Terra Incognita: A Novel of the Roman Empire

by Ruth Downie

“What else have you got for me?”

  What Ruso had had, until moments ago, was a plea for mercy on behalf of the undeserving Rianorix and an insistence that both he and the innocent Tilla had been trying to restrain the crowd last night.

  Now it seemed that Tilla was not so innocent after all. And if she had been lying to him all along about knowing the Stag Man, perhaps she had lied about Rianorix. Perhaps he really had murdered Felix. On the other hand, Catavignus had a motive, and he had an opportunity, and . . . And Ruso was suffering from lack of sleep and a headache and he did not know what to say about any of this. He could not come up with any words until he had had a chance to unscramble Metellus’s latest revelation.

  “I’m told,” prompted Decianus, “that you now think Catavignus the brewer carried out the murder. I take it we have evidence?”

  “I was hoping to get something this morning, sir.”

  “You mean no?”

  “Not yet, sir.”

  The slave finished tweaking and lifted the prefect’s breastplate from the stand. Decianus motioned him to wait. “I’ve got the governor arriving in a matter of hours,” he said. “I’ve still got one man who’s confessed to a murder and another one who probably did it. You’ve had days to sort this out, and we’re no farther ahead.”

  “You’ve got Rianorix in custody again, sir.”

  “We could have done that whenever we wanted. We’d have the Stag Man as well by now if it weren’t for you.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “So have you got anything useful to tell me?”

  “The infirmary’s been cleaned out and tidied up and is ready for the governor’s inspection, sir.”

  “I heard you had to bring in reinforcements.”

  “A professional colleague volunteered, sir.”

  “So you didn’t even manage that by yourself.”

  “No, sir.” There was no point in arguing. “Sir, I need to ask you something.”

  Decianus sighed. “Go on.”

  “I was hoping you could release the girl Tilla—the one you just saw— to help me gather evidence this morning.”

  Decianus lowered his head and pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. Looking up, he said, “Is this some sort of practical joke?”

  “Sir?”

  “Did she put you up to this?”

  “No, sir.”

  “I suppose you’d like me to release the basket maker as well?”

  “No, sir. We can do that if we find some evidence against Catavignus.”

  “Catavignus is on our side, Ruso, and it’s time you learned to stand on your own feet instead of calling on colleagues and women to help you out. You’ve already told Metellus that your deputy did it. Next you’ll be telling me it was you. I’m not surprised the legion thought they could spare you. You’re as mad as the Greek and twice as useless. Now clear off, I’ve got more important things to do.”

  83

  VALENS, WHO HAD evidently abandoned all hope of sleep, looked up from examining an ulcerated leg. “Successful visit?”

  “Not exactly,” said Ruso.

  “Thessalus is asking for you.”

  “Tell him I’m trying to sort something out.”

  “He said to remind you the governor’s due at midday.”

  “Not now he isn’t,” put in the owner of the leg.

  “Really?” said Ruso, his hopes lifting.

  “My mate just saw a dispatch rider who said he passed them about an hour ago out on the south road.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “It’s true, sir,” put in the orderly. “Only it’s less than an hour now because I heard it three patients ago.”

  “Miss Aemilia is at the baths, sir.”

  “No matter,” said Ruso. “It’s you I want to talk to. It’s about laundry.”

  He followed Catavignus’s housekeeper into the kitchen. He was rewarded with the sight of limp garments festooned across the back of the room. “We’ve got no space for any more,” said Ness, surveying the drooping lines of twine. “There’s a woman you could talk to down on the bridge road. We sometimes send out there when we’ve got too much.”

  “It’s not for me,” said Ruso, trying to ignore the feminine underwear draped across the nearest line and examining the tunics beyond for the vestiges of bloodstains. “I’m trying to find out something about the laundry here. Whether you’ve been asked to wash anything—unusual.”

  “Unusual?”

  “Ah—unusually soiled. Or perhaps you’ve found something that somebody’s had a go at washing by themselves. In the last few days.”

  The woman frowned.

  “I wouldn’t be troubling you with this if it weren’t very important.”

  “I’ll have to ask the master, sir.”

  “I’m asking you.”

  She folded her arms. “I couldn’t answer questions about the household without the master’s permission, sir. Or Miss Aemilia.”

  “I know,” said Ruso. “Which normally would be admirable, but it’s vital that you tell me right now.”

  “Shall I wake the master, sir?”

  “No!”

  The woman looked relieved.

  “I’ve been given the prefect’s authority,” insisted Ruso, not adding that it had now been rescinded.

  “I don’t answer to the prefect about my laundry. If the master or Miss—”

  “I’ll find Aemilia.”

  As she followed him to the door the woman said, “Sorry not to help you, sir,” and actually sounded as though she meant it.

  The elderly bath attendant raised a hand to halt him in the doorway. “Sorry, sir. This is the women’s session.”

  “I know,” said Ruso, “It’s a woman I’m after. Aemilia, daughter of Catavignus the brewer. Can somebody fetch her for me?”

  The man looked around nervously. “Are you family, sir?”

  “Yes,” lied Ruso. “And it’s urgent.”

  The man shook his head. “I don’t think you are, sir. I—oh!”

  Ruso had grabbed him by the arms and lifted him off the floor. “Sorry,” he said, putting the man down again to one side, “but I really haven’t got time to argue.”

  The female scream was a ghastly sound at the best of times, but when several of them did it together in a room with a bad echo, the effect was hideous. Ruso clapped his hands over his ears and shouted, “Has anyone seen Aemilia?” over the cacophony, but nobody seemed to be listening.

  A glance around the hall revealed that he would have to go deeper into the female sanctuary that was the Coria bathhouse before the sounding of the midday bell.

  The cold room was empty. It was in the warm room that the real trouble started.

  “A man!”

  “Get out!”

  “Aemilia?” ventured Ruso with his head around the door, his gaze darting about wildly in an attempt not to settle on any undressed females except the one he needed to talk to.

  “Go away!” shrieked a woman whose vast and dimpled thighs seemed to be keeping her anchored on the bench as she lunged at him with a towel.

  “Could somebody please—”

  “Help!”

  “Help, a man!”

  The crashing open of the cold room door behind him warned Ruso that the attendant had fetched reinforcements. He ignored the shrieks as he strode across to enter the hot room.

  The heat and the additional screaming—they had obviously heard what was going on next door and got themselves ready—both hit him at the same time. They were followed by a splatter of hot water in the face, a hail of bathing equipment, and a flurry of buffeting towels.

  “Out!” screamed his tormentors. “Out, out, out!”

  “Where’s Aemilia?” yelled Ruso, ducking to one side and trying to shield his head with his arms.

  “Out!”

  He finally retreated when they started to beat him over the head with their wooden bath shoes.

  Back in the warm room he was seized b
y three bath attendants and a couple of scantily clad women. The bath attendants were apologetic and applied no more force than necessary. The woman weren’t and didn’t.

  “I was told she was here,” he insisted as they bundled him back through to the hall. “I didn’t mean to—”

  “Stop!” called a female voice. “Please, stop! Doctor, it’s me!”

  Ruso and his handlers paused. One of the women gave him a final kick to remind him not to do it again.

  “I was having my hair washed,” explained Aemilia, wrapping the towel tighter around her ample frame.

  “I need your permission to talk to your housekeeper.”

  Aemilia pushed a strand of wet hair behind one ear. “I knew you would come sooner or later,” she said sadly. “I’ll get dressed. You can talk to me.”

  They were standing in the meadow behind the bathhouse, far enough away from the buildings for only the grazing horses to hear what they were saying. Aemilia’s hair was lank and dark with damp, and her eyes looked hollow. He realized she was older than he had thought.

  “I need to know what happened, Aemilia.”

  She lifted her skirts above the grass and began to walk slowly along the top of the meadow. “I have tried to believe that the doctor did it,” she said, “Or the Stag Man. But I can’t.”

  Ruso, in step beside her, said nothing.

  When she said, “What will they do to him?” he knew she was talking about her father.

  “Tell me what happened.”

  “I met Felix through Daddy. Felix was interested in investing some money in the brewery. Then he lent Daddy the money to start the new house and introduced him to the builder. But the builders had hardly got going when they raised the price. Daddy was cross and said if he’d been told the truth about how much it was all going to cost in the first place he would never have started.”

  This sounded horribly like the tale of Ruso’s family shrine to Diana.

  “Felix said Daddy should have asked the builder for proper figures right from the start.”

  It was exactly what Ruso and Lucius had said to each other when they found out the extent of the debt.

  “Daddy told me to stay away from him, but by then I thought I was having a baby. I didn’t dare tell Daddy. But Daddy was still being nice to him because Felix had a lot of business connections and he didn’t want him to cause trouble in the guild. That’s why I couldn’t believe Daddy would do anything to hurt him.”

  “Did your father know that Felix had come to see you after he left the bar that night?”

  “I have thought about this,” she said. “I thought he was asleep in bed but he must have heard us.”

  “Did you hear your father leave the house after that?”

  “No. But I woke up later to hear him banging on the door. Ness had locked up and gone to sleep, and he couldn’t get in. I got up but she was already there. So I went back to bed.”

  “Did you see him come in?”

  “No. It was dark. Ness was just carrying a small lamp. I heard her say something, and he told her not to make a fuss.” Aemilia’s fingers crept toward her mouth. “He said it was only a nosebleed and he was all right now.”

  “I see.”

  She hung her head. “When I first heard about Felix I was frightened that he might have done something terrible. Then I told myself I was being silly. He is my father! And then the doctor confessed and I thought I must be wrong.” She turned away from him, gazing down across the meadow to where the horses were swishing their tails against the flies.

  “Does your father often get nosebleeds?”

  “No.”

  “Did he say where he went that night?”

  “He told Ness he had been to check something at the brewery.”

  Ruso said, “Do the brewery staff sleep on the premises?”

  “The foreman sleeps in the loft, but he’s very deaf. Daddy has a key. He could go in there without anyone knowing.”

  So the story might have been true. He said, “Where’s your father now?”

  “When I left, he was ill in bed,” she said. “He is usually ill after the caterers’ dinners.”

  “Do you know what he was wearing that night?”

  “There was no blood on his cloak,” she said dully. “I looked. Under that, the tunic with the blue stripe that is lost in the wash.” She paused. “Could he have taken his cloak off before he . . . ?”

  “Yes,” said Ruso. “Yes, he could.” After he had stunned Felix, the brewer had been clear thinking enough to realize that the mutilation that would help to incriminate Rianorix was going to incriminate him too if he wasn’t careful.

  “We shall have to apologize to the washerwoman,” she said. “The tunic never went there, did it?”

  “What do you think he might have done with it?”

  She shrugged. “Anything.”

  “Was it the sort of thing lots of people wear? Or could it be identified as his?”

  “It was an old one,” she said. “But it was expensive. He bought it from a trader from Londinium. It was a very fine weave.”

  “He won’t have dumped it where someone might find it, then,” said Ruso, glancing down toward the river and hoping it was not wrapped around a lump of stone lying on the bottom.

  “Ness has already searched the house for it,” said Aemilia. “She couldn’t remember sending it to the washerwoman, but I think she didn’t know who else to blame.”

  “Tell her to search again,” said Ruso. “And this time we’ll help her.”

  84

  RUSO KNELT BESIDE the blackened slabs of the firing hole by Catavignus’s malting floor. They had already caused a disruption inside the brewery and scrabbled fruitlessly through the damp malt that had been loaded onto the floor ready for drying. This was the last possible hiding place he and Aemilia could think of.

  “Do you clean this out every time you light it?” he asked, peering past the kindling into the murk of the low tunnel that led under the raised floor of the building to the flue.

  “It won’t need doing today, sir,” the slave boy assured him, bending toward the kindling with the glowing brand he had just fetched from inside the brewery.

  Ruso grabbed his wrist. “Don’t.”

  “Miss Aemilia?” The youth looked at her in the hope of being saved from this interfering officer and allowed to get on with his work.

  “When was the last time it was raked out?” asked Ruso.

  “About a week ago. The barley ran out so the master had to wait for them to send some down from the granary.”

  “Do it now, will you?”

  “Rake it out?” The slave looked understandably appalled. “I’ve just got it ready to fire! The malt needs to be dried now or it’ll go over. The master’s very particular.”

  “Please,” said Aemilia, taking Ruso by the arm. “Do as he says.”

  “But miss, your father—”

  “I’ll tell him it was my fault.”

  “Have you noticed any odd smells in the burning lately?” inquired Ruso as the slave knelt by the hole and began to gather up the kindling.

  “There’s always odd smells,” grunted the youth, reaching for the rake and crouching to insert it at an awkward angle. “If it burns, it goes in here.”

  Ash began to pile up outside the mouth of the tunnel. The youth’s hands and arms and knees were smeared in soot. He had a black mustache where he had wiped his nose on his arm. “I can’t get any more out, sir. You’ll have to get a little kid to go right inside if you want it done properly.”

  “We haven’t time,” said Ruso, imagining what a ghastly job it would be.

  “I’ll just get something to put this ash in, miss.”

  When he was gone Ruso took the rake and poked at the crumbling flakes of wood ash.

  “Nothing,” said Aemilia.

  He took a deep breath, got down on his knees, and reached an arm into the stinking black depths of the flue. He could feel the soft powder rising in the air
, entering his nose and eyes and coating his skin. This, he realized with disgust, was where Catvignus had hidden the sack containing the head until he had decided to deposit it as evidence outside Rianorix’s house. He groped about in the grit of the ash that remained on the floor, ramming his shoulder farther in, praying for one of Tilla’s miracles. He realized he was no longer interested in proving anyone’s innocence or guilt. He was desperately hoping to prove—to himself, if nobody else—that he was not a total fool.

  His fingers closed around brittle half-burned sticks. Scraps of broken pot. Then something thin and woven and pliable. He drew it out, blew off the dust, and lay it on top of the brushwood waiting to be burned. He and Aemilia stared at it.

  It was a scorched fragment of old green rag.

  Ruso swore.

  Aemilia said, “That’s an old tunic Ness was using for cleaning.”

  “I suppose Ness can testify to what she saw that night,” said Ruso, disappointed. “It’s not very conclusive, though.”

  A nosebleed would surely make stains very different from those of an attack on another human being. The tunic would have been just the evidence he needed, but he was not going to find that evidence now. In the distance, a trumpet sounded. Ruso scrambled to his feet and looked over the wall of the yard and down toward the river. A carriage with a large escort was making its way across the bridge. A red-cloaked formation of Batavian cavalry, glittering and immaculate in the sun, was trotting down the road to welcome it.

  “I’ve got to go,” he said, wiping the soot from his hands onto his tunic.

  “What shall I do?”

  “Talk to Ness. Find out exactly what she saw and tell her she must talk to officer Metellus.” It might make a difference, although Ruso suspected not. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  Behind him, he heard the slave begin to restack the kindling in the stoke hole.

  85

  IT WAS A good morning for burglars. Inns were abandoned, houses deserted, the forge and the carpenter’s workshop fallen silent. Even the painted whores had emerged into daylight, jostling with shoppers and slaves and traders and veterans for a position by the side of the road. Small children wanting a better view were trying to clamber onto the backs of older brothers and sisters. A mother was urging a toddler to wave at the cavalry, perhaps in the hope of a surreptitious wink from beneath the brow of a polished helmet as its owner rode out to meet the man who was bringing the authority of the emperor.