by Ruth Downie
Tilla missed the next part and probably her husband did too, because Mara flung both chunks of apple at the table and one landed in his wine.
He spun round, slapping at his wet arm. “What was that?”
“I’ll take her out, mistress!” whispered Neena, grabbing the bag of spare baby cloths and getting to her feet with a protesting Mara tucked under one arm.
The young woman hurried off to fetch a cloth while Gnaeus scolded his children, who both denied leading the baby on and solemnly agreed that it wasn’t funny.
“Go outside and play,” ordered their mother. “It’s a lovely day. You shouldn’t be in here at all.”
When peace was restored and the wine refilled, Tilla asked, “How did the fire start?”
Gnaeus said, “Nobody knows.”
“Fires start all the time,” put in his wife. “And I know you shouldn’t speak ill of the dead but it’s no surprise people got burnt in their beds. It was badly managed, that place. The landlord was drunk half the time himself. Not in a fit state to look after guests.”
Tilla frowned. “People must have ideas about how it happened.”
“If they do,” the wife told her, “they should keep them to themselves.”
Ruso said, “Who’s taking on this place, Gnaeus?”
The man looked at his wife. “It’s confidential, sir,” he said. “That was a condition of the deal. How’s the beer, miss? Can I get either of you another drink?”
“We’ve still got some olives,” the wife declared, and went to fetch them.
With both owners briefly out of the way Tilla looked at the wet patch on her husband’s tunic and could not resist giggling. Ruso scowled.
“It was a very good shot,” she said.
“Sometimes, wife,” he growled, “I wonder what we’re raising.”
“A baby,” she told him. She kept her voice bright, but a chill had rippled over her. He had always wanted a boy. What if Mara was a disappointment to him? What if he suggested handing her back to Virana?
On the way back to the Mercury, rejoined by Neena and a baby who was now fractious because she was hungry, Tilla decided to distract him. Stepping closer to him on the pavement, she said, “What the woman overheard at the fire does not sound good for Valens.”
“It was never sounding good,” Ruso told her. “We know Catus will testify that Valens was carrying a dagger, and Valens himself said that Serena was stabbed. Now we’ve got a witness to Serena begging Terentius not to go and confront somebody. No wonder the chief priest was so eager for me to talk to her.”
“You think she is lying? She seemed nice.”
“I don’t know. I know they were desperate to move.”
She said, “So, who is taking over their bar?”
“Presumably,” he said, “somebody who doesn’t want the trial to take place.”
“But this new story will only encourage Pertinax to ask for a trial.”
“It’s not aimed at Pertinax,” he said. “It’s aimed at us. They’re saying there’s no point in trying to save Valens’s reputation, so we might as well give up and go away. You know the only person I think we can trust in this place?”
She said, “Albanus?”
“Apart from Albanus.”
“Virana.”
“Try again.”
She reached up to push a pin back into her hair. “I know you want me to say Pertinax,” she said, “but you might be wrong.”
35
Their second attempt at dinner—in the bar of the Mercury—was more successful. To Ruso’s relief, Mara had calmed down, and he felt ashamed of his earlier exasperation. A grown man really should be able to rise above the immaturity of an eleven-month-old baby.
As if to rebuke him, their daughter was now behaving delightfully, beaming in response to the admiring glances from the two elderly ladies on the next table, attracting the usual questions about how old she was and the she’s-just-like-her-father remarks that he and Tilla had learned to accept with a smile.
One day they would have to decide what to tell Mara about her past, but that day was a long way off. Tonight he could sit proudly beside his beautiful ex-slave wife with her unusually formal hairstyle, accompanied by his much-admired adopted daughter, and by Neena, who was much better at looking after the household than Tilla had ever been. Tonight the pork-and-bean stew was both plentiful and good, and the pain in his arm had eased.
He wondered where Valens was now and decided it was best not to know. Nor was the absence of young Esico a major concern: The lad was old enough to look after himself, and if he didn’t come back … well, either Valens would be looking after him or he had found a place for himself back amongst his own people.
Under the table, he slipped a hand onto Tilla’s knee. She said, “Is everything all right, husband?”
“It is,” he assured her. At that moment everything was as all right as it was ever likely to be while they were in Aquae Sulis.
Tilla turned away and resumed her conversation with Neena, and he withdrew the hand. He had spoken the truth: Everything was all right. As long as you didn’t think too hard. As long as you didn’t imagine the skeleton watching you silently from the floor. Because even though the meal was good and the wine was better and you and your loved ones were in good health and enjoying a well-cooked dinner and had nothing to complain about, it was impossible to forget that just across town there were two little boys who had now lost both mother and father.
Ruso’s thoughts drifted back to that afternoon’s watery meeting with the chief priest and the haruspex. Recalling his own stubborn insistence that he must track down Serena’s killer for the sake of the boys, he began to feel uneasy.
He didn’t trust Dorios. In their desperation to avert a trial, the priest or one of his cronies might well have bribed Gnaeus’s young wife to lie about what Serena had said at the fire. Certainly the timing and the secrecy of the deal that had helped the couple escape from their failing bar were very suspicious. Then there was that business of the stolen boat. Either the slave or the pair at the wharf had lied about it. And if Pertinax hadn’t ordered the nighttime ambush in the Traveler’s Repose, who had?
It was equally hard to warm to Memor, the haruspex, but Ruso supposed that if you were paid to speak for the gods, and people ignored your warnings, it was more or less your job to say I told you so when things went wrong. How else would you persuade anyone to listen next time?
But whatever he and Tilla did now, it was inevitable that the boys would end up living with their grandfather. Even if Tilla did have a low opinion of the grandfather’s new girlfriend. And if that was the case, quarreling with Dorios and Memor was a waste of time. Unappealing as they might be, the two men were just doing their best to defend their goddess and their town from further scandal.
Ruso took a long draft of wine and rolled it slowly around his tongue before swallowing. For once, Valens had done the most sensible thing possible. Knowing that he would be convicted whether or not he turned up for trial, he had chosen not to stay and fight. Now it was time for his friends to step aside, accept the inevitable, and take advantage of a free passage home.
He was about to announce this decision to Tilla when he felt her knee pressing against his own and heard a murmur of “Husband!” He looked up to see her jabbing a dripping spoon toward something behind him. The gray-bearded landlord was standing by his shoulder, and Ruso, who had just finished his bowl of stew, decided it was time to go and listen to another apology.
36
Kunaris led Ruso through a connecting door and into the privacy of a back room at the Repose. Then he shut out the clatter and hiss of the kitchen and motioned Ruso to the only stool. He perched himself on a strongbox, leaning back against a rack of keys and wooden tags that jingled and swayed behind him. “How’s the arm, sir?”
Ruso flexed and extended it, then turned it to display the bruising, allowing the landlord to make suitably shocked noises before he said, “It’s much b
etter now, thanks.”
The expected apology followed. It seemed that new rules had been introduced for the staff of the Traveler’s Repose, involving the locking of doors and the questioning of strangers seen on the stairs. “We’ve never had anything like that happen before, sir,” the man added. “But we’ve never had a guest like your friend before, either.”
When Ruso did not respond he continued, “I was in two minds about letting him stay here, to be honest, sir, but I felt sorry for him.”
“I see,” said Ruso, who was not going to thank him for charging Valens a lot of money for a gloomy hole that stank of urine.
“The truth is, sir, I’m in a bit of an awkward situation here.”
“Really?”
The keys swayed again as the landlord leaned forward. “I was hoping you and I might be able to help each other out.”
First the chief priest, now the landlord. Ruso tried to look like a man ready to do a good business deal. Since he could not remember a single occasion on which he had done a good business deal, it wasn’t easy.
“The centurion tells me that you want to prove your friend is innocent of murder. Is that right?”
No. Not anymore. Valens was gone: What good would it do? “Yes.”
“Good.”
Ruso waited.
“You may have realized I’m a local man, sir. It’s not a Roman name, Kunaris. I’m a full citizen of Rome and you might think I’m well established in the town, but it’s always a bit … well, perhaps your wife could explain it better than I can.”
Ruso did not need his wife to explain it. “You never feel fully accepted by either side,” he said. “You always feel people are expecting you to prove your loyalty.”
“That’s exactly it, sir. The last thing I want is to get caught in the middle of this business between the temple people and the veterans. So I was thinking, if there’s something I can do to help you …”
“In return for …?”
“Quite a few people would be interested to hear that your friend was hiding here, sir. But I’d rather those people weren’t told.”
Ruso rubbed his chin. “The centurion already knew.”
“I’m not thinking of him, sir.”
“Is that because Pertinax doesn’t worry you, or”—this was going to sound like a line from a comedy, but he couldn’t think of another way to phrase it—“you knew already that he knew?”
“The centurion’s a very well-informed man, sir.”
It was a neat dodge around the question, but it gave Ruso his answer. “You could have warned Valens that his father-in-law knew where he was hiding.”
The landlord shifted slightly, and all the keys behind him swayed in unison. “The slave who sold that information to the centurion has been given a good beating, sir. He won’t do it again.”
There was no way of knowing whether the disloyal slave had ever existed or whether the landlord had betrayed Valens himself. Either way, since he was being paid handsomely for the room, things must have been working out very nicely for both him and Pertinax until Valens ran away.
“So,” said Ruso, “who mustn’t find out that Valens was here?”
“The Sulis Minerva Association, sir. If Chief Priest Dorios hears I had some information and I didn’t pass it on to him, things could get very awkward. Especially if he works out that the centurion knew and he didn’t.”
Ruso caught himself scratching one ear again. He was beginning to lose his way in the labyrinth of who was supposed to say what to whom.
“I was hoping to catch you earlier for a quiet word about all this, sir, but you’d gone out.”
“Pity,” Ruso said. “While I was out, Dorios spoke to me about the attack. And I mentioned that Valens had been staying here.”
Kunaris said, “Ah.”
“How awkward can he make things?”
“Very, sir.” The man gestured around him. “Dorios owns the Repose. And the Mercury. He pays my wages.”
It was Ruso’s turn to say, “Ah.” Then: “Does he own any other places like this?”
The man shot him a sharp glance, as if wondering why it mattered how many visitor attractions the priest owned when there were more serious things to discuss, then proceeded to mutter to himself and count on his fingers. The more fingers he tapped, the more likely it seemed to Ruso that Dorios had been in a position to offer the veteran Gnaeus and his young wife the move they were desperate to make. In exchange, perhaps, for giving Ruso the sort of false evidence that would encourage him to shut up and go away.
This whole business was like blundering around in a snowstorm. There were no clear landmarks. He had no idea whether he was making progress or stumbling back to where he’d started.
“Three inns, three bars at the last count,” Kunaris concluded. “Sir, about Chief Priest Dorios knowing your friend was here … See, the wife never wanted your friend back here in the first place. She’s been on at me all day, and—”
“A collection of bars seems like an odd investment for a priest.”
“He’s a businessman, sir,” Kunaris explained. “Plenty of the priests are. People like me and the wife get paid to run them.”
“And the priests have fallen out with the veterans.”
“Yes, sir. A lot of the veterans own businesses too. There’s fierce competition. Meanwhile people like me and the wife just do our best to make a living, and—”
“So, where do the magistrates fit into all this?”
“Both sides, sir. Most of the magistrates are either in the Sulis Minerva Association or the Veterans’ Association. Sir, I wouldn’t ask, but—”
“That must make for some interesting town council meetings.”
But the landlord had had enough of being sidetracked. “Sir, would you mind telling me what you said to the chief priest about your friend being here?”
Feeling he had made the man suffer enough—for now—Ruso wrapped both hands around the back of his neck and bent forward, trying to remember the exact conversation. When there were so many different versions of the truth, it seemed important to be as accurate as possible himself. “I told him the attack might have been intended for my friend, who’d been using that room,” he said. “I don’t think I ever said that you knew who Valens was.”
The landlord did not look encouraged. “But I did know who he was, sir,” he pointed out. “He’d stayed here before, on the night of the fire.”
“And,” said Ruso, hearing the sound of argument from the kitchen and suddenly feeling sorry for the wife trapped in the middle of all this, “I think I told him that Pertinax had managed to find Valens by putting me under surveillance. I didn’t say you told him anything.”
“Ah.” The keys swayed as the landlord leaned back. “Thank you, sir. I’ll tell the wife. That might calm her down a bit.”
Ruso nodded. “So, what can you do to help me?”
The man reached down to pick up a wooden key tag that had slipped off the rack. “I don’t know who killed your friend’s wife,” he said, “but I don’t think it was your friend.”
“I’ve got that far already,” Ruso told him. And then begun to wonder if I was wrong.
“Like I said, he was staying here the night it happened. He took a room that afternoon and went straight out. We didn’t see him again till after dark. Sat in the corner with a jug of a nice Rhodian, staring at the table like it had just insulted his mother. He wasn’t causing any bother, so we left him to it.”
That must have been after the argument with Serena. Perhaps, if Valens was to be believed, after he had left her and Terentius kissing under the temple portico. “Did he have any weapons?”
“If he did, they were hidden. We don’t search them unless they look like trouble.”
Ruso said, “He didn’t look—disheveled in any way?”
“He didn’t look happy.”
“Go on.”
“Then someone came in shouting about a fire, and he stood up and asked if there was anyone
hurt, and did they need a doctor.”
“How much had he had to drink?”
Kunaris wrinkled his nose. “There was still half a jug left. And a whole jug of water. He was gone quite a while: My doorkeeper let him back in round about the start of third watch. My man says he stayed in his room. I was the one who woke him up not long after dawn so they could tell him his wife was dead, sir. He looked stunned.”
“And you’d testify to all of that if need be?” Not that it was much help: Ruso had already seen how easy it was to slip in and out of the Traveler’s Repose. In any case, the landlord was looking hesitant.
“What I hope you’ll understand, sir, is that a man in my position, especially a local man with no powerful friends … I can’t afford to upset people.”
“Are you saying you wouldn’t testify?”
“Oh, no, sir. If I was asked, I’d swear to what I just told you.”
“Good.”
“But when your friend came back in the middle of the night, my doorman saw blood on his clothes.”
One step forward, another one back. Ruso tried to suppress a sigh and failed. “He’s quite sure?”
“My man asked him if he was all right, and he said the blood was from a patient. If anybody asked, sir, we’d have to say that too.”
Ruso let out a breath long enough to contain a silent prayer that Valens would never be heard of again, because if he were tried, there seemed less and less that anyone could do to defend him. He thanked the landlord for his information and got up to leave.
“I was thinking you might be able to find the patient, sir. Or somebody who saw him.”
“Yes,” said Ruso. But even if he did, some of the blood on Valens’s clothes could still have belonged to Serena.
“Glad to have been of help, sir.” Kunaris got to his feet and all the keys swayed and settled back into their starting positions, leaving one tag still swinging as Ruso paused with his hand on the latch.
“Can you just tell me one more thing?”
“Sir?”