by Ruth Downie
“Then let her family grieve in peace.”
Tilla stepped out from behind him to face their host. “Doctor Valens is grieving too, sir.”
Pertinax turned his gaze on her for the first time. “So you do know where he is.”
Ruso swallowed. Tilla wisely followed his cue and remained silent.
“Talk or don’t talk, it doesn’t matter,” Pertinax continued. “I can have you followed.” He bent and retrieved the inkpot that had rolled under his chair. “Clear off, the pair of you. And stay out of my family business.”
“I intend to find out the truth, sir,” Ruso told him, determined not to leave before he had made the situation clear. “I’ll be making inquiries and I’d appreciate your understanding, if not your cooperation.”
“Out!”
Ruso grabbed his wife and shoved her out of harm’s way again. The inkpot flew past his ear and exploded against the wall, narrowly missing one of the veteran guards.
Maybe Pertinax wasn’t mellowing after all.
17
They made their way out to the late-afternoon warmth without speaking. As Ruso crossed the terrace to the garden steps he mused that the view from Pertinax’s house didn’t seem so fine now. The sparkling river was inappropriately cheerful and the sparrows squabbling in the hedge seemed to be mocking him. What sort of insensitive fool hoped to persuade a bereaved father to see reason?
Tilla paused to pluck a dead rose from the rambler that had been trained along the wooden terrace railings. “There are weeds in the flower beds,” she observed. Now he looked, he saw that the little ornamental hedges between the beds were straggly and in need of a trim. He supposed the gardens had been Serena’s domain: once a joy, now another reminder and a burden.
Tilla said, “I am sorry about telling him—”
“It doesn’t matter,” he told her. “He’d already guessed that we know where Valens is.”
“But if he has us followed—”
“He won’t have the resources to follow me, you, and Albanus.” At least, he hoped not.
The gate in the wall below them creaked open and a stranger began to make his way up the steps. The man was breathing heavily and his face had an unhealthy pallor. He was taller and balder than Pertinax, but that nose was unmistakable. They waited on the terrace to let him pass, and his nod of greeting turned into the involuntary jolt of a cough. He struggled to draw breath as the coughing fit threatened to overwhelm him. Finally he turned aside to spit into a cloth.
Ruso said, “Gaius Petreius Ruso, sir. Are you Serena’s uncle Catus?”
The man grunted. “My brother said you would turn up.” He made them sound about as welcome as a fly laying eggs on his dinner.
“I served under your brother in the Twentieth, sir. My wife and I knew Serena well. We grieve for her.”
Catus nodded and lifted an unsteady hand to wipe his brow. “A terrible loss,” he said. “I doubt my brother will ever recover.” His voice trailed away into silence and he swayed alarmingly. His face was like chalk.
Ruso and Tilla grabbed an arm each. “Sir, I think you need to sit down.” They led him to a wooden bench scattered with rose petals. “Just sit down and try to breathe normally. Any pain in the chest at all?” There was not, but the man was alarmingly thin and Ruso was fairly certain he had glimpsed a spatter of red on the cloth. “It’s a warm day to be hurrying up steps.”
The man had to fight a fresh fit of coughing before he could say, “Don’t patronize me, son. I was your age once. Walked the—length of the Augusta—aqueduct in an afternoon.” A pause for a tentative breath. “Can’t get up my own garden now.”
There were footsteps behind them, accompanied by a jingle of metal. A tall red-haired woman had come out of the house. The blue plaid tunic suggested she was a native; the keys at her belt said she held authority. She seated herself beside the engineer, put a hand on his shoulder, and said in Latin that leaned toward the local accent, “You look weary, Catus. Is there anything I can do?”
Ruso felt Tilla’s boot pressing onto his toes and realized he was staring. Surely this woman could not be the notorious Gleva?
“He needs water,” he told her.
She said, “Who are you?”
Ruso gave her his name. Adding the words I’m a doctor did not work its usual magic.
“I hope you’re not the one who’s been upsetting Pertinax.”
If she really was Gleva, then Tilla must surely be amazed too. He had wondered vaguely what sort of woman might want to take on Pertinax, but nowhere in his imaginings had he considered the flame-haired dancing priestess from last night’s parade.
Tilla said, “We have not come to upset anyone. We are here to grieve and to help.”
“I’m a doctor,” he repeated, hoping his shock had not been too obvious. “This man needs some fresh water.”
The bald head lifted slightly. “I’ll be all right. You can all stop fussing.”
The hand resting on Catus’s shoulder was almost as big as Ruso’s own. “Of course you are all right,” the woman agreed. “Are these people bothering you?”
Catus said, “Not as much as you are.”
The priestess got to her feet. “These are very difficult days,” she observed to no one in particular. “I will tell the staff to bring water. Try not to upset him.”
When she had gone, Catus said, “Wretched woman. Everyone’s gone mad.” A pink petal drifted down and landed on his arm. He stared at it as if he were too tired to brush it away. “A terrible loss,” he repeated. “Two young lives ruined.”
Ruso said, “I’m told the missing man was your assistant.”
“Terentius. Fine lad. Good engineer.” The man paused as if he could feel another cough rising, then carried on. “Only had to tell him something once,” he said. “I suppose you’re here to defend the husband.”
“I’m trying to find out what happened, sir. Anything you can tell me would be helpful.”
A murmur of “Sir?” heralded the arrival of Pertinax’s aged houseboy with the water. Catus took a long draft and sat cradling the cup with both hands, staring at the weeds peeping between the flagstones of the terrace. His breathing had steadied now. “She was a sensible girl, Serena. Thought almost like a man. Not silly like some of them.”
Ruso said, “It must have been very upsetting to find her, sir.”
“You’re wasting your time, Doctor.”
Not wanting to push further, Ruso waited.
“It’s no good you trying to stir it all up again. My brother’s taking it to the governor. If you want to do something useful, hand over that murdering husband of hers for trial.”
“But—”
“I suppose he thinks I didn’t see him there that night.”
Ruso said, “Valens?”
“Prowling around the courtyard. I saw the knife in his hand.”
“Valens?”
Catus paused to clear his throat. “I would have said something,” he said. “But it was dark, and I thought I was alone there with him. He’d just had an argument with my niece. I didn’t want trouble.”
“You saw Valens in the temple courtyard with a knife? The night Serena died?”
“Did I not make myself clear?”
“Did you see Serena or Terentius there too?”
“I told you, I thought I was alone with him. Not much sense asking questions if you don’t listen to the answers.”
“What made you think it was Valens, sir?”
But the man’s interest had drifted to his niece. “I won’t say she wasn’t headstrong. Took after her father. He should have been firmer with her. He should never have let her marry that idiot. What sort of father marries his daughter off to a doctor? Might as well take her to the theater and offer her to the actors.”
Ruso, who had witnessed the courtship, said, “I don’t think your brother had much say in it, sir.”
“If I’d said something to him, they might both still be alive.”
&n
bsp; If only … Ruso suspected he would be hearing a lot of that over the next few days.
Tilla said, “He was unlucky you were there at that very moment to see him, sir.”
Catus grunted assent. “Only went across to make sure the sandbags were doing their job around the drain.”
Tilla said, “What do you put sandbags round the drain for?” as if she was genuinely interested.
“High tide after heavy rain,” he explained. “You get the river flooding back up the drain into the bath and you’ve got a terrible mess.”
“It must be a lot of work,” Tilla sounded impressed.
Catus grunted again. “Nobody notices what engineers do till it goes wrong.”
Now that Tilla had neatly established what Catus himself was doing in the courtyard at night, Ruso said, “I don’t understand how you knew it was him in the dark, sir.”
“It was him. That bath oil. Smelled it on him at the house.”
Tilla said, “Bath oil?”
“Terentius wouldn’t have stood a chance,” Catus continued. “Good lad, but never had weapons training. No good for the legions. Deaf in one ear.”
The man was right: Ruso had sat on many recruitment panels as medical assessor and none would have passed Terentius as fit for training unless someone higher up had overruled them. A legionary needed to be able to hear orders from all directions. So an attacker who knew which side to approach him from would have had the advantage of surprise. But the idea of Valens prowling about in the dark with a knife was ridiculous. Besides, if Terentius had been a victim, where was his body? It was much more likely that he was a killer on the run. And this man might be able to help track him down. “Sir, Terentius could be safe somewhere. We could help you look for him.”
“Utter waste. All that time I spent teaching him. All that work he did. All the plans. And now he’s gone, and they want to blame him for murdering my niece.”
“ ‘They’?” Ruso had not realized he might have allies in seeking to accuse Terentius.
“Bad for business to make a fuss. Blame the lad who can’t be found.” He leaned sideways and spat on the ground. “Cowards.”
“Who’s blaming him, sir?”
“Cowards, every one of them. His whole life was here. He could have had a future.”
Not if he were caught and convicted of murdering Serena. And then there was that business of the veterans’ failed building project over behind the temple complex—the one Terentius had been involved in. The one that had allegedly upset the gods and must have cost the investors dearly. No wonder the young man was nowhere to be found.
“Sir, the building work at the other spring …”
“All wrong, right from the start. I told them they’d have trouble with that land, but nobody wanted to listen. They should have hired another architect, not left it all to the youngster.”
“Did Terentius get the blame?”
“I told him, ‘Never mind, my lad, you’ll learn from it. You can still step into my shoes when I retire.’ Course, he had a lot of daft ideas of his own about water levels and draining the silt out of the spring. I told him, ‘That’ll never work,’ but who knows? He might have been right.”
Tilla said, “You must miss him terribly, sir.”
Catus was shaking his head slowly from side to side. “I won’t find another lad like that to follow me on. It’s too late now.”
Ruso said, “Where do you think he is, sir?”
“They’re sending me a replacement from Londinium. Have to start all over again with some feller nobody’s ever heard of.”
Tilla said, “Maybe Terentius saw the knife too, sir, and decided to keep away from it.” She seemed to realize that she had inadvertently conceded that Valens might have been armed, and hastened to add, “Perhaps the person who killed Serena is someone else that none of us knows about.”
“Hmph.”
She said, “We will gladly help you to look for Terentius.”
“You won’t find him now. He’s long gone.”
“He could tell us exactly what happened.”
Catus put the cup down, lowered his head, and grunted with the effort of pushing himself up from the bench. “The last thing Serena’s boys ever need to know,” he said, “is exactly what happened to their mother.”
Ruso stood beside him. “Sir,” he said, “if your brother insists on bringing an accusation against Valens, the lawyers will tear the whole story apart in front of everyone. Word will get around. If we can find Terentius, he can talk to the governor in private and we might be able to spare the boys from the worst of the trial.” Even as he said it, he was shocked to realize how easily he had abandoned one of the basic principles of civilized society: that trials should be held in public.
“None of it will bring my niece back.”
“What do you think would be best for her children, sir?”
Catus shook his head. “It’s my brother’s decision, not mine. He’s hiring the lawyer.”
“But he is wrong!” put in Tilla before Ruso could ask who the lawyer was.
“My brother respects the law.” Catus paused to grab the cup and drain the last of the water. “Your friend will be accused in public in front of the governor. I shall say what I saw. The boys …” He paused. “The boys will have to live with what their father did.”
Somehow, despite making a totally misguided accusation, Pertinax had ended up on the moral high ground here. Ruso said, “Sir, if you could—”
“A lesser man than my brother would take vengeance into his own hands.”
Before Ruso could reply, there was a crash behind them as the door was flung back against the wall, and Pertinax roared, “I told you to get out of my house and out of my family’s business!”
For a moment Ruso froze. Then he looked more carefully at the aging grandfather with one leg missing who was tottering toward them, calling for his staff to “throw that pair off our property!” and for his brother not to say another word, and realized that what he felt was more pity than fear.
If only Valens could say the same.
18
“Well!” said Tilla, hauling open the gate that was there to stop stray animals from wandering up the path to the cemetery. “Gleva was not what I was expecting.”
Her husband, cradling the jug of wine they had just bought, lifted the gate back into place with his free hand and dropped the rope over the post. “Perhaps that woman’s not Gleva. Perhaps she’s just …”
“Just what?”
“I don’t know,” he confessed.
“Are you sure she was the same person you saw in the parade?”
He said, “How many six-foot redheads do you think there are in a town this size?”
“She might be a sister, or a cousin.”
“It was her.”
From Virana’s description she had thought this Gleva must be a person of no importance who was seeking to raise herself, but what was it Virana had said about her wanting to annoy the high priest? The idea of a priestess attaching herself to the leader of the veterans made some sort of sense. A powerful woman seeking influence might well knock aside someone like Serena who stood in her path, and who better than a priestess to understand the power of a curse?
“The question is,” he said, “why does Pertinax fall for it? She’s not unattractive, but you’d think he would go for a woman who knows her place and won’t embarrass him.”
“Virana says she is using a love potion.”
The snort told her what he thought of that.
“What, then? You are the one who cannot understand a man wanting a woman who does not know her place.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“If not a love potion, then what?”
He said, “You think I know what’s in the mind of Pertinax?”
“He is a man,” she pointed out. “So are you.”
He thought about it for a moment. “I imagine she fusses over him,” he said. “She makes him feel important.”
“Oh. And does he not wonder why?”
“Why would he care? She’s probably sensational in bed.”
She wondered if he could tell how Gleva was in bed from looking at her, or if it was just a guess. There was no point in asking: He would just say whatever he thought would cause the least trouble.
If only a woman could, just for one day, look out at the world through the eyes of a man.
He said suddenly, “I wish I’d known who she was when I was talking to her brother.”
Only when she said “Her brother?” did he tell her about the man who had invited him to bathe in one of the sacred springs.
How could anyone forget a thing like that? With some unease she asked, “You did go in, yes?” and was relieved to hear that he had. To refuse the invitation would have been a great insult.
She paused to pick some white bindweed flowers from the hedge beside the path. “What is his name and his people?”
“Brecc. I never found out much about the people.”
That was the first thing a Briton would have asked. Then, no matter how far apart their homelands, they would have tried to find something or someone in common. Perhaps a well-traveled horse trader, famous for spotting winners with his one eye. Perhaps a local man who had once visited the borderlands and brought back a wife, or a fresh scar, or a bad joke. But this Roman from Gaul, no matter what tongue he spoke, could not offer any of the sort of connections that would make him truly accepted amongst the local tribes. Which made being invited into the pool even more of an honor than he could ever understand.
“This must be it,” he said.
The grass around the tomb had been trampled by recent visitors. Pausing to stand beside him, Tilla gazed at the square little house built of the local honey-colored stone. Its tiled roof was barely higher than her own shoulder. The studded oak door was just big enough to admit a funeral urn. Above the door was a blank space, waiting for a carving or a slab that would speak everlasting words to honor the dead.
The sun was low now, and her feet were chilly in the shadow of the tomb. Almost without thinking, she stepped back. “We should look at the others. Just to make sure.”
