“But how else will I get out of this place?” Virana sat up and gave the pink dress a violent tug to straighten it. A bulge of pale flesh appeared through a hole in the side seam. “They won’t even let me in to talk to anybody.”
“They are not going to help you,” Tilla agreed.
“Those horrible centurions don’t care about anybody.”
“It is not their job to care about you.”
The girl swung her feet to the floor. “They don’t even care about their own soldiers!”
Tilla said, “My man does his best.”
The girl put a hand to her mouth. “I am sorry. I meant no insult.”
“You can speak the truth, Virana. I am not in the Twentieth Legion just because he is.”
Virana glanced at the window, then said softly, “You should tell him to be careful in there.”
“Why?”
The girl leaned closer and mouthed, “People keep on dying. They say there is a curse.”
“I heard about the man on the roof.”
“Not just Sulio.” Virana glanced at the window again, and fell silent.
Tilla checked that no one was listening at the door. Then she closed the shutters, plunging them into near darkness. “What do you mean, ‘People keep on dying’? What sort of people?”
“I don’t want to get into trouble.”
“There will be no trouble if you tell me the truth.”
The girl sniffed. “First Dannicus. Then Tadius. Then Victor ran away, and now Sulio lies dead too.”
Tilla paused. “This Victor-does he have ginger hair?”
In the gloom she could just make out Virana’s nod.
She said, “I think I have seen him,” but Virana was not listening.
“Fortune has turned her back on them!”
“But you still want to go to Deva with them?”
“They say the tribune will offer a ram to Jupiter in the morning. Perhaps things will be better after that. But tonight-”
“I will tell my husband to be careful,” Tilla agreed. “These deaths-what causes them?”
“Dannicus drowned in the river.” Virana shuffled on the bed. “So you cannot help me?”
“I cannot see inside the womb, sister. Think who you lay with at about lambing time and try to work it out.”
Virana began counting on her fingers and murmuring names. There seemed to be a lot of them. Tilla opened the shutters again.
“They were all nice to me.” Virana stopped counting. “I wouldn’t do it with the rude ones.”
“Of course not.”
“They bought me beads.”
“So I see.”
“I felt sorry for them.”
Tilla, trying to remember if she had ever felt sorry for a soldier in her life, said, “Why was that?”
“Mam said to stay away from them, but what does she know? I shall have plenty of time to grind flour and milk cows when I’m old like her.”
“There is no need to feel sorry for soldiers, Virana. Especially when they ask you to comfort them.”
The pout reappeared. “They won’t have me back at home now. My aunt says I’ll turn the milk sour.”
“I am sad to hear it.”
“It wouldn’t be Tadius, would it? I only did it once with him because of my sister.”
“Once is often enough,” said Tilla, pushing aside the thought,
“Well, I’m sure it isn’t. Anyway, I need somebody alive. Marcus is nice …” The girl looked up. “You won’t tell my sister about me and Tadius, will you?”
“I do not know your sister.”
“She thinks she was the only girl he ever looked at. Now she is lying at home, sulking.”
Tilla dismissed the question of what the parents had done to deserve two such daughters, and tried to steer Virana back toward the danger the Medicus might be in. “Could the father be either of the other men who died?”
“Oh, Sulio and Dannicus weren’t interested in girls. You know. Like they say about the emperor.”
Tilla was not going to discuss the emperor’s bedroom habits with a girl who could not control her tongue or, it seemed, much else. “So the boy who jumped off the roof was the lover of the one who drowned?”
Virana nodded. “After Dann was drowned, Sulio was so frightened he couldn’t eat. He wanted to run away. I told him not to be silly.” She sniffed. “I should have said,
“Why was he frightened? Was he to blame for the drowning?”
“Tadius and Victor were really cross with him.”
“He was frightened of the other recruits?”
But Virana had moved on. “Now Tadius is dead and Victor knew it would be him next and Corinna would be left on her own.” She sniffed. “Like I will be if I’m not careful.”
While the girl paused to wipe her nose on the back of her hand, Tilla tried to make sense of what she had said. “Three soldiers are dead, but from different causes, and one has run away.”
Virana nodded vigorously, shaking the remaining strands of hair loose. “Corinna really is Victor’s wife. But that’s none of the army’s business, is it?”
Talking with this girl was like trying to catch fleas: you never knew which way she was going to jump. “That depends on who you ask.”
Virana thought about that for a moment. “It’s not so bad for me, really, is it? I mean, I’ve got plenty to choose from. Corinna never lay with anybody else, so she can’t get them to help now that Victor’s gone.”
It seemed the local girls had rushed to make the new recruits very welcome indeed. A harder woman would have told them that if they must take on a soldier, go for an older man who was about to settle down with his retirement fund. The young ones had no money, little free time, and no choice over where they were posted-but of course they had clear eyes and smooth skin and full heads of hair, and they thought they were immortal. Until, it seemed, they came to Eboracum.
She decided to approach from a different angle. “Who spoke this curse, Virana?”
The girl glanced at the open window again. “I do not think one ram to Jupiter will make much difference.”
“What should I tell my husband to look out for?”
Virana got to her feet and adjusted the pink dress again. “I have to go now. I don’t have to pay, do I? You didn’t help me.”
“I need something,” Tilla insisted. “I have done everything I can for you, and I cannot have word go round that I see patients for free.”
Virana pulled at a strand of her hair. “I have no money.”
“You hoped I would help you because I am generous?”
“I hoped if I warned you about the curse …”
“What you have told me is gossip. I need to know exactly what my husband has to fear in the fort. Who spoke the curse, and why?”
The girl twisted the hair around her forefinger until the fingertip went white. “It will probably be all right,” she said at length. “It is only the recruits that bad things happen to. An officer from Deva will be safe.”
“I hope so, Virana. Because if you have lied to me, I will find you, and you will be sorry.”
Chapter 13
The empress Sabina had long ago formed her own theory about the nonsense in travel books. No traveler,
