by Ruth Downie
‘Oh, no, sir!’ This, apparently, would have been a memorable event. Neither of these two had ever been seen in the kitchen before mid-morning.
Ruso frowned. This was not proving as helpful as he had hoped. ‘You’re sure he just had the same food and drink as everyone else?’
‘Not the drink, sir. He always has — had his own medicine. The cook mixes him up honey and rosewater. Just that, sir. Nothing that would do no harm.’
‘And nobody else drinks it?’
Flaccus shook his head. ‘No, sir. Well — not usually. But after Master Severus died, the steward came down to the kitchen and asked a lot of questions. And he made us all eat the food and share out the rest of the medicine. That’s how we knew Severus must have been poisoned. But nobody was ill.’
So Zosimus, the responsible steward, had been making inquiries of his own. Personally Ruso would not have risked poisoning the entire staff by sharing everything out, but presumably he had been hoping to force a confession. ‘Well, it looks as though he’s satisfied himself that none of you was involved.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Flaccus did not seem particularly cheered by this news. ‘But when Cook asked him what’s going to happen to us he just said we’ve got to wait for orders from Rome.’
‘I’m afraid that’s true,’ said Ruso. ‘Severus didn’t die under this roof. That may be a good thing for you, if not for me. But I’m not a lawyer. I don’t know what’s going to happen to any of us.’
Flaccus sniffed. ‘Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.’
‘What I do know is that it’s not going to be helped by listening to worrying gossip. Now go back to your duties and try to ignore anything you hear, because if none of us knows until we hear from Rome, nothing you’re told can be true, can it?’
The boy managed a wan smile. ‘No, sir.’
A sizeable gang of dingily attired visitors was rolling up the drive as Ruso left, presumably on the way to offer condolences to the grieving widow and sister. The gatekeeper’s face was impassive as he asserted that he couldn’t answer questions without permission from the steward, but his one eye was bright. Ruso suspected these were the most interesting couple of days he had had in a very long time.
32
Fuscus would not want a suspected poisoner visiting potential voters on his behalf, but Ruso called on the pretext of collecting the canvassing list anyway. The gods alone knew what that message to Rome had contained, especially since Probus had been the one to tell Fuscus the bad news about the murder. He needed to put his own side of the story to the nearest member of the Gabinii as soon as possible.
This time he was left to wait out on one of the benches facing the street. He was not sorry. The ache in his foot was so persistent that he was relieved to lean back against ‘Vote for Gabinius Fuscus!’, stretch both legs out in front of him and close his eyes.
He was conscious of the warm wall hard against his back. Of the smell of fried eggs and old vegetables. Of the passing slap of sandals, and the cackle of an old woman laughing. Of a small voice at the back of his mind that was telling him he was in serious trouble.
The only way to prove to the Senator’s investigator that he had not murdered Severus would be to present the real culprit. Despite his bold assurances to Claudia that he had dealt with this sort of thing before, this was a situation unlike anything he had faced in Britannia. His assertion that he knew what he was doing had been little more than wishful thinking. He did not know the proper way to conduct a murder investigation. Indeed, he did not even know if there was a proper way.
Ruso propped the heel of his sore foot on the toes of the whole one and tried to reflect on his experiences in Britannia. There must be some conclusions he could draw: some fruit of his experience that he could bring to this current crisis.
The business of the murdered bar girls in Deva had taught him that no one in authority could be expected to investigate a crime if it were not in his own interests to do so. From the mysterious affair of the antlered god who had caused mayhem on the border, he had learned … what had he learned? That the north of Britannia was a dangerous place. That Tilla’s idea of loyalty was not the same as his own. And in both cases, that the truth only seemed to emerge after a great deal of unproductive, uncomfortable and unwilling blundering about. Precisely the sort of blundering about that a man suspected of murder was unlikely to be free to undertake.
He had just reached this unhelpful conclusion when a hoarse voice announced, ‘You’re that doctor!’
He opened his eyes to see the hulking figure of one of Probus’ security guards, a retired gladiator whose hefty shoulders and flattened nose served to deter both burglars and clients seeking loans without collateral.
‘Remember me?’
Ruso straightened his back, put both feet on the ground and prepared to fend off whatever trouble the man had been sent to make. ‘You work for Probus.’
‘You come to the house courting Miss Claudia.’
‘So I did,’ agreed Ruso, although it was hard now to remember why. All the signs had been there from the beginning.
‘I thought you might want to know, sir, my lad’s done well for himself. He’s in Municipal Water Distribution.’
Ruso gave a smile that acknowledged the man’s obvious pride, wondered which lad they were talking about and said he was delighted to hear it.
‘Not a scrap of bother with the leg, sir. Not even a limp.’
Something stirred in the recesses of Ruso’s memory. ‘Broken femur, wasn’t it?’
The mangled face split into a grin. ‘That’s the one. Only eight years old, he was. You done a lovely job, sir.’
The father’s delight was clear, as was his gratitude, and Ruso felt his spirits lift. It was good to be reminded of a time when he had done something right.
‘I’m glad to see you after all these years, sir,’ continued the man. The bench swayed as he seated himself next to Ruso. ‘I reckon I owe you a favour.’ The reason for the unexpected familiarity became clear when he leaned closer and murmured, ‘If you don’t mind me saying, sir, there’s something you ought to know. But you won’t have to let on who told you.’
‘I won’t,’ Ruso promised, his spirits rising even further. He was not alone in the battle to clear his name. There were people here who remembered him. People who were willing to help. He had come home.
‘About your sister.’
Ruso’s optimism collapsed. If rumours were circulating about Severus’ designs on Flora, it could reflect badly on her no matter how innocent she might be. He would have to find a way to defend Flora’s reputation as well as his own.
What the guard proceeded to tell him, however, was completely unexpected. It had nothing to do with Flora. It was that Marcia had recently approached Probus in the hope of borrowing against her forthcoming dowry.
‘What? Are you absolutely sure?’
The man did not know how much Marcia had sought, but according to what he had overheard, she had already consulted several financiers. Probus had refused her request, as presumably had all the others.
‘Good,’ said Ruso, wondering why nobody else had had the decency to warn the family. ‘I appreciate you telling me.’
‘Right you are, sir.’ The man got to his feet. ‘It weren’t me what told you, though. I don’t want no trouble.’
‘Of course not,’ Ruso agreed. And then, with foreboding, ‘I’ll talk to her.’
‘Ruso!’ There was no embrace this time. Fuscus remained seated. He reached for a grape, frowned at it and tossed it aside. ‘I thought you’d be here before now.’
‘I was.’
‘Really? They didn’t tell me. What’s all this about you poisoning my relative?’
‘I didn’t.’ Ruso offered condolences on the death of Severus and briefly wondered why Fuscus was not over at the estate paying his respects. Presumably he had more important things to do. ‘Severus was taken ill at my house,’ he explained. ‘I did what I could for him, but it was pretty hopele
ss without knowing what he’d taken.’
Fuscus sighed and closed his eyes. ‘A great tragedy. A terrible loss to our family. A man in the prime of life. Whoever did this deserves the worst possible punishment. It’s a shame we won’t have time for a trial before the games. We could have had the murderer fed to the beasts. Very slowly.’
‘They’ve had other doctors look at the body,’ said Ruso, ‘but I don’t think they’ve come up with much. His widow and his sister have asked me to try and track down whoever did it.’ It was almost true. Just after she had told him to go away, Ennia had said she wanted to know who was responsible for her brother’s death.
Fuscus opened his eyes. ‘Last time you were in here asking about a ship. No wonder you don’t know much about poisons if you waste all your time poking about with things that don’t concern you.’
‘If I don’t concern myself with this, people will think it was me.’
Fuscus’ hand paused in mid-air. ‘Probus told me it was you.’
‘And what do you think?’
There was a pause while Fuscus popped another grape into his mouth and said round it, ‘I’m reserving judgement. Until we get instructions from my cousin the Senator.’
‘Do you still want me to talk to the veterans?’
‘What?’ Fuscus spat out the pips. ‘Of course not. Stay away from them. Don’t even mention my name. I’ll get my publicity men to paint the signs out and we’ll find somebody else.’
Signs? ‘But I didn’t do it.’
‘In fact, stay out of town altogether. It looks bad.’
‘I had no reason to kill Severus,’ insisted Ruso. ‘You know that. You were going to persuade him not to bankrupt me.’
Fuscus shifted in his chair. ‘I don’t think you understood me there, Ruso. I said I’d do my best to support you, but if you remember, I also said my hands were tied.’ He shook his head. ‘A man in my position can’t be seen to be influencing the course of the law. Not even for the son of a dear old friend. We’re dealing with principles. Principles are what raise us above the barbarians.’
‘What if I told you Severus and I were about to do a deal and he was going to abandon the seizure order, so I’d have been crazy to murder him?’
Fuscus’ eyes widened. ‘Why didn’t you say so? If there’s a witnessed and sealed agreement — ’
‘There wasn’t time.’
‘Pity,’ said Fuscus in a tone that implied he did not believe a word of it. ‘You’ll just have to explain it all to my cousin the Senator’s man. Assuming he sends one. If not I may have my own men carry out an investigation.’
‘I’m intending to get it sorted out before then.’
‘Forget it, Ruso. It doesn’t matter what the widow and the sister want. The investigation has to be independent. None of the suspects must be involved. Understand?’
‘Oh, yes,’ agreed Ruso, backing towards the door to terminate this waste of time. ‘Perfectly.’
Fuscus gestured to dismiss him as if he were brushing away a fly. ‘Stay out of it, Ruso. Go home, tend your farm, look after those sisters of yours and stay where the investigator can find you when he comes for a chat.’
33
Staying at home waiting to be accused of murder was the last thing Ruso intended to do. He needed to find out what poison had been used.
Moments later he was appalled to find himself facing an exhortation from G. Petreius Ruso, Veteran of the XX Victoria Victrix, urging the voters of Nemausus to support Gabinius Fuscus.
Fuscus’ publicity man had been busy with his paintbrush overnight. In the next four streets Ruso saw his own name three times. He was relieved to turn left into a narrow entrance where the walls were too grimy for election slogans and the mingled scents fell over him like a curtain: spice and vinegar and mint and roses and old wine. The street ahead widened into an area where the surrounding tall apartments trapped the babble of conversation and radiated the afternoon heat. The area was lined with the stalls of herbalists and drug-sellers. This was the place to find out about poisons.
The first stall had attracted a couple of women who were trying out cosmetics on the backs of their hands. Marvelling at the patience of shopkeepers hoping for a sale, Ruso found himself drawn into a crowd that had formed outside a booth next door. A half-naked man lay on a table under the shade, having something green and glutinous plastered on his chest by a leather-aproned physician.
One of the onlookers glanced down at Ruso’s stick and the toes poking out of his dusty bandage. ‘You’ll have to wait,’ she said, putting her arm around a thin child whose tunic was so big that he looked as though he had shrunk in the wash. ‘We’re next.’
‘And then it’s me,’ put in another voice, followed by a fit of coughing that did not sound as though it would have a happy ending.
Ruso nodded and moved on. There was nothing to be learned here beyond what he already knew: that if he survived to set up a practice in town, he would be facing stiff competition.
A wooden sign reading ‘No money, no medicine. No exceptions’ was nailed to the next stall. The welcome was similarly unfriendly, the buxom stallholder asserting that she didn’t sell poisons to people who didn’t know what they wanted. No, not even people claiming to be doctors. Rats, eh? If it was really for rats, why hadn’t he said that in the first place?
It was an admirable moral stance, but Ruso wondered how she managed to sell anything at all.
His next choice was hung with limp greenery drying in the sun and stacked with little limewood boxes and stoppered animal horns full of powders and creams. The trader welcomed him like an old friend. Ruso understood why when the man tried to persuade him that he wanted to buy frankincense.
‘Guaranteed pure, sir,’ the man added, handing over the box for examination. ‘Top quality. All the way from Arabia. Male, second harvest. Only the best.’
The man watched as Ruso held the pale lump of resin up to the light, rolled it between his fingers and sniffed.
‘It’s very expensive.’
‘I’m not saying you won’t see it cheaper elsewhere, sir,’ the man agreed, ‘but you’d be wasting your money.’ He leaned forward as if he was confiding a great secret. ‘You wouldn’t want to know what some of this lot round here put in theirs.’
‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ promised Ruso. He closed the lid and handed the box back. ‘What I’m really interested in — ’ He was interrupted by a scream from further down the street. He turned, grasping the other end of his stick. A man who could not run was not much use in chasing a bag-snatcher, but if the culprit came this way … To his surprise, the scream was followed by cheering and applause.
‘The Marsi are in town,’ the man explained.
‘The Marsi?’ This was good news.
‘If it was up to me, I wouldn’t let ’em through the gates,’ grumbled the man. ‘It’s dangerous, bringing snakes into a place like this. One of these days someone’s going to get bitten. Then we’ll see what their cures are like. What was it you wanted?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘Let me do you a deal on that frankincense, sir. I wouldn’t want you to be going home with some of the rubbish they sell down the road.’
‘Thanks, I’ll think about it,’ said Ruso, giving the man a smile that they both knew was no compensation for a lost sale.
Shoppers had begun to desert the stalls around him and drift towards the new crowd that was gathering. The women from the cosmetics counter tottered past, craning to see what the fuss was, clutching their baskets with pink-and-black-streaked hands.
Ruso could not move fast enough to get to the front, but the mountain-man’s shrill voice above the notes of the flute made it clear that the townsfolk were seeing the power of magic over the deadliest of snakes. The effect on the onlookers was conveyed by their gasps and exclamations of ‘Oh, look!’
Beside Ruso, a father lifted his small daughter on to his shoulders to get a better view. ‘Can you see the snake?’ he dem
anded, unable to see it himself. ‘What’s it doing?’
‘Snake!’ cried the child, pointing and wriggling. ‘Snake!’
Ruso leaned back against the shutters of a shop selling perfumed oils and bags of fresh lavender and rose petals. He had seen too many deadly snakes in Africa to want to watch one being provoked, magic or no magic. He hoped the performance was not going to go on too long. His foot was aching. His stomach was reminding him that it had been a long time since breakfast. But he needed to talk to the Marsi.
By the time the Italian mountain-men had finished their show and sold snake products to the eager crowd, several of the stallholders had begun to pack up for the day. The shoppers drifted away, heading for home or the baths, several pausing to slake their thirst in the shade of the nearest snack bar. The two Marsi, their skin already tanned to leather and their eyes as dark as those of the unblinking snake still draped around the older man, seemed not to notice the heat. The younger one was stacking up boxes that could have contained the performers or the remedies that were made from them. The older man looked up, lifted a fat coil of reptile from his shoulder and gave Ruso a gap-toothed grin before asking in a rough country Latin how he had enjoyed the show.
Ruso, unable to identify the species of snake, stepped forward to just outside striking distance. When he introduced himself as a medicus, the man’s smile widened.
‘Medicus, eh? We got what you want!’ The man gestured to his son to bring one of the boxes across. ‘A live helper of Aesculapius!’
Ignoring Ruso’s protests, he lifted the lid from the top of the box to reveal a set of dark coils with no discernable markings. ‘You’ve heard the stories. Get your hands on the real thing.’
‘I’d rather not,’ said Ruso.
‘Take a look. He don’t bite.’ The man slid one skeletal hand into the box by way of encouragement.
‘I think some of my patients would be frightened off.’
The man chuckled and tied the lid back over the snake. ‘So what else can we do for you?’ He lifted one of the pots stacked beside him on the pavement. ‘Snakeskins boiled in wine, good for earache and toothache.’ He placed it in front of Ruso and reached back for another pot. ‘Roast viper salts,’ he announced, showing the pot to the snake before placing it beside the other. ‘Recommended by Dioscorides himself. Sharpens the eyes, releases tight tendons, reduces swollen glands.’
