by Ruth Downie
Beside him, something stirred and muttered. A voice somewhere at the back of his mind said that this was not right. There was no masseur, just the aching head. This was not the bathhouse. He was lying in his bed at the mansio. He had eaten and drunk too much, too late at night, and the body beside him was his wife.
His skin prickled with sweat. The sheets were sticking to him. He was short of breath. He kicked off the covers, flinging them over onto Tilla, who hated to be woken by a cold draft. He lay on his back in the darkness with one arm and one leg trailing over the edge of the bed, trying to cool off.
There was no light around the shutters. It must still be the middle of the night. Wincing as the pain throbbed behind his temples, he rolled over to grope for the cup of water he had left beside the bed. As he drank he noticed a faint red glow in the corner. It must be the reflection of…
It couldn’t be. There were no reflections in the dark.
He rubbed his eyes and opened them again. The red glow was still there. He could pick out a black curve beneath it. The lip of the brazier. That was why he was so hot. He closed his eyes, wishing someone would come and move it. Or open the window.
He swung his feet down onto the floor and stumbled across to where the window should be, but he must be still dreaming. Instead of a window he found himself fighting with a tangle of blanket that seemed to have draped itself between him and the latch. Finally lifting it out of the way, he managed to unfasten the shutters. Cool air wafted across his face and down over his bare feet. He took a couple of deep breaths. He could see the shape of the flowerbeds and the outline of the roof opposite. There was a lantern burning over by the door to the reception area. He was not dreaming.
A brazier? In the bedroom?
“Tilla!” He ran to the bed, colliding with some piece of furniture and kicking it out of the way. “Wake up!” He flung back the covers and hauled her out of bed. His head was thumping. She was muttering in protest. Struggling. That was good. That was definitely good.
“Wake up,” he urged, dragging her across to the window.
She was mumbling something in British.
“Breathe,” he urged, holding her up to the fresh air. “Deep breaths.”
“Leave me alone!”
“Breathe.” He was shaking her now. “Breathe in!”
“I am breathing! Get off!”
He loosened his grip. “Did you order some heating?”
“What?”
“Stay by the window.” He filled his lungs with fresh air before searching for a taper, and again before leaving the window to light the lamp. When he had satisfied himself that they were alone in the rooms, he said, “Did you ask the staff to put coals in the brazier?”
She shuddered. “Someone has been in here while we were sleeping?”
Would fumes work faster in a smaller body? “Keep taking deep breaths.” He put his hands on her shoulders and turned her back toward the open window. “Do you feel sick?”
“A little. But I felt sick anyway after all that food.”
She was answering questions sensibly. That was good too.
He opened the doors wide, then wrapped his hands in the blanket and carried the brazier out to discharge its poison harmlessly into the night air.
Yellow light spilled onto the walkway from the reception door. The shape of the night porter appeared. “Everything all right, sir?”
“No,” said Ruso. “No, it’s not. Somebody’s just snuck in and tried to kill us.”
62
Summoned early, Dias arrived with six other guards just after dawn. By then a frantic Publius had already threatened the night staff with flogging, arranged to have the locks changed, settled Tilla in with his own family and four yawning slaves to watch over them, and apologized profusely while assuring Ruso that nothing like this had ever happened here before in the whole time he had been in charge. Ruso had to restrain him from sending for both chief magistrates and the doctor.
Dias did all the right things. He declared that no one was to leave. He searched the rooms. He announced that his men would be questioning everyone.
The night staff, still lined up in the chilly reception area, looked terrified.
“Everyone,” repeated Dias, looking at Publius, who said, “But my wife isn’t-”
“Everyone.”
Publius’s “Of course” sounded faintly strangled.
Dias commandeered one of the guest rooms for the interrogations. Publius’s request to listen in was denied. So was Ruso’s, and his, “I think this was done by somebody from outside,” was dismissed with, “We’ll see, sir.”
While Ruso had Dias’s attention, he murmured, “I hear you went to visit Grata last night.”
Dias looked him in the eye. “She’s upset,” he said. “That body was no sight for a woman.”
“It was her decision.”
“And this is mine,” said Dias. He turned to his men, giving orders for the staff to be taken into the questioning room one by one. When he saw that Ruso had not moved, he said, “I’ll assign you two good men, sir. You can get on with your inquiries, but don’t leave town. I’ll need to talk to you again.”
“You go, sir,” urged Publius, looking haggard. “There’s nothing you can do here.”
It was true. He left Publius to defend his staff as best he could, slipped across to make sure Tilla was still making a good recovery, then left.
The Albanus who lifted his head from the tax office desk at the sound of Ruso’s arrival was not looking his best. His eyes were bloodshot and his hair was awry. He had not shaved and he had a red V shape across one cheek where it had been resting on the corner of a writing tablet.
“Long night?” said Ruso, fixing the latch behind him so they would not be interrupted.
Albanus struggled to his feet. Instead of the salute he would have once given, the hand was raised to stifle a yawn. Ruso found himself yawning in sympathy. He still felt too shaken by the events at the mansio to want to talk about them. Instead he grabbed a stool and they both slumped back down with their elbows on the desk. Standards had definitely dropped since they had left the army.
Ruso put a finger to his lips and pointed to the window, outside of which Gavo had stationed himself, and quietly explained his suspicions about Rogatus, the stable overseer. Instead of admiration the clerk’s face was one of concern. “Are you all right, sir?”
“No,” admitted Ruso, realizing he would have to explain that too.
When Albanus had finished expressing sympathy and outrage, he reached for the wooden tablet he had been sleeping on. “There is some good news though, sir. I think I’ve found something.” He unfolded the thin wooden leaves for Ruso’s inspection. One ink-stained finger pointed to a set of figures in spidery black writing with illegible scribbles against them.
“More shorthand?”
As Albanus leaned very close to whisper his response, Ruso was aware that it was some time since his clerk had washed. “No, sir, Asper had terrible handwriting at the best of times. That’s his note of taking the money out of the strong room to deliver to the procurator’s office.”
“So he did have it after all?”
Albanus reached for another record on a much longer, narrower sliver of wood. “This is the Council record, where the quaestor signed it out to him.”
Ruso recognized the record Nico had shown him two days ago.
Albanus glanced up at the window, then put both sheets side by side for inspection. “What do you notice, sir?”
Ruso looked from one to the other without enlightenment. “Nothing.”
“Not the writing, sir. The ink.”
“Nothing.”
“It’s the same, sir,” Albanus whispered. “Different batches of ink come out slightly different, depending on the proportions of the soot and the glue, but I’d say they’re the same color.”
Ruso angled them both to catch the light. “You noticed this last night by lamplight?”
“No, sir. Not
till the sun came up this morning. It shines directly into Asper’s kitchen.”
“You haven’t been up all night doing this?”
“I thought I ought to work fast, sir. Before the procurator starts to wonder where we are. And to be honest I was a bit worried about that Dias coming back.”
“I think he was busy elsewhere,” said Ruso grimly. He arched his back, stretched his arms to the ceiling, and yawned. “This business will drive us all mad. I hope the women appreciated what you’d done.”
“They tried to feed me a huge breakfast, sir.”
“Yes,” said Ruso, who had barely been able to face his own. “That seems to be the way they show their appreciation around here.” He picked up the records again. He was still not sure what he was supposed to be seeing. He whispered, “So they borrowed each other’s ink?”
Albanus shook his head. “The boy who looks after the stationery in the Council office isn’t allowed to give it to anybody else. Asper would have had to supply his own.” He ran his forefinger down three lines of the Council record. “All these are in the darker color, so it must have been their ink, but it only appears once here in Asper’s.” He pointed to the final entry. “The writing isn’t quite the same as the rest. See the way the line crosses on the ten, sir?”
Ruso could not see it, but he was not going to argue with a man who had been examining these records almost nonstop for the last eighteen hours. “So?”
“So someone working for the Council came in here after Asper was gone and added a note to his records.”
“The lock had been changed when I got here. I queried it and Nico said he’d been in to search for some clue about where Asper had gotten to.”
“I think he already knew, sir,” said Albanus. “I think he wanted to get in here and change the records to cover his own tracks. I think this proves Asper never had the money.”
Unfortunately it did not prove who did. “If the money were still here, could you tell?”
“I don’t know, sir. I know how much I think ought to be there, but it’s all very complicated and the Council clerk isn’t very keen to tell me anything without the quaestor there. I think he thinks I’m trying to catch him out and steal his job.”
Ruso got to his feet. “I doubt the quaestor will be turning up for work. Let’s go and see if I can frighten some sense out of the clerk. Then with luck Gallonius will be here and we can check what’s actually in the strong room.”
63
Verulamium’s treasure was stored beneath the Great Hall in a dank underground cell that was barely seven feet square and not high enough to stand up in. Ruso caught a glimpse of boxes and bags piled onto rough shelving against the far wall before Albanus’s arrival at the foot of the stone steps blocked much of the light. Then the view faded completely with the shriek of rusty hinges, leaving only the feeble yellow glow of the lamp.
“I didn’t mean shut it completely!” Ruso hissed.
The hinges squealed a new note and the shadowy walls reappeared around him.
“Pass me the candle,” he said, more nervous than he cared to admit. “Then put something in to jam the door open. We don’t want to be locked in here.”
“I can’t see, sir. I’ll put my foot-oh, sorry, sir!” Albanus had just collided with him. “There’s not much room in here, is there?”
Ruso closed one eye while he lit the candle. “At least there’s no chance of Gallonius wanting to come in and see what we’re doing.” He put both lights on the floor out of his line of vision. His sight was beginning to adjust now: He could make out the shelving again. He reached for the smallest of the boxes, a crude effort about six inches square and surprisingly heavy. “Try this,” he said.
Albanus lifted the box from his hand. “It says ‘Orphans,’ ” he announced. “One bag tied shut with the money changer’s seal on the cord, and some loose coins, mostly bronze.” Ruso heard the lid clap back into place and the scrape of the box being slid into position on the floor.
“Was that what you were expecting?”
There was a pause while Albanus retrieved the list that was tucked into his belt. “Orphans. One hundred and twenty-three. That’s probably about right.”
“Is Gallonius still watching?”
The light altered again as Albanus peered around the door. “I can’t see him, sir. I can just about make out one of the guards. But I can’t see much at all from down here.”
“We’ll just have to do this as quickly as we can,” said Ruso, handing him the next box. “It doesn’t matter if he sees us checking the totals: That’s what we’re here for. What’s that one?”
“Wages, sir. Three bags, all sealed, some loose coins… I’m looking for three hundred and… that’s right. This is all very reassuring, sir.”
“Good,” said Ruso, not feeling in the least reassured. He was trapped in a cold dark hole whose door could only be opened from the outside, and he was looking for something to incriminate the commander of the man who was standing at the top of the steps with the key. He put the wages box back at the right-hand end of the shelf and went on to the next one.
As they progressed along the shelf, Ruso tried not think about what he was handling. There was more money in here than he had ever seen in his life. What a man could do with this! He would have power. He would have choices. He would no longer be compelled to go anywhere to earn a living.
Albanus caught him musing over a bag from the theater fund, a deposit that spread to three heavy boxes. “Tempting, isn’t it, sir?”
“Let’s not think about it,” said Ruso hastily. “The sooner we get out of here, the happier I shall be.”
Before long all the boxes and bags had been moved from left to right and had proved to contain more or less what Albanus had been expecting. “That’s rather pleasing, isn’t it, sir?”
“I’m glad you think so,” said Ruso. “I was hoping for an extra seven thousand.”
“You think Nico signed the tax money out and then brought it back?”
“Put that way,” admitted Ruso, “it doesn’t seem very likely.”
Albanus was leaning around the door again. “I can see Gavo up there, sir. He’s talking to the other guard.”
“Right. We need to do this quickly.” Ruso chose the position where the light was best, crouched to check that he could not be seen from outside, and sat with his legs stretched out on the cold floor and his back against the shelving. He unsheathed his knife. “Throw me over a bag from the ‘Orphans.’ ”
The heavy little bag landed in his palm with a chink. “Sir, are you sure you can see what you’re doing?”
“No,” said Ruso, prizing open the lid of the seal box, “but I’m going to give it a try.” The coins that cascaded into his lap glistened like a shoal of silver fish.
“It’s true what they say about metal, sir, isn’t it?”
“What?”
“That it reflects its own color. Whereas everything else shiny just looks white. If we got some gold out-”
“I’m not checking the bloody gold as well.” Ruso grunted, placing a coin on his palm and rocking it from side to side so the light caught the edges of the design. After the tenth coin he scooped them all up in his hand, tipped them back into the bag, and retied the cord. “I haven’t got time to do them all. That one can go back.”
Albanus picked up the wax candle. Meanwhile Ruso removed his left boot and took the seal ring from his middle toe.
Albanus glanced out the door before whispering, “It’s as well the guards didn’t search us properly, sir.”
“They’re worried about us taking things out,” said Ruso, reaching for the candle. “Not bringing them in. I just hope I’ll know what I’m looking for when I see it.”
Albanus cleared his throat. “Do you mind me asking exactly what you are looking for, sir? I mean, there wouldn’t be much point in them hiding the forged money down here, would there? They’d want to take it somewhere they could spend it.”
Ruso, busy
resealing the bag, did not reply.
Albanus reached behind him and lifted the lid of the box labeled, “Road and Building Maintenance.” He was working the knot open from beneath the seal on the first bag when Albanus observed, “You know, sir, this is very odd.”
Another shower of silver fell into Ruso’s lap. “I’ll say.”
Albanus squinted at the holes in the seal box of the first bag and threaded one end of the cord through. “I don’t mean the being down here, sir. I mean keeping the money separate like this.”
“Really? It seems quite sensible to me.”
“But it’s completely unnecessary. It’s just a lot of extra work. If you know how much is in here, you just leave it all together and keep some working cash and separate records upstairs in the warm. That way you don’t have to come trotting down here in the dark every time the Council decides to give two sesterces to the orphans.”
Ruso stared at him. Then he abandoned the knot and tossed the bag across. “Seal that one up, Albanus. We’ve been looking in the wrong place.”
He found it in the theater fund: the oldest bags, faintly damp and dated from before Asper had even arrived in town. At least half the coins in the first bag he checked seemed to have blurring around the s of “Hadrianus.” The second seemed so full of forgeries that he began to wonder if his eyesight was failing in the poor light. “That’ll do,” he said, handing the bag across to Albanus for resealing. “Let’s get out of here. I’m-” He stopped. Someone was coming down the steps.
Albanus gave a squeak of panic and dropped the candle, which went out. The door hinges shrieked and Albanus cried out as the heavy oak door crashed into his arm.
A hefty figure in chain mail filled the doorway. “Sorry, sirs,” it said. “But I’ve been told to come and get you. Something’s happened.”