Read Tabula Rasa Online

Authors: Ruth Downie

Tags: #dpgroup.org, #Fluffer Nutter

Tabula Rasa

To those who wait, not knowing whether news will ever come.

With respect.

Nescis quid vesper vehat.

 

You do not know what the evening will bring.

 

—Macrobius,
Saturnalia
, Book
II, 8.2

Contents

In Which Our Hero . .
.

Map

 

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Chapter 69

Chapter 70

Chapter 71

Chapter 72

Chapter 73

Chapter 74

Chapter 75

Chapter 76

Chapter 77

 

Author’s Note

Acknowledgments

A Note on the Author

By the Same Author

TABULA RASA

 

A NOVEL

 

IN WHICH
our hero, Gaius Petreius Ruso, will be . . .

 

 

 

 

 

 

watched by

 
Aedic, a boy who sees something amazing

 

motivated by

 
Albanus,
his old friend and former clerk

 
. . . and by embarrassment

 

worried by

 
Candidus, a young clerk, nephew of Albanus

 

exasperated by

 
Fabius, the local centurion

 

puzzled by

 
Nisus, a pharmacist

 
Regulus, a victim of attack by natives

 
Grata, the absent girlfriend of Albanus

 

assisted by

 
Virana, a pregnant girl whom nobody else wants

 
Gallus, his baby-faced deputy

 
Valens, an old friend and colleague

 
Mallius, a quarryman with a hen

 
A lucky charm

 

led into trouble by

 
Tilla, his wife, formerly known as Darlughdacha

 
Daminius, a junior officer

 

surprised by

 
Gracilis, a clerk

 
Mara, Tilla’s mother, long deceased

 

reassessed by

 
Pertinax, formerly the second spear, now promoted to prefect of the camp

 

informed by

 
Olennius, a builder

 
Silvanus, Candidus’s centurion

 
Larentia, a girl with a mole in the right place

 

misinformed by

 
Lupus, a slave dealer

 
Piso,
Lupus’s agent

 

welcomed by

 
Senecio, the head of a native family

 
Branan, youngest son of Senecio

 
Susanna, an old friend in Coria

 

not welcomed by

 
Conn, an older son of Senecio

 
A group of fur traders

 

fed by

 
Enica,
wife of Senecio

 
Ria, landlady and part owner of the local snack bar

 
A kitchen maid

 

commanded by

 
Accius,
tribune with the Twentieth Legion

insulted by

 
Serena,
wife of Valens, and daughter of Pertinax

 

ignored by

 
Rianorix, husband of Tilla’s cousin Aemilia

 

set upon by

 
Various Britons, mostly for the best of reasons

 

And his fate will be influenced—from a distance—by

 
Cata, a long-suffering girlfriend

 
Dubnus, another son of Senecio (deceased)

 
Inam, young neighbor and friend of Branan

 
Matto, a bully

 
Lucano, elder brother of Matto and a bigger bully

 
Petta, stepmother of Aedic

 
Pandora,
legendary owner of a box (or jar, depending upon who you believe) full of bad things and best never opened.

Chapter 1

It was easy to believe that the rain threw itself at you personally; hard not to feel persecuted and aggrieved when it found its way into your boots no matter how much grease you slathered on them. It blew in veils across the sides of the hills, whipped along the crests, and cascaded in streams down the valleys. The river had burst its banks, and the meadows beside it mirrored the gray sky. Turf squelched underfoot and supply carts sank into the mud, so that whole gangs who should have been building spent the short daylight hours sloshing about, clearing drains and filling potholes. Men pulled hoods over their heads to stop the wet from going down their necks and then had to keep pushing them back to see properly. Inevitably, there were accidents.

Up at the wall, the rain made earth heavier to shift and washed white streaks of fresh mortar out of the day’s build. In the quarry, hammers skidded off the heads of chisels. In the camp, tools and armor went rusty overnight. Doors stuck, leather was clammy, firewood was hard to light, and bedding smelled of damp wool and mold.

And then, after another long night in chilly beds, serenaded by a ragged chorus of coughing and snoring, the builders woke to an innocent morning full of birdsong. The sun rose in a sky that had been rinsed clean. Crisp views stretched for miles across hills that rolled like waves toward the north. Men nodded greetings to each other as they lifted the sides of tents and hung everything out to dry.

Some even dared to hope that the worst was over. Most knew it wouldn’t be. This was October, and the weather was only going to get worse. Already a strategic retreat was planned for the end of the month: The legions would march south to hunker down in their winter quarters, leaving the permanent garrison to tough it out here along the line of the emperor’s Great Wall until the next building season. If the garrison troops were bored or cold up here, there were—as the legionaries were happy to remind them—plenty of ditches to be dug.

And then it happened
.

 

It was a tearing, gut-wrenching roar, like a thunderbolt crashing into the depths of the underworld and shaking the ground beneath their feet. Medical Officer Gaius Petreius Ruso ducked and clamped his hands over his ears, but the cry of “Earthquake!” died in his throat. The noise wasn’t how he remembered it. Besides, this was Britannia, not known for earthquakes, and whatever it was had stopped.

Ruso and his assistant straightened up, glancing at one another as if to confirm they had not imagined it. Beyond the stone wall, a panicked flock of sheep was racing across the hillside. Dogs had begun to bark, sounding the alarm in the surrounding scatter of native farms.

Ruso bent to retrieve his medical case, wiping off the mud on the grass at the side of track. Several loose pack ponies bolted past him, narrowly avoiding men who were sprinting down from the camp while grimy and breathless figures were hurrying up to meet them. Somewhere over the chaos, a trumpeter was sounding the call to assemble.

Ruso was already heading downhill when a wild-eyed man in a rough work tunic grabbed him by the arm. “Sir, they need a medic in the quarry!”

 

The quarry, even when it was full of legionaries cutting stone for the emperor’s Great Wall, had always seemed relatively peaceful. The
tink-tink
of hammers on wedges rang out like the pecking of metal birds above the gurgling of a stream that was swollen by summer rain. Everything brought in by the army—men, tools, work sheds, lines of plodding ponies, lifting gear, wagons—was dwarfed by the raw cliff face that loomed above them.

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