by R. S. Downie
The gate guards could not remember anything at all about Julius Asper but confirmed Ruso’s impression that no sensible tax-collector would wander around with a large sum of money and no proper security. No, they could not remember ever seeing a man with only half of one ear, but if he were guarding the tax money, might he not be wearing a helmet?
Having confirmed at least some of Camma’s story, Ruso spent what was left of the afternoon on a fruitless but necessary round of visits to ships and warehouses, offices and inns, a cheerful brothel and a depressing one, and the local baths. Despite the offer of a reward – something he had forgotten to warn Firmus about - nobody could remember a man with greying brown hair and a scar beneath the right eye, who might or might not be calling himself Julius Asper. Nor could they recall Julius Bericus, or his mangled ear.
The sun was beginning to slide down towards the horizon, and Ruso was hungry. For all he knew, the brothers might have avoided the obvious route south and fled in some other direction. He would have to go to Verulamium tomorrow and start again from there.
He turned away from the river and headed back to find out where Valens was thinking of buying tonight’s dinner. He hoped it was none of the places he had visited so far.
He would not have noticed the slight figure approaching along the street but for the two small boys who were following and imitating his gait. It was a moment before he realized the figure was calling to him.
‘Doctor Gaius Petreius, sir!’
Ruso stopped. ‘Albanus?’
He blinked in surprise at his former clerk. Neither seemed to know whether to embrace the other. Albanus solved the problem with a snappy military salute that was immediately parodied behind him. Ruso returned the salute and glared at the boys, who fled.
Invalided out of the Army, Albanus was attempting to make a living by teaching boys like the ones Ruso had just frightened away, although, as he observed, most of the boys were even less eager to learn than their parents were to pay: a fact which was borne out by the patches on his tunic. ‘I get by, sir. But if you need a clerk, I’d be very happy to help.’
‘Not at the moment, I’m afraid. I’ve got a temporary job with the Procurator’s office. They seem to have a clerk in every corner.’ He explained about the hunt for the missing brothers. ‘But if I hear of anybody who needs a good man, I’ll mention your name.’
The smile was pathetically grateful. ‘Thank you, sir. They can find me at Albanus’ School for Young Gentlemen. We’re in the south-west corner of the Forum every morning. Reading, writing and mathematics as standard; Greek, logic and rhetoric by special arrangement. In the meantime I’ll spread the word about your tax men. And if I hear of anybody who needs a good doctor, I’ll tell them you’ll be available shortly.’
Ruso grinned. ‘Thank you.’
‘You will be careful, won’t you, sir? People can turn very nasty when there’s money involved.’
Ruso’s smile faded as he watched Albanus walk away down the street. He had always felt vaguely responsible for the head injury that had ended Albanus’ career in the Army, but at the moment he barely had the resources to look after himself and Tilla, let alone employ a clerk he didn’t need. It was unlikely they would ever work together again, and he suspected both of them would be the poorer for it.
8
Tilla was eating upstairs with the new mother. Down in the dining room, Valens poked at the wick on the lamp with the sharp end of his spoon. The flame rose higher. He wiped the spoon on the couch, seemingly unaware of the oily streak it left behind it. He poured himself another generous helping of Ruso’s wedding-present wine while Ruso helped himself from the platter of salmon that the boy had just fetched from the inn around the corner.
‘This is the life!’ Valens observed, adjusting the cushions behind him before lifting his feet on to the couch. ‘Just us chaps together. It’s a pity you’ve got to rush off to Verulamium in the morning. You know,’ (here he took a mouthful of salmon and carried on talking round it) ‘sometimes I miss the old place back in Deva.’
Ruso licked the over-spiced sauce from the spoon. ‘Didn’t we spend most of our time in the old place looking for ways to get out of it?’
‘Ah, Ruso,’ said Valens, ‘how I’ve missed your delightfully glum presence.’ He grinned. ‘I never thought I’d say this, but it’s more fun with you around.’ Seeing Ruso’s surprise he added, ‘It’s an honour to tend the great and the powerful, but frankly it’s not very entertaining.’
Ruso took another swig of wine and marvelled at how Valens’ life must have changed if this evening was his idea of fun. He said, ‘I ran into Albanus this afternoon.’
‘We should have invited him,’ said Valens. ‘I didn’t think.’
Ruso was about to say, ‘He’s looking for a job,’ and then considered what it might be like to work for Valens, and kept quiet.
If Tilla were here, she would be hinting that this was the time to ask about the mysterious absence of Serena.
‘So,’ said Valens in a tone that implied he was about to say something that had been on his mind for a while. ‘Women, eh?’
‘Women,’ agreed Ruso, hoping Valens would get to the subject of Serena without any embarrassing prompting.
‘Tell me, what do your family make of Tilla?’
Perhaps he was approaching the topic by a roundabout route. ‘Some of them quite like her,’ he said. ‘The rest are somewhere between horror and resignation.’
‘Ah,’ said Valens. ‘Well, as long as you’re happy.’
‘Mm.’ Ruso glanced down at his cup. ‘Pass the jug over, will you?’
Valens refilled his own cup before complying. Eyeing his old friend over the top of the jug he said, ‘What do women want, exactly?’
Ruso felt a faint twinge of alarm. This was not supposed to happen. Valens had always been the man with the answers. ‘You’re asking me?’
‘Well, you married two of them. You must know something.’
Ruso watched the stream of wine cascading into the cup and pondered the question. ‘Tilla wants to settle down and have children,’ he said. He was about to ask what Serena wanted when Valens said, ‘And Claudia?’
Ruso pondered that for a moment. ‘I tried asking her once.’
‘And?’
‘She said it was obvious.’
‘If it were obvious,’ said Valens, ‘surely you wouldn’t have been asking?’
‘That’s exactly what I said.’
‘And then?’
‘She told me I’d just proved her point.’
Valens frowned. ‘So what was her point?’
The wicker chair creaked as Ruso leaned back in it. ‘I don’t know.’ He made a careful attempt to sound casual as he asked. ‘What about Serena?’
Valens appeared to ponder this for a moment, then said, ‘Well whatever it is, I can’t do much about it if she isn’t here, can I?
9
As Ruso lifted the covers and fell into Valens’ spare bed, it dawned on him that not only had he eaten too much, but that he and Valens must have drained the amphora deeper than he had realized. From where he lay, his wife now appeared to be clutching a glass phial in one hand and tiptoeing around the bed with the exaggerated gait of a slave about to deceive a master in a silly comedy.
He closed his eyes, told his slithering mind to get a grip and looked again. Now she was standing with her loosened curls haloed in the lamp, swirling sludgy grey liquid around in the phial and apparently mouthing words to it.
There would be an explanation. There was always an explanation with Tilla, but not necessarily a logical one and not one he wanted to listen to after a long day. He had a vague memory of wanting to ask her something, but whatever it was could wait. He let his eyes drift shut and left her to carry on. Thus he was totally unprepared to be woken by a rush of cold air, a warm body straddling his over-full stomach and a voice announcing from above, ‘I am ready for you, husband!’
‘Uh?’
�
��Now. While the medicine is working.’
He opened his eyes and surveyed his naked and wild-haired wife with more alarm than desire. ‘What medicine?’
‘It is spring, and the moon is waxing. It is a good time to make a child.’
He swallowed. ‘Right now?’
The eyes that were not blue but were not really green either fixed on his own. ‘Right now,’ she declared, and reached across him to pinch out the bedside lamp.
Some time later, vaguely aware that it was still dark despite the screech of a neighbour’s cockerel, he heard her say, ‘And another thing. This bed is too hard.’
He mumbled, ‘Perhaps the beds will be better in Verulamium.’
‘I hope many things will be better.’ He guessed this referred to their latest attempt to produce an heir, which had been swiftly concluded and followed – as far as he could remember – by his drifting off to sleep while she was still talking. She said, ‘I have told Camma she can travel with us tomorrow.’
He grunted his assent.
Outside, the cockerel again shrieked the start of a non-existent dawn. He said, ‘Somebody ought to put that bloody bird in the pot.’
‘It is good we are not at home in Brigantia.’
In the silence that followed, he wondered what the Brigantes did with poultry.
‘Nobody at home will find out I have married a tax man.’
Ruso sighed. There was, he decided, a fundamental incompatibility between women and men. Women could not just get on and do things. They had to decide how they felt about doing them, and then they had to tell you how they felt, and then they expected you to do something about it, no matter how irrational their feelings might be. He had tried to explain to her that modern living needed money, that for ordinary people money came from taking a job, and that a job inevitably involved a man going where he was told and doing what he was paid to do when he got there. There were times when the question of whether his wife would approve was not uppermost in his mind.
‘I’m not a tax man,’ he pointed out, deciding it would not help to admit that he could not care less whether the Britons paid their taxes. ‘I’m an investigator. Besides, you were the one who wanted me to look for the missing husband.’
‘I have been thinking about that. Do not look too hard.’
‘What?’ He rolled over to face her in the dark. ‘It’s too late now. I’ve got everybody from the Procurator’s office downwards on the lookout. Even Albanus is spreading the word.’
‘He does not deserve her, or his beautiful son. What sort of a man leaves his family for a bag of money?’
‘She says he hasn’t taken the money.’
‘Of course she says this. He is a tax-collector. He has lied to her and run away with his brother. She will be better off without him.’
Ruso lay on his back with his eyes closed, and marvelled at the speed with which his wife could change her mind.
Outside the window there was a soft pattering of rain, followed by the unsteady rhythms of dripping from the eaves. Further along the landing he could hear the rasping cry of the newborn child keeping its mother awake in the room usually occupied by Valens’ children. Tomorrow, he vowed, he would go and find the temple of a suitable god. He would give thanks for a safe journey and offer whatever the priests thought might be appropriate in exchange for an heir. It could do no harm.
He was just beginning to drift back to sleep when the cockerel jolted him awake with another fanfare. He felt a flash of irritation. Somebody ought to wring that feathery neck. He would cheerfully do it himself. But that would mean leaving a warm bed, groping for his boots, creeping down the stairs and prowling wet lanes and gardens in the dark. Instead he said, ‘There should be a law against keeping a bird like that in town.’
‘He should be in a house with a good low roof to keep his head down,’ said Tilla. ‘When you find proper work and we have a house, I shall keep hens.’
‘It’ll be easier to get work as a medic now I’m here,’ he promised her. ‘I’ll start writing to people in a day or two.’
‘Perhaps they will want a doctor in Verulamium.’
He said, ‘Don’t say that to anybody up there, will you?’
‘You are proud to work for the tax man and ashamed to be a healer?’
‘I can’t get on with inquiries if people keep asking me to look at their bunions.’
‘Be careful, husband. It is bad enough this Julius Asper is a tax-collector, but a man who would leave a wife like that will do anything. If they are still around and they know you are chasing them, they will try to stop you.’
He slid one arm around her waist, drawing her close so that her hair tickled his nose. ‘I’ll be safe,’ he promised. ‘I’ve got a fierce British warrior-woman to defend me.’
Tilla said something that sounded like ‘Hmph.’
He remembered what he had wanted to ask her earlier. ‘Has Valens said anything to you about Serena?’
‘She was a fool to marry him.’
Ruso assumed this insight had originated from Tilla rather than Valens. A worrying thought crossed his mind. ‘You haven’t been talking to him about us, have you?’
‘You think I would talk to Valens?’
He had to admit it was hard to imagine. ‘So where did you get that medicine?’
There was a pause, then, ‘From somebody I met.’
Clearly she was not going to tell him. ‘And did this somebody tell you what was in it?’
After a moment’s hesitation she said, ‘Ashes of hare’s stomach in wine.’
‘Ah.’ He had heard hare recommended as a treatment for barrenness. ‘Anything else?’
‘Roast sparrow.’
Another cure more often endorsed by rumour than by experience. ‘Let’s hope it works.’
‘She would not tell me the other things.’
‘Probably just as well,’ he said, glad that they would be leaving in the morning. Whoever had sold Tilla that concoction would have to find some other desperate woman to exploit.
10
The guardians of the sunken chamber of Mithras did not seem to think the god would be over-eager to help a man who had never bothered with him during all his years in the Army. In truth the officers’ favourite god would not have been Ruso’s first choice, but he did not have time to hunt around for another deity this morning. Finally the guardians sized him up and agreed that an unblemished lamb would be a sufficient offering to make should the great one grant him a son, although unless Ruso were to go through the proper initiations, divine assistance was unlikely. Ruso duly descended into the gloom and made his promise to the god. Stepping over a wide puddle outside the exit, he crushed the unholy thought that the guardians might be partial to roast lamb. He had more important things to think about.
He could not understand why Camma was convinced the Council were behind her husband’s disappearance, nor why they in turn seemed to suspect him and his brother of running off with the money. Tax collection was a form of licensed theft anyway. It was hard to see what Asper might gain by becoming a real criminal when he could sit comfortably where he was, charging over the odds and growing legally rich on a fat percentage of the receipts. It was the only reason for anyone to take on such an unpopular role in the first place. If the red-haired Iceni wife had been the problem, he could have divorced her. It was surely far more likely that the men had been attacked by robbers on the road.
He would find out the real story when he got to Verulamium. In the meantime, he needed to collect the warrants and get across to the stables before other travellers booked out all the vehicles.
Over at the residence, the builders were tying another layer on to the scaffold. Behind a stack of poles he found the office of the under-clerk whose job it was to issue warrants for the use of official transport. No, the warrants were not ready. Yes, the request had been sent across yesterday. But no permits could be issued to a new user before he turned up in person. Procedures had been tightened up. The Em
peror had given orders to crack down on abuse. Not that the clerk was suggesting in any way, of course … but since the other traveller appeared to be a native woman …
‘She’s my translator,’ explained Ruso. ‘I’ll vouch for her.’ He would also pay the fee of a sestertius that might, like the new rules, be official. On the other hand, it might be the clerk’s drinking-money. He did not have time to argue. He would put the money on his list of expenses for Firmus, along with the name of the man who had demanded it.
As he handed over the cash the man said, ‘Oh, and there’s a message for you from the Assistant Procurator, sir. He needs to see you urgently.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me that straight away?’
‘You said you wanted your permits immediately, sir.’
Crushing the warrants in his fist, Ruso strode across the courtyard. With luck, Firmus was about to tell him that the missing men had turned up, the cash had been delivered, and he could get on with finding somebody who wanted to hire a surgeon.
In fact, what Firmus wanted to tell him was that someone had just reported the discovery of a body that fitted the description of Julius Asper. ‘He tried to claim some sort of reward, but the staff sent him packing.’
‘Ah,’ said Ruso, wishing he had remembered to warn Firmus about the reward.
‘But even if the body is one of our men, it seems he didn’t have the money with him.’
‘I see,’ said Ruso, wondering whether Firmus had really imagined that the finder might hand in the cash.
‘Let’s hope the other one turns up soon,’ said Firmus cheerfully. ‘Verulamium will have to talk to the Procurator about the money, but at least our problem will be solved.’
