by Ruth Downie
‘It’s not that I don’t trust you, Tilla, it’s just …’ He hesitated. ‘Look, if I tell you, you must promise not to repeat it.’
‘Yes.’
‘He was obviously confused at the end. He didn’t know what he was saying.’
‘Yes.’
‘So when he said, The bitch has poisoned me, it can’t have meant what everyone will think.’
Tilla took a long, slow breath.
He said, ‘Well, you did ask.’
‘This is the last thing he wants to say to the world, but the old wife tells you he is lying, so you are trying to find somebody else to blame.’
‘I’m trying to find out the truth.’
‘But you already know!’
When he did not reply, Tilla said, ‘Perhaps you should try and think inside your head, even if she is my old wife, should I believe everything she is saying to me?’
‘I’m the only one who can help her, Tilla.’
‘The Senator will send a man from Rome to ask questions. Then we will see whether you should help her or not.’
The Medicus got to his feet. ‘Next time,’ he said, brushing the dust off the back of his tunic, ‘I’ll lie to you. Will that make you happy?’
Next time I’ll lie to you? Tilla stared at the froth winking at the mouth of one of the great jars. All the things she wanted to say tumbled over each other in her mind and ended up in a soggy tangle that came out as ‘No.’
She wished she had not come to this place. Nothing had gone right from the moment they had arrived at the farm. Now she felt as if some sort of unsuspected hollow had opened up underneath her. As if he had been watching her all along, comparing her with the old wife and the widow next door as a man would compare horses for a race. If she pushed him too far, he would lie to her. He had just told her so.
She put the platter aside and stood up. Keeping her voice as bright as she could manage, she said, ‘I will find out from Galla which fish-seller knows about the ship.’
‘In the meantime, tell her from me to keep it quiet.’
‘Yes. Can she go back to the house now?’
‘I don’t know why she isn’t in the house,’ he said. ‘What’s this fuss about taking the girls to town?’
She explained. ‘She is here because a servant cannot do two different orders from two different people. The mother wants her to tell what she knows about the daughters, but the daughters order her to be silent. It is not her fault.’ She would have repeated, ‘It is not fair,’ but now she must remember to be careful not to annoy him.
‘I’ll straighten it out with Arria.’
There were footsteps in the yard outside. A shadow fell across the rows of jars. Tilla said, ‘You can talk to Galla. She is here.’
Galla drew back, alarmed.
Tilla beckoned her in. ‘The master is going to say you can go back to work in the house.’
‘Not yet.’ The Medicus was reaching for his stick. ‘I’ll talk to Arria.’
‘But you are head of the family!’ She stopped. Would he go back and tell the old wife about the awkward Briton who was always arguing with him? ‘They must do what you say,’ she suggested.
‘I know,’ he agreed. ‘But then she’ll be having two different orders from two different people again, won’t she? You have to do things in the right order with servants, Tilla.’
‘Yes,’ she said, hitching her tunic up over her belt. She dipped her feet in the bucket to rinse them. Then she climbed back into the treading trough and, before she could stop herself, said, ‘I can see that telling people what to do all day is very hard work.’
Chapter 35
The pungent mixture of burned walnut husks and vinegar that the bath-boy was dutifully plastering across the top of Lucius’ head was unlikely to cure his bald patch, but it would not help to point that out. Instead Ruso leaned back against the side of the warm bath, let his injured foot float to the surface and observed, ‘I hear Tilla spent the day in the winery.’
‘I put them in there out of the way.’
Ruso said, ‘Someone needs to talk to Arria.’
‘I know.’
‘Do you think Cass would do it?’
‘No.’ Lucius reached for the wine flagon. He took a long draught and clapped it back on the tiles. Ruso retrieved it. He was ignoring Valens’ advice to avoid wine, and besides, if he did not intervene soon, Lucius would have consumed the whole lot by himself.
Ruso said, ‘Claudia’s hair has turned orange.’
Lucius’ eyes widened. ‘I’m surprised they let you in over there.’
‘Probus turned up just as I was leaving. As friendly as ever.’
A dark drip separated itself from Lucius’ hairline and began to slide down his temple. ‘Miserable old bugger. The last time I saw him was when he came over here to tell Cass that Justinus had drowned.’
Ruso mused, ‘I liked Justinus.’
‘It’s knocked her sideways. She only had one relative.’
In the silence that followed, Ruso could hear something dripping. He gazed across at the crack in the plaster that ran all the way down from the window, crossed a blue fish and a mermaid’s arm and was going to cause a leak in the bath one day. He wondered if Lucius too was imagining the simplicity of having only one relative.
‘She was all for having some sort of tomb put up to start with,’ said Lucius. ‘Heaven knows what it would cost, but apparently that’s what you do when you haven’t got the body. I was just coming round to it, and now she’s changed her mind. Blowed if I know what to do with her.’
At last, the bath-boy finished pottering about and went out to see to the fire.
As soon as the door closed, Ruso said, ‘His household know he was poisoned. Claudia’s father has told Fuscus that I did it.’
‘Oh, marvellous. I knew this would happen.’
‘It could be worse. They’ve sent for instructions from the Senator. We’ll have at least two or three weeks to find out what really happened before somebody from Rome gets here.’
Lucius smeared the drip of hair lotion across his cheek. ‘So it’s we now, is it?’ he said. ‘How do you suggest we go about it, exactly?’
Ruso took a swig from the flagon. ‘When I was in Britannia –’
‘You aren’t in Britannia now. You can’t just get the Army to go round burning people’s houses down till somebody confesses.’
‘Claudia was talking about getting professional questioners in – speaking of which, is that one of your off-spring being tortured out in the garden?’
Lucius listened for a moment, then said, ‘Cass will sort it out. Who’s going to pay for the questioners?’
‘Nobody. I’ve asked her to wait.’
‘Right,’ said Lucius. ‘I’m sure that’ll make a big difference.’
Ruso closed his eyes, took a deep breath and slid down to the privacy of the bottom of the bath.
Forty-five, forty-six … He shot up, gasping in air and releasing the illogical panic clutching at his chest. When he had wiped the water out of his eyes and his breathing had settled down, the thought that had flashed and faded in his mind while he was counting returned. ‘Who, how and why?’
‘What?’
‘The things we need to find out about the poisoning. Who did it, how, and why.’
‘I’m a simple farmer,’ pointed out Lucius. ‘And nobody trusts doctors. So how are we going to do that, who would tell us anything, and why would they want to?’
‘It’s like geometry,’ Ruso persisted, ignoring him. ‘Find two angles of a triangle, and it doesn’t matter if you don’t know the third one. You can work it out.’
Lucius eyed him for a moment, then reached for the wine. ‘If you’re going to try saving the family with geometry,’ he said, ‘I need another drink.’
‘I haven’t got very far with how,’ Ruso admitted. ‘I don’t know what the poison was, and Claudia says none of the other doctors who looked at him could agree either.’
; ‘Well I never,’ said Lucius, shaking the flagon and trying to peer inside it. ‘Doctors who don’t agree.’
‘Who, then? It must be somebody on the Senator’s estate or somebody here.’ As an afterthought he added, ‘Or somebody he met on the way over.’
Lucius tipped up the flagon to drain the last few drops. ‘Well done, Gaius. You’ve really narrowed it down there.’
Fighting an urge to shove his brother’s head under the water, Ruso said, ‘It’s not that bad. Obviously not everybody Severus came into contact with would want to kill him.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Lucius sliding down until he could lay his head back on the edge of the bath with his eyes closed. ‘You met him, what did you think?’
Ruso paused for a moment. ‘It doesn’t sound as though Cass is out there.’
‘Somebody will be.’
‘We’ve got to think logically. The likely suspects are …’ Ruso began to count on his fingers.
‘You’ll need to use your toes as well,’ said Lucius. ‘And mine.’
‘We’ll start with the estate staff.’
‘Dozens of them, and I bet nobody liked him.’
‘Number one is the staff, collectively,’ said Ruso. ‘Taking numbers two and three together for a minute – Claudia and the sister. They won’t have read the will yet because of the murder, but they’re bound to inherit whatever he had to leave.’
‘Sisters don’t murder brothers to get hold of their money. They just nag them till they hand it over.’
‘Actually I don’t think he had enough to make it worth the bother,’ Ruso conceded. ‘Even the servants nearly all belonged to the Senator, which is why Claudia’s now being elbowed aside by the steward. And she wasn’t a happy wife, but she didn’t need to kill him to escape. She could have divorced him.’
‘It’s not that easy,’ muttered Lucius.
‘It is for Claudia,’ said Ruso. ‘The sister, Ennia. Claudia says she and Severus argued a lot.’
‘It’s not her, Gaius. You saw her with the body.’
Remembering the sight, Ruso said, ‘She was about to kiss him on the lips before I stopped her. You wouldn’t do that if you’d poisoned somebody. Fourth, there are his business enemies, but unless someone intercepted him on the way over or bribed one of the servants, it’s hard to see how they would have done it.’
‘If we start poking around, they’ll be our enemies too.’
‘Claudia’s going to see what she can find out from Probus.’
‘Why is Claudia being nice to us?’
‘Because I was a better husband than Severus,’ said Ruso, prouder of the speed with which he had dreamed up this answer than he was of the way he had really obtained Claudia’s cooperation.
‘She won’t get much out of Probus if he finds out you’re behind it. I still think she did it.’
‘Then there are the people here. Number five, we can count our stable lad out, even if he didn’t approve of Severus’ treatment of his horse. Six, our kitchen-boy drew the water but wouldn’t have a reason to murder him. I know I didn’t do it, so number seven is …’
Lucius sat up so quickly that the water slopped over and landed with a splat on the floor tiles. ‘Cass has got nothing to do with it.’
‘I’m sure I’ll be able to rub her off the list as soon as I’ve spoken to her.’
‘Thanks. Very gracious.’
Ruso cleared his throat. ‘Tilla thought we ought to take a look at Probus,’ he said, not adding that Tilla, too, now suspected Claudia.
‘So we includes your girlfriend as well? Why don’t you invite the bath-boy in to give his opinion?’
Ruso was determined not to be distracted. ‘She’s picked up some gossip about Severus borrowing a lot of money from him to finance the ship that sank.’
‘Then Probus wouldn’t poison him, would he? He’d want him alive to pay it back. Face it, Gaius. It’s obvious. Claudia did it.’
Ruso’s mind was turning over a question that had not occurred to him before. ‘Why was Justinus on the ship in the first place?’
‘Or maybe it was your girl who did it. Perhaps she fed him some wild barbarian potion, trying to do you a favour.’
‘Tilla was in town. You haven’t answered the question. Why was Justinus on the ship?’
Lucius rubbed one ear and wiped a black smear of hair lotion across his cheek. ‘To keep an eye on the business, I suppose.’
‘But why –’
‘Holy gods, Gaius! The man’s dead: it doesn’t matter! Stick to the point. Do you realize that if we don’t find out who poisoned the Senator’s agent, you’ll be the one on trial in the Forum for murder?’
Ruso closed his eyes and prayed for patience. ‘Then perhaps,’ he said, ‘since you can see all the problems so clearly, you might try thinking what you can do to help, instead of knocking aside everything I’m trying to suggest.’
Lucius’ hand slapped on to the surface, splattering them both with water. ‘I tried to help! I warned you not to drag the family into a murder case, but you wouldn’t listen to me!’ He shoved himself away from the side of the bath. His voice echoed from the domed ceiling. ‘I had all this debt business under control, too, but no, you had to interfere! You’ve never listened to me. Even when we were children. You were always right!’
‘I was older!’
‘You still think I can’t manage without you!’
‘I’ve never said that.’
‘You didn’t have to! Poor old Lucius, can’t do without his big brother. You think this is all my fault and you’re going to sort it out, don’t you?’
‘It is your fault! If you’d just stopped to get a receipt from Severus we’d never have been in this mess!’
‘There never was a letter, was there? Admit it, Gaius!’
‘Of course there was! Ask Tilla.’
‘What does she know? She can’t even read!’
The boom of their voices collided over the splashing as Lucius grabbed his brother and yelled into his face, ‘You just came home to check up on me!’
‘No, I didn’t!’
It was a stupid, childish fight that turned into something worse. The kicking and splashing and grabbing and grunting and yelling, ‘Get off!’ and ‘Admit it!’ and ‘No!’ and ‘You made it up! Admit it!’ and ‘No!’ turned into heavy punches and pain.
Lucius, shorter but heavier, had Ruso’s face within an inch of the surface, yelling, ‘No, I didn’t!’ when Ruso suddenly felt him slacken his grip. He became aware of another voice. A smaller, higher voice, calling, ‘Papa! Uncle Gaius!’
Ruso released his hold on Lucius’ throat.
‘Polla!’ exclaimed Lucius as the brothers hastily pushed apart.
‘Papa, stop fighting,’ ordered Polla in the brisk tone she used with her younger brothers. ‘Little Lucius is up the pergola and he can’t get down, and Publius is shaking it.’
A smaller figure appeared from behind her skirt and cried, ‘Aah!’
Lucius wiped the thin strands of badly rinsed hair out of his eyes. ‘Where’s your mother?’
‘She’s busy. Papa, your nose is bleeding.’
‘Aah!’
‘Tell Publius I said to stop,’ said Lucius, wiping his upper lip and then glancing at his fingers before washing them in the bath water. ‘Then go and call Galla to put them to bed.’
‘Galla isn’t allowed to look after us.’
Ruso tucked a guiltily bloodstained fist behind his back and offered, ‘Ask Tilla.’
Polla shook her head. ‘I don’t know where she is. The laundry girl is there but the boys don’t take any notice of her. Papa, why is there black stuff on your head?’
Lucius uttered a word not commonly used in the presence of children and rose from the bath. ‘Tell them I’m coming.’ He swore again when he realized the towels had been on the floor when the water slopped over the side. He wiped his head with a sodden towel, then flung it aside and strode naked towards the door, muttering, �
��I can’t stand much more of this. Where the hell is she now? What’s the matter with this family?’
Chapter 36
Ruso stretched out on his bed, closed his eyes and savoured these few moments of privacy. One of the things he had forgotten about family life was that a man could never be alone. Of course he was rarely alone in the Army, either, but there he frequently found himself in the company of men who were not expected to speak to him unless spoken to, so that despite their presence he could occupy himself with his own thoughts. In a household – at least, one as ill-disciplined as this – anyone felt free to accost and interrupt him at any time. Even the study was not safe now that he knew Arria had her own key. It was a sorry state of affairs when a man had to hide in his own bedroom on a warm evening with the shutters closed and a stick wedged in the door-latch just to get some peace and quiet.
He had spoken firmly with Arria, agreed that his sisters deserved to be confined to their room until morning and insisted that Galla must be allowed back into the house. He had also reminded her that Tilla was not a servant and would be dining with the family this evening. He had then gone down to the winery to convey this message, only to find both Tilla and Galla already eating at the long table set up in the yard for the farm slaves and sharing a joke with Cass, who was busy supervising the feeding of the staff while her children ran wild in the care of the laundrymaid.
No, Tilla assured him as he drew her aside, she did not do these things just to embarrass him. Why was she sitting outside the bunkhouse eating stew? ‘Because I am hungry after all that work.’
‘But you’re supposed to be dining with the family!’
‘You said that last night, but then that man is dead and the stepmother says there is no dinner.’
Ruso stared at her. ‘She meant the dinner with the neighbour was cancelled. I know there was a lot of rushing about, but there was food in the kitchen.’
Tilla shrugged. ‘Nobody tells me.’
He said, ‘Why didn’t you ask?’
‘She says there is no dinner, why bother to ask?’
‘Of course there was food, Tilla. You’re a guest. You should expect to be fed. It’s bad enough dealing with my family without you being deliberately obtuse.’
