by Ruth Downie
"Oh, for pity's sake!" He turned and flung the belt at the desk. It skidded across the top and sent the whetstone and the scalpel clattering onto the floor. "Get up!" he snapped. "Sit on a chair and stop fiddling with that bandage."
Tilla sniffed again and scrambled up onto the nearest stool.
Ruso retrieved the scalpel from under a chair, lifted her hands, and stroked apart the thread that held them together. The limp forefinger lifted as he unraveled the binding, then fell back into her lap. The white indentation that ran around it gradually turned pink.
Tilla said flatly, "I have failed."
This so accurately mirrored his own feeling that he paused before asking, "At what?"
"If I speak," she said, not looking up, "I will be punished. If I do not speak I will be punished."
Ruso sat on his desk and folded his arms. He was almost sure she was telling the truth about Innocens. She could not have picked anything more dangerous than a dandelion around Merula's and anyway the girls never went out without the protective supervision of one of the doormen. So what on earth could she have to confess? As gently as he could he said, "Then you may as well tell me now."
"If I tell," she said, "my tongue will be cut out."
Ruso frowned. "Is this some Druid nonsense? The Druids are finished, Tilla. We're in charge here now."
"Is not Druids!" she blurted in exasperation. "Is Merula!"
Ruso felt his shoulders drop. "Merula?"
"You have seen Daphne!"
He stared at her. "The pregnant one?" He tried to grasp the connection. "Are you telling me Merula cut out her tongue?"
"Daphne asks a customer to help her run away. He says he will help, then he tells Merula. You see what happens to slaves who talk!"
He slid off the desk, crouched in front of her and gripped her by the shoulders. "Tell me," he insisted. "Tell me exactly what's going on. I'm going to put a stop to this nonsense right—" There was another knock at the door. "I said, not now, Albanus! Is this life or death?"
"Yes, sir! No, sir!"
"Which?"
"Yes, not now, sir, no it's not life or death, sir." There was a pause, then the clerk's voice said uncertainly, "Shall I come back in a minute, sir?"
"Don't bother," said Ruso. "I'll come and find you."
He returned his attention to his servant. "Quickly," he urged.
52
SO," SAID RUSO, scratching one ear and trying to make sense of what his servant had just told him. "This new girl at Merula's, Phryne—"
"Is not her real name."
"Well, just pretend it is for the moment. This is a girl from your own tribe who accepted a lift from Innocens and then found herself kidnapped and sold to Merula."
"She is not a slave. She is freeborn. Her father is carpenter."
"These are serious allegations, Tilla."
"Yes, my Lord."
"And are you saying that Merula knows her history?"
"She tell her."
"These are very serious allegations."
"Yes, my Lord. Merula—"
"Threatened to have your tongue cut out if you talked. I know. How was she going to explain that to me?"
She shrugged.
"Clearly she didn't expect to have to do it. So you're convinced that your goddess has given you the job of saving this girl, but rather than have your tongue cut out, you were encouraging her to run away and making magic potions and prayers to protect her from the same fate as the other girls."
"And I put—"
"Don't say it!" he interrupted. "If you've been putting curses on Merula or anyone else, I want you to keep quiet about it. I happen to think it's nonsense but there are people who won't. You could get yourself into a lot of trouble."
Suddenly she looked up as if a bright idea had occurred to her. "My Lord could buy Phryne!"
He frowned. "Buy Phryne? What would I want to buy her for?"
"Or my Lord's friend, the good-looking one, he could buy her!"
"Even if we wanted to," Ruso pointed out, unable to imagine the good-looking one exerting himself for a slave he didn't want, "neither of us can buy her if she's stolen, can we?"
"Then you send her home, and Merula does not know that I tell you!"
"And the lightness in my purse is counterbalanced by the weight of moral righteousness."
She looked at him blankly. "Is what?"
"Never mind."
"You get your money back," she said. "I tell her family, they pay you."
"Marvelous. I'll go into business with Claudius Innocens. He can be the muscle man, and I'll send you to do the extortion."
She said, "Oh."
He was conscious of time moving on. He really should go and deal with whatever Priscus wanted. "There's no need for all these complicated schemes, Tilla," he told her. "I know your people have trouble believing it, but this part of Britannia is under Roman protection. A man can't steal a freeman's daughter and sell her into slavery, and an owner certainly can't buy a slave and put her to work knowing her to be stolen. You've acted correctly in reporting a crime. I'll pass on the report and it will be dealt with in the proper way."
"But my Lord, Merula—"
"Don't worry about Merula. The law says that slaves are the property of their owners. Merula might get away with bullying her own girls but nobody's going to cut out the tongue of my property. I'll make it clear to the bar staff that they're to leave you alone in future. Understood?"
She nodded. "Yes, my Lord."
"Now go over to the house and get started on dinner. And don't steal anybody else's firewood."
"Yes, my Lord." She stood and gathered up the cloak and the basket.
Her hand was on the door latch when one last question occurred to him. "Tilla?"
She turned. "My Lord?"
"You are legally a slave yourself, aren't you?"
She raised her hand to the place on her upper arm where the tunic hid the copper slave band. "I am, my Lord."
"And Innocens didn't steal you?"
"He paid money, my Lord."
"Hm. Not as much as he told me he did, I'll bet."
She smiled. "No, my Lord. I think not."
53
TO RUSO'S SURPRISE and mild embarrassment, the urgent message from Priscus had been a referral to a private patient with a toothache. By the time he arrived at the office the administrator had gone out, but Albanus introduced him to a small boy who had been waiting to take the first available doctor to his grandmother.
He followed the boy out through the fort gates and down a street behind the amphitheater to a barber's shop. A veteran with a spectacular scar running down into a patch over one eye was perched on a stool by the entrance, steadily stropping a wicked-looking razor and ignoring the sound of raised female voices from somewhere in the depths of the building. He stood up as Ruso entered the shop.
"I was told you needed a doctor."
The veteran's one good eye glanced down from Ruso's growing beard to his medical case, then across at the boy who had brought him. He said something to the boy in British. The boy's reply seemed to satisfy him.
"It's the mother-in-law." The man jerked his head toward the back of the shop. "Needs a tooth pulled. Good luck."
The boy picked up a broom and began to sweep clumps of hair off the floor. Ruso made his own way past shelves stacked with towels and basins and stoppered jars. He rapped on the door.
The younger of the two voices in the back room launched into a fierce tirade of British that seemed to be aimed at someone else. The only word he understood was medicus.
"I'm the doctor," he announced, and pushed open the door in search of his patient.
The room smelled of smoke and boiled cabbage. It contained a table, two stools, an unmade bed, and an exasperated woman. The woman was standing by another door that led to the back of the house. This door was closed. From behind it came a speech in which he could again make out the word medicus. This time it sounded like an accusation.
"I understand she wants a tooth pulled."
"She doesn't. We do."
Ruso said, "Ah."
"All week," announced the woman, still in Latin but slowly, and loud enough to be understood from the other side of the closed door, "All week she has been tormented with worms in her tooth. We have tried everything we can think of. We have bought medicines to drive the worms out. My husband offered to pull it. We have taken her to the healer. She is still in pain. Now my husband has called for a medicus . . ."
The stream of British from the other side of the door contained the words Roman and medicus in a tone that suggested they were interchangeable with bloodthirsty and maniac.
"My husband," continued the woman, "whose life was saved by a Roman medicus, has hired a surgeon for my mother at his own expense, and my mother shames us all by refusing to see him."
"Sit down, Doctor," offered the veteran's voice from behind him. "The wife will pour you a beer."
"I've told her he's here," explained the woman, unnecessarily. "She still won't open the door."
"This often happens with toothache," observed Ruso, suspecting he was only a transient player in a long-running dispute. He offered to leave some paste to pack around the tooth. For answer, the woman placed one of the stools in front of him. Then she took down a cup from the shelf and poured beer from the jug on the table.
"How do you usually get them out?" inquired the veteran.
"The worms?"
"The patients."
Ruso took a sip of the beer and decided it would have been better used on the tooth worms, which, if they existed, must be devious little beasts because neither he nor anyone he knew had ever seen one. "I don't," he said.
The woman banged a cup down in front of her husband and poured more beer. The husband peered at it with his one eye. "Steady on, woman. You could drown a fly in that."
The woman shrugged and returned to her station by the door. She seemed to be listening for movement. The veteran helped himself to more drink, evidently not troubled by the mysterious objects floating in it. "Women, eh?"
Ruso braved another mouthful of the beer. "Tell me something," he said, "you do women's hair as well as men's?"
The barber shook his head. "Never had much chance to practice in the army. I'll do a quick trim on the locals, but we don't go in for all that fussing with pins and curling tongs."
"I just wondered if you'd had anyone in asking about selling hair."
The barber hooked something out of the beer with his little finger and wiped it off on the edge of the table. "I might look at something valuable. Blond, or red. Mouse brown you might as well use for stuffing cushions."
"Have you had anyone in asking about red?"
The one eye met his. "Is this about that tart in the river? I heard some doctor was poking around."
"This isn't official. I was the one who took the body in. I just wondered how far the inquiry had got."
"Well, nobody's come bothering me."
"Right." Ruso was beginning to wonder if the second spear was doing anything at all about the dead girls. At this rate Innocens would die of old age before anyone found the time to question him. "Well, if you should happen to hear anything—"
"If we get anyone around here, I'll tell them what I'm telling you. I don't want nothing to do with it."
The woman began to pound the door with the heel of her hand.
The man leaned forward to be heard over the din and said, "From what I heard, those girls were well looked after at Merula's. Compared to some of the places down the Dock road, Merula's bar is a palace. They took it into their heads to run off—" He broke off. "Will you stop that, woman? The old bat might be daft but she's not deaf!" He turned back to Ruso. leaving the wife to deliver another tirade in British. "Don't take a genius to work out what happened to them, does it?"
"I know what happened to them, and at least one of them didn't die by accident. What nobody seems to be able to find out is who did it."
"If I was you, Doctor, I'd stay out of it. You start asking too many questions, you upset people. I know who I buy from. I don't buy from murderers."
"I wasn't suggesting—"
"'Course you weren't. But you should be careful who you ask. People who go around poking into other people's business can end up in a whole lot of trouble."
"Why would anybody shelter a murderer?"
"I'm not saying they would. I'm just saying, watch out. Me, I mind my own affairs and I don't let my woman wander around this place after dark." The man rocked his stool back to lean against the wall and turned to the aforementioned woman. "Did I just hear you tell her I'd take the door down?"
The woman stabbed a finger toward Ruso. "Our money is sitting there, doing nothing!"
"Do you know how much it costs to fix a door, woman?"
Ruso rubbed his chin and decided to ask now before he or the barber drank any more of the beer. He gestured toward the shop, which since it opened westward onto the street would still catch the best of the daylight. "Any chance of a shave while I'm waiting?"
An hour or so later the patient lay on her bed in a drugged stupor, minus two disgusting black molars that had now vanished into the dusk along with her grandson. Ruso had a smooth chin, short hair, and he hadn't been bitten once.
As he closed his case he was still weighing whether to knock the cost of the haircut off the fee. Charges tended to fluctuate depending upon the means of the patient, but asking too little was as bad as asking too much. Word got around. Precedents were hard to break.
"About the fee . . ."
The barber frowned. "I know you had a bit of a wait, Doc. But you did have professional services during the waiting time."
"Exactly."
"The other officer told the lad it was a flat rate."
Ruso's face must have betrayed his confusion. "The other officer?"
"Old what shisname—Priscus. Up at the hospital. Recommended you very highly."
"I see."
"He said you'd got an arrangement. We pay him and he passes it on to you."
"Ah," said Ruso, "that arrangement."
Ruso strode across the paved area toward the fountain, the fall of each boot on the flagstones coinciding with the rhythm of the speech he was rehearsing for Priscus. "And exactly what right have you . . . ?" He was distracted by a gaggle of children gathered by the steps that ran up the outside of the amphitheater. On the wall behind them he could just make out the white of a chalk scrawl announcing the forthcoming visit of L. CURTIUS SILVANUS, DEALER IN SLAVES: RELIABLE STAFF FOR THE DISCERNING EMPLOYER. Below, half a dozen children were scrabbling to peer into the hand of a boy whom he recognized as the barber's son.
"Ugh, look, there's roots!"
"Look at the blood on them!"
"Did you see the worms wriggling?"
He was passing the entrance to the oil merchant's when one of them shouted, "Hey, mister! Got a penny, mister?"
Ruso ignored him. Others joined in the chorus. He could hear their footsteps running up behind him. "Mister! Mister!"
Ruso spun on his heel and the gang stopped dead, a small and ragged bunch gathered just out of arm's reach. He pointed to the barber's son. "Does your father know you beg in the street?"
The boy hesitated, then grinned. "I know something you don't," he said.
"No doubt."
"I'll tell you, but you got to pay me first."
"Why would I do that?"
The boy glanced at his comrades, then sidled closer to Ruso. "I know something about red hair."
Ruso stared at him.
"I heard you ask. You want to know about somebody selling red hair."
"Somebody sold red hair to your father?"
The boy held out one hand, and made a show of clamping the other over his mouth.
Ruso sighed, and filched out the one meager coin
inside his purse.
The boy took it and removed his hand from his mouth to let out the words, "It was a man."
"Do you know his name?"
"No."
"What sort of a man? What did he look like?"
The boy looked at his friends for support. "I don't know. He was just a man."
"Old, young, fat, thin? It's no good holding out, I haven't got any more money."
The boy frowned. "He was old."
"Was he a soldier?"
"I don't know," said the boy, backing away.
"When was this?"
The boy's friends closed around him. "He was just a man!" he called as they turned and fled.
A man. Ruso frowned at the backs of the retreating children. With a little effort civilian liaison could have found that out—and probably more—days ago. In the morning H Q would be receiving another report, and might even have to interrupt their hunting trips to go and question the barber. In the meantime, Ruso had told the boy the truth. Despite treating his second private patient in Deva, he had no cash in his purse.
Another thought struck him. Priscus's lodgings were somewhere on the east side of the town. He might be at home. According to Decimus, who was not as discreet as Albanus, the miserable old weasel had gone home to keep an appointment with his decorator.
Ruso tightened his grip on the handle of his case. Why wait for morning? He spun around. He was going to straighten out this business of the fees right now.
"Ow!"
The girl he collided with stumbled back against the wall. He made a grab to steady her and knocked something from her hand. It clanged as it hit the pavement. "Sorry," he said as the noise reverberated down the narrow street. "I didn't see you."
The girl shook off his hand and bent to retrieve the item she had dropped. "If this bloody thing's broken again, you'll pay for it. It's only just been—"
"Chloe?"
"Oh! Hullo, Doctor." Chloe held a large saucepan up for inspection.
She wiggled the handle experimentally. "Still attached. No harm done."
Ruso frowned. "Should you be wandering alone out here? It's getting dark."
He was conscious of an arm snaking around the back of his neck.
