all the reasons why going to a farm was a bad idea. She seemed to think he was a civilian. If the men thought the same thing, there was a chance they might let him go with a beating.
She finished tying her boots and stood up to address the soldiers in Latin. “I thank you,” she said. “Now, will you please fetch my husband? He will know what to do.”
There was a moment of hesitation, then the senior one allowed himself a grunt of disapproval before ordering his comrade to take the message to the gate.
“And ask him to bring his case!” she called after him.
Victor closed his one good eye and prayed that the mighty Bregans would remember the pair of white doves he had promised to sacrifice if he got away safely. He was not to be taken into the fort yet: That was good. But now he had to explain to an officer why he had been hiding under a tree to watch a respectable married woman untie her boots, hitch up her skirts, and dangle her bare feet in the river. And as if that weren’t enough, he had then stepped forward and hit her.
Of course, the man should never have allowed her to wander the countryside by herself in the first place, but in Victor’s experience officers never took the blame for anything.
His new bruises had already begun to stiffen up by the time more men emerged from the fort. The two big lads in chain mail must be part of the German unit based here. The one in the middle was taller than some officers and scruffier than others, but he had the coloring of a man from a hot and dusty place where they talked too much and thought they were clever. Besides, there was no mistaking that walk. They all had it: the confident stride of a man who knew what to do.
Victor stifled the instinct to stand to attention while the men spoke in Latin about “this native” as if he were a stray dog.
The Germans saluted and marched back to the fort. The officer turned to his wife. “This had better be good,” he said.
Chapter 2
Ruso had already noted with relief that the young man’s black eye and swollen jaw were too mature to have been administered by his wife. Or by the Germans, who had sloped off up the hill with obvious disappointment now that their sport had been taken away from them. “I’ve just left spiced chicken and a decent wine,” he said. “Why aren’t you over at the inn?”
Tilla frowned. “If I have to listen to the driver and that woman for much longer, I shall get off and walk. I went to eat in peace by the river and look at your sister’s letter, and this man came to beg for food. Do you think his jaw is broken?”
Ruso, setting aside yet again the disagreeable prospect of a letter from his sister, cast an eye over the native’s injuries. They looked like the result of a brawl. Perhaps somebody else had caught him pestering their wife.
The man had shortish ginger hair, appeared to be in his early twenties, and-apart from the bruises-seemed to be in excellent physical shape. Still speaking Latin, Ruso asked, “Been in a fight, soldier?”
The native looked up. There was fear in his eyes.
“It is all right,” Tilla assured him in British, but the words were still on her lips as the man sprang away and pelted down the slope toward the river.
“Stop!” cried Tilla.
Ruso seized her by the wrist before she could give chase.
“My husband is a doctor!” she cried. “He can help you! Come back!”
The man’s tethered hands gave him a peculiar gait, as if he were trying to run through something sticky.
Ruso released his grip on her wrist.
“We will give you food!”
The man did not break his stride.
“What is the matter with him?”
Ruso folded his arms and watched as the man staggered across the river, lurching as the current pulled at him and then recovering to struggle up the slippery bank without the help of his hands. Finally he vanished into the woods on the far side.
“He’s either stolen his civilian clothes,” Ruso observed, “or his army boots. My money’s on the clothes.”
“Will you send the soldiers after him?”
He bent to pick up his case. “I’ve got enough patients without chasing after more.”
“What will happen to him?”
“I’m guessing he’s one of the British recruits they’ve started taking into the Legion. Not a very bright one. He’s got rid of his belt, but unless he has the sense to change his boots and hide amongst the locals while his hair grows, he’ll be caught.”
“But he has the voice of a Southerner,” she said. “He has no one around here.”
“So?”
“The local tribe might sell him back to the army.”
Ruso reflected that British tribes were always more complicated than you thought. “Well, it’s not our problem.”
Assuming that the spiced chicken would be cold and the wine would be finished by now, he accompanied his wife back to the river bank to compete with the local ducks for a share of her lunch.
“My brothers,” said Tilla, raising her voice over the din of a squawking flotilla lunging for the bread as it hit the water, “would never have joined the Legion.”
Since Tilla’s brothers were not Roman citizens and had been killed by neighboring cattle raiders before they were twenty years old, this was not surprising. “And would they have said,
“You are not a proper soldier,” she said, flinging the next handful toward a lone bird hesitating at the back. “You are a medicus.”
Ruso glanced down at his army belt and reflected that this fine distinction might be a comfort to Tilla, but it was invisible to everybody else. He had renewed his vows to the emperor. He was an officer of the Twentieth once more, and it did not matter that he had only come back because he missed the salary and the camaraderie and because he never, ever wanted to work as an investigator again. As far as the rest of the world was concerned, he was just another soldier.
When all the food was gone, he escorted her back to the inn. “Just stay out of trouble this afternoon, will you?”
“If that driver is still in there telling stories about how stupid the natives are, I may punch him on the nose.”
“Fair enough,” he agreed. “If it needs straightening afterward, send him up to me.”
On the way back past the gate guards he wondered if he should, after all, report the escaped Briton as a deserter. Then he remembered it was his own wife who had prized the man away from the guards, and decided someone else could do it.
Chapter 3
Victor struggled on into the deep shade of the woods, his head pounding with every step. His throat was sore. His legs felt like lead. He was torn all over by brambles. He stumbled over a root and went headlong, crying out at the jolt of the landing but knowing he was lucky: The rotting leaves had broken his fall. He lay still, trying to listen over the rasp of his own breathing. Nobody seemed to be following him.
He began to squirm, curling up into a position in which he might be able to reach the clasp knife they had not taken because they had not searched him properly. Whatever they had tied around his wrists was digging into his
