Ruso and the Root of All Evils mi-3

by Ruth Downie

  ‘It was him what done it!’ announced Stilo, pointing at Ruso. ‘The doctor and the wife, in the kitchen with the honey. We know about the red hair and the pink shoes!’ He turned to Calvus for confirmation, but Calvus was gone. The commotion in the crowd beyond the balcony marked the point where he had leaped over the side and was now forcing his way along a row of bewildered spectators.

  Stilo glanced down, thought better of it and made a lunge for the nearest serving-girl. Her tray crashed to the floor as he pulled her back against him, and a knife appeared at her throat.

  Fuscus and a couple of the dignitaries clutched at the nearest women. The dignitaries appeared to be trying to protect their wives, Fuscus to use his as a shield. The guards backed away as Stilo dragged the terrified serving-girl back towards the exit.

  ‘Don’t just stand there!’ cried Fuscus, knocking the fan from the hand of the nearest slave. ‘Defend us!’

  The grip on Ruso’s arm fell away. Stilo reached the exit, flung the girl into the arms of the approaching guard and clattered away down the steps.

  The guard who had evicted Tilla from the balcony was returning up the steps as Ruso stumbled down. ‘You’re welcome to her, mate. Little cow nearly had my ear off.’

  By the time Ruso reached the corridor neither Tilla nor Stilo was in sight, but the direction of one or both was marked by a series of complaining spectators who had been shoved aside. Forcing himself to ignore the stabbing pain in the side of his foot, Ruso followed the trail up the steps, swerved round a furious vendor and narrowly missed slipping on a scattering of pastries the man was trying to pick up. As he raced along the upper corridor he realized none of Fuscus’ men was with him. He was not even sure who he was chasing. All he knew was that if Stilo decided to take on Tilla, she was in serious trouble.

  An usher was trying to block his path, shouting something and holding up one hand in a ‘stop’ sign. Ruso charged straight for him, yelling, ‘Where did they go?’ The man faltered, leaped aside and flapped the hand to send Ruso straight on.

  Ahead, the curve of the gallery was almost empty. To his right, the open archways offered a fine view of the town, but it would be a brave man or woman who would risk the leap down to the sunlit street. To his left, on the inside of the curve, shadowy flights of steps rose and fell from the gallery every few paces.

  ‘Where did they go?’ he yelled to an old man squatting in the shade of a pillar.

  The man pointed a skinny finger towards the next flight up. Ruso hopped towards it, grabbing at his injured foot. The brief massage made no difference: every step up was a fresh wave of pain.

  ‘Tilla!’ he shouted, knowing his voice would not reach her over the sound of the crowd. ‘Tilla, wait for me!’

  Emerging into a narrower corridor, he gasped to the usher, ‘I’m looking for a blonde woman!’

  ‘Aren’t we all?’

  ‘Which way?’

  The usher, still grinning, pointed to his left.

  ‘Is there a man with her?’

  ‘No, he’s in front.’

  The upper corridor was a lame man’s nightmare: barely a few yards level at a time before more steps down into a dip, a junction with another gloomy stairway that Tilla or Stilo might have descended, and more steps back up the other side. By the third or fourth dip Ruso was beginning to feel exhausted. All those weeks of limping about had left him seriously out of condition.

  ‘Tilla!’ he yelled, forcing himself to keep going. By the next dip he knew he was never going to catch up with her. She might not even be ahead of him any more. She might have followed Stilo down any of the exit routes he had hurried past. They might have gone into the cheap seats above, with the slaves and the sailors who operated the awnings. They might have gone around to the women’s area. He glanced down, and up, and ahead, and back, and did not know which way to run. Finally he leaned back against the wall, feeling his heart pounding and his breath rasping in his chest. Wherever Tilla was, he could not help her. Surely any passers-by would defend a lone woman against a male attacker? Even if she was obviously a barbarian? Of course, whether they would defend a female barbarian who seemed to be attacking a local man was another matter entirely.

  Outside, the crowd held its collective breath and then burst into wild cheering. Alone in the cool gloom that smelled of urine and fried food, Ruso curled up one leg and nursed his foot, trying to think past the pain. It was a moment before he registered the voice saying, ‘Doctor Gaius Petreius, sir?’

  He looked up. ‘Tertius?’ The youth who should have been arming himself with net and trident in the gladiators’ cells was trotting up the steps towards him in military boots and a sweat-stained tunic. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

  Instead of replying, Tertius seized him by both shoulders. ‘Thank you, sir! I never thought you’d do it, but thank you! I won’t let you down, I promise!’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Find the money! I can’t believe it!’

  ‘Nor can I,’ said Ruso, too breathless to argue.

  ‘Are you all right, sir?’

  Ruso gesticulated vaguely around him. ‘There’s a blonde woman — ’

  ‘Dressed in blue, chasing a man in a green tunic?’ Tertius pointed back the way he had come. ‘They went down towards the animal cages.’

  Ruso was already racing down the steps as the words ‘Sir, what’s going on?’ echoed around him.

  76

  Tilla tried to steady her breathing, but the stench of animals made her gasp. The row of smoky torches stretching down the tunnel ahead did little to lift the gloom, barely revealing the figures of slaves moving about between arched recesses on either side. From somewhere deeper inside, beneath the middle of the arena, she heard a clang of metal, then the shout of an order and the squeak and grind of something being hoisted on a winch. An animal howl echoed down the tunnel. Tilla shuddered.

  This must be where the creatures were kept before they were lifted up and thrust into the arena through trapdoors. As her eyes adjusted from the sunlight outside, she could make out the stripes of cage bars in some of the recesses.

  She tightened the grip on her knife. There was no other way the man could have come. She was not far behind him, and if he had run away down that tunnel she would have seen him pass through the torchlight. He must have ducked into one of those black recesses. But even if she found him, what was she going to do?

  It seemed nobody on the balcony except the Medicus had believed her. Nobody else had given chase when she ran after Stilo. She was sure the Medicus had been behind her, but even he had disappeared now. Whatever was down here, she was facing it alone.

  Someone — not Stilo, it was the wrong height and gait — emerged from a side entrance hauling a trolley. As the slave approached, the eyes that glanced out of the filthy face suggested that she should not be here, but that he did not dare tell her so. She said, ‘There is a sailor in there. He is wearing a green tunic and he has two fingers missing. Have you seen him?’

  The slave’s expression did not change. ‘No, miss.’ As he plodded past she tried not to look at the mangled and smeary creatures piled on the trolley.

  She turned her head away from the source of the stench and took a deep breath. Then she murmured a prayer and ventured into the place where the spirits who lived under the ground were appeased with blood.

  The stones beneath her boots were slippery and uneven. The first recess on each side was empty: she had been able to see that from the entrance. Beyond them, she flattened her back to the wall, trying not to think of the filth that might be crusted on it, and crept sideways. Beneath the gloomy arch opposite, she could make out the poles of brooms and shovels. Nothing rounded enough to be human. Nothing moving.

  The roar of the crowd echoed through the tunnel, sounding like another great animal.

  She slid one hand further along the wall. Her fingers rounded a corner stone with something cold set in it. Cage bars. Down at floor level she could make out pale wis
ps of straw. She waited, hardly breathing, but nothing moved. She checked the tunnel and then shifted further along towards the next recess, moving away from the bars in case there was something behind them with claws and a long reach.

  What happened next was over almost before she realized it. The hand clamping on her wrist. The hopeless struggle not to be dragged in between the bars. The pain of her shoulder rammed against the cage. The screech of metal on stone tangling with the echo of her own scream: the weight of the body pressing her against the cage and the shock as the knife was knocked out of her hand. Then the smack of something hitting flesh. The grunt of pain and the sudden release. The footsteps, the shouts of ‘Miss!’ and ‘Let her go!’ as the two silhouettes that were racing towards her from the outside world became the Medicus and another man, both asking if she was all right.

  ‘I think so,’ she said, shaking off the filth of the cage and rubbing the pain in her shoulder. The man handed her back her knife and said something about being sorry and having to go. The Medicus had already set off down the tunnel, dodging round a couple of slaves with trolleys. ‘Wait for me!’ she shouted, running after him, ashamed to recognize it was because she wanted his protection, not because she wanted another fight with Stilo.

  Beneath one of the far torches, the Medicus was shouting something at a slave carrying buckets. She heard the slave try to tell him he shouldn’t be there, and the Medicus say, ‘Never mind. Did you see him?’

  Tilla jumped over the stream of water the slave had just sloshed down the tunnel floor. ‘What did you just tell that man?’

  The slave looked baffled. ‘I said the one he’s chasing run out the far end, miss.’

  When Tilla caught up with him the Medicus had already emerged at the far end of the underground chambers and clambered up on to the end of a row of seats. He was standing with one hand shading his eyes, squinting out across the packed terraces. A couple of spectators were complaining and leaning round him to get a clear view of the arena. Tilla tried to get up on to the seating opposite. She glimpsed hundreds — thousands — of dark heads along the curving rows before a couple of men shouted at her and tried to push her off.

  ‘Can you see him?’

  The Medicus shook his head and jumped down to join her, wincing even though he landed on his good foot. ‘We’ve lost him. Are you sure you’re all right?’

  She said, ‘Where will he go?’

  ‘A long way from here. Put that knife away, you’re frightening everyone.’

  She looked round and saw the approaching steward.

  ‘It’s all right,’ the Medicus explained, taking her by the arm and steering her firmly towards an exit. ‘She’s with me. She just got a bit overexcited. It’s her first time.’

  The steward said, ‘Yes, sir.’ He did not look surprised.

  She said, ‘What will we do now?’

  He took a left turn. ‘Go back to work.’

  ‘But what about that man?’

  He steered her towards another staircase. ‘He’ll leave town. Maybe the Senator will send somebody after him.’

  And maybe not. All her effort had come to nothing. The man who had murdered Cass’s brother had escaped. The Medicus was right: he could be anywhere out there among thousands of people. They would never catch him now.

  His hand tightened on her arm and she noticed for the first time how badly he was limping. ‘You should not be walking around on that foot.’

  ‘You shouldn’t be chasing a man like Stilo on your own.’

  She said, ‘Back in that …’ She had no name for it. ‘Back down there. Did something hit Stilo?’

  He said, ‘Damn. I forgot to pick it up.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘My lunch,’ he said. ‘The Army teaches you to throw stones, but I reckoned that at that distance an apple in the eye would stop him just as well.’

  77

  ‘Ferox!’ gasped the man, struggling to rise while Ruso’s blood-splattered assistants tried to hold him down on the table. ‘Where’s Ferox?’

  Ruso, who dared not remove the wadding over the wound until his patient was still, said, ‘He’ll be in later. We need to deal with you first.’

  ‘No, he’s worse! Where’s Ferox? What have they done with him? Let me go!’

  A fist escaped and narrowly missed Ruso’s jaw.

  ‘Somebody else is dealing with your friend,’ said Ruso, seizing the flailing arm and glancing across at Gnostus, who looked up from washing the sand out of a nasty head wound and drew one finger across his throat.

  Ruso turned back to the patient. ‘Lie still and let’s have a look at what’s going on here, shall we?’

  The man continued to thrash about. ‘Let me go! I’ll find him. I’ll bring him in. He’s down. He needs help.’

  ‘Somebody else will see to him.’

  ‘You’re lying! You’re all lying to me!’

  Ruso eyed the dirt-streaked face. At least the man’s lungs were in good order. ‘You’re right,’ he said, too tired to lie any more. ‘Ferox is dead. Fate chose to take him and not you. Lie still and let me look or you’ll be joining him.’

  ‘You bastard, you filthy lying dog! He’s not dead!’

  Ruso had already given the man as much mandrake as he dared, but it seemed to be having little effect.

  ‘Ferox is with the gods,’ a female voice assured him. A hand, smaller and cleaner than those that were trying to force him down, reached out to rest on his forehead. ‘I will pray for his soul,’ promised Tilla, who until now had been standing in the shadows.

  When she began to pray over the patient in British, Ruso was relieved. As long as nobody understood, she could — and no doubt would — rain down any number of curses on the politician who had paid for thousands of people to watch death as entertainment, and possibly on himself as well for joining in.

  As the babble of British rose over the operating table, the man’s arching chest sank back down. His grimace relaxed. ‘Ferox!’ he whispered to the stone vaulting above their heads. ‘There you are. I didn’t mean it, mate. I didn’t mean it.’ His voice was growing sleepy. ‘You were supposed to go left. Up, down, left. Both left. I told you, mate, you got to … you got to pay … pay attention.’

  Ruso lifted the wadding from the side of the chest and began to explore the injury.

  He had patched up the wound and was giving orders for the patient to be kept poulticed and under observation when another fresh and whimpering load was manoeuvred in from the corridor. The bearers rolled the occupant of the stretcher on to the table, announced, ‘Hamstrung, can’t stop it bleeding,’ and retreated to their station.

  Tilla cried, ‘That is him!’ at the same moment as Ruso recognized the filthy and blood-streaked figure curled up in front of him.

  ‘Tertius? How did this happen?’

  Tertius groped a hand towards his own. ‘Is that you, sir?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Ruso, lifting the dressing to peer at a gaping wound behind the lad’s left knee. He said, ‘Who did this?’

  Tertius’ weak response was something between a laugh and a sob. ‘Sorry, sir. I wasted your money.’

  ‘He came back,’ said a voice from Gnostus’ side of the room. ‘Silly bugger came back to make up the numbers so his mate didn’t have to take on two men.’

  Ruso shook his head in disbelief.

  ‘How bad is it?’ The voice was barely recognizable as the confident youth from earlier this afternoon.

  ‘Nothing to worry about,’ Ruso lied, directing the assistants to get him into a better position while he hunted for the main source of the bleeding. Tilla fetched a lamp from one of the brackets and held it close. He was finishing the first cautery when there was a commotion out in the corridor, and a voice that should have been inaudible down here shrieked, ‘How dare you? He’s my fiance! Let me in!’

  Ruso winced as the door crashed open. ‘It’s me!’ cried Marcia, rushing across to the table. ‘Tertius, don’t die! Get out of the way, Gaius!’ />
  Instead of getting out of the way Ruso placed another sponge in the wound and ordered one of the assistants to hold it there. Then he gripped his sister’s shoulders with bloodstained hands and said firmly in her ear, ‘If you want to help, shut up and wait outside. You’re embarrassing me and you aren’t helping him.’

  ‘But he’s hurt! Oh, what did you sign up for, you stupid, stupid boy? What am I going to — ugh! Gaius, your hands are horrible, get them off!’

  ‘Wait outside,’ Ruso repeated, nodding to the other assistant, who propelled her towards the door.

  ‘You can’t throw me out, I — what’s she doing here? You said she ran away! Get off me! Gaius, tell him to let me go!’

  ‘And while you’re out there,’ Ruso called over his shoulder, ‘think about growing up. There’s a brave man lying here and he deserves better than this.’

  78

  The games were over. The rows of seats were practically deserted apart from the slaves gathering up litter and lost children. Already three had been corralled near the east exit, where a plump and jolly woman was consoling them for their lack of parents by feeding them sausage fritters. Outside there were still plenty of people milling about, buying food and haggling over the price of souvenirs. Ruso made the mistake of catching the eye of a vendor. The little terracotta shapes rattled in the tray as the vendor scuttled forward to block their path and suggested that the young lady might like a little memento of her trip to the city.

  ‘I am trying to forget,’ said Tilla.

  No, they did not want a bronze model of a gladiator waving a sword. Nor did they want any of the terracotta portrayals of execution victims being done away with in various gruesome fashions, even if they were an absolute bargain, and the man’s master would be furious when he found out he’d practically been giving the stock away.