Memento Mori

by Ruth Downie

  “Or some drunk,” offered a third voice.

  They were warming to their theme now. “Or the natives.”

  “Maybe a drunk native. There’s always one or two hanging around there.”

  “Anyhow,” put in the leader, “it’s got nothing to do with the centurion’s daughter. Or the missing kids.”

  But his companions were too busy enjoying the speculation to be silenced. “It could have just been an accident,” suggested someone.

  “My money’s on Terentius,” repeated his accuser. “Couldn’t swallow what he’d bitten off with them new baths and wanted out.”

  “But after it all went tits up, that was him in the clear, right? The fire finished it. The builders had nothing to come back to and nobody else would have taken it on. He didn’t have to run.”

  “What would you do if you’d lit a fire that killed people?”

  “I’d sit tight and keep my mouth shut.”

  “It was that lot from the temple,” the leader insisted. “Didn’t want to share the trade. Obvious.”

  Ruso said, “Is it?”

  “Course. As long as I’ve been here, the priests have been talking about expanding the old baths. Always some reason why it couldn’t start just yet.”

  “That’s religion for you,” said one of the others. “All talk and no action.”

  “I hear that’s what they say about you too,” observed one of his comrades.

  “You want to ask your wife, mate.”

  “Hah! You wish.”

  “Anyway,” continued the leader, undeterred, “then Pertinax came along and said it was a bloody disgrace. The legions built the whole lot in the first place and now we’re only allowed in for half the day. So he stuck a few hornets up a few arses and in no time it’s all happening. The magistrates vote it through, the plans are all put together, and a bunch of old tentmates turn up to do the job.”

  “It was never going to work, though,” put in the man who favored Terentius as culprit. “Old Catus had more sense than his brother right from the start.”

  “Catus had to say that. He works for the temple lot. He was frightened of losing his job.”

  “That haruspex was against it.”

  The soldier snorted. “Old Willy-hat is best mates with the chief priest. What did you expect him to say?”

  “Whatever the gods tell him,” came the unexpectedly pious reply. “It’s asking for trouble, arguing with the gods. See what’s happened.”

  There was a brief silence and several of the men turned their attention to the bread. Then somebody said, “I still reckon it was the natives. The one that hangs round there looks like some sort of druid. And he’s the brother of the boss’s woman.”

  “Her with the hair?”

  “Her who says she’s a priestess. And hardly a virgin, right?”

  “Not if the boss can help it.”

  “The boss can’t help anything where she’s concerned, mate. I tell you, she’s put a spell on him.”

  “What would she want to burn down the Little Eagle for?”

  “It’s obvious, mate. Sabotage. The natives never wanted to give us that spring. Or the big one, either. Look at the way she flings herself around at the processions. It’s not respectful, is it?”

  “That’s how they do things. The natives.”

  “I tell you, it’s her. She’s got powers.”

  “Well, you’d better hope she can’t hear you with her powers,” said the leader, heaving himself up from the borrowed bench with a grunt. “Time to get back to the house and report in.”

  45

  Cold. Cold and stiff. There was something foul in her mouth and her wrists hurt and her shoulders screamed with pain as she tried to move. She remembered where she was, and was suddenly wide-awake and on the alert and—what was that noise, cutting through the drumming of the rain on the roof? Something scuttling? Something nearby? Something on her?

  Tilla shuddered and curled herself into a ball on the cold mud floor, scrabbling with her feet to pull her skirts down so she could tuck her legs underneath the protection of the wool, but it was not easy with hands and feet bound behind her.

  There must be something I can do. She had tried kicking out earlier, when they first left her alone here. Her feet collided with what seemed to be an empty wooden box, which made a satisfying boom. But the hammering on the door that followed was only her captors telling her to shut up or they would tie her to a post. Did she want to be tied to a post?

  No, she did not. And besides, there was nobody around to hear. As far as she could tell, this was some sort of old shed out on the edge of town.

  She curled her tongue back and pushed it forward, trying again to shove the foul ball of cloth out of her mouth, but it was too big and they had tied the gag tight to hold it in. She stopped, afraid she would make herself vomit and choke.

  After all the shifting about, she paused to listen, but there was nothing moving around her now. Keep moving, she told herself. Mice are frightened of movement.

  Rats are bolder.

  There are no rats in here. I would have heard them before.

  She would have liked to draw on the courage of her ancestors, but with the gag around her mouth she could sing the words of the old songs only in her head, and it was hard not to be distracted.

  My arms hurt. My shoulders hurt. The back of my head aches where they hit me. My ankles hurt. I want to be sick.

  Don’t think about feeling sick.

  That’s what I told my husband on the ship. I should have been kinder to him.

  Don’t think about feeling sick. Think about—

  I need to pee.

  Don’t think about that, either.

  But I really, really do need to— Was that a cockerel?

  There it was again. She opened one eye and could make out dim shapes around and above her. The angles of crates, the bulges of sacks. Long, tilting stems that must be amphorae propped against a wall. The light was coming, and with it whatever the day would bring. Compared with the urge to pee, none of it seemed very important.

  A lot of painful wriggling told her it was not easy to get up from the floor with hands and feet tied. The nearest crate shifted away as she pushed her shoulder against it, scraping across the floor and knocking something else over with a crash. She did not bother to stop and listen. She was desperate now. The crate seemed to have wedged against something and she leaned on it, gradually edging her ankles under herself until at last she was kneeling on top of her outstretched feet. It was as she leaned forward so she could put the soles of her feet on the floor—gritting her teeth against the pain—that she realized. She must have been too stunned last night to think of it. Her captors, who seemed never to have done this sort of thing before, had not thought of it, either. Her hands, tied behind her back, could now reach the knot in the cord around her ankles. Clumsily, with prickles running through her fingers as the movement brought the feeling back, she began to pick at the knot.

  Later, finally able to take a few wobbly steps, she tottered across to the door and dragged the gag down off her mouth by hooking the edge of the fabric over the latch. Then she spat out the horrible soggy cloth.

  By the time the rain had stopped and it was light outside, she was sitting on a box and sawing at the binding around her wrists with a shard of broken pot. That was when they came for her.

  46

  If the clerk to the town magistrates was hoping to spend a quiet morning preparing for the arrival of the governor, he was to be disappointed. He had made the serious error of turning up to open the office, only to find three men already waiting outside. Pertinax heaved himself up from a damp bench overlooking the street. Ruso stepped away from the wall he had been lolling against and tried to pretend he wasn’t racing the third man—who smelled of the stable—to be first in the queue.

  “No business today, gentlemen, sorry.” The clerk strode past the jostling trio and rattled the heavy iron key back and forth inside the lock unti
l it found the right place. “Holiday for the Feast of Sulis Minerva and the governor’s visit.”

  Pertinax put a heavy hand on the doorframe. “Holidays can wait.”

  “I’ve had two horses stolen!” declared the ostler.

  Pertinax said, “I’ve come to liaise about the kidnapped children.”

  “And I can’t find my wife,” said Ruso, feeling upstaged.

  “Two bay mares, one with a white blaze.”

  “She’s the one who’s taken my boys.”

  The clerk twisted the key and pretended not to have heard any of them.

  Pertinax said, “I want to know what’s being done.”

  “Valuable animals. Vanished overnight.”

  “She’ll have taken them too,” said Pertinax. “What’s being done about it?”

  Finally acknowledging them, the clerk looked down his nose at the centurion with the air of a man who was used to being told what to do, but not necessarily by people who knew what they were talking about. “The office is closed today, sir,” he said. “The other magistrates have already been notified about the children, and any news will be sent to you. There have been several complaints about householders being woken during the night. The chief magistrate wants it known that any unofficial disturbance of residents will be frowned upon.”

  “That’s it?” demanded Pertinax. “Tell him the veterans are getting ready to do more house searches.”

  The clerk looked alarmed at the suggestion. “But if the boys have been taken on horses, they won’t be in the town, will they?”

  Ruso had to admire the man’s courage, if not his intelligence.

  Pertinax’s voice was dangerously quiet. “Are you arguing with me?”

  The gulping movement in the clerk’s throat betrayed his sudden awareness that he had made a mistake. “Sir, I’m sorry, but there’s nobody here who can help you today. The other magistrates are all preparing for the festival. The governor will be here at any moment and the sacrifice will be made as soon as he gives the word. I’ve only come to collect the guest list for the official dinner.”

  “I would like,” Pertinax repeated softly, “in a spirit of cooperation, to make an official report to my fellow members of the council of magistrates of Aquae Sulis that the two Roman citizens who were abducted from their home last night have still not been found, and that I, with the help of the Veterans’ Association, will be doing whatever it takes to find them.”

  The clerk took a deep breath. “Yes, sir,” he said, pushing open the door. “Please follow me and I’ll take down the details and deliver your message to the chief magistrate.”

  Pertinax paused in the doorway to say to the ostler, “Send messages out with all the riders and vehicles leaving town, and report to me if they’re found. There’s a reward.”

  Ruso stepped forward, but Pertinax shut the door in his face.

  “And me!” Ruso shouted. There was no response. “My wife could be in danger!”

  The ostler said, “She’s in danger all right if she’s stolen my horses.”

  “Of course she hasn’t stolen your horses! She’s my wife!” As if that made it impossible. As if marriage had wiped away the skills and the memory of a woman brought up as the daughter of a horse breeder.

  The ostler muttered that this was a waste of time and walked off. Ruso slumped down in the dry patch that Pertinax had left on the bench. He watched as a cat skirted a large puddle in the empty marketplace. Moments later he caught himself yawning, and forced himself to sit up straight. He wriggled his toes inside the damp chill of his sandals. This was not the time to fall asleep. What sort of man fell asleep when his wife had gone missing?

  Things seemed to be ominously quiet inside the council office. Then he heard a roar of “Because he’s a murderer!” and felt reassured that the clerk must still be capable of arguing.

  A slave walked past with a basket of bread balanced on his head, and Ruso wondered whether his wife was hungry and whether he ought to go and check on his daughter.

  Someone was entering the marketplace from the far corner. A woman. Three women.

  “Tilla!” Ruso leapt off the bench.

  “Husband!” She tried to move toward him, but the women on either side of her held her back. They had tied her arms.

  He ran to her, seizing her face between his hands and looking into her eyes. “I’ve been looking all night! Are you all right?”

  “They locked me in a shed,” she told him.

  There was mud on her chin, a graze on her cheek, and a bruise under one eye. The smart hairstyle was a straggled mess. He stepped back. “This is my wife. Let her go.”

  “This is thief!” declared one of the women. She had a weather-beaten face and an accent he couldn’t place. Something Eastern.

  “We have catch her!” declared the other one, obviously a relative. “We catch her stealing, doing damage, go to magistrate.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous!” Tilla had not, as far as he was aware, stolen anything for a very long time. She certainly—well, probably—wouldn’t have got out of bed in the middle of the night to do it. “You’re making a mistake,” he told them. “Let her go.”

  “Go to magistrate,” insisted the woman, dragging Tilla forward in the direction of the council office. “You pay for stealing.”

  “There’s nobody there,” Ruso told them. “You’re wasting your time. It’s all shut for the holiday.”

  At that moment he heard the door open behind him. The clerk, evidently chastened by the encounter with Pertinax, called, “Sir, would you like to report your wife missing now?”

  “There!” declared one of the women in triumph. “See? Magistrate!”

  “This is thief!” cried the one who did not seem to know any other Latin.

  The clerk evidently thought Ruso had not heard the invitation, and came closer. “Sir, if you’d like to report your wife—”

  Ruso said, “She’s not missing now.”

  “That’s her!” cried Pertinax from the doorway.

  The clerk looked at the trio of women and then back at Ruso.

  “She’d been kidnapped,” Ruso explained.

  “This is thief!”

  “Don’t move!” ordered Pertinax, lurching toward them. Pushing Ruso aside and thrusting his face into Tilla’s, he demanded, “Where are my boys?”

  Tilla stared at him blankly.

  “Where’s he taken them?”

  The women spoke rapidly to each other in their own tongue while Ruso hauled Pertinax aside. “Let me deal with this.”

  “This is thief!”

  “Let her go,” Ruso insisted, “and we’ll sort this out.”

  “Thief!”

  “What’s she supposed to have stolen?”

  “Vegetable, sir,” said the one with more Latin, addressing Pertinax. “Lettuce. Carrot. Onion. Every week, something. And now we catch her in the night.”

  “Vegetables?” said Pertinax.

  The ruined hairstyle flopped again as Tilla nodded a confession.

  Pertinax’s voice was suddenly weary. “Let her go, you two.”

  “You’ve got the wrong person,” Ruso insisted, relieved.

  “We take her to magistrate. Magistrate decide.”

  Pertinax’s “Let her go!” was loud enough to be heard on the other side of town. The two women leapt away from Tilla as if she were on fire.

  Ruso stepped behind her, reaching for the little folding knife strapped to his belt. She flinched as he began to saw through the frayed rope around her swollen wrists. He murmured, “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  The ruined hairstyle flopped about again as she nodded.

  Ruso held out the length of grimy rope and one of the women snatched it as if Tilla had tried to steal that too. Then he put his arm around his wife’s shoulders and led her to the bench. The others crowded round as he sat beside her and said, “What happened?”

  Tilla, busy rubbing her wrists, had barely drawn breath to reply when one
of the women cried, “Magistrate!”

  “Let her speak!” snapped Ruso, but the woman cried “Magistrate!” again, and pointed.

  The council clerk was sprinting away down a side street with a scroll in one hand and a set of keys dangling from the other. Ruso lowered his head into his hands. “Tilla, Valens’s boys have been taken. Do you know anything about it?”

  “No! Who has taken them?”

  “Valens, we think.”

  Pertinax remained silent.

  Ruso said, “What’s all this about vegetables?”

  “This is thief!”

  Unusually, it seemed Tilla had nothing to say in her own defense.

  “She only came here two days ago,” Ruso pointed out. “If you’ve been losing vegetables for weeks, it can’t be my wife.”

  The women spoke to each other again in their own language.

  “There is damage. Dead plants. All dig up. All flat. She is there in night with spade.”

  “There’s damage to my wife too,” he pointed out. “I won’t sue you for kidnap and assault if you agree not to sue for anything that happened last night.”

  The woman with the Latin thought about that for a moment, then said, “We let her go.” Her sister asked a question in their own tongue but, instead of replying, the first woman seized her by the elbow and hurried her away. As the sound of their argument faded, Pertinax said, “About that business at the inn last night …”

  “Forget it,” Ruso told him. “In your position, I’d have done the same.”

  He was aware of Tilla swaying beside him on the bench. “Let’s get you back to, uh …” He stopped. Back to where, exactly?

  “They call it the Mercury,” she reminded him. “You look very tired, husband.”

  “We aren’t in the Mercury anymore,” he told her. “Neena’s taken Mara over to the oil shop.”

  Pertinax said something and seemed to be expecting an answer.

  Ruso yawned. Tilla was right: He was, indeed, very tired. He ran over what he thought Pertinax had said in his mind, trying to work out what he had managed to mishear as I’ll tell Gleva to get a room ready.