Ruso drew his knife. Around him, the street was deserted apart from the old man and a woman clutching a toddler in each hand.
“You get ’em, sir!” urged the man. “I’ll call for help!”
Ruso glanced at the medical case in his left hand. “Look after that for me,” he said, dropping it at the feet of the old man. Then he took a deep breath, yelled, “You four men, follow me. Audax, take the others around to the far end and cut them off!” and charged.
Faces turned toward him in alarm. The curses were louder as the knot rapidly disentangled itself and three or four plaid-trousered natives fled, escaping from the far end of the alley. Left behind, writhing on the ground, was a figure in Batavian uniform.
The man was wild-eyed, clutching at his chest, shaking his head and gasping for air as if he were drowning. Ruso looked for blood and failed to find any.
“Have you swallowed something?” asked Ruso, kneeling beside him and running through the possibilities. Choking. Poison. Stab wounds to the lungs. Heart failure. All sorts of things that could kill a man while a doctor was still trying to work out what he was dealing with.
The man shook his head in denial and pushed him away.
“I’m a doctor. Where are you hurt?”
The man jabbed a finger toward his abdomen.
“Stomach punch?” said Ruso, hopefully.
The man nodded.
“You’re winded,” said Ruso, relieved. “Curl up into a crouch. Don’t worry, it’ll settle down in a minute.”
While the soldier was recovering his breath the shouting by the river reached a crescendo and then seemed to die down. Ruso glanced out of both ends of the alley into peaceful streets. There was no sign of the man’s attackers, nor of any other assault upon the town. Ruso went back to the victim just to make sure there wasn’t an injury he had missed.
The soldier was now beginning to take in some air but his face still suggested that he was not in a fit state to listen to the old man’s account of how he had seen three of them natives grab him off the street and bundle him into an alley and how he’d have come after them himself if the officer hadn’t turned up.
Neither man, fortunately, had yet noticed what Ruso had seen scratched in stark black charcoal on the grubby lime wash of the wall above the victim: a line sketch of a two-legged figure with antlers sprouting from his head.
Ruso, who had been silently critical of Audax for destroying evidence, leaned hard against the wall and slid his shoulders first from side to side, then up and down, rubbing off the loose surface of the charcoal. The old man looked up and asked if he was all right.
“Just an itch,” explained Ruso, leaning back against the wall. “You did well, father.”
“If I’d have been ten years younger, I’d have had ’em!” the man assured him, waving his stick in the direction of the natives’ flight. “Barbarians. Savages. Oughtn’t to allow ’em in the streets.”
A thunder of hooves announced the approach of a cavalry patrol. Moments later a blur of color passed the end of the alley, heading toward the river.
Unable to spend the rest of the afternoon blocking the view of the wall, Ruso distracted the old man with a request for help in getting the soldier up, and together they shuffled back toward the street. The old man seemed delighted to hear that the authorities might want to ask him some questions. The soldier complained that he didn’t want a fuss.
“You want to make all the fuss you can, boy,” insisted the old man. “You might have ended up cracked over the head like that Felix.” He turned to Ruso. “You tell them to come and ask questions any time. It’ll make a change from listening to the wife.”
“Nosy old bugger,” muttered the soldier after he had gone. “What’s it got to do with him?”
“Did you know who those men were?”
“Didn’t see their faces.”
Something about the manner of the reply suggested that he was lying. “But you knew what they wanted.”
“I never said that!”
“I’m going to have to report it anyway,” Ruso told him, “so you’d better think what you’re going to say.”
The man winced and clutched at his abdomen. Ruso told him to come over to the infirmary later for a checkup.
“It was only a bloody hen,” the man muttered. “Everybody does it. How was I supposed to know it belonged to somebody?”
“Hens usually do belong to somebody,” pointed out Ruso. “When did you last see a flock of wild hens?”
The man scowled. “Whose side are you on?” he said.
Ruso made his way back through the alley and finished rubbing off the worst of the charcoal figure before going in search of his assistant.
The stampede seemed to have come to a halt at the end of a muddy lane leading to the river meadows. He could see the top of Ingenuus’s head above an excited mob who were all too busy shouting questions to listen to the answers. Other men were walking back up from the willows along the riverbank. In the far corner of the field, a couple of grooms were trying to round up some horses who were cavorting around in circles and far too excited to let anyone approach.
The dogs had wandered off. The small boys, having seen all there was to see, had fallen to wrestling with one another. Nobody appeared to be hurt.
As Ruso heard the next watch being sounded from inside the fort walls, it occurred to him that Metellus had been waiting to see Tilla for his identity parade since breakfast, and it was now midmorning. Well, he would have to wait. He stepped forward and extricated Ingenuus from the melee, relieved to see he was still clutching the medicine box.
“Broad daylight!” the bandager grumbled as they made their way back up the slope toward the bathhouse. “Broad daylight! They’re getting more uppity by the day, sir. That’s two good stallions gone, and if we get them back they’ll probably be ruined.”
“Who took them?”
Ingenuus stared at him. “Didn’t you see, sir? The natives! Strolled into the field right under the groom’s nose, shot a couple of slingshot stones at him, mounted up and jumped the hedge! Something’s going to have to be done, sir. This can’t go on.”
“No,” agreed Ruso, wondering if the daylight horse theft had been laid on as a distraction for the attack on the soldier. It seemed an elaborate and risky plan to punish the theft of one hen. But if “everyone” really did do it as the soldier had claimed, perhaps the natives had finally had enough of having their meager food supplies raided by foreigners bored with military rations.
36
This is where it all started, sir,” said Ingenuus, pausing beneath the sagging awning outside Susanna’s snack bar. “The night before last. Felix was at this table here…” He led Ruso in and indicated a corner table. “We were over on the other side. If only the beer hadn’t run out, we’d have been here to help.”
The elderly woman now sitting at the table of the ill-fated Felix repaid Ruso’s interest with a scowl.
He eyed the rest of the customers seated in the very plain surroundings of the snack bar. There was no sign of Tilla or Lydia. Nor were there any workmen snatching a quick bite to eat. Not a single loafer was idling away the morning with a jug of Susanna’s unexpectedly good wine. Instead… he turned to Ingenuus. “Is there something I don’t know?” he murmured, wondering if Ingenuus’s insistence on a midmorning snack was about to violate some local custom.
“What sort of thing, sir?” asked Ingenuus, unhelpfully.
Ruso leaned close to the big man’s ear and hissed, “They’re all women.”
The bandager, unembarrassed, surveyed the occupants of the tables across the top of his box. “Never mind
