered.
Innocens's jowls collapsed in disappointment. He shrugged the shoulder not being used to prop up his merchandise. 'I wish I could, sir. I can hardly afford to feed her. But the debt I took her for was four thousand.'
It was a ridiculous lie. Even if it wasn't, Ruso didn't have four thousand denarii. He didn't even have four hundred. It had been an expensive summer.
'Fifty's more than she's worth, and you know it,' he insisted. 'Look at her.'
'Fifty-five!' offered a voice from the scaffolding.
'What?' put in his companion. 'You heard the man, she's a virgin. Fifty-six!'
Innocens scowled at them. 'One thousand and she's yours, sir.'
'Fifty or nothing.'
The trader shook his head, unable to believe that any fool would offer all his money at the first bid. Ruso, remembering with' a jolt that payday was still three weeks away, was barely able to believe it himself. He should have put some water in that wine.
'Two hundred, sir. I can't go below two hundred. You'll ruin me.'
'Go on!' urged the chorus from the scaffolding. 'Two hundred for this lovely lady!'
Ruso looked up at the workmen. 'Buy her yourselves if you like. I only came out for a bottle of bath oil.'
At that moment the girl's body jerked. A feeble cough emerged from her lips. Her eyelids drifted shut. A slow silver drool emerged from her mouth and came to rest in shining bubbles on the sodden wool of her tunic. Claudius Innocens cleared his throat.
'Will that fifty be cash, then, sir?'
3
What are you doing in here?'
Ruso opened one eye and wondered briefly why he was being addressed by a giant inkwell. Opening the other eye to find himself in fading light and surrounded by shelves, he realized he must have fallen asleep in the records office. He hauled himself upright on the stool and yawned. 'Catching up on some notes. How are you feeling?'
Valens grinned. 'Better than that thing in Room Twelve. It looks as if it's just crawled out of the sewer. What is it?'
Ruso reached for the writing tablet before Valens could make out: Female, history unknown, fracture to lower right arm, pale, dry cough, weak, no fever. Note: Launder bedding, treat withfieabane. He snapped it shut and slid it into the Current Patients box.
'That thing is a sick slave with a broken arm.'
'Whose?'
'Her own.'
'Very funny Whose slave?'
Ruso scratched his ear. 'Couldn't say, really' He had entertained a faint hope that his purchase might be claimed by the lovesick porter and taken off his hands, but the man had not recognized her.
'I leave you on your own for a couple of days,' said Valens, 'and you fill the place with expiring females.'
'A couple of fishermen found the other one already expired. The town council clerk wouldn't let them dump her outside his office and they couldn't think what else to do with her.'
Valens shrugged. 'Of course. We're the army, we'll deal with everything. If somebody doesn't identify her soon, I suppose we'll have to bury her too. So who said her friend could die in one of our beds?'
'She isn't dying,' argued Ruso, seizing the chance to side step the question of who had brought her in.
'That's not what I heard. She on your list?'
He nodded.
'No hope for her, then.' Valens glanced out into the corridor, pushed the door shut, and lowered his voice. 'Five says she'll be dead by sunrise.'
Ruso pondered this for a moment. Payday seemed farther away now than when he had foolishly offered all his remaining cash for a slave he didn't want. If he could just keep her alive until tomorrow, he would salvage some of his dignity and come out of it with money in his purse.
'She isn't dying,' he repeated with more confidence than he felt.
