by Ruth Downie
The smile faltered. “I’m afraid the holy spring isn’t suitable for bathing, sir. But the baths will be open just after midday.”
“So late?”
In what was evidently a practiced speech, the man explained that the bathhouse was reserved for ladies only in the mornings, in line with the emperor’s ban on mixed bathing. “But we open to all on selected evenings for festivals and private parties. Perhaps you would like to visit the temple instead, sir? We have some fine works of art and treasures on display. Most of our visitors are very impressed with it.”
Ruso thanked him for the advice, although he had no intention of following it. In other circumstances he would have been happy to visit the temple of a healing god, but he was here to inquire about a murder, not about miracles, and he certainly wasn’t going to waste a morning gazing at statues.
Before he could retreat, another voice, so close that he was startled, said, “Let me show you around, sir.” Then, addressing the pink head in the window, it said, “You carry on, Latinus. I’ll make our guest welcome.”
The head vanished. Noting the name of Latinus as someone he probably needed to speak to later, Ruso found himself standing beside a short, wide figure whose thinning curls matched the gray bags under his eyes. The face and the shape and the walking stick looked familiar, but it was a moment before his memory added the toga, the rattle, and the cries of Hail, Sulis Minerva!
“You’re the priest.”
The man, now wearing a smart cream linen tunic with three stripes over the shoulder, inclined his head. “Dorios. Honored to be the chief priest of Sulis Minerva. Also chief magistrate.”
No wonder the man looked weary under the weight of all that responsibility.
“And you are?”
“Ruso.”
“Ruso!” repeated the man, as if he had been looking forward to meeting him all week. “Welcome to Aquae Sulis!”
Ruso wondered why such an important official was bothering to offer a guided tour to a stranger, especially a stranger who had expressed no desire at all to see the temple. Was he intercepting any visitor who showed an unhealthy interest in falling into the spring? Or was he just a generous host, keen to welcome visitors and show them what Aquae Sulis had to offer?
Dorios steered him in the direction of the temple steps. The polite question about Ruso’s journey led to a surprised “All the way from the border?” and progressed through the obligatory inquiry after the progress of the emperor’s Great Wall to “And are you a soldier yourself?”
“Not these days.” Too late, Ruso realized that he should have invented a cover story. He did not want to admit any connection with Serena straightaway. But a town full of sick people and their healers was not the place to admit to being a doctor, either, so he said, “I’ve been in Rome,” and quickly changed the subject, leaving the man to imagine something far more mysterious and glamorous than the reality. “I’ve got a letter to deliver while I’m here. I need to find a chap called Terentius. I’m told he’s an engineer at the bathhouse.”
But sadly it seemed Terentius had moved away the previous month. The building project he was working on had run into difficulties and been abandoned, and Dorios did not know where he had gone.
“Is there anybody I could leave it with?”
The priest was full of regret that there was not, which was just as well, because Ruso hadn’t written it yet. Indeed, only the other day the chief engineer had been lamenting the lack of a forwarding address. “We’ll just have to wait until he makes contact. But you know what young men are like.” The sagging features lifted into a conspiratorial smile. “I expect he’s busy.”
Since he was probably busy running away, it would be a long wait.
“I hope you haven’t had a wasted trip.”
“Not at all,” Ruso assured him, adding with sudden inspiration that he was there on behalf of a friend with some money to invest.
“Ah, I see!”
Ruso hoped he did, because his own imagination was struggling to fill in the details of the wealthy friend. “But if you could keep it quiet …”
“Of course, sir.”
With luck, the man wouldn’t keep his promise and Ruso would become someone whom people wanted to meet.
“In fact, sir, you’ve just witnessed the need for a project that might interest your friend.”
“Really?” Ruso noted that now he had a rich friend, he had become “sir” again.
“The emperor himself suggested an expansion of the temple area when he came to visit. And as part of it we’ll be building a second bathhouse so everyone can have access all day.” Dorios raised a stubby forefinger in the direction of the sacred spring. “At the far end of our present bath building.”
“So that wasn’t the project that was abandoned?”
“Oh, no, sir. That was something else.”
“So what was that?”
Dorios shook his head sadly. “It was a wild venture, sir. An attempt to tame one of the other outlets of the goddess’s waters. Frankly, it was ill-considered from the start and the omens were never good. Whereas the East Baths project has been carefully planned over several years, and our own haruspex has declared the omens to be very promising.”
Ruso said, “I see,” because he had no idea what a man who was keen to invest in expanding bathhouses might say.
Dorios seemed to take his cool response as an invitation to be more forthcoming. He raised one hand as if he were asking for a moment to think something over, then said “Yes” to some argument that had apparently been going on inside his head. “Yes, I think we could see a little of the bathhouse if you wish. I’m sure Latinus—he’s our manager—won’t mind.” He gestured toward the door beside the spring. “Shall we?”
Ruso followed the priest through a side door and hoped the imaginary friend wasn’t going to be more trouble than he was worth.
“We’ll have a corridor through here for privacy,” explained Dorios, indicating a space marked off by a row of movable wooden screens that meant all Ruso could see of the echoing changing hall was a pod of painted dolphins leaping across the ceiling. A sudden shriek drew his attention to the pale flesh of a young woman retreating through a gap farther along the screens. Evidently she had not expected to find two men standing there.
While Dorios explained the merits of the building alterations, Ruso gazed up at the dolphins and wondered whether Terentius and Serena had met beneath them on the night of the murder. He was now standing where the manager had been when he called out, Careful, sir! Behind him were the glassless windows that opened directly onto the pool where Serena’s body had been found. He considered a new possibility. What if Serena had been attacked in here? Anyone wishing to heave a body out through the window would have had a struggle, but what if she had used the last of her strength to scramble over one of the sills herself? If Terentius could unlock the door after hours to let her in, he could lock it again to trap her. She could have tumbled into the water while trying to escape from him.
Meanwhile the priest was busy telling him about—what was it? The emperor’s interest in architecture, the redecoration plan, the hope that Ruso would enjoy the facilities in the hot and cold rooms later in the day …
Aware that the man had stopped talking and was looking at him as if expecting a response, Ruso said, “Mm.”
“Excellent!” The smile reappeared. “Because if he could get here in time, I’m sure we could arrange a space for him at the governor’s dinner.”
Another reminder, as if one were needed, that the wretched visit of the governor was drawing closer with every hour that passed. The imaginary friend, though, must be looking forward to it. He now had an invitation to the best dinner in town. “I’ll let him know.”
Ruso turned and rested his elbows on the sill of the central window, wondering if a woman who had been stabbed through the heart could possibly muster the strength to—
“It’s a fine sight, sir, don’t you think?”
/> The priest had joined him, gazing beyond the pool to where the morning sun was gilding the steps and columns of the temple. Ruso agreed.
“People talk about Londinium and Camulodunum,” Dorios continued, “but those of us who have the pleasure of living here know that these are the most important buildings in the province.”
Ruso raised his eyebrows and waited to find out what was so special about Aquae Sulis apart from the cheap hot water supply.
“You’ll be aware of the trouble with the natives in the past, sir.”
“I was up on the border for the last lot,” Ruso told him, narrowly stopping himself from adding that he had treated many of the Roman casualties. While everyone called it “trouble,” disaster would have been a better word.
“And you’ll have heard the old tales of the mad queen’s rising in the East.”
Mad if you were a Roman. Heroic if you were Tilla. “Boudica.”
“Exactly. We’re very glad we still have military men like yourself to keep us safe, sir. But here at Aquae Sulis we like to think we’re showing the natives a new way forward. Coming together in joint worship. Their Sulis, our Minerva. Their traditional shrine, our stunning architecture.”
Their moustache, our plumbing. Victory by water engineering. Ruso tried to sound suitably impressed, then could not resist adding, “I saw you have a native priestess.”
If the priest saw the unsettling resemblance between Boudica and the flaming red hair of the native priestess, he chose not to acknowledge it. “The natives have a, ah … a rather different understanding of priesthood from us, sir.”
A rather different understanding of priesthood was a diplomatic understatement. While Boudica had been busy burning her nearest Roman city to the ground and massacring its residents, the Roman governor of the province had been on the far side of the island wiping out most of the Britons’ religious leaders. Coming together in joint worship must require a deliberate act of amnesia.
“But,” Dorios continued, “we are making progress. The shrine is increasingly popular with both groups. The extra bathing suite and the temple expansion are only the first steps. Ideally we would like accommodation for the patients separate from the temple, a better roof over the main pool, and perhaps a small building to protect the spring from the weather.”
It seemed there were investment opportunities to match all purses. Ruso said “Ah” in what he hoped was a suitably enigmatic fashion. No doubt Dorios was looking forward to introducing the imaginary investor to his fellow magistrates. And no doubt all the grand plans for expansion would be knocked sideways if a whisper got around that the temple staff had been so slack as to allow the body of a woman who had been murdered—sadly, these things happened—to pollute Sulis Minerva’s sacred spring. It was the sort of desecration that could bring about disaster, and so it had proved for Aquae Sulis: That very night, the goddess had sent a terrible fire and burned innocent men in their beds.
The fact that the one hadn’t necessarily led to the other wouldn’t matter. People didn’t listen to logic when they were choosing their holiday destinations. Or their healing shrines.
Ruso ran one hand through his hair. “Listen, I know I’m probably asking the wrong person, but does the goddess really answer the patients’ prayers?” He had never understood how remedies dreamed up while spending a night in the presence of the god, often accompanied by sacred dogs or snakes, could succeed where conventional treatment had failed. What was it Cicero had said about dreams? That dreams didn’t teach reading and writing, so why would they teach medicine?
Dorios, however, had no such doubts. “Oh, yes. Absolutely. You must go into the temple and read the testimonies on the wall. Some of them are quite remarkable.”
“I will,” he promised, pushing aside a sudden and irrational stab of professional jealousy. He needed to hurry this tour along. He had urgent inquiries to make, and hanging around in the bathhouse was not going to answer them. “The baths are smaller than I thought.”
“Ah, but there’s more!” Dorios announced. “This way, sir.” He led his guest along past the screens and hauled open a massive door.
This was more like the scene Ruso had been expecting. The two men stepped into the fug of a vast hall that enclosed one steaming bath the size of a sixty-foot swimming pool, with a smaller one beyond it. Green light filtered down into it from the high glass windows, and the delicate song of a pair of pipes hung in air that was thick with the scent of oil and hot bodies and the minerals of Sulis Minerva’s water. Between the heavy columns that held up the roof beams, the steps around the bath were adorned with several pale figures and a couple of brown ones in various stages of submersion. Children were splashing about in the arms of their maids. Or their mothers. Without the distinction of clothes, it was hard to tell. A naked woman with her eyes closed was performing a leisurely backstroke from one end of the pool to the other.
“This is the place to bathe in the sacred waters, sir,” Dorios informed him, apparently oblivious to the heat and the naked woman. “I’m afraid we can’t linger.”
Ruso wiped his forehead with the back of his hand and thought of basking seals, and sirens, and then, looking again at the clientele draped over the steps, of beached jellyfish. He realized one of the jellyfish was glaring at him and averted his gaze. This was, after all, the ladies’ bathing session, despite the presence of the old boy on his knees scrubbing the paving, and the inky-fingered man sitting behind a scribe’s desk, chatting to the girl selling pastries and drinks, and another fellow beside a painted board whose snake-on-a-stick motif pronounced him to be a healer.
He followed Dorios back to the entrance and to decency, declined a cup of Sulis Minerva’s wondrous water—it would be a long time before he wanted to drink from that spring—and excused himself from a guided tour of the temple by saying he had to meet his family.
“Do come back and bathe later on, sir. I can vouch for the water myself. Marvelous for all manner of aches and pains. We have highly skilled doctors and masseurs on-site throughout the day. And of course there are plenty of good places to eat and drink. Any of the staff will be pleased to direct you. Whatever you need, don’t be afraid to ask!”
“I won’t,” Ruso assured him. But he was confident that neither I need to get my friend out of that terrible room nor I need to catch the man who murdered Serena and dumped her in your sacred spring would be needs that any of the staff wanted to discuss.
11
Tilla paused to lift the blanket and check that the braid harness around Mara’s chubby form was firmly tied to her minder’s wrist. Baby and slave were both asleep in the sunshine, but there was no telling which of them would wake first. Satisfied that Mara could not crawl unheeded around the stacked amphorae and drop over the side into the river, Tilla stepped past Albanus. He barely looked up from the new scroll he had bought yesterday from a dealer in the port. She threaded her way between the sweating rowers to the prow of the boat. A cool breeze ruffled her hair while the gray-green waters slid past below her, almost close enough to lean down and touch.
The river was narrower here. Earlier they had passed under spectacular gray cliffs. Now the water lapped against dark woods on either side of them, and the bends in its course made it impossible to see very far ahead. They had passed other craft but at the moment there were no boats in sight. Only a little landing stage with its scatter of huts set well above the waterline marked the presence of humans.
Tilla glanced back at Esico. The gangling slave was leaning over the side and trailing one hand in the water. She called to him to join her and said in his own tongue, “I thought we had lost you yesterday, Esico.”
“Me, mistress?” The innocent tone was belied by the pink flush spreading up his neck and across his cheeks.
Esico’s tendency to dawdle over jobs that did not interest him often meant he was gone longer than expected, but yesterday’s disappearance into the backstreets of Abona had been unusual even by his standards. Tilla, who ha
d a fair idea of why, had decided to wait until they were alone to tackle him about it. “Is it true that if we had sailed along the coast toward the sunset, instead of turning up this river, we would have reached the lands of your people, where the coast is rocky and the tides are high?”
“The Dumnonii are not my people now, mistress.”
“Even so.” She could only imagine how a family might long for news of a lost son. “That is where your father is a warrior and an elder?”
Esico mumbled something about not knowing where to find his father. She assumed the lad had gone to ask about him in Abona. Seaports were fine places for picking up news. It seemed there had been nothing, which was why he had come back, claiming to have got lost—a poor excuse in a town by the sea where you spoke the local language. Still, Tilla knew how lonely it was to be a slave in someone else’s tribe.
“Somebody among your people will know, surely? What is the name of your home? We must send a message to say you are safe and well.”
“My father is not an elder now,” Esico admitted. “There was trouble. Now other people are in charge.”
“Was that how you ended up as a slave?”
“Yes, mistress.”
So. Rival leaders had deposed the father and sold the son. It was an old story. Nobody wanted the warrior children of ousted leaders hanging around, causing trouble, and he was lucky he had not been murdered. Certainly he could not go home. “Do you have brothers and sisters? A mother?”
“All dead, mistress. Perhaps my father too.”
“We can try to find out while we’re down here if you like.”
But Esico did not seem especially interested. Perhaps he would rather imagine his father to be alive than know for certain that he was not.
“You can go and sit down now,” she told him. “Do not wander off again when we get to Aquae Sulis or I shall have you brought back and beaten. We need you for unloading.”
Farther back, the baby and her minder had not moved. The minder—the slave they had actually gone out to buy when Tilla had taken pity on Esico as well—had never shown any sign of wanting to go home. There was nothing Neena missed about her own tribe: Even there she had always been a slave.
