Caveat emptor mi-4

by Ruth Downie

  Dias knew it too. He directed a practiced salute at Firmus and the decurion, then smirked at Ruso before turning his men to march them back toward the road. Gallonius went with them. Ruso was still wondering how he was going to explain any of this to the procurator-let alone to Metellus-when Valens appeared and announced that he and his wife wanted to get the boys home by nightfall. Firmus decided the cavalry could escort the Iceni tomorrow without his help, and turned to Ruso. “I’ll ride back with you,” he said, adding ominously, “You can explain everything to me on the way. I can inspect the milestones at the same time.”

  Tilla had not been included in any of these conversations. She had produced the feeding bottle from somewhere and was sitting on the grass, wailing with the Iceni women. After several attempts Ruso managed to catch her eye and point toward the carriage that was still waiting over by the road. She said something to the redhaired woman next to her, and got up to leave. The woman stood too, and Ruso realized there was some sort of argument going on. Tilla began to walk away. The woman went after her.

  Firmus was still talking, but Ruso was not listening.

  There was some sort of struggle. The feeding bottle fell and landed in the grass.

  He ran across the middle of the clearing, crouching to shield his face from the heat as he ran.

  “Stop!”

  The Iceni woman was tugging at the baby. Tilla was trying to kick her away. The baby was crying. The funeral wailing ceased as the other Iceni tried to intervene.

  “Leave her alone!” he shouted. The struggle paused, but neither woman let go. The baby was still crying. He had never seen Tilla look so desperate.

  “My wife has looked after this baby since he is born,” he explained in awkward British over the noise to anyone who would listen. “He knows her. She likes him very much.” He looked around. The Iceni were grimfaced. “We can give him a good home,” he promised. “We will teach him and look after him and-” What else could he promise?

  “He will never go hungry,” put in Tilla.

  “What will you teach him?” demanded the redhaired woman.

  Tilla’s chin rose. “I will tell him the story of his beautiful mother,” she said, wresting him out of the grasp of the woman and patting his back to console him. She leaned her cheek against his swollen red face and his cries began to die away. “Little one, I will tell you about your father from the Dobunni and your mother from the Iceni and your ancestors who were wronged by Rome and how they took a terrible revenge. And when you grow up, I will tell you about an old woman who was still afraid of them sixty years later and about her son who tried to make things better by a marriage, and how it did not work, and how your family came to this place afterward to make sure you were safe.”

  “We will bring him to visit his people,” added Ruso, putting an arm around Tilla and gazing around at the fierce faces of the family who had come here to rescue a sister and did not look as though they were inclined to leave empty handed.

  “What will you teach him, Roman?” demanded their leader.

  “Medicine,” said Ruso. “Healing.” What the hell was the word in British? He switched to Latin for “Surgery.”

  “In Latin?”

  “He will speak Latin and British, like you.”

  “How to give orders and demand tribute?”

  “My wife was a friend to your sister,” Ruso tried. “She delivered this baby. Camma trusted her.”

  “She trusted both of them,” put in another voice. Ruso had forgotten that Grata was there. “They are good people.”

  “Another foreigner!” declared the redhaired woman. “What does she know?”

  “More than you,” retorted Grata. “And I’m not foreign.”

  “Don’t argue with them!” pleaded Tilla. She turned to the leader. “I am begging you, sir, let me look after this child. Do not take him away from us.”

  “We want to-” Ruso stopped. How did the Britons say adopt? He didn’t even know if they had a word for it. “We will make him our son.”

  He knew from the man’s eyes what the answer was going to be. He barely heard the words: just Tilla’s anguished cry and a brief and rapid exchange in British. The leader seemed to be asking Tilla something. When she did not answer, the woman stepped forward and took the baby out of her arms.

  73

  Medicine, like investigating, was an occupation fraught with failure. Still, back in Londinium, it was a relief to retreat into the relative simplicity of covering out-of-hours calls so that an unusually hesitant Valens could spend more time with his family. In quiet moments, Ruso carried on working his way through a stack of writing tablets, contacting everyone he could think of who might care to recommend him for a job.

  There was no shortage of quiet moments. Tilla seemed to have very little to say to him or to anyone else. He had said he was sorry about the baby, but the only response was, “Yes.” He had asked what the Iceni man had said to her, but she refused to tell him. Since Serena had now reinstalled a full complement of servants, there was little for her to do. Instead she spent long hours sitting in the bedroom by herself. Asked what she was doing up there, she said, “Thinking.”

  “About what?”

  “Things.”

  Not sure he was welcome upstairs, Ruso took to spending his evenings helping the apprentices practice their stitching on ox tongues and testing them on the medicinal properties of flavored wines. When the short one offered to take his teetering stack of letters, he realized with a jolt that he had no desire to send them. A new job would mean leaving Londinium. It would mean being on his own with Tilla. He was not sure either of them wanted that. “I’ll sort them all out when I’ve finished,” he told the apprentice, doggedly carrying on writing requests and leaving them to accumulate on the new table in Valens’s hall.

  At night he lay awake regretting the demise of the cockerel. It would have been some sort of company as he waited for the trumpet from the fort to sound the change of watch and hoped for an emergency to give him something to do. In the mornings he slept late.

  Tilla’s was not the only frustrating silence.

  It was three days since he had delivered his report to the procurator’s office along with a claim for his expenses. Neither the procurator nor Firmus had been available to speak to him at the time, and there had been no message since. He had used the excuse of his expenses to visit the Residence, but again no one was around. The gap-toothed expenditure clerk told him his claim was being processed and that he would be contacted. The travel warrant clerk-last seen on horseback in the cemetery at Verulamium-had refused to discuss his emergency reinstatement into the cavalry. It was, apparently, “a military matter.”

  Was his report so comprehensive that the procurator didn’t need to question him? Did nobody here care what went on up the road as long as the tax was paid? Maybe it had been a mistake to admit the truth about his coerced speech to the Council. Being honest about one’s failures was not a trait much prized among the powerful.

  Ruso was even beginning to wish Metellus would get in touch. He had left a note in the Room Twenty-seven pigeonhole, but there had been no response. It had begun to dawn on him that he might never find out the end of the story. He was not important enough to be told. Nor, it seemed, was he competent enough to be given any more work as an investigator. For that, at least, he was grateful.

  Thus it was with mixed feelings that he finally received a message ordering him to report to Firmus.

  “Ruso!”

  Was it his imagination or had the youth grown in the few days since they had last seen each other? His surroundings had certainly improved: no longer a dingy back room but a bright office with sun streaming through the window. Pyramus was perched on a stool just behind his master and a couple of scribes were hovering, waiting for instructions.

  Verulamium, Firmus explained with obvious pride, had just delivered its tax along with a large consignment of forged coins for destruction.

  Ruso offered cong
ratulations and waited to find out why he was really here.

  “And the procurator’s read your report and wants to see you. You weren’t entirely straight with us about Metellus, were you?”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” said Ruso, wondering how much they knew.

  “We’ve been in touch with the governor,” said Firmus. “My uncle will explain.”

  On this ominous note Ruso was ushered out by one of the scribes and escorted to the procurator’s office.

  The great man was sufficiently recovered to be seated at his desk in another crisp white linen tunic, but Ruso barely noticed him. What drew his attention was the very ordinary-looking man silhouetted in front of the window. It looked like… Surely it couldn’t be?

  “Come in, Ruso,” said the procurator. “Metellus and I have some things to say to you.”

  74

  The governor and the procurator’s departments are cooperating,” explained Metellus, perhaps sensing Ruso’s bewilderment.

  Was that a faint expression of distaste on the procurator’s face, or just the discomfort of breathing inside cracked ribs? He said, “The governor has kindly offered Metellus’s help with some of the tidying up after this Verulamium business.”

  Ruso swallowed.

  “Metellus and I have both read your report,” the procurator continued, “which leaves us reassured about relations between the Catuvellauni and the Iceni, but unfortunately since you let the presence of your wife compromise your inquiry, we’re now in a rather delicate position.”

  Ruso said, “She happened to be working there as a midwife, sir,” but neither man seemed interested.

  “The Catuvellauni are trusted allies,” said Metellus.

  “They demonstrate to the other tribes the rewards of cooperation with Rome,” added the procurator.

  As if they had rehearsed their parts, Metellus said, “The governor wouldn’t like to take any action that might upset them, or look as though we’re threatening the independence of Verulamium.”

  “However,” continued the procurator, “since you’ve brought this forgery business to our attention, we can hardly ignore it.”

  It seemed that Ruso’s uncovering of a capital crime had caused them a major inconvenience. He said, “The men called Dias and Rogatus have murdered four people between them, sir. And I’m willing to bet that the magistrate Gallonius knew all along. He was definitely providing the silver for the false coins.”

  “As I said, we have read the report.”

  “The murders aren’t anything to worry about,” said Metellus. “Just the natives quarreling among themselves. I know they tried to suffocate you with a brazier, Ruso, but there’s not enough credible evidence to make a case.”

  “But if you interview the mansio staff-”

  “We don’t want to be accused of interfering.” The procurator winced as he reached for the notes on his desk. “We might have executed the three of them for forgery, but according to your report, you’ve already informed the locals on my behalf that the forgers were”-he ran one finger down the notes-“two men called Asper and Nico, who are already dead.”

  “I didn’t tell them that directly, sir, I only said-”

  “It doesn’t matter what you said,” put in Metellus. “What matters is what they think they heard.”

  “If we start arresting other people now,” said the procurator, “it’s going to look as though we don’t know what we’re doing.”

  “And if you don’t deal with them, sir,” put in Ruso, “they’re going to think they can get away with anything they like.”

  “Apparently they can,” said Metellus. “All they have to do is appear to threaten our investigator’s wife, and he’ll do whatever they want.”

  Ruso felt his fists clench. He addressed the procurator. “I did my best under the circumstances, sir.”

  The procurator sighed. “I’m disappointed in you, Ruso. When you had the sense to tell me you weren’t an investigator, I assumed you were an intelligent man.”

  Metellus glanced up. “Why did you say you weren’t an investigator, Ruso?”

  “Because I wasn’t!” snapped Ruso. “And I’m never doing it again, either. It’s nothing but lies and deceit and making people even more miserable than they are already. Now if you’ll excuse me, sirs, I have patients to attend to.”

  It was rude and disrespectful and probably pompous as well, but he managed to get out of the door with his head held high. Somehow that was all that mattered.

  He was through the building site that was supposed to be a garden and halfway across the courtyard before he heard someone calling his name. The chain-mailed form of Dias was looking at him across the back of a familiar-looking horse.

  Ruso said, “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “Escorting the tax money,” said Dias. “Like I usually do. Haven’t you heard? We’re the town that always pays up.”

  “I could say a few other things about your town.”

  “Ah,” said the guard, slackening the horse’s girth, “but who’d listen? Have you thought any more about that job offer?”

  Ruso glanced around, then took hold of one side of the bridle. “Since nobody’s listening,” he said, “tell me something. I can see what Gallonius got out of it, with his town house and his country estate and all his jewelry. But you’re no fool, and you’re not all that rich, either. Where did your share go?”

  Dias grinned. “You think I’m no fool, but you’re asking me to incriminate myself?”

  “What can I do about it?” asked Ruso. “Asper and Nico are getting the blame for everything. The procurator won’t go after you now.”

  Dias considered that for a moment, then lowered his voice. “You won’t believe me if I tell you.”

  “Right now, I’d believe almost anything.”

  “Gallonius paid the engraver. But I had to pay Rogatus for the metalwork and a bit of occasional help.”

  “Like attacking my wife?”

  “I’m not proud of that,” said Dias. “But it was for a good cause. Most of the money went toward the lads.”

  “You did it for the guards?” Ruso was taken aback.

  Dias sighed. “You’ve got no idea, have you?”

  “No.”

  “Decent uniforms. Good kit. Proper pay. A man doesn’t have to be a Roman citizen to appreciate things like that.”

  “They could join the army.”

  Dias snorted. “And be treated like dirt? My people have been allies of Rome for generations, and you know how much our lads get paid if we join up to fight for you?”

  “Auxiliaries’ wages,” conceded Ruso, knowing they were nowhere near what a legionary would receive.

  “Meantime we’re paying tax to keep your men over here, and what do we see for it?”

  “The army keeps the peace,” said Ruso, repeating the official line.

  “In the North, maybe,” conceded Dias. “But when Verulamium needs to show a sharp edge to the neighbors, they send a bunch of old men with a blind fourteen year old in charge.”

  “Our men came to help. You didn’t even know the Iceni were on the way.”

  Dias was not listening. “You lot haven’t changed since you ran and left a bunch of civilians to face Boudica. Well, we learned something from her, even if you didn’t. We learned that we can’t rely on you. If the other tribes come looking for trouble, we’ve got to be able stand and fight for ourselves.” Dias vaulted up onto the horse and turned its head toward the gateway. “We could’ve taken those Iceni.”

  Ruso did not doubt it. The man was a good leader, and shrewd enough to know that Rome would always put its own interests above those of its allies. He had cast himself in the role of a warrior, and he was doing what tribal warriors had always done: defending his people. Dias was almost a hero. What was a little stolen money here or there? Nobody really needed a theater, did they?

  It sounded so reasonable. So honorable… until he watched the scarlet braids disappear among the rest o
f the traffic in the street and thought of Camma lying in the rain, and Julius Asper, and the ravaged body of Bericus, and the sleep from which Nico-and so nearly he and Tilla-had never woken.

  Ruso strode back across the ruined garden and under the walkway. Swinging into the corridor, he almost collided with the expenditure clerk and barely stopped to wait for “Come in!” before bursting into Firmus’s office.

  “You can’t arrest those three for forgery or murder,” he said, “but you’re responsible for inspecting milestones and tightening up on travel and transport, right?”

  Firmus blinked. “Yes.”

  “Does that include the Imperial post?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “And interfering with the Imperial post is a serious offense, yes?”

  “Of course.”

  “That’s how we nail Rogatus. Talk to Publius up at the mansio. Say you had an anonymous tip-off about people abusing the system and you want to help him clean it up. Dias is probably involved too, but if you can’t get him that way, have somebody check all the records of the Third Brittones. You may be able to get him for faking a medical discharge.”

  Firmus’s eyes were bright. “And the magistrate-Gallonius?”

  “I don’t know,” confessed Ruso. “He’s overcharging the mansio for supplies, but that’s not illegal. Maybe Metellus can come up with something.”

  “It’s worth a try.” Firmus got to his feet. “Stay around in case my uncle wants to talk to you.”

  Ruso doubted that the procurator would want to talk to him ever again, but he supposed he should comply. Thus he was standing on the edge of the governor’s landing stage and wondering whether any of the ships moored farther down the glistening Tamesis would take him back to Gaul when a figure materialized beside him. Metellus wanted a quiet word.

  There was only one word Ruso wanted to hear from Metellus. “Is my wife’s name off that list?”