by Ruso
‘Nonsense. How many men did you save?’
‘Not enough.’ Not anywhere near enough.
Fuscus scowled. ‘What did I just say about modesty?’ He stopped. ‘Not married, are you?’
‘Divorced,’ said Ruso, hastily sifting through his memory in the hope of confirming that Fuscus did not have a marriageable daughter.
‘Probus’ girl, wasn’t it? She’s done well for herself, you know. Married the agent of my cousin the Senator.’
‘So I hear,’ said Ruso, suspecting that Fuscus enjoyed the sound of ‘my cousin the Senator’. ‘Actually that’s why I –’
‘Never mind. The point is, you’re single. Men will respect you, and women will fight over you.’
This was an alarming, if unlikely, prospect. Ruso cleared his throat. ‘You do know the agent of your cousin the Senator is threatening me with a seizure order?’
Fuscus frowned. ‘Is that still going on? Your brother came to see me. I did my best for him, as an old friend of your father, but he didn’t seem very grateful.’ He held out two pink palms. ‘My hands are tied, you see, Ruso. That’s the burden of office.’ He shook his head sadly, as if contemplating the effect of the burden in his own reflection on the desk. ‘Leadership never wins a man popularity.’
Privately Ruso doubted that Fuscus would have been popular whatever he did. At least in his current position he had influence. He could impress people by putting on games, buy them by lending them money they couldn’t repay and then employ men with large knives to demand they give it back.
‘These are difficult times, Ruso,’ Fuscus was complaining. ‘Who’d have thought we’d live to see a good man like yourself in danger of going under? And your brother. How many children is it now?’
‘Five.’
‘I hear those sisters of yours aren’t married yet.’
‘No.’
Fuscus shook his head. ‘A great shame.’ He looked up as if a good idea had only just struck him. ‘Of course, your being part of the family team might impress Severus. He’s a relative of mine, you know. Very distant. He’s a good man, but he might have been a little hasty. Doesn’t know how we do things up here. He might take some time to think before he asks for the case to be sent up to the Praetor.’
‘My being part of the family team?’ repeated Ruso, wondering if that would add Fuscus to the list of his other inescapable relatives.
‘He might be persuaded to drop it altogether. It was only ever his word against your brother’s, wasn’t it?’
‘It was,’ agreed Ruso, not adding ‘but that didn’t make any difference before.’
‘I want you with me at the games.’
‘As a medic?’ tried Ruso, without much hope.
‘I need the veterans’ votes,’ Fuscus was saying. ‘They’ll listen to you. Wear your armour so they can see who you are.’
‘I didn’t bring it home.’ Ruso was well able to imagine what the local veterans would say if a legionary medic turned up at the games clad in iron and helmet and tried to tell them who to vote for. ‘I’ve got an army belt.’
‘Will people know what it is?’
‘The people who count will,’ Ruso promised, still not clear about what he had just agreed to and appalled to find that he was already talking like a political campaigner.
Fuscus summoned the clerk. ‘Forget the veterans’ seats. I want the town’s very own life-saving war hero sitting up with me on the balcony. Ruso, remember what I said. No pretending to be modest. Everyone sees through it these days. Did I mention that Severus is here for dinner this evening?’
‘You really think you can get him to change his mind about the seizure order?’ said Ruso, trying not to picture himself hobnobbing with Fuscus’ councillor cronies at the amphitheatre.
The crocodile smile appeared again. ‘Dear boy, you’ve been away with the barbarians too long. What are friends for?’
Ruso suspected this was just the sort of equivocal answer Fuscus had given to Lucius. He said, ‘There is one other thing I wanted to ask you about.’
The smile faded.
‘On behalf of a friend.’
Fuscus’ expression lifted slightly at the prospect of making someone else beholden to him.
‘A relative of mine was on a ship from Arelate that sank a couple of months back. The Pride of the South.’
‘Probus’ man?’
‘Justinus. His sister’s trying to piece together what happened to him so she can arrange the memorial. If I wanted to find out, who would I talk to?’
Fuscus shrugged. ‘Who knows the ways of Neptune?’
‘I realize it won’t be easy.’
‘Then make up something to tell her, and don’t waste any more time on it. We’ve got campaigning to do.’ He snapped his fingers, and the clerk scurried forward. ‘Find out the names of all the local veterans with a vote and draw up a list. Ruso, I want you back here tomorrow to pick it up, and then I want you to contact each one personally on my behalf.’
The newest member of Fuscus’ team should have said yes, but all he could manage was a strangled sound in his throat.
‘One more thing, Ruso. Your little game at the gate? That’s how false rumours start. You won’t ever mention my cousin the Senator and bankruptcy in the same sentence again. Understood?’
16
Ruso turned the corner to find another election slogan – genuine, he supposed – that told him he was not the only one who owed Fuscus some sort of favour. Evidently the local silversmiths did too. He shivered, despite the heat of the day. After that meeting, he felt in need of a wash. And a drink.
There was a snack bar on the next corner. Hunched over a cup of watered wine, he ran over the conversation again. How was he going to explain to Lucius that, in exchange for a vague promise of possible support, he had agreed to become one of Fuscus’ yes-men? He had even managed to get himself warned off asking questions about the sinking of the Pride of the South.
Ruso took a long swig of the wine. He had always supposed that, when a man made a sacrifice in a good cause – and his family was, he supposed, a good cause despite its manifold eccentricities – he would feel proud. But he had never imagined that the sacrifice would be one of self-respect.
He had expected Fuscus to ask for some kind of private favour. Something medical and embarrassing and strictly confidential. The last thing he had anticipated was being held up in front of the whole town as some kind of military hero. The thought of any genuinely invalided veteran seeing him showing off up on the grand balcony at the public games made him shudder.
He was not a hero. He had chosen to rush home and desert his remaining patients in the Legion. He had wriggled out of his sworn loyalty to his Emperor with a half-truth. He should never have listened to Valens. He should have gone to his superior officer, explained the situation, and …
… and been told to leave his domestic affairs outside the gate and get back on duty.
Sometimes, no matter how hard a man tried, it was impossible to do the right thing.
He swilled the remainder of the wine around the cup. In Britannia, the work had been gruelling, but at least his duty was clear. Here, he was expected to stave off bankruptcy and ruin while helping with a political campaign and taking an interest in dowries, drains and dinner parties. In the midst of it he had foolishly promised to help find out about Cass’s missing brother.
He glanced out into the street in the faint hope that Tilla might be passing with the girls. Tilla, the barbarian woman who consorted with rebels and thieves, believed in ridiculous gods and cheated at board games. She had no clue about elections or dinner parties and was unlikely to know much about drains, but he drew some comfort from the thought that he could talk to her about them later in the privacy of a shared bed. In the meantime, he hoped her morning was turning out to be more enjoyable than his own.
The barman raised his eyebrows, offering a refill. Ruso shook his head and paid up. He would go and do now what he should have d
one in the first place. He would bypass Fuscus and all his slippery promises and machinations. He would go and announce his return to Severus and deal with him, man to man.
17
‘Not that one. The big one on the left – no, not that big! – down a bit.’
Tilla marvelled at the patience of shopkeepers. At first she had feared the girls were about to spend money the Medicus did not have. But by the time they had left a second salesman to reconstruct his disrupted display, she began to understand the game. In the faint hope of a sale, the shop staff would be obliged to pass over shoes and hairpins and earrings and necklaces and wait while the girls tried them on, craned their necks to see the effect in mirrors, giggled and then declared that this wasn’t quite what they were looking for: how about that one just above it?
‘This would suit you, Tilla,’ suggested Marcia, holding up a delicate gold chain with blue and green stones.
Tilla shook her head. ‘I am not buying today.’ Or any other day.
‘Try it on,’ urged Marcia, reaching across to drape it around her neck. ‘It’s just right with your hair. Go and look in the mirror and tell me that isn’t made for you.’
Tilla took off her hat and picked up the shop mirror. She was conscious of the salesman’s cynical gaze from behind the counter. They both knew she was only being allowed to sample the goods because he did not want to offend the young ladies. Still, it was not every day she had a chance to wear costly jewellery. She straightened her shoulders and eased down the neck of the dreadful yellow outfit with her forefinger so the stones would lie flat against her skin.
It was not a good mirror. Careless customers had damaged the polished brass surface, and the serious young woman staring back at her was softened around the edges by a thousand tiny scratches.
‘So,’ she said, watching herself frown and trying to repress the smile that followed, ‘you think a barbarian should wear one of these?’
‘Very nice, miss,’ offered the salesman. The girls said nothing. She wondered if she had offended them with the ‘barbarian’ remark. She put the mirror back on its ledge and glanced around, seeking their opinion.
They were not there. She blinked and looked around again. It was a small shop – just a lock-up booth built into the front of a house – and there was nowhere to get lost. Apart from the man behind the counter, she was quite alone. It seemed the girls had grown tired of waiting for her and moved on.
She stepped out into the street to look for them. A heavy hand landed on her shoulder. ‘Forgot something, miss?’
She had not noticed the guard outside the door. His grip tightened as she squirmed, trying to catch sight of Marcia’s green stole. To her surprise there seemed to be hardly anybody about. A rattle of shutters told her that the coppersmith’s shop opposite was closing. ‘I must go,’ she said, reaching behind her neck to grope for the fastening of the necklace.
‘Cash only,’ said the voice behind her. ‘No credit, and our master don’t take offers.’
‘I don’t want to buy it,’ she explained, struggling to find the fastening.
Behind her was a shuffle of leather soles on flagstones. ‘Let me help, miss.’
She felt a hand lift one of her plaits. ‘That’s a very expensive item, miss,’ said the salesman. ‘You don’t look to me like you could afford to buy it.’
‘I am not stealing,’ she insisted loudly, wondering where the sisters had gone. How long would it be before they realized she was missing? ‘I don’t want to steal. I forget I am wearing it. I have to go with those girls.’
‘Third one this week,’ said the doorman.
‘A lot of ladies forget to take off expensive items and wander out by mistake. That’s what we keep the door staff for, see?’
‘Well, now I am remember,’ said Tilla, her frustration spilling over into a struggle with the Latin. Arguing was so much easier in British, when she did not have to think about the words. In British, she would be able to tell this man what she thought of him. But there was nobody for hundreds of miles who could translate. ‘Keep your necklace,’ she said. ‘Let me go.’
‘Funny accent,’ said the salesman. ‘Can you understand what she’s saying?’
‘Nah,’ observed the doorman. ‘We don’t talk like that round here, miss.’
‘We’re about to put the shutters up for lunch,’ said the shopkeeper. ‘You can stay and explain it to us.’
Tilla took a long, slow breath. They were probably just teasing her, but in a strange land she had no way of guessing from their tone. Keeping her voice as steady as she could manage, she said, ‘Let me go. My friends will vouch for me. Their family is very important.’
‘Really?’
Was that a note of doubt in his voice? ‘Their father is Publius Petreius who built a big temple with an inscription. When everyone hear that you make one of their guests prisoner alone in this shop, how many rich ladies will want to come here and buy things?’
She hoped the fumbling at the back of her neck was undoing the fastener and not a prelude to something worse. Moments later she felt the stones slither across her throat as the necklace was removed. ‘There you go, miss,’ said the salesman, as cheerfully as if he had been trying to help her from the start. ‘Try and remember next time. If your friends come back we’ll tell them you were looking.’
Tilla stood on tiptoe at the crossroads. There was no green stole in sight. Neither of the women she stopped to ask had seen two girls answering the right description.
She turned right by the shrine on the corner, hurried on to the next crossroads and then right again. She thanked whatever gods might be listening that the Romans were so fond of squares and rectangles. If she kept choosing the same direction in this ants’ nest of narrow lanes, she would find herself at the other end of the jewellers’ street, and perhaps meet the girls coming back to find her.
She glanced into the few shops that were open as she passed: a weaver’s, a merchant selling perfumed oil, a meat stall, a scribe bent over his copying … no green stole in any of them. No green stole on any of the customers lolling at the shady counter of the bar, either. She passed a narrow alleyway where someone was playing a tune on a whistle. All she could see in the shadows were three curious dark-eyed children and a hen peering at her from behind a line of limp laundry.
The next open door had a picture of a smug-faced man painted on the wall beside it. The man was attached to an eager phallus which appeared to be beyond his control and, at the far end, beyond his reach as well. The Medicus’ sisters definitely wouldn’t be in there, and Tilla felt a momentary pity for the girls who were.
She could understand neither where the sisters had gone nor why. It was hard to believe that they would walk off in the middle of a conversation, or that they could vanish so completely and so quickly. She had heard tales of young women being stolen, of course: everyone had. Snatched up by gods, or ghosts, or more likely by humans with evil intent. But surely someone would have noticed two people disappearing at once? And surely Marcia would have had something to say about it?
It was hard not to conclude that the girls had deliberately run off and left her.
None of the figures chatting on the communal seats of the latrine was familiar. Back out in the glare of the street, she realized she was no longer wearing the straw hat that the Medicus had bought her. After a moment’s thought she remembered taking it off in the jeweller’s shop. She sighed. She was not going back there. The hat was lost.
The slave-girl sweeping the paving stones in the grand square of the Forum knew nothing. The knot of women standing on the fringe of a poet’s audience told her they had no money for beggars. Neither the silversmith’s slave nor the boy selling fancy sandals knew anything. If Marcia and Flora had passed this way by choice, Tilla was certain they would have paused at those stalls. According to the attendant, who refused to let her in to look around without payment, they were not in the bath-house, either.
Pausing at the next fountain, she
borrowed a cup from a friendly young woman with a black eye and gave herself a long drink. Then she asked which local god might be inclined to help a foreigner who had lost something she was supposed to be looking after.
‘You could try Isis,’ suggested the woman, pointing across the street at a small shrine gifted with several bunches of lavender. ‘I pray to her for protection sometimes.’
Tilla glanced at the black eye. ‘And does she answer?’
The woman ran her forefinger lightly along her bruised cheekbone. ‘Well,’ she conceded, ‘he hasn’t killed me yet.’
With nothing else to give, Tilla unfastened the knife from her belt and laid a lock of blonde hair amongst the lavender before setting off again on her search.
The city slaves who had the unenviable task of dredging the sacred spring had no more idea about Marcia and Flora than the ducks preening their feathers under the balustrades. (Even the sacred spring, Tilla noticed, had been trapped into a rectangular stone pond. The god of the spring had taken his revenge by turning the water pea-green and cursing it with a bad smell.) ‘Try going up the hill, miss,’ suggested one of them. ‘You’ll get a better view.’
The view after she had slogged up the hill was indeed better, but no more useful. The guards at the nearby tower had no information to offer except that, for a special price for pretty girls, they could let her climb up to the top and enjoy a finer view still.
Tilla threw herself down in the shade of a pine tree, pausing to straighten out the creases from Arria’s cast-off tunic. She surveyed the vast sprawl of red roofs stretching out in front of her. The pale oval in the distance must be the amphitheatre, where men would soon be trying to murder each other for the entertainment of the townspeople. Down there, somewhere in that cruel city, were two girls whose mother had sent them out under her protection.
She stood up, brushed away the dead pine needles that had made patterns on the backs of her calves and decided there was no point in wandering about. If the girls had been taken, they would be hidden. If they had drifted off, they knew their way far better than she did. She would go back to the Augustus gate and hope they turned up in time for the cart the Medicus was sending to fetch them. If they did not, she would stay there to wait for them and send the driver hurrying home with the message that they were lost.