Tilla stood up. Those eyes looked into his own. “You are a good medicus,” she said, “And a good man. But you are mistaken about this. I am not a friend of the army. Now if you have no work for me, I am going to talk with Lydia.”
16
Ruso complimented the woman on the wine when he went to pay for his food. She shook her head sadly. “It’s the last we’ll get, sir. We lost our supplier today. A terrible, terrible thing.”
“Felix?” he guessed.
She nodded. “Did you know him?”
“Not really.”
“He’ll be missed,” she said. “Always a friendly face. Whatever they say about him, we never had any trouble with him. It’s a sad way to lose a young man, like that.”
“It is,” agreed Ruso, wondering how much information had escaped from the fort. “What did happen to him, exactly?”
The woman hesitated.
“I just don’t want to say the wrong thing to his friends,” he explained.
“He was hit over the head,” she said. “His centurion found him in an alleyway over by the fort first thing this morning.”
“So have they caught the man who did it?”
She looked at him oddly. “ I don’t think so,” she said, and bent down to pick up something from behind the counter. Ruso took the hint.
Across the road, a middle-aged native with a cascade of iron gray hair was sitting outside the barber’s in the late afternoon sun, having his mustache trimmed by a barber’s slave. In the gloom of the shop behind him, a man and a woman were staring silently at the floor. The way their chairs were turned toward each other reminded Ruso of those awful social occasions-usually instigated by Claudia-where he and some stranger had run out of conversation but could not find an excuse to move apart.
As Ruso headed for the bathhouse doors, a voice called, “Good afternoon, sir!”
The man, more alert than he seemed, had sprung to his feet.
“How are you today?”
“Dirty,” said Ruso.
“Well, you’ve come to the right place, sir!” The barber was beside him now, making ushering motions with his arms as if he were hoping to round Ruso up and pen him into the shop like a sheep for shearing. “What can we do to help? Haircut? Shave?”
Ruso rubbed his chin. What he felt beneath his fingers was no longer stubble. Unfortunately, from what he had seen of the chins of the Tenth Batavians this afternoon, Hadrian’s famous beard had so far failed to inspire any imitators here. Since he was now in charge of the infirmary until the new man turned up in four days’ time, he supposed he should make an effort to resemble the Batavians’ image of an officer.
“Take a seat, sir.” The barber had trotted ahead and was indicating a stool next to the native. “Guaranteed the best in town, or your money back!”
“Just a shave,” he said, subsiding onto the stool and adding, “Take it steady, will you?” lest this should be one of those enthusiastic razor-wielders who valued speed above accuracy.
“Don’t you worry, sir!” chirped the barber, draping a stained cloth across Ruso’s chest and pulling his own stool closer. “You just close your eyes, relax, and it’ll be over in no time.”
This sounded alarmingly like the sort of thing surgeons said to patients: not because there was nothing to worry about, but because worrying would make no difference.
Ruso checked that the letter Albanus had given him was still safely in his belt, and closed his eyes.
“So,” said the barber, slapping cold water onto the doomed beard, “have you come a long way, sir?”
“Deva,” said Ruso, making no effort to stimulate the conversation since in a moment he would only be able to answer in grunts.
“Deva! Well!”
Ruso heard the water bowl being put down.
“You’ll be with the Twentieth, then, sir?”
Presumably the razor had been picked up. Just to be on the safe side, Ruso’s reply was confined to, “Uh.”
A voice close to his left ear said, “Just keep still now, sir,” and he felt the scraping begin at the lower left- hand side of his jaw. “It’s an honor to shave an officer from the legions, sir. Especially the Twentieth. It’s a grand legion, the Twentieth, isn’t it?”
“Uh.”
“A lot of people will be very pleased to have you here, sir. What with all the bother we’ve been having lately.’
Ruso, unable to explain that most of his comrades were leaving in the morning, said, “Uh.”
“We have to expect a few robbers and thieves around, I suppose, sir, don’t we? Low types too lazy to earn an honest living. And if people don’t keep an eye on their things in the bathhouse, they’ve only got themselves to blame, haven’t they? But it comes to something when the roads aren’t safe to travel in daylight, and now an innocent man’s been horribly murdered right in the middle of-”
“Festinus!”
The rich bass voice could only have come from the native. Ruso opened his eyes, but his head was being held over to one side and all he could see was glinting light alternating with the shadow of a hand as the blade scratched at his left cheek.
“Festinus,” continued the voice, “don’t alarm our guest.”
In truth Ruso was less alarmed by talk of horrible murders than by the discovery that he was being shaved by a man whose nickname was Hasty.
“I’m not trying to alarm him,” said Festinus, pausing briefly to wipe his blade. “I’m just making conversation. And it’s only fair to warn visitors if there’s something funny going on. You’d rather be warned than murdered, wouldn’t you, sir?”
Ruso grunted an assent. He wished he could find a way of asking the stranger not to distract the man who was sliding a razor up under his left ear.
“Nobody knows what they did to him, but it must have been nasty. They won’t let no one see the-”
“Festinus!”
“ ’Course, I don’t expect you’ll have no bother at all, sir,” the barber continued. “I always said Felix would get into trouble one day. He was a bit too clever, sir; that was his problem.”
“No danger of you being in trouble, then, is there?” put in the woman’s voice. “Don’t you listen to him, sir. Poor Felix was a nice friendly young man. Not like some of them we get around here.”
The barber snorted. “A bit too free with his friendship, if you ask me.”
“Nobody did ask you,” pointed out the woman. “And you shouldn’t be talking like that before he’s even buried.”
The barber, ignoring her, urged Ruso to “Straighten up a little, please, sir,” just as a gray mustache appeared in his line of vision and its owner said, “Pleased to meet you, officer. Catavignus. I represent the local people in the guild of caterers.’
Ruso had the vague sensation that he had seen him somewhere before, but could not think where.
The barber paused again to wipe the razor. Ruso seized the moment to introduce himself to Catavignus, who was evidently a native who had added a Latin ending to his name.
Catavignus bowed. “Welcome to Coria, Doctor. Sorry to hear about the accident. I hope you’re not hurt?” The accent was similar to Tilla’s, but his Latin demonstrated a grasp of grammar that Tilla seemed to have decided was not worth the effort.
Ruso offered a double-barreled “Uh-uh,” and a wave of the hand to indicate that he had survived the accident
