by Ruth Downie
The crates only hid Ruso from people standing at the kitchen end of the yard, not from anyone approaching from the alleyway. But there was no time to climb back over the wall, so he stayed motionless, hood pulled down and cloaked arm up to cover the pallor of his face. The footsteps came back toward him. The man stopped. He was almost within touching distance. He smelled of fried onions. From beneath the hood Ruso could see only half the figure, and it was hard to tell which direction he was looking in.
Fortune was kind: The night was not as clear as it had been earlier, and thin clouds had veiled the moon. Ruso heard a faint scuffle close by and forced himself to stay still as something—a mouse? a rat?—ran over his foot and scuttled away. It was just as well Tilla wasn’t here.
The man grunted, appeared to stretch, then paused to scratch his crotch before going on his way. Ruso let his breath escape at last and eased himself into a more comfortable position before straining again to hear what was going on indoors. They were taking longer than he had expected, but he heard nothing that would suggest a wanted man had been apprehended while making his way from the stairs to the back door.
Valens couldn’t have mistaken the message, because—rather than trust Esico’s Latin—Ruso had scrawled it on a wax tablet.
I think the Mercury is being watched. Will be waiting for you in the yard of the Repose at the start of the third hour of the night. Use the back door and cover yourself up. We’re going for a walk.
There was nothing to do but wait and hope that if Pertinax had someone stationed in the alleyway at the back of the Mercury, he—or she—was no better than the very obvious spy he had placed at the front. Admittedly Pertinax was not known for his guile, but he could surely have done better than that scruffy native pretending to be asleep over his tankard of beer while glancing up every time someone came or went. There was something familiar about him too: Ruso was almost certain he’d seen the man before, even though he couldn’t remember where. The old centurion really was losing his touch. Unless, of course, the native was a decoy and the real spy was someone else …
No. Pertinax was never that subtle.
More movement at the door. Ruso put one eye up to the gap between the crates and was relieved to see two familiar shapes emerge into the yard. The pallor above Valens’s cloak suggested he had shaved off the beard. Esico was carrying a traveling bag. When they drew closer Ruso pulled both his companions back against the wall, out of sight of the open door, and hissed to Esico, “What have you got there?”
Valens answered: “My things.”
Ruso was baffled. “We’re not going on holiday.”
“I’m not leaving them behind!”
“You’ll be back in half an hour.”
“What?”
Ruso rammed an elbow into his friend’s ribs. “Keep your voice down.”
Valens lowered his voice but was still indignant. “I thought you were getting me out!”
“I said,” Ruso hissed in his ear, “we were going for a walk.”
“I thought you meant—”
“We’ll have to dump the bag by the gate.”
“I’m not dumping my things for someone to—”
“Nobody’s going to check the rubbish heap in the dark. Now, shut up and let’s go.”
“Where?”
“Out. Esico, leave everything there.”
Moments later they had lifted the bar on the gate and were striding three abreast toward the temple courtyard. Ruso’s reasoning proved correct: The few people who were out in the street to witness their approach were more concerned with keeping out of their way than with getting close enough to identify any of them. Just in case, he led his companions past the arch, round a few unnecessary corners, and in and out of shadows. Only the one main entrance to the courtyard would be open and he wasn’t going to use it until he was certain they wouldn’t be followed and trapped.
Safely inside and under the colonnade, he led them into a dark corner where they could hide and watch for anyone else moving about. The perpetual trickle of Sulis Minerva’s hot water overflowing from the sacred spring sounded louder than it had in daylight. Out in the open, he could make out the pale rectangle that must be the main altar, and above it the silhouette of the temple looming against the sky. One bright gold streak marked a gap between the doors. Beyond them, the goddess’s eternally burning lamp must be illuminating the hopeful sleepers and their attendants. He thought he detected a whiff of incense.
Thicker clouds drifted across the moon, and the pale shape of the altar faded into its surroundings.
Finally confident they were alone, he said softly, “Right. Esico, keep a lookout. If you see anyone at all, just say Good evening, sir loud enough for us to hear. Got that?”
“No, master.”
If there was one thing Ruso had successfully managed to teach his superfluous slave, it was that while there were many failings that could be forgiven, pretending you understood instructions when you didn’t was not one of them. He translated the order into British. “Got it now?”
“Yes, master.”
He drew Valens aside. “I want you to walk me through exactly what happened.”
“I don’t see how that’s going to help. I didn’t see anything.”
Ruso didn’t see how it was going to help, either, but he had no better ideas. “You followed Serena from Pertinax’s house,” he prompted. “What was she wearing?”
He could hear Valens scratching his head. “Some sort of thin blue drape. It was a warm evening.”
“And was she still dressed the same way when they found her?”
“Yes. Is that significant?”
“Too early to say,” said Ruso, who didn’t know himself. “How light was it?”
“Just the stars,” Valens said. “But I didn’t need much light. Her sandals had nailed soles. I could hear them clack on the paving. I followed the sound.”
“Right,” said Ruso. “Good.” Like her father, Serena had never been one for subterfuge. “What about your own shoes? Would she have known you were there?”
“I was careful.”
“And she walked down the main street?”
“Straight down here from the house and through the arch.”
“Alone?”
“Yes.”
“And you followed her.”
“Yes.”
“With the dagger drawn?”
“Of course not. That’s illegal.”
“Show me exactly where she went.”
Valens led him across the open courtyard, past the altar and the pool, and back under the colonnade not far from the side door that led to the baths. He counted off the row of identical stone pillars, each of them broad enough for an average-sized person to hide behind. “It was somewhere here,” he murmured, placing one hand on the stone and peering into the shadows. “Near that seat.” Ruso thought he could make out a low rectangle near the back wall of the colonnade to his right.
Serena had stood motionless behind a pillar, apparently unaware that her husband was standing three pillars farther along. “Downwind,” Valens added. “I knew if she got a whiff of that bloody bath oil, she’d realize I was here.”
Before long a man had hurried into the courtyard. Serena waited for a moment, perhaps to make sure it was the person she was expecting, then stepped out from her hiding place and pulled him in under the darkness of the colonnade.
“And you were …?” Ruso prompted.
“I moved a bit to try and see them. I didn’t go any closer.”
He let Valens run through the whole story without interruption. How he had drawn the knife, how just at that moment he was startled to hear the door of the baths shut, and someone passed behind him and out into the courtyard carrying a lantern. “And that’s when I thought, This is insane. I put the knife back and I walked away.”
“Did you recognize who it was with the lantern?”
“At first I thought it must be one of the priests. Then he coughed and I he
ard the keys jingling on his belt and I realized it was Catus. I didn’t think he’d seen me.”
If Catus had been carrying the lantern behind him rather than in front—the only way not to night-blind himself—he might have been able to pick out a figure lurking by the pillar. And if he had come out of the door from the baths, the breeze might have wafted the perfumed oil toward him as he entered. It all made rather more sense than Ruso had been hoping. One thing, however, did not.
“Wait there.” He stepped away from Valens and, making his way carefully backward, retreated along the colonnade. When he had counted off three columns he said, “Now go and stand by the wall and stay there.” The shape he had been able to pick out only because he knew where it was now vanished completely into the blackness.
He returned to his friend, counting the columns again. As he reached the last one he said, “Where are you?” and the reply of “Here” startled him with its closeness.
“I still can’t see you.”
He jumped as he felt a hand on his shoulder and the voice said “Here” in his ear.
“Hm.”
“What does that mean?”
“You said they were kissing. I’m wondering how you saw that in the dark.”
“I didn’t,” Valens said softly. “I heard them. There was just me and them, and the sound of the water flowing out from the spring. And this frantic whispering. Breathing. Gasping. You’d be amazed how much noise—” He stopped. “I thought how easy it would be to take him. Just slip up behind him, clamp a hand over his mouth, and ram the blade in between the vertebrae. I was just seized by this utter, absolute blind fury. It was as if nothing else mattered. Except to make it stop.”
Ruso held his breath.
Valens said, “You said you wanted the truth. This is it. If old Catus hadn’t turned up, I would have killed them both.”
22
Whoever it was managed to open the bedroom door silently, but the rising sound of chatter from the bar gave their arrival away. A glow appeared around the edges of the curtain and a bright spot betrayed a small hole in it that Tilla hadn’t noticed earlier. An intruder with a lamp seemed unlikely, but she reached under the pillow and slid out her knife anyway. She strained to hear the click of the latch being dropped, but the noise from downstairs faded with no other sound until the creak of a floorboard. She lifted the bedding, sat up, and planted her bare feet firmly on the floor. Softly, so as not to disturb Mara or Neena sleeping in the adjoining room, she asked, “Is that you?”
The light rose, the curtain shifted, and her husband’s head appeared. “Who did you think it was?” His eyes widened as he caught the glint of the knife. She slipped it out of sight again and he sat beside her on the bed. He said, “You could have fastened the door.”
“And have you knock and wake Mara?”
He leaned over and kissed her cheek. “Sorry. I didn’t expect to be this late.” He put the lamp on the trunk beside the bed and undressed, lowering his belt slowly onto the floor so the metal fittings and the strap ends didn’t land with a clatter.
“All right?” he asked, the usual prelude to pinching out the lamp.
“All right.”
The light died. As he slid under the covers beside her, she wound an arm and a leg around him and wriggled closer, enjoying the warmth of his body. “So. What happened?”
In place of a reply there was a grunt.
“Not good?”
“Not good.”
She waited for him to explain, but instead he lay thinking, gently running his thumb across the curve of her shoulder blade. At least, she supposed he was thinking. As the movement of the thumb gradually ceased she began to wonder. It would be very annoying if he were drifting off to sleep after she had made an effort to stay awake for him. She shifted a little farther away to make him less comfortable.
“This is a very strange town,” she told him. “Neena went shopping and she says there are lots of bars and places to buy souvenirs and jewelry but it is very hard to find anywhere to buy a cabbage.”
Silence. Then, “What did she want a cabbage for?”
So he was listening. “You know what I mean. What happened with Valens?”
“Valens,” he said, “has decided to leave town.”
“What? Where is he going?”
“I’m not sure he knows.”
“It must be better than hiding in a room all the time. He can send us a message when he gets there.”
“True.”
“It may be for the best. That local man was at the bar across the street until after dark, watching who went in and out of here. I think he got a bit drunk.”
“Mm.”
“If Valens has told you everything, he is safer somewhere else.”
“Mm.”
“Has he?”
“I said he could take Esico with him, so he’s got someone who can speak to the locals. He’ll send him back later.”
She pulled herself up on one elbow. “Has Valens told you everything?”
He rolled away from her and lay on his back. “You know, I can remember my father saying that his friends’ endearing quirks got more fixed and more annoying as they got older. At the time I thought it was just Pa getting more irritable. But I’m beginning to see what he meant.”
“You have had an argument.”
“He lied to me, Tilla. I’m his oldest friend, we came all this way, and he lied to me.”
“So? Valens lies to everybody.”
“Yes, but it never really mattered before.”
Surely it had always mattered to Serena? But Valens had been charming and funny and handsome and a good doctor. It seemed that what his wife thought did not count. Now, though, when the truth mattered more than ever before, he had changed his story twice, and the first time only because he had been caught out. Tilla had to agree that it did not sound good. “So, what will happen?”
“If he doesn’t come back to face trial, not only will he lose the boys but he’ll leave them believing he murdered their mother.”
She said very quietly, “Perhaps he did.”
When he said, “Imagine growing up with that,” she was not sure whether he had heard her or not.
Then he said, “I can’t … I don’t want to believe he did it. But between Valens and the local gossip, I’m not sure what’s true and what isn’t. I’m beginning to wonder if he knows the difference himself.”
“So, if he has run away, do you want to carry on?”
“No,” he said. “I want to do a bit of sightseeing, find out what Sulis Minerva does to her patients in that temple, and pretend none of this ever happened.”
“And then what will you do?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Oh, bugger.”
“What?”
“I’ve just remembered. He’s left your mirror behind in his room.”
She said, “You can get it in the morning.”
“In that place? Someone will have helped themselves.”
Before she could stop him, he had slid out of the bed and into the darkness.
23
Faced with explaining to the doorkeeper at the Traveler’s Repose that he had just dropped in at this strange hour to collect something from a friend, Ruso realized he probably should have bothered to get fully dressed after all. “I’m staying next door,” he reminded the man, adding, “I was here last night.”
The man let him pass with a warning to be quick and not disturb any of the other guests, and he helped himself to a lamp from the bracket before he slipped past the late drinkers and padded up the stairs in bare feet.
The latch was stiff, but just as Valens had said, the door was unlocked. Once in, he turned aside to find the lamp bracket. That was why he took his first step into the room without looking, and how he ended up stubbing his toe against something that caused him to swear and almost drop the lamp and lurch down toward his foot, and that was how the assailant who had been hiding behind the door failed to kill him. He felt th
e rush of air as something swept past, missing him by a fraction of an inch, and stumbled sideways.
He was still sprawled against the wall, weaponless, when the man came at him again, arm raised. Ruso flung the lamp at his face and dived, rolling across the floor and hearing the man yell out in pain.
By the time Ruso was back on his feet, his attacker was out of the door. Ruso hurled himself across the room and raced down the corridor in pursuit. He was almost in grabbing range of the dark cloak when the man swung around. The club in his hand smacked into Ruso’s left shoulder. His upper arm exploded in pain, and he went sprawling again.
This time he did not bother to get up. He lay on the bare boards clutching his arm, vaguely aware of feet thundering down the stairs and a lot of shouting. Then someone was standing over him for the second time that day and asking if he was all right.
“Someone just tried to kill me.”
“I’m very sorry, sir. We tried to grab him but he got away.”
Ruso looked up to see the gray-bearded form of Kunaris leaning over him. “He was waiting in the room.”
“Are you badly hurt, sir? Shall we call a doctor?”
“I am a doctor,” Ruso confessed, flexing the arm gingerly and deciding nothing was broken. “I’ll see to it.” He grabbed the banister rail with his good arm and hauled himself to his feet. “Did you see who it was?”
The landlord shook his head. “I’ll talk to the staff, sir, but I doubt anyone got a good look at him under that hood. I don’t know how he got in.”
“Probably over the gate and in the back door,” Ruso suggested. “The same way my friend got out.”
“Are you sure there’s nothing we can do for you?”
“I just want to get what I came for and go to bed.”
The pain in Ruso’s arm was easing slightly as he borrowed another lamp, went into the room, and retrieved Tilla’s mirror.
Standing in the doorway, he crouched down and righted the heavy chamber pot he had walked into earlier. Someone at the inn had finally taken the trouble to empty and return it, but instead of bothering to put it back in the corner they had just shoved it back through the open door. And in doing so, they had just saved his life.
