Medicus mi-1

by Ruth Downie

  "Surely it does not end there?"

  "Where's it going to go?"

  "To find out the truth."

  Chloe gave a bitter laugh. "The truth isn't going to bring her back, is it? 'Round here you learn to keep your mouth shut."

  Tilla shook her head. "Poor Saufeia, with no one to avenge her."

  Chloe looked at her strangely. "They couldn't. They don't know who did it."

  "And no family to mourn her passing."

  "Look, we did our best. Merula paid for the funeral. Nobody knew what gods she served so we said prayers to all the ones we could think of while Stichus dug the hole, then we threw flowers in and poured a cup of wine over the urn. We even planted violets on top of the grave. Anybody would think we liked her."

  29

  Moments after Ruso had emerged from Priscus's office, he spotted Albanus at the far end of the corridor. The clerk dodged around the corner as if he was attempting to stay out of sight. Puzzled, Ruso continued down the corridor until he reached the corner, then turned to find the man pressed flat against the wall.

  "Albanus, are you avoiding me?"

  The clerk swallowed. "You're not supposed to be here yet, sir."

  "Perhaps you'd like me to go away again?"

  "Oh no, sir! But you told me to stay out of your way."

  Ruso sighed. "I didn't mean you have to run off every time you see me."

  "No, sir. Sorry, sir. I could fetch my things and start now if you like, sir."

  "Please do."

  Albanus brightened. "I'll fetch your post as well, sir, shall I?"

  "Post?"

  Ruso had been known to ignore his pigeonhole for weeks and then find something important and out of date in there. Watching Albanus bustle off in the direction of the records office, it occurred to him that having a personal clerk might even turn out to be useful. Although he hoped he would not have to admit as much to Priscus. In fact, he was intending to keep well clear of Priscus in future. Merely thinking about the administrator gave him an urge to beat the man over the head with his inkwell. Which, for a professional healer attempting to follow the dictates of reason, logic, and philosophy, was more than a little disappointing.

  The first letter was from a seller of medical texts advertising his latest stock, none of which Ruso could afford. The second was from one of his former trainees in Antioch, asking for a letter of recommendation. The third was a fresh and unexpected letter from home.

  He settled on a stool in the corner of his surgery and read them all. Then, with a calm he did not feel, he dictated a letter of recommendation. He left Albanus to copy it and to tell anyone who asked that he would be back in time for afternoon clinic.

  When he reached the cashier's office, the length of the line suggested to Ruso that he would, after all, have to keep his patients waiting. At the counter, the duty clerk and a dim but determined soldier were locked in an argument about receipts. Ruso leaned against the wall and reread the letter which was the cause of his being here.

  "Greetings, brother," he deciphered mostly from memory since as usual Lucius had crammed the lines together to fit everything on the page.

  I trust you have sent us the package we are expecting. I thank you and eagerly await its arrival. Unfortunately I am now wondering whether our present course of action remains appropriate. Perhaps the full burden of responsibility for the farm is too much for the pair of us to sustain. As you are our father's heir I am writing to ask your permission to seek a buyer. I will endeavor to find someone who requires a sitting tenant and thus save the family any unnecessary upheaval. You will be interested to hear that the oldest daughter of Germanicus Fuscus is to be married in the spring. Naturally Fuscus will be providing his daughter with a suitable wedding celebration and will wish to make a generous gift to the happy couple, as will we. We are all in good health, brother, and hope you are the same. Write soon, I beg you.

  Fuscus! Ruso certainly was interested to hear about what Fuscus was planning, although not about the marriage. Not two months ago, he and Lucius had shaken Fuscus's hand over an agreement to extend the terms of the loan. Now the man had changed his mind, and clearly Lucius had failed to persuade him to hold off.

  "Sir?"

  A second clerk had appeared at the counter and was beckoning him forward. Ruso did not look at the faces of the men he bypassed. One day, when they were officers, they would jump the line too.

  "I'd like a word with the cashier," he said. "In private."

  Afternoon clinic was busy, evening ward round was even busier, and although Lucius's letter was on his mind, Ruso was unable to find the privacy to reply to it. It was several hours after dark when he finally escaped from the hospital-and from Albanus-and made his way back to the house accompanied only by the smell of someone else's fried bacon.

  Still pondering his brother's hint about the generous gift, he reflected that he did not have to stay in this inhospitable corner of the empire. As a surgeon, he was not committed to serve out the twenty-five years of a career soldier. He could try to resign and make the crossing to Gaul before the winter storms set in. There, he could exploit the tax-free status of a civilian doctor, take on his full responsibilities as Pater Familias, and support the family on the ailments of neighbors rich enough to pay him.

  The trouble was, would it be enough? What if Fuscus's failure to honor his agreement signified a general loss of faith? If all the debts were called in, there would be no farm to go home to. He would have given up a job he enjoyed, with a regular and very reasonable salary, for nothing. Maybe he should tell Lucius to sell and invite them all to join him in Britannia. It was no worse than his stepmother deserved.

  What he needed, of course, was the salary of the chief medical officer. Valens was shamelessly jockeying for the job on the flimsy basis of having been here first, but Ruso's experience was far wider and Claudia had always insisted he could do better for himself if he just made more effort to be polite to people. He had taken little notice of her complaints. A man's work should speak louder than his words. The trouble was, hardly anyone here knew much about his work.

  He had been wasting too much time messing about with injured and deceased slave girls. For the sake of his family, he was going to have to find ways to impress the right people. He needed to make useful contacts. Get his face known. Gods above, if he was CMO he could even hunt down a rich widow and persuade her to marry him. He could be the sort of man who gave-the words rang through his head like the blast of a warning trumpet- dinner parties.

  In the meantime, Lucius was waiting for an answer.

  Safely shut away in his bedroom, Ruso opened one of the blank writing tablets he had persuaded a dubious Albanus to part with (I have to sign for them, sir), and scrawled,

  Greetings, brother. Thank you for your suggestion, but I am not prepared to relinquish the burden just yet. Interested to hear about the wedding plans. Are there any more on the horizon? Keep me informed. I am eager to hear all the latest news from home. In the meantime, I am arranging to send three thousand denarii, which I trust will fund a suitably substantial gift.

  30

  W HEN SOMEONE THUMPED on the door early the next morning, Ruso rolled over in bed, groaned, and pulled the covers over his head. Surely he had made himself quite clear yesterday? His bed was warm, it was almost comfortable, and he was not going to get out of it. Sooner or later, even Albanus would give up. If he tried opening the door, the dogs would frighten him off.

  Instead of being frightened off, the man let himself in past the excited dogs and made his way into the kitchen. Moments later he was crashing about with the fire irons. Worse, he was whistling.

  Ruso wrenched open the door of his bedroom and roared, "Albanus!"

  The whistling stopped. A rotund stranger appeared in the kitchen doorway. " 'Morning, sir. Beautiful morning!"

  "Who the hell are you?"

  "Justinus, sir. Officer Valens said would I drop by and lend a hand, sir. Get the fire lit, fetch the wate
r, let the dogs out, that sort of thing, sir."

  "Did he tell you to make as much noise as possible?"

  "Sorry, sir. Didn't know you were in."

  Ruso, who felt he had earned the opportunity to sleep in, went back to bed. He had barely drifted back to sleep when he was woken by a knock on his bedroom door. The rotund man handed him a closed writing tablet. "From one of the centurions, sir. Thought it might be urgent."

  Ruso undid the tie and squinted at the letters scraped in the wax. "Marvelous," he said. "Thank you."

  "You're welcome, sir. Mind if I ask how you're getting on with the inquiries, sir?"

  Ruso frowned. "What inquiries?"

  "I heard you were looking into the murder of that girl, sir. Or is it supposed to be a secret?"

  "No," growled Ruso, "because I'm not. I'm going back to sleep."

  The man failed to secure the door properly. Moments later it swung open and a puppy bounded in. It disappeared under the bed and rushed out again with one of Ruso's sandals in its mouth. Ruso leaned over the side of the bed and flung the writing tablet after it. So he did, after all, have a use for the recipe for venison gravy.

  31

  The woman at the bakery handed Ruso his breakfast roll without being asked and remarked that it was a good day for a celebration.

  "Is it?" inquired Ruso, still resentful at being woken to see it.

  The woman looked surprised. "It's the birthday of the noble emperor Trajan, sir, may he walk with the gods. We're closing early today."

  "So it is," said Ruso, who now vaguely recalled some notice to that effect and, feeling some other comment was needed, added, "Very good."

  "And the gods have blessed us with good weather."

  It struck Ruso that if the gods kept this up, he might not have to buy Tilla any winter clothes. "When do you think it'll start getting cold?"

  The woman assured him there would be no frost for a couple of months. She then contradicted herself by adding that you could never really tell, could you? And if he didn't mind her saying so, it was nice to hear that somebody was still taking an interest in the business of that girl who was murdered, and had he caught anybody yet?

  "No," said Ruso, wondering who had started this rumor and how he could stop it before it reached the ears of the second spear.

  "We'd help you if we could, but she was hardly here more than a few days and we don't pay much attention to what goes on over there. It's not very nice sometimes, you know. Especially when it gets late."

  "I can imagine."

  "Shouting and swearing and banging on the shutters."

  "Mm," said Ruso, groping in his purse for his money so he could escape.

  "Those doormen do their best to keep order but really, it's terribly noisy. We keep ourselves to ourselves. All we knew about that one was that she had a pretty face and a foul mouth."

  Ruso looked up. "Really?"

  "Oh, yes!" The woman looked pleased at his interest. "She came across the street one day wanting to say something to us. So the doorman, the ginger-haired one-Stichus, is it? — he called her straight back. Which was quite right. We've told that Merula woman we can't have them hanging around here, you see, it puts the customers off, so he was quite within his rights. And when she didn't take any notice he came over and got her, and to be honest, Doctor, she seemed quite a nicely spoken girl up till then-but you should have heard what she said to him! Well, I expect you hear it every day in the barracks, but we don't expect it in the street. And from a young woman. We were quite shocked."

  "And then what happened?"

  "What happened?" Evidently the woman had already reached the climax of the story and Ruso was supposed to be impressed. "Well, nothing. He took hold of her and got her in and straight up those stairs and we didn't hear any more about it. The Merula woman did have the decency to come over later to apologize. I will say that for them, they do realize what a lot of trouble they cause for the neighbors."

  "Tell me about the girl's hair," said Ruso, suddenly curious.

  "Her hair?"

  "Was it…" Ruso tried to think what questions he could ask, and resorted to, "Could you describe it for me?"

  "It was red. Very red, not ginger. Natural, I think. But of course you can never tell."

  "It was natural," said Ruso, without thinking. Luckily the woman did not pause to wonder how he knew.

  "I don't know about the curls," she said. "They could have been done with tongs. And I think it was probably quite long, but it was all pinned up, so I couldn't really see."

  "And it was definitely her own hair? Not a wig?"

  "Oh yes, I think so. People say you can always tell, don't they, but of course if you couldn't tell you wouldn't know you couldn't, if you see what I mean, would you?"

  "Right."

  "To tell you the truth, I wasn't surprised when I heard what happened to her."

  "No?"

  "But I was sorry. Nobody deserves to die like that, do they?"

  "No," agreed Ruso, handing over his money, "they don't."

  "I wish I could be more help to you."

  To his relief another customer arrived at the counter. "You're not alone," Ruso assured the woman. "Nobody else saw anything either."

  She pressed the change into his hand and leaned closer to him. "Never mind, Doctor," she said. "I'm sure you'll catch him in the end."

  Ruso sat on the sunlit bench outside the bakery to finish his breakfast and wondered what Saufeia had been so eager to say to the bakery staff. Probably nothing of any consequence. He decided he had been wrong about Saufeia. She was not a girl with education who had fallen on hard times, but a creature from the gutter who was sharp enough to pick up a cultivated accent and a few letters. He was aware that this should not have made a difference to his attitude: that the bakery woman was right and nobody deserved to die like that. But there were many worse ways. He had seen several of them. Perhaps everyone else had been right too. Saufeia had been offered protection. She should have had the sense to take it.

  In the meantime, he had more pressing things to think about. He needed to decide whether to order some winter clothes now or wait until payday, when the legion would be besieged by traveling merchants eager to relieve it not only of its quarterly wages but also of any advance on Hadrian's promised bonus. When could a buyer secure the best deal? Claudia would have known. His former valet would have known. Until now, Ruso had never needed to know. Now that he had made the grand economy of selling his staff, he was finding day-to-day penny-pinching not only aggravating but quite baffling.

  Reminding himself that Lucius had far worse difficulties to contend with, he brushed the crumbs off his tunic and crossed over into the shadow cast by Merula's bar. The shutters were half-open but there seemed to be no one around.

  "They're out," called Bassus from somewhere in the gloom at the back of the bar. Everyone seemed to be up early this morning.

  "I've come to see my patient." Ruso strode past the tables and started up the stairs.

  "You won't find her up there, mate. Try the baths."

  Ruso paused. Perhaps he had been too impulsive when he handed over the key. "I didn't say she could go out."

  Bassus emerged from the kitchen door, polishing an apple on the front of his tunic. "You didn't say she couldn't."

  "Did anybody go with her?"

  The doorman took a bite out of the apple and stopped chewing long enough to say, "You don't want to worry about her, mate. We got the best-kept girls in town here." He paused to swallow. "Bathed three times a week, chaperoned everywhere they go… Anybody out there messes with our girls, they've got me and Stich to answer to."

  "I see," said Ruso, politely refraining from observing that two of the best-kept girls in town had chosen to run away.

  Bassus grinned. "If they want to mess with our girls, they got to come over here and show us the money first. Got to build up a retirement fund somehow, haven't I?"

  "How's it going?"

  The man sh
ook his head. "Born too soon, mate." He slid a heavy knife out of the sheath at his belt and began to dig at a brown patch in the apple. "Born too soon. Me and Stich, we do twenty-five years in the Legion, spend another five years scratching our backsides in the reserves, and all we get is the discharge grant." He flicked the rotten section of the apple out into the street. "Now we got pimply kids been in the army a week, coming in here telling us how they're going to spend the emperor's bonus."

  "That's very bad luck," agreed Ruso.

  Bassus squinted at the remainder of the apple and, apparently satisfied, wiped the knife on his tunic and slid it back into the sheath. "Tell you what, though. You and me might be able to do a bit of business."

  "We might?"

  "That girl. You don't want to let her go to Merula. Feed her up a bit, she'd be worth something."

  "The thought had crossed my mind."

  "Let me know when you're thinking of cashing in." He took another bite out of the apple. "I'll put the word out for you."

  "You know a good dealer?"

  The man shook his head. "The dealers 'round here, they'll rob you blind. I know some people."

  Ruso said, "I'm waiting till she's fit before I make any decisions."

  The man shrugged. "Whenever you're ready. Let Merula get her smartened up and see how she turns out."

  "Right." Ruso paused. "You're not going to ask me about the investigation?"

  "What investigation?"

  "There's a rumor going around that I'm investigating the death of your Saufeia."

  "And?"

  "And it's not true. So if you come across anything, you need to talk to Civilian Liaison. Not me."

  "And what are they doing?"

  Ruso scratched his ear. "They're uh-as far as I can tell, they've completed the first stage of the investigation and now they're waiting for developments."

  "Huh. I won't hold me breath, then."

  "So, when will the girls be back?"

  "Shouldn't be long."