Caveat emptor mi-4

by Ruth Downie

58

  Ruso had noted before how the arrival of an infant released a deluge of washing. Rows of it were dripping into the vegetable patch behind Asper’s house, and when he queried Grata’s absence, he was told she had gone to take bedding to the laundry.

  “I was hoping the three of you would stay together.”

  “I asked her to stay,” replied Tilla, holding up a bone-dry linen towel and pulling it to tug out the creases before folding it and adding it to the pile beside her. “She is nothing but bad temper. I offered to help her turn out Bericus’s room this afternoon, but she says I will only get in the way.”

  “She is upset,” put in Camma from beside the hearth. She had removed the baby’s swaddling to massage his limbs, just as Ruso had read in the textbook. “She has a kind heart underneath.”

  Tilla reached into the basket for another towel. “I hope so. Did you find the man who sent you the strange letters, husband?”

  Ruso helped himself to a stool. “Yes, but he doesn’t know who attacked you.” Their eyes met and he knew she understood that there were things he could not tell her in Camma’s presence.

  Tilla grasped a crumpled linen undertunic in both hands and snapped it out flat. The sound startled the baby, who flung his arms into the air. Ruso suspected that Grata was not the only woman here who was in a bad temper. The bluebells had been received politely, but without the gratitude a man deserved for being seen carrying a bunch of flowers through the streets. He wondered if his wife was jealous. She would be returning to Londinium tomorrow, leaving Grata here with the baby and the woman who had become her friend.

  He felt partly responsible for Grata’s bad temper. Her upset state was his own fault. The sight of Bericus’s body would have shaken anyone, let alone somebody who had shared a home with him. Even Dias had seized her by the wrist to try and keep her away. Later he had rebuked Ruso for allowing her forward.

  Something whispered at the back of Ruso’s mind. For a moment he could not think what it was. He ran over his thoughts again, trying to catch it. It was something Albanus had said this morning. Albanus was alone in the hall with Camma because the other one left to go off and argue with your guard chap.

  He looked up. “Camma, what’s the connection between Grata and Dias?”

  “Who knows?” she said lightly. “One minute they are friends, the next not. He is not the sort of man to settle with one woman. Why do you ask?”

  Tilla said, “That is another reason for her bad temper. Camma, where do you want me to put these clothes?”

  The two women carried on discussing the domestic arrangements as if nothing had happened. Meanwhile Ruso was considering the sudden collapse of the case against Caratius. Nico had already suggested that Caratius knew nothing about the murders. Anyone could have put the body on his land. The only real evidence against him was the message luring Asper and Bericus out of town. The message that only Grata had heard. Now it seemed that same Grata was close to Dias. What if Dias had persuaded her to lie?

  A further thought struck him. Grata had been in the room when they had been discussing the coin mold. If she had told Dias, then he would know they had found the evidence of forgery.

  Ruso would say nothing to Camma. He might be wrong. Even so, he would warn Albanus before leaving him in charge here this evening. Grata could not be trusted.

  On the way out he beckoned Tilla into the garden. Gavo’s large form stood awkwardly amid the washing as he kept guard over the back of the house. When Ruso explained that he would like a moment alone with his wife, Gavo nodded and made his way back through the alleyway toward the street. Ruso noticed he did not look at Tilla. After the way she had stalked them through the woods on the way to dinner with Caratius, he probably thought she was dangerously unstable.

  When they were alone together beside the bean patch, he gathered her into his arms. He kissed her for the benefit of anyone who might be snooping before murmuring his suspicions about Grata.

  “Dias is definitely involved in forging money,” he said, “but I can’t get any more names out of Nico.”

  She nibbled his ear and breathed, “It must be a man. A woman working in a forge would be noticed.”

  He let her think he had already considered that possibility and dismissed it.

  “What about the other man Dias was with when I found them stealing the furniture?”

  “What other man?”

  She broke away from him. “Wait here.”

  She ran back into the house, and returned to whisper, “Camma says his name is Rogatus.”

  “The overseer at the stables?” Ruso stared at her. Several things fell into place. Rogatus could intercept the post. He had access to a forge at the vehicle repair workshop. It was Rogatus who had sworn that Asper said he was going to Londinium and had sent him out in a carriage without even the basic protection of a driver. At last this wretched business was starting to make some sense.

  He grasped both her hands. “Promise me you’ll stay in the house till I come and collect you,” he said. “And dress for dinner.”

  59

  There were many reasons why Ruso was glad he was not the emperor, but one that he had never considered until this evening was that the more power you appeared to wield, the more determined people were to impress you in inappropriate ways. The conversation in the dining room of Gallonius’s town house was conducted across a fleet of little tables while the staff appeared to be carrying out an experiment to see how much could be loaded onto each one before its expensively spindly legs gave way.

  It was hard not to conclude that the food and wine had been arranged by Gallonius while the delicate furnishings and the tasteful red and marble effect walls had been the choices of his wife, a small pale creature whose skin seemed barely able to stretch over her bones and whose conversation consisted mostly of, “Yes, dear.” She did manage to ask Ruso whether he was finding Britannia rather cold and should she ask for more coals on the brazier, but when he assured her that he was quite warm enough, her husband said, “Our guest’s been here before, woman. Right up on the border. He knows what cold is.”

  The wife retreated back into, “Yes, dear.”

  “Boy? Go and see if the piglet’s done!” Gallonius gave a sonorous belch, sighed, and explained that he was a slave to his digestion.

  “My poor husband has been to all sorts of doctors,” ventured the wife, perhaps feeling this was a safe subject on which to expand, “but they can’t do anything for him.”

  Gallonius said, “My father was just the same,” as if eating too much and too fast were passed from father to son like a family heirloom.

  Tilla reached up to check that the bluebells were still tucked into her hair and said innocently, “Have they recommended any special diets?”

  As the staff began to clear the tables, Gallonius and his wife began to describe the various regimes he had followed in the hope of relief.

  Ruso was not listening. Now that Tilla had given him the final name, it was all beginning to make sense. Realizing-perhaps with Grata’s help-that the tax man was on their trail, the forgers had arranged to murder Asper in such a way as to make it look as if he had run off with the tax money. Asper would be lured out of town by a false message to visit Caratius. Rogatus would tell everyone that he had gone to Londinium, but in fact he and Dias would have intercepted him just outside of town.

  Things had gone wrong. Perhaps they had not been expecting Bericus to go too. Somehow Asper had escaped. The killers had also underestimated Camma. Instead of going to the local guards, where her testimony would have sunk without a trace, she had traveled twenty miles to appeal to the procurator.

  The trouble was, if everybody stuck to their lies, he could not prove any of it.

  Ruso was wondering what Dias was up to this evening-the guards currently waiting to escort them home were strangers-when a roasted piglet appeared on the table in front of him, accompanied by the sort of silence that told him his host was waiting for a reply.

&n
bsp; The tentative “Er-” was a mistake. It implied that he had heard the question and was considering the answer.

  “Have a try,” urged Gallonius, failing to stifle another belch.

  It was Tilla who saved him. “It is no good asking my husband to guess what is in there,” she said. “He is from Gaul, where the food is very strange and has different names.”

  It was their host’s turn to say, “Really?”

  “Oh, yes,” Tilla assured him. “When I cook for him, I have to tell him what he is eating.”

  Gallonius threw his head back and guffawed. His wife smiled wistfully, as if she wished she understood the joke. Tilla adjusted the bluebells again and grinned at her husband. Gallonius answered his own question with obvious pride and a servant stepped forward with a carving knife.

  Musing while he ate, Ruso wondered how anyone could think that the best way to astonish and delight a visiting official was to see how many items of unrelated food could be crammed inside a deceased piglet before it exploded under the strain.

  “Well!” exclaimed Gallonius as the debris of honey cakes dipped in wine was cleared away and Ruso was congratulating himself on having politely managed a taste of everything, “I’d imagine that’s better than you got from old Caratius.”

  “Much better,” said Tilla, dabbling her fingers in the bowl of water the servant was holding in front of her. “More food and no bodies.”

  Ruso wondered how much wine she had drunk.

  “Our guards frightened Caratius’s mother,” she added.

  “A very sad case,” put in the wife, seizing on another safe subject. He never brings her into town these days, does he, dear? She wanders off looking for the family silver.”

  “She’s been dotty for years,” said Gallonius. “His father only married her because she convinced him the silver was really there. Of course, they never found it. I expect the Iceni had it. If it ever existed.” He turned to Tilla. “Which reminds me, my dear. It’s very good of you to look after that girl, but you should be careful. The Iceni can’t be relied upon.”

  The awkward silence that followed was broken by the slaves carrying out the last of the empty tables and Gallonius announcing, “And now…” in a tone that sounded alarmingly as if they were about to reappear with more food on them. To Ruso’s relief he was only announcing that the ladies could withdraw next door while the men talked about things that would not interest them.

  Tilla said, “What things?”

  “Off you go, wife,” Ruso urged her. “Perhaps you could ask the cook for the piglet recipe.”

  Gallonius’s wife dipped her thin fingers in the water bowl, rose from her chair, and began to drift toward the door. Tilla followed, but not before giving her husband a look that said he would be hearing about this later.

  As soon as the door had closed behind them, Gallonius sat up straight and said, “I hear you’ve brought in an assistant.”

  “He’s taking a look at the finance records,” said Ruso, adding, “I’ve spoken to Nico,” as if the two facts were related and Nico had given his blessing to the audit.

  “Is that really necessary?”

  “Yes. You need to be careful what you say about Caratius. Some new information has come up.”

  Gallonius’s eyes widened. “What sort of information?”

  Ruso decided not to name his suspects in case Gallonius tried to interfere. “I can’t explain until I’m certain,” he said, “but Asper’s death may have been nothing to do with Caratius. I think there was something illegal going on and Asper got mixed up in it. As Nico’s off sick I’ll need your permission to go into the strong room.”

  Was that a brief hesitation before Gallonius stifled a belch and reached for his wine? “We’ve nothing to hide,” he said. “I’ll take you in there myself tomorrow morning. But don’t be fooled by the amount you find down there. Everything we have is set aside for some purpose or other. Did Nico tell you we have a generous fund to provide bread and schooling for orphans?”

  “I did hear you have a fund for the theater.”

  “A lot of the money for the theater is still just promises, I’m sorry to say.” The magistrate called for one of his servants to come and adjust his cushions before leaning back and removing his belt. “If you’re right, and Caratius doesn’t have the money, where is it?”

  “I’m working on that.”

  “We shall struggle if the procurator expects us to make up the missing payment. There will be a lot of dissatisfaction.”

  “Yes,” said Ruso, “that’s more or less what Caratius said right back at the start of this.”

  Gallonius looked up. “I hope you don’t think, Investigator, that this is some sort of elaborate ruse to defraud the procurator.”

  “Oh, no,” said Ruso. “Because if it were, and you were caught, it would be catastrophic for everyone involved, wouldn’t it?”

  60

  After the warmth of the heated dining room, Tilla was shivering inside her shawl as they walked down the moonlit street past the deserted meat market. Ruso put his arm around her shoulders. There was almost nobody around to see them apart from a slinking cat and the two guards behind them, who could think what they liked.

  Albanus answered their knock at Camma’s house, explaining that the ladies had gone to bed. He had two lamps and a short stump of candle burning on the kitchen table, perilously close to the piles of records he seemed to have spent all evening examining.

  “Anything interesting?” said Ruso, more out of politeness than hope.

  “Just a moment, sir.” Albanus flicked the beads of the abacus with his left hand and scratched a figure on the wax tablet with his right. Then he frowned at the figure and flicked the beads again but made no alterations to what he had just written. “I do have some questions, sir. Probably very foolish ones but I’m only a schoolteacher, I’m afraid. They seem to have an awful lot of different funds and it’s rather hard to tell what’s where, especially when they seem to keep moving money from one to another.”

  Ruso squinted at the tablet. “I don’t know how you can work in this light. Have you found the orphans’ bread and education fund?”

  “Oh, yes, sir. And the maintenance of streets fund and the extension to the mansio fund and the fund to pay the municipal slaves and the cost of keeping the guards going. I have to say I didn’t realize how complicated this would be.”

  Ruso pointed to the largest figure. “What’s that one?”

  Albanus peered at his list, referred to a second list, and said, “That’s the running total for the theater fund, sir, as of last January. I’m sorry I haven’t finished, but Dias came to call and there was a bit of a fuss over getting rid of him.”

  Tilla said, “Dias? Here?”

  Ruso frowned. “I should have known he wasn’t taking the evening off.”

  “He wanted to talk to Grata, sir. She told me to tell him to go away.”

  Tilla said, “I knew I should never have left them!”

  Albanus visibly bristled. “I got rid of him, sir. The ladies were quite safe.”

  Ruso said, “Well done,” just as Tilla said, “How did you do that?”

  “Grata ran back into the kitchen, sir, and I stood in his path and told him that if he tried to come past I would be forced to use violence. And then he tried to insult me, and I told him I was a trained legionary acting under the orders of the procurator, and if he didn’t leave straightaway I would report him to you.”

  “Excellent,” said Ruso, picturing the scene. “I knew I could rely on you.”

  “I think it may have helped when Camma pulled the poker out of the fire and waved it at him,” admitted Albanus. He spread one arm to indicate the piles of documents on the table. “So I’m afraid with all that I haven’t got as far as I would have liked. I was wondering whether you’d mind if I stayed here to finish, sir? Grata’s kindly left me some blankets on the couch.”

  Ruso recalled the splendor of Suite Three, where the sheets still reta
ined a faint memory of lavender. “Well,” he said, “if you’re sure you don’t mind staying, Tilla can come back with me.”

  Albanus squared his shoulders. “Absolutely not, sir. I think one of us should stay here to look after the ladies.”

  Ruso nodded. “Make sure everything’s properly locked up,” he said. “I don’t think he’ll be back, but if he is, don’t tackle him on your own. Shout ‘Fire’ and rouse the neighbors.”

  “Fire, sir?”

  “Yes. They may not get out of bed for anything else.”

  The route Ruso chose toward the mansio took them past Nico’s lodgings. There were no lights visible. He stepped up to the entrance to check that it was secure. There was a thud and a rattle of ironwork. The dog that had hurled itself at the door began to bark.

  As they fled down the street with the guards clattering along behind them, Tilla gasped, “Nobody in that house will thank you for making sure he is safe.”

  Once his guards had checked the mansio rooms and declared them free of lurking assassins, Ruso dismissed them for the night. “You’ll be safe in here,” he said to Tilla, locking the outside door and picking up the lantern that had thoughtfully been left burning in the hallway. Once inside Suite Three, she stood in silence as he lit more lamps and the simple elegance of his accommodation sprang into view. “You have to admit,” he said, “we’ve come a long way since the damp rooms in Deva.”

  “All this is for one man?”

  In the confined space he was conscious again of the clear scent of the bluebells. “There’s a dining room and private kitchen as well,” he told her. “But I told them I hadn’t brought my cook.”

  “I will go into your kitchen in the morning and start stuffing piglets.”

  “Tomorrow,” murmured Ruso, sliding one arm around her waist and plucking the bluebells from her hair, “you can do whatever you like. Tonight, I want you here.”

  61

  The bathhouse was full of stuffed animals and slaves to digestion, and the masseur was tightening an iron band around Ruso’s forehead. He lifted one arm to push the man away, but the stone weighing down his stomach was too heavy. It hurt to move his head. He was too tired to complain.