by Ruth Downie
The man squinted at Ruso. “Soldier, are you?”
“I served with the Twentieth in Deva.”
The man tapped his chest. “Centurion with the Third Cohort. Served against the Druids in Mona, marched east to put down Boudica’s rabble, helped to take the North and then marched back down again with nothing to show for it. I’ve seen sights you’ll never see, boy, and never want to.”
Ruso nodded his respect. Conversation was hard enough without adding unnecessary words. A rough attempt at mathematics suggested the man must be about eighty: a truly remarkable age and perhaps a testimony to the healing properties of Sulis Minerva’s water.
“He would have made a good soldier, Terentius, but they wouldn’t let him in.” The old man pointed at the left side of his head. “Deaf in one ear, see? I used to say to him, I said, ‘Two grown men and we’ve only got one ear between us!’ ” The cackle was gentler this time. “He was doing well for himself till he met that girl. Married, see? I said to him, ‘You be careful. I’ve seen it before. It don’t do to shear another man’s sheep.’ But he didn’t listen, and now look what’s happened. Who’s going to mend things for us now?”
The couch gave an alarming crack as Ruso shifted his weight forward. The cat shot across the floor in front of him and vanished under the old man’s chair. “Did anyone ask you about a ring?”
“What?” The hand rose to cup the ear again.
“Did anyone—”
“Scarpered when the husband turned up. And very wise too. Nasty business. Went off in a boat, they said. Must have been desperate: He was never one for boats. All that water and he still couldn’t swim. What’s it like in the North these days, then? How’s the emperor’s wall going? Still changing the plans every new moon?”
Ruso shouted that the Twentieth Legion were set to complete their allotted sections of wall before the Sixth this season, which pleased the old man enormously. When Ruso finally got across that the latest plan was to build the forts along the line of the wall instead of siting them behind it, the man was even happier. “I always said they should have done that in the first place. I told young Terentius that, didn’t I?”
The old woman sighed. “I expect so.”
Oblivious, the man carried on. “That boy had promise, see? He was doing well for himself here. The lads put him in charge of the new baths. At his age! That’s how it was back in my day: If you had the ability, you were given the chance.”
Ruso said, “Did anyone ask you about—”
“I never held with all this nonsense about it being his fault when it went wrong. How’s the lad supposed to know what’s under the ground? I told them, ‘When you get to my age, you know every building project goes wrong somewhere or other.’ I said, ‘Give him a chance to make good.’ But who listens to an old man? They were still arguing when that feller runs in shouting, ‘Fire!’ I heard that all right. ‘Fire!’ ”
Ruso yelled, “You were in the veterans’ meeting?”
“What?”
Ruso repeated the question.
The old man grinned. “They come and fetch me for all the meetings. There’s nobody more veteran than me. And I know a good lad when I see one. Who knows how far he could have risen?”
“That boy did love his work,” the old woman confirmed. “You couldn’t cross his room for all the plans unrolled on the floor. And the lamp oil he went through!”
Ruso said, “Would you mind if I take a look at the room?”
The old woman leaned over the chair. “He wants to see the room!”
“Look as hard as you like; he’s not there,” the old man informed him. “Got a retired pay clerk from the Batavians in there now. Pays his rent but never offers to lend a hand.” He pointed to the old woman and confided in a loud whisper, “I’m thinking of selling her and buying myself a younger one. One who does what she’s told. A nice blond with big—” He cupped his hands around invisible breasts.
“Ha!” retorted the woman, reaching across to straighten his blanket. “Nobody else would put up with a stinky old bugger like you.” She turned to Ruso. “You won’t touch anything in there, will you?”
“I won’t even go inside,” he promised, but she shuffled down the corridor in front of him just to make sure. On the way, he ascertained that the last time either of these two had seen Terentius was on the morning before the fire, which moved him no further forward.
The woman paused in a doorway and leaned against it for support while he stood beside her.
Ruso surveyed a good-sized square room with fresh limewash on the walls, another man’s boots under the bed, and nothing remarkable about it whatsoever.
“Terentius mended the shutters and painted the walls,” put in the woman.
“Did he leave anything behind?”
“We kept his things safe for him, but that silly old fool in there needs the rent. The man from the baths came and collected it all.”
“Catus? Or the manager, Latinus?”
“Very glum-faced, he was. Well, he’d just come from his niece’s funeral, poor man. At least he wasn’t spouting those terrible lies about Terentius. Our boy wouldn’t hurt a fly. It was that husband that did it. I hope they catch him and finish him off.”
Ruso said, “The plans were on scrolls?”
“Plans? Oh, yes. Right across the floor. A boot on each end to hold them open, so you could fall over those too. I don’t know what use they’ll be now. That other gloomy one was down here straight after the fire, standing by the spring with his daft hat on, telling everyone the goddess didn’t want anyone building there. After they’d all gone, him in there said, ‘Well we’ve had a fire and four people dead and the man in charge has run off. You don’t need a white robe and a willy on your head to see the signs weren’t good.’ ”
There had been no scrolls of plans in the possessions Ruso had examined.
She hauled herself upright from the wall and began to lead him back. Outside the door of her master’s cluttered den, she paused. “That ring they brought round: That was his all right. His father gave it to him before he died. That’s how we know he’s run off.”
“I’m sorry.”
“If you find him, tell him the silly old fool in there misses him, and so do I.”
“I will,” he promised. But the more he learned, the more reasons it seemed Terentius had to stay firmly unfound.
29
“You’ve done something with your hair,” he said, pleased with himself for spotting it straight away. “And you smell very, ah …”
“Sandalwood, rosemary, and lavender,” Tilla told him, flinging her bag down on the bed. Neena carried the sleeping Mara across into the other room and closed the door behind her. “What do you think? Truly.”
He sniffed. “It’s a bit strong,” he admitted.
“Not the smell, the hair.” She twirled around so he could see the elaborate cap of blond plaits from all angles.
“Very nice,” he said, because I liked it better before and Why does it have to be so complicated? and It looks as if your head has shrunk would not go down well. “Was it, ah …”
“Very expensive,” she confirmed, patting the plaits. “It is the style all the ladies are wearing in Rome.”
“Are they?” He tried to remember. Then he tried to think what the empress’s hair had looked like on her visit to Britannia, but all he could recall was being told that the empress’s hair had originally been grown by somebody else.
“I don’t remember anyone looking like this,” Tilla admitted. “She asked if I wanted the Sulis Minerva hairstyle with the wavy sides, but I thought it would be like telling everyone I was a visitor.”
He was spared the need to comment by Neena, who emerged at that moment, confirmed that Mara was sleeping off her morning swim, and said that she would go out to fetch some lunch. “Something cheap,” he told her. “So not from downstairs.”
“But not something horrible,” Tilla put in. “Ask around about a good snack shop.” When
she was gone, Tilla went across to the window. “That old man is back.”
“I know,” he told her. “Perhaps we were wrong about him.”
Tilla eased the window open. “Perhaps he is spying for somebody else.”
He said, “Everyone must know Valens is gone by now.”
“I hope he is looking after Esico.”
“Valens? Perhaps he’ll decide to take him on.”
“Esico would be safer with us,” she said. “I am sure we will find something he is good at sooner or later.”
There was more to be gained by holding back I told you so than by saying it. Esico’s presence was a constant reminder of the folly of buying a slave you had no use for, just because your wife felt sorry for a fellow Briton.
“He doesn’t wander off very much, really,” she continued. “If he had been here he might have saved you last night.”
“I managed without him,” he pointed out.
“He was very brave defending us from the debt collectors in Rome, and he was very good with my cousin’s mule when it was lame. It is not his fault we have no farm for him to work on, and no horses.”
“Well, I definitely don’t want him in the surgery,” he said. “It’s discouraging for the patients when the assistant turns the color of old parchment and rushes out to vomit.”
“Abdominal surgery was not a good place to start,” she said. “Perhaps you should give him another try when he comes back.”
“I did,” he told her. “He’s reasonably competent with anything that doesn’t involve blood, but he’s not really interested.”
“He does not have to be interested. He is a slave. He has to do as he is told.”
“I prefer my patients to get the impression that we all care whether they get better or not.” He moved across to join her by the window. Pertinax’s spy was sipping beer through his straggly gray moustache.
She said, “Will you cheer up if I tell you I think this hair is very silly, and I only had it done so I could talk to Gleva?”
“You had to have your hair done to talk to Gleva?”
“And I found out she is a horrible woman, even if she is sensational in bed.”
He said, “I was only speculating.”
“Anyway,” she continued, ignoring him, “I think Virana is right. Gleva put a curse on Serena. She acts as if she is one of the family already. I think she is the one pushing Pertinax to blame Valens for the murder.”
“Just because she’s a horrible woman, or for some other reason?”
She said, “If you really do not like the hair, I can pull all the pins out. Neena will have to help me unstitch it.”
“The hair’s fine,” he assured her, knowing better than to admit that he didn’t much like it after he had already said it was very nice. That was only storing up trouble for the future. “Tell me about Gleva.”
“Virana says if Gleva marries Pertinax and they have a son …” Tilla went on to explain a possibility that sounded remarkably like the tales of long-dead empresses maneuvering their own offspring into power above older stepchildren.
“Virana told you this?”
“She says Albanus told her it is what stepmothers do in Rome.”
Ruso had often wondered what two such different people as the native farm girl and the ex-legionary son of a Greek teacher found to talk about. It seemed Albanus entertained his young wife on long winter evenings with tales of ancient scandals. When he said, “It’s entirely possible,” his own wife looked relieved that he had not mocked her.
“It might have been Gleva who ordered the attack last night.”
He said, “Perhaps it was Gleva who carried it out. She seems to be responsible for everything else.”
She glanced at him. “Are you teasing me?”
“Just a little.”
“Well, listen to this. Gleva really has been using a love potion. The hairdresser told me. She could be in lots of trouble.”
“This hairdresser doesn’t sound very discreet.”
“She did not tell me it was Gleva,” Tilla explained. “Not right away. I told her my man had lost interest and I wanted something to encourage him.”
“Thank you.” He could imagine that little morsel being passed on to the girl’s next clients as the gossip of the day. It was just as well he wasn’t looking for work here as a medic: It was always bad for business when you were seen to seek cures from other people. Even worse when your wife told people it was for a problem with your marital equipment.
“I told her you have lost interest in me because there are lots of other girls here,” she added.
“That’s better,” he said, and then remembered Virana’s He is married to somebody else and so am I and wondered how long it would be before the two rumors met and bred.
“And she said I ought to be very careful, because you can get into trouble for using that sort of thing.”
“On your own husband?”
“I did not tell her that to start with. First of all I just said it was for my man.”
“Oh, good. That should fool everyone.”
The eagerness of her “Do you think so?” took him by surprise.
He said, “So how did this discussion about my performance get around to Pertinax and the wild redheaded priestess?”
“I thought, I do not want to make things even worse than they are now by starting a new scandal.”
“Absolutely not.”
“So when she said I could be in trouble, I told her the man was my husband.”
“Right.”
“And she said she had heard that I need a mixture of linseed with honey and pepper, or boiled turnip root and rocket and leek juice with frankincense, and … I think you can do something with cuckoopint. But I have forgotten what.”
“Poison me, probably.”
“And I said ‘Does it work?’ and she looked across at where Gleva was talking to somebody and she said, ‘Well I hear it works for other people.’ So now we know.”
“I see,” he said. “But what we don’t know is whether Gleva really is full of evil intentions or simply an unfriendly woman who’s set out to seduce a man with influence. Anyway, while you were at the baths. I found out—”
He was interrupted by a rap on the door that was too loud to be Neena. A voice called, “Visitor for you, sir!” It was swiftly followed by the sound of an uneven and unwelcome gait. Gleva’s man with influence was clumping toward them along the landing.
30
The quiet control with which Pertinax shut the bedroom door was more unnerving than if he had slammed it. He had arrived without any henchmen, but Ruso guessed they must be downstairs. “I told you,” he said, his glare fixed on Ruso, “to stop pestering my household.”
Ruso pulled up the shoulder of his tunic and turned so Pertinax could see the spectacular purple bruising, which had now developed an impressive black patch in the middle. “Any comment?”
“I heard. Nothing to do with me.”
“Valens should have been in that room.”
“I told you. Not me.”
“So if it wasn’t you—”
“I’ll tell you if I hear anything,” Pertinax told him. “My advice is: Keep out of things that don’t concern you. And get your woman under control.”
Tilla was standing in full view, but the centurion was following the protocol of complaining to her commanding officer.
“I talked with Gleva at the baths this morning,” she announced. “Perhaps you would like to get her under control. She speaks as if she is one of your family.”
Still Pertinax behaved as though she were not in the room. “If you’ve got something to say,” he told Ruso, “you say it to me.”
“I just have.”
But Pertinax had not finished. “It’s a weak man who hides behind his wife.”
“And it is a weak woman,” declared Tilla, “who sends a man to make an argument for her.”
Pertinax’s denial that he had ordered the attack had taken
Ruso by surprise: The old man had never been one to shirk responsibility. He needed to try a different approach, and Tilla’s defense of her wounded dignity was not helping. Placing a hand on his wife’s arm, he took a step forward to stand between them. “I’ve got something else to say too.”
The old man’s retort of “If she’ll let you” was undermined by him losing his balance and having to grab the end of the bed for support.
Ruso leaned down to drag the trunk out from beside the bed. “Take a seat.”
The centurion let go of the bedpost and lifted his chin. “I’m not feeble.”
“I’m sorry we can’t offer better hospitality. Can we fetch you a drink?”
Pertinax eyed him for a moment, then sat stiffly on the trunk. “Say what you’ve got to say.”
Ruso placed himself on the end of the bed so he was still between Tilla and their visitor. He could tell from the way the man cupped one hand around the stump of his amputated leg that it was causing him pain. “There’s a truth about what happened to your daughter that needs to be found, sir, and we won’t find it by arguing with each other.”
“The governor will determine the truth in court.”
“He may well do, sir,” Ruso conceded. “I believe Valens may have been capable of murdering your daughter and her lover.”
He felt the bed shift beneath him as Tilla registered her surprise. Meanwhile it was not anger that Ruso read on the old man’s face, nor sorrow. It was relief. And it was curiosity. And then it was gone.
“Valens felt more than the outrage of a cheated husband, sir. I know you don’t agree, but I think he was genuinely fond of your daughter. That’s why he was so upset when she wrote and asked for a divorce. Then, when he came to your house to see her, she told him about Terentius. There was an argument, and afterwards he followed her down to the temple court and he saw her and Terentius there together.”
An elbow dug into his side, accompanied by the murmur of “Husband, are you mad?”
“And when a man sees a beloved wife in the arms of another man, who knows what goes through his mind?”
