by Ruth Downie
"She told me not to waste a lot of money on presents. I was saving up. I was going to get her out of there. She promised me she'd wait." Ruso said nothing.
"Why didn't she tell me she was going to run away?"
"Perhaps she went on the spur of the moment," suggested Ruso.
"She didn't have time to send a message."
The porter sighed. "She was a good girl, my Asellina. I know what people said. But it wasn't her fault she had to work in that place. I was going to buy her out. We had plans." The man looked up suddenly "All that about the sailor. I knew it wasn't true. First they tried to blame me for stealing her, then they just made up that sailor to shut me up. What do you think made her run away, sir?"
"I don't suppose we'll ever know," said Ruso, not voicing the thought that finding the girl's remains proved nothing: She could have been hiding while waiting for any number of sailors. Or soldiers. Or even a well-heeled local. He put his hand on the man's shoulder. "I'm very sorry, Decimus."
The man picked up the bead between his forefinger and thumb. "Can I keep this, sir?"
"Of course." Ruso coughed, and wondered how much smoke he had inhaled the night before. "Tell me some more about her," he suggested." She sounds . . ." He paused, not sure how to phrase it. "She sounds like a kindhearted sort of girl."
"Wouldn't hurt a fly, sir. She never had no enemies, Asellina. Got on with everybody." The man paused. "Except . . . well, you know. But she never meant no harm."
"There were people she didn't like?"
"Oh, no, sir. She liked everybody. Well, near enough. They have customers down at the bar that nobody likes. But they have to be nice to them, it's their job. The thing was, sir, she used to see the funny side of things. She used to make me laugh. But not everybody knows how to have a good laugh, do they, sir?"
"No," agreed Ruso, relieved. Clearly Asellina had not been vindictive in life: Even if there were such things as ghosts, there was no reason to suppose that in death she would be any different.
Decimus wiped his nose on his fingers and got to his feet. "She deserves a decent funeral, sir."
"Now we know who she is, I'll get the civilian liaison to go and see Merula. Then you'll have to talk to her about funerals."
Decimus nodded and squared his shoulders. "I'll see to it. Are you all right yourself now, sir?"
"Fine, thank you."
"I was sorry to hear about your troubles last night. And now they go and find my Asellina this morning. What do you make of that, sir?"
"Nothing," said Ruso, to whom daylight had brought the conclusion that he must have left the candle burning. "It's just a coincidence." The puppy must have then knocked it over and rolled it across the floor, where the flame had caught a trailing edge of his blanket. "One last thing, Decimus."
"Sir?"
"If you're going to drown your sorrows, don't do it at Merula's. And don't go alone."
The porter managed a weak smile. "Yes, sir. Thank you, sir."
After Decimus had left, Ruso thought about the girl who had always seen the funny side of things, who had lain cold and unburied for all those months while the rest of Deva carried on its business around her. The second girl from Merula's bar whom he had met only in death. Now, surely, there would be a proper investigation. In the meantime, he had to go and see what was being done about making his lodgings fit to live in.
39
IT WAS EARLY evening by the time Ruso found time to check on his slave. He found men crowded around the bar, blocking the entrance. As he approached, he heard the twitter of flutes. Evidently the bad news about Asellina had not been allowed to disrupt business.Finding a place in the crowd, he was in time to see the object of everyone's interest display a length of shapely leg through a slit in a silky outfit that left just enough to be imagined. The dancer arched her back and slid one hand slowly up her thigh. Ruso felt the surge of a desire too long denied.
A voice said, "Good, ain't she, our Chloe?"
He had not noticed Bassus moving over to stand next to him.
"Very," agreed Ruso, hoping he had not been watching with his mouth open.
"I'll get her to give your girl some lessons."
Chloe was swaying across the room toward them. Ruso, making an effort to concentrate, said, "I don't want her working here."
" 'Course not," agreed Bassus as Chloe entwined one braceleted arm around Ruso's neck. "But a bit of private dancing, that's an extra skill, see?"
Ruso felt the flicker of Chloe's tongue against the lobe of his ear.
Bassus was saying something about it all being money in his purse.
"Yes," said Ruso thickly, his mind not on his purse at all.
Suddenly he was deserted: Chloe had moved on to work the tables. A legionary was grinning with embarrassment as she ran her hand down his chest. His companions jeered and whooped as the hand slid lower.
Ruso tightened his grip on his medical case. He was making his way to the stairs—ignoring complaints from customers whose view he was blocking—when Bassus's "Not that way, Doc!" registered. He turned to find the man pointing him to the kitchen door.
Ruso retraced his steps to loud suggestions that he should make up his mind.
"She didn't have nothing to do up there," explained Bassus. "She's helping the cook out instead."
"I said she wasn't to—"
The doorman's hand was heavy on his shoulder. "Don't you worry, Doc, I'm protecting our little investment. She's well out of sight." He winked. "I told Merula we got to keep her as a surprise."
Ruso wondered which was worse: having Bassus as an enemy or having him as a friend. "And untouched," he insisted.
"You leave it to me, Doc." Bassus's words would have been more reassuring if he had not added, "She'll be as untouched as the day she come in here."
As Ruso entered the kitchen a cloud of smoke and steam that reminded him uncomfortably of last night billowed from the griddle. A stocky figure swung away with one arm raised to protect her eyes. Lucco swerved to avoid a collision. The dishes piled against his small chest swayed and rattled, but he managed to keep them balanced. Across the kitchen, Daphne set down her rolling pin beside an expanse of flattened pastry and paused to massage the small of her back with floury hands. Both she and Lucco looked as though they had been crying. The cook, who would not have known Asellina, seemed only to be squinting because of the smoke. When it cleared she turned back toward the spitting griddle with a look of determination and a spatula, while Lucco resumed his journey to the crockery shelves. No one seemed interested in Ruso's arrival, and the figure seated at the table with her fair hair in two long plaits did not look up.
Tilla had steadied the bowl on her lap by trapping it between her knees and the tabletop. In front of her on the scrubbed wooden surface was a heap of untouched bean pods: by her feet a bucket of hollow green halves. Ruso, feeling his tunic beginning to stick to him in the heat, watched unnoticed as she reached for a fresh pod. She pinched one end until it burst open, then widened the gap with her thumb, and finally twisted her wrist so the pod was upside down before maneuvering the thumb back down the inside of the pod to send the beans bouncing into the bowl. A couple shot over the rim. Tilla dropped the empty pod into the bucket and picked up another.
Ruso retrieved a bean that had rolled toward his feet. So, this was what a servant with one hand could do. He hoped the cook was not in a hurry for the vegetables. He stepped forward and dropped the escaped bean into the bowl. Tilla looked up at him in surprise just as the back door opened, sending in a gust of welcome cool air, and with it Merula's voice. "Doctor! Just the man we need!"
"Give me something, Doctor."
The hand that grabbed at Ruso's was cold.
Ruso, who had never expected to see its owner again, disentangled himself from the feeble grasp. The two men stood eyeing each other in the middle of Merula's back yard. The sweaty strands of hair that were usually combed flat across Claudius Innocens's head were dangling around his nose. His
skin had a greenish tinge, which Ruso found both professionally interesting and, on a personal level, deeply satisfying. The silence was interrupted by Innocens's need to bend over the bucket again.
Ruso commended Merula for keeping the patient away from anyone else. It could be contagious.
Merula turned. "Phryne!"
A blond girl who was barely more than a child appeared from the open doorway of an outhouse and sidled into the yard. A nervous smile flitted across her face. One hand instinctively rose to cover crooked teeth.
"Get a bed made up in there."
"Yes, Mistress."
"Well, what are you waiting for?"
"Please, Mistress, I don't know where—"
"Then ask someone!"
The girl fled.
Merula turned back to the merchant. "I hope she isn't going to be another disappointment, Innocens."
"She's just a little nervous, madam," he assured her. "She'll settle down—ah!" He bent over, clutching at his stomach.
Merula asked Ruso what he thought the problem was, adding, "He hasn't eaten here," before he could speculate.
Ruso scratched his ear. "It's hard to say," he said. "It could be anything, really." He turned to the patient, who was now slumped against the wall. "It might just pass by itself. You really want me to prescribe you something?"
"Anything, Doctor, sir. I'm in your hands." Innocens's head drooped, swayed toward Merula, and lifted again. "Excellent doctor. Business acquaintance of mine."
"He sold me a half-dead slave," explained Ruso.
Innocens made an attempt to plaster the strands of hair back in place.
"And you got a bargain, sir. She's turned into a fine-looking girl."
"No thanks to you." Ruso had a sudden thought. "Innocens, do you come to Deva regularly?"
"I pass through, sir. From time to time."
"Were you here in late spring?"
"Ah—possibly, sir. Possibly."
Ruso wished he had bothered to find out the specific date of the fire. "How long had you been here before you sold me that slave?"
"Oh, dear . . ." The strands of hair fell down again and dangled while their owner struggled to form an answer. Finally he said, "About two or three days, I suppose, sir. I really don't feel very—"
"Did you ever know a girl called Saufeia?"
Merula turned to stare at Ruso.
"Me, sir? Saufeia? I don't think so, sir. But these girls' names change like the wind, sir. If you're after something special I could—"
What Claudius Innocens could do was never made clear: He was too busy lunging for the bucket.
Ruso had to hurry back to his hastily cleaned but still smelly lodgings to fetch one of the ingredients for Innocens's medicine. By the time the ailing man had swallowed it, a bowl of pale damp beans was resting on the table where Tilla had sat. Ruso knocked on her door without success and then, hearing her weeping, hurried downstairs to see if there was a spare key. That was when he learned that Tilla was no longer occupying the shabby little upstairs room. Merula had moved her in to sleep with the other girls.
"That isn't what we agreed."
"I'll give you a discount," conceded Merula, placing a jug of wine and four cups onto a tray. "We needed the room." She glanced around the bar area and shouted, "Daphne? Table four!"
"Whoever's in there now doesn't sound very happy."
Merula handed the tray across the bar to Daphne, who had changed from her kitchen clothes and had tied a green ribbon in her hair. "I don't buy girls to make them happy," said Merula. "I buy them to work. Yours is in with the others. Through the kitchen and turn left."
On a lone chair festooned with discarded clothes sat Chloe, now huddled in a brown blanket, her feet soaking in a bowl of water. Tilla, who had been lying on one of the lower bunks, swung her legs off the bed and stood up. Chloe stayed where she was.
Ruso had never considered where bar staff might live when they were off duty, but if he had, he would have expected something better than this. The room was dingy and cramped. What little floor was visible between the three sets of bunk beds was presumably mud beneath the covering of dried bracken. The walls had once been cream but were badly stained with soot. Limp feminine laundry had been draped over a length of twine tied between the bunks. The girls had made attempts to brighten things up: Two cheerful red bows adorned the latches of the shutters and a familiar-looking cup filled with yellow flowers sat on the one shelf. Around the flowers lay a scattering that reminded him of Claudia: combs, mirrors, hairpins, jars of makeup.
He had the feeling of being too big for the room; as if any misjudged movement would knock over something precious and break it.
The girls, as was proper, were waiting for him to speak first. Trying not to think about Chloe's tongue exploring his ear, he cleared his throat and said, "Good evening."
Tilla bowed her head and murmured with a pleasing—and surprising—display of respect, "My Lord."
Chloe reached for a towel. She looked tired. The black around her eyes was smudged. It was hard to imagine her as the seductress he had seen writhing in the bar.
Ruso coughed again. "I hear there was a funeral today."
Chloe lifted one foot out of the water. "Some of us are starting to wonder who's next."
"I am sorry for the loss of your colleague."
"That's more than the management were. And I wouldn't call it much of a funeral. If it hadn't been for Decimus I bet they'd have dumped her in a ditch."
Not sure how to reply, Ruso turned to his slave. "Show me where you are sleeping now."
Tilla indicated a rolled-up mattress stashed between two bunks. As Ruso checked to make sure it was the clean one, she said, "A new girl is here."
"Asellina's been replaced," put in Chloe. "They were starting to run out of staff."
"The new girl is locked in the room," Tilla continued.
It was not an unreasonable precaution. "You should stay away from her for a day or two," suggested Ruso. "If she came here with Innocens she may have the same illness."
"I hope he is very ill and then he dies," said Tilla.
Ruso, who could not agree with this sentiment aloud even though he might share it, instructed her to sit down. He knelt awkwardly in front of her to check the alignment of the splints. Chloe did not offer him the chair.
As he felt along the length of the lower splint, he said, "I gather Innocens did not eat here?"
"If that's what Merula said," put in Chloe before Tilla could answer, "then he didn't."
Ruso glanced at her. "I'm not trying to accuse anyone. Nothing you say will leave this room, but it will help me do my job."
He saw the two girls look at each other. Chloe shrugged, tossed the towel aside, and reached for her sandals.
"He takes from the kitchen," explained Tilla. "When the mistress is not there."
"What did he take?"
"Wine, apple pie, and Mariamne," said Chloe.
"Mariamne?"
"He might have made her feel sick," continued Chloe, winding the thongs of a sandal up her calf, "but not the other way around. There's nothing wrong with the wine, and other people have had the apple pie."
Ruso pondered the possibilities as he checked the limited movement of the bandaged hand. He was paying no attention to Chloe groveling for something under one of the bunks, which was why when he turned to find her hidden behind a golden cavalry mask and brandishing a sword, it was a shock.
Chloe raised the mask. "It's blunt," she assured him, lifting the sword toward the fading light from the window before sliding it back into its scabbard. "You wouldn't believe what rubbish you have to put on here just so the customers can look at you taking it off again. Want to come and see the show?"
"I'm sure it'll be very, uh . . ." Ruso paused, looking for a word. "Artistic."
" 'Course it will," said Chloe. "That's why they come to watch."
When she had gone he turned to his patient. "Tilla, tell me what you know about Claudius
Innocens."
"He is a patch of slime."
"Yes, but do you know what he was doing in Deva before I met him?"
Tilla shrugged. "He stays at an inn. He leaves me locked up there when he goes to do business. He tells me he will fetch a healer but I never see one."
"And some of his business was here with Merula?"
"I do not know, my Lord. If you ask him, he will lie to you."
"Did he ever mention any other girls?"
"He says I am the most ungrateful girl he has ever met."
"Hm. So he doesn't lie all the time, then. Tell me one more thing. Do you know why he is ill?"
The eyes that reminded him of the sea were wide with innocence. "Perhaps he is cursed, my Lord."
"What would make you think that?"
"Perhaps your medicine will make him better."
"Perhaps."
There was a pause, then she said, "What medicine do you give?"
Ruso looked at the door to the kitchen, which was closed. He looked at Tilla, and at the complex bandaging that covered the very best work he had been able to do, but which even now would probably not return her the full use of her arm. He said, "I gave him medicines that are recommended by several authorities."
She raised her eyebrows, waiting.
He took a deep breath and said, "Some of my colleagues recommend chewing several cloves of raw garlic." Although not necessarily to cure vomiting. "And then to sweeten the breath, the patient should take honey containing ashes of burned mouse droppings."
Her eyes widened. "And this is what you give for sickness of the stomach?"
"There are men who recommend these things," he responded, wondering what had possessed him to administer this ludicrous and disgusting treatment in which he had no faith at all, and scarcely able to believe that he had just admitted this weak—but oh, so enjoyable!—moment to a slave.
From somewhere in the yard outside the window came the sound of retching. Tilla said, "I think it did not work."
"No," agreed Ruso solemnly. "Perhaps he is cursed."
40
RUSO'S THOUGHTS AS he lined up with the First Century on the damp parade ground were a mixture of apprehension and annoyance. The apprehension was such as any man who has not recently undertaken serious physical training might feel at the prospect of a ten-mile run. The annoyance was partly with Valens, who could surely have found a more sensible way to impress the second spear. It was also with himself for rising to the challenge of Valens's "I would have signed you up too, but after a summer off I don't suppose you'd be up to it."