Ruso and the River of Darkness

by R. S. Downie

  ‘I remember.’

  Very softly, she began to sing again.

  Tilla had plans, of course. Women always did. It seemed almost every conversation on the journey had begun with, ‘When we are home …’ He had stifled the desire to point out that it might be her home, but it was not his.

  He only hoped Valens had remembered the promise to find him a job, because he suspected that now they were here, ‘When we are home,’ would turn into ‘When we have somewhere to live,’ and then they would be back to, ‘When we have children,’ and there was only so much planning a man could stand.

  He blamed the crockery. Despite Tilla’s unfortunate origins, there was a clear expectation from the female side of the Petreius family that any man who had been presented with a matching set of tableware as a wedding present would hurry to provide a table to put it on, and somewhere to put the table, and a brood of little Petreii to eat at it.

  Evidently Tilla’s thoughts were not far from his own. As the sailors positioned themselves to throw the mooring-ropes, she said, ‘I want to watch them unload. I am not bringing all those cups and bowls this far to have them dropped on the dockside.’

  ‘Good idea,’ he agreed. ‘I’ll go and tell Valens we’ve arrived.’

  The side of the ship bumped gently against the massive planking of the wharf. Ruso felt a surge of energy at the thought of getting back to work. He would have something useful to do at last.

  3

  ‘The trouble with you, Ruso,’ said Valens, glancing to check that the door was closed before propping his feet on one of the polished tables in his remarkably ornate dining room, ‘is that you’re never satisfied. Look at me. Here am I, burdened with a massive rent to pay, two children and a dissatisfied wife to support, an endless round of demanding patients, two of the dimmest apprentices in Londinium – and do you hear me complaining?’

  ‘What you promised to do,’ said Ruso, guessing that Valens’ patients must be not only demanding but wealthy, ‘was to keep an eye open for a surgical job.’

  ‘Exactly!’ exclaimed Valens. ‘Throw me one of those cushions, will you, old chap? You wouldn’t believe what she paid for this couch and it’s the most uncomfortable – thanks. You’re much better off on the chair, believe me.’

  Ruso tossed over one of his cushions, removed the pull-along wooden horse that explained the lumpiness of the other, and placed it on the floor.

  ‘Sometimes I think she chose it to keep me awake while I listen to her. Anyway, where was I? Oh, yes. Knowing how desperate you always are for cash, I assumed the operative word in your letter was job.’ The handsome grin that had once charmed his dissatisfied wife reappeared. ‘And on the very morning you turn up, I’ve found you a job. Not only for you, but one for your own lovely wife as well. You didn’t warn me you were going to be picky.’

  ‘I’m not being picky,’ pointed out Ruso. ‘I’m being realistic. I don’t know the first thing about finding missing –’ He stopped as a cry of pain echoed down the stairs. ‘Should one of us go up and have a look at her?’

  Valens shook his head. ‘I saw her just before you got here. The apprentices will call me if anything happens, but she’ll probably be hours yet. It’s a first baby. What was it you were saying?’

  ‘I said, I don’t know anything about finding missing tax-collectors.’

  ‘Don’t worry. You’ll get the details this afternoon.’

  ‘I haven’t said I’ll do it.’

  The brown eyes widened. ‘You aren’t going to let me down, are you? That would be horribly embarrassing. I’ve just been telling the Procurator’s Assistant what a marvellous chap you are.’

  ‘Why would he employ a medic to conduct a manhunt?’

  ‘Well you wouldn’t be anyone’s first choice, obviously.’ Valens glanced at the slave in the corner and nodded towards his cup. The boy stepped forward and poured more wine. ‘But I said you helped me work out who murdered that soldier up on the border, and –’

  ‘I helped you?’

  Valens shook his head. ‘There you go again, being picky. And I told him you’d had a good go at finding out what happened to those bar girls in Deva –’

  ‘I did find out.’

  Valens paused. ‘Really? I don’t remember. Anyway, I managed to convince him that you’re just what he’s looking for.’

  ‘A surgeon.’

  ‘If it would have helped to tell him you were a surgeon, I would have. But he wanted an investigator. And you can’t resist poking your nose into things, so you are a sort of investigator, aren’t you? Admit it, Ruso. Find something that intrigues you, and you’re like a dog with a bone.’

  There was another wail from upstairs. Valens frowned. ‘Shouldn’t the lovely Tilla be here by now? I promised the woman a midwife would be there any moment.’

  Ruso had barely finished saying, ‘They must be taking a long time to unload,’ when there was a commotion out in the hall and the door crashed open. Valens removed his feet from the table and swung round to see a figure stagger into the room carrying a jumble of bags and bundles.

  ‘Tilla!’ Valens sprang up from the couch. Tilla, evidently not wanting to drop the luggage, was unable to move until he released his embrace. ‘Dear girl, you shouldn’t be carrying all that. Didn’t he get you some help?’

  Ruso said, ‘I thought you’d get the driver to bring it in.

  ‘That driver is a clumsy oaf,’ explained Tilla. Ruso guessed that he had not treated the crockery with sufficient respect.

  Valens stepped back and gestured to his slave. ‘Give her a hand, will you? Into the guest room.’

  As the boy began to ferry the bags back into the expanse of the hall, Valens turned to Tilla. ‘You have no idea how glad we are to see you. The young woman upstairs will be even happier. I’m sorry to ask you to take over the moment you arrive, but we chaps aren’t much good at this delivery business. And you speak the language.’

  Tilla looked both weary and confused. ‘Your wife is having a baby?’

  ‘Emergency patient,’ Valens explained. ‘A long way from home, can’t find her husband, and her waters popped in the middle of the tax office. I’m sure she’d rather see you than any of us.’

  The tone of Tilla’s, ‘Yes,’ suggested she had more to say, but she was saving it for later.

  ‘Still a bit thin,’ Valens observed after she had gone, ‘but charmingly freckled. The Gaulish sunshine’s done her good.’ He flung himself back on to the couch. ‘I practically dropped the letter when I read that you’d married her, you know.’

  Ruso could hardly believe it himself at times. He was still not sure how a destitute British slave with a broken arm had managed to slip past the defences of an educated and civilized man – especially a man who had been determined not to repeat the mistake of his first marriage. It was not as if Tilla had deliberately set out to lure him. She had consistently refused to embrace the qualities one might seek in either slave or wife. She showed neither obedience nor respect, and both he and Valens had given up hoping that she would ever learn to cook properly. Yet he had found that he was much happier with her than without her. Back at home, with their relationship under the dubious scrutiny of his family, marriage had seemed the natural – even the honourable – thing to do.

  ‘But then I thought,’ Valens continued, ‘what harm can it do? And I’m delighted to see you both. Not to mention that rather promising amphora I notice has arrived with you. You, me, Tilla – it’ll be just like the old days in the Legion.’

  Ruso, noting the absence of mould on the walls and beer stains on the furniture, said, ‘Not quite.’

  ‘Well no, we’ve gone up in the world since then. At least, I have. Did you notice my rather lovely consulting rooms on the way in? Once word gets round that you’re a personal physician to the famous …’ He smiled and spread his hands in a gesture that was somewhere between a modest shrug and an attempt to demonstrate the enormity of the good things that had come his way since they bot
h left the Army. ‘Anyway, let’s hope young Firmus likes you. Then who knows how high you might go?’

  Ruso frowned. ‘Who’s Firmus?’

  ‘Some sort of junior relative who’s in charge while the Procurator’s laid up.’ It was not a ringing endorsement of Firmus’ competence as an employer. Ruso suspected that Valens, having failed to find him a job despite all the breezy assurances in his letters that it would be no problem, had now offered his services to the first person who looked open to persuasion.

  ‘Tell me about him.’

  ‘Looks as though he’s cracked a couple of ribs, and he’s seriously shaken up. Not to mention embarrassed. Between you and me, I’d imagine that when the Governor’s away on tour he’s supposed to be sitting in his office running the province, not gallivanting around chasing wild boar. Especially a man of his age.’

  ‘I meant Firmus,’ explained Ruso, who was not interested in the accident that had temporarily disabled one of Hadrian’s two top men in Britannia.

  Valens shook his head. ‘Frighteningly young, Ruso. As they all are these days. He came trotting in while I was strapping his uncle up and said he had a mad native ranting about a missing husband and stolen money, and now she was about to give birth on the floor of his office and what should he do?’ The grin reappeared. ‘Unfortunately I’d just filled the Procurator with poppy juice, so he wouldn’t have cared if Juno herself was giving birth in the office. Young Firmus was looking a bit desperate, and I’d just heard that your ship was coming in on the next tide, so everything fell into place rather neatly.’

  ‘You told him I’d rush all over Britannia for the tax office, hunting down this woman’s missing husband?’

  ‘From what I can gather, all he needs is someone to nip up the road to Verulamium – which is a pleasant enough place, by the way – chat to the locals, and confirm whether this fellow’s really abandoned his wife and run off with all their money. Just come back with a report the lad can hand over when the Procurator gets back to work. What could be simpler?’

  ‘If it’s so simple, why can’t he find someone else to do it?’

  Valens sighed. ‘He could, Ruso. Frankly, I should think the next-door neighbour’s dog could do it. But you’re the one with no money and no job. I’ve solved your problem and his at the same time, you see? You might try and be grateful.’

  Ruso said, ‘I’ll do my best.’

  Another cry from upstairs penetrated the room. Valens winced. In the silence that followed he said, ‘I hope she doesn’t go on too long, poor woman. You can hear it all over the house.’

  Ruso got to his feet. ‘I suppose if I’m going to look for her husband,’ he said, ‘I’d better try and talk to her while she’s still listening.’ It seemed like bad luck to say, While she’s still alive, although given the number of women who did not survive childbirth despite the very best of help, it might have been more honest.

  4

  Upstairs, everything was going very well.

  He was not sure whether this was true, or whether Tilla was just saying so in order to keep her patient calm.

  The air held the spearmint smell of the pennyroyal Tilla had taken from Valens’ medicine shelves. The woman was kneeling on the floor with her back to him, elbows resting on the bed and head bowed in concentration. A thick tail of tangled red hair cascaded down over a cream linen shift that Ruso thought he might have seen before on his wife. A selection of cloths and woollen bandages and sponges had been laid out next to the bowls of water on top of the cupboard. A little figurine of a goddess had been placed on a stool in the corner. In front of it was a lit candle and an offering of some of the olives they had brought from Gaul. Tilla might have started worshipping Christos while they were away, but here she was taking no chances.

  He beckoned her out of the room to explain what he wanted, adding, ‘Don’t tell her I’m a doctor.’

  His wife looked askance at him. ‘Do not think of behaving like one. It is bad enough managing with no birthing stool and no helpers.’

  ‘If you need us to –’

  ‘If I am truly desperate, I will ask you to fetch a neighbour.’

  Back in the room, the woman was eager to tell him her troubles. The torrent of words tumbled over one another, and at times he had trouble separating them even though she had good Latin. It seemed that her husband and his brother had left Verulamium three days ago, intending to visit a neighbour on the Londinium Road. They had not been seen since. Now the Council were accusing them of theft.

  ‘You must listen!’ she insisted, gripping a fistful of bedcover. ‘Something has happened to them. Nobody will listen to me. That is why I came to the Procurator.’

  She stopped talking, lumbered to her feet and walked round to the window. Clinging on to the sill, she bent forward and cried out. Tilla stood behind her, patiently massaging her back and assuring her she was doing very well.

  He waited for the contraction to pass, silently absorbing this fresh evidence that women were very poorly designed. He had, without telling his wife, added a book on pregnancy and childbirth to his collection of medical texts. Yet it still remained a mystery to him why Tilla, who knew more about childbirth than most, was so desperate to go through it. Picturing himself carrying a small son or even a daughter on his shoulders gave him an inexplicable sense of warmth and contentment, but had his own part in the procedure been as troublesome – not to mention dangerous – as this, he might have wondered whether it was worth the bother.

  Finally Camma let go of the windowsill and whispered, ‘Another step closer?’

  ‘Another step closer,’ Tilla assured her. ‘Do not worry. My husband will help to look for your man. He is good at this sort of thing.’

  As the woman began to describe the missing brothers he could see his wife counting the time to the next contraction on her fingers.

  Julius Asper was a tall man with kind eyes. He was thirty-four years old. His hair was short and brown, with some grey at the temples, and he had no beard. To Ruso’s relief he also had a scar under his right eye, which might distinguish him from hundreds of other brown-haired tallish men of the same age. As for the kind eyes – that would perhaps depend on whether one was a devoted wife or a defaulting taxpayer. The brother was shorter, with darker hair in the same style and – oh, joy! – half of one ear missing. Now that was a useful description. Both spoke good Latin. She had never noticed an accent, but since she had one herself, that might not mean much.

  ‘Please find him!’ She clutched at the sill again. ‘Everyone is lying to me. Aagh! O blessed Andraste, make it stop!’ Her voice rose to a shriek. ‘Why did I let him do this to me?’

  Ruso left the room quietly, unnoticed and doubtless unmissed.

  Downstairs, Ruso conceded that he would be going to Verulamium. ‘Serena won’t mind if Tilla stays here, will she?’

  Valens’ hesitant ‘Ah’ hinted at complications.

  They had never discussed it, but Ruso was aware that, despite their own friendship, the two women had never been close. Serena was the daughter of a high-ranking Roman centurion. Tilla was not only a native but, when they had first met, she had been Ruso and Valens’ housekeeper. It was a social distance that neither woman had really managed to bridge. Still, it was surely not so serious that Valens would turn down a request for hospitality. He said, ‘I don’t think an investigator is supposed to trail his wife about all over the place.’

  ‘Oh, absolutely. But if Serena comes home tomorrow and finds somebody else’s wife here with just me, the apprentices and the kitchen boy, it’ll look a bit odd.’

  ‘You mean she’s not back tonight?’

  ‘Anything’s possible,’ said Valens, whose earlier statement that his wife had gone to visit a relative had, now Ruso thought about it, been unusually vague.

  Ruso looked more closely at the room in which they were sitting. It was true that the walls were elegantly painted and there were no beer stains, but there were balls of dust in the corners. He saw for
the first time that someone had dribbled oil down the lampstand and not wiped up the pool on the floor, and recalled the dying flowers on the table in the hall.

  ‘So where –’

  ‘She’s bound to be back any day now,’ Valens assured him. ‘She left most of her shoes behind.’

  Ruso decided not to pry. He would leave that to Tilla. Instead he tried: ‘How are the twins?’

  Valens brightened. ‘Oh, fine little chaps. Coming along very nicely. New teeth and new words practically every time I see them. Sorry about the state of the place, but she’s got most of the staff with her. Still, I was thinking we could crack open that amphora tonight and perhaps Tilla might, ah …’

  ‘You want Tilla to cook?’

  Their eyes met. For a moment neither of them spoke, each perhaps recalling his own selection of Tilla’s culinary disasters.

  Valens said, ‘Of course we could always …’

  ‘We’ll have something brought in,’ agreed Ruso, anticipating the end of the sentence.

  5

  Londinium reminded Ruso of a child whose mother had dressed it in a huge tunic and announced, ‘You’ll grow into it.’ Four years after his first visit, there was still no sign of the town expanding to fit the massively ambitious Forum. Its red roofs dominated the skyline on the far side of the marshy brook separating Valens’ end of town from the wharves and most of the official buildings.

  Joining his own footsteps to the dull thunder of feet on the nearest bridge, he wondered how the hell he could steer clear of the tax office without getting Valens into more trouble than he deserved.

  He was distracted by snatches of conversation in a blur of languages: words of complaint in Greek, the first half of an old joke in Latin, and something Eastern. As he passed the gaudy bar where he had first discovered that the native brew really did taste as foul as it smelled, he overheard two trouser-wearing slaves arguing in an oddly strangled burble and realized with a shock that it was British. He had spent much of the voyage struggling to wrap his tongue around the complications of Tilla’s native speech, but Tilla was from the North. Now it seemed that if his efforts were to be of any use, he was going to have to perform some sort of mental swerve into a new track.