Terra Incognita

by Ruth Downie

  “What?”

  “Trenus of the Votadini. He’s been disarmed at the border and escorted into Coria for tomorrow’s meeting with the governor.”

  “Trenus is a thief and a murderer,” said Ruso. “Tilla didn’t stay with him willingly.”

  “Really? She was there for at least two years.”

  “She couldn’t get away. If you want a clear-cut example of justice for the natives, why don’t you arrest him? She’ll testify.”

  Metellus shook his head sadly. “This is exactly why I warned the prefect about involving an amateur. Your loyalty is commendable, but not appropriate.”

  “I suppose you’re going to tell me it’s not that simple?”

  “The Votadini are a self-governing friendly tribe, and the governor will be hoping to enlist their help in flushing out the Stag Man. If we invite one of their people to a meeting and then arrest him, there will be enormous political implications. I suppose you do understand that?”

  “What I understand,” said Ruso, “is that we’re more interested in doing the easy thing than the right thing.”

  Metellus shook his head. “No, no. We are interested in doing the thing that will get the right result. And the right result is that we keep order and make sure the taxes are collected.”

  66

  THESSALUS WAS AS upset as Ruso had anticipated at the news of the gruesome discovery behind Rianorix’s house. “But I think Tilla’s telling the truth about him,” said Ruso, moving the scrolls to sit in the chair. “He didn’t do it. I think Gambax did.” He explained about the wine deal.

  To his surprise, Thessalus laughed.

  “I didn’t know about the wine,” he said, “but I had a fair idea about other things. Bedding, clothing, kitchen equipment, tools . . . Anything you can legitimately buy for the infirmary or any of the medical facilities along the border, all of whose supplies come through us, you can overorder. I’m pretty certain he was passing the surplus on to Felix and I suppose they were splitting the profits.”

  “But when Felix took a stupid risk and supplied medicinal wine to the bar where you drank—”

  “Ah. I’m afraid that’s where your theory falls down,” said Thessalus. Ruso stopped. “Why?”

  “I couldn’t be seen to be drinking it, it’s true, but Gambax knew I dared not upset him because of what he knew about me and Veldicca. He probably told Susanna to keep the wine out of my way, but even if I did see it, what would I do?”

  “Oh, hell. I don’t know. Maybe they fell out about something else. He was definitely on the loose out there when Felix was killed.”

  Thessalus shook his head. “We’re running out of time, Ruso. And Metellus has his evidence. You have to decide what you’re going to do.”

  Ruso scratched one ear. “I’ll try and get some sense out of Aemilia. Felix gave her a ring he didn’t receive until closing time that night. She must have been the last one to see him alive.”

  “I mean about me. You can’t prove anything about Gambax, and you said Metellus has checked out everyone else who was in the bar. The only realistic chance of saving Rianorix is if I’m convicted in his place.”

  Ruso reached idly for a scroll, perused the name, and put it aside.

  He tried to frame his dilemma in one of those educational questions for bright young minds to ponder. A man is asked to lie so that an innocent colleague who does not have long to live can take the punishment of a man who has coincidentally stolen the first man’s . . . gods above. By the time the tutor got to, What should he do? the students would be just as confused as Ruso himself.

  He said, “If they convict you, what happens afterward won’t be pretty.”

  Thessalus took a long breath. Finally he said, “I’m just hoping they’ll make it quick because I’m an officer.”

  “You don’t have to—”

  “And I’ve got more to go on now, remember. I can remember hitting him on the back of the head with a rock. I can remember hiding the head up near Rianorix’s house. I suppose he found it and didn’t know what to do with it.”

  “Nobody’s going to believe that. They’ll know I told you.”

  “They won’t know anything unless you tell them. They’ll be guessing. And they’ll do whatever’s politically convenient. Just get me in front of the governor, Ruso. Let me try and convince him. You aren’t going to let me down, are you?”

  67

  MISS AEMILIA WAS not receiving visitors at the moment. No, she was not unwell and in need of a doctor. If he really had to know, she was getting ready for the caterers’ dinner this evening.

  Ruso explained that his visit was extremely important. Ness informed him that nothing was more important than the caterers’ dinner and besides, he was not to go upsetting Miss Aemilia just when she was feeling better.

  “How about Tilla? Is she here?”

  “No.”

  “I need to talk to her urgently too. About something else. Where is she?”

  “Out.”

  Ruso gritted his teeth. “I want to warn her,” he said, “that the man who caused all the trouble with her family is in town.”

  “She knows,” said Ness.

  There was a movement behind her and Aemilia appeared. Her face was unnaturally white and one stray curling rag had escaped from the bright green cloth wrapped around her head. Ruso recognized the early stages of female preparation for an evening out. At this point the effect was alarming rather than attractive, and in the days when she was still interested in what he thought of her, Claudia had shooed him out of her bedroom until the job was complete—a task that could take anywhere from several minutes to several hours.

  “My cousin is not at home,” Aemilia said as calmly if she had not screamed, Go away! at him last time he was there. “We don’t know where she went. There was somebody she did not want to see.”

  He said, “Did she go by herself?”

  Aemilia had said Let me just finish getting ready and I’ll come with you, Cousin, but Tilla had said she was in a hurry, picked up a cloak, and run out the door.

  “Was Trenus the person she didn’t want to see?”

  “He came to visit my father,” said Aemilia. “She heard them arguing and ran away.”

  “Did she say where she was going?”

  “Somewhere safe,” said Aemilia, unhelpfully.

  Ruso took a deep breath. “While I’m here, there’s something very important . . .” The final words were spoken at rising volume, because Aemilia was retreating from the door. “I need to ask you some questions!” he shouted. “Aemilia, please! It’s about Felix!”

  “You can ask the mistress questions at dinner,” said Ness, pushing the door closed in his face. “She has to get ready.”

  68

  THERE WERE, RUSO reasoned, only a limited number of places a visiting chieftain with a rough reputation could be lurking in a place like this. If Trenus were in the fort, Metellus would know. If he were not, he would be in a bar, a brothel, or the bathhouse. Ruso hoped he wasn’t going to have to search them all. He was supposed to be working at the infirmary. He needed to get some sense out of Aemilia. He needed some proper evidence against Gambax. He needed to check on Albanus. He was supposed to be doing any number of important and urgent things, none of which included hunting for a visiting tribesman in defense of a woman who had betrayed him, but suddenly that seemed more important than any of them.

  Trenus was not at Susanna’s, and no one would have been interested if he had been. The little waitress was blotchy faced, and Susanna’s head covering kept sliding off and having to be yanked forward again.

  “Two of them!” she muttered across the counter, furiously and ineffectively rubbing at an old stain with a cloth. “Two customers attacked in one week!”

  Ruso agreed that it was very bad luck.

  “Why me?” she demanded, her hand pausing in midrub. “I ask you, what sin have I committed that this should happen to me? I close on the Sabbath. I don’t envy anybody anything. I d
on’t eat the food offered to Apollo-Maponus. I admit it’s served in my house, but what can I do? There’s only me here. I don’t eat it myself, and it’s too late to cancel the caterers now. You’ll be there, and Doctor Valens . . .”

  “Don’t worry on our account,” said Ruso generously. “You can say you’re canceling out of respect for Albanus.”

  “But all the caterers will be making things to bring, and the pastries are in the oven, and the duck’s been stuffed!” She sighed. “If we cancel now, people will say we’re giving in to the rebels. But I swear if that young man survives, I’ll never host another one of these things. Never mind what the caterers think. That’s the end of it.”

  Ruso crossed the street. Someone in a place this size was bound to have noticed a visiting chieftain.

  The barber was busy with another customer but greeted him like a long-lost friend. “Doctor! I won’t be a minute!”

  “Don’t rush, Festinus,” Ruso urged him. “I just want a word.”

  Moments later the customer was clutching a wad of bloodstained linen against his jaw, and Ruso had been directed to a bar on the far side of the west gate.

  “Step right in, sir! What’ll you have to drink? Will it be wine, beer, mead?”

  “No thanks,” said Ruso, who had drunk enough overpriced vinegar in seedy bars to know better. From the look of the customers eyeing him from the table in the waiting area, they were wishing they hadn’t bothered, themselves.

  “Of course for our selected clients we do have”—here the woman propelled him in by the arm and gave him a frightening leer as she stage-whispered—“Doctor Ruso’s special love potion.”

  “What?”

  The secretive wink was even more frightening than the leer. “Very effective, sir. You’ll be impressed.”

  “What did you call it?”

  “Special love potion, sir. As used in all the best establishments in Gaul.”

  Ruso peered at the face again, wondering if underneath the paint— which had sunk into the wrinkles around her eyes, making her look even older—there was a patient from his clinic, who was trying to apply one of the first rules of salesmanship: Address the customer by name. But try as he might, he could not recall the violently red hair. Nor the black teeth. “What,” he said, turning to make sure he was leaning against a solid wall and not one of the curtained-off alcoves in which the real business was conducted in this sort of place, “did you say the name of the potion was?”

  The stink of breath-freshening pills surrounded him as she stood on tiptoe to whisper again, “Doctor Ruso’s, sir.”

  “And he sold you his potion, did he?”

  “Oh, no, sir. We get it from a supplier. He imports it from a famous specialist.”

  “I see,” said Ruso, postponing further inquiries because at that moment, deeper into the gloom of the interior, a curtain was pushed back and a hefty black-haired man emerged, fumbling as he attempted to knot his belt.

  Ignoring the owner’s assurance that Cynthia would be free to entertain him in a minute, Ruso eyed the man’s braided hair and drooping mustache and said, “Trenus?”

  Behind him, he heard a bench scrape back across the floor. The two customers who had been lounging over the table were on their feet, and much taller than he had expected.

  One of them asked something in the local language. Not for the first time, Ruso cursed his laziness in not bothering to learn it.

  “He says,” explained Trenus, “who wants to know?”

  “I do,” said Ruso, relieved to find that the man spoke good Latin and moving aside lest the two bodyguards should think he was trying to trap Trenus in the building. The owner, he noticed, had retreated behind the planking that served as a bar.

  Ruso said, “I hear you paid a visit to the local brewer this morning.”

  “What’s that got to do with you?”

  “In case Catavignus didn’t explain something to you, I’ll do it. Stay away from his niece.”

  Under the mustache, Trenus’s mouth spread into a smile. “The blond?”

  “You know who I mean,” said Ruso, hoping to avoid pronouncing her native name.

  “What I did for that girl,” said Trenus, “was a kindness. She was supposed to go up in smoke with the rest. Not that I ever got any thanks for it. You’re her latest victim, then?”

  “If you ever lay a hand on her again,” said Ruso, “if you so much as look at her—you’ll answer to me. Have you got that?”

  Trenus held up a hand as if requesting a pause. “I’ll just translate that for the boys,” he said.

  There followed a rapid exchange that Ruso could not understand, then all three looked at him and laughed. “What will you do then, eh?” inquired Trenus, pretending a genuine interest.

  Ruso paused in the doorway. It was all very well trying to defend Tilla, but he had no idea what he could do that would either frighten or impress a man like Trenus, who was now standing between his henchmen with his thumbs hooked into his belt and his head cocked to one side, waiting for an answer.

  What was it Tilla had said about this man? The body of a bear, the brain of a frog, and he makes love like a dying donkey with the hiccups. None of that seemed especially helpful at the moment.

  “I’m only one man,” Ruso conceded. “And you’ve got two bodyguards. So at the moment, all I could do is run away.”

  “Hah!”

  “Not only that, but I hear you’ve got important friends. I hear the governor’s invited you to dine with him in the fort.”

  “What’s that got to do with you?” repeated Trenus.

  “Nothing,” said Ruso. “I’m just a humble medic.” He pointed at the woman hiding behind the bar, whom he suspected of clutching some kind of hidden weapon. “She’ll tell you all about Doctor Ruso. Specialist in potions and poisons, temporarily in charge of the fort medical service.”

  Trenus glanced at the woman as if he were wondering whether to believe any of this.

  “Did you know there are some poisons so deadly that a man can be killed just by having a vessel painted with it touch his lips?”

  “You’re lying.”

  “Am I?” Ruso smiled. “Enjoy your dinner, Trenus.”

  69

  BACK AT THE house next to the brewery, Ruso informed Ness that as a legionary officer he was ordering her mistress to talk to him.

  “My mistress is not in the army.”

  “Tell her it’s about stolen jewelry and withholding evidence from a murder inquiry.”

  Moments later, Aemilia appeared. She had taken out the curling rags. Her eyes were wide with alarm and fresh paint beneath the unnaturally springy hair. “I didn’t know it was stolen!” she began. “I haven’t done anything wrong!”

  “Can I come inside? You won’t want to discuss this on the doorstep.”

  Aemilia glanced over her shoulder at Ness, and then stepped back to allow him in. Ness ushered them both into a small room painted dark red and crammed with furniture. Ruso sat on an overstuffed couch that had been polished into slipperiness, and Aemilia seated herself in a wicker chair on the far side of a flotilla of small tables. Ruso wondered whether Rianorix had woven that chair.

  She said, “About yesterday. You called at a bad time. I was upset.”

  He said, “I know. I’m not worried about who the ring belonged to, but I have to ask you some questions. It’s very important for Rianorix’s sake that we find out exactly what happened on the night Felix died. You saw Felix that night, didn’t you?”

  Her fingers strayed toward her mouth. “Yes.”

  “Did he come here, or did you meet somewhere else?”

  Her voice was very small. “He came here.”

  “Do you know if anyone else saw him? Anyone hanging around, or visiting the house? Gambax from the infirmary does business with your father, doesn’t he?”

  “Not that night. There were no visitors.” She ran a hand through the artificial curls. A long pin dropped out and landed in her lap. She picked
it up and twirled it between thumb and finger. “He said we would get married,” she said.

  Ruso tried to think of something comforting to say. Instead all he could come up with was, “Who do you think killed him, Aemilia?”

  There was an audible click as she bit through a fingernail. “I never meant all this to happen.”

  “I don’t think Rianorix did either. He was only asking him for money.”

  She frowned. “For money?”

  “For five cows.”

  “Then it was all lies,” she said flatly. “Everything he said was a lie.”

  Ruso waited, not sure which of the men she was talking about.

  “I have tried to tell myself Felix meant what he said,” she continued, “even though it was not his ring. But that is the honor price. He must have told Rianorix he would never marry me.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Ruso, ashamed of having upset the girl and still no further forward in the hunt for the murderer.

  She said, “Rianorix was asking the proper compensation to the family for a broken promise of marriage.”

  Ruso leaned back. The back of the couch creaked under his weight. He wondered if Felix had grasped the importance of what was being asked of him. “What if that compensation was refused?”

  “I don’t know. My uncle used to say that in the old days the Druids brought justice. I suppose they would ask the man’s people to pay.” She looked at Ruso helplessly. “But the Druids are gone, and Felix’s tribe is across the sea. The army wouldn’t pay us, would they?”

  “No.”

  Her chin rose. “Then he got the punishment he deserved,” she said. “I must tell Rianorix I am sorry.”

  “Who killed Felix, Aemilia?”

  She picked up the hairpin and a comb. “The Stag Man,” she said. “Now, would you like to know where to find my cousin?”

  70