by Ruth Downie
“Yes, master,” said Esico, obeying for a few paces and then carrying on exactly as before. Clearly Ruso would get no sense out of him until they were safely indoors.
The patient was a frail old man with the sort of cough that got worse at night, and since the whole family lived in one room that smelled of damp, nobody was getting much sleep. Ruso tried to find a tactful way of telling the weary and exasperated son and daughter-in-law that the father was not coughing on purpose. As he did so the father tried one of the cough-mixture lozenges Ruso had given him to suck and spat it out, declaring that everyone was trying to poison him and they would be glad when he was gone.
The son shot Ruso a glance that said, You see? and insisted on paying for the medicine anyway, saying the father might be willing to try it again later.
Ruso left with the feeling that he had been another in a long line of disappointments. Even if his medicine soothed the cough, he was powerless to treat the underlying problem: that eight people were living in a room suitable for only two. In addition, the flights of steps that he was leading Esico down were so steep that the old man would never be able to leave the apartment unless he were carried. He wondered how much they were paying in rent and to whom. The property business is all about demand and supply. It certainly wasn’t about need.
On the way out he broke the news to Esico that they had another call to make. Esico managed to invest “Yes, master” with a sense of dread.
“It’s not far,” Ruso promised cheerfully.
This time, “Yes, master,” was in the tone of a young man resigned to his fate.
Even indoors Esico still looked nervous, but to a man who had served in the Legions, the headquarters of the night watch on the Via Labicana felt comfortingly familiar. The dimly lit corridor where they were told to wait smelled of leather and beeswax and unwashed humanity. From somewhere deeper inside came the sound of whistling over the rhythmic swish of something being sharpened. Through the opposite doorway Ruso could see a couple of cloaks hanging on wooden pegs and a cupboard with a stack of documents on top.
Two men in uniform with fireman’s axes strapped to their belts came out of a room farther up the corridor. Ignoring the visitors, they strode past with the confident air of trained professionals doing something that no civilian could possibly understand.
Esico was standing with his hands clamped behind his back. Ruso, unable to think of the British for Stop chewing your lip asked him again about the debt collectors, but it seemed Esico had concentrated on repelling rather than observing them.
Ruso said, “Thank you for looking after my family, Esico.”
It was hard to tell in the dim light, but he was fairly sure the youth’s angular face turned pink.
Esico went back to chewing his lip while Ruso gazed at the notices nailed to the board above the lone lamp.
A duty roster with scribbled alterations was followed in much larger writing by
NO MAN IS TO SWITCH DUTIES WITHOUT THE PERMISSION OF THE DUTY CENTURION.
BURIAL CLUB CONTRIBUTIONS NOW DUE.
ROOM TO RENT.
Ruso leaned back against the wall and stared down at the boots that had been tightly stitched and greased to keep out the British rain, wondering what was the matter with his wife, and if there was any chance she might have forgotten about it by the time he got back.
Thinking of Tilla reminded him that he needed to have a look at all the medicines Kleitos had left behind. If one of them was sloppily labeled, there might be others. He should throw them all away and start again. It was just as well he had smelled and tasted that poppy before dispensing it to Horatius Balbus.
A slave came hurrying along the corridor. Even in this light Ruso could make out the bloodstains on his tunic. The man bowed and announced, “The doctor will see you now, sir.”
It was apparent from Esico’s expression that he too had noticed the bloodstains, and Ruso’s assurance in British that the man they were following into the dark was a healer’s helper elicited only another glum “Yes, master.” Leaving him outside the door to worry, Ruso followed the slave into the brighter light of the treatment room.
Last time he had been here, he had been sent away almost immediately with the news that the watch already had a full complement of four medics and a masseur. This time Simmias looked up from pouring something out of a jug into a glinting glass vial and greeted him with “Ruso! Sorry to keep you waiting, dear boy.” He gestured toward the stool where a patient would have sat. “How can I help?”
Ruso glanced at the bloodstained slave. “It’s a personal matter.”
Simmias handed the vial to the slave and sent him to deliver it to somewhere else in the building. Taking up his own seat, he leaned forward with an expression of concerned interest that was really very impressive. “Tell me.”
“I’m confused.”
Simmias reached for a cloth and wiped his hands. Then he opened a cupboard and produced the sort of basin Ruso usually used when wounds needed to be washed. “Have a wine cake,” he said, “and try to start from the beginning.”
Ruso declined the cake. As Simmias helped himself and then put the basin away, Ruso said, “This afternoon I had a patient who told me that you took over in Kleitos’s surgery when he was injured. So now that you’ve had a chance to think about it, I’ve come to ask if you’ve remembered where Kleitos might be or how I could contact him.”
Simmias closed the cupboard door before replying, “I’m sorry. You’ve been misled.”
“Also I see that his name’s out there on the roster with yours as duty medic.”
Simmias put his cake down next to a stack of bandages. “We work at different times. I don’t know him well enough to know where he’s gone.”
“His patron’s very worried about him. And I need to ask him about a patient.”
“Can I help you with the patient?”
“No. Perhaps you have some idea why Kleitos has gone?”
But Simmias had nothing to offer on that subject, either. “I do hope you were out already this evening,” he said, reaching for the cake, “because otherwise you’ve had a wasted trip.”
“I had a house call,” Ruso told him, “and, ah … I might want to report a missing slave.”
The cake, which had begun its journey to Simmias’s mouth, was lowered again. “Not one of your Britons?”
Ruso shook his head ruefully. “You were right. I should never have listened to my wife. The skinny one bolted as soon as we got him home. I’m not paying to get him back, but somebody told me to come and report him in case the watch picks him up. What’s the procedure for that?”
“You’d need to talk to our centurion.” Simmias was looking much happier now they were not discussing Kleitos. “I think he puts the name on a list, but after that I’m not sure what happens. If they find someone they suspect is a runaway, they usually hold on to him for a while in case he’s claimed.”
Ruso scratched one ear with his forefinger. “To be honest, I’m not sure I want him back. What happens if I don’t report him?”
“Nothing, as far as I know.” Simmias took a mouthful of cake and said ’round it, “If he gets picked up and refuses to say where he comes from, he’ll be auctioned off.”
“And if he doesn’t get picked up by the watch?”
Simmias shrugged. “Who knows?”
Ruso pondered that for a moment. “I went to the undertakers’ today,” he said, “about that body in the barrel.”
“I thought that was all dealt with?”
“It is. He’s been identified, and the family have been informed.”
Simmias, who had taken another bite, stopped chewing.
“I suppose,” Ruso continued, “that we were all hoping it was some vagabond like my lost Briton—someone with nobody to mourn him. At least that way it would only be one man’s tragedy.”
“Absolutely.” Simmias put the crumbling remains of the cake aside.
“Let’s hope for the family’s
sake that he died of natural causes,” Ruso added. “Otherwise they’ll have the extra distress of deciding whether or not to investigate and prosecute.”
The “Yes” sounded faintly strangled.
“But the undertakers won’t divulge any details, so we’ll never know.”
“No,” Simmias agreed.
Ruso said, “I’m hoping that was the end of it, and whoever arranged that delivery to Kleitos has realized it’s a dangerous business and won’t do anything like it ever again.”
“I’m sure he won’t, whoever he was.”
“Even if he had the best of motives.” Ruso was not enjoying this. He had tried to heave himself up onto the moral high ground, but if he was honest, he felt sorry for Simmias.
“I can’t imagine what his motives might be,” said Simmias.
“I can,” Ruso confessed, getting to his feet, “having listened to those idiots sharing their ignorance in the Forum. Anyway, thanks for your time. I’m sorry you couldn’t help me find Kleitos, because that would have saved a lot of bother.”
“I would have if I could—believe me.”
He was almost at the door when Simmias called him back.
“Last time you were here you asked about a job. I’m sure if I put in a good word for you while Kleitos is away…”
“No, thanks,” Ruso told him. “I’m busy at the moment, trying to find him and trying to keep clear of the mess he’s left behind.”
Simmias was on his feet now, leaning back against the cupboard, and gripping the top with both hands as if he was trying to hold it down. He said, “Did that man really have a family, Ruso?”
“So I’m told,” Ruso said. He gestured toward the cupboard. “Enjoy your cake.”
29
On being told that they were going home, Esico at last strode briskly down the middle of the street as he had been ordered. Ruso was reminded of a horse heading back to its stable.
He was pleasantly surprised by another kiss on his return, although Tilla seemed to sniff at him like a dog checking out a new friend. He hoped he hadn’t picked up some sort of unpleasant smell.
“You were out a long time,” she told him, unfastening his cloak and hanging it on the back of the surgery door before locking up. “I was worried.”
“I had to wait at the night watch headquarters.” He went through to the bedroom, unstrapped the dagger, and laid it safely back in the box under the bed, aware of his wife watching him.
At his instigation, the lamps were extinguished early. Mara was already settled to sleep on one side of Narina’s mattress, and as he pointed out, everyone had had a busy day. But if Tilla noticed that this was their first night alone together for a very long time, she showed no sign of it, undressing in silence and shaking her golden hair loose in the lamplight before sliding under the covers.
He supposed she was tired. But he had spent a lot of borrowed money for this moment. A little intimacy did not seem much to ask in return. He licked his fingers and pinched out the flame, settling under the covers in the darkness and nuzzling her ear. “Finally,” he said, “just us.”
“Yes. Finally.” The words were used like weapons.
It was one of those times where a man had to weigh up which would cause more resentment: asking—again—what was wrong, or making a risky guess. Or trying the tactic of surprise.
“Good night,” he said, rolling away from her. “Sleep well.”
The silence in the bedroom went on for so long that he began to wonder if his feigned indifference had been a failure. Then it occurred to him that if she were asleep, he would hear her breathing. Whereas all he could hear was the distant sound of a dog barking. And then, “I am doing my best, husband.”
What was that supposed to mean? And more worryingly, what was he supposed to say in reply? Perhaps he could bluff. “I know.”
“Do you?”
There was no way back now. “Yes.”
“But I am not very good at it.”
At what? Should he stumble on in the hope of enlightenment, or retreat? He could try taking hold of her hand and squeezing it. Would that help? If they did not sort this out soon, Mara would wake up and Tilla would be out of his reach once more, gone to snatch her away from the baby-minder. “Wife,” he confessed to her back, “I need to tell you something.”
She sniffed. “I know.”
She knew? What did she think she knew? Or was she bluffing too?
He said, “I need to tell you that I haven’t the faintest bloody idea what we’re talking about.”
And that was how he discovered that Tilla was doing her very best to be a Good Roman Wife while her husband went out to bars and bathhouses and met important people.
Recalling the kisses and the deference, he let the business of the slave auction pass. Even Tilla’s best was not perfect.
Apparently one of the things Accius’s housekeeper had told her on the journey over here—as well as how little she would like Rome—was that husbands were never as interested once there was a baby.
“And you believed her?” he demanded, torn between framing a complaint to Accius and admitting that there might be some truth in it: All those broken nights and messy cloths were hard work.
Tilla said, “I told her when she had a husband she would know. But then you went out to the bar this afternoon, and then out to the baths, and then tonight—”
“Sabella wanted to complain about the mix-up over the body,” he explained, wondering how she knew where he had gone. “And I wanted to see if she could tell me where Kleitos is.”
“Why? We don’t want him back.”
“Ah, but his patron does.” He saw now that in the rush of buying the slaves, he had shied away from breaking the unwelcome news that he was now actively seeking the man who might displace them from their new lodgings. “And I need to talk to him about a patient,” he added.
Her “Oh” sounded baffled rather than angry.
He told her about buying supplies at the baths. Then he explained that he had been to visit Simmias at the night watch to try to make sure there would be no more bodies in barrels. When he had finished undermining tonight’s main objective with all these unromantic complications, she said, “Is that everything?”
She did not need to know the details of Balbus and the theriac. “Yes.”
“Good.” And then, instead of worrying about all these things as he had expected, she slid one smooth thigh across his and murmured in his ear, “Welcome home, husband.”
30
Ruso had no idea what time it was, and he didn’t care.
He was a contented husband with a satisfied wife lying beside him.
They had a sleeping child and, it seemed, a loyal household.
The body in the barrel had gone, and he had seen to it that there would be no more of them. Soon he would track down his missing predecessor and get the recipe for bald Balbus’s theriac, and everything would be all right. Because while he was out yesterday, Tilla had met some men who knew where Kleitos was.
He saw now how he and Tilla had been so anxious to allay any suspicion of Kleitos’s performing human dissections that they had started to believe their own cover story. They had seized onto the arrival of anyone who came asking for money as proof that the man was in debt. But Balbus—who should know—had insisted Kleitos was solvent. And now that he thought about it, the man from the undertakers’ had limped to the door only to request payment for a delivery. So it was very likely that the men Tilla said were “pretending to collect the other doctor’s things” really had been. And if they were sent by Kleitos, they must have a way of contacting him to pass on the money from the sale.
It was all ridiculously simple. Now all he had to do was trace the men. It was a pity Tilla had sent them away, but they would surely be back, and they would want to talk to him. He had the perfect lure: money. If the remaining furniture and equipment here was for sale, who better to buy it than himself?
He was wondering if it was worth try
ing to have the runaway slave tracked so he could hand him over in exchange for Kleitos’s abandoned possessions when he felt his wife move across the bed, and heard the soft shuffle of feet sliding into sandals.
“If you go in there and wake her,” he said, “we’ll all be sorry.”
The bed creaked as she sat down again. She said, “Do you think Virana misses her?”
“I expect so.”
“I am thinking we could send news.”
“We’ll do it tomorrow. Go to sleep.”
“Where will we send it?”
“Albanus will know where she is,” he told her, glad to turn his mind to happier times. He missed Albanus. The infatuation of his former clerk with a native girl who had no ambition beyond marrying a soldier had never made much sense to Ruso. Still, Albanus seemed to be flattered by the attention and Virana was delighted to have snared a real Roman at last. Meanwhile Tilla, desperate for a child of their own, had been happy to relieve her of the complication of Mara, who could have been fathered by any one of a number of Virana’s former boyfriends. It was a good solution all ’round, as long as you didn’t stop to wonder if Mara would grow up as feckless as her real parents.
“I will not tell Virana how horrible this city is,” Tilla murmured. “Or about Narina being Catuvellauni. I will tell her we are in a nice home.”
From beyond the bedroom door he caught the sound of someone moving about and then the trickle of urine going into the pot.
I am living, Ruso thought, in a household full of stray barbarians. More interesting was the thought that, at that particular moment, he really didn’t mind. Tomorrow he would sort everything out. For now, sleep was holding out her welcoming arms toward him and…
