Ruso and the River of Darkness

by R. S. Downie

  ‘That letter I gave you,’ he said. ‘Did you have any luck deciphering it?’

  They had not, but both apprentices had spent a couple of hours trying. Oblivious to how happy this must have made Valens, the short apprentice went back into the surgery to fetch the wax tablet on which it was written.

  While he was waiting, Ruso gathered up a couple of chunks of fallen plaster almost the size of his fist from the foot of the hall wall. He tried to fit them, painted side out, into the hole made by whatever weapon had narrowly missed his head. More dry plaster crumbled away from the lath and showered on to his feet. The hall table, presumably broken, had been removed. Serena was not going to be pleased when – if – she returned.

  Ruso unfastened his left boot and shook out a piece of plaster grit. Then he leaned back against an intact stretch of wall, folded his arms and began to make a mental list of the new questions he was going to ask Caratius.

  He was interrupted by the reappearance of the short apprentice, pink in the face and clearly agitated. ‘It must be in our room, sir,’ he declared, scuttling away towards the back of the house. ‘Won’t be a moment.’

  There followed a series of muffled crashes, thumps and screeches that suggested the flinging open of cupboards and the shifting of heavy furniture. After a brief silence in which Ruso wondered if he should offer to help, the noises recommenced with increased vigour. Finally the youth re-emerged, his face even pinker and shiny with sweat. ‘Sorry about this, sir. He’s put it somewhere.’

  ‘He’ was presumably the tall apprentice. Moments later both youths were in the hallway denying having moved the letter from the surgery shelf and blaming each other for its disappearance.

  ‘It was probably Doctor Valens,’ suggested Ruso, not wanting to voice a growing suspicion that it was none of them. ‘You two get back to work. I’ll have a word with him in between patients.’

  As they headed back through the surgery lobby the tall apprentice voiced Ruso’s own thoughts. ‘Perhaps the burglar took it.’

  ‘Huh,’ said his companion. As the door closed Ruso overheard, ‘That’ll be the same thief as took the only decent pen I had, and gave you one just like it.’

  Ruso went into the dining room. Since the apprentices were not allowed to use the room there was no reason why the letter should be in it, but he might as well do something while he was waiting.

  Shifting cushions and peering under the couch produced several small coins, a wooden whistle, a child’s shoe, a crust of bread hardened to the consistency of concrete, a green hair-ribbon that must belong to Serena … and a writing-tablet. His brief moment of elation was destroyed by the words ‘Pharmacy List’ inked on the outside. Idly curious, he took it across to the window to read.

  What it contained was not a list but a message.

  Scrawled in a large and badly formed hand were the words: ‘When you finally notice that we are not here, you may want to know that I have taken the boys and gone to live with my cousin.’ The message was scraped so deep into the wax that it had scored the wood underneath.

  So that was it.

  Ruso was more saddened than surprised. He wished he had found the note before Tilla had gone. She would have known what to say. In fact it would have been better not to have found it at all, or at least to have left it unopened. Now he felt like the woman in the old Jewish tale: the one who ate the fruit from the tree and knew too much. He should say something helpful to Valens, but what? How could a man interfere in his friend’s marriage? Especially since he was not supposed to have read the note anyway.

  He pushed the message back under the couch. When the apprentices reappeared with orders from Valens to question the kitchen boy and search the rest of the house, he closed the door of the dining room and told them he had already checked it. There was nothing there.

  He entered the surgery just in time to see a middle-aged man stagger out into the street with a poultice clutched to his face and a message for the next patient that he would be called in a moment.

  ‘Splendid abscess,’ said Valens, describing the patient rather than the space beside a stack of rolled bandages to which he now pointed. That was where he had seen the letter late last night. He had almost called one of the boys to put it away until he realized it was not a patient record after all. ‘Somebody must have come in here after me.’

  Ruso waited until the patient had shut the door before suggesting, ‘The burglar was in here.’

  Valens’ eyes widened. ‘Ruso, you don’t think you’re taking this investigation business a little too seriously? I know it must have been a shock finding this chap in the house, but really – what sort of burglar steals somebody’s letters?’

  ‘The sort who wants to know what’s in them?’ Ruso suggested, remembering Caratius’ eagerness to see the letter. ‘Or the sort who already knows and doesn’t want other people to find out.’ He glanced round at the neatly stacked shelves. ‘If it was here last night and it’s not here now, where is it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Valens admitted.

  ‘The women wouldn’t have taken it. Neither of them can read.’

  ‘Nor can the kitchen boy, much.’

  ‘Which only leaves the burglar.’

  ‘I’m sure it’ll turn up,’ Valens assured him. ‘You can let the lads carry on hunting for a while. I’m running late for house calls, and it’s much quicker in here without them. Don’t fancy seeing a few patients yourself, do you? Keep your hand in?’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Ruso, backing out of the room. ‘I’m only an investigator.’

  At the far end of the hall there seemed to have been an explosion in the laundry basket. It was the work of the kitchen boy, still delving down and flinging out the contents. As Ruso approached, a blanket unfurled in the air. A sock disengaged from it and sailed past his shoulder. The kitchen boy apologized. He had not found the letter yet. ‘But we’re all looking, sir.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Ruso, grateful for his efforts even though the bottom of the laundry basket had obviously lain undisturbed since whenever it was Serena had walked out. ‘Let me know if you find anything.’

  He was not optimistic. If he was right about the burglar, then one question about the letter had been answered: its contents were important to somebody. Unfortunately, the manner in which he had learned of their importance meant he was not going to be able to find out what they were.

  The apprentices had now moved on to the upstairs rooms in their efforts to vindicate themselves. Remembering Tilla’s precious crockery, Ruso hurried up to restrain them. The box had been dragged out from under the bed, and he deduced from the shape of the legs protruding in its place that the tall apprentice was conducting a thorough search.

  ‘It won’t be under there,’ Ruso pointed out. ‘Nobody who had it came in here.’

  ‘I know, sir,’ agreed a muffled voice. ‘But we’ve tried everywhere else.’

  The legs began to shuffle back towards Ruso. The tall apprentice’s face, when it appeared, was smudged with soot. His hair was sticking up at unintended angles, and a cobweb festooned one ear, evidence of his searching in other unlikely places.

  ‘I’m going to have to go out,’ said Ruso. ‘If you have to look in here, be careful of that box with FRAGILE written on it.’

  The boy’s bewildered glance around the room showed that he had not noticed the warning when he moved it.

  ‘And that trunk has my medical texts and instruments locked in it, so don’t bother looking there.’

  He turned to leave, and found himself facing the short apprentice. He was about to say, ‘There’s no point in two of you wasting time in here,’ when he noticed a battered piece of parchment cut from a scroll in the youth’s hand.

  ‘That’s not it,’ he said. ‘We’re looking for a wax tablet.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said the youth, ‘but is it the actual tablet you want, or just what was written on it?’

  Ruso paused. ‘You mean you can remember what was written on it?�
�

  ‘No, sir.’ The youth held out the parchment. ‘But I’ve got my notes. It was hopeless with two of us trying to work on it at once, so I copied it out.’

  Ruso scanned the document and read aloud, ‘Dearest girl, when your sweet lips meet my eager –’ He looked up. ‘This isn’t it, surely?’

  ‘Oh, no, sir! That’s a poem. The other side.’

  He turned it over and flattened the curve against the wall with his thumbs to reveal two lines of text in fresh black ink. As far as he could recall, the shapes echoed those of the original. They even curved down towards the foot of the document at the right-hand end.

  The tall apprentice was leaning over his shoulder. ‘Why didn’t you say you’d got that, stupid?’

  It was a good question, but not one Ruso was inclined to waste time on. ‘Young man,’ he said, placing his hand on the short apprentice’s shoulder, ‘you are a hero.’

  The blush shot upwards. The youth mumbled something about Doctor Valens insisting they always took notes. For a moment Ruso even felt a rush of gratitude towards Valens and his ability to teach by lecture, if not by example.

  ‘Will it do, sir, or do you want us to keep on looking?’

  ‘This will do,’ said Ruso, tightening the roll of the parchment. ‘This will do very nicely.’

  20

  As the carriage trundled northwards it occurred to Tilla that before she met her husband she would never have thought of travelling undefended through the territory of a Southern tribe. Especially not that of the Catuvellauni, notorious for trampling all over their neighbours until the Romans had come and put them in their place. Naturally the Catuvellauni, untrustworthy as ever, had then switched sides and become staunch supporters of the Emperor.

  Amongst all his other warnings this morning, the Medicus had told her not to mention any of this to anybody in Verulamium. As if she would be such a fool! The last thing she wanted to do was remind them that their warriors’ resistance to Rome had finally crumbled when a treacherous queen of her own tribe had betrayed their leader. Such shameful deeds were best left unspoken. She was part of a new world now. She was the well-travelled and respectable wife of a man who worked for the Procurator.

  The vehicle jolted through a pothole. Tilla leaned back against the blanket she had folded to cushion the carriage wall and closed her eyes. No one in her family had ever been south of Eboracum before. She tried to imagine what they would think if they could see her now. What would she say to them about her marriage? They would never understand how easy it was to drift once you were away from home: how small compromises seemed right at the time, and how you could find yourself on the far side of a river with no clear idea of when you had crossed it.

  Was that what had happened to Camma?

  When she had some privacy Tilla would tell Christos about Camma and the baby and the missing brother. He was supposed to be able to hear you no matter where you were, but just in case he had no power here across the sea, she would find out where the gods of the Catuvellauni were worshipped and make an offering to them too.

  The baby who was not the husband’s was asleep in a box tied to the seat beside his mother, lulled by the steady clop of hooves and the rumble of the wheels. He was swaddled in the cloths and bandages Tilla had brought back from Gaul. Camma seemed to think she carried baby clothes about with her because she was a midwife, and she had not bothered to explain. Still, if that disgusting gritty medicine had worked, she would have a use for them herself before long. If the gods were kind, she and the Medicus would have their own home too. The red crockery gleaming on the table would remind them of Gaul and they would have a pair of iron fire-dogs framing the hearth like the ones in the house where she grew up. Outside there would be a vegetable patch, and some hens, and –

  ‘You have been kind to me, sister.’

  Tilla returned to the present. ‘Anyone would have done the same.’

  Camma had pulled a strand of hair forward and was chewing the end of it. ‘I was afraid nobody would help. I thought I would die.’

  ‘You were in need,’ Tilla pointed out. ‘Of course people would help you, even here in the South.’

  ‘And now you are leaving your husband behind to come with me, when I don’t deserve it.’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ Tilla assured her, wondering if Camma was about to explain the rift with her own husband. Instead, the Iceni woman glanced down at the shrouded figure laid out along the floor of the carriage. ‘A man who collects taxes is never liked,’ she said, ‘but somebody must do it.’

  ‘Doctors are not much liked either,’ offered Tilla. ‘A few bad ones and they all get the blame.’

  It was not until Camma said, ‘I thought he must be a doctor,’ that Tilla remembered she was supposed to be keeping that quiet.

  ‘But now he is an investigator,’ she added.

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘It is only a job,’ said Tilla.

  ‘So is collecting taxes.’

  They were passing a couple of thatched round houses. A woman was working at a loom set up outside one of the doors. Behind her, fat skeins of brown wool were hung to dry on lines slung from one porch to the other. It reminded Tilla of her childhood.

  Camma said, ‘I can’t believe he is gone. The medicine makes me sleep, then I wake up and it has all still happened.’

  ‘Have you thought about a name for the baby?’

  There was no reply.

  Whoever was supposed to mend the road after the winter had not done it very well. The carriage lurched as a front and then a back wheel went into the same hole. The baby’s eyes opened. Camma checked the cords that held the box on to the seat. Satisfied they were secure, she leaned forward so the driver could not listen. ‘You will be asking what an Iceni woman is doing amongst the Catuvellauni.’

  It would not have been Tilla’s first question, but considering the old enmity between the tribes, it was a good one.

  ‘When we get there I expect someone will tell you about my famous ancestor.’

  There was only one famous family amongst the Iceni, headed by a woman who had seen her people bitterly wronged by Rome and taken revenge. Tilla realized she was staring at her travelling companion. ‘You are –’

  ‘She was my great-grandmother,’ said Camma. ‘Whatever they tell you about all of my family being hunted down after the battle is a lie.’

  As Tilla digested this she continued, ‘What do you do with an ancestor like that? Everyone watches you. Everything you do has meaning.’

  Tilla gazed out of the carriage. Farm carts and passenger vehicles were going about their business with scarcely a guard in sight. The verges were spattered with primroses, and beyond, sheep were grazing with their lambs. A small villa was poised on a southern slope to catch the sun, and the occasional drift of smoke marked the site of an isolated farm. She tried to picture Camma’s ancestors and their allies thundering up this road with Londinium in flames behind them and Verulamium undefended in front.

  They said that Boudica had lost control of her warriors. That her forces had butchered anyone who could not run fast enough. Old people. Women. Children. They said, too, that the soldiers who should have fought to save Londinium had marched away and abandoned it.

  ‘I was sent to Verulamium in payment of a debt,’ continued Camma. ‘I was accepted to show that the past is buried and forgotten. An Iceni princess can marry a Catuvellauni leader. Look, we are all modern Romans now!’

  ‘Not where I come from,’ said Tilla, understanding at last why Camma had married that angry old man. ‘Most of my people would rather be who we have always been.’

  ‘Do your people know about our Great Rebellion?’

  ‘Everybody knows.’

  Camma gave a small nod of acknowledgement, like a princess accepting a compliment. ‘In Verulamium,’ she said, ‘mothers tell their children that, if they’re naughty, Boudica will come and get them.’

  Nobody had come out of the great rebellion with much g
lory. Thousands had not come out of it at all.

  There had to be better ways. Caratius must have believed that when he married an Iceni woman. Christos believed in loving his enemies. Her own da had believed that, if you ignored the Romans for long enough, they would go away. He had always refused to learn Latin because before long there would be nobody left to speak it to. But Caratius had been betrayed by this beautiful Iceni wife. Nobody here seemed to have heard of Christos. And now Da was in the next world with the rest of her family, and the Romans were still here.

  The pace of the horses changed. Looking out, Tilla saw they had reached the crest of a long hill. The driver was slowing the team to walk them down the other side.

  Camma said, ‘You know what it is to have a good man.’

  ‘He is the best one I’ve found,’ Tilla agreed. ‘So far.’

  ‘Asper was a man who knew what it is to be an outsider,’ Camma said. ‘To be part of one thing when everybody around you is part of something else.’

  ‘That is a hard way to live,’ said Tilla, who had often felt the same way herself.

  ‘When he first came to the house I brought him wine from my husband’s store. He noticed I was pale. He asked if I was unwell.’

  ‘I see,’ said Tilla. Perhaps Asper had fancied himself as a doctor.

  ‘Lots of men only talk to women to show how important they are themselves. But when I met him again, he remembered what I said before. And he didn’t look at me in the way that many men look at women when their families aren’t around.’

  ‘And how is that?’

  ‘Picturing them with no clothes on.’

  Tilla had spent long enough living in Army lodgings not to argue with that, but it was sad to find a woman so easily impressed.

  ‘You must think me very weak.’

  Guessing the rest, Tilla said, ‘I think you were very lonely.’

  Camma shrugged. ‘When I knew about the child I tried to do the right thing. I left the house and went to live in town. I told Caratius we must divorce.’ She sat back and pulled her shawl tighter around her shoulders. ‘People talked,’ she said. ‘Women said things. Men looked at me in the street. Nobody wanted to be my friend. I wanted to leave, but Asper had a contract and they said he must carry it through.’