By Paul Carrier
It’s 122 A.D., and Aedic, an inquisitive native boy in Roman-occupied Britannia, knows that the soldiers building Hadrian’s Wall construct the exposed outer edges with large square stones before filling in the gap between them with all sorts of things, such as rocks, clay and sand.
But a corpse?
Aedic is shaken when a shadowy figure tosses a body into an unfinished and deserted section of the wall and covers it with stones. He later tells a group of boys that there’s a body in the wall, but he tries to distance himself from the crime by claiming it was a boy named Branan who actually witnessed the clandestine burial and later told Aedic about it. In fact, Branan saw nothing and is unaware of Aedic's claim.
While Aedic grapples with the implications of what he has seen, Gaius Petreius Ruso, a medic with the Twentieth Legion, has problems of his own. His incompetent clerk, Candidus, has disappeared. And when Ruso arranges for overzealous soldiers to conduct a search, they needlessly antagonize the already disgruntled locals by harassing Branan's family.
Meanwhile, Ruso finds himself caring for Regulus, a Roman soldier who was kidnapped by a group of Britons, stripped, bound and suspended upside down from a tree. The motive remains unclear, until Ruso learns from Tilla, his native-born wife, that Regulus had repeatedly abused his British girlfriend. By then, angry and misguided Roman troops have burned one culprit’s farm to the ground, in retaliation for the not-unjustified abduction.
Tensions mount.
Tensions mount.
As rumors spread within the Twentieth Legion that there’s a body in Hadrian’s Wall, Ruso wonders if the seemingly wild claim is true, and if Candidus was the unlucky victim. When someone, possibly a Roman soldier, kidnaps nine-year-old Branan, speculation grows that the killer seized the boy to silence him, in the belief that he is a witness.
So the mystery in Tabula Rasa involves several questions, as various threads are woven into one tale. Who did Aedic see disposing of a corpse? Whose body was it, and why was the victim killed? Who kidnapped Branan? Was it the killer, or someone else? Where is the boy? And what has become of Ruso’s clerk?
Ruso is the protagonist in six Ruth Downie mysteries, most of which are set in Britannia, He is a reluctant sleuth, a somewhat jaded but hard-working doctor who longs to practice medicine without becoming embroiled in detective work. To his chagrin, fate always seems to have other plans for him.
Thanks to his British wife and his extensive experience serving with the legions in Britannia, Ruso is keenly aware of the often-strained relationship between occupier and occupied. In fact, much of the appeal of the Ruso mysteries stems from the cultural interplay that permeates the novels. Downie offers up a fine cast of well-drawn characters in this compelling tale, whose setting greatly contributes to the novel's appeal.
Local families have been displaced by Rome to make way for Hadrian’s Wall, which is being built only a short time after a failed upraising against Roman rule. Yet despite their mutual distrust, Romans and Britons are equally determined to find the kidnapped boy. The locals are desperate to save one of their own from the enemy, while Roman officials are determined to resolve the crisis before it triggers another uprising.
Just as Rome and Britannia eye one another with suspicion and mistrust, so too Tilla and Ruso, who truly love each other despite their sometimes-sharp differences, nurture a mixed marriage that is weighed down by more than its share of cultural baggage.
Tilla, who is a midwife, is training to become a “medicus” like her husband, yet she is skeptical of Rome and its seemingly strange ways. For his part, Ruso has learned enough of the Britons’ language to carry on a conversation with the locals and to serve as a translator, yet he hopes to wean Tilla from the customs and beliefs of her own people.
Is there a seventh Ruso mystery in the offing? Downie implies as much on her web site (rsdownie.co.uk) and Ruso offers a tantalizing hint of adventures to come in the final pages of Tabula Rasa. Although Ruso is from Gaul and Tilla hails, of course, from Britannia, the couple may head for Rome in a seventh installment — or so we are led to believe as this sixth entry draws to a close.
