Vita Brevis

by Ruth Downie

  “Kleitos owes them money?” Simmias’s head lifted. “Oh, dear. I do wish you hadn’t managed to annoy them, dear boy.”

  “I just wanted them to stop!”

  “I’m sure you thought you were being helpful getting involved, but you need to understand how things are done around here. This business about money is totally unexpected.”

  “You must have known there was cash changing hands.”

  “Well, of course, but Kleitos dealt with all that.”

  “And he let you join in his explorations out of generosity?”

  Simmias cleared his throat. “I made a contribution.”

  “Make a contribution now,” Ruso suggested. “Any part of six hundred sesterces will be very welcome.”

  “Dear gods! It was never that much!”

  “They didn’t seem open to negotiation.”

  “I have very meager savings.”

  “I have none at all,” Ruso told him. “And it’s not my debt. Kleitos is your friend. When he turns up you can ask for it back.”

  “But I don’t know where he is!”

  “Neither do I,” Ruso agreed. “But if I haven’t got either Kleitos or the money by the time your suppliers come back, I’m going to send them over to you.” He got to his feet, causing the sparrows to flutter up in alarm. “So now we both need to find him.”

  50

  While her husband was out somewhere with the fat doctor they had met at the slave market, Tilla considered asking Esico to throw out all the remaining medicines left by Kleitos. Then she decided it would be wise to leave something useless for Squeaky and his friends to destroy. So instead she sent her bandaged and black-eyed slave to refill all the lamps while she sat at the workbench and finished rolling myrrh-and-pepper pills to treat coughs.

  Having slaves made work for the owners too. She was wondering what job to give Esico next when a figure she remembered only too well appeared and announced that he had come to talk to the doctor.

  “The doctor is out.”

  The caretaker from the cockroach-riddled apartments leaned in and displayed his scummy teeth. “Nice to see you again, miss. Perhaps you can help instead.”

  She tipped the finished pills into a box before answering. “I mostly help women. Are you suffering from something a woman might have?”

  “Ah, it’s not for me. My friends here want to value some items from the last tenant, so I thought I’d pop along to say hello.”

  The two men had come back to fetch Kleitos’s things! Her prayers were answered. “Should you not be at Horatius Balbus’s funeral?”

  “Family only at the cremation, miss.”

  “There is not room for everyone in here,” she told him. “You can wait outside.”

  Two others trooped in. She recognized the porter with the stylus tucked behind one ear, and the youth whose gaze seemed to be moving between his boss and Esico, as if he were deciding which of them to back if it should come to a fight.

  Esico, meanwhile, was clutching the oil jar like a weapon and warning her in British that he did not like the look of these men.

  “I know,” she told him, wishing she had sent him out earlier to buy a new broomstick. “But they might know something we need to find out.”

  The trouble with going to ask the other auctioneer for help, she now saw, was that anyone who heard the story could turn up in the hope of being paid for nothing. Already the porter was taking in all the contents of the room with the eye of a man who knew exactly what he could sell them for.

  “Many of these things are ours,” she told him, moving between him and the case containing her husband’s surgical instruments: by far the most valuable thing in the room. “And some of the medicines the other doctor left are worthless.” No sooner were the words spoken than she was struck by the fear that he might repeat what she had said to someone who would then ask if her husband had ever used any of them.

  That wretched secret. It kept spreading like a crack under the floor, undermining every thought.

  The porter suggested politely that she should just take him through the apartment and show him what he had to value.

  “We may want to buy the things ourselves,” she told him. “But you will have to talk to my husband about a price. He might want someone else to confirm what you say.”

  “Very wise, miss,” put in the caretaker, who was blocking the doorway. “You tell the doctor to do that. He won’t get a better deal, what with the discount the boys’ll give him for being a customer already. And with what the other lot’ll charge for the valuation. But you tell him to go ahead.”

  “You need to move,” she told him. “You are making it dark in here.”

  He stepped aside, running his fingers over the broken lock. “Had a bit of trouble here, have you, Blondie?”

  She turned to the porter. “I will need someone to confirm that you have the doctor’s permission to sell his things.”

  The porter agreed. You couldn’t be too careful these days. Especially when you were new in town. “You’d be amazed what goes on, miss,” he assured her, as if he were proud of it. “Full of crooks, this city.” He pulled out the writing tablet that was tucked into his belt and groped behind his ear for the stylus. “Do you want me to start in here or somewhere else?”

  She did not want him to start at all, but if she told him that, he might go away and not come back, and there was a chance he really might be able to lead them to Kleitos. “I need to tell my housekeeper.” She picked up the case and handed it to Esico, saying in her own tongue, “Put that a long way in under the bed, and tell Narina there will be Romans looking through the rooms. Then come straight back.”

  As Esico went, the porter was giving orders to the youth. “Stand there,” he said. “No touching, no talking. Like I told you. Respect for the customer.” To Tilla he said, “Sorry, miss. He’s got to learn. Only bought him last month.”

  In another time and place and in different company, Tilla might have said she too had new slaves to train, and that would have been an interesting thing to talk about. But it was bad enough having these men sniffing around her home. She was not going to tell them anything more than they could see for themselves.

  The caretaker was still peering in and the porter was lolling against the table in a pose that did not show any respect for the customer at all. He patted the surface with one hand. “This table, miss?”

  Tilla clutched a fistful of skirt. “Perhaps I should not be doing this without my husband here.”

  “You don’t have to worry about the boys, Blondie,” offered the caretaker from the doorway. He gestured toward the porter. “I know he’s an ugly sight, but he managed your things all right, didn’t he? Was anything broken?”

  “No,” she admitted, clutching the skirt tighter.

  “There’s a good girl,” said the porter. “We’ll start with the easy ones, like. My lads didn’t bring the table, so I’ll put that down as belonging to Kleitos.”

  “Oh, dear!” Tilla put her other hand on the table as if to hold it down. “I don’t want to make a fuss, but my husband has gone out to see his patients and he will be so cross if I do this without his permission.”

  “Don’t you worry, miss. We’ll talk to him when we come back for the money.”

  “If you could just tell me where the other doctor went, then perhaps I could send one of our slaves to him with a message to check that this is all right.”

  “The other doctor?”

  “Then as soon as the message comes back you can get on with your work. I don’t want to cause you any bother, but I think I should take your advice and be careful.” She twisted the handful of skirt. “We haven’t been in Rome very long and I’m all on my own here with the slaves.”

  The porter let out a sigh that said she was, indeed, making a fuss.

  From the doorway, the caretaker offered, “His boss didn’t like it much when you sent the other lads away, miss. They got into a lot of trouble.”

  “Oh,
dear!” Tilla looked wildly around the surgery, as if she was hoping for some sort of answer to appear. “I don’t know what to do. My husband was cross about that too, but now you tell me Rome is full of crooks and I should be careful.”

  “Lucky you’ve got us, miss,” said the porter.

  From the doorway: “You know us.”

  “Yes. Yes, you’re being very patient.”

  This whiny-woman behavior was surprisingly easy: You just had to look cowed and say no by pretending to be too frightened to say yes. Then unless the people asking you to do something were very stupid, they would realize that the harder they pushed, the more stubborn your no would become.

  “I’m sure you understand why I just need to make sure,” she said. “There is a saying amongst my people in Britannia, No man minds being proved honest.”

  The porter gave a sickly smile. “You send your message if you like, miss. But I’m not sure the doctor’s going to be there in the afternoon, not with day being as night over there, like.”

  So Doctor Kleitos was nearby after all! It was that easy! “I don’t like to make you wait,” she said, trying to keep the eagerness out of her voice. “Perhaps if you tell me where to send the message, and then when my husband is home to talk to you we will send our slave to fetch you. I will ask my husband to have plenty of money ready and you can do everything with one visit this afternoon.” She looked the porter in the eye, gave him her best smile, and held his gaze until the stylus went up behind his ear again.

  “He’s over at the second night watch station on the Via Labicana,” he said.

  “Doctor Kleitos is with the night watch?”

  “No, miss,” he said, explaining as if he were talking to a child. “Doctor Kleitos is the one who’s gone away. Doctor Simmias is looking after his things for him. We’ve been sent by Doctor Simmias.”

  51

  The edges of the glass glinted in the lamp that lit the gloom behind the curtain. Ruso’s hand brushed against one of the chicken feet as he took the empty bottle from Xanthe.

  “That one would not be my choice,” she told him, gesturing at the residue of Balbus’s original theriac. “There are better recipes. But it is the work of a man whom many people trust.”

  Feeling his stomach sink, he stashed the bottle in Kleitos’s old satchel. “So a person taking it might still be vulnerable?”

  “I could sell you something much better,” she told him, now groping behind her and placing a full bottle on the table. “But since your patient is dead, and I have bought this nonsense for you specially and cannot sell it to anybody else, that will be one hundred sesterces.”

  Desperation told him to grab that stringy throat and demand to know whether this stuff really did work or whether he might have poisoned Balbus. Cowardice wanted him to run away with his hands clamped over his head in terror. Reason reminded him that she was bound to disparage a competitor’s product. He said, “That’s more than the patient usually pays.”

  “Then I have been swindled,” she told him. “That is what I gave for it.”

  She was probably lying about the price she had paid. If he bought it, he would be seriously out of pocket. If he didn’t, he would be making an enemy of a supplier.

  He paid. He was already in trouble with a professional torturer: He did not want to upset a poisons expert as well. Now he only had thirty-five sesterces to fend off Squeaky.

  When she said, “You can always sell it to someone else,” he pretended not to hear. The last thing he would give any patient now was a medicine full of ingredients that his supplier refused to vouch for.

  Instead of going straight back home, he tramped across to the Praetorian guard camp outside the city walls and had a conversation with a watch captain and an armorer that made him feel homesick for the Legion. Then, since he was passing that way, he called in at the tenement block to see if the old man with the cough was still alive.

  Ruso was surprised to leave the apartment greatly cheered. He was, apparently, a marvelous doctor. Not because he had offered any relief to the family or done anything useful to ease his patient’s suffering—he had not, and the old man was unlikely to last beyond the night—but because he had bothered to turn up and shown some interest.

  The irony was compounded by the concern of the old man’s son, who followed him into the hallway to tell him he wasn’t looking too good himself, and he ought to take it easy. “I bet you’ll be glad when Doctor Kleitos is back.”

  “I will,” Ruso assured him. “You don’t know where he might be, do you?”

  But of course the man had no idea.

  52

  On the way across to the night watch Narina said, “May I speak, mistress?”

  “Do.”

  “The saying that No man minds being proved honest—it is very good. I never heard it amongst the Catuvellauni.”

  Not even tempted to offer the obvious insult to the Catuvellauni, Tilla said, “Nor I amongst the Brigantes. But when you are foreign you can tell people whatever nonsense you want about your homeland, and they will believe you.” She peered past an old man on a donkey at a tall brick-fronted building farther down the street. “I think that must be it. Give me Mara now.”

  Narina offered to help her tie the shawl, but Tilla told her to carry it. “I want them to be able to see her face,” she explained, pausing as they approached the open gates. There was an engraved plaque on the wall outside, but after working her way through the lines of pompous blather about emperors and consuls and being none the wiser, she gave up and did what any sensible person at home would do: ask. The girl who was leading a brown spotted goat along the street said that, yes, this was indeed the home of the second cohort of the night watch.

  She drew Narina aside to stand beside her under the high wall. “I have dealt with soldiers many times,” she said, “and I think these men may be the same. The trick is to make them think you belong to one of them. And if they make ignorant remarks, pretend you have not heard.”

  Narina’s nervous “Yes, mistress,” reminded her that this woman was not a new friend but a slave. It was not wise or even fair to explain everything to a slave. But with Phyllis banned from visiting and Sabella threatening to evict them, Narina was the closest thing to an ally she had left. Tilla took a deep breath, kissed the top of Mara’s head, and said, “Let’s go.”

  To her surprise there was no guard to argue with. Instead of being confronted as they would have been when visiting any official building in Britannia, they walked unhindered past the gates and followed the sound of hammering through a short passage into a courtyard.

  A couple of men were working on some sort of wheeled pumping contraption with polished brass and leather that was parked next to a stone tank. One of them was lying underneath and trying to bang something into place. As she watched, the other crouched beside him and poked at the underneath of the vehicle with a stick. There was a clang as something metal landed on the cobbles and the one underneath swore. Tilla drew Narina back into the shadow of the walkway: This was most definitely not the time to approach.

  She was about to retreat into the passageway and try one of the doors—there must be an office or a clerk—when she heard the clatter of feet on wooden steps and a breathless slave appeared to ask how he could help.

  “I have come to visit one of my husband’s comrades,” she told him. “Doctor Simmias.”

  To her amazement, the slave bowed and said, “Follow me, mistress.” He led them along under the covered walkway past stacks of ladders and coiled ropes hung on the walls, knocked on a door, and said, “Doctor, there is a lady come to see you.”

  It was that easy.

  Doctor Simmias seemed very different now to when Tilla had first seen him at the slave market. There, he had seemed very full of himself. Now his chins wobbled with fright at the sight of her, and the first thing he said was, “Oh, dear.”

  “I have not said anything yet.”

  He backed away into the room, bumping into
a stool and knocking it over. “Oh, dear. I am so sorry, dear lady, but I really didn’t have anything to do with what happened.”

  Tilla handed the baby to Narina and told her to wait outside the door. Her lone presence seemed to terrify the doctor even further. He took another step backward, fumbled with the door of a cabinet, and pulled out a bowl. “Would you like, ah—?” The trembling hand held the bowl out toward her.

  “I have not come here to eat cakes,” she told him. “I have come here to talk to you.”

  “Yes. Yes, of course.” The cakes disappeared back into the cupboard. “I was rather afraid you had.”

  “About the men who have come to our house.”

  “Oh, dear. Yes. A terrible thing. I was so sorry to hear about that, dear lady. How is your slave?”

  Tilla blinked. “The slave?”

  “Your husband told me someone was attacked.”

  “Yes.” He must think she had come to talk about Squeaky and his friends, not the men who came to value the furniture. Whatever had happened between her husband and this man over in the gardens of Livia, it had clearly given him a serious fright. Now he seemed to think he was about to be attacked by a barbarian.

  “It really was nothing to do with me, you know. I can quite understand why your husband was angry, but I didn’t—oh, dear. There was no need for you to visit, you know. I was going to bring it over myself when I had a moment.”

  For a moment she thought he was going to offer the cakes again, but this time he delved lower into the cupboard, grunting with the effort of bending down. Finally upright again, he thrust a leather purse toward her. “There’s almost three hundred sesterces in there. I’m afraid it’s all I can manage. I was saving it to move to a new apartment. The stairs— You wouldn’t understand. The stairs are too much for a man of my age.” He jerked the purse up and down as if to prove from the chinking within that there was money in it. “You must have it, of course. I see that.”

  Tilla took the purse and pulled the drawstring open. A pile of denarii slid into her palm like silver fish. Times four to make sesterces … the number seemed about right.