As delighted as I am, indeed. A neatly ambiguous statement from the man who had earnestly requested the latest advice on contraception after the birth of the last baby.
"I pray that you remain in good health despite the climate in Britannia," continued Lucius, "and hope you will write soon, brother!" The final sentiments, having reached the bottom right-hand corner too early, performed a sharp turn and twisted up a narrow column of space between the ends of the previous lines and the edge of the letter. "Do not forget our arrangement," Ruso deciphered, turning the page sideways. The way the pen had skidded and fallen off the cut edge of the wood while forming the tails of the longer letters somehow added to the urgency of, "We all depend upon you. Farewell."
Ruso glanced around the shadowy walls of his small but relatively private bedroom, and knew he was lucky Do not forget our arrangement. Lucius was in charge of four children, a wife, a farm, a stepmother, and two goose-brained half sisters, and now there was another baby on the way. All Ruso had to do was carry out his work and send home all the money he could muster every quarter to help keep a roof over his family's head.
Outside, the trumpet sounded the change of watch. It was getting late. Ruso stood to put the box away. Then he lifted the unconscious slave girl and carried her to the kitchen, where he laid her on a rug beside the warm embers in the hearth. She hardly stirred as he slid a cushion under her head and put his own cloak over her for a blanket.
He leaned against the wall with his arms folded and gazed down at her. The surgery had been the easy part. If she perked up, she would have to be fed and sheltered through a long-and possibly unsuccessful-recuperation.
It was not difficult to see why some people threw out useless slaves. He had wondered briefly whether that was what Merula had done with Saufeia-the girl who "wasn't really suitable for this kind of work"- but that would not have made sense. Merula had not suggested that the girl was physically incapable of working, just that her attitude was poor. There were all sorts of jobs that a fit slave could be coerced to do, whatever her attitude. The girl would have been salable to somebody, and her flight and subsequent death must have meant a financial loss to the business. Merula had received the news calmly not because she was indifferent, but because she had expected the worst and prepared herself.
Merula had made one effort to claim compensation-the complaint about the hair-but when that had failed, it seemed she had given up. Since the army provided most of her income, he supposed it was a wise decision. In fact the only person who had shown any interest at all in the question of who had murdered Saufeia was the girl with the ankle chain, the one they called Chloe. He had wished he could promise her that the army would find the culprit and punish him. But if Merula was not going to make a fuss, it was unlikely anyone else would make any effort to narrow down the suspect list from the several thousand men currently in Deva. Besides, now that he thought about it, the murderer might have been a woman.
The girl shifted and murmured something in her sleep.
Ruso's collecting women.
He was glad he didn't have to explain any of it to Lucius.
18
The gray light of dawn was making its way around the shutters of a house that contained three people. Two were asleep. The third was grappling with the problem of women's underwear. Where could a man get hold of some? Discreetly? As if that were not bad enough, there would be the monthly business to deal with at any moment.
Ruso wished, not for the first time, that he had been blessed with a useful sort of sister. According to Claudia, a man's only role in the mystery of feminine hygiene was to purchase a capable maid and then stay out of the way. So, although his training had covered the theory, in three years of marriage Ruso had evaded the practice so diligently that he had never really been sure what arrangements were necessary. Valens, of course, was bound to know, but he was not going to ask Valens.
Ruso stared at a cobweb that was trembling in the draft from his bedroom window and thought: landlady. The girl couldn't stay where she was much longer anyway. The obvious answer was to find a room in a house with a sympathetic landlady. A dispenser of nourishing meals and womanly advice who didn't charge too much. A landlady was the thing. He would go out this morning and find one. In the meantime, he would wander into the kitchen and see if his property had woken up yet.
He had grasped his overtunic between finger and thumb and was about to give it a good shake when he remembered again that this was Britain, where there were no scorpions to creep into dark crevices during the night. Buckling his belt and wondering if he would ever entirely break the wary habits of Africa, he made his way toward the kitchen. The couch, which would have been the obvious place for the girl to sleep, was still being shared by one of Valens's cronies and the dog.
He opened the kitchen door quietly. Something ran across his foot and shot into the corner. He sighed, then started as his eyes adjusted to the shuttered gloom and he realized the hearth was empty. Instead, there was a figure curled up on the table.
"Good morning."
The girl stirred. A tangle of hair slid across her cheek. She blinked sleepily and stretched her good arm above her head. Ruso had a sudden urge to seize her and take her to his own bed, where she would be warm and sleepy and-since he owned her-obedient. He swallowed hard and pushed the thought aside, not wishing to ponder the level of desperation it revealed.
He said, "Why are you on the table?"
She stared at him for a moment, as if trying to remember who he was, and then gave a heavy sigh of recognition. She slid her good hand forward to grasp the edge of the table and leaned forward, surveying the floor.
Ruso followed her gaze. "Are you afraid of the mice?"
He saw her fist tighten. She looked up at him. "Mice do not hurt."
"No," he agreed, "but falling off the table will."
It was a question of simple economics. The longer her recovery took, the longer it would be before he saw his money. "You won't spend the night here again," he promised. "I'll find a proper room."
It was a promise he would regret by the end of the morning.
Several would-be landlords had chalked up advertisements on the amphitheater walls.
The smell of urine and old cabbage stew, which hit Ruso as soon as the first door opened, failed to mask the personal odor of the toothless crone who announced,
"He an't here, I dunno where he is, and he an't done nothing."
"I'll keep looking," said Ruso.
"Did have," said the next one. "We did have a room. Somebody should have rubbed the notice off."
The third room was still having its walls plastered, but the owner's wife promised it would be ready by nightfall.
"How much?"
She told him. Ruso laughed and walked away, and she let him go.
As the morning wore on and his boot studs wore down, it became clear to Ruso that he had a problem. He was here because Rome had decided that Britannia was worth the trouble of holding on to and had stationed just about enough troops here to crack together the skulls of any Britons who refused to cooperate. Side by side with the stick, however, went the carrot. Civilization. Not only the fort, but Deva itself was undergoing a massive modernization project. Every man not currently engaged in keeping an eye on the hill tribes had a trowel in his hand or a hod over his shoulder. It seemed the legion's orders were to hack out all the available stone, saw up all the local trees, and pipe water to every conceivable outlet. Until the last dog kennel had under-floor heating or the new emperor came up with a new plan, the Twentieth Valeria Victrix was to keep on building.