Ruso and the Root of All Evils

by Ruso

  A roar rose like a tidal wave around the amphitheatre. Ruso glanced down into the arena. A standard-bearer on a white horse had just emerged from one of the tunnels and was trotting around the perimeter displaying a golden image of the Emperor to the crowd. He was followed by a man with the ceremonial birch rods and a chariot pulled by two more white horses. Inside the chariot stood Fuscus, fresh from the sacrifices at Jupiter’s temple, waving to the cheering spectators with one hand and clinging on with the other. The crowd yelled even louder as a parade of men marched out in his wake, their bright blue cloaks shimmering with embroidered gold.

  ‘Tertius!’ screamed Marcia over the din, leaping to her feet. ‘Tertius, look up, it’s me!’

  Arria’s cry of ‘Marcia, behave!’ was barely audible.

  The gladiators were followed by a squad of slaves displaying their armour to an audience that howled and stamped its approval.

  Ruso squeezed back towards the exit past several women who looked as if they might push him over the parapet in their excitement. At the top of the steps he paused and looked back at his family. Arria had given up trying to restrain Marcia and was pretending not to notice the screaming and waving.

  The last time he had been inside this place his father had been alive, Lucius had been courting Cass, and he himself had been a married man. Now his father was dead, Lucius and Cass were quarrelling, his little sister was in love with a gladiator, and Claudia was at home pretending to mourn the loss of a different husband.

  He glanced down over the bobbing coiffures of late arrivals still clattering up the steps and caught the glare of the usher before starting to force his way down against the flow.

  Ruso had never managed to work out exactly how the honeycomb of stairs and corridors fitted together to hold up the miracle that was the amphitheatre. Navigating by counting the arches, he made his way past the latecomers being directed up to their seats and paused to buy an apple from a fruit-seller in case there was no time for lunch. He showed his pass to the attendant, who moved aside to let him descend the steps into the area reserved for competitors.

  As he went lower, the appetizing waft from the fritter-sellers outside was overwhelmed by a sour stink from the condemned cells. Above him, a sudden silence from the crowd told him the entertainment was starting in the arena. He was not going back up to watch. Hidden away deep beneath the seating, he unlatched the door of the dank vault that had been reserved for medical treatment.

  As his eyes adjusted to the gloom he could see that the room was more or less empty apart from a couple of tables, two chairs, an empty brazier and some rubbish that had been cleared away and dumped at the far end. The larger of the tables was bare, ready for its first patient. The porters had stacked the other with the boxes of medical supplies that Gnostus had organized the day before and placed several buckets of water underneath.

  Ruso unravelled his roll of instruments and began to lay them out on the side table. A room without much daylight was not an ideal place to perform emergency surgery, but then, nothing about this grandiose combination of sport, warfare and public execution was ideal.

  A roar from the crowd washed through the corridors. Ruso neither knew nor cared what beasts had been winched up from the vaults for the hunters to chase around out there. He had more important things to think about.

  He wished he could believe in the existence of some unknown woman with a grudge against Severus who would take the trouble to disguise herself as Claudia and had the chance to put poisonous honey in his drink, but he could not. Claudia’s denial had been vehement, but she had offered no alternative explanation except the vague suggestion that Ennia might have disguised herself and murdered her brother for no reason. It was true that Ennia could fit two sides of the triangle (the ‘who’ and the ‘how’), but only Claudia could supply a plausible ‘why’.

  The truth, of course, could be found by dressing a selection of females in pink sandals and orange wigs, parading them in front of the man who had sold the honey and demanding that he identify his customer. To arrange that, he would have to confide in the investigators and incur the vengeance of Probus.

  Ruso seated himself on the operating table and ran his fingertips over the rough edge of the wood. He envied Euplius, who had vanished from a difficult situation and re-emerged somewhere else as Gnostus. How easy life would be if a man had no responsibilities. He now saw how simple life had been in the Army compared to this: just himself and Tilla.

  He was not going to wait around to be arrested. If Lucius did not reappear with the women, he would set off for Arelate as soon as he had finished here. But even if he found Tilla and all this mess were magically straightened out, would they ever be able to regain the trust they had lost?

  He didn’t know the answer to the next question either, which was introduced by ‘Holy Jupiter, you gave me a turn sat there in the dark!’ and resolved into ‘Have you seen any hats with wings on them?’

  Ruso blinked, dazzled by the sudden blaze of torchlight. ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Mercury hats,’ explained the man clutching the torch as Ruso tried to remember where he had seen him before. ‘I’ve found the boots,’ he continued, holding up a jumble of footwear with large flaps attached in the shape of wings. ‘They’re with the hooks in the toolstore, but nobody can remember what we did with the hats.’

  Ruso finally recognized Attalus the Undertaker from Severus’ funeral, now evidently having trouble costuming the employees who would remove the dead from the arena.

  ‘Going to look bloody stupid out there with no hats,’ grumbled the man, raising the torch and peering towards the pile of junk at the back of the vault. ‘What’s in that lot?’

  ‘Not a clue,’ said Ruso. ‘Help yourself.’ He slid down from the table and held out a hand for the torch.

  ‘If you want something done, do it yourself, see?’ continued Attalus, groping his way through a pile of empty boxes and tipping a sackload of what appeared to be rags out on to the floor. ‘I told them to get all the gear checked over in advance, and what do they do? Leave it till the last minute and then come whingeing to me.’ He bent to examine the scattered rags and gave them a perfunctory poke with his toe. ‘The gods alone know what this rubbish is.’ He dragged out a board that appeared to be a piece of painted scenery and flung it aside. ‘You’re the doctor everybody thinks poisoned Severus, right?’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘So I hear.’ Attalus kicked a sack aside and yelled as a rat shot out, ran across the floor and disappeared out of the door. ‘Ought to get a dog in,’ he said. ‘It’s a disgrace, the state of this place.’

  ‘What exactly did you hear?’ asked Ruso, moving the torch as close as he dared without setting the undertaker or the junk on fire.

  ‘Turns out it was the wife all along,’ said Attalus, tugging at the corner of a basket.

  ‘Who says?’

  ‘The investigators, or so I’m told.’ Attalus heaved the basket out and dropped it on to the floor before lifting the lid with his toe. ‘So that’s you in the clear, then, eh?’ He bent down to peer inside. ‘Got ’em!’ He snatched up the basket, flung the winged boots in on top of the contents and took back the torch. ‘Sorry about the mess,’ he said, stepping over it. ‘Got to run.’

  ‘Hey! How do they know it’s the wife?’

  ‘I’ll send somebody down to clear up.’

  ‘But how do they –’

  ‘Who cares!’ retorted Attalus. His voice echoed down the corridor as he retreated. ‘Just be glad it’s not you!’

  73

  There was a rattle and a clang as the porter tipped hot coals from the shovel into the brazier for the cautery irons. He had just glanced at the empty operating table and observed, ‘Not long to wait now, boss,’ when they heard a voice calling for the medic. The porter grinned. ‘There you go, boss. What did I just say? They ought to give me a job down with the Oracle.’ He stepped across to the door and shouted, ‘In here!’

  Ruso reache
d for one of the leather aprons slung on a nail in the wall. ‘Tell Gnostus to send me some help, will you?’

  Squinting at the apron in search of the head-hole, Ruso had greeted his first customer with ‘Right, what can we do for you?’ before he realized that the person who had come into the room was not a patient at all.

  ‘Tilla!’ He flung the apron aside and hugged her, shouting after the porter, ‘It’s all right, I don’t need any help with this one!’ Burying his face in her neck he said, ‘Thank the gods! Is Cass back? You’re covered in dust, are you all right? Did you see Lucius?’

  ‘Cass is at home with the children,’ she said. ‘Lucius has gone back to make his wine, and they are not shouting any more, and I am very bruised after riding fast in that bumpy cart.’

  He pulled her close. ‘I tried to come after you,’ he said. ‘The horse fell.’

  ‘Galla told me you are working here,’ she said. ‘I have many things to tell you, or I would never come to a bad place like this.’

  ‘I have to earn a living, Tilla.’

  ‘That is what you always say.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have run off like that with someone you didn’t know. You could have got into all sorts of trouble. Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘I found out something important,’ she said, dodging the question. ‘The two men who have come here are not from the Senator. They are not real investigators.’

  She stood back and waited for his response, looking very pleased with herself. Outside, there was some sort of commotion further down the corridor.

  ‘Not investigators?’ Ruso tried to make sense of it.

  ‘The clever one wearing the ring is a man called Ponticus, who did Severus’ business in Arelate. He is the one who bought the bad ship.’ The shouting was growing closer. ‘The other one with the fingers missing is a sea captain called Copreus, who is supposed to be drowned.’

  ‘The captain of the Pride?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But what are they doing here?’

  At that moment the door burst open and a voice cried, ‘Where’s the surgeon? Injured man coming in!’

  Ruso reached for the lamp and held it up to light the others in the bracket on the wall. ‘That’s me,’ he said. ‘What have we got?’

  ‘Huntsman. Tripped over. Tiger got to him before they could get him out.’

  He nodded. ‘Go and tell Gnostus I need a hand here. He’ll be down with the fighters.’ He leaned across the table and held out the lamp. ‘Light the rest of them, will you? Then get a cloth out of the last box on the left, soak it in wine and wring it out.’

  Tilla did not reach for the lamp.

  ‘If you’re not going to help,’ he said, placing it on the table, ‘keep out of the way.’

  Their eyes met. Finally she hooked a finger through the handle of the lamp. ‘I am still not glad about what happens in this place,’ she said.

  Ruso placed one hand over the clothing shears to check that they were within easy reach. ‘Right now,’ he said, ‘I shouldn’t think the huntsman’s too happy about it, either.’

  74

  It was midday before Ruso finished trying to clean up the huntsman’s shredded shoulder and put it back together, all the time wondering if it would have been kinder to suggest that the man were swiftly finished off. He stayed to supervise the dressing, then took Gnostus’ advice and went to find some lunch. Gnostus’ view, unfortunately expressed in front of Tilla, was that since the lunchtime entertainment was only a few criminals, there wouldn’t be much for the medics to do unless the beasts turned on their trainers.

  ‘What does he mean?’ demanded Tilla as they left the stuffy confines of the lamplit room for the relative cool of the corridor.

  Ruso muttered, ‘Executions,’ through a dry throat. ‘Come upstairs, we’ll get something to drink and you can tell me about Calvus and Stilo.’

  ‘Executions of people with animals?’

  ‘It’s not much different to what happens in Deva,’ he assured her, realizing now how little attention he had paid to the gruesome death sentences meted out within a few paces of the fort. ‘Just on a bigger scale.’

  She gestured towards the steps that led out to the glare and bustle of the arena seating. ‘And all those people come here to watch this thing happen?’

  ‘Not really,’ said Ruso. ‘It’s not the star attraction.’ He took her arm and steered her towards a crowded exit. ‘Which means there’ll be queues building up at the lunch stalls.’

  He got her as far as the exit before she stopped dead. This, he supposed, was some sort of achievement, although the man who shoved past them both with ‘Get out of the way, will you? Bloody foreigners!’ was clearly unimpressed.

  He drew her aside. Standing in the shade of a massive pillar as the lunchtime crowds flowed out into the sunshine, he decided to cut short the inevitable argument. ‘I can’t do anything about it, Tilla. There are twenty thousand people here who –’

  ‘I want to see it.’

  ‘No, you don’t. Come and tell me about Calvus and –’

  ‘Do not tell me what I want!’

  ‘Trust me. You don’t.’ He knew it would be useless to explain to her that the victims were all criminals sentenced to death in a fair trial. Useless even if it were true, which it probably was not.

  Standing close so as not to obstruct the exit, he noticed for the first time how the sun had bleached her hair. How unfashionably and delightfully freckled her face had become. He said, ‘Why would Calvus and – whatever their names are – why would they come to Nemausus?’

  From somewhere inside the arena came a shrill scream, followed by a ripple of laughter.

  The familiar eyes gazed into Ruso’s own. Instead of the determination he had expected, he saw fear.

  ‘Come and get something to drink,’ he urged her, annoyed at being made to feel responsible for whatever ghastliness was going on in there. ‘You can tell me all about Arelate.’

  ‘If it was me,’ she said, ‘would you be there to see me die?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ The words came out more harshly than he had intended. ‘What I mean is, you wouldn’t –’

  She was gone before he reached the end of the sentence, dodging round the wandering spectators and back into the shadowed entrance tunnel.

  ‘Tilla!’ he yelled, plunging after her, apologizing as he stabbed a passing foot with his stick. ‘Tilla, wait!’

  He need not have worried. By the time he got there she had already been grabbed by an usher and was being firmly escorted back down the steps. The usher looked relieved to see him. ‘I was just saying,’ the man said as another hideous shriek issued from the arena and the crowd yelled advice and abuse, ‘military veterans only in these seats. Women and slaves is round to the right and higher up.’ Evidently the man could not decide which category Tilla fell into and was taking no chances.

  Tilla said, ‘I must see.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Ruso.

  ‘Because it is what your people do.’

  ‘Yes, but –’

  ‘I want to understand.’

  More spectators brushed past them, voices rising and fading down the corridor. A couple of men sharing a joke. A small boy wailing and his mother demanding: ‘Why didn’t you say you needed a wee before we sat down?’

  Tilla said, ‘Your family come to these games?’

  ‘They’re up there,’ said Ruso, pointing vaguely in the direction of the women’s seats and adding, ‘Marcia thinks she’s engaged to one of the gladiators. He’ll be on later.’

  ‘So you let your sisters watch this?’

  ‘Everybody watches it.’

  ‘That is why I must see.’

  ‘Please don’t.’

  ‘If you are ashamed, why are you here?’

  It was not a question he wanted to consider. He took her by the arm and led her back up the steps. ‘I’m a veteran,’ he informed the usher. ‘Twentieth Legion, served in Britannia.’ He tugged open h
is purse and handed the usher a coin. ‘Just let the lady stand at the top of the steps for a minute, will you?’

  A naked man and woman were chained to a post in the middle of the arena. The man had a placard hung around his neck which read ‘TEMPLE ROBBER’. The woman’s pale rolls of fat wobbled as she caught sight of the bear. Someone in the crowd shouted an insult, and laughter rippled around the stadium. The men with whips stepped forward to encourage the bear to do its duty.

  The deaths he had paid for Tilla to watch were deliberately hideous. ‘It’s supposed to discourage crime,’ he heard himself saying as the crowd mocked the woman’s frantic efforts to burrow under the corpse of her companion.

  Tilla did not seem to hear him. Her eyes were fixed on the execution. Beneath the freckles, her face was an odd colour, and he suspected she was about to be sick.

  ‘It’s finished,’ he said, taking her by the arm as if she were the only one needing support. ‘Come down now.’

  As she turned to descend the steps without arguing, he glanced across at the seats of honour. Resplendent in a dazzling white toga, Fuscus was leaning sideways to chat to his companions, leaving one hand holding a silver winecup in the air as if he were saluting the prisoners dying beneath him.

  It was only as he followed Tilla down the steps that Ruso’s mind registered who he had seen up on the balcony talking to Fuscus. The two men who were not really from Rome, not really investigators, and not really called Calvus and Stilo.

  75

  The two heavyweights protecting Fuscus and his guests from the common herd did not look impressed. Between them they were wide enough to bar access to the flight of steps that led up to where the great man was apparently holding a lunchtime meeting on the balcony.

  ‘This is urgent,’ explained Ruso, recognizing one of the gang who had helped Stilo search the house.

  ‘Can’t be interrupted,’ said the second man. ‘Gabinius Fuscus is a busy man. Things to do, people to –’