Semper Fidelis Read Online Free PDF Page A

staying here,” said Tilla, not wanting to give her the satisfaction of agreeing.
“You see?” Minna demanded of the manager, as if the state of the military accommodation were his fault. “It’s not even good enough for the natives!”
As Minna carried on (“My master is a tribune, not just some passing centurion!”), Tilla felt the blood rising in her cheeks. Not even good enough for the natives? One of the local staff— who were probably listening somewhere out of sight—ought to hide a frog in the wretched woman’s bed. Better still, a cow pie. Perhaps she would do it herself.
Instead of telling Minna to go away and use the servants’ entrance, the manager was promising her that the very best suite was being prepared at this moment.
“Well, I hope they’re doing it properly. I know what you people are like.”
Tilla paused in the doorway to give the manager a sympathetic glance, but his face was still a mask of politeness. She said, “I shall be out for a little while, and I may have some visitors later.”
The manager bowed. “Yes, madam.”
“I will come back for dinner.”
“We shall look forward to it, madam.”
She made her way down the steps outside, leaving Minna, who was complaining that it wasn’t as if the soldiers hadn’t known her master was coming. Perhaps she thought the poor man might feel sufficiently outraged to go up to the fort and berate the Twentieth Legion for negligence.


D
OCTOR RUSO, SIR?” The voice echoed around the empty benches in the entrance hall of Eboracum’s hospital.
    Ruso would have been hard-pressed to recall many faces from the ever- changing trail of young hopefuls who had followed him around the wards back at Deva, supposedly watching and learning. But standing before him was an older, thinner version of a short curly-headed youth whom he remembered only too well.
    “It’s Pera, sir. I was—”
“You were at Deva,” said Ruso, grateful for the reminder of the name. “We got your letter, sir,” said Pera. “Welcome to Eboracum.” “Thank you,” said Ruso, trying to remember anything Pera might have
    done to distinguish himself apart from that unfortunate prank in the mortuary. The awkwardness of the pause that followed suggested Pera might be trying too.
“So, who’s in charge here?”
    “I am, sir.” He sounded as if he was expecting this mistake to be rectified at any moment.
“Really?” said Ruso, recalling the disciplinary hearing where Pera had explained how, instead of leaping out from beneath a shroud to terrify his fellow students, he had made the catastrophic blunder of doing it in front of half a dozen relatives grieving for the man on the next table. “Excellent,” he said, realizing Pera had heard Really? as an expression of disbelief. “Well done.”
Pera looked relieved. “Thank you, sir.”
“Perhaps you could explain the setup here. I’d imagine the camp prefect’s rather busy welcoming the tribune.”
It was one of those conversations that reminded Ruso of all the things he liked about military medics. Pera, his confidence restored, did not waste time with rambling discourses on why all his rivals were fools, or praising his own secret medical recipes, or blaming the patients for his failures. Within minutes Ruso had a clear picture of the varied needs of two centuries of experienced but aging legionaries, a small auxiliary unit, and forty-eight recruits in basic training who were barely out of their teens. “Sorry. Forty- seven now, sir.”
What Pera did not say did not need saying. There was no need to elaborate on the usual struggle to impose ventilation, cleanliness and sobriety upon men who would happily spend their off- duty hours drinking the local beer and their nights huddled in a warm fug of unwashed bodies. Nor did he need to explain that Eboracum, like much of Britannia since the uprisings in the North, was chronically undermanned. Pera’s small team was rattling around in a hospital built for a garrison