by Ruth Downie
Ruso retreated, wiping water out of his eyes. The slave stood and watched as Publius climbed out and Bushy glanced around before following them.
“Sirs—”
“We’re just going,” Patchy assured the slave, pausing to give Wispy one last soaking before they both scrambled out.
14
Tilla wished her husband would hurry up and finish talking to those men over by the fountain. She was hot and sticky even here under the shade of the snack bar canopy, and she was brooding on Xanthe’s damning testimony. She needed to share it with someone, but that someone was not Marcia. Even though Marcia had given her half of a raisin pastry and then insisted that she had a right to be told. Tilla had eked out the pastry for as long as possible, but even the sparrows hopping around their feet had given up searching for the last crumbs and gone to another table. So now the two of them were sitting at opposite ends of a bench, with Tilla pretending to be interested in a noisy ball game on the far side of the exercise area, and Marcia muttering that she hoped nobody knew she was related to one of those idiots over there with his big feet in the fountain.
“At last!” Marcia announced as a childish water fight broke out and the group of men split up.
Tilla stood and waved, and her husband strolled across to join them, carrying his sandals and shaking water out of his hair.
“You wouldn’t believe what we’ve had to put up with this morning,” Marcia told him. “Tilla was inside one of those disgusting places for so long I nearly had to go in myself and get her. Anyway, I found your girl for you, and now Tilla’s going to tell us what she said.”
He said, “Publius says to tell you his sister is making a good recovery.”
“Did he look guilty about pushing her down the stairs?”
“Not especially.”
“I might go and visit her,” said Marcia. “I could ask what she’s heard about the murder. I bet the staff would tell her things they wouldn’t tell Publius.”
Tilla and her husband exchanged a glance.
“You could come too,” Marcia added. “Pretend to check her for broken bones, or something.”
He frowned. “It’s a bit late to—”
“I will come,” Tilla put in, not because she thought the girl would want to see either of them, but because she could see another argument brewing. She need not have worried: at that moment a small boy arrived to tell Marcia the foot masseur was ready for her.
“Good!” Marcia snatched up her bag and stood holding out one hand to Ruso. “I’ll need enough for the hairdresser as well.”
Ruso said, “If you can’t afford it, why did you arrange it?”
“Because I knew you’d want to thank me for all I’ve done for you.”
He hesitated just long enough to show his annoyance before paying. Watching her departing figure, he said, “What does she need her feet massaged for?”
“I have news for you, husband.”
“It’s not as if she ever walks anywhere.”
“It is not good news.”
“Well, I suppose it’ll buy us some peace.” He lowered himself onto Marcia’s end of the bench with what sounded like a sigh of satisfaction. “I’ve had a productive morning.”
“The girl Xanthe saw everything.”
“Really?”
She slid closer so they could not be overheard by the other customers. When she had finished telling him what Xanthe had said, he said, “Are you sure that’s exactly it? Behind the carriage where nobody could see, and Titus fell inside the door?”
“That is exactly it. She is sure it was Verax.”
He thought for a moment, then said, “Good.”
“How can it be good?” Had she not made it plain? “She saw—”
“I heard what you said.” He folded his arms and looked very pleased with himself. “But that isn’t what she saw.”
“But—” Tilla stopped. “You think she is wrong?”
“I saw the carriage yesterday on the estate, and I stood in Publius’s courtyard this morning. It can’t have happened the way she told you. The carriage door is on the wrong side. I think she’s lying.”
Tilla said, “Oh.”
“I’ve just been talking to Titus’s friends. They say he was with Xanthe shortly before he was killed. One of them saw them getting into the carriage together, and nobody saw him afterwards. What does that suggest to you?”
“We already know they were in the carriage together,” she reminded him. “Verax told us he tried to stop them.”
“This was later. They were all out in the courtyard playing some sort of game that involved running around in pairs. The friends are going to find out if any of their slaves saw anything useful, and report back to Publius.”
“I see,” Tilla said. And then, “It is a pity. I liked her.”
“We won’t tell Flora the details yet, but we can tell her it’s looking hopeful.”
Flora. Tilla had almost forgotten why they were doing this. “I did wonder why Xanthe was speaking to me,” she mused. “Verax was already accused. She could have said she saw nothing and stayed out of it.”
“When you arrived asking questions she must have panicked. Probably guessed she’d been seen by the carriage with Titus. She was throwing dust in your eyes.”
“Why would a hired girl attack a client in a house where everyone knew who she was?”
He shrugged. “Who knows why someone like that would do anything?”
She turned to stare at him. “Are you asking that because she is a woman, or a slave, or a prostitute?”
“I’m sorry if you liked her, wife, but somebody did it. She was seen there, and she’s lied about what happened.”
“But what reason could she—”
“Maybe Titus did something nasty to her earlier.”
Tilla lifted her skirts to fan some air around her feet. The story still did not make sense. “If I was Xanthe,” she said, “and a man did something nasty to me at a party, I would get away from him as fast as possible.”
“Well you aren’t,” he said. “Thank the gods.”
“If I needed to kill him I would do it later.”
“That’s reassuring.”
“It would be safer,” she explained. “Not so much danger of being caught.”
“Whatever the girl’s reasons, it’s good news for Flora.” He glanced back over his shoulder to where the snack-vendor was wiping a grubby cloth along the counter. “Have we got time for a drink before Marcia comes back?”
“The masseur is a very handsome young Greek,” she told him. “And then there is the hairdresser. I think we have time for lots of drinks.”
He looked pained. “I can’t spend the whole afternoon hanging around here. I’ve got things to do.”
He should have thought of that before he gave Marcia so much money, but it would not help to tell him so. Instead she said, “If you go when you are ready, I can bring her home in the cart when—” She broke off. “That man over by the barber’s stall. I have seen him before.”
He followed her gaze. “Publius,” he told her. “The host of the party. You saw him with me at the fountain just now.”
“Not him. The one with the squinty eye.”
“His slave.”
“I saw him leaving Xanthe’s house just as we arrived. Your Publius has been sending messages to Xanthe this morning!”
Even now he was not impressed. “It was money,” he said. “The girls left the party without being paid, and Publius sent him to pay up. Publius seems to be the only one of them who’s got any sense of responsibility.”
Tilla said, “Oh.” She thought about telling him what the doorman had said as Publius’s man left Xanthe’s house, but he would probably have an explanation for that too, and she was tired of being told where she was wrong. “Publius’s man must know how to find all the girls who were at the party,” she said. “We should talk to the others as well.”
He frowned. “Didn’t you see them while you were
there?”
“Xanthe did not know who they were.” Even as she said it, it sounded foolish. And now instead of arguing, her husband was looking at her with pity and amusement, as if she were a clumsy puppy who had failed in her attempt to please.
He said gently, “I think Xanthe may have told you quite a lot that wasn’t true.”
She swallowed. “I will collect the cart and bring your sister home as soon as I can.”
He bent down and kissed her lightly on the forehead. “I’ll thank you now on Marcia’s behalf,” he said, “because she probably won’t bother.”
15
Marcia, stretched out on the massage couch in a haze of perfume and very little else, showed no interest in knowing where Tilla might be going as long she did not have to walk home. So it was easy to slip away from the baths unescorted, and hurry down the narrow, airless streets to the house where Xanthe lived.
What was not so easy was being allowed to enter. The first knock was greeted by a long silence: the second by a female voice calling, “There’s someone at the door, Andreas!” The third led to a cry of “Andreas! The door!” and after a pause, the approach of footsteps. A buxom young woman with red hair and baby blue eyes looked up at Tilla and said, “Who are you?”
“I have some news for Xanthe.”
“Xanthe’s gone.”
“When will she be back?”
“No, she’s gone.”
“I saw her here this morning!”
The girl shrugged. “Sorry.”
Another voice called from inside the house, “Who is it? Where’s Andreas?” and the red-haired girl called, “I think Andreas is gone too.”
“What?” Footsteps came thudding down the staircase and a dark young woman appeared. One side of her hair was in ringlets and the other side was still tied up in strips of pale rag. She ran back into the house and Tilla heard her shouting for Andreas. There was some sort of conversation, then she then returned and spoke one word to her companion. “Bastard.”
“It might be all right. He might be—”
“I knew there was something wrong. The kitchen boy hasn’t seen him either. Not since Xanthe went.” The new arrival seemed to notice Tilla for the first time. “Yes?”
Neither of the girls could guess where Xanthe might have gone, and they seemed surprised that the missing doorman had gone with her. “I wouldn’t mind,” observed the dark one, “but he’s my slave, not hers.”
Her slave? Tilla realized with a jolt that she had read this household wrongly. She had supposed that the girls were slaves and the doorman had the job of keeping them in order on behalf of some more powerful owner. She was truly surprised to find women in charge. She thought briefly, how foreign I have become! But there was no time to dwell on it. “Xanthe talked to me about the party,” she said. “The one where the young man was killed.”
The dark girl said, “Have you come to pay us?”
So it was as she had feared: they had all been at the party, and Xanthe had lied about knowing them. She said, “I heard you had already been paid.”
They glanced at each other.
“This morning,” Tilla added. “Publius’s man came with the money and spoke to your doorman. I saw him.”
The red-haired girl stepped back to let Tilla pass. “You’d better come in.”
Tilla stared around the little room in wonder. The bed she had sat on was still there, the blankets rumpled and the pillow thrown on the floor. The walls were bare apart from a torn scrap of yellow silk caught on one of the nails that scarred the dull, cracked plaster. All that was left of Xanthe’s make-up was a jumble of ring-marks and blotches on the wooden surface of the table.
The red-haired girl pushed past Tilla, crouched beside the bed and eased a silver earring with a droplet of blue glass from a gap between two floorboards. “She’ll be annoyed she’s lost that.”
“Andreas and Xanthe,” muttered the dark girl. “They’ve taken the cash and cleared off.”
“I knew something was wrong this morning,” the dark girl said, looking round at the bare walls. “Somebody came to see her and she wouldn’t say who it was. And then you came, and as soon as you’d gone she was packing up to go. I said, ‘What about the money from the party?’ and she told me when it turned up we could keep it.’”
A fly was buzzing against the windowpane. Tilla reached across and let it out, and as it flew off into the hot afternoon she made a decision.
The sound of conversation in the street faded as she closed the catch. She took a deep breath. “I am not sure I am supposed to tell you this,” she said, “but people are saying it was Xanthe who killed that young man.”
They both said, “Xanthe?” at the same time.
“Is that why she is gone?”
“Of course not! She wouldn’t—”
The red-haired girl was grabbing at her companion’s arm. “We don’t know,” she told Tilla.
The dark girl said, “But Xanthe wouldn’t—”
“Who cares? She’s gone. With our pay. There’s just us left now.”
The dark girl pondered that for a moment, then turned to Tilla. “Perhaps she did do it. It’s no good asking us. We don’t know anything.”
Tilla said, “I thought she was your friend?”
“That was before she stole Andreas and the money,” said the red-haired girl.
“I came back here to warn her,” said Tilla. She glanced around at the empty room. “But perhaps she has already heard what they are saying.”
The red-haired girl’s eyes narrowed. “Why would you warn her? You hardly know her.”
Tilla shrugged. “She told me things this morning that were not true. I thought if I helped her, she might tell me the truth before her lies got her into trouble. But now she is gone, so I am asking you for the truth instead, because I do not believe she did it.”
Instead of answering, the red-haired girl reached up to place her hands on Tilla’s shoulders, and pressed. Tilla subsided onto the bed, trying to remember how the street door was fastened and deciding the dark girl would be the easier of the two to knock aside.
The red-haired girl said, “Listen to me, woman from across the seas who doesn’t earn her living the way we do.”
“I am listening.”
“Then understand this. Clients get drunk and stupid at parties. They talk too much. They do things that, if they’re lucky, they’ll live long enough to regret. It’s none of our business, and whatever we see, we don’t blab about it.”
“I understand.”
“It’s called being discreet. It’s part of the job.”
Tilla looked up with her best innocent face. “Did you really not see anything at all?”
The red-haired girl sighed, folded her arms and gazed down at her with the air of a disappointed parent. The other one turned away, groping in her hair for stray rags.
“I think I have been a bit of a fool,” Tilla confessed. “I was so pleased when Xanthe wanted to talk to me that I never asked myself why she was doing it. And when she told me the other girls at the party lived in another place and she did not know them, I believed that, too. I did not stop to ask, is she trying to protect her friends?”
The red-haired girl said, “She told you she didn’t know us?”
“My husband has been talking to Publius and his friends. And I can tell you, everyone is very happy to blame Xanthe.” Tilla looked from one to the other of them. “If anyone comes to ask questions about that party, you will have to think very carefully what to say to them. Because if they do not think you are helping, you will be in trouble too.”
The dark girl groaned. “I knew we should never have gone there.”
Tilla said, “Who invited you?”
“It was Titus,” said the red-haired girl. “We should have known.”
“He said they would all pay us between them,” put in her companion, “but they didn’t. We only went because he said Publius was in charge, but I don’t think Publius wanted a part
y at all.”
“None of it was Publius’s fault,” observed the red-haired girl.
“He seemed a nice young man,” said Tilla, who had no more than glimpsed him across the bathhouse exercise yard. “I am sorry for him.”
The girls glanced at each other. The red-haired one said, “Shall we tell her about…?”
“You just told her we were discreet.”
“But she did come to warn Xanthe. Even though Xanthe didn’t deserve it.”
The dark girl turned to Tilla. “If you promise not to say where you heard it, we’ll tell you something about Publius.”
16
It struck Ruso as he set out on the long and dusty walk home that he never wanted to quarrel with his sisters. Yet the more reasonable he tried to be, the more exasperated they became. This time, though, would be different. This time he would be telling Flora what she wanted to hear: that there should soon be good news.
He would keep back the details until everything was sorted out, but he was certain that the girl Xanthe had incriminated herself by lying. The testimony of Bushy, Wispy and Patchy had only strengthened the case against her. With luck, some of their slaves would also have seen her in the company of Titus just before he was found dead.
As soon as all the information was gathered he would go to Sabinus and reassure the old man that he would not, after all, lose both sons at once. He would consult Sabinus about Verax’s choice of bride. Then, with luck, he would be able to tell Flora the whole story, sort out her dowry and give his blessing to her marriage.
He lengthened his stride past the second milestone, shrugging some of the tension out of his shoulders. Before long all his female relatives would be happily occupied with wedding plans, and his brother would be home to run the farm. Freed from a constant barrage of demands, Ruso would have time to reintroduce his wife to the good things of his native land. Sunshine. Olives. Wine. The absence of sulking Britons mumbling about rebellion.
Perhaps he should leave out the sulking Britons. Some of them were Tilla’s family.
When he reached home there was no sign of Flora, and the laundrymaid thought she might have gone out into the vineyard. Ruso went first to the kitchen in search of a drink. He found the babyminder spooning some sort of brown mush into his daughter’s mouth, while Mara was doing her best to spread it across her face and into her ears. At the sight of her father she batted the loaded spoon aside, cried “Aah!” and beamed at him, lifting both sticky arms towards him in a clear request to pick me up!
