happened to them.
Virana said, “They got sticks to keep themselves steady and they tried to cross hand in hand, but the current was pushing them, and then Dann lost his footing and they both went under. Then Geminus dived in on the end of a rope and they got Sulio out.”
“But not Dannicus?”
She shook her head. “The ferrymen found him washed up on the north bank the next day. He was a long way downstream.”
There was only one question left now. “Did the centurions know that Dannicus couldn’t swim?”
“Well, I knew,” said Virana. “And my friend knew. And I heard the other boys teasing him about it. So I should think everybody did, wouldn’t you?”
Chapter 21
Ruso was searching the office in vain for the postmortem report he had read only yesterday when he was startled by a rap on the door. He shoved the box onto the nearest shelf and turned just as a young man burst in wearing a sweat-stained tunic, exuberant tattoos, and an anxious expression.
“Can I help you?”
In Ruso’s experience, recruits were perpetually hungry, but this one seemed to have given up the battle with the chunk of tough barley bread clutched in his hand. He also seemed to have forgotten how to speak.
“The clerk’s gone to find some lunch,” continued Ruso, who had chosen this moment to visit the office for that very reason. “I’m the doctor.”
The man glanced down at the bread, then tried to hide it behind his back before more or less standing to attention.
“Are you looking for somebody else?”
“No, sir.”
“So,” said Ruso, wondering if his visitor was also on a mission to sneak into the records while the clerk was absent, “why are you here?”
“I was told to come and see Austalis, sir.”
“Ah,” said Ruso, helping himself to a seat. “Stand easy, er …”
“Marcus, sir.”
A man called Marcus who spoke Latin with that accent had probably been given one of the few Roman names his parents knew. Ruso guessed he was a full-blooded native son of some sort of local chief. “You’ll find him in the room opposite. Don’t stay too long: He’s very weak.”
“I have seen him already, sir. He looks terrible.”
Ruso said, “We’re doing everything we can.”
“I think he will die.”
“Not necessarily.”
Marcus ran a hand back through his hair, inadvertently giving Ruso a better view of the blue horse rearing up his right arm. “He was fine just a few days ago.”
“I’ve been wondering why a man who was fine would deliberately take a slice off his own arm.”
The young man hesitated.
“There are safer ways to remove tattoos.”
His visitor’s face brightened: Ruso had guessed well. “Are there, sir?”
“Nothing’s completely safe, but I’d suggest burning them off slowly with a caustic potion.”
“Can you do these?”
“Turn around and let me see.”
A serpent slithered down the other arm toward the left wrist.
“If you had a slave brand,” he said, “I could understand it. But as tattoos go, those are rather good. Marcus, haven’t I seen you somewhere before?” Or his arms, at least.
“You were one of the doctors who said I could join the army, sir.”
“I imagine that seems a long time ago.”
“A whole life, sir. What is in the potion? Can you do it before we go to Deva?”
Ruso angled himself on the stool so that it was resting on the back two legs, and dismissed a distant echo of his first wife’s warnings about ruining the furniture. “First,” he said, dodging the first question lest the patient should decide to slap lime all over himself, “tell me why you would want to bother.”
Moments later he was recalling a conversation with a young lawyer in Antioch who had insisted that he was not ashamed of his own people. “I simply want to go to the baths and not be
Ruso had explained the difficulties of the surgery, the inevitable pain, the possible consequences of serious inflammation at the operation site, and the fact that nothing would fully restore what had been lost. The lawyer, who seemed to think he was bargaining, begged him to reconsider and offered more money. That evening Ruso’s ex-wife, who had recommended him through an acquaintance, demanded to know why he had embarrassed her by refusing the case.
“Because it’s unnecessary, nasty, and dangerous.”
“But it must work or people wouldn’t do it.”
“True.”
“And if you get a good reputation for doing this epispasm thing, he’ll send all his friends, and-”
“I don’t want any sort of reputation for surgery people don’t need.”
“But he thinks he needs it! Now he’ll have to go to somebody who’s not as good as you. And when his thing drops off, it’ll be your fault.”
Sometimes Ruso thought it was a wonder he and Claudia had stayed married for as long as they did. They had still been arguing when the earthquake struck. The lawyer was only one of a great number of people he had never seen again.
Now he was facing a man with a similar problem. The trouble with tattoos, apparently, was that when legionaries of any rank saw them they thought,
“It’s bad enough to be in an unlucky unit, sir, but if the rest of the Legion think we are no good because we are barbarians …”
“Do they?”
Marcus twisted the rough bread between his hands. A shower of crumbs fell to the floor. “I am a Roman citizen, sir,” he insisted. “Just like the rest. My father has a copy of the citizenship order. Signed by the emperor Trajan himself.”
Ruso said, “To be chosen by the emperor is a great honor.” It was true, although Tilla would have said that any Briton chosen by the emperor had obviously done something to be ashamed of. “Are you the first legionary in the family?”
Marcus nodded. “Everyone’s very proud of me at home, sir.” He looked up. “How can I tell them what it’s really like?”
“It’ll be better when you get to Deva and you’re assigned to your century,” Ruso promised him. “It’s not all like basic training.”
“Austalis will never go to Deva now, sir, will he?”
“I don’t know.” Austalis would be lucky if he survived at all.
“It’s not right, sir. Me and Austalis grew up together. We had our first tattoos on the same day. We enlisted together. And now … now …” Marcus, unable to find the words, gestured helplessly with the bread. Then he raised the arm with the horse tattoo. A roar of fury and despair covered the sound of hard bread crashing against shelves. The British curse on the name “Geminus!” was clear enough, and so was the threat to kill him.
