Caveat Emptor

by Ruth Downie

  “Oh, no,” said Ruso. “Because if it were, and you were caught, it would be catastrophic for everyone involved, wouldn’t it?”

  60

  A FTER THE WARMTH of the heated dining room, Tilla was shivering inside her shawl as they walked down the moonlit street past the deserted meat market. Ruso put his arm around her shoulders. There was almost nobody around to see them apart from a slinking cat and the two guards behind them, who could think what they liked.

  Albanus answered their knock at Camma’s house, explaining that the ladies had gone to bed. He had two lamps and a short stump of candle burning on the kitchen table, perilously close to the piles of records he seemed to have spent all evening examining.

  “Anything interesting?” said Ruso, more out of politeness than hope.

  “Just a moment, sir.” Albanus flicked the beads of the abacus with his left hand and scratched a figure on the wax tablet with his right. Then he frowned at the figure and flicked the beads again but made no alterations to what he had just written. “I do have some questions, sir. Probably very foolish ones but I’m only a schoolteacher, I’m afraid. They seem to have an awful lot of different funds and it’s rather hard to tell what’s where, especially when they seem to keep moving money from one to another.”

  Ruso squinted at the tablet. “I don’t know how you can work in this light. Have you found the orphans’ bread and education fund?”

  “Oh, yes, sir. And the maintenance of streets fund and the extension to the mansio fund and the fund to pay the municipal slaves and the cost of keeping the guards going. I have to say I didn’t realize how complicated this would be.”

  Ruso pointed to the largest figure. “What’s that one?”

  Albanus peered at his list, referred to a second list, and said, “That’s the running total for the theater fund, sir, as of last January. I’m sorry I haven’t finished, but Dias came to call and there was a bit of a fuss over getting rid of him.”

  Tilla said, “Dias? Here?”

  Ruso frowned. “I should have known he wasn’t taking the evening off.”

  “He wanted to talk to Grata, sir. She told me to tell him to go away.”

  Tilla said, “I knew I should never have left them!”

  Albanus visibly bristled. “I got rid of him, sir. The ladies were quite safe.”

  Ruso said, “Well done,” just as Tilla said, “How did you do that?”

  “Grata ran back into the kitchen, sir, and I stood in his path and told him that if he tried to come past I would be forced to use violence. And then he tried to insult me, and I told him I was a trained legionary acting under the orders of the procurator, and if he didn’t leave straightaway I would report him to you.”

  “Excellent,” said Ruso, picturing the scene. “I knew I could rely on you.”

  “I think it may have helped when Camma pulled the poker out of the fire and waved it at him,” admitted Albanus. He spread one arm to indicate the piles of documents on the table. “So I’m afraid with all that I haven’t got as far as I would have liked. I was wondering whether you’d mind if I stayed here to finish, sir? Grata’s kindly left me some blankets on the couch.”

  Ruso recalled the splendor of Suite Three, where the sheets still retained a faint memory of lavender. “Well,” he said, “if you’re sure you don’t mind staying, Tilla can come back with me.”

  Albanus squared his shoulders. “Absolutely not, sir. I think one of us should stay here to look after the ladies.”

  Ruso nodded. “Make sure everything’s properly locked up,” he said. “I don’t think he’ll be back, but if he is, don’t tackle him on your own. Shout ‘Fire’ and rouse the neighbors.”

  “Fire, sir?”

  “Yes. They may not get out of bed for anything else.”

  The route Ruso chose toward the mansio took them past Nico’s lodgings. There were no lights visible. He stepped up to the entrance to check that it was secure. There was a thud and a rattle of ironwork. The dog that had hurled itself at the door began to bark.

  As they fled down the street with the guards clattering along behind them, Tilla gasped, “Nobody in that house will thank you for making sure he is safe.”

  Once his guards had checked the mansio rooms and declared them free of lurking assassins, Ruso dismissed them for the night. “You’ll be safe in here,” he said to Tilla, locking the outside door and picking up the lantern that had thoughtfully been left burning in the hallway. Once inside Suite Three, she stood in silence as he lit more lamps and the simple elegance of his accommodation sprang into view. “You have to admit,” he said, “we’ve come a long way since the damp rooms in Deva.”

  “All this is for one man?”

  In the confined space he was conscious again of the clear scent of the bluebells. “There’s a dining room and private kitchen as well,” he told her. “But I told them I hadn’t brought my cook.”

  “I will go into your kitchen in the morning and start stuffing piglets.”

  “Tomorrow,” murmured Ruso, sliding one arm around her waist and plucking the bluebells from her hair, “you can do whatever you like. Tonight, I want you here.”

  61

  T HE BATHHOUSE WAS full of stuffed animals and slaves to digestion, and the masseur was tightening an iron band around Ruso’s forehead. He lifted one arm to push the man away, but the stone weighing down his stomach was too heavy. It hurt to move his head. He was too tired to complain.

  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 tape
r, 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

  S UMMONED 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

  V ERULAMIUM’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.”