The Governor's Man by Jacquie Rogers (best beach reads TXT) 📕

and looked longingly at the hot snacks set out for sale on fast-food counters along the city streets. Quintus seemed oblivious. They didn’t pause till they had left the city through the west gate, mounting their horses at last where the tombstones of the cemetery cropped up through thick grass along the road.

They rode steadily west. The weather held cool and turned damper, successive waves of thin rain blowing into their faces.  The road seemed endless to Tiro, despite his years of slogging around the province with the army. It wasn’t the same without your mates. This close-mouthed frumentarius was no kind of officer in Tiro’s books. No company to lead, no salutes or smart uniform, no burnished weapons on show. Not even any barked commands. Just the occasional low-voiced order to break the long periods of silence as they trotted the horses through Pontes towards Calleva Atrebatum.  Drizzle turned to longer showers, and then hardened into a steady rain.

Quintus was a competent horseman, but seemed to have no intention of pushing their mounts hard to reach their unknown destination. Tiro was no slouch on a horse after a decade as a mounted auxiliary rider, and couldn’t understand why they weren’t using the posting stations. With a wave of the boss’s lance-head badge they could have been speeding along, with frequent changes of horse all to the tune of snappy salutes. Why the secrecy? He didn’t even know where they were heading, or why.

‘The road west beyond Calleva, and on to the Summer Country,’ was all Quintus said when Tiro asked. Summer Country? That was a good joke, Tiro thought, scratching the itchy wool of his sodden cloak and twitching it up to cover his civilian clothes. Maybe the Investigator just wasn’t very good at his job. That’s probably why he’d been posted from Rome—exile for upsetting someone, no doubt.

By Jupiter Best and Greatest, couldn’t they just get the job done quickly? The sooner they arrived at this wretched place in the west, the sooner Tiro could be back home in the comfort of his fort, drinking with his mates in the Londinium wineshops. All the same, there was something forbidding about the wiry officer that made Tiro hesitant about open challenge. Quintus said little, and despite the modest pace he was setting, everything he did was spare and direct. The Briton settled back into his soggy birrus, and resigned himself to a slow muddy journey.

Tiro was already regretting this assignment instead of the quicker, more painful punishment for being drunk on duty.

Chapter Four

Julia Aureliana glanced around the whitewashed ward of the Aquae Sulis hospital, smoothing down the plain stola she wore for clinic work. She smiled at a plump nervous woman standing deferentially by her father’s bedside. Julia picked up the hand of the old pilgrim drowsing in his narrow cot.

Good. The erratic pulse had started to slow and deepen since he’d taken Julia’s mixture, a few powdered foxglove leaves stirred into rainwater with a little cinnamon to smooth out the bitter taste. Julia checked that the old man’s feet were raised on a pillow, and smiled again at his worried daughter.

‘Your father will be fine. He just needs another day or so of rest here before you take him to the Goddess’s sacred spring. I’ll give you some more medicine for him. And don’t let him walk too far, or bathe in the very hottest waters. He should take it easier at his age.’

The woman looked relieved, murmuring her thanks. An orderly lingering nearby said quietly, ‘Lady Julia, the medicus wishes to speak to you. In the third cubicle.’

‘Ah, Lady Julia. I would value your opinion.’

The garrison surgeon, Anicius Piso, straightened from examining a young man as Julia entered the side-room.

Piso ran this little clinic and hospital for soldiers, pilgrims and holidaymakers who needed medical attention while visiting the busy spa town. He was nominally attached to the small Aquae Sulis garrison across the river, which policed the famous Temple of Sulis Minerva. In the years since a younger, less-assured Julia had come to his clinic begging to work in exchange for his surgical teaching, he had quickly moved to a wry acceptance of her skill. He discovered that the tall, reserved girl had been taught medicine by a respected Greek physician, a freedman who was tutor to the girl’s distinguished family in the Summer Country. Julia later let drop that she had also trained in Eboracum.

Then there was the tuition she did not admit to. She had been apprenticed to wise-women herbalists, inheritors of the Druid tradition. He didn’t ask, and she didn’t tell. He knew her to be a devout worshipper of the powerful goddess, Sulis Minerva, knowing more about medicine and herbal healing than he did. That was all that mattered to Piso, a pragmatist. He was grateful to have Julia’s expertise in his hospital.

Julia looked carefully at the injury. The young man’s right leg had been crushed. A race between town youths, involving three horses and a heavily-laden wagon all entering the north city gate together as the young men thrashed their horses into the spa resort. Inevitably there had been a dreadful smash. Two days ago Julia had held the sedated patient steady while Anicius operated to remove splinters of bone and set the fracture. The leg now lay straight and correct. Anicius had cleansed the area on the shin where bone had broken the skin, and the wound was neatly sutured. But the injury had got inflamed and puffy. She leaned over, sniffing for infection. The patient was slipping in and out of consciousness, moving restlessly. His face was slick with sweat and his skin felt hot to the touch. She was not hopeful they could avoid amputating the shattered leg. Lady Minerva, give me your wisdom, I beg. How can I best help this young man? She touched her gold necklet,