by Ruth Downie
Nico positively jolted with shock. “Your wife? Attacked? Oh, this is terrible! Was she hurt?”
“Didn’t he tell you?”
“Who? I know nothing about it! What’s happening to us all?”
“I don’t know,” said Ruso. “Maybe I’ll work it out if you tell me why the hell you’re sending me anonymous death threats.”
“Me?” Nico drew up his knees under the blanket and wrapped his thin arms around them, but it did not disguise the trembling. “Death threats?”
Ruso gestured toward the stairs. “I’ll ask the landlady whether you went out of the house last night, shall I?”
“No! Please, I’m…” He stopped.
“You’re not ill,” said Ruso. “We’ve just established that.” He leaned back against the wall and folded his arms. “I’m willing to accept that it wasn’t you who attacked my wife. So are you planning to sneak out and murder one of us, or do you think somebody else is?”
“Oh, no! I would never hurt anybody.”
That much at least was credible.
Nico clamped one hand against his forehead in a gesture that would get him a job in the new theater if it were ever built. “You will think I am deranged.”
“Try me.”
“I was trying to warn you,” he said. “I have dreams. Terrible dreams, always the same. A man is being stabbed in the back, and I am supposed to save him but I can’t move. I never knew what it meant until you arrived. Then I realized. You are the man in the dream!”
“Rubbish,” said Ruso, hoping he was right. He had heard plenty of stories of premonitions in dreams. Some were true and others were nonsense, but he had never heard of one quite so specific.
“And now your wife has been attacked!” Nico shuddered. “I don’t believe in these things, either, but how would I feel if it came true?”
“Not as bad as I would,” said Ruso. “So in your dream, who’s doing the stabbing?”
“I don’t know. I never see his face.”
“Let me help you,” suggested Ruso. “There isn’t a dream, any more than there’s an illness. You and I both know there’s something illegal going on here, and whoever’s doing it is desperate to cover it up. Dias is involved in it, and probably another man too, and it’s something to do with forged denarii.”
Nico gave an anguished howl. As he was saying, “I don’t know anything! Help!” the landlady’s voice sounded up the stairs. “Are you all right in there, gents?”
Ruso grabbed the undersides of Nico’s bent knees through the blanket and jerked them upward, tipping him flat before clamping a hand over his mouth. “Shut up,” he hissed. Nico’s arms flailed helplessly as Ruso called down the stairs, “We’re fine, thank you.” He removed the hand. “Talk.”
Nico took a deep breath, as if he had been starved of air. “Go away. Please, go away before they come after you too. I can’t tell you anything.”
Ruso closed the shutters and checked the door again. Returning to stand over the bed, he said softly, “If you really want to help me, tell me what’s going on.”
“I can’t. Just go away.”
“Do you want me to go to the procurator and tell him you’re part of it? They’ll put you in chains and have you tortured.”
Nico snatched at the blanket and pulled it up over his chin. “They made me do it,” he whispered. “I didn’t want to.”
“Do what?”
His head jolted from side to side as if he was trying to burrow down backward into the pillow. “I can’t! I can’t tell you!” He seemed to be having trouble breathing.
The man was reaching a state of panic in which there would be no chance of getting any sense out of him. Ruso seated himself on the floor, leaning back against the bed so he could not see Nico’s face. “This is very difficult, isn’t it?” he observed to the flaking paint on the wall. “I need to know some things in order to protect my wife and find the money you’re supposed to be responsible for, but you don’t want to tell me them.”
“It isn’t that I don’t want to!” exclaimed Nico. “I can’t. You saw what happened to Asper and Bericus.”
“It’s all a bit of a mystery, really,” Ruso continued, as if he was thinking aloud. “And you know one of the things I can’t understand? It’s why an obviously decent man like yourself got involved in it. I mean, you don’t look the type.”
“I’m not! They made me.”
Ruso waited. He could hear the landlady moving about downstairs. He had hoped Nico would feel the need to fill the silence, but as the moments drifted by he began to wonder if the man had fallen asleep. Outside, a distant blast on a horn signaled midday. He was about to try again when he heard, “It was when I went to Londinium.”
Ruso held his breath.
“The Council sent me to hire the architect for the theater plans. I had quite a lot of money for the deposit.”
There was another long pause during which Ruso wondered if he was supposed to guess the rest.
“I couldn’t see him till the next morning,” Nico continued. “There was what seemed like a nice bar down the road from where I was staying, and there was this very friendly girl…”
Ruso had a feeling he knew what was coming.
“And when I woke up,” said Nico, leaving events with the girl to Ruso’s imagination, “she was gone and so was the money. The people at the bar said they’d never seen her before. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t come home and say I’d lost it. I’d have been shamed. So… somebody said he would help me.”
“Dias?”
“I didn’t say the name!”
“No,” agreed Ruso. “So Dias helped you-how?”
“He knew somebody who could lend me the money.”
“And in return?”
“I can’t talk about that. They’ll kill me!”
Ruso turned to crouch beside the bed. “We can protect you,” he promised, hoping it was true. “We’ll get you sent somewhere out of their reach.”
“I shouldn’t have told you anything.”
“You won’t be safe until these men are caught.”
“You don’t understand.”
Ruso’s patience snapped. Grabbing the scrawny throat, he hissed, “What I understand, Nico, is that my wife’s been dragged into an alleyway and threatened with heaven knows what if I don’t keep out of this investigation and she doesn’t keep her mouth shut. If I can carry on, so can you. What did they make you do?”
“Let me go!” Nico seemed to be shriveling in terror.
“It’s something to do with forging money, isn’t it?”
“Please!”
“It must be someone who knows about metalwork. Someone whose family used to make coins in the old days?”
“You can’t hurt me! You’re a doctor!”
“Someone with access to a forge. Are we talking about someone in town, or outside? Is it somebody on the Council?”
“Help!” Whatever else Nico would have said came out as a strangled gurgle.
Ruso looked down into the bulging eyes for a moment, then sighed and relaxed his grip.
Nico took a gulp of air, grabbed the blanket, and pulled it up over his head. From underneath came a muffled, “I can’t tell you anything. Please, go away!”
“Caratius’s grandfather worked in silver. Is it Caratius?”
“Go away!”
“Why did he invite Asper to visit him?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did Caratius know about the plot to murder Asper and his brother?”
“I don’t know! I don’t think so. No.”
“Did you?”
“I had nothing to do with it! They just told me to take Asper into the strong room in the morning.”
“And do what?”
“Nothing! I’ve done nothing!” Nico was still hiding under the blankets. “I didn’t know they were going to kill anybody. I just did what I was told. Please, I beg you. Go away.”
“Where’s the money now?”
“I don’t know!”
“Where do the false coins go after they’ve been minted?”
There were footsteps on the stairs. Nico gave a muffled squeal. “They’re coming!”
Ruso, hand on the hilt of his knife, moved to shield the bed from whoever was opening the door.
“You! What are you doing here?”
Ruso let his hand fall to his side.
The doctor’s pot belly was still bulging under the same blood spatters as yesterday. “I gave specific orders that my patient was not to be disturbed. I can’t have this constant interference. If it goes on I shall complain to the Council. This man is seriously ill.”
“Seriously ill with what?” inquired Ruso, interested.
“None of your business,” replied the doctor, just as Ruso would have done.
“I only ask,” said Ruso, “because it looks like something a lot of men go down with in the army.”
“Yes. I hear you’ve been passing yourself off as a doctor.”
“I just thought you might be able to help,” he said to Nico, “but never mind. And don’t worry, I’m sure that medicine will have you back on your feet very soon.” He smiled. “And then we can talk again.”
After this thinly veiled threat, he paused for a word with the landlady, who was lurking in the hall and jabbing at invisible cobwebs with a feather duster. In response to his request, she assured him that no other visitors would be allowed upstairs no matter how they tried to get in. This was a properly run house and when she and her husband were asleep, the dog was loose downstairs.
Reassured that his witness was being safeguarded, he gathered up Dias and Gavo. “Well,” he said, as casually as he could manage, “That was a waste of time. Anybody mind if we go and hunt down some lunch?”
Was that suspicion on Dias’s face, or the reflection of his own tension? He was fairly confident that whatever the man might be thinking, he would not act on it in broad daylight-certainly not while the innocent Gavo was with them to witness it. All the same, he was relieved when they left the quiet street in which Nico lived for the bustle of the main thoroughfare, where to his guards’ evident amusement, he paused to buy a bunch of bluebells from a street vendor.
57
What we need, sir,” murmured Albanus, scooping crumbs off Julius Asper’s desk and into his cupped hand, “is a way to make this Nico more frightened of us than he is of Dias.”
“He thinks Dias is going to kill him,” said Ruso. “It’s hard to be more frightened than that.” He glanced at the bluebells, temporarily stationed in a cup of water, and wondered whether the women were back from the cemetery yet. Perhaps he should go and see.
“Has he got a family he cares about?”
“Not as far as I know.”
“That’s a shame.” Albanus walked across to the high window, stood on tiptoe to check that nobody was outside, and then tossed the crumbs away. “Perhaps we could threaten to kill him more slowly than Dias will.”
“Albanus, that isn’t funny.”
The clerk sighed. “I don’t think he’d believe us anyway, sir.”
“I offered to rescue him,” said Ruso, “but I don’t think he believed that, either.”
Albanus, to whom Ruso had now explained everything it was safe for him to know and much that wasn’t, shifted the box of records he had just finished checking and perched himself on the desk in an informal pose that he would never have dared to adopt during his official years as Ruso’s clerk. “I’ve had a good look through but I can’t find any details about the wages Asper owed to the guards, sir.”
Ruso had forgotten about the unimportant task to which he had assigned his clerk before deciding to tell him the truth.
“In fact, I can’t find any sign that Asper ever paid them anything at all.”
“Really?”
“Nothing. I’d imagine the Council considered escorting the tax money to be part of their normal duties.”
Ruso scratched one ear. “So when Dias said he was looting Asper’s house to make up the wages, he was lying.”
“He’s the chap with the flashy hairstyle, sir? The one you think was your burglar?”
“And the one who’s been blackmailing Nico. I suppose he was searching for anything Asper had stashed away that might incriminate him.”
“If Dias is really forging money, where does he spend it?”
“He’s up and down to Londinium all the time. Perhaps he’s distributing it there.” Ruso paused. “You don’t look convinced.”
“Sir, if I were making false money, the last place I would pass it round is the town where all the treasury officials live.”
“Good point.” Ruso checked again that there was nobody listening outside the window before settling himself into Bericus’s chair and tipping it back so it was balancing on two legs. “Nico doesn’t think Caratius had anything to do with the murders,” he said. “If that’s true, then he hasn’t got the money. I think the brothers were killed because Asper was on the trail of the forgery. But I can’t tie the forgery or the murder to Dias, and I can’t find the money if I can’t work out the sequence of events, and I can’t hang around here much longer with somebody threatening Tilla and the Council and the procurator both telling me to get out of-aargh!”
He grabbed the edge of the desk to steady himself and rocked the chair forward to a safer angle. “Out of town,” he concluded. “Nico was coerced into taking Asper to the strong room, presumably to make it look as though Asper was taking the money. But Camma’s certain he never took it. Now Nico says he doesn’t know where it is.” Ruso looked up. “You don’t suppose it’s still in the strong room after all?”
Albanus stared at him. “Well, if it is, sir, why would the Council say it’s missing?”
“Because Nico told them it is. It’s his job to keep track of what’s in there.” He paused. “You don’t think they’re all lying because they don’t want to pay up, do you?”
“But they always pay up.”
“Exactly. Verulamium always pays on time. So when Hadrian canceled everybody else’s tax arrears, they must have been mightily annoyed.”
“There’s only one thing for it, sir.” Albanus’s tone was resigned, but Ruso recognized the light of battle in his eyes. “I’m going to have to do a complete audit.”
“Can you do that?”
“I don’t know, sir. But I can add and subtract, and it can’t be that difficult, can it?”
Having listened to Nico’s explanation of how the Council ran its finances, Ruso decided not to answer. Albanus reached for a records box and began to riffle through it, muttering about confirming the balance due.
“I’d imagine Dias found out that Asper was sending coded letters to Londinium,” said Ruso. “A forger would have no problem opening somebody’s correspondence and resealing it. Anybody who can make a fake coin can make a fake seal, but if he couldn’t read the code he wouldn’t know whether Asper was writing about him or not. No wonder he was prowling around Londinium trying to find out.”
Albanus reached up onto a shelf. “It’s especially easy to intercept a man’s letters if he leaves his seal lying around instead of wearing it, sir.”
Ruso peered at the ring Albanus was holding out to him and wondered how he could have missed it during his search yesterday. He carried it across to the window and looked at it again. Then he slid it onto his little finger and twisted it around so the stone was hidden in his palm. “Wait here a minute,” he said.
Satto the money changer halted his queue when he saw Ruso approach.
“Take a look outside,” Ruso urged, stepping past the counter to the window at the back of the office and glancing over his shoulder to where Dias was watching from the doorway.
“What for?”
“Quick,” Ruso urged, placing his own hands up on the high sill and leaning out. As he had hoped, Satto did the same. “Over to your left,” said Ruso, pointing. “See?”
“What?” demanded Satto, cr
aning for a better view of the unrelenting British clouds.
“Damn,” Ruso muttered. “It’s gone now.”
“What’s gone?”
“I thought I saw an eagle,” said Ruso. “It’s a good omen. But I might have been mistaken.” He apologized to the queue on the way out, ignored Satto’s confused shout of “Which way was it flying?” and nodded to Dias, who was hopefully none the wiser despite having witnessed the whole exchange. Then he hurried back to tell Albanus that the seal he had found in Asper’s office was not Asper’s seal. It was a replica of the one on the hand of Satto, the man who authenticated the bags of money stored in the strong room.
“Oh, no,” groaned Albanus, uncharacteristically despairing. “Sir, every time I start to get a grip on what’s going on here, it changes shape. So was Asper up to something himself? Authenticating fake money, perhaps?”
“Possibly. Or somebody wants us to think he was. I’m sure that ring wasn’t in here when I looked before.”
“Perhaps Asper and his brother were working with Dias and they fell out.”
Ruso shook his head. “I don’t know. I’ll try and have another go at Nico but we need to find out what’s in that strong room. Preferably not when Dias is around.”
“This evening?”
Ruso shook his head. “I’m supposed to be dining with one of the magistrates tonight,” he said. “Which reminds me, I’ve got another job for you while I’m there.”
“Sir, I may not have finished the audit by this evening.”
“Oh, you can take some records with you. This is guard duty. I want you to look after the two witnesses you saw earlier in the hall.”
“Me, sir? The ladies? Are you quite sure?”
“You’re an intelligent man with military training. I can’t think of a better man for the job.”
It was so easy to make Albanus happy. In truth Ruso could not think of any other men at all for the job, but he was not going to say so.