Memento Mori
Page 16
27
Ruso accompanied the priest across to the sacred spring, where Dorios wished a hearty rather than a friendly “Good morning!” to a couple dallying in an alcove. The girl looked undernourished and her makeup was smudged. The customer groping her was old enough to be her grandfather.
“Really!” Dorios muttered as he unlocked the side door of the bath suite. “People do all sorts of things on holiday that they would never consider doing in public at home.”
The girl was still writhing against her customer. The shape of the man’s hand was roaming about inside her skimpy tunic. Dorios glanced out across the courtyard. Ruso barely caught the subtle twitch of the walking stick that pointed out the offending couple. Two muscular temple slaves with shaven heads emerged from the shade of the colonnade and strode toward them.
“Once you let standards fall,” Dorios observed, “you end up attracting the wrong sort of visitors entirely.” Without waiting to see the outcome, he led Ruso into the screened-off changing hall and locked the door behind them. “Follow me, please, sir. We don’t want to disturb the ladies any more than we can help.”
As they entered the steamy bathing hall, Ruso spotted Tilla sitting on the side of the baths, clutching a towel around herself. She was watching Neena and Mara splashing about. He thought of Serena, who must have bathed here regularly. He wanted to say, Jump in. Enjoy yourself. Make the most of being alive. Instead he followed the priest across to a side exit that led into a service area. Shutting out the sound of running water and the echoing voices of the morning bathers, Dorios said, “Just down here, now.”
The corridor widened to a long storage area lit from above by barred windows empty of glass. Behind a battle-scarred wooden sawhorse Ruso could make out racks crammed with chisels and hammers and plastering tools and masons’ equipment. Below them, an untidy collection of shovels and sledgehammers was propped against the wall. Despite the flow of fresh air, many of the tools bore witness to the constant battle with rust in the damp atmosphere.
“The maintenance stores,” Dorios explained. “Terentius used to work here with Catus.”
Beyond the racks of tools, piles of items that might be useful one day lay under a coating of dust and spiders’ webs. Ruso was willing to bet that Catus knew exactly what was there and would be outraged if anyone dared to move it.
“And this is where our bathhouse manager works.” Dorios rapped on the door of what appeared to be a shed built against one wall of the stores. “Latinus? A visitor for you.”
The door was opened by the pink-headed man.
“Our guest needs to see the ring, Latinus,” said Dorios. “He’s kindly agreed to help us with our centurion problem, so if you could give him every assistance …”
He paused only to wish Ruso well and assure him that any difficulties should be referred straight to himself. “If you’re quite sure you don’t need one or two of our men, sir …”
Not liking the idea of being followed at every turn, Ruso repeated that he didn’t need a bodyguard. Reflecting that it was just as well the bath manager was a thin man, he crammed himself up against the very splendid desk in order to shut the door. Latinus forced open a reluctant folding chair for him and slid aside a clutter of writing tablets. Then he reached two fingers into his purse and drew out a silver ring, which he placed on the worn surface of the desk. “This is it, sir.”
It was heavier than Ruso had expected. He turned it this way and that, watching the light from the high window catch some sort of engraving in the orange gemstone.
“It’s a panther,” said Latinus. “Carved into a cornelian.”
“And it definitely belonged to Terentius?”
“Yes, sir. I recognized it straightaway, and it’s been identified by his landlord as well.”
“And the slave was caught trying to sell it?”
“To a visitor. He must have been afraid a local person would recognize it. Fortunately, the visitor was sharp enough to query where a humble bathhouse cleaner had found something so valuable.”
As expected, the man had broken down under questioning, but instead of confessing to theft, he had insisted that Terentius had given him the ring on the night of the fire in exchange for help with escaping.
“I’d like to talk to the slave.”
Latinus squeezed his way past the desk to have the man summoned. In his absence Ruso slid the ring down to the joint on his third finger, slipped it off again, and pondered how desperate a man would have to be to part with something so valuable.
With the manager back in his seat, Ruso said, “What do you think actually happened on the night of the murder, Latinus?”
The man leaned his bony elbows on the desk. “Most of us, sir, think Terentius attacked the lady and fled. Chief Engineer Catus doesn’t agree, of course. He was very fond of Terentius.”
“The family all believe it was the husband.”
“Yes.”
Ruso shifted on the stool. He was beginning to feel sticky: The damp heat of the bath penetrated even in here. “Did Terentius have keys to this place?”
“If he didn’t, he knew where they were kept.”
Latinus’s confirmation that nobody stayed in the baths overnight reinforced Ruso’s suspicion that Terentius had been planning a private party somewhere in there with Serena. If it had ever begun, it had been abruptly ended by the news of the fire at the Little Eagle, where they had been seen together. Then something must have happened, the couple had fallen out, and he had killed her and fled town.
Ruso was aware that he was scratching his ear with one forefinger, a gesture his wife insisted meant he was uncertain. The exact nature of the “something” that had happened to change Terentius’s attitude to Serena was puzzling. Could she have kissed the man with the passion Valens had described and then rejected him? Did women do that sort of thing? Setting the question aside to ask Tilla later, he said, “There’s been no news of him since?”
“We thought he might send someone to collect his things, sir. But they’re all still here.”
Ruso glanced around. “Here?”
“Outside in the store. Would you like to have a look through? Perhaps you’ll notice something we missed.”
Back out in the storage area, Latinus reached up to a high shelf and slid a key out from beneath a faintly moldy pair of leather working gloves. “Just here, sir.” He knelt and unlocked a wooden chest that had been shoved into a gap between a bulbous oil amphora and some bags of sand. “You won’t mind if I stay while you look, sir?”
“Be my guest.”
Latinus found a linen rag to wipe away the dust and Ruso cleared a space on the shelf above the chest.
Ruso lifted out a pile of three unremarkable tunics, shook each one flat, refolded it, and placed it up on the shelf. Below them was a toga that had evidently been a nourishing home for a colony of moths. He slid a scroll out of its container, scanned a few lines of the sort of poetry that appealed to amorous young men, and rolled it back up. He spent some time pondering the note tablets, which, as Latinus explained, contained diagrams and numbers and drawings of some improvement that Terentius had been convinced would mean less time lost to business while the spring was being drained and dredged of silt.
“Was he right?”
Latinus gave a sad smile. “Catus was doubtful, sir. But we’ll never know.”
Ruso was reminded of his own early belief that he would one day surpass his mentor and uncle, Theo, and find a cure for the winter fever that had snatched away his mother. Now he had learned to resign himself to smaller victories. But Terentius would still have been young enough to believe that if he applied enough hard work and determination, he could shape the world to his liking. It was just unfortunate that Terentius’s liking had involved somebody else’s wife.
Ruso put the cork stopper from a missing jar up on the shelf. It had a slice cut into it, with a copper coin stuck in the gap. Perhaps a reminder of a good party.
Latinus cleared his
throat. “Is there anything in particular you’re hoping to find, sir?”
Ruso, who didn’t want to admit that he had no idea what he was looking for, pretended not to hear. His bruised arm ached as he carried on emptying the trunk and stacking the contents of the trunk on the shelf. A boxwood comb with a couple of short brown hairs caught between the teeth. A broken leather shoelace held together with a reef knot. Various well-worn items of underwear. Two odd socks. A clasp knife with one half of the bone handle missing. In the bottom left-hand corner, a leather bag that chinked when he lifted it. He tipped the money into his palm and slid it back and forth across the calluses formed by a summer of haymaking and harvesting that seemed a hundred years ago. The coins were a mix of silver denarii and copper: probably somewhere near a month’s wages. He tipped the money back into the bag, and that went on the shelf too. He was just sniffing a bottle of bath oil—nothing special: Virana had not favored Serena’s lover with the latest thing fresh off the boat—when the door from the bathing hall opened and a horribly familiar smell wafted in, followed by a small man who walked with a stoop.
Latinus greeted him with “Have you just walked through the bathing hall?”
“They said you wanted me, master.” The man’s voice was reedy and he shuffled uncomfortably from one foot to the other.
“You’re supposed to use the other entrance.”
“I never got that part of the message, master.”
Latinus huffed in exasperation and indicated Ruso, who got to his feet and fought the urge to step away from the stink. He had once been compelled to scrub out a sewer. It was a smell you never forgot, and one which was surprisingly hard to wash off.
“This man will ask you some questions, Justus,” Latinus told the slave. “Tell him the truth, and don’t try to be clever. I’ll be listening.”
It seemed that, in the midst of all the confusion over the fire, Terentius had come to the slave demanding to know where he could get a boat.
“Why you?”
“I used to work at the wharf, sir.”
“And when he came to find you, you were … where?”
“Out in the courtyard, sir. Taking some buckets to help with the fire.”
“Carry on,” said Ruso, keen for the smell to walk away as soon as possible, and wishing the unfortunate man would stop shuffling from foot to foot. The movement must surely be wafting the air about.
“So I took him up there and I found him a nice little skiff and the oars.” Justus reached up a grimy hand to scratch his scalp. “It’s finding the oars that’s the tricky part, sir. Any fool can steal a boat.”
“Theft is nothing to be proud of,” put in the manager.
“No, master. Then he gave me his ring like he promised and I came away and that’s the last I heard of it till morning.”
Ruso said, “He didn’t say where he was going?”
“There was only one way he could go, sir.” The slave paused.
Ruso’s “Where?” sounded more irritable than he had intended.
“Downstream, sir. He’d never have made it up against the flow.”
Ruso had hoped for more. “Anywhere in particular?”
“He’d have had to change to something bigger by the time he got to Abona, sir. A little skiff like that, he’d be all right on this part of the river, but lower down he’d be Neptune’s breakfast.”
Ruso said, “How did he seem?”
“How did he seem, sir?” The man risked a glance up at Ruso as if he didn’t understand the question.
“Was he flustered? Frightened? Calm? What was he wearing? Was there anything odd about him?”
“There was, sir.”
“What was it?”
“He was asking for a boat in the middle of the night, sir.”
As an outside door that Ruso had not noticed before banged shut behind the slave, the manager observed, “Not the brightest star in the sky, I’m afraid. No wonder he got caught.”
“Has anyone made inquiries at Abona?”
“Nothing turned up, sir.”
Ruso crouched down again by the trunk and brought out a thin rectangle of wood on which someone had sketched a few lines in ink. Whoever it was had captured a likeness of Serena so remarkable that the loss hit him afresh. Finally he managed to say, “Do you know where he got this?”
“It would be one of the street artists that sets up stall in the temple courtyard, sir. A lot of the visitors like a souvenir. A painting of yourself beside a famous landmark. One of them could identify the style if you’re interested.”
“No.” The sketch was just a slice of wood with soot and glue on it. It went up on the shelf.
“If there’s anything I can do to help, sir …”
“No, thanks.” He stacked everything back in the trunk. It was a random collection of items that could have come from the room of any number of young men. If there had been any clue amongst them to the whereabouts of Terentius, someone else would already have found it. On the other hand, no one would willingly have left that much money behind. It all fitted with the story of a sudden flight. It wouldn’t convince Pertinax, but it was a comfort to Ruso. Whatever Valens might have felt like doing to Serena and her lover, he hadn’t done it.
Ruso closed the lid and got to his feet. “Thank you,” he said. “You’ve been a great help.”
Before Latinus could reply, the door from the main hall crashed open. A buxom woman clad in what appeared to be a bedsheet clattered toward them on wooden bathing sandals, complaining that her clothes had been stolen.
Ruso left to the sound of Latinus assuring her that it must be some unfortunate confusion and he would order his staff to search for the clothes immediately.
Making his way back through the main hall toward the exit, he saw that Tilla had moved to the other side of the pool and was having her hair done. She still wasn’t dressed. He walked out without her knowing he was there, and reflected how privileged he was to know exactly what treasures were hidden under that towel.
28
Terentius’s lodgings were not far from the oil shop where Virana worked. The front held a shop selling lamps and inkpots and little terra-cotta models of shrines and gods and anything else that could be made quickly from a mold and sold for several times what it had cost to create. Ruso knocked on the insignificant door beside it.
Despite assuring himself that he was in no danger from the previous night’s attacker, he still glanced both ways down the street and assessed the capabilities of the man strolling toward him. That bundle of fresh torches could be hiding a weapon.
If it was, the weapon wasn’t meant for him. The man passed by and carried on up the street. Ruso was about to walk away when he heard the clack of the latch and the door creaked open.
An elderly woman peered up at him. “You’re not the doctor.”
“No,” agreed Ruso, who had found that it was never wise to be a doctor unless he was intending to act like one.
“If you’re here about the room, it’s been taken.”
When he explained that he was in town looking for Terentius, she warmed immediately. “Come in and meet the master. He’ll want to see you.” The woman shuffled down the corridor, moving from one handhold to another and observing, “Sorry, my dear. I’m not very fast these days.”
She led him into a room filled with the sort of clutter that people amass around themselves when mobility is a struggle. Among the jumble of side tables and cups and medicine bottles was a wicker chair piled with blankets. Somewhere in the middle of the blankets—it was hard to tell where the man ended and the bedding began—was a wizened figure with a few strands of white hair combed across a mottled pate. The sight of Ruso occasioned a “Ha!” followed by a puzzled, “He’s not the doctor.”
The woman grasped the side of the wicker chair and leaned forward to shout, “He’s come about Terentius!”
The man cupped a blue-veined hand over one ear. “What’s that?”
“Terentius!”
“He knows!” the woman shouted. “He’s a friend. He wants to find him.”
“No, we can’t find him,” the man agreed. Then to Ruso, “We can’t find him. Do you know where he’s gone?”
“No!” Ruso shook his head and gave an exaggerated shrug.
“Well, what are you here for, then?” the man demanded.
“He’s asking if we know where he is!”
“I just said we can’t find him!” The man turned back to Ruso. “He’s a good boy, Terentius. Used to do jobs around the house, ran errands. We’re not as lively as we used to be, you know. She’s slowed down and I’ve stopped altogether. Still, I can see and she can hear. Between us, we’re nearly a whole person.”
Ruso grinned. Had he been their doctor, these were the sort of patients who would have cheered the heart.
“You’re supposed to tell me I’m marvelous for my age,” prompted the old man.
Ruso crouched beside the chair and shouted, “What is your age, sir?”
“Too old to remember!” The man’s cackle of laughter at his own joke ended in a violent fit of coughing.
Ruso waited for it to pass while the woman grumbled that the silly old fool shouldn’t be telling jokes at his age. “Stop making yourself cough!” she yelled. “You’ll kill yourself!”
The man flapped a dismissive hand at her. “Agh, what does it matter? All my friends are dead anyway.” The hand waved toward a couch strewn with cushions and bandages and a tabby cat Ruso had only just noticed. “Clear that off and sit down, boy.”
It was a long time since Ruso had been called “boy.” Before disturbing the cat he shouted, “Can you tell me about Terentius, sir? Anywhere he might have gone?”
“Terentius. Nice to see a youngster who loves his job. Always bringing bits of things home to mend, he was.”
Golden boy in charge of the bath plug. Everyone except Valens seemed to like Terentius. Ruso shifted a couple of cushions and the cat glowered at him before leaping onto the back of the couch. He sat down in a warm nest of cat hairs.