by Ruth Downie
Pertinax said, “But Catus could have been carrying a lantern for any number of reasons. Terentius couldn’t have known he was going to lie to your wife.”
Ruso stared at the centurion for a moment. The man was absolutely right. He opened his mouth to reply, but nothing came out. How could Terentius possibly have guessed who had lit the fire? He glanced down at Tilla, but she offered no help.
He was rescued by Gleva. “Terentius knew who started the fire,” said Gleva, “because my brother was over in the other spring taking a night dip and saw what happened, and told him.”
“What?” Pertinax’s head jerked round. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“What good would it have done?”
Pertinax did not answer.
Ruso thought about the native he had met lying naked in a pool of warm water, and decided he should show the gods more respect in future. Perhaps Sulis Minerva was helping him after all. “So,” he said, mentally scrambling back onto the path, “Terentius knew who had sabotaged his project. Whatever he thought of Catus, he couldn’t be expected to keep quiet about that. But the one thing practically everyone has in common in this town is that they don’t want to upset the visitors. An accidental fire was bad enough, but to have it known that guests had died as a result of a local quarrel …”
“Disastrous,” put in the governor. “So poor old Catus decided to shut him up. And the young woman must have got in the way.”
“Impossible!” cried Pertinax. “His own niece! Never, sir. This man’s misleading you to save his friend.”
The governor turned to Ruso. “Well?”
Ruso looked around the room at all the eyes trained on him. Suddenly he felt nostalgic for the daily grind of the farm up on the distant border. Life had been so much simpler when he was chasing goats off the haystack and grumbling about the weather.
Tilla’s warm thigh pressed firmly against his. He heard the urgency in her soft murmur of “Husband?”
“I was hoping,” he said, “that if I went through all the facts here, somebody might have another idea.” He surveyed them all. “No?” He turned back to Pertinax. “I’m sorry to cause you further grief, sir.”
Pertinax addressed the governor. “He knows they can’t win at trial, sir.” Gleva’s hand reached for his, but he pushed it aside. “They can’t win, so he’s sunk to blaming a man who can’t defend himself. It won’t work, sir. I won’t be intimidated. I’ll be lodging a formal accusation against my son-in-law first thing in the morning.”
69
It was as well that the rain had stopped because there were plenty of people hanging about in the street outside the Mercury. The governor’s guards. Some of Pertinax’s veterans, ready to take him home on the mule. A couple of temple slaves, waiting to escort the priests to their homes by torchlight. Esico, still contrite and doing his best to be helpful. “I tried to get a mule for you too, master, but—”
“Please don’t,” Ruso told him, although he was glad that there were two people who were still prepared to speak to him.
The other one was Tilla, who was trying to steer him in the direction of Pertinax’s house, asking if he could walk that far in wooden sandals and in the same breath telling him he needed to lie down. “You are very tired.”
He said, “I thought he would abandon the trial.”
“Never mind that now. Nobody could have done more to help Valens. We have all had a very difficult evening. Now, those sandals—”
“I want to talk to the priest,” he said, glancing past her and catching sight of the wide form vanishing around the corner.
“Do it tomorrow.”
“It’s important.”
“What?” She leaned closer and hissed, “Look at yourself, husband! You look like a man who has escaped from his keepers!”
He had embarrassed her and upset Pertinax, and he hoped he wasn’t soon going to be even more sorry for it than he was already. “I won’t be a moment,” he promised, pushing away her guiding arm and forcing his tired limbs into action once more, clacking along the street in pursuit of the priests.
Memor must have gone in a different direction. Ruso caught up with the chief priest and his escorting slave at the entrance to the temple courtyard. “Dorios? I need a quiet word.”
“Not tonight.” The priest turned in under the archway and kept walking.
“It’s not to do with the death,” Ruso insisted, pausing to pull off the noisy sandals and setting out barefoot across the paving. It struck him that the courtyard was unusually silent. With the pool emptied, there was no trickle of sacred water overflowing from the spring and cascading down toward the river. He could just about make out some figures seated at the base of the temple steps: hopefully, Gnaeus and his little group of veteran protectors, still there to make sure the temple guards did not burst through the doors and tear Valens away from his supposed sanctuary.
“I need to consult you urgently in your capacity as priest of Sulis Minerva,” he persisted, following the torch and hoping Dorios wouldn’t call the guards down to get rid of him.
Dorios paused, the uncertain torchlight flickering over his scowl. “I shall be here in the morning, Doctor.”
“It’s about something in the temple. Something that—at least, I think it happened. I’ve never seen anything quite … well, I’m not really a religious man. But I’ve been thinking about it since, and I think it might be important. I won’t keep you long.”
Dorios sighed. “Very well, then.”
Moments later the two men were seated under the darkness of the portico just as they had been when Dorios finally confessed about the polluted water.
“This is a bit embarrassing, to be honest,” Ruso confessed. “I’m not a great one for the gods. Absolute respect, obviously, but we tend not to bother each other, if you see what I mean.”
“Of course.”
“And it might be nothing. But if it was real, I need your advice on what to do.”
“Tell me exactly what happened.”
“Well,” Ruso began, leaning closer. In the dark he could sense rather than see the priest’s stillness. “It was during the ceremony. We were in the temple, and there wasn’t much light, and the boys were asleep, and there was just the sound of the choir singing outside. I was tired, and I think I must have drifted off. Of course, I’d had a bang on the head, which might explain what I saw. But not what I heard.” He paused. “To be honest, I feel foolish telling anyone this.”
“What did you see?”
“It’s hard to describe. A shape, a sort of golden glow, like something standing over me. And I had the very strong sense that, whatever it was, it was wishing me well. I’m sorry. This probably sounds ridiculous.”
“Not necessarily.”
“Up to that point it could all just have been the bang on the head. But not the words. That’s why I need your help.”
“Words?”
“ ‘The one who is seeking purity shall bring me a white cockerel.’ Just that. Very clear and distinct, but if you asked me to describe the voice, I couldn’t do it.”
“Hm.”
“What do you think?”
Dorios said slowly, “It has the pattern of truth about it.”
“I was afraid you might say that.” Ruso paused. “Why me?”
“The gods choose whom they will, Doctor.”
“So should I bring the goddess a cockerel? Or am I just a messenger?”
“Are you seeking purity?”
Ruso frowned and then wished he hadn’t, because it pulled on the stitches. “It wouldn’t do any harm,” he admitted. “But I’m wondering if the message was for somebody else.”
When Dorios did not reply, he cleared his throat. “When I spoke in front of the governor, I was hoping one of you would convince me Catus hadn’t done it.”
“I see.”
“But nobody did.”
Dorios said, “It’s all very distressing. Poor Catus must have been desperate.”
&n
bsp; “It’s too late to give him the message now. He’s already suffered the awful fate in Gleva’s curse.”
“Indeed.”
“But perhaps I could still do something for Valens. Maybe that’s why the goddess kept me safe in the tunnel.”
“Hm.”
“Should I have told all this to the haruspex?”
There was a shuffle of fabric as the priest shifted on the stone bench. “Leave it to me,” he said. “I’ll discuss it with him in the morning and get back to you.”
But Ruso wanted more reassurance. “If Valens offers the cockerel, perhaps Sulis Minerva will save him from the trial and let him stay with his boys.”
“Let me talk to Memor. We’ll come up with a decision.”
Ruso thanked him and got to his feet. “I tell you what,” he said. “I’ll bring a cockerel along in the morning and you can tell me what to do with it.”
Dorios grunted as he hauled himself upright. “Our goddess is gracious to all who honor her,” he said. “Come back tomorrow and we’ll see what we can do.”
70
It was not quite dawn when something nudged Ruso out of sleep. He grunted a response and instantly a hand clamped over his mouth, startling him fully awake.
“Sh!” The hand was removed and he felt his wife’s hair tickle his face as she breathed in his ear, “At the altar. Look.”
He rolled over in the tangle of borrowed blankets and squinted out across the courtyard, breathing in the cold air. Then he shifted himself into a sitting position, moving slowly to ease the stiffness that had crept in from the stone floor of the portico.
Tilla murmured, “See him?”
He rubbed his eyes and tried again. She was right: There was someone moving beside the pale rectangle of the altar. But, try as he might, it was impossible to reconcile the figure out there in the uncertain light with the one he had been expecting.
Maybe, even now, he was wrong.
The figure circled the altar three times. Then he crouched, and there was a creak of wicker. Something white appeared. It flapped about and squawked, and he felt Tilla clutch his arm in excitement.
“It is him!” Tilla whispered.
“It’s not.”
“But he brought the cockerel.”
Ruso shrugged off the extra blankets and peered over at the foot of the temple steps. He could just about make out a couple of standing figures: Gnaeus’s men still keeping watch over Valens’s place of safety. He hoped they weren’t going to interrupt. There had been no way of getting a message to them without arousing the suspicion of the temple guards, lurking up there in front of Sulis Minerva’s heavy doors.
The unknown figure seized the bird and pressed it down onto the ground in front of the altar. As he did so the glow of a lamp appeared from behind the temple. A second figure came lurching across the paving stones with an unmistakable gait.
Tilla whispered, “Dorios! You were right!”
The cockerel seemed to have stopped moving. The man who had brought it stepped back, leaving the white shape lying motionless on the ground.
“That was quick.” Tilla sounded puzzled.
“Sh.” He heard a clink as Dorios placed the lamp on the ground. There was some sort of activity he couldn’t make out. Then the priest and the other man stepped apart, there was the glimmer of a flame and Ruso caught a whiff of incense and something less desirable.
Just as Ruso recognized the bent form of Justus the drain slave, there was a thud and a muffled female cry from behind him.
Dorios called, “Who’s there?” and then, louder: “Guards!”
Ruso’s cry of “Veterans, to me!” rang out over the clatter and scrape of the temple guards’ boots descending the stone steps. He strode toward the altar. Behind him, Tilla whispered an apology. “I fell over the blankets.”
“Doctor?” Dorios peered at him in the light of the brazier as the temple guards and Gnaeus’s little band of veterans clustered around the altar. “There’s no need for you to be here. Everything is under control.”
Ruso glanced at the collapsed white shape of the bird. “Is it?”
“This slave caused the death of Catus. Now he has sacrificed the bird to purify himself.”
The slave said, “I didn’t—” but whatever else he might have said was silenced by a rapid motion that Ruso guessed was a jab from Dorios’s walking stick.
“I came myself,” the priest continued, “to see that the correct form was observed so that the goddess will accept his gift.”
“But it is not dead!” declared Tilla. “See?”
As if to prove her right, the cockerel gave a squawk, scrambled to its feet, and flapped away from them.
“Catch it!” cried Dorios, but the slave was not fast enough. The cockerel was a fading white shape skittering across the courtyard. “You should have tied its legs, you fool!” shouted Dorios. Then, turning to the temple guards: “Don’t just stand there! Help him!”
Ruso said, “What about Valens?” but Dorios was busy shouting at the guards to bring the bird straight back to the altar.
“What will Valens do?”
But the priest had not had time to think about Valens.
“Will the goddess accept two birds from different people?” Ruso persisted. “If she doesn’t, what should he do?”
“Never mind about him,” muttered Dorios, straining to see where the cockerel had got to. “I’m sure Catus was the killer anyway. You should have given the message from the goddess to Catus.”
Tilla said, “It’s flown up onto the portico roof.”
The priest gave a wail of distress.
“A reluctant victim,” put in Ruso, bending to pick up a lone white feather. “Not a good sign.”
Dorios did not reply.
“I tell you what,” Ruso suggested. “While they catch it, we could go and tell Valens what really happened to his wife.”
Dorios said, “You tell him, Doctor. You know him better.”
The cries of the cockerel chasers rang out from somewhere on the far side of the temple. The tone of exasperation suggested they might be gone for some time. Ruso stepped forward and took the priest by the arm. “I’m thinking,” he said softly, “that if between us we can make a good case for Catus being guilty, we might still be able to avert a trial. That’s what you want, isn’t it? It’s certainly what Valens wants.”
“But—”
“Why don’t we go up to the temple and talk about it?”
“Surely it would be better to wait and—”
But Tilla had seized the priest’s other arm. His own guards had run off in pursuit of the cockerel, and the veterans were closing in around him.
71
“You’re taking them outside?” Valens demanded as Tilla hurried his sleepy boys toward the great doors of the temple. “Who’s out there?”
“My husband and the priest have things to say to you,” Tilla told him. “But the boys do not need to hear them. We will sit on the steps and watch the sun bring the new day while you talk.”
“Don’t let them out of your sight.”
“They will be safe with me,” Tilla promised.
The temple doors thudded shut between Valens and the children he had fought so hard to retain. Inside, the lamps around Sulis Minerva’s plinth had burned low but still there was enough light to glint on the golden features of the goddess as she stared out above the heads of the three mortals in her gloomy temple: a military doctor who was accused of murdering his wife, his weary and slightly battered friend, and a priest who was struggling to pull some folds of his shambolic toga up over his head without letting go of his walking stick.
“Perhaps,” Ruso said, “we should all approach the goddess and ask for her help.” He turned to the priest. “What do you think?”
Dorios’s eyes were bulging like a frog’s. The loose skin under his throat shook. He glanced back at the doors, which were firmly shut, and whispered, “I only ever tried to help you, Doctor.”
Ruso glared at Valens, who was clearly more interested in knowing what was going on outside with his boys. Finally getting the message, Valens stepped up and took Dorios’s other arm. They moved forward as a threesome across the polished marble floor and paused to bow at the foot of the statue. Ruso said, “Would our priest like to say a prayer?”
Dorios gulped, then muttered, “That won’t be necessary.”
“Then perhaps here, in the presence of the goddess, you could tell Valens who it was that caused the death of his wife.”
For a moment there was silence. Then the priest wrenched himself free of their grasp and cried out, “Forgive me, goddess—it was Catus!”
“If it was Catus,” put in Ruso, “why were you here to sacrifice a cockerel in search of purity?”
“I told you, the slave—”
“Are you saying, in front of the goddess, that you weren’t willing to make the sacrifice?”
Dorios gazed up at the perfect, impassive golden features. “Sulis Minerva knows the truth. The gods will not be mocked!”
“The slave didn’t come here to sacrifice the bird,” Ruso said. “He was here to deliver it and soothe it for you so you could offer a willing victim.”
Dorios was backing away from the statue now. He collided with the rumpled bed that the boys had just left, and it creaked as he collapsed down onto it. “It was the slave who opened the sluices and drowned the engineer.”
“Yes,” Ruso agreed, ignoring Valens’s “What? Catus? What happened?” and stepping to one side so he could watch the priest without irreverently turning his back on the goddess. “On whose orders?”
Dorios was silent.
“It doesn’t matter if you don’t answer,” Ruso assured him. “The governor’s men will get the truth out of him: It’ll only be a matter of time. But I expect Justus has been doing whatever you tell him to do ever since he was caught with Terentius’s ring, because he’s afraid that if he’s not useful to you, he’ll be silenced too.”
