Caveat emptor mi-4

by Ruth Downie

  Ruso walked his horse slowly forward between the lush grasses bowing in from either side. He stopped where the branch of an oak overhung the track. He could see no evidence of any attack that might have taken place here. The carriage could have been deliberately driven along the track to get it off the road-or the horses, with all night to wander about, could have meandered down here in search of a roadside snack.

  Returning to the others he said, “While we’re out here, let’s see if we can see how Asper ended up on the river.”

  Dias turned. The dark eyes seemed to be scrutinizing him, as if trying to assess how much he knew. Ruso forced himself to stay relaxed, knowing the horse might react to any tension, and Dias was not a fool.

  Finally Dias said, “And what will that tell us, sir?”

  Was there a whisper of insolence in the “sir”? Dias had had five years in the auxiliaries to practice being just the right side of insubordination. “Probably not a lot,” Ruso admitted. “But it’s your money, and you never know.”

  Dias looked him up and down. “You haven’t got a bloody clue where the money is, have you?”

  “Neither have you,” said Ruso, returning the candor, “or we wouldn’t be standing here.”

  Dias’s face relaxed. “Move on!” he called over his shoulder to Gavo, the harness jingling louder as he urged his horse into a trot. “The investigator wants to look at the river.”

  As the road approached the meandering river, it had been raised to cross flat watermeadows where the lowest patches were dotted with tufts of reed. Apart from the cover of the occasional willow tree, Ruso had to concede that it was a poor site for an ambush. The road was straight in both directions. The drivers of a couple of vehicles in the distance must have a clear and puzzling view of him and his escort, halting on each of the three bridges in turn. They could also be seen from the native farmsteads on the low hills around, most of which had been cleared of trees. There was a villa beyond a wood on one side of the road and, on the other, a grand stone memorial reminding travelers of some deceased landowner with plenty of money.

  On the last bridge he stared into the dark water and watched long green fingers of weeds waving downstream. The river was no more revealing now than it had been when he had paused to inspect it on the way here. Still, on Asper’s last journey, it had been raining heavily. The traffic would have been lighter than usual and the visibility poor. If Asper had been attacked by men he recognized, they might have been able to get alongside before he realized he was in danger. There would have been no pursuit or ambush to alert his fellow travelers.

  The water would have been higher with the rain too. High enough, perhaps, for a man to float downstream, abandoned for dead by assailants who needed to get away before someone else came along and saw what was happening. Farther along, Asper could have crawled out of the water. By morning he had gathered enough strength to frighten Lund’s children and steal his boat.

  It was all speculation. The ambush-on-an-open-road theory was just about plausible, but none of it answered the question of what had happened to the missing brother.

  The wooden bridge gave a dull boom as Dias’s horse stamped with impatience. Its rider said, “Tell you anything, sir?”

  “Not really,” said Ruso, tossing a very small coin into the water for luck and hoping Christos, if he existed, was listening to Tilla’s prayers. “I think I’m ready for some dinner.”

  They turned right off the main road soon after, Dias leading the way along a narrow unmade lane where grass sprouted between the wheel ruts. The gelding picked up its pace, recognizing the route. Ruso was aware of Gavo drawing up beside him, waving one hand to attract his attention and mouthing, “Sir?”

  He slowed the horse, letting Dias draw away in front of them.

  “Sir, I should never have said that about Dias. You won’t say anything to anybody, will you?”

  “I’m sure he can explain,” said Ruso. “Don’t worry, I’ll have a word with him and sort it out.”

  “But sir-”

  “I won’t tell him who told me,” said Ruso. The youth evidently had no clue that he might be involved in covering up a murder. “With luck, he’ll never find out.”

  The youth glanced at Dias, still a couple of horse lengths in front. He moved closer until his and Ruso’s knees brushed against each other and hissed, “Please, sir! It wasn’t anything bad. He just went to meet a woman.”

  “I thought he spent the evening with you?”

  Gavo shook his head. “In the end he had to, sir. Her husband was at home.”

  “Ah,” said Ruso, who didn’t believe a word of it but could see why Gavo had been impressed.

  “Please don’t tell anyone, sir. If his girl finds out, I’m dead.”

  With that, Gavo drew back and left him to ride on alone. The gentle plod of hoofs on dried mud was accompanied by evening birdsong as they followed the track through fresh green woods that would have been an ideal ambush site but were implausibly far from the river.

  After a couple of hundred paces the view opened to reveal the villa he had seen from the road: a two-story building with tiles on the roof, paint on the walls, and glass in several of the windows-which by British standards made it a high-class residence. Horses in the surrounding paddocks lifted their heads and trotted up to greet the new arrivals. A gray-headed figure that could only be Caratius appeared on the porch.

  He had just raised one arm in greeting when there was a commotion behind them. The alarm calls of startled birds rose above the sound of someone crashing about and shouting. Ruso wheeled the horse around. Where Gavo should have been was an empty track. Dias, spear raised, yelled, “Keep back!” as he thundered past toward the woods. Over the hoofbeats, from somewhere deep in the trees, came a shrill and terrible scream.

  It was all over by the time they got there. Gavo was standing triumphant, the tip of his spear pressed into the rough clothing of a prisoner who was lying facedown among the leaves.

  “Got her, boss!” he announced proudly to Dias, and then to Ruso, “This woman was following us, sir.”

  Ruso put both reins into one hand and swung down from the horse. As he knelt beside the prisoner, Dias approached and said something in British.

  “Tell your man to stand easy, Dias,” said Ruso, relieved to see that the prisoner’s expression was one of indignation rather than pain. “There’s no danger.”

  “She’s the associate of the Iceni woman,” said Dias.

  “Yes,” said Ruso, sighing. “She’s also my wife. Would you mind letting her up, please?”

  By the time Ruso emerged onto the track Caratius had arrived with a posse of excited farmworkers clutching pitchforks and horsewhips. His own escort was still wandering about the woods, trying to catch the horse that had fled from Gavo in all the excitement. Ruso jumped the gelding back over the ditch, then turned and leaned down to grab his wife’s hand as she leapt across onto the track with her skirts bunched up into the other fist.

  The embarrassment of having to explain the arrival of an uninvited dinner guest who was still picking twigs out of her hair was something Ruso would later try very hard to forget. Caratius made an effort to be polite but the tone in which he said, “From the North, I see!” suggested that if Ruso was going to marry a Briton, he might have made a more civilized choice. Indeed, it probably looked as though Ruso had failed to mention her before because he was ashamed of her.

  As Caratius showed them around the estate, Tilla seemed to be trying to make up for her bizarre behavior by being unusually sociable. She was busy complimenting their host on the mares and foals grazing in the paddocks when Ruso wandered a few paces farther along the track, which carried on past the house. He stopped. The river had not followed the course he had assumed. Instead it had swept round in a wide curve. Not only did it flow across Caratius’s land: down there in the shifting shadows of the willow trees he could make out some sort of planking and mooring posts.

  It was difficult to concentra
te on the tour of the stables. He barely noticed the tack room, hung with plenty of jingling decorations for Caratius’s slaves to polish. He had to force himself to pay attention to the conversation as they paused to watch a very small boy in man-sized boots hold the halter of a gray stallion while a man clamped its nearside hoof between his own thighs and circled it with a pair of long-handled pincers, clipping off a hard crescent of extra growth.

  When Caratius finally left them in a hall that smelled of roasting beef and mold and went to warn the cook about the extra guest, he hissed, “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “I am here to protect you.”

  “I thought you couldn’t leave Camma on her own?”

  “She is not on her own,” said Tilla, looking pleased with herself. “The housekeeper came to pay respects to her master. She said she will stay while I am out.”

  “Well, don’t say anything careless. I think the guard captain was Valens’s burglar.”

  “I told you,” she whispered, “you cannot trust these people.”

  She lifted her hands to tuck a solitary primrose into her ruffled hair. She was still flushed after the chase through the woods. How did this woman always manage to be desirable at inconvenient moments?

  “Turn round,” he ordered her as a slave approached clutching a towel. “Stand still. You’ve still got pieces of leaf stuck to your back.”

  37

  The men had gone into the dining room ahead of her. Tilla settled herself on the stool, leaned against the wall, and stretched out one leg so the slave could struggle with the knot in the damp leather lacing of her boot.

  She had made a fool of herself, and the Medicus was embarrassed. Still, it was better to be a fool than a widow. Better to be embarrassed than to suffer some “accident” at the hands of the Catuvellauni. He would come to see that in a day or two. And at least she was getting dinner.

  When the slave had finished drying her feet and taken her boots away to clean, she was ushered into a big room where instead of good beef there was all sorts of fiddly food set out in red bowls much like their own on a low table. Her husband and Caratius stopped talking and turned to look at her as if they had been discussing something important and secret. Perhaps Caratius had been trying to find out what the Medicus knew about the murder. Or perhaps he had been giving his own side of the marriage story that both he and Camma had been too embarrassed to tell in Londinium.

  She sat in the wicker chair, relieved that this house did not have those terrible dining couches to go with the foreign food. She had never understood how people could eat lying down. It was against all common sense. A slave poured her watered wine, then offered her olives and oysters. She knew it was an odd combination. She might be a Northerner but she had traveled across the sea to places that most men like Caratius could only dream about. She supposed he was trying to impress.

  Perhaps she had been worrying about nothing. Caratius did not know he was under suspicion. Besides, the man had spent money on the dinner. He would not do that if he were planning to attack his guest. He had just brought the Medicus out here to tell him what to think.

  She glanced at her husband’s bowl. He had stayed with the oysters. She helped herself to a couple of olives. The taste reminded her of Gaul. Caratius was boasting about his wine specially imported “from a man I know in Aquitania” and how their grandfathers had been friends and how he was thinking of inviting him over here to help set up a vineyard. The Medicus very politely did not say that his own family had been making wine back in Gaul for years and that anyone-even a British woman who preferred a good beer-could tell that it was better than the rubbish the grandfather’s friend was sending over.

  Caratius carried on gulping down oysters and ignoring her. He was too busy explaining why the Council would do well to listen to him in future and how the Medicus ought to go about his investigating. The Medicus was saying very little, perhaps waiting for Caratius to give something away by mistake.

  Her hand slipped down to massage her bare toes. She could have outrun that big lad. She had been watching them for most of the journey. Neither of the so-called guards had paid any attention to a woman in a nondescript shawl hurrying along the road to get home before dark. None of them had noticed her slip into the woods. Even when she had startled a magpie and the big one had spun around and spotted her, she could have gotten away. She flexed her toes and rubbed away a sliver of grazed skin. If only she had noticed that tree root.

  She shivered. The evening air drifting in through the window was chilly and Grata’s shawl was damp after its roll in the leaves. Outside, she could see the Medicus’s guards leading the stray horse up the track from the woods.

  One of the slaves came in to light the lamps. Caratius stopped talking for long enough to grab another oyster and order the shutters closed. Before he could start again she said, “Have you told the investigator that you invited Julius Asper here to see you on the day he was killed?”

  The point of Caratius’s spoon skidded off the edge of the oyster and narrowly missed stabbing his thumb. The Medicus glared at her. Later on, no doubt, he would tell her he had a plan and she had wrecked it. When really, he was trying to find a way to ask, and not doing very well at it.

  Caratius put the oyster down. “I think you are mistaken.”

  “I have been told,” she said, “that he was not going to Londinium at all. He had a message to come here and see you. I have spoken to the housekeeper who took it.”

  “Here? No, no, no. I never wanted to go near the man. Absolutely not.”

  He turned to the Medicus. “This is the sort of thing I was telling you about earlier. False rumors. Cursing in public places. Vindictive behavior. I wasn’t even at home that day.”

  That, of course, meant nothing at all. He could still have sent the message and ordered the murder. She said, “Asper thought you wanted to talk about-” She stopped. Outside in the hall, an old woman was shouting in British for help.

  As they all leapt to their feet, Caratius was saying, “Please don’t disturb yourselves!” and heading for the door. It burst open before he got there. A little woman with sparse white hair was shouting in a cracked voice, “They are here! Warriors in the woods!”

  Caratius moved to put himself between her and his guests. He said in British, “It’s all right, mother.” He took hold of one thin arm and tried to steer her back out of the room. “They’re just guards from town rounding up a loose horse. They won’t hurt anybody. Mother, have you been hiding food again?”

  “Let go of my bag!” Her hands were like claws, clutching a grimy sack to her chest. “I need my bag!”

  The waft of roasting beef from the kitchen mingled with something more pungent.

  “Just go to your room, mother. Nobody wants your bag. Where’s that dratted girl?”

  The woman peered past him. “What are those people doing in my house? Are they the ones who took our silver?”

  “They’re visiting, Mother. Guests come to share a meal. It’s nothing to worry about.”

  A maid hurried in, flustered, and took the old woman by the arm. As she was led away she was still saying, “There are men in the woods!” and the maid was trying to reassure her.

  Caratius turned to the Medicus. “I’m sorry. My mother is having a bad day.” He cleared his throat. “You may have understood her talking about stealing. Please don’t take offence. She’s not well.”

  Tilla said, “Have you lost some silver?”

  Caratius shook his head. “My mother remembers many things, but not in the right order. My grandfather’s stock of silver was lost sixty years ago. If it ever existed. I’m sorry you were disturbed.” He clapped his hands and a servant stepped out of the corner to stand at his shoulder. “We’ll have the beef.” He turned back to his guests. “Now, as I was saying…”

  As he went back to talking about the Council, Tilla was distracted by a whispered conversation in the doorway behind her. The servant who was supposed to be fetching
the beef hurried back into the room and murmured something into his master’s ear. Caratius hissed in British, “Can’t it wait?”

  The servant did some more murmuring. Caratius’s body jolted as if someone had just shot an arrow into his back. He looked at the Medicus. Suddenly efficient, he said, “Investigator, you need to come with me.”

  Before she could say anything, the Medicus gave her a look that said if she tried to follow, he would be very angry indeed. On the way out she heard Caratius giving someone orders to bring lanterns. She needed her shoes.

  The hall was empty. Behind the farthest door she could hear the mother’s anxious voice and the maid still trying to calm her. The main door was open. Servants and farmworkers had clustered out in the yard. All had their backs to the house and were standing looking toward the darkening woods.

  What had the servant done with her shoes?

  As she entered the kitchen a tabby cat leapt off the table, onto the sill, and out the open window. The steaming joint of beef sat abandoned on the table in a pool of congealing grease. The platter held the small clean wipes of tongue marks.

  She found the shoes set back from the fire. The damp leather was cold and clammy around her feet. She had just closed the window shutters to keep the cat out when Caratius’s mother wandered into the kitchen. The maid was close behind, looking almost as desperate as her charge. “Your little boy is a man now, mistress. He will make sure you are safe.”

  “You’re lying to me!” insisted the mother. “Everybody lies to me. What have they done with my son? Where’s my bag? I saw the warriors!”

  “Your bag is here, mistress. You have everything you need. Your son is safe. We’re all safe now. Come back and eat.”

  “Where’s Father? Father is still down there. He thinks he can talk to them.”

  The maid shot Tilla a look of despair across the gloom of the shuttered kitchen.

  “Your Da is in the next world with mine, Mother,” Tilla assured her.

  The woman backed away. “Who are you?”