by Ruth Downie
To Tilla’s relief the slave said, “You’ve got lovely hair yourself, miss! I’ve got some rosemary oil with lavender in my basket that would be just the thing for you. If you don’t mind waiting, I can do you next.”
Gleva looked about as pleased as a cornered rat, but the slave had her by the hair and Tilla had the perfect excuse to fetch a stool and sit beside her for a chat.
The priestess’s hair was full of tangles and took a long time to comb through. By the time it was done, Tilla was regretting ever starting this.
Getting to speak to Gleva had been easier than she had feared. Getting information from her was not. Switching to the local tongue in the hope of a little more privacy, Tilla tried to soften her by saying how shocked and saddened they were to hear that Serena had died. She said nothing of the attack on her husband the night before, and if Gleva knew of it, she chose not to mention it. Or indeed anything else.
The slave separated out a section of red hair, divided it into three and began to pass one strand swiftly over another to form it into a tight plait.
“Aquae Sulis is a long way from where my people live on the northern border,” Tilla continued, wondering if the woman was naturally quiet or just rude, “but we wanted to come and pay our respects.”
The hairdresser pinned the first plait roughly into place and began to form a second. At last Gleva spoke again. Since she was tethered to the slave by her own hair, the words “Serena is a very sad loss” were spoken straight ahead to the pool and Tilla could see her face only from the side. Perhaps that was what made it sound as though she did not mean what she was saying.
Tilla shifted position on the stool, pulled the towel tighter, and rubbed her fist into the small of her back to catch a trickle of sweat. She wished she had taken the time to go and get dressed before rushing across. She glanced back over the water and was reassured to see Mara’s head beside Neena’s. “We are very sorry for Officer Pertinax’s troubles,” she said, returning her attention to this difficult woman. “It was my husband who saved his life after the landslide last year.” Saved his life, she thought, sounded better than cut his leg off. “Perhaps you know about that?”
Gleva’s “Yes” could mean Yes or it could mean No, and I don’t want to hear about it.
“I am glad to see Serena’s boys doing so well.”
“As well as can be expected,” Gleva told the pool.
“I hear you are helping to look after them,” Tilla said. “That is very kind of you.”
“Someone has to do it,” said Gleva. “Their mother is dead and their grandfather is the only one who truly cares for them.”
Tilla bit back the words You know nothing about it! “Their father is very fond of them also.”
“That is not what Publius says.”
For a moment Tilla wondered who this Publius was and why he had any right to speak about Valens’s family affairs. Then it dawned on her that even Pertinax must have a first name. Publius. Publius something-or-other Pertinax. The man who struck terror into the hearts of trained killers on the parade ground must once have been a child. It was almost as hard to imagine as this woman from a Southern tribe having the right to use his name as if she were part of the family.
The hairdresser reached for her needle and began to stitch the two plaits together at the nape of Gleva’s neck with a length of russet wool in a very Roman fashion. Was Gleva taming her wild hair as part of her plan to lure Pertinax? While it was being done, she sat like a statue, her mouth shut as if she had spoken the last word on the subject of Valens and his children.
Tilla said, “I have known the boys since they were babies, and although Valens can be very annoying, he has never once beaten his wife or been unkind to his children. I have seen how the boys love and respect him. I am sure Serena would want us all to do the best for them that we possibly can.”
The hairdresser passed between them. Gleva waited until she had moved out of the way and then said, “It is a shame you are not part of the family. If you were, you would be able to offer help and advice.”
Tilla restrained an urge to grab Gleva’s remaining loose hair and yank her off the stool. The slave tidied the hair into a roll and removed the temptation.
“All done, mistress,” the slave murmured, holding out a mirror. Gleva, now looking more like a Roman wife than a local priestess, approved the front and sides of her hair, patted the back, and paid.
As the hairdresser stashed the money in the purse at her belt, Tilla murmured, “The boys are asking to see their father.”
“Then it is a pity he did what he did,” Gleva told her.
“But he—”
“Listen to me, woman from the North who calls herself Tilla. I understand that your man is a friend of the husband, and I have seen how loyal the soldiers are to their friends, but this is a family matter.”
“But you are not—”
“There is nothing useful you can do here. When you have paid your respects to Serena, you and your man should go home to the border and allow her family to mourn in peace.”
Before Tilla could think of an answer, Gleva turned and strode away. Tilla was left sitting on a stool wrapped in a skimpy towel and feeling hot and angry.
Several slaves paused to bow to Gleva as she passed.
Because Gleva was a priestess.
With that thought, Tilla was not hot and angry anymore. Invisible fingers began to slide icicles over her skin.
What if she had read things all wrong? What if Gleva had every reason to be cold? What if, in fact, she had been surprisingly polite?
What if Gleva knew, because her comrade the chief priest had stopped her on the way here to tell her, that Tilla and Virana had planned to put a curse on a woman who had murdered Tilla’s friend? And what if she was not fooled by the it-happened-a-long-way-away story? The only woman with a reason to murder Serena was Gleva herself. And now she might put a curse on Tilla and Virana too.
Maybe they should have gone ahead with it and got in first.
26
Ruso had intended to challenge Pertinax about the attack the night before, but to his frustration the centurion was not at home and the elderly houseboy who opened the door would not say where he had gone. Albanus, who hurried out from the children’s room at the sound of Ruso’s voice, did not know. He peered at Ruso and said, “Are you all right, sir?”
“No, I’m not. When you see him, tell him I want to talk to him. It’s important.”
Albanus’s “Oh, dear!” could have been sympathy for Ruso but was more likely alarm at the prospect of giving an unwanted message to Pertinax.
It was followed by a reassuring “Don’t worry, sirs. I’ll do it” from the houseboy, which might have prompted some interesting reflection on the relative status of slave and free in the centurion’s household if Ruso had not been more interested in knowing, urgently, who had sent the assassin to the Traveler’s Repose.
Unable to confront Pertinax, he went back to the Mercury to talk to the landlord, only to find Kunaris was out. The room upstairs was empty too. According to the chambermaid, Tilla and the others had gone to the baths.
The only person who was where he was expected to be was the old man sitting at the bar table across the road, watching Ruso over his beer. Ruso considered tackling him and then decided not to bother. He would only get entangled in argument and denial, and besides, his bruised arm was aching. The man he needed to find was Pertinax.
He would try Virana. As Valens had pointed out, she was always full of hot gossip, even if much of it wasn’t true. If she didn’t know where Pertinax was … well, this was a small town, and there couldn’t be very many men in it with only one leg.
He was passing the entrance to the temple courtyard when a voice called “Sir!” and he turned to see a temple slave hurrying toward him, clutching a bundle of firewood. He recognized the man he had asked about the abandoned sandal—and the missing Terentius—the day before.
The man stopped and bowed.
“Yes?”
“Sir, do I have the honor of addressing Doctor Ruso?”
This was indeed a small town: Evidently word had already got around. Bracing himself for the sort of middle-of-the-street consultation that people seemed to think doctors went looking for, he said, “That’s me.” But instead of offering an ailment, the man said, “Sir, a message from Chief Priest Dorios. He invites you to speak with him.”
Glancing at the firewood, Ruso guessed that the man had paused on an errand to somewhere else, which suggested that his own description must have been circulated to all the temple staff. If that was so, then Dorios must be very keen indeed to talk to him. Since it seemed nobody else was, he said, “Show me where he is.”
“Doctor!” exclaimed the chief priest in exactly the same tone as he had exclaimed “Ruso!” the previous day, except that then he had been full of welcome. Today he was overflowing with concern and apology, and looking wearier than before. “Come with me.”
Dorios limped across the courtyard, changing course to avoid a meandering family who were too busy cramming their mouths with honey cake to look where they were going. Nearby, a small boy was hanging on to his mother’s skirts and wailing that he wanted cake for breakfast like that girl over there. The mother, who was ignoring him, was carrying a painted model of Sulis Minerva that made the goddess look like a frog.
Ushering Ruso to a quiet corner of the courtyard, the priest sank onto the bench and propped his stick against the wall before inquiring after Ruso’s arm.
“Nothing’s broken,” Ruso assured him, pulling up the shoulder of his tunic to show a spectacular display of purple and red of which he was secretly rather proud. Dorios reacted with a pleasing amount of horror and dismay, and—glancing around and clearly hoping no one else had noticed—assured him that nothing like this had ever happened in the town before.
“You’ve just had a murder,” Ruso pointed out.
The priest cleared his throat. “Ah. Yes. But that was very different, Doctor. That was a personal matter. An attack by a stranger on a guest in his own room! I can’t begin to say how sorry we are.”
Despite this, he had already begun to say how sorry he was several times, and again Ruso said, “Thank you.”
“The landlord came straight to me this morning. I’d like to assure you that we’re doing all we can to catch the culprit.”
“Thank you,” repeated Ruso, finding himself reluctant to mention his suspicion that Pertinax was behind the attack.
“I hear you threw a lamp at him. Well done, sir. Well done. A lesser man would never have thought of it.”
“I didn’t have anything else,” Ruso pointed out. “And I should explain that it wasn’t my room.” There was no need to keep Valens’s presence secret anymore. Nor his own purpose in visiting the town. It was hardly fair to leave the locals believing that some random attacker was prowling the inns and assaulting innocent visitors.
When he had explained, the priest said, “So the bereaved husband was hiding in the Traveler’s Repose all along! I had no idea.”
“He thought his presence there was a secret,” Ruso explained. “But apparently it wasn’t.”
The priest shook his head. “This is very worrying. That particular landlord is usually very discreet. That’s one of the reasons we chose to invite the governor to stay at the Mercury.”
At least, Ruso reflected, he was no longer dreading the arrival of the governor. Now that Valens had fled, his own skills as a defense lawyer would remain untried. “It might not be the staff at the inn who betrayed my friend,” he admitted. “I think it might have been my arrival there that gave him away.”
Dorios nodded. “I’m afraid, Doctor, that you may have fallen foul of our rather powerful group of veterans.”
“Really? The veterans I’ve spoken to assure me they respect the law.”
“Hm.”
Ruso flexed his arm around the bruising and said nothing.
“It’s a very sad business,” Dorios continued. “Several of us have done our best to resolve it, but we don’t seem to be getting anywhere. Centurion Pertinax is determined to prosecute his son-in-law no matter what anyone says to him.”
Ruso wished he had confided in this man earlier. He should have realized that Dorios would have a fair grip on the situation. Someone who was both chief priest and chief magistrate would have plenty of sources of information. Reserves of tact too: Dorios had been too polite to mention the disappearance of Ruso’s imaginary investor friend, who had melted away in the night.
“The attacker may have bruising or burns on his face, or singed hair or eyebrows,” Ruso pointed out. “You could check with anyone who might have been asked to treat him.”
Dorios agreed to try but warned that the man might have left town. “Which reminds me …” He paused to glare at a slave who had come to remove the dead torch from a nearby bracket. The slave gave a hasty bow and hurried off to work somewhere else.
“Young Terentius,” the priest continued. “We’ve been looking for him ourselves since the night of the murder. We even let it be known—discreetly, of course—that there would be a reward for useful information. To be honest, when I first heard that you were asking for him, I wondered if word had leaked out and you had come here to try and win the reward.”
“No. I had no idea.” So the slave he had met on his first day here had reported his curiosity about Terentius. That explained the chief priest’s eagerness to meet him. The guided tour of the bathhouse had just been an excuse to look him over.
“Can I assume,” Dorios continued, “that you had no letter to deliver to Terentius?”
“I made it up,” Ruso confessed, relieved to be able to tell the truth at last. “And the investor friend too, I’m afraid. I was trying to be discreet.”
“And we do appreciate it, believe me. Although the presence of another investor would have been very welcome.” Dorios raised one plump arm to indicate the courtyard in front of them, which was already busier than when Ruso had arrived. “As we discussed: the most important monument in the province. A symbol of peace. But our goddess can only do her work in this place if our visitors choose to come here.”
A choice the visitors might already be reconsidering after so many deaths on one night. Any association of the goddess’s waters with a murder would deter all but a few ghoulish types who wanted to gawp at the scene of the crime.
“Apart from the family,” Ruso said, “how many people know what really happened to Serena?”
Dorios counted them off on his fingers. “Myself; Memor, our haruspex; and the man you met yesterday—Latinus.”
The pink-headed man who had looked out of the window and advised Ruso not to bathe in the sacred spring.
“It was Latinus who found the body.”
Ruso said, “It must have been hard to keep it quiet.”
“It was before dawn when he found her. We closed the courtyard straightaway. Catus harnessed up our own service vehicle himself and took her home while a ceremony of purification was held at the spring.” Dorios cleared his throat. “It was all very distressing.”
At last, the chance to ask a straight question. “Was there any sign of how she got there? Any blood, anything disturbed or damaged?”
“Nothing at all. A complete mystery.” He lowered his voice. “Almost as if the goddess herself …”
A divine stabbing was not a possibility Ruso wanted to consider. “I assume you checked that there was nothing else unexpected in the pool?”
“Of course.” A flicker of irritation crossed the priest’s face. “The pool was drained straighaway to clear the contamination.”
“Sorry. I had to ask.”
“We told anyone who asked that the drainage was for regular maintenance—it has to be done to clear the silt—and we told everyone that the lady had been found on the temple steps. Of course, it hasn’t stopped people spreading all kinds of ill-founded rumors.”
“My wife was told th
at Valens lit the fire and Serena died in it.”
“People will believe any kind of nonsense, I’m afraid.”
Ruso said, “I haven’t told anyone about last night’s attack.”
Dorios placed a slightly clammy hand over his. “Thank you, Doctor. I can see you understand the difficulty we’re in—”
“I can’t promise that nobody in the Repose has talked. Whoever it was made a bit of a disturbance in the bar when he ran out.”
“Disgraceful,” Dorios observed. “We can’t have this sort of thing going on. That’s why I’m hoping you might be able to help us.”
“Help you?”
“We’ll provide a couple of guards for your security, of course.”
Ruso blinked. “What am I helping you with?”
“With Officer Pertinax.”
To Ruso’s relief the man removed his hand.
“Is it correct, Doctor, that you’ve known Pertinax for some years?”
“He was a senior centurion. I was just a medic.”
“Even so. You stand a better chance than any of the rest of us.”
Ruso said, “To do what?”
“To do what you came here to do. We think it’s very unlikely that your friend is guilty of murder. Someone has to persuade the centurion to accept the latest evidence and withdraw his wild accusations.”
“I haven’t had much luck doing that so far.”
“Ah.” The priest smiled and leaned back against the stone wall. “That’s because we haven’t told you about the ring.”
