by Ruth Downie
“Yes, thank you.” He wondered how many of the guards knew what had been going on this afternoon. Doubtless all of them would have heard that he had attacked Dias in front of everyone in the Hall. “I’m looking for somebody else now. A different woman.”
The man grinned. “Really, sir?”
Ruso put his hands on the desk and leaned across. The man’s breath smelled of onions. “Really.”
The grin faded. The man promised to put out a Missing Person Report immediately.
A Missing Person Report. They even had a name for it. Whatever else Dias was, he was a good organizer.
“Now where do we look?” asked Tilla, rejoining him in the middle of the Forum just as a rich voice bellowed, “Investigator!” He spun around to see Gallonius emerge from the Council chamber and head toward them with his arms spread wide as if he was trying to stop them escaping.
“Investigator,” he repeated, clapping Ruso on the arm, “good to see you. I think it went rather well at the meeting, don’t you?”
Ruso said, “Were you behind that game with my wife, or was it Dias’s idea?”
“You mean our little offer of thanks, Investigator?” Gallonius gave him a conspiratorial wink. “Or should I call you Doctor?”
“Someone deliberately arranged it to look as though she was being arrested.”
The smile faded. “Why didn’t you say something? Did anyone tell you that your wife was being threatened?”
“Not exactly, but-”
“I think you’ve been jumping to conclusions again.” He looked from one to the other of them. “I’m sorry if you felt misled, but I hear the lady approves of the house and we have to keep the ladies happy, don’t we? She’s welcome to stay here while you go down to report to the procurator. That reminds me. If you would kindly explain to him that the forgers are dead, he’s welcome to send as many men as he likes to witness the destruction of the false coins.”
Tilla began to say, “But they aren’t-”
“Obviously,” said Ruso, talking over her, “you won’t be asking him to write off the tax.”
“No, no. We’ll find the money from other funds and send it down in a day or two. It will be a shame for the orphans, of course. Most of the maintenance work will have to wait and it will be disappointing not to have the theater under way by the time the emperor gets here, but don’t worry. We will pay our dues.”
“Never mind about the orphans and the emperor,” put in Tilla, who perhaps now understood the real reason for her escorted trip around town. “Where is Camma?”
Gallonius scratched his head. “I’m sorry, my dear,” he said, “I have no idea where your friend is. There’s no reason why I should know, is there?”
Ruso sighed. “No,” he said. “There isn’t. You don’t even need to shut her up now, do you?”
Tilla watched the magistrate walk away toward the Great Hall with his trail of slaves. “That man,” she said, “is a liar.”
“He’s a survivor,” said Ruso. “We’ll try the house. Perhaps she’s come home.”
They could tell before the door was open that Camma was not at home. Her son’s screeching complaints almost drowned out Grata’s shout of, “If you’ve come wanting money, piss off!”
“It is me!” called Tilla. “Let us in!”
Grata wrenched open the door and thrust the baby into Tilla’s arms. “You try,” she said, handing her the feeding pot with the spout. “These things are useless.” She dabbed at the wet patches on her tunic with a cloth. “I’m not paid to do this, you know.”
As she turned to lead them through the house, Ruso saw that the skin over her left cheekbone was flushed and swollen, as if someone had struck it.
The kitchen air was thick with the smell of stew and soiled baby cloths. Tilla seated herself by the fire. Preoccupied with trying to calm the infant, she did not seem to have noticed the bruising on Grata’s cheek.
Ruso said, “How long has she been gone?”
Grata gave whatever was in the pot a stir and banged the spoon on the side of the cauldron. “I don’t know.” She had been working in the kitchen, trying to prepare a meal, while Camma sat nursing the baby and weeping and saying she was all alone and nobody understood her.
“Then the baby fell asleep,” said Grata, “and I told her to go and get some rest.” She glanced from Ruso to Tilla. “I need a rest too. This house is full of nothing but trouble and crying.”
Tilla reached across to the table and balanced the pot so nothing would tip out of the spout. “He is not hungry,” she said.
“Then what’s he got to cry about?”
Tilla shrugged. “Perhaps he wants his mother.”
Ruso said, “I’ve alerted the guards to look for her.”
Grata snorted. “You are asking Dias for help?”
“I don’t trust him,” said Ruso, “but his men are our best bet. I’ll carry on looking, but if she comes back in the meantime, tell her I’m truly sorry about what happened at the meeting. You both turned up at the wrong moment.”
Tilla looked up from rocking the baby. “Camma heard what you said to the Council?”
“He let the Council think everything was the fault of Asper and Nico,” said Grata. “Nobody spoke the name of Dias, still there throwing his weight about.”
He said, “I can explain.”
“No need,” said Grata. “I know how it happens. They have frightened you like they frightened me. And this is not all your fault.” She scraped a stool across the floor and seated herself on the other side of the fire. “This afternoon I told Camma something I should have said a long time ago,” she said. “But I thought…” Her voice drifted into silence. Then she shook her head. “Anyway, I have been first a fool and then a coward. And now perhaps more of a fool for telling it, but I am weary of all the lies. And I keep thinking about what happened to Bericus.”
Ruso and Tilla exchanged a glance. Tilla said, “What is this thing, sister?”
“There was no message to meet Caratius at his house,” said Grata. “Dias asked me to say it.”
Ruso felt a lurch of disappointment. He had been hoping for something new: some unexpected revelation that would point the way out of this mess. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’d already guessed that.”
“But Camma had not,” said Tilla.
Ruso said, “Does Dias know that you told her?”
Grata lowered her head. “He was here just now,” she said, “pretending he wanted to make sure we were all right after the trouble at the meeting.”
“And did he know you had told her the truth?”
Grata sniffed. “I told him I was sick of him and I never wanted to see him again. And he said I had better keep my mouth shut because I would be in trouble if I didn’t, and I told him it was too late.” She cupped one hand over the bruising. “That was when he hit me.”
“I think she has gone to the cemetery,” said Tilla. “She has gone to lift the curse on Caratius in the place where it was spoken.”
Ruso said, “Dias’s men will have seen her go through the gate. If she’s there, he’ll know where to find her.”
Tilla laid the baby back in his box and pulled the blanket up to his chin. “If he wakes again, try warming the water and putting a little honey in it.”
“What if Dias comes back?”
“Dias will be too busy chasing Camma,” said Tilla.
“Because of me? Because I told her there was no message?”
“Because she might tell everyone who is behind all this,” said Ruso, wishing he had done so himself. “I’ll go after her.”
“We need horses,” put in Tilla, plainly not intending to be left behind. “We can take Grata to the mansio on the way to the stables. She will be safe there.”
“You are a sensible woman with a good heart,” she assured Grata breathlessly as Ruso unlocked the street door to let her into the safety of Suite Three. “Keep this door blocked, because Dias may still have a key. If you have any trouble,
run into the garden and shout for Doctor Valens and Serena. I will be back as soon as I can, and when we find Camma, I will tell her to give you extra pay.”
69
Afterward, on bad days, Tilla would blame herself for the delay she had caused by insisting on taking Grata and the baby to safety. On those days, she would blame herself for everything. Sometimes the Medicus would tell her that they were both at fault, and at other times they would agree that Dias had been the cause of it all. The truth was that they would never know. All they could say with certainty was that if they had been a few minutes earlier, it might not have happened.
If only Tilla had demanded a proper horse, instead of the fat little pony that the stable boy had insisted on leading across to the mounting block because he seemed to think a woman would not know how to get on without help. If only she had not distracted him by asking if he had never seen a woman in skirts hitch them up and ride astride before. If only it had not begun to rain in thick cold drops as they trotted through the town toward the south gates, and if only they had not had to shout for the men to come out of the guardhouse and confirm that, yes, they had seen Camma hurrying past less than an hour ago.
If only they had not wasted time riding through the cemetery and calling her name into the woods, with Tilla pushing windswept hair out of her eyes and shivering, wishing she had brought a cloak, while the horses’ hooves churned up the wet grass between the graves. If only there had been a funeral that afternoon, the cemetery slaves might not have smelled of beer as they wandered out of their hut to see what was going on. They might have remembered which way the wild-haired woman had gone after she had left.
If only she had not paused to cut a switch to wake the fat pony because it refused to speed up even when the Medicus tried to lead it with his own horse, and if only he had not slowed so that he could keep her in sight…
If none of these things had happened, then Dias might not have already been on his way back from Caratius’s farm by the time they arrived, galloping headlong toward them on the track through the woods and reining his horse in as he saw the Medicus waving at him. Tilla was too far away to hear what they were saying to each other before Dias yanked the horse’s head around and both men raced back toward the house. Even the fat pony seemed to understand, too late, that she needed to hurry.
Through the rain Tilla could see servants clustered around something at the foot of the house steps. The Medicus slid down off his horse and ran toward them. As they parted to let him through, she could see a splash of bright hair on the ground, golden against the scarlet of blood. The fat pony’s hoofbeats slowed and she heard the thin, terrified screams of the old woman.
The Medicus was bending over Camma, talking to her, but he was asking the same questions again and again. Can you hear me? Camma, can you hear me? He was trying to wipe the blood from the side of her head and shelter her from the rain with a borrowed cloak and organize the servants to bring something to lay her on and get her up to the house.
All the time the old woman was clinging on to the door frame wailing and crying and the maid was trying to reassure her and coax her back inside. Dias was saying, “I couldn’t stop her. I saw it happening and I couldn’t get there in time to stop her.” Caratius was there, kneeling in the mud beside his former wife, his gray hair lank and dark with the wet. When he looked up and roared, “Silence!” to Dias, was that rain on his face, or tears?
According to the maid, Caratius had been up in the top paddock assessing a lame foal when Camma had appeared out of the rain, running toward the house with dripping hair, her skirts gathered in her fists and mud splashed up her legs and a warrior chasing after her on horseback. The maid had opened the door, then rushed to the kitchen to fetch the cook and tell the kitchen boy to find the master. In that brief moment it seemed nobody except Dias had seen the old woman shuffle out onto the porch with a bag clutched in one hand and her walking stick in the other, and lunge with the stick. Camma had fallen back down the steps while the old woman cried out something about Boudica and a little boy.
Dias told them he had been trying to catch up with Camma to offer her protection. Tilla said, “Like you did with Grata?” and he said nothing. When he left, saying he would take the news back to town, the Medicus followed him out into the rain.
She could hear the maid in the old woman’s room, singing softly to calm her. Caratius was bending over his beautiful dead wife, stroking her hair. He looked up. His voice was strained, almost pleading, as he formed the words, “I never meant her any harm.” For once he was speaking in the tongue of his ancestors.
“She knew that,” said Tilla, crouching beside the old man she had once thought dangerous, and then merely foolish and pompous, and putting a hand over his. “She was coming here to make her peace with you.”
70
It occurred to Ruso that anyone watching the farewell on the sunny steps of the mansio the next morning would have thought they were witnessing the end of a happy and successful visit. It was not obvious that the redheaded baby in Tilla’s arms was there because nobody else wanted it. Gallonius and Dias might have been there to honor Ruso rather than to make sure he was off their territory.
While Gallonius was assuring him yet again that the job of mansio doctor and the house that went with it were his whenever he wanted them, the cousin was begging Serena to “come back and see us soon,” as if she and her husband had not subtly thrown her out over dinner last night.
Ruso envied Valens his ability to ignore what he did not want to hear. Serena was busy supervising the loading of her voluminous luggage onto the second carriage. Valens was bouncing up and down the steps with one or other twin on his shoulders. He seemed to have decided that his wife was returning home because she had succumbed to his charms. As their hosts had remarked over dinner several times before the first course was cleared away, it was so considerate of him to come and fetch her.
The baby really was very red haired. Ruso waited until his wife had climbed into the carriage and then handed him up to her, careful to support the wobbly head with a hand that looked huge against the size of the creature that might be about to change both their lives. Tilla took the baby without a word. Last night they had agreed not to talk about it, both afraid of saying things that could not be unsaid later. This agreement seemed to have carried on through breakfast, and now he was wondering if they would ever talk about it, or if Tilla was hoping that one day he would forget that the child belonged to neither of them.
She settled down in the corner and brought out the clumsy feeding cup. He swung up to sit beside her. He supposed she would find a wet nurse when they got to Londinium. He supposed he would be expected to pay. He wanted to say, “It’s not the baby I object to, it’s the not being consulted,” but he was not sure it was true.
The carriage shifted and creaked as the driver climbed on board. To Ruso’s surprise Valens appeared in the doorway. “Mind if I ride with you? It’s a bit crowded back there. Our driver says we’ll never make it up the hills with the weight.”
“Give us some luggage instead,” suggested Tilla. “Then you can talk to your wife.”
“Oh, I can talk to her anytime,” said Valens breezily, settling himself on the seat opposite. “Whereas you two are likely to push off at any moment. Actually, that’s what I wanted to chat with you about. Ruso, are you taking that job offer?”
Ruso said, “I’d rather starve.”
Valens’s eyes widened. They widened even farther when Tilla said, “We are wiping this place off our shoes and never coming back.”
Valens shook his head sadly. “The business with Camma was always going to end badly, you know. You could see that from the start. And now you’re left holding the baby.” He peered across the carriage. “It is awfully red, isn’t it?”
“Like fire and the sun,” said Tilla.
“If you say so.”
“And beautiful.”
“Oh, absolutely. Anyway, those chaps back there obviousl
y took to you both, even though you did try to strangle the one with the things in his hair. And the place can’t be that bad. Albanus says he’s staying on for a few days after the funeral.”
“Albanus is staying because Grata is there,” said Tilla, setting the pot aside to wipe up the milk the baby had just dribbled all over her lap, “and because Londinium is full of small boys who do not want to learn Greek.”
Ruso did not want to think about Albanus and the disappointment on his face last night. Ruso had broken the news of Camma’s death to both clerk and housekeeper in Camma’s kitchen. Through the tears Grata had said, “Dias did it.”
“I think so too,” he agreed, “but he’s clever. If Caratius’s workers saw anything, they were too frightened to say. The only thing we can prove about Dias was that he was in Londinium. And that’s using a witness who was drunk at the time and may be too loyal to testify.”
“And me,” put in Grata.
“I’ve been talking to this young lady, sir,” said Albanus, placing one hand on Grata’s shoulder with surprising boldness. “She is prepared to testify that Dias sent a false message to lure Asper and his brother to their deaths.”
Ruso had promised them both that he would see what the procurator said. The Albanus he had known back in the army would have been satisfied with that. These days he was confident enough to argue.
“Grata is being very brave, sir. She’s prepared to give evidence despite being threatened.”
“I know,” Ruso had said, “and I appreciate it.” The trouble was, he suspected nobody would want to listen.
The carriage lurched as the driver urged the horses forward. Valens gave the group on the mansio steps a cheery wave. Ruso raised a hand in farewell to Publius and his wife, and if Gallonius and Dias thought he was acknowledging them, they were wrong.
“What I was thinking,” said Valens, settling back into his seat, “was that if you aren’t taking that job, I might pop back while you’re all at the cemetery and have a chat with them about it myself. To be honest, things are a bit tricky with Serena at the moment, and a move might-”