Caveat emptor mi-4

by Ruth Downie

  “We weren’t asked,” said Dias, leaning on the splintered front doorpost. “We only work for him when we’re asked. He went with his brother. My lads rode out to help the minute we knew he was missing.”

  “Bericus is still not found,” said Tilla.

  “Maybe he did it,” suggested Dias. The dark eyes looked into her own. “Maybe he’s the one you want to be calling a thief, not me.”

  “If he is alive,” said Tilla, “I will. Now, are you going to help?”

  When Asper had been laid out on the pinkish gray floor of the smart front room, Dias nodded to the household shrine in the corner and said, “I’ll let the cemetery slaves know. First thing tomorrow morning, all right, ladies?”

  Tilla glanced over at Camma, who did not look as though she understood the question. “First thing tomorrow morning,” she agreed. The sooner it was over, the better. “Thank you.”

  Safely inside with the cupboard rammed against the broken street door to keep it closed, Camma slumped against the wall. “He was not attacked for money.” She sighed. “He did not take any money. There is nobody left who will listen to me.”

  “I believe you,” said Tilla. She bent down to straighten the rush mat that had been kicked aside as they carried the body in. “But you and I cannot prove anything else yet, and we need that man to help with the burial.”

  “But-”

  “It is always good to speak the truth, sister,” said Tilla, wishing she had left the mat hiding the pair of man-sized house shoes that she had just revealed, “but sometimes it is wiser to say what is useful.”

  28

  As the ostler had promised, the ginger mare was keen to go-but not necessarily forward. After winning the argument over which of them was steering, Ruso urged it out under the archway and onto the wide expanse of the North road. The rhythm of its gait changed instantly as a clear run stretched out ahead. He sat deep in the saddle, relishing the rush of speed. They pounded past a crawling train of supply wagons and he grinned at the envious glances as he overtook a column of legionaries slogging along at the military pace. At this rate he would be in Verulamium by late afternoon.

  As he passed the first milestone, more native houses started to appear. It occurred to him that Londinium had been an easy place to be a foreigner: a place run by the army and full of veterans and merchants. Beyond the safety of its walls people like himself were vastly outnumbered by the Britons, and Tilla was right: Whatever his intentions, he was venturing out into the province in the role of a tax collector.

  Still, in other ways it was a relief to be heading out of town. Valens seemed to be suffering from an uncharacteristic and worrying urge to be helpful. While Ruso had been in a hurry to leave, Valens had been flapping about asking whether he was sure he had everything he needed and insisting on lending him even more money than he asked for.

  For someone who had known Valens as long as Ruso had, it was all deeply disturbing. Most disturbing of all was their parting conversation. It began, “If you should happen to run into Serena and the children…” and trailed off into, “no, it doesn’t matter.” Valens had slapped him on the shoulder with something of his old bravado. “She’s bound to be back before long. Have a good trip, old chap. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine. You’ve got far more important things to think about.”

  Ruso squinted at the road ahead, where a rapidly expanding shape became an official dispatch rider. He had one hand raised in greeting before he remembered he was a civilian now. The rider flashed past without acknowledging him, hurrying south with whatever the governor had to say concealed in the leather pouch strapped to his side. Perhaps there were messages in there for Metellus.

  One of the unsettling things about Metellus was that you never knew how far his influence extended. He seemed to have no idea why Asper had been killed, which suggested he had no other source of information in Verulamium. If that were true, Ruso could do whatever kept the Council and the procurator happy, and as long as he produced a plausible report at the end, Metellus would be none the wiser. On the other hand, Metellus could be lying. It would be just like him to have somebody watching the watcher. But if he still had another spy in Verulamium, why had he bothered to recruit Ruso? Did he have doubts about the loyalty of this hypothetical second man?

  Ruso shook his head. Once you began to believe in hypothetical spies, you began to jump at the movement of your own shadow. You stopped trusting anybody. He glanced back over his shoulder, just to confirm that there was no hooded man behind him. The mare, sensitive to his movement, shifted sideways. He nudged her back onto the soft verge, barely conscious of the mule train he was overtaking as he wondered where a man who did not know whom to trust would turn for help if he had been attacked. Instead of doing the sensible thing and asking the nearest person to fetch a doctor, he might just flee to another town.

  Asper’s assailant must have left him truly terrified. He had not even dared to seek help when he arrived in Londinium, probably miles away from the scene of the attack. Confused or frightened or both, he had been convinced that an urgent message to Metellus was his best hope.

  Ruso put both reins in one hand and loosened his neckerchief to let in some air. Nine milestones gone: He must be almost halfway by now. The horse was tiring. He was in need of a break himself. He was starting to get confused. If Asper had needed help from Metellus, then the murderer was definitely not some random robber. Besides, if Camma was right, Asper had taken no cash with him and would not be worth robbing. On the other hand, the tax money was missing…

  This whole business seemed to be as slippery as the burglar he had chased out of Valens’s entrance hall. He hoped it would make more sense when he got to Verulamium.

  There was a cluster of buildings farther up the hill. As he drew closer a carriage pulled out from among them and began to head south. He shifted in the saddle, already beginning to relax muscles he had not realized were tense. This was what he was looking for: the official posting station.

  He handed the ginger mare’s reins to a groom and ordered a fresh horse, then headed for the awning of a roadside snack bar. A few paces away, a large carriage with polished surfaces still visible through the dust had parked up on the scrubby gravel beside the road. Its cavalry escort seemed to have scattered in search of fodder and latrines, its driver was busy tending to the horses, and three faces were peering out the window. The woman was saying something to the children. Ruso caught the end of her sentence: something about, “No. It might be dirty.”

  He commandeered a bar stool, refused the stew, and was wondering how rough the really cheap wine might be, if this was the medium, when the door of the carriage opened and a servant stepped down followed by the three he had seen just now. The small girl was shifting from foot to foot in a manner that betrayed their purpose. The bartender leaned out and pointed to the left. “Round the back behind the empties, missus.”

  “Officer’s family?” Ruso speculated as they hurried away.

  “Just in off the ship, I’ll bet,” observed the barman. “Too frightened to come out and eat with the barbarians.”

  Having smelled the stew, Ruso did not blame them. As the bartender moved away to serve the family’s escort, he wondered how the woman would cope when she reached her destination. Probably she would dictate letters home with news of a terrifying journey and only leave the safety of her husband’s fort for escorted trips to visit other officers’ wives.

  The voice of his own first wife echoed from the depths of his memory. You never take me anywhere nice, Gaius.

  I’ve tried. You won’t go.

  But how can I? The whole of Antioch is full of those dreadful people!

  The barman returned, ostensibly to see if he had changed his mind about the stew. It seemed the cavalrymen were disinclined to gossip and the lone customer was a better bet. “You hear about that tax man being murdered?”

  Ruso nodded.

  “Used to stop here regular,” said the man. “Him and that bro
ther they can’t find, and the guards.”

  “Did you know him well?”

  “Not what you’d call a big spender. Jug of wine, bread, and a bit of cheese. Always the same.” The man shook his head, as if the crime had deprived him not only of trade but of words. “Makes you think, don’t it? Him setting out thinking it was just a normal trip and he’d be home next morning.”

  Ruso balanced the cup on the uneven planks that made up the bar and shrugged the stiffness out of his shoulders. “Do they know who did it?”

  “Northerners,” said the bartender confidently, then, “Or it might be the Iceni, or some of their friends. But most likely Northerners. More and more of them hanging around these days.”

  Ruso wondered if Tilla had stopped by for refreshment. “Do you get much trouble around here?”

  “You don’t want to worry, boss. You got a fine day. Plenty of folk on the road. Just make sure you’re settled in somewhere before it gets dark.”

  Ruso downed the rest of his drink and stood up. “I need to find a farmer called Lund.”

  “Oh, everybody knows Lund.” The bartender chuckled. “Lives a couple of miles this side of Verulamium. Turn left at the split oak before the bridge and watch out for the monster. I hear it gets bigger every time he tells it.”

  29

  The bartender was right. According to the eager farmer who dragged the gate open and ushered Ruso into his yard, the river monster was at least eight feet tall and broad as a bull. It had snatched the family’s boat from its mooring and hurled it into the middle of the river before chasing the terrified children into the woods. To Ruso’s relief, the farmer was able to explain all this in reasonably fluent Latin.

  His children, whose ages ranged between about four and ten, were neatly lined up beside him. Their skinny frames were clothed in tunics that were patched but clean and their hair was combed. The girl, who was the eldest, wore a chain of fresh daisies around her neck. All three nodded enthusiastically every time they heard, “Ain’t that right, kids?”

  They escorted Ruso down a muddy track to where the monster’s footprints could be seen across the open grass leading up from the empty mooring post at the river. The prints were marked by wilting clumps of wild garlic, which had miraculously sprung up the day after the visitation.

  “Remarkable,” said Ruso, noting a swathe of similar plants growing under the trees on the far side of the clearing.

  Lund and his group of witnesses led him around a curve in the bank to a freshly hollowed tree stump where a pinch of incense could be burned to appease Ver, the life-giving river. There was no charge for this service as long as you brought your own incense: Ver did not approve of exploiting his followers. He did, however, look especially kindly on those who left gifts glistening in his gravelly shallows. If the officer cared to look closely, he could see the sorts of offerings left by earlier visitors. Did he see the way the sun caught that gold coin over on the left, behind the big red pebble? The man who left that coin went straight home and found news of a legacy waiting for him when he got there. “Ain’t that right, kids?”

  It seemed several visitors had reason to thank the native god. Another donor had been promoted to centurion. A third had been healed of a broken arm.

  “Remarkable,” repeated Ruso, shielding his eyes with one hand and peering into the water to admire the shiny trinkets scattered there, one or two of which were already showing spots of rust. Behind him the eldest child observed in British, “He don’t look very rich, Da.”

  “Shut up and keep smiling,” replied the father in the same tongue. “You can never tell with these foreigners.”

  Ruso, who had truthfully told the man that he had only been in the province a few days, suppressed a smile of his own and wondered how best to deal with this. There was no malice in the harmless nonsense about the river monster. Clearly the family was not wealthy, and if they managed to make a little money out of gullible travelers, it was probably no worse than the followers of-

  He curtailed that thought, just in case Mithras was able to read men’s minds. He was conscious of the family watching as he delved into his purse and pulled out one of Valens’s silver denarii. It would be worth more than all the rubbish in the river put together. “Does the god answer questions?”

  The children looked at their father, who hesitated. It seemed nobody had made this request before. “What sort of questions?”

  “I’m trying to find out what happened to a man who came from Verulamium,” Ruso explained. “He was badly injured and he ended up a long way down the river in a small flat-bottomed boat that seems to have been stolen. I’m wondering if the river god might have seen what happened to him.”

  In the silence that followed, he was conscious of the gurgle of the water in the shallows and the distant cry of a drover on the North road.

  “I don’t want to get anybody into trouble,” he said, flexing the base of his thumb so the coin on his palm lifted and tipped over. The sun glinted on the squat profile of Vespasian. “And I wouldn’t want to upset the monster. But perhaps one of you could have a word with the god and see if he could give me a few pointers.”

  The father sent the younger children back to the house in the care of the oldest girl. When they had disappeared around the bend in the river, he said, “Please don’t be angry, sir. They are just kids. He frightened them.”

  “And he grew into a monster?”

  “Just a bit of fun. With the taxes and a sick wife and the price of seed corn, we need money.”

  Ruso flipped the denarius over again, then held out his hand for the man to take it. “Tell me,” he said.

  Soon afterward Ruso’s horse was picking its way back along the shady track toward the main road and its rider was deep in thought.

  Very early on the morning after Asper had disappeared, Lund’s children had gone down to the river to fetch water. A terrifying figure with blood on his face and mud all over his clothes rose from the reeds farther along the riverbank and demanded to know where he was. The first Lund knew of it was when he heard them running toward the house screaming about a monster. By the time he reached the bank, the boat had been loosed from its mooring and was drifting out of sight around the bend in the river. He could not see if there was anyone in it.

  He had accused the children of untying it and inventing the monster to avoid a beating, but they all told the same story and passed it on to the neighbors’ children. Within a couple of days the tale had grown and spread along the course of the river. It was some time before Lund heard about the disappearance of Julius Asper and began to wonder if the monster-who might originally have fit his description-had something to do with it.

  “Are you sure there was just the one man? Could there have been somebody with him?”

  “Just the one,” insisted the man. “We did him no harm, sir.”

  “There were two men went missing.”

  “If the brother was here, the dogs would find him,” said the man, grasping his meaning.

  Ruso paused, distracted. “Is that your wife coughing?”

  “The same all through the winter, sir.”

  Most people suffered from coughs and chilblains through the damp British winter, but generally those who survived had recovered by now. “Has she seen a doctor?”

  “They all try something different. Now she is thin as a stick and brings up blood.”

  There was no point in offering a further prognosis. It would not be good. “Leek juice with frankincense might help a little,” he suggested, wishing he had brought his supplies with him. “And whatever they tell you, don’t let them bleed her more than once every three weeks.”

  Before he left he remembered to tell the man where his boat was. It was not much consolation. Turning the horse’s head north, he rode past an elderly couple shuffling along carrying a basket full of cabbages and leeks between them. He wondered what sort of welcome Tilla had received in Verulamium. With luck he would sort out this Julius Asper business to M
etellus’s satisfaction and her name would be erased from the list. If not, as soon as it was over he would suggest they pack up the red crockery and the baby clothes and take the next ship back to Gaul.

  30

  These days Hadrian’s reforming zeal had seen to it that all lodging houses for traveling officials were centrally administered. The majority of every mansio’s staff, however, were bound to be locals. Ruso suspected there would still be a wide variation, not only in style, but in the guests’ confidence that nobody might have spit in the soup. However, he was optimistic about Verulamium. It was a major town on one of the busiest routes in the province. The governor must travel this way regularly on his trips to the troubled North. If the natives here were the sort who wanted a theater, they would also want to impress with the size of their bathhouse, the jingle of coins at their market-and, hopefully, the welcome they afforded to the representatives of Rome.

  Before he could sample that welcome, he found himself held up outside the town gates. Easing the sweating horse past a couple of vehicles whose drivers were obliged to wait in line, he saw that the delay was being caused by a couple of natives sporting military-style chain mail and red tunics. One of them was the strapping youth who had been escorting Caratius around Londinium. They were equipped with daggers and their spears looked like standard army issue, but in the place of swords they wore stout wooden clubs. He recalled his conversation with Metellus: presumably the routine wearing of swords would have indicated that the local guards had ideas above their station.

  Today they were stopping everyone to ask in both British and heavily accented Latin whether anyone had seen a man named Bericus. They were looking very bored with the job until Ruso asked whether a carriage with two women, a baby, and a body had arrived from Londinium. The big one glanced across at the sound of his voice and announced, “It’s the investigator!”