Memento Mori

by Ruth Downie

  The chairs and bedsteads he and Valens had piled against the inside of the temple doors were still there, but nobody was trying to invade. The rioters had gone into retreat at the sound of the governor’s troops. There had been a pause while Dorios and the other officials stood outside to debate whether the ceremony could proceed with the goddess locked out of her own temple. In the end they had agreed that, since Sulis Minerva was able to survey proceedings from the top of the steps, it was safe to go ahead and sacrifice the ram as planned.

  Meanwhile, Ruso tried not to drip his own blood on the pure-white temple blankets as he made up one of the beds supplied for the goddess’s patients while Valens coaxed his frightened children out of their wet clothes.

  Once the children were in bed, Valens clambered across the heap of furniture, peered out through the gap between the doors, and observed that the priests were having trouble getting the altar fire lit. “They’ve left the big statue out there to protect us, boys,” he said. “I’m looking out past Sulis Minerva’s armpit.”

  The goddess’s presence seemed to offer little cheer to the pale and frightened children. Ruso was even less impressed. Doubtless the difficulty of lighting the fire would be blamed not on the rain but on the sacrilege of the two men who had barricaded the goddess out of her own home. Still, they were safe in there for a while. Nothing would be allowed to interrupt the ceremony, because if that happened the priests might have to go back to the start and begin again. It was hard to imagine anyone except Valens and himself wanting that.

  Eventually the boys stopped crying and dropped off to sleep, cuddled together under the watchful gaze of one of the temple treasures: a painted stone maiden whose skimpy clothes served no apparent purpose at all.

  If ever anyone needed divine assistance, Ruso decided, it was Valens’s children. They had lost their mother, heard their father accused of killing her, been spirited away from home on horseback in the middle of the night—“I told them it was an adventure,” Valens explained—seen their father arrested, and been in the middle of a melee in which he was almost murdered by an angry mob. Now they were trapped in the richly painted gloom of a temple with no windows, and Valens was adamant that none of them would leave until he got justice.

  Meanwhile their father’s friend was sitting on the marble floor beneath a plaque commemorating the miraculous healing of one Bodukus of the Cornovii. He was holding a blood-soaked cloth to his forehead and was drifting into a sentimental and sleepy reverie about the innocent pleasures of making hay and tending sheep on Tilla’s family farm when he heard Valens’s voice.

  “Uh?”

  “How’s the head?”

  “Could be worse.”

  Valens removed a lamp from one of the brackets beside the treasure display and knelt beside him. “Let me see.”

  Ruso lifted the cloth for a moment and got a close view of the swollen purple lids that had now met over his friend’s left eye.

  Valens handed him the lamp, squinted at Ruso’s injury, and poked it with a forefinger before declaring it to be only superficial. “They can’t throw you out of a temple if you claim sanctuary, can they?”

  “Can’t they?”

  “No, I’m sure of it. That would be outrageous.”

  As outrageous as horse theft or invading the house of a goddess and locking her outside in the rain.

  “You need a few stitches,” Valens told him, “but I doubt there’s anything here to do them with.”

  Ruso clamped the cloth back against his head. “I don’t want it stitched by a one-eyed man in the dark anyway.”

  “In case you feel like asking,” Valens told him, “my eye is throbbing, and it feels like a watermelon. But I’m not complaining.” He got to his feet and wandered back to the treasure table. “For a goddess of healing, she hasn’t got anything here that’s very useful.” He picked up a bronze ring, slid it onto one finger, then removed it and put it down again. There was a little ivory carving with two lumps that might represent breasts in need of the goddess’s assistance, and a clay model of a foot. “Although these might come in handy.” He held up a bronze ceremonial sword and a brightly painted round shield that would barely have protected a ten-year-old.

  “If you get in any more fights,” Ruso told him, “you’re on your own.”

  From somewhere outside came the wail of a horn. The choir burst into a new hymn. The ceremony was grinding its way forward. Sooner or later there would be angry men outside again, shouting demands through the door.

  “Cheer up, Ruso,” announced Valens, bringing a pewter jug over. “Somebody’s given the goddess some wine. I can at least clean you up.”

  “Marvelous.”

  “Even though you don’t sound very grateful.”

  They were already in so much trouble that there was no point in telling Valens to leave the wine alone. “I thought they were going to kill us,” Ruso said. “What the hell were you doing, running into the temple courtyard with all those people there?”

  Valens glanced at the boys. “By the time I worked out how to spring the lock on the carriage door, we were back in town. I thought the best chance of escape was to hide in the crowd.” He folded a cloth into a pad and poured some wine onto it. “I didn’t know we were famous.” He dabbed Ruso’s injured head with the damp cloth. “Nothing’s quite gone to plan lately.”

  “At least your career in horse theft seems to have been a—ow!”

  “I think the bleeding’s stopped now. I had no idea those horses were stolen. I sent your lad straight back with them when I found out.”

  “Where did you think they came from?”

  “I don’t know. He said he could get them for me.”

  Ruso said, “By magic?”

  “I assumed he had local contacts.”

  “He does. His father is a horse thief.”

  Valens paused with the cloth in midair. “You didn’t tell me that.”

  “I didn’t—ow!—I didn’t know.”

  Valens put his head on one side to survey his work. “That’ll have to do. You don’t look quite as frightening as you did.”

  Ruso grunted something that Valens could interpret as thanks if he wanted to.

  Valens dragged an ornately carved folding chair off the barricade and set it up next to Ruso, facing toward the shapes that were his children, asleep under the blood-spattered blanket. Ruso pondered the effort required to heave himself up and fetch another chair, and decided he could doze just as well where he was. “Throw me a pillow, will you?”

  Valens obliged. “I’m not leaving them, you know.”

  “I know.”

  Ruso lay back and closed his eyes. Moments later he heard the creak of the chair as Valens got up. That was good. Better to keep one man on watch. Meanwhile, this was the place where patients were supposed to be sent helpful dreams. Perhaps while Ruso caught up with the lost sleep from last night, Sulis Minerva would tell him who had killed Serena.

  He hardly seemed to have dropped off when he heard the voice.

  “Bodukus,” it said.

  Bodukus? A native name. Bodukus. It sounded familiar.

  “Of the Cornovii,” continued the voice, “had a painful shoulder for a year. Sulis Minerva prescribed daily bathing in the waters and a plaster of barley meal and bear’s fat and—”

  “Shut up. I’m trying to sleep.”

  “These things are fascinating,” said Valens, unabashed. “He’d had this bad shoulder for a year and the goddess cured it in a month.”

  “Hmph.”

  “Of course, it doesn’t say whether he’d seen a mortal doctor first.”

  “Or whether he’d done what he was told to do when he did,” Ruso grunted.

  Valens stepped over Ruso and carried on exploring the walls, holding up the lamp to illuminate the plaques and painted inscriptions in between the pillars. “Lots of infertility,” he remarked. “Tilla might be—sorry, is that a sore point?”

  “No,” Ruso lied.

  �
�Oh, this one’s interesting!”

  “Tell me in the morning.”

  “Some chap’s cure for blindness was withdrawn until he brought the offering he had promised. So first he can’t see, then he can, and then he can’t, and then—”

  “I really don’t care,” Ruso told him.

  “I think this Sulis Minerva might be my new favorite goddess.”

  When Ruso did not reply, he said, “D’you think there are sacred snakes in here?”

  “No.”

  “It’s all right, the boys aren’t listening. They’re sound asleep.”

  Ruso sighed and hauled himself back up to a sitting position. It was clear that Valens was too agitated to stop talking, and no amount of complaining would help. Sleep would have to wait a little longer.

  After remarking on a daughter who was cured of dropsy when her mother bathed in the local waters (“How does that work, with someone else taking the cure?”), Valens wandered back to the treasure table, picked up a small bottle, and shook it. “I think these might be somebody’s gallstones. They’re quite splendid. Want a look?”

  “No.”

  Valens put the bottle down and helped himself to a pair of decorated silver cups. He blew into them, then wiped them both out with a fistful of his tunic before pouring wine into each one. He took a sniff at a second jug and wrinkled his nose.

  Ruso said, “No good?”

  “Water from the spring.”

  The statement was terse, and Ruso wished he hadn’t asked. He looked at the glittering cup in his friend’s hand, reminded himself that it wasn’t sensible to drink unwatered wine on an empty stomach, and took it anyway. Valens raised his matching silverware in salutation. “To Sulis Minerva, and sanctuary,” he said.

  “Sulis Minerva, and sanctuary.”

  They both tipped their heads back.

  Valens jerked forward as he tried to control the choking, while the wine seemed to be stripping several layers off the inside of Ruso’s mouth.

  Recovering, Valens gasped, “No wonder she didn’t want it.”

  “She can drink the rest herself.” Ruso handed back the cup.

  Valens poured the rejected wine back into the jug, shook out the remaining drops, and wiped the cups clean with his tunic. Then he helped himself to a pillow from somewhere in the corner and finally settled down in the chair.

  Ruso leaned against the wall and glanced up into the gloom that hid the temple ceiling. He wondered when Valens would realize that he was going to be alone in this sanctuary with his boys before long, because Ruso didn’t have to stay here, and he wasn’t going to. He closed his eyes.

  His gentle drift into oblivion was interrupted by “If the boys had been hurt out there, it would have been my fault.”

  “They weren’t.”

  One of the boys muttered something. The bed creaked.

  “Ruso?”

  “Mm?”

  “I need to know something.”

  “I’m trying to sleep.”

  “This is important. I need to know before they come for us.”

  Ruso stifled a yawn. “Go on, then.”

  “Do you believe I did it?”

  “Did you?”

  “No.”

  Ruso heard himself say, “Then we’ll fight Pertinax in court.”

  “I suppose it’s the only way now.”

  “Mm.”

  Valens said, “What have you found that we can use?”

  Ruso took a slow breath in and wondered how to break the news that he had found nothing conclusive at all. He said, “We’ll ask the governor for time to track down Terentius.”

  “That might take months. I can’t keep the boys in here forever.”

  “The boys aren’t in need of sanctuary,” Ruso pointed out. “You are.”

  Instead of easing off, the rain had grown heavier; he could hear it drumming on the roof tiles now. He continued, “Everything’s a lot more complicated when you have children.”

  Valens said, “They are when you haven’t got a wife.”

  Outside, the choir burst into song again.

  Valens said, “They’ll go to Pertinax, won’t they?”

  “You know he’ll look after them.”

  “So. After all this bloody time and effort, we’re back where we started.”

  “No.” Ruso bowed his head and tried to massage the stiffness out of his shoulders. “When we started, you could just walk out of the inn. This time you’re trapped.”

  52

  To Tilla’s surprise the priests who were gathered around the altar in the rain showed no sign of wanting to hurry, although the slaves who had the job of holding the covers up over their heads might have thought differently. Beside them, Gleva stood tall with no shelter of any kind. Her head was crowned with a garland of wilting white flowers and the rain had plastered long ripples of red hair flat against her dripping green garments. Still she raised her bare arms to the skies as if she had not noticed the weather. Tilla might even have admired the woman had she not known so much about her.

  While many of the crowd had retreated to the warm bathhouse, the hardy and the devoted, whose clothes mostly suggested they were keen to be Romans, were standing under the shelter of the colonnade to watch. The governor and some of his followers—including a glum-faced woman who must be his wife—had been installed under a rain shelter close to the altar and were probably hoping some of the warmth from the flames would blow in their direction. Tilla shivered alongside the common people, wishing the priests would get on with it, yet at the same time hoping they wouldn’t. As long as the golden goddess stood out on the temple porch, the fugitives behind the closed doors were safe. Once the priests wanted to put her back in her rightful place, who knew what would happen?

  Tilla was prepared to wait, but Mara had had enough, and although the whining and wriggling could be pacified, there was no taming the smell.

  Tilla glanced at Neena, who wrinkled her nose and said, “Shall I take her away, mistress?”

  Tilla hesitated. She knew almost no one here, and she had seen how quickly the crowds could turn nasty. She peered out through the rain at the golden statue in front of the temple doors, and murmured a quiet prayer for Sulis Minerva to keep the priests busy and her man and his friends safe while she was not there to watch.

  On the way into the bathhouse she remembered Esico, all alone somewhere on his first wet evening of freedom, and promised herself she would pray for him too. Not until this present trouble was over, though. For now, the men and boys in the temple needed the goddess’s full attention.

  Mara shrank against her as they entered the torchlit hubbub of the changing hall. “The latrines,” Tilla urged Neena, pointing across the hall. She caught sight of Virana serving behind a food stall and raised a hand in greeting. Virana grinned and waved a pastry in reply. Tilla and Neena edged their way toward the latrines, trying not to bump into anyone’s beer or tread on small children. They were surrounded by people all trying to shout over each other in the echoing hall, many of them speaking the local tongue. To Tilla’s surprise, not all the talk was of the men in the temple. She caught snatches of conversation about children and neighbors, about the price of cows, about the effect of the damp on bad knees, about how all child snatchers ought to be nailed up, and about what a bad sign it was to see the gods raining on the new governor.

  “Sulis isn’t pleased with him.”

  “And they couldn’t get that fire lit.”

  “Things have never been right since they interfered with the other spring.”

  “It’s all because of that doctor who murdered—ow! Watch where you’re going!”

  But Tilla was out of reach and did not bother to apologize.

  The two elderly ladies who had admired Mara over yesterday’s dinner in the Mercury were crammed onto a bench by the latrine door, each clutching an untouched pastry and gazing about them as if they were wondering where all these people had come from and how they could escape.

 
Tilla bent down and greeted them in Latin. Seeing their alarm, she leaned closer and explained, “My husband and I met you in the Mercury!”

  The nearer of the two clutched her pastry against her chest as if Tilla might have come to snatch it. The other one leaned across and shouted above the hubbub, “My poor sister and I didn’t get a wink of sleep last night!” as if this were somehow Tilla’s fault.

  Baffled, she shouted that she hoped they would be feeling better soon.

  She should have guessed that the latrines would be full. Men and women were seated side by side all along both rows, five or six people were standing in the middle waiting to take the first place that came free, and there was already another baby laid out on the floor having his cloths changed.

  “Try the cold room,” suggested a motherly-looking woman in the queue.

  She was right: There were far fewer people in the chillier room. It was just bad luck that one of them recognized Tilla.

  “Aren’t you the one who was helping the child stealers?”

  “No.”

  “Funny. You look just like her.”

  “They are not child stealers,” she explained, allowing Neena to lift Mara from her arms. “One of them is the father of the boys.”

  “That priest said that they were child stealers,” insisted the woman, who was standing in front of a torch at such an angle that her hair looked as though it were on fire. Tilla was sorry that it wasn’t.

  “We all heard him say it!” chimed in someone else.

  “Well, they aren’t,” Tilla told them. “The priests wouldn’t leave the children shut in there with them if they were.”

  “I knew there was something not right about those two,” put in another voice from behind the woman. “You could tell from looking at them.”

  Tilla tried to object but nobody was listening. She flinched as a restraining hand was laid on her arm, then realized it was Neena. “Come away, mistress,” the slave urged. “Mara needs you.”

  “One of them was that doctor. The one who murdered his wife.”