Terra Incognita: A Novel of the Roman Empire Read Free Page B

tablet, Tilla guessed he was either making the wax speak to his brother across the sea, or doing his accounts. She restrained an urge to stride across the bedroom, wrench the stylus out of his hand, and poke him in the eye with it.
    As far as she had been able to work out, the medicus’s family lived in a fine house whose roof baked beneath the everlasting sunshine of southern Gaul, while its foundations stood in a deep and perilous pool of debt. When she had found this out she had felt sorry for him. She knew that he sent most of his money home to his brother, and she knew that it was never enough. In the same way, she knew, she could never fully repay what she owed him for saving her life. More than once, while he frowned over the latest letter from the brother, she had slipped away and brought out the purse from its hiding place, secretly adding up how much she had saved for him and imagining his pleasure when she presented it.
    But now he had taken the money that she had spent months building up for him and squandered half of it on the best room that the surprised innkeeper could offer. Worse, the smug expression on his face as he had patted the fine large bed suggested he expected her to be grateful. It was one of those moments when, no matter how loyal she knew she should feel toward this man, she found him utterly exasperating.
    She had squinted at the covers and said, “There will be bugs.”
    He had assured her that this room was usually kept aside for important travelers.
    “Rich men’s bugs,” she had said, surveying the painted walls.
    “Sleep on the floor, then,” he had replied. “The bugs and I will have a quiet night.” But she had seen him opening a bag from his medical case and sprinkling something under the bedding. As if that would make any difference.
    The water in which she was standing was like gritty brown soup. She balanced on one foot while she rinsed the other with fresh water from the jug. Brown smudges mingled with older, unknowable stains on the linen of the innkeeper’s towel.
    She did not want to curl up with the medicus in that borrowed bed, bugs or no bugs. She would rather have been outside in the yard, bedding down under the canopy of the hired cart in the company of the woman who had just had the baby. It was not wise for any woman to be left with only a boy driver for protection in a place like this. Especially not a woman with a new baby. But the medicus’s patience had been wearing thin today, and by the end of the journey she had felt too tired and dirty to point out to him that Lydia’s needs were just as important as his own.
    Instead she had waited obediently for him outside the army transit camp, feeling the mud stiffen on her skin, ignoring the curious passersby and the loudmouths who thought their comments were funny. By the time he had finished doing whatever it was soldiers did and they had walked down to the inn, the lamps were being lit.
    The inn’s bathhouse had turned out to be a small and not very clean set of rooms occupied by sweaty latecomers scraping off the dirt of their day’s journey. She had only paused long enough to collect water and towels. So now here they both were, trapped in a costly privacy neither of them seemed to be enjoying.
    The medicus was still sitting on the rented bed, scratching out his letters by the light of the lamp. He would certainly not be telling his brother how much money he had just handed over to the landlord of the Golden Fleece.
    Tilla reached for her clean undertunic and dragged it over her head. He had not thanked her for saving him from cheats and liars. He had not even thanked her for the money. No matter what he used it for now, the gift was spoiled.
    She unwrapped the towel from around her hair. A silent blaze of white appeared around the window shutters. In less than a heartbeat it pulsed again and was gone.
    The Medicus glanced up. “Was that lightning?”
    “Yes.” There. Now she could not be accused of