Three weeks after Claudia moved out, Ruso had signed up to a fresh start in Africa with the army. Now he stared at his pathetic collection of furniture and wondered if his wife had been right.
Valens was back, bringing a gnarled creature who had evidently spent all his money on blue tattoos and couldn't afford to bathe.
"I suppose you'll want to carry on using the spare bed, then?" inquired Valens as the tattooed one moved the table aside, lifted both trunks at once, and set off with them down the jetty.
Ruso picked up the chair. "Just until I get sorted out."
Valens reached for the legs of the table and swung it up over his head like a large sunshade. "With what these people charge," he said, "we ought to give up medicine and take up moving furniture."
They reached the end of the jetty. The trunks had been loaded onto a cart that smelled of old fish and appeared to be held together with greasy twine and dirt.
Valens wrinkled his nose and stepped back from the cart. "Were you serious about those termites?"
"The smell from that cart should finish them off."
"You're not in some sort of trouble, are you?"
Ruso watched the man roping down all that remained of his furniture, and said, "No, of course not."
"You won't find much to buy over here, but we've got a few decent carpenters. I'm thinking of having a proper dining room set made."
"For that house?"
"No. I told you, that one's supposed to have been flattened weeks ago. I mean in my new rooms. The ones I'll get when they promote me to CMO."
"So he's definitely not coming back?" Ruso was aware that no one expected the hot springs of Aquae Sulis to rejuvenate the present chief medical officer, but so far there had been no official word of his retirement.
"He's bound to go before long," said Valens. "I'll save him the bother of trailing back up here and have his things sent on."
"And you think they're promoting you to CMO?"
"Why not?"
"Because they might choose me."
"Bollocks."
"I've got combat experience."
"But you don't know anybody yet, Ruso. Anyway, you don't need the money like I do."
"No?"
"I thought you were supposed to inherit from your father. Aren't you the oldest son?"
"There were a lot of expenses," said Ruso. "You know what funerals are like."
"Didn't he have land in Gaul?"
"My brother's looking after it. The farm has a lot of people to support."
"Giddyup!" The driver gave one of the beasts a flick with his stick and the cart lurched forward. They followed its creaking progress up the slope.
"What you need," said Valens suddenly, "is a rich widow."
Ruso noted this suggestion to add to his list of things he didn't need at all. He had no intention of explaining to Valens that what he did need was either the CMO's salary or a collection of lucrative private patients and some peace and quiet to get on with his writing. Now that he was living in a backwater with no earthquakes or family members or ex-wife to distract him, he hoped to complete the work he had already started and abandoned several times. G. Petreius Ruso's Concise Guide to Military First Aid would be detailed enough to be useful in the field, and short enough to be copied onto very small scrolls that would fit into a soldier's pack. The copying would be expensive, but once those copies had been sold, there would be a double profit-one in cash, and one, he felt sure, in lives and limbs saved. What he didn't need was Valens making helpful suggestions, or worse still, taking up the idea himself.
"Did I tell you," Valens continued, bringing Ruso back to the subject at hand, "I'm thinking of proposing to the second spear's daughter?"
"Is she a rich widow?"
"Gods, no. She's sixteen. Rather attractive, actually, considering what her father looks like."
Whatever the second spear looked like, he must have been on centurion's pay for some years before he had been promoted to a command in the top cohort. He would be a wealthy man.
"Only child, I suppose?" ventured Ruso.
Valens grinned. "Divorce has turned you sadly cynical, my friend."
"Not divorce," said Ruso. "Marriage."
9
Ruso lay in the darkness and listened to the scurry of the mice in the dining room, and then to the patter of the dog. There followed some skidding and squeaking and a crash, then a long silence. It was finally broken by the wail of third watch being blown, and the creak of his bed as he rolled over and vowed to move out of this madhouse as soon as he could afford it.
By the time he woke again, Valens had gone on duty. The house was quiet. As soon as he had breakfasted and bathed (there would be no time later), he would be able to make some progress with his writing.
Ruso wandered into the kitchen and picked up half a loaf of bread and a chunk of cheese that had been left out on the kitchen table. There were, he observed with relief, no mouse droppings on the table this morning. Then he glanced across at the little box on the windowsill and saw that the pile Valens was collecting had grown considerably. Abandoning the idea of food, Ruso strode back to his room, pulled on his overtunic, and went across to the hospital to see his private patient.
The girl was still asleep. He did not wake her. Valens would check on her during ward rounds.
The words CLOSED FOR IMPROVEMENTS had now been chalked on the main fort baths for so long that they had grown faint with age. Apparently half the builders had been called away on more pressing peacekeeping duties. The rest were clearly determined not to be accused of rushing their work. The height of the weeds growing around the feet of the scaffolding struts suggested to Ruso that it would be weeks before they got around to fixing the hospital roof. Months until they demolished the old centurion's house in which he now lived, which Valens had somehow persuaded them to leave standing when the adjoining barracks block was flattened for rebuilding. The rebuilding hadn't even been started. The reopening of the main military baths was surely far more urgent, but even that didn't seem likely to happen this month-let alone this morning.
Using the hospital baths was out of the question. The thought of being trapped naked with a roomful of patients comparing their symptoms made him shudder. He would go out to the public baths. This early, there would be no lines. With no mistreated slave girls to distract him, he should soon return clean, invigorated, and ready to make progress with the Concise Guide to Military First Aid.
First he needed a decent breakfast. Recent disappointments at other shops had confirmed that it was worth the trouble of walking across to the bakery opposite Merula's, where he savored the smell before handing over his cash for a fresh roll. The crust crackled as he tore it. Steam rose into the cool morning air. He sat on the bench, leaned back with his legs stretched out over the pavement, and took a mouthful.
The streets were as quiet as was usual in the mornings: so quiet that he could catch the occasional bellow of orders from the parade ground, where most of the legion would be sweating their way through daily training. So far his name had not appeared on the training rota: an oversight that would no doubt be rectified when the administrative officer returned.
A couple of women went into the bakery to load their shopping baskets. A small boy passed down the street, bumping along a cartload of apples cushioned in straw. A settled hen squawked in annoyance as a woman emerged from the doorway where it was sitting and batted it out of the way with a broom. Across the street, the shutters were still closed. Ruso gazed idly at the advertisements on Merula's whitewashed walls.