He wiped the strigil on the towel, then dropped the towel to mop up the spilled lamp oil. The light caught an end-of-the-day rainbow sheen dappling the surface in the tub, but at least the water was still warm. He sniffed the contents of a couple of bottles that had been left on the shelf. Spice. Lavender. The girl could take her pick.
The coals in the brazier of the hot room were almost out. The room smelled of overheated men. He had barely stepped inside when something landed on his head. He flinched and shot up a hand to brush it away, then realized, shook his head, and smiled. This was not Africa. There were so few biting and stinging creatures here that the hospital didn't even have its own poisons expert. What he had felt was only condensation dripping from the ceiling.
Ruso abandoned the hot room, guessing the girl would not linger in there.
When he went back he found she had edged along the bench and was huddled in the corner. She looked bewildered. It struck Ruso that since she had been unconscious when he carried her in, this was the first time she had seen anywhere outside Room Twelve.
He turned to find her a clean towel, only to find himself facing an empty shelf. He did the sit gesture again and stepped out into the corridor just as an orderly was passing with a tray of water jugs.
"Where's the clean linen kept?"
"Third door on the left, sir." The orderly disappeared into a side corridor.
Ruso flipped the latch and collided with the door, which had failed to open as expected. He rattled it to no avail, then realized there was a keyhole. When the orderly reappeared with an empty tray he said.
"Where's the key?"
"Officer Priscus will have it, sir."
"He took the key to the linen closet?"
"Officer Priscus is in charge of all the keys, sir."
"That's ridiculous!"
The orderly was too wise to comment. Ruso was wondering what to do next when he heard a familiar voice.
Evidently Valens's social evening had been interrupted. He found him arguing about racing teams with a grizzled veteran whose leg was swathed in bandages from the hip down. Ruso said, "How do we get hold of clean linen when the administrative officer's not here?"
Valens glanced up. "He usually leaves enough out to last till he gets back. There'll probably be some up from the laundry in the morning."
"Surely he can't just disappear like this?"
"Excuse me a minute," murmured Valens, and left the man's bedside.
As they approached the door, Ruso heard a dog bark somewhere inside the hospital building. "Did you hear that?"
"What?"
Ruso wondered if he was starting to imagine things. "Never mind."
"Priscus has a system," explained Valens. "Jupiter knows what it is, but nobody likes to interfere because as long he's left alone, everything turns up more or less when you need it."
"I need it now. Why the hell isn't he here anyway?"
"Apparently he went to Viroconium to negotiate a contract for delivery of hospital blankets."
"Blankets? Gods above, surely any peasant with a couple of sheep and a wife can knock up a few blankets?"
"Ah," agreed Valens, "you and I might think so. But they have to be the right specification to fit hospital beds."
"Does anyone really believe that?" said Ruso.
Valens shrugged. "You'll have to pinch what you want from someone else."
Back in the corridor, Ruso contemplated the silent door of the linen closet. He had yet to meet Officer Priscus, but already he hated him. The man seemed to have turned hospital administration into an art form-something incomprehensible, overpriced, and useless. In the meantime, a sick girl was huddled in a corner of the changing room, facing a pile of wet towels.
Ruso stood back, contemplated the latch for a moment, and moved. A splintering crash echoed down the deserted corridor. He helped himself before anyone could arrive to see who had just bypassed the hospital administration with a military boot.
"Towels!" he announced, presenting them to her with a flourish.
She seemed less impressed than he had hoped. He took her good arm and helped her up. As he opened the cold room door she tried to pull away. He tightened his grip. "You need to bathe," he insisted, walking her through into the warm room. He thought again how thin she was as he lifted her onto the edge of the massage couch. As he approached with the cleaned strigil and the two bottles of oil, her eyes widened. She raised herself up with her good arm and tried to sidle away down the couch.
Ruso did the "sit" gesture again. "Stay still." He walked around to the other side of the couch, leaned across, and began to untie the sling that was knotted behind her slim neck. He felt her shoulders tighten and remembered how the pregnant Daphne had frozen at the touch of the doorman. "It's all right," he assured her. "You're safe here. Nobody is going to hurt you."
He had carried this girl in through the east gate. He had put her to bed, and dressed her in the washed-out gray tunic she now wore. He had already seen the protruding ribs, the breasts shrunken by hunger, the yellowing bruises that shouldn't be there. He knew the sight of her body would arouse nothing in him but sympathy. Unable to explain that to her, he tapped the splint and said, "Don't get water on the bandages," then put the towels over her good arm and told her he would come back later.
He had finished his records and there was not enough time to settle into "Treatments for Eye Injuries," so Ruso strolled down to the nearest of his wards. He looked at an abscess, got a concussed man to count the number of fingers he held up, ordered another poultice for the crushed foot, listened to a worrying cough, chatted to the signaler, checked up on recent surgical patients, and told the surprised staff not to expect this every night. In a small side room he examined a veteran centurion who had been brought in after collapsing, and decided he had been right this afternoon: It was pneumonia. The man was sixty-six. There was little they could do beyond trying to make him comfortable.
He dared not leave the girl for too long in case she fainted in there. When he had made sure the gasping centurion was propped up on his pillows and had instructed the orderlies to check him every hour, he made his way back down the corridor to the bathhouse.
His announcement of, "It's the doctor!" echoed through the rooms. The only response was the flicker of the lamps in the draft from the door.
He found her perched on the side of the warm bath wrapped in a towel, skinny legs dangling, matted wet hair dripping down her face. "Enjoy that?" he asked, more out of habit than in any hope of an answer. He stood in front of her and frowned at the rough surface of the tangled hair. "Time we sorted this out," he announced. "Can't have you harboring lice." The girl's eyes met his. She showed no sign of understanding.
He reached behind him for the shears he had tucked into his belt. They were usually used for cutting clothes off accident victims, but they were fairly small and sharp and he knew he had a steady hand. He lifted one side of the mat away from her ear. "Keep still."
"No!"
The shriek echoed around the empty blue walls.
Ruso paused with the shears in midair. In his surprise he had let go of the hair. The girl was bent double, her good arm shielding the back of her head.
The sound of the scream died away. The girl began to rock backward and forward, making a soft moaning sound.