Caveat emptor mi-4

by Ruth Downie

  The boatman cleared his throat. “Have I done enough for the reward, then?”

  “Any idea where he might have got the boat?”

  The man’s eyes narrowed. “I’m giving you a lot of help here, boss. I only picked him up to do him a favor. I never got paid for it and now it’s causing me all this bother.”

  Ruso reached for his purse and the man shut the door again. The candlelit smile revealed a set of black teeth. They disappeared when he realized the large volume of coins he was being given only added up to three denarii.

  “I was told forty.”

  “Never believe rumors,” said Ruso, who had not mentioned a figure. The light glinted on the edges of two silver coins as he placed them on the table. “My employer would very much like to know where the boat came from.”

  The man sucked in air through the black teeth. “You wouldn’t believe how many miles of river join up to here. There’s whole towns. That’s before you count all the farms with land fronting the water.”

  Ruso placed his forefinger on one of the denarii and slid it back toward his purse. It was less than an inch from the edge of the table when Tetricus said, “I did hear a rumor.”

  The coin came to a halt.

  “It might be nothing. People are always losing boats. And it don’t make much sense. I wouldn’t waste your time with it, only I heard he come from Verulamium and so does the rumor.”

  “Just tell me,” said Ruso, to whom little of this Asper business was making sense at the moment.

  “Farmer by the name of Lund, lives a couple of miles downstream from the town. Going round telling people that a river monster stole his boat.”

  “Could Asper have traveled by boat from there to where you found him?”

  Tetricus shrugged. “I said it didn’t make sense. He’d have been a lot quicker by road.”

  “But it could be done?”

  The man frowned, considered it, and agreed that the craft was light enough for the trip to be possible. Ruso slid the money across the table toward him. Tetricus gathered it up and got to his feet. “That’s it, then, is it?”

  “That’s it,” Ruso agreed.

  Tetricus grinned. “Glad to be of service, boss.”

  Back in the street, the two apprentices were standing where Ruso had left them as if they had never moved. The impression of innocence was spoiled by a female giggle from a doorway and a call of, “Another time, eh, lads?”

  It was difficult to tell in the poor light, but Ruso was fairly sure the short apprentice was blushing. “Wipe that silly grin off your face!” he snapped at the tall one, and was alarmed to find himself again sounding like his father.

  17

  When Ruso finally returned the apprentices to the safety of Valens’s house, he could hear the ominous strains of Tilla singing the sort of song she sang to relieve the boredom of cooking.

  He found her disemboweling a plucked fowl by lamplight while the baby lay in a wicker crib in the shadows under the kitchen table. A cauldron was bubbling over the coals and the mixture of steam and chopped onion assaulted his eyes and his lungs. No wonder the kitchen boy had taken himself off to tidy up the dead flowers and sweep the hall.

  “Your medicine worked,” said Tilla, wiping the back of her hand across her forehead in a vain attempt to push a damp curl out of her eyes. “Camma went to sleep.”

  He reached across the table and tucked the hair out of the way. “It’s late to be starting dinner. We could get something brought in.”

  “I will boil it very fast,” she promised. “So. Have you found out what you wanted to know?”

  “I’m not sure.” He explained about the boatman.

  The bird’s leg joint made a sucking noise as Tilla disarticulated it. She sliced it away with a couple of deft strokes. “Camma does not know why he was on the river,” she said, holding the leg between finger and thumb to examine both sides before dropping it into a bowl. “How near is it to the road?”

  “Miles away. Apparently they diverge just out of Verulamium.”

  Tilla pondered this as the second leg hit the side of the bowl and slithered down to join its mate.

  “Did you ask about the letter?”

  “She does not know, but two weeks ago she took some of his letters to the stables for the southbound carriage to pick up, and she thinks one of them had the number of that room written on the outside.”

  The southbound carriage would have been heading here. “She can’t remember any more of the address?”

  “Numbers are easy. Words are hard to read.” Tilla, who could not read herself, sliced something away from the bird’s tail end and tossed it into the waste bucket in the corner.

  It occurred to Ruso that his wife seemed to have a particular talent for anything involving a knife. She would probably have made a far better surgeon than she was a cook.

  “It wasn’t a planned escape,” he mused. “If it had been, he wouldn’t have needed to steal the boat. It’s looking more and more as if they both took the money and then the brother murdered him for it.”

  Tilla sniffed, either from disdain or from onion: It was hard to tell. “She says Caratius is lying.”

  “We’ve been round this already. They looked to me like old enemies.”

  “She says he must be lying because Asper was not on the way to Londinium, he was only going to visit a neighbor just outside town. And the neighbor was Caratius.”

  “What? Why didn’t she say so?” Why had the magistrate himself not mentioned it? He considered the problem while Tilla hacked the torso of the bird into quarters. He was going to have to question the man again. “Maybe Asper lied to her about where he was going.”

  “Or else Camma is right and that magistrate is not telling the truth.” The cauldron hissed and spat as she upended the contents of the bowl into it. “What is funny?”

  “Last night you were convinced Asper was the villain because he was a tax man.”

  “But now I have seen the magistrate and I do not trust him, either.”

  “You hardly met him.”

  “I have met men like him before.”

  “That’s more or less what he said about Asper.” No wonder Albanus was reduced to dinning letters and numbers into small boys: The art of logic did not seem much prized among the Britons. Ruso leaned back against the wall, folded his arms, and watched as she wiped the table clean and wrung out the cloth.

  She said, “You can tell Valens that dinner will not be long.”

  Her words reminded him of another mystery. “Has he said anything about Serena coming back?”

  “If you really want to know, why do you not ask yourself?”

  “You know what Valens is like.”

  “Hm. I expect Serena has found out what he is like too.”

  Fond as he was of Valens, he had to admit that she had a point.

  “I think we should listen to Camma,” Tilla continued. “She is not a fool. When we get to Verulamium I will try and find out the truth.”

  “I’d rather you concentrated on looking after your patients,” he said, alarmed by the prospect of Tilla arriving in a strange town and confronting the chief magistrate. “I’ll be there as soon as I can, but get the driver to take you right to the door and be careful who you talk to. If Camma’s neighbors think her husband’s stolen their money, I don’t think you’ll be getting a warm welcome.”

  Tilla raised her chin. “The Catuvellauni have always been a tribe that likes to rule over others,” she said. “A warm welcome in their hometown is not something to be proud of.”

  “Stay out of trouble, Tilla.”

  “I am not going there to make trouble,” she said. “I am going there to-oh!”

  The Iceni woman was standing in the doorway. Even in a creased mud-colored tunic that was too short, one hand rubbing sleep out of her eyes and her hair wilder than usual, she was beautiful. She said, “There is something you must know before we go to Verulamium.”

  Tilla pointed to the chair
by the fire. “Come and sit while I cook.”

  Camma did not move. “When I tell you, you may not want to come with me.” She paused, as if she was hoping Tilla might promise to come no matter what she said. When the silence grew awkward, Ruso offered to leave.

  “No, you must know this too. I am to blame for what has happened.”

  Tilla looked up from stirring the pot and assured her that nothing was her fault.

  Camma took no notice. “It was my husband,” she said. “My husband put a curse on him.”

  Ruso had very little faith in that sort of irrational nonsense himself, but for people who believed in its power, a curse could stir up an untold amount of trouble. “Your husband put a curse on Caratius?” he said. “What for?”

  “No!” She was sounding impatient. “My husband was the one doing the cursing. He cursed Julius Asper.”

  For a few seconds it made no sense. Then Tilla said, “So Asper was not-”

  “Julius Asper is the father of my baby,” explained Camma. “My husband…” She stopped to clear her throat. “My husband is Chief Magistrate Caratius.”

  18

  Ruso was still considering the implications of Camma’s confession as he stretched his legs out across the floorboards and leaned back against the rough wall of Valens’s storeroom. At least he would not be bored during the long hours of the night. Watching over the remains of the man who was not Camma’s husband after all, he was going to have to go back over his conversations with Caratius. The ground had shifted beneath his feet. He understood now why she had said the baby was “the cause of all this.” He understood too why the magistrate had insisted that Asper was a crook and Camma a liar. Camma, in one simple sentence, had transformed Caratius from outraged victim to chief suspect.

  She had also shaken Ruso’s confidence. What sort of an investigator did he think he was? How the hell had he failed to see it when the two of them had confronted each other in Valens’s dining room? Come to that, why had neither of them admitted it? He supposed neither had thought their complaint would be taken seriously if they told the truth.

  It was possible-understandable, in fact-that the magistrate would want revenge. But a man planning to do away with his wife’s lover would surely keep the matter within his own family, or at least his own tribe. Why involve a large sum of public money and attract the attention of the procurator’s office? As for Camma’s claim that Asper had not been on the way to deliver the tax at all, but had disappeared after announcing a visit to Caratius-he would follow it up, but that would make the magistrate a fool as well as a murderer. Caratius did not seem like a fool. Still, it was obvious that he was glad to see the back of Julius Asper.

  Maybe there was something in this curse business after all.

  The room was growing chilly. Ruso reached for his cloak and threw it around his shoulders, wondering if Tilla would complain about the limewash making white marks on the wool and then reminding himself that he should be concentrating on praying for the spirit of Julius Asper. After all, hardly anyone else was likely to bother.

  In the feeble yellow glow of the lamps he gazed at the shell of a human being laid out on the bed. This man had chosen to steal someone else’s wife, and possibly someone else’s money. He had then been murdered, dumped in an alley, haggled over, and jovially threatened with having his brain opened up.

  There would be no more choices for Julius Asper.

  The silence in the room felt thick enough to reach out and touch. Even the rogue cockerel seemed to be asleep. Ruso stood up to light the grains of incense in the bowl, recited what he hoped was a suitable prayer and began to run through the things he must do in the morning. He would probably have to pay handsomely for the women’s transport to Verulamium, since he could not transfer his travel warrant and he could hardly ask the grieving widow if she had brought any spare cash with her. Before they left, he would sit Tilla down and make it absolutely clear that the wife of a Roman citizen and a government investigator must not take sides in local disputes. Especially disputes between politicians and their wives.

  Then he was going to find Caratius and ask the questions he should have asked today instead of listening to all that pompous speechifying. This time he would concentrate on asking him… Ruso yawned. On asking him…

  He must stay awake and concentrate. He tried to frame some probing questions, but it had been a long day. A soft fog was drifting across his brain. He found the same phrases were repeating themselves, circling lazily around his mind. He felt his eyes drift shut. He would think about it later.

  Something made him stumble on the threshold of sleep.

  He tried to repeat the sound in his mind. The more he thought about it, the more convinced he was that he had heard the scrape of the street door opening downstairs.

  It could not have been the door. He could not recall the corresponding scrape of it being closed again, and nobody would leave it open at this hour of the night. Besides, everyone was asleep. If Valens had received a night call, half the house would have heard the messenger arrive.

  Shut in a dimly lit room with a dead body, he was starting to imagine things. Julius Asper’s spirit had not just slipped out of the room and left the house. Such things did not happen.

  Probably.

  He must think about something else. Pleasant, daytime thoughts. Where would he want to settle after this was over? There would be plenty of work in the North, mopping up the medical discharges who did not want to go home. Tilla would be near to what remained of her family. On the other hand, tensions would still be high after the recent troubles. He was not sure he wanted to have his domestic life punctuated by arguments about the governor’s latest peacekeeping policy.

  Perhaps Tilla had a point about Verulamium. Of course it would depend on how the investigation went, but the Catuvellauni were friendly to Rome, aspired to civilization, and were close enough for him to keep in touch with Valens and Albanus.

  His backside was going numb. He put both palms flat on the floor, and lifted himself a couple of inches. As soon as he relaxed, the numbness returned.

  He closed his eyes and tried to picture himself in his consulting rooms in Verulamium, just a short stroll from proper baths and a decent wine shop. While he chatted about the latest play at the theater with his grateful patients, Tilla would be looking after their scrubbed and smiling children and doing things to food in the kitchen.

  He was jolted awake by a sound like someone dropping a spoon on a tiled floor downstairs.

  The lamp in the hallway had gone out. The foot of the stairs was even darker than the landing where he stood peering over the banister. The only sound was the soft sigh of his own breath: the only movement the thump of his heart. He shook his head. He was getting jumpy. He had slept badly last night. His imagination was not listening to reason. It was probably just the kitchen boy knocking something over on his way to the night bucket. Maybe the tall apprentice was wandering about in the dark, unable to sleep with a mind full of murder and prostitutes.

  He picked his way back along the chilly corridor, seeking the solace of the lamp flame.

  A dog was barking in one of the neighbors’ houses. The distant blare of the fort trumpet sounded the next watch, and he remembered that he had promised to get the unfinished letter looked at by a code expert. He had no idea how to find one, but Albanus had spent years as a medical clerk charged with deciphering doctors’ handwriting. It would be a start.

  He stepped across to take a deep breath of air at the window, then stood at the foot of the bed and began to count backward from one hundred to keep himself awake.

  He was trying to remember the rhyme for the causes and cures of gout when he heard something smash downstairs. It sounded as though it was in Valens’s surgery.

  Perhaps he should call out. On the other hand, if he woke the whole house and it turned out to be a clumsy apprentice, or Valens indulging some nocturnal inspiration, he would look a fool.

  He eyed the body on the
bed. What if Asper’s spirit…

  No. He was not going to think about that.

  Perhaps he should just take a look downstairs.

  He slid one finger along the latch. It lifted without a sound. Out in the corridor, he closed the door so he was not silhouetted against the lamp. He crept along the rough boards in his bare feet, praying the stairs would not creak beneath him.

  He paused just above ground level. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he froze. A sinister figure was watching him from along the wall in the hallway. There was a dog crouching at its feet. Neither Ruso nor the figure moved. Gradually, the figure resolved itself into a collection of cloaks on a hook. The dog was a pile of boots. He let out a long breath and forced himself not to gasp for air as he replaced it.

  He was moving toward the entrance to Valens’s surgery, careful to avoid knocking over the hall table, when he sensed a cool draft wafting around his feet. Something smelled wrong. He spun around.

  He could see now that the street door was very slightly ajar.

  Instinctively, he flattened himself against the wall and held his breath. He should have brought a weapon. He should have woken Valens. What had he been thinking?

  Nothing was moving. He let out his breath and began to edge slowly down the corridor again.

  Gods above, what was-?

  As he glimpsed it, the shape exploded from the shadows of the alcove. He made a grab for it and ducked just before something crashed into the wall where his head had been. Shouting for Valens, he snatched at a passing flurry of fabric, lost his grip on an oily arm, and felt a blow to his shoulder as he hooked one foot behind the intruder’s knee. They both landed on the floor in a messy tangle of limbs and fists, Ruso still yelling as the intruder slithered out of his grasp, threw the table at him, and ran for the door.

  Flinging the table aside, Ruso caught enough breath to bellow, “Stop, thief!” as he raced out into the starlit street. The hooded figure was barely ten paces away, heading down toward the river. He was gaining on it when it dissolved into the shadows of the buildings on the right.