by Ruth Downie
Albanus helped himself to one undersized stool from beneath a desk and perched on it with his knees up under his chin. Ruso eyed the other one with some trepidation. “It’s all right, sir,” Albanus told him. “The centurion had them made by a legionary carpenter. You could sit an elephant on it.”
Ruso lowered himself onto the seat and felt a surge of sadness at the thought of the small boy who should be sitting here—swiftly followed by shame at the realization that, had the child actually been here, he would not have known which twin it was. He rested his elbows on his knees and said, “Talk to me.”
Instead of speaking, Albanus retrieved a slate from the nearest desk and handed it across.
Ruso turned the surface toward the light and read, in an awkward scrawl, the words,
THE BOYS ARE WITH ME. I HAD NO HELP FROM THE STAFF. VALENS.
“It was under the bed, sir.”
Ruso read it again, very slowly, not sure what to say. He knew he should be relieved. But this … “This is very odd.” He glanced at the window.
“It doesn’t open, sir.”
There were six glass panes high up on the outside wall to let in the light, but no way of moving them aside to allow the passage of air. The door they had used opened onto the walkway around the courtyard garden. The only other way out was via an adjoining bedroom that had belonged to the boys’ mother. This also opened onto the courtyard. “Is there another way into the house?”
“No, sir. The back of the house joins the neighbor’s up the hill. I suppose Doctor Valens could have come in over the roof, but he’d have needed a ladder and there’s no sign of one anywhere.”
Ruso returned his attention to the note.
“Do you think it’s his writing, sir?”
He squinted at it. “It could be,” he conceded. But slate was not the easiest medium to write on, and evidently something clumsy had been used to scratch the lettering. “It looks as if somebody wrote it with their eyes shut,” he said.
“Or in the dark,” Albanus said.
“Or in the dark.”
“But you couldn’t swear that it’s his writing, sir?”
“Not really,” Ruso admitted. “I can’t imagine the boys would have gone willingly with anyone else, though.”
Albanus’s sigh did not convey the relief Ruso would have expected.
“It must be him,” Ruso explained.
“Oh, it must be him who’s taken them, sir,” Albanus agreed. “But it’s hard to see how he did it without help. And if someone on the staff had helped him, they might be very keen to absolve themselves from responsibility.”
“So they asked him to write this?”
Albanus swallowed. “Or they wrote it themselves, sir.”
Ruso was not sure whether to be impressed by such subtlety of thought in the middle of the night, or amazed by the complex depths into which Albanus’s anxiety had plunged him. He examined the slate again, seeking some clear evidence of Valens’s hand. But even if he had found some, how could anyone prove that this was not a fine imitation by a clerk who had worked alongside Doctor Valens in the hospital at Deva? “How many of the staff can write?”
Albanus’s face was glum. “Just me, sir.”
“What about Gleva?”
“I believe not, sir. She asked me to read a very simple note to her the other day.”
Ruso held out the slate and looked him straight in the eye. “Did you write this, Albanus?”
There was no hesitation. “No, sir.”
“Then what’s the problem? Either you did it or he did it, and since you didn’t, and the boys certainly didn’t, and nobody else would have, it must be genuine.”
Albanus still looked blank.
“Well, if you’re the only one who can write, and it wasn’t you, who else would they have gone with?”
“Nobody, sir. Thank you. I’m so sorry to trouble you with this when you’re looking for your wife.”
“One thing at a time,” Ruso suggested, hoping simultaneously that Tilla was safely with Valens and the boys and that she wasn’t. “At least we can be sure the boys are with someone who’ll look after them.”
Albanus, however, was still not happy. “The message was under the bed, sir. I could have hidden it there earlier and it wouldn’t be found until the room was searched.”
“But you just said you didn’t.”
“No, sir, I didn’t.”
“Then why are you desperate to implicate yourself?”
“I’m not, sir. I’m just trying to imagine how Centurion Pertinax will see things when he comes back.”
Ruso shook his head, understanding now how Albanus had worked himself up into such a state that he had vomited. “If we’re going to speculate,” he said, “then let’s speculate about something useful. How did Valens do it without anyone seeing?”
Albanus looked at him with the same level of desperation as the little maid in the entrance hall. “I don’t know, sir. I wasn’t here.”
Ruso shifted off the stool and crouched on the floor. Then he lay down and rolled under the bed, squeezing himself up against the wall. “Can you see me?”
“No, sir.”
Ruso rolled back out, stood up, and brushed at his tunic, but there did not seem to be much dust. “He must have come in here when the room was empty, and hidden. Then they all crept out when everyone was asleep. He probably told them they were going on an adventure.”
The tone of Albanus’s “Yes, sir” was wary.
“I’m not saying you hid him!”
“No, sir. He might have come in when I took the boys out for a walk, but I swear I had no idea.”
“I know you didn’t,” said Ruso. Albanus’s panic was sending his thoughts scurrying in circles. Valens, on the other hand, seemed to have had a plan all along—a plan he hadn’t been willing to confide to his best friend. “Tilla can write,” he mused, realizing a potential complication. “But she was with me at dinner. She came to bed with me. She couldn’t possibly have sneaked in here after dark.” Yet she too had vanished in the middle of the night. Had she made some arrangement with Valens? Had she known where he was all along? He said, “Did you know Tilla asked Virana about borrowing a spade?”
It was a moment before Albanus looked up. “I’m sorry, sir, what did you say?”
“A spade,” Ruso repeated.
“Yes. That’s what I thought you said, sir. My wife didn’t say anything about a spade. Why would she want one?”
“I thought I knew,” Ruso told him. “But she wasn’t where I expected to find her, and I don’t know where else to look.”
43
The houseboy was slumped on the stool beside the front door at a perilous angle. When Ruso greeted him he jerked awake and almost toppled onto the tiled floor. “Bedding,” Ruso announced, dragging the straw mattress and the blanket that Albanus had found for him across the hallway. “Put it behind the door when I’ve gone and you can sleep and guard the door at the same time.”
The houseboy scratched at his thin hair and blinked as he drifted back into consciousness, then hauled himself to his feet. “I’m all right, sir, thank you. I was just resting my eyes.”
“Then at least put the bedding around the stool so you don’t break something when you fall.”
The man mumbled his consent.
“Before I go, can you just run over exactly what the security arrangements are here?”
The houseboy would have been within his rights to refuse to speak, but fortunately he had more sense than that. In answer to Ruso’s question, he agreed that although the main door was locked at sunset, it was usually open in the daytime to allow the daylight and fresh air in. The twins couldn’t reach the latch on the gate to the road, and the family relied on seeing any visitors coming up the steps. Yes, the boys had been out for an afternoon walk with Albanus as usual. The female staff? “In the kitchen all afternoon, sir. All the shopping is done in the morning.” The master? “In his study, sir.” Master Catus? “Ou
t at work, sir. He’s been very busy since he lost his assistant.” Gleva had been out too. The houseboy did not know where and to judge by his tone, neither did he care. Ruso noted that she was no longer referred to as “Mistress Gleva” in her absence.
“So with everyone busy it might have been possible for somebody to slip into the house?”
The houseboy bristled. “Not without me noticing, sir. I was tidying up the plants around the terrace all afternoon.”
While Ruso was wondering how to get him to admit he might have sat on the bench and rested his eyes in the sunshine, the houseboy said, “There was some native who tried to get in, but I saw him off.”
“Native?”
“Tall, gangling thing he was. Not very old. Not very bright, either. Came wandering in, trying to sell onions. Kept saying ‘I speak to cook’ but he didn’t understand a word of Latin.”
“Did he speak to the cook?”
“No he did not, sir. He was lucky I saw him off before the master caught him.”
“He was,” Ruso agreed, because he doubted Esico would have stood up to much questioning by Pertinax. Once his suspicions were aroused, Pertinax might have had the house and garden searched, and Valens, who must have slipped in during the distraction, would have been found.
“One last question,” Ruso said. “Do you know where Gleva was on the night Serena died?”
“I don’t, sir. Not here. I’ll ask the cook if she knows in the morning.” The man stifled a yawn. “We don’t know much about what Gleva does, to be honest.”
“No matter.” Ruso found himself yawning in return. “I was trying to place everyone. But we’ve all got more pressing things to worry about now.”
“The masters have called out the veterans to search for the children, sir. Perhaps they’ll find your wife too.”
“Perhaps they will.” He was grateful for the man’s concern, but he doubted that any lone woman would allow herself to be found by a bunch of unfamiliar soldiers tramping the streets at night.
The houseboy unlocked the door. A gust of cold damp air swept in. “It’s raining, sir. Quite heavily.”
“Oh, perfect.” As if tonight had not been difficult enough already.
“Would you like to wait inside till it eases off, sir?”
If he sat down, he would not want to get up again. So he bade the man good night, pulled his cloak up over his head, and strode out into the wet, raising one hand to acknowledge the houseboy’s “Good luck, sir.”
As he picked his way down the front steps with cold water spattering his face and seeping into his sandals, two things struck him. The first was that if the attack at the inn really had been aimed at him rather than Valens, it was not very sensible to be wandering about the streets at night on his own, armed only with a folding dinner knife. The second was that the only way the veterans would find Tilla was if she wasn’t in a fit state to run away. Neither thought was of any comfort at all, and he realized he was getting as nervous as Albanus. It wouldn’t do.
He fumbled for the gate latch, then took a deep breath and counted to three before lifting it and slipping out onto the street.
44
The doorkeeper at the Mercury was not pleased to be disturbed yet again. No, the doctor’s wife still wasn’t there. No, there hadn’t been any sign of her. Ruso ignored the man’s suggestions about where he could take himself, but he had few better ideas of his own. He was running out of places to try. Should he go back to the vegetable patch? Or the temple courtyard? At least it would be dry under the colonnade. But why would Tilla linger in a place where another woman had been murdered?
Finally he found himself standing under the dripping eaves of the oil shop, inhaling the rich aromas from within and wondering whether setting his mind at rest about Tilla was worth the risk of having Albanus and Virana evicted by an irate landlady. On balance, he decided it wasn’t. If his wife was there, she was safe, whether or not he knew about it.
There couldn’t be much of the night left. Since he had nowhere to sleep, he might as well keep looking. And since he had no plan, he began to splash his way up and down the streets of Aquae Sulis, pausing to call “Tilla?” over the gurgle of the water in the gutters, and to wait for a response that never came.
He was in an unfamiliar area between Pertinax’s house and the temple when the approaching tramp of boots reminded him that he was not the only one on a search—although how the veterans expected to run across any fugitives when they were making that much noise and carrying torches was a mystery to him. Then he heard the sound of fists hammering on doors and realized the four men weren’t expecting to stumble across Valens. They had turned themselves into an unofficial night watch. They were conducting a dawn raid on the pretext of alerting the occupants of Aquae Sulis to the presence of a child snatcher who broke into people’s houses in the night. A child snatcher who was working with a native woman accomplice.
When the doors of bemused and alarmed residents had closed again, he approached the men in the street. They turned out to be a different group from the veterans he had met before, so he introduced himself before they could seize him and demand to know what he was doing, wandering around in the rain at this hour.
No, they had not seen any sign of a lone woman. “Quite tall,” he persisted, realizing he had no idea what she might be wearing and neither could he remember the color of her woolen wrap. “Slim, curly fair hair; it might be done up tight in …” He was aware of gesticulating vaguely toward his head, as if that might help. “Whatever those twist things are called.”
“Plaits,” the leader said, glancing at his comrades.
“That’s the one,” said one of the others.
“You’ve found her?”
“Not yet,” said the leader. “You’d better come with us.”
It sounded more like an order than a welcome. He followed them under the shelter of a porch. “She isn’t with Valens and the boys,” he said, hoping it was true.
“No? What’s she doing out in this, then?”
“She couldn’t sleep.” It was a better answer than I think she went to try and dig up a body, but not much.
The leader’s “Hm” suggested that he was not impressed. “She got any friends she might have gone to?”
“It’s possible she’s gone to the bath-oil shop since I checked,” Ruso explained, “but I don’t want to give our friends more trouble with their landlady at this hour.”
The leader exchanged another glance with his men, one of whom said, “Worth going back there, boss?”
Ruso looked from one to the other of them in the torchlight. “You’ve been there already?”
They ignored his question, leaving him to speculate on the effect of yet another nocturnal interruption on Albanus’s long-suffering landlady. “The boys definitely aren’t there,” he insisted. “That’s where their tutor lives. Pertinax has already been there himself.”
There was a pause while the veterans decided whether to believe him.
“I’ve just come from Pertinax’s house,” he continued. “I should have explained. I’ve known him for years. We served together. The staff can vouch for me.”
“Then why does he think your wife’s stolen his grandsons?” There was an understandable hint of aha! about the tone.
“Because she happened to go missing at the same time. Look, if you can’t help, I’ll move on.” Although where he should go, he still had no idea.
“Nah, you don’t want to go wandering off in the dark.”
It was not exactly an arrest, but not far off. For all these men knew, he could be an accomplice in the kidnapping of the boys.
Conversely, for all Ruso knew, he could now be sharing the shelter of the porch with the man who had attacked him at the Traveler’s Repose. Pertinax had denied any involvement, but what if one of his cronies had decided to silence Valens without telling the old man?
“Pertinax’s daughter was a friend,” he told them, glancing around the group but seeing no s
igns of a damaged face or singed hair in the shifting light. “We want justice for her, the same as you do. You might be able to help.”
“We’re helping already, mate,” the leader pointed out. “We’re looking for the bastard who did it.”
Loitering in the background as more households were persuaded to open the door to wet visitors in the dark, Ruso noticed that the veterans were now warning of “a man who’s taken two boys, and he might have a blond woman with him.”
The search was, of course, organized rather than random. Even in his agitation, Pertinax was a professional. After years of occupying the troublesome island of Britannia—or, rather, the half of it they had managed to conquer and retain—one thing Rome’s men knew how to do was conduct an efficient door-to-door search. They also knew how to time the completion of their allotted duties with the opening of the nearest bakery. To his surprise, the leader offered Ruso a share. He supposed it helped to preserve the illusion that they were all on the same side while conveniently encouraging him to stay where they could keep an eye on him.
Seated under the porch of a locked wineshop and nibbling at a chunk of bread that was almost too hot to hold, Ruso was struck by how much he missed the companionship of the legion. He supposed that was why the veterans continued to keep each other’s company. Many of these men must have spent twenty-five years under orders, and while the priests seemed to view the Veterans’ Association as a threat, its members probably saw it as a safe haven in an unfamiliar civilian world. I’ve seen sights you’ll never see, boy, and never want to. Easier to be with people who didn’t need you to explain.
“Tell me something,” said Ruso, breaking off a hot flake of crust. “That fire at the Little Eagle—was that really an accident?”
“Bloody convenient one,” observed the leader. “Not for the lads who died, of course.”
“So who do you think …?”
The man snorted. “Put it this way: If it was up to me, I’d lock up the whole of the Sulis Minerva Association till they hand over the one that did it.”
Perhaps encouraged by this frankness, someone else put in, “I reckon it was that Terentius. Did it himself. What a waste of time he turned out to be.”
