Caveat emptor mi-4

by Ruth Downie

  Ruso, noting the absence of mold on the walls and beer stains on the furniture, said, “Not quite.”

  “Well, no, we’ve come 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 around 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 both 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’s 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 neighbor’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 to 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 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 to keep her patient calm.

  The air held the spearmint smell of the pennyroyal Tilla had taken from Valens’s 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 woolen 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 neighbor.”

  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 difficulty separating them even though her Latin was good. It seemed that her husband and his brother had left Verulamium three days ago, intending to visit a neighbor 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 around to the window. Clinging onto 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 gray 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! — part of an 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. Aargh! Oh 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 doubtlessly unmissed.

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

  Valens’s hesitant “Uh” 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’s 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 have his wife trailing along all over the place.”

  “Oh, absolutely. But if Serena comes home tomorrow and finds somebody else’s wife here with jus
t 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 lamp stand 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, uh…”

  “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’s 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 walk away from 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 onto a new track.

  He passed the timbered workshop of a cobbler who had once repaired his boots. He nodded to some native god at a street altar, resolving to give proper thanks for a safe voyage as soon as he had time. Moments later he was enjoying the simplicity of Latin as he explained himself to the guards at the grand gatehouse of the Official Residence.

  It seemed that the governor had ordered improvements to be made to the Residence in his absence. Ruso followed the guard across the courtyard, through the hall of the main building, and out into what should have been a formal garden area where the great man and his guests could enjoy a grand view of the river. The view was intact but the garden had been converted into a temporary builders’ yard. Their progress was accompanied by the musical clink of stonemasons and the crunch and rattle of someone shoveling gravel. A cargo of roof tiles was being unloaded from a vessel moored against the governor’s private steps. A chain of slaves was passing them along and the last man was stacking them inside the clipped rectangle of a box hedge as if they were some kind of delicate plant.

  The guard escorted him past the fish pool and around a pile of timber blocking one side of the walkway. Ruso ducked under a scaffolding pole to see a makeshift sign that read, “Procurator’s Assistant.” Beyond it, he was ushered into the dank chill of a room where the plaster was still drying out.

  This wing of the complex might be imposing one day but at the moment nothing was quite finished, and that included the official behind the desk. Firmus was indeed frighteningly young. He had the smooth cheeks of a boy, the nose of a patrician, and the tan of someone who had not just spent a winter in the Northwest provinces. These were arrayed beneath what Ruso supposed was the next fashion in haircuts.

  As he approached, a bent slave leaned forward to whisper something in one of the aristocratic ears.

  “So you’re Ruso,” the youth began, squinting as he looked him up and down. “I’m told you’ve done some work for the governor’s security chief?”

  “Just an isolated case, sir,” said Ruso, hoping Metellus was still safely up on the northern border and had not been seconded to the finance office.

  “And you’ve also worked for the Twentieth Legion?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve never met an investigator before,” the youth confessed. “At least, not as far as I know.” The squint reappeared. “You’re not what I expected.”

  “I was with the Legion as a medical officer,” said Ruso, wondering what an investigator should look like.

  “Ah,” said the youth, nodding slowly. “Very clever. Good cover.”

  “I’m not a spy,” Ruso explained. “To tell you the truth, I’m not really-” He stopped.

  “Not what?”

  Ruso hesitated. Assuming she survived, Camma would be expecting him to look for her husband. Silently cursing Tilla’s eagerness to help and Valens’s ability to tell the wrong lies for all the right reasons, he said, “I’m not really here on business.”

  Firmus’s eyebrows rose. “I hope you’re not suggesting you have something more important to do than to help the emperor’s personally appointed finance administrator?”

  Ruso cleared his throat. “No, sir.”

  “Excellent. So, where do you want to start?”

  Ruso scratched one ear with his forefinger. “I’ve had a word with the Iceni woman already, sir. She says his brother’s gone missing as well.”

  “There are two of them now? Why didn’t she say that before?”

  “She may have been distracted, sir. Apparently the brother’s called Bericus. He only has half of one ear, so he should be easy enough to find.”

  “I hope we aren’t running around chasing the fantasies of a madwoman.”

  Ruso pondered this for a moment. Tilla had been convinced by the woman’s story, but they barely knew her. “We could send a messenger to Verulamium to check,” he said, “but we’ll lose the rest of the day waiting for an answer. Are we sure the money’s missing? What do your staff know about Asper?”

  Evidently Firmus had not thought to ask.

  “I’ll get a description out along the docks in case they try to leave the province.” It was a commonsense move that Firmus should have made straightaway, and even then it would probably have been too late.

  The youth’s eyes widened. “You think they might be here?”

  “If they’ve stolen a lot of money and one of them’s abandoned his wife, I’d imagine they’ve already left on the first ship they could find.”

  “Ah.” Firmus pondered that for a moment. “If they have, we’d better keep it quiet until we check with the procurator. We don’t want a big fuss with the natives, especially when we’re leading up to the emperor’s visit.”

  “Hadrian’s really coming at last?” asked Ruso. There had been unfulfilled rumors about an Imperial tour of Britain for years. “Do we know when?”

  “When he decides,” said Firmus, who evidently did not know himself. “He’s on the way to Gaul now. We’ve already had orders to tighten up on government transport. I’m personally organizing a survey of milestones. Whenever it is, we intend to be ready. Now, do you have everything you need?”

  “Almost,” said Ruso, wondering what else an investigator should ask for. “We just need to talk about payment.”

  Firmus recoi
led, as if payment were not a suitable subject to be discussed in a finance office. He left Ruso to listen to the sound of hammering while he went to consult someone else. Moments later he reappeared with a short balding clerk who lisped through the gap in his teeth, “We will arrange an official travel warrant, sir.”

  “And the fee?”

  “It’s not policy to offer fees in addition to salary, sir.” The sir was added in a tone of practiced insolence that suggested years in some division of military service involving neither danger nor discomfort. “You’ll have the honor of serving the procurator.”

  “But I’m not on a salary,” Ruso pointed out. Another problem occurred to him. “I’ll need a translator if I’m going out into the countryside.”

  Firmus glanced at the clerk. “You can ask the Council to give you somebody when you get there,” he said, seizing the wrong ground to fight over.

  “The Iceni woman’s saying the Council can’t be trusted,” Ruso pointed out. “Their man could lie to me. I wouldn’t know.”

  The youth gave him a look that said he was not sure whether he could trust Ruso, either. The clerk offered to send a message over to the fort. “They might be able to spare somebody, sir.”

  “No need,” put in Ruso before they could lumber him with an unwanted helper. “I know someone who can do it.” Interpreting the local accent would not only get Tilla out of Valens’s house but-with luck-take her mind off babies and tableware.

  The lisping clerk looked doubtful. “I hope his name’s on the official list, sir?”

  “It’s unlikely.”

  “But are you sure he’s a reliable man?”

  “Speaks it like a native,” said Ruso, skirting the question. As for reliability-since Tilla viewed Southerners and Romans with equal mistrust, bias would not be a problem.

  “It’s very unusual, sir,” murmured the clerk, managing to invest the word unusual with meanings that ranged from “extravagant” to “rash” via “setting a dangerous precedent.”