by Ruth Downie
He opened his mouth as if he was about to argue, but then seemed to change his mind and put his arms around her, resting his chin on her shoulder. She felt rather than heard the depth of his sigh.
Just at the wrong moment, Esico wandered in from the kitchen with a jug of water. Behind her husband’s back, she gestured frantically to him to go away. The door closed again and they were alone. “You did your best,” she said softly.
“It looked as though he hit his head on the curb.”
“Then what could you do?” she asked, surprised at how upset he seemed. Of course it was always bad to lose a patient, but he had met this one only two days ago, and the man was not young. It was not like her husband to mourn the loss of someone just because he was rich and powerful. “I know he was very important,” she continued, “but I am sure nobody could have done any more for him. Not even Doctor Kleitos.”
The grunt could have meant yes, or no, or stop talking—it is not helping.
“We will manage without him,” she promised. “We know lots of people here now.”
He said, “I’ve been to tell Accius. I’m not sure what’ll happen now.”
“What did he say?” If it was Accius who had upset him, she would go over there and tell him what she thought. She had given up trying to be a Good Roman Wife now. It was very confusing having to say one thing and mean another all the time.
“He’s gone straight over to see Horatia.”
“That is very good of him.”
He released her and leaned back against the bench. “Did I tell you he brought her a birthday present back from Britannia?” he said. “One of those jet bracelets they make over on the east coast.”
“Did she like it?”
“I should never have left the Legion.”
She had always thought that when he finally admitted it, she would say, I told you so. But now she took him by the arm and steered him toward the back rooms of the apartment. “Just sleep. I will see the patients and call you if we need you.”
“Don’t use any of those medicines. Only use what we brought with us.”
“Husband, what is the matter?”
“Nothing.”
When she got him to bed she said, “Do you want herbs to help you sleep?”
“No!”
She sat beside him on the bed. “What happened out there?”
“Nothing. I lost a patient. That’s all.”
When she lifted her hand from his shoulder, he rolled over and curled up like a small child.
“We will talk about it when you wake up.”
“Yes.”
“It will be all right,” she promised, but she had no idea if it would be, because she had never seen him like this before. She had seen him exhausted and anxious and sad and confused, but never like this. Despondency was a new enemy, and most of the gods who might have been persuaded to help them were a very long way away.
34
He looked much better when he wandered out of the bedroom. Still rumpled, but some of the bleariness in his eyes had gone. In response to Mara’s greeting of “Ah!” he crouched in front of the fleece and bent to kiss her on the forehead. Mara rewarded him with a smack on the ear and a giggle.
“There is porridge,” Tilla told him. “Or if you wait, Narina has gone out for bread.”
“I’ll wait.” He picked up a towel that had been slung over the blue curtain, crossed the room, and stopped with his hand on the back door. “Has anyone called?”
“The woman with the bad veins came again. I said does she want to think about surgery but she said no, so I showed her how to do the bandaging herself.”
“Did you tell her not to make ridges?”
“Of course. Then I talked to the pregnant girl from across the court, and cleaned and dressed a dog bite.”
“Serious?”
“He was lucky. The dog ought to be got rid of: They said it was not the first delivery boy he has bitten, but he belongs to a rich man so nobody dares. Oh, and Sabella and lots of other people wanted to know if it is true about Horatius Balbus.”
“Uh.”
Moments later he was back from the courtyard, rubbing his wet hair.
She said, “I said you would go and see Accius when you wake up.”
He stopped rubbing and looked up from under the towel. “He came here?”
“It was only a message. Have something to eat first. He does not know you are awake.”
She had thought he might rush off anyway, but instead he sat down at the kitchen table and said, “I must find Kleitos.”
She went to check that Esico was standing out by the front door. Narina was still not back with the bread. Certain they were alone, Tilla sat opposite her husband and said softly, “Are you worried about that medicine you made?”
“You think I should be?”
“You did boil it up very quickly,” she said. “And there was all that fuss going on outside about the body.” Catching the stricken expression on his face, she reached for his hand. “But there was nothing in there to cause harm.”
“I’m sure it was fine,” he agreed, patting her hand as if he were the one offering reassurance.
When people really were certain about something, they just said it. They did not bother to tell you how sure they were. Nor did they say, “Don’t say anything about it to anybody, will you?”
“Of course not.” What did he think she might say? My husband is afraid he might have poisoned one of his patients? “I am sure there is nothing to worry about.” There: She was doing it herself now.
“The jar definitely said poppy on the outside.”
“You always check.”
“I tried some. It tasted right.”
She said, “I will try it myself.”
“You can’t,” he said. “I used the last of it. Then I told Esico to scrub all the empty containers clean. None of them has any writing. I’ve looked.”
She took a breath. “Lots of men that age fall down and die, husband. What were you treating him for?”
Instead of answering, he got to his feet. “I’ll go and see what Accius wants,” he said. “Might as well get it over with.”
He was halfway to the door when he paused to say, “Those men who wanted to sell Kleitos’s things might have been telling the truth. If they come back, ask them in and tell them they need to wait and talk to me. I need to track him down. He’ll know what was in that jar.”
35
Accius, as far as his doorman was aware, was still at the house of Horatius Balbus. As he set off in search of him, Ruso realized he was feeling calmer. Tilla had been right: The sleep had done him good, and a brisk walk through the sunny streets was helping him put the night in perspective. He could now see that he had overreacted. Somehow in the darkness and the panic, his mind had pulled together the body in the barrel, his hasty inclusion of an ingredient he couldn’t vouch for, Balbus’s odd fear of being poisoned, and that conversation with the old woman in the bathhouse. Now that he thought about it, she was bound to try to surround her knowledge with mystique and issue dire warnings about the dangers of amateur dabbling. Poisons and antidotes were sold by fear. There had been nothing dangerous in that mixture.
Probably.
By the time Ruso could hear the sound of mourning drifting out from the courtyard of Horatius Balbus’s house, he had decided that the chance of the death being caused by his own concoction was very small indeed. Firmicus seemed eager to blame someone—hopefully someone other than Ruso—but in truth Balbus could have collapsed from natural causes. A sudden failure of the heart. A seizure or even a simple faint. In the darkness he might have tripped up without his companions realizing what had happened. There were any number of reasons for a man to fall, but only one result if he was unlucky enough to crash heavily onto the thin bone at the temple as he hit the ground.
Accius responded to his message by leaving the mourners and steering Ruso to the nearest bar, where he requested a private room. “I can’t b
e seen hanging around a cheap drinking hole dressed like this,” he explained, grabbing fistfuls of his dark mourning clothes to avoid tripping over them on the stairs. “It’s disrespectful.”
The room was not especially clean and was equipped for private meetings of an entirely different kind. Accius surveyed it with a faint expression of disgust, said, “It’ll have to do,” and sat on the bed. “I need your help, Ruso.”
Ruso tweaked the curtain aside to check that Accius’s slave was stationed at the top of the stairs, and then perched farther along the grubby bedspread.
“You wouldn’t believe the chaos back there,” Accius told him. “Poor Balbus is hardly cold and every friend and relation who might possibly be in the will has rushed to offer condolences. The staff are drooping about all over the place, the official mourners are making an appalling racket, and there’s a whole crowd of hangers-on who are just there to gawp. It’s outrageous. I’m sure some people just wander the city looking out for a door with cypress over the top and then call in to see if there’s anything to eat. I’ve told Firmicus he’s got to get a grip for Horatia’s sake, but I don’t think any of them is in a fit state to listen.”
“He’s been up all night, sir.” Ruso scratched an itch on the back of his leg and tried not to think about bedbugs.
“Well, we need to do something about it. I’ve been blind, Ruso. Horatia needs protection. The vultures are circling.” Accius shifted closer on the bed and lowered his voice. “Horatius Balbus is—was—a shrewd businessman and a devoted father, even if he did have terrible taste in statues. But to be honest I always thought he was a little odd.”
“In what way, sir?”
“He was convinced there were people out to kill him. Did you know he took antidotes?”
“He seems to have fallen and hit his head, sir,” Ruso insisted, trying to ignore the sudden churn of his stomach as he remembered the very public handover of the imitation medicine. “His own men were there at the time.”
“Ah, but why did he fall?”
He must tell Accius about that medicine. “Sir—”
“Who had he just been dining with?”
Ruso could see where this was going. What he could not see was a way to stop it. “I believe it was Curtius Cossus, sir.”
“And who exactly is Curtius Cossus? Eh?”
Ruso was not in the mood for rhetorical questions. “He’s a builder, sir. Balbus introduced me to him in case he ever needed a doctor.”
“Really? Well, I imagine he soon will, at his age. He’s not just a builder, Ruso, he’s an entrepreneur who buys up cheap apartment blocks on decent plots and pulls them down to make space for clients who want expensive houses. Only last month Balbus outbid him on a block in the Aventine that has some very fine views.”
“Then why was Balbus dining with him, sir?” The medicine business would have to wait: Accius was leading on a different trail altogether.
“I imagine they were going to discuss some sort of deal. But Cossus wants more than property. He’s had the nerve to turn up and offer to look after Horatia with some mad tale about being betrothed to her!”
“I believe he’s been telling other people the same thing, sir.”
“That he’s betrothed to them too?”
“That he’s going to marry Horatia, sir.”
“What? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“It was just thirdhand gossip, sir. I told them he wasn’t.”
“Well, it would have helped to know.” Accius shifted position on the thin mattress. “He’s obviously been plotting this for some time. It all makes sense, once you see it. He invites Balbus to dinner, has a conversation with him that none of Balbus’s people overhear. Balbus conveniently drops dead on the way home, and Curtius Cossus has his own witnesses to say that Balbus has promised him Horatia in marriage.”
Ruso blinked. “Why?”
“To get his wrinkly fingers on all of Balbus’s properties, of course! And on Horatia—the bastard. The poor girl’s not in a fit state to deny it: She can hardly speak. He’s got to be stopped. In fact—” Accius paused, as if listening to another wild idea being announced inside his head. “Don’t you see? He must have found some way to get rid of Kleitos!”
“But, sir—”
“Listen to me, Ruso. He’s got to be stopped.”
“You’re saying Curtius Cossus got rid of Balbus’s doctor so he could murder Balbus?”
“Of course that’s what I’m saying! So he could poison him.”
Ruso took a deep breath. “Sir, I need to explain to you about—”
“You were with him at the end. Did he say anything?”
“He was already unconscious when I got there, sir.” No point in adding that Firmicus hadn’t understood his master’s last words, or that Latro thought he had said he felt ill. Latro might have misheard. It might have been indigestion.
“Well, never mind. You’re a medical man. I want you to find out how Cossus did it.”
Deliberately calm, Ruso said, “I don’t think he did, sir. Why would he get rid of Balbus before he’d got a proper betrothal agreed?”
Accius sighed. “Do wake up, Ruso. Because he would never get a proper betrothal, would he? Between you and me, Horatia was certain it was only a matter of time before Balbus accepted my offer for her.”
It all made some kind of horrible sense. It also had the dubious merit of casting the blame a long way from Ruso.
Accius had not finished. “Now apparently the poor girl will be under the guardianship of some cousin she hardly knows, and if Cossus can convince this cousin that he’s the one Balbus wanted her to marry…”
“But if you could convince the cousin she was supposed to marry you, sir—”
“Horatia will back me up, of course, but we don’t know if he’ll listen. For all we know, Cossus has been working on him already. Anyway, I’ve told her not to worry. I’ll find a way to sort this out. Meanwhile I’ve told Firmicus to tell the cousin not to listen to a word Cossus tells him, and to make sure he knows my men are looking into it.”
“Men, sir?” As far as Ruso was aware he was Accius’s only man when it came to investigating suspicious circumstances. All the others were domestic staff or workers on some distant agricultural estate.
“I’m not saying you’re not up to the job, Ruso. But everyone knows you’re my man, so you’re not going to get anything out of Cossus’s household without help. And besides, you’ve got patients to look after. Luckily, I know just the chap. With your medical skills and Metellus’s—”
“Metellus?”
“Yes. You must remember him from Britannia. Did you know he’s here now? He’s always remarkably well-informed. You’ll have to keep it quiet that he’s working for me, of course.”
Ruso was groping for words. “Sir, Metellus is … Well, his methods are—”
“I’m not asking you to marry him, Ruso. I’m just asking you to work with him. And frankly, given the methods of the man we’re up against, I don’t think we can afford to be too fussy. There’s a lot of property at stake here. Cossus may try to poison me too if I get in his way.”
“But, sir—”
“Metellus doesn’t feel the same way about you. In fact, his note said he was looking forward to seeing you again.”
Unable to say anything positive, Ruso was silent.
“You’re not sulking, are you?”
“No, sir.”
“I wouldn’t like you to think I’ve lost faith in you after you left that body to be dumped in the street. Did you buy a slave, by the way?”
Ruso felt his spirits sink even farther as he recalled his houseful of barbarians. “Yes, sir.”
“Good. I don’t want you distracted. Anyway, I’ve canceled all my meetings today. I’m not leaving Horatia on her own with that murderer Cossus around.”
“I don’t think she’s in immediate danger, sir. It sounds as though he plans to marry her.” Ruso stopped short of before he murders her.
> “Exactly!” His former senior officer reached across the stained bedcover, gripped him by the arm, and informed him with an intensity he had never shown before, “You must help me save her, Ruso. She deserves better. She deserves me.”
Accius was right, of course. Metellus was just the chap, as he had demonstrated many times back in Britannia on behalf of the Imperial cause. If Ruso had been asked to write a list of all the people he disliked and rank them in order of deviousness, Metellus’s name would have come so far ahead that everyone else’s would have been written on a different sheet altogether. But as Accius said, he was remarkably well-informed. Metellus was the kind of man who knew what people were thinking—usually because they were too frightened not to tell him. Back in Britannia he had placed Tilla on a list of potentially treacherous natives, and even though he was probably right, Ruso had never forgiven him.
Still, that was a long time ago. Tilla was now a somewhat ambivalent citizen of Rome, Ruso’s chief patient was dead, and Accius was in love. The world had changed, and he and Metellus were going to have to find a way to work together.
36
The man who came to the gate of the auctioneer’s yard was neither of the ones Tilla now regretted chasing away from Kleitos’s house. He had greasy hair and a quick glance that seemed to assess visitors’ worth before he invited them in. As soon as Tilla, Mara, and Narina were through the gate, he slammed it shut behind them.
There was a smell here that Tilla did not like. She gazed ’round at a covered area crammed with the insides of other people’s homes. A dozen upright bedframes leaned like a row of drunks. Two cupboards glared at each other, so close that the drawers of neither could be opened. The lumpy yellow cushion on the couch beside her bore the marks of dried puddles.
“What can I do for you, lady?”
Those quick dark eyes, the hair slicked back behind pink ears, the way the teeth reached forward as if they were racing to get ahead of the nose—Tilla pressed her feet against each other and tried not to think about rats. If finding Kleitos would restore her husband’s spirits, then she must find him. “My family have moved into the rooms of Doctor Kleitos in the Vicus Sabuci,” she told the man, “and we would like to make him an offer for the things he left behind.”