Tabula Rasa: A Crime Novel of the Roman Empire

by Ruth Downie

  Chapter 52

  “Absolute waste of time,” complained Fabius, and for once Ruso agreed with him. The smithy and the wheelwright’s shop were now back in action. Daminius had been sent back to laboring duties in the quarry, where Fabius was probably hoping another landslide would bury him. Meanwhile Fabius had asked Ruso to accompany him on a healthy walk around the perimeter track.

  “I shan’t cause any disruption to the work here,” Fabius continued, “but once we’re back in Deva, I shall get rid of him.”

  Having defied a tribune and trespassed on someone else’s human property, Ruso was surprised that Daminius had not already been suspended from his duties. On the other hand, the tribune had sanctioned illegal treatment in front of witnesses. Daminius’s future was going to be interesting.

  Unabashed by Ruso’s silence, Fabius carried on. “I can see it all now, looking back. Always finding excuses to come to the house. Volunteering for things. Asking to take on more responsibilities. I should have guessed.”

  These were the very qualities which Fabius had prized in him until just now. Ruso could not think of another man who would have covered up for his centurion the way that Daminius had, and he had no doubt that Fabius had taken the credit for most of the work his optio did. It occurred to him that the affair with the kitchen maid might have been the only thing that kept Daminius sane. “What will you do with the girl?”

  “She’ll go back to the dealer.” They both stepped across a broad puddle. “I can’t have a deceitful little trollop like that in the house. I have a wife back in Deva to consider.”

  Ruso supposed Fabius would buy himself a new maid to chase.

  “I need to write to the dealer straightaway. I may need you as a witness.”

  “To say she’s not satisfactory?” This would hardly get Fabius a better price. It would certainly wreck the girl’s chances of being bought by a good family. “Why not just sell her locally?”

  “I want my money back. She’s still within the six-month guarantee period.”

  “Ah.” If the lovestruck Daminius had thought about buying the girl for himself, he would have to beat the original price.

  “I’ll have her confined to the kitchen until we get back to Deva. Although why the cook didn’t tell me there was something going on, I don’t know.” He answered his own question with “I suppose she was sleeping with him too. The only place who might pay decent money for her here is the brothel, and it’s too much bother selling to them since the law changed.”

  Considering the fate of slaves in brothels, Ruso took the view that the more bother involved in consigning them there, the better.

  “Anyway,” Fabius continued, “with all this to deal with, it’s just as well my headache has cleared. Doctor Valens was right: I should be staying out in the fresh air during the hours of daylight.”

  “He’s a good doctor.”

  “You need to get up-to-date with the latest treatments, Ruso. The Greeks don’t know everything. You should read about what Doctor Spiculus and his people are doing in Alexandria.”

  “Really?”

  “I’ve asked Doctor Valens to find me a copy.”

  “I’d like to see it.” Ruso had never heard of a Doctor Spiculus in Alexandria, but he could recall a bartender of that name not fifty paces from where Valens used to live in Londinium.

  “Anyway, I’ve told the tribune that the doctor and I can keep everything going here between us while you search for the boy. A huge quantity of routine work goes into keeping a century running smoothly, you know. People don’t appreciate it.”

  “It’s the same with hospitals.”

  “But you don’t have quotas and targets in hospitals,” Fabius pointed out. “Obviously it’s a pity about the boy, but Second Augusta are already on the march back to Isca. My old comrades in the Sixth expect to finish tomorrow and head south the day after, whereas our men have a turret and another hundred feet of wall to complete before we can all go home. I’ve explained that we’ve had a landslide and trouble with the natives and I’ve practically lost my optio, but it makes no difference. Everyone still expects the stone to arrive on-site as if nothing had happened. Even if they send us more men—which they won’t—Daminius says we’ll need at least a week.”

  Daminius says. Daminius was not suspended from duty any more than was the kitchen maid, because Fabius could not manage without them.

  Chapter 53

  “Leave that alone!” The young woman let go of the handle in the top grinding stone, grabbed the toddler, and lifted him away. Over his howls of outrage, she shouted, “Do you want to get your fingers mashed?”

  The toddler wailed louder. Still squatting, she held him at arm’s length, turning toward the unkempt man who had just let Tilla and Enica into the yard. “What’s that boy of yours done now?”

  “I don’t know!” The man glanced around and yelled, “Aedic? Aedic! Get here now!” There was no response. “Where is he?”

  “How should I know?” The woman ignored the toddler’s frenzied struggles to free himself from her grasp. “He’s your son!”

  Tilla glanced at Enica, who was looking exhausted. The harassed mother thrust the toddler toward the man. “You take this one. I’ll see to them.”

  “I’m busy.”

  “Oh, and I have nothing to do?”

  The woman won. The man tucked the toddler under his arm as if he were a stray and very unruly lamb, and the sound of protest was muffled by the walls as they went indoors.

  The woman scrambled to her feet, slapping away the pale drifts of flour on her skirts. A couple of older women came out of the better-kept house across the yard. They recognized Enica, and Tilla heard yet again the conversation that had been repeated at every home they had visited. The sympathy. The hope of good news. The promise of prayers and offerings. And behind it all, unspoken, the fear that Enica’s bad luck might rub off on them.

  Duty done, the women retreated and stood with their arms folded, as if they were waiting to say, I told you so, about something.

  Enica said, “We must speak with Aedic, Petta. We think he can help.”

  But Petta did not know where Aedic was. “He wanders off,” she said. “I tell him not to, but he never listens to me and his father does nothing about it.”

  “When did you last see him?”

  The woman scratched the back of her neck. “He brought in the firewood,” she said, trying to remember. Then she appealed to her neighbors. “Did anybody see where Aedic went?”

  One of them said, “Sometimes he runs errands for the soldiers.”

  Enica gave a gasp of concern as Tilla asked, “Do you know which ones?”

  Nobody did. As if to excuse herself, Petta added, “I have enough to do without worrying about a boy who never does what I tell him.”

  Tilla wondered whether, if this Aedic had been kidnapped, anyone here would notice. “Has there been anyone here asking for him?”

  There had not. Without much hope, she said, “Did he ever talk about seeing something at the wall one day?”

  The question reminded one of the neighbors of something. “My son says Aedic sometimes hangs around near the old farm.” Seeing Tilla did not understand, she said, “Where he was brought up.”

  “Our farm?” demanded the husband, who had reappeared in the doorway. The toddler, damp hair still stuck to his forehead, was cramming bread into his mouth. The man turned to his wife. “Nobody told me.”

  Petta said, “Did you ever ask?”

  “What does he go there for? There’s nothing left.” He turned to Tilla. “They took our land for building on,” he said, “turned us off good grazing, burned down the houses and—”

  “Oh, stop!” Petta cried. “Nobody cares about your land. A boy has been stolen, and your son knows something about it.”

  Tilla raised her voice to step in before the argument grew worse. “When you find Aedic, Branan’s family need to talk to him straightaway. We need to know what he saw at the wal
l.”

  The father said, “I’ll tell him.”

  “It is not safe to send him on his own,” Tilla told him, afraid he might be thinking of doing just that. “Do you know where to bring him?”

  “We know,” growled the father, perhaps annoyed at being told what to do.

  They were on the way out when Tilla said, “Do you know where their old farm was?”

  Enica, busy dragging her horse’s head round so it would carry her back to the road, did not seem to hear. Tilla said, “You need to go home. I will take you back now and find some salve for your tired muscles. Then I will take Dismal and go and look for Aedic.”

  Enica was too weary to argue. Tilla took hold of the piebald’s reins and led it beside her own horse, hoping the other searchers had been more successful and feeling guilty for dragging this poor woman about on horseback for hours, finding nothing, and making her suffering even worse than before. Now she was plagued with a new fear. What if Aedic had disappeared too?

  Her thoughts were interrupted by “That is the first time I have spoken with Petta since the business with Conn.”

  Tilla twisted round to face her companion. “The business with Conn?”

  “Petta and Conn were almost betrothed, did you not know?”

  “I heard there was a girl,” said Tilla, struggling to fit the woman she had just met with the picture of Conn’s lost love that she had formed after listening to the gossip at Ria’s.

  “She left Conn for a soldier. He got her pregnant and then he was posted somewhere else. Conn refused to take her back if she kept the child. So Petta needed a father for the child, Aedic’s father was widowed and needed a wife, and you see how it has turned out.”

  Tilla said, “I heard the soldier forced her.”

  “That is what she told Conn to start with, but it was a lie.”

  The story was more complicated than the gossips had thought. “Conn should not be losing sleep over her.”

  Enica said, “That is what we all told him. But Conn likes to be angry. So my husband still has no grandchildren.”

  Tilla wondered why people who did not deserve children had no difficulty producing them, and then remembered to tell herself that, compared with many women, she had very little to complain about.

  Chapter 54

  At first Ruso did not recognize the brothel keeper. The fox-pelt color was gone: Today her hair was a startling jet-black to match the makeup around her eyes, but the professional smile was the same. “What’s your pleasure, Doctor?”

  “A word in private,” he suggested.

  She led him into a little room that smelled as though the brightly colored rugs and cushions were concealing a bad damp problem.

  “I’m told it’s harder to buy staff these days,” he said, lowering himself onto the little couch as instructed. “Since the change in the law.”

  “I hope you’re not going to make me an offer, sir. We run a respectable house here.”

  “I’m still looking for the boy. I need to know how your business works. You can’t just buy from anybody? What’s changed?”

  “It’s the emperor, sir. May the gods bless him. He’s a great improver, isn’t he?”

  “Undoubtedly,” said Ruso, aware that not everyone wanted to be improved.

  “Says nobody can sell to us or the gladiator boys unless he can show a good cause in law.”

  Ruso wondered what would constitute a good cause, and whether it would involve the bad behavior of the slave or the financial desperation of the owner. “What do you think of that?”

  “Very commendable, sir.”

  “And does everyone share that view?”

  She tilted her head to one side. “I have heard it suggested, sir, that a business with standards can’t run on everybody else’s cast-off staff. These days lot of the better houses have taken to breeding their own workers. If you want happy customers, you can’t offer them riffraff.”

  Ruso nodded. “Are there other sources?”

  The lips pursed. “All my girls are legal, sir. You can check.”

  “I’m not here to cause trouble,” he reminded her. “If some other owner wanted to buy a stolen boy, where would he—or she—go?”

  She glanced at the door. “I have to do business with these people, sir. I can’t afford to have it said—”

  “Branan is nine years old.”

  She sighed. “I had a boy once. He died of a fever.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You won’t say who told you?”

  “Not a word.”

  She leaned closer. He had grown used to the damp, but now he was assailed by a sudden waft of garlic. “I hear things,” she whispered, “about Lupus over in Coria. Nothing definite, mind. Just rumors. Back-door deals.”

  “Is Lupus the dealer who has an agent in Vindolanda?”

  “That’s the one. Down the main street in Vindolanda, turn left just past the butcher’s shop and it’s the third door on the right. Ask for Piso.”

  The stable hand had tied the bay up with a very short rope in order to brush him. “Vindolanda again already, sir?”

  “I forgot something.” Ruso stepped back as the horse shifted sideways and nearly knocked the groom over. He had a feeling that he was going around in circles, but he didn’t know what else to try, and nobody else seemed to know, either.

  The horse was happy to canter much of the way to Vindolanda: good, not only because Ruso was in a hurry, but also because he could speed past what was obviously turning into a major argument over a pile of broken red crockery at the side of the road. A driver was waving his arms about and shouting at a group of natives. Ruso overheard something about “I’ve been bloody searched twice already!” He urged the horse on before anyone might imagine he would like to get involved.

  Most of Vindolanda’s shoppers had gone home now. A few off-duty soldiers were lounging outside the bars. He went down to the fort gate and reported the roadside fracas before heading off in search of Piso.

  The dealer’s agent was down a side street, exactly where he had been told. He tethered the horse on a short rein, warning the small boys who offered to “watch him for you, mister” not to get too close.

  But whatever he might have hoped to learn from Piso, he was out of luck. According to the hulking house slave, the agent had gone away on business. The slave either did not know where or had been instructed not to say. He was not allowed to let anyone in. There was no stock there. The master had taken all of them with him.

  “Never mind,” Ruso assured him. “Perhaps you can get a message to him.” He leaned closer. “I don’t want to say this out in the street,” he explained, “but there’s a bit of a problem over the boy one of our men sold him the other day.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Ruso was aware of trying to steady his voice. Yes, sir could mean anything. “I wanted to make sure your master knew about it.”

  The slave eyed him for a moment, then said, “I think everyone knows, sir.”

  Now it was the tremble in his hands he needed to steady as well. He waited until a gaggle of children had led a puppy down the street on a length of twine before he leaned forward again. “Your master’s problem isn’t the boy so much as the seller. He’s claiming your master arranged the deal in the first place, and all he did was deliver.”

  “The seller’s been caught, sir?”

  “He’s singing like a bird in a cage,” Ruso told him. “But nobody knows how much of it is true.”

  The slave’s eyes narrowed. “Why should you want to help my master, sir?”

  Indeed, why would he? “I can’t explain it on the doorstep,” said Ruso, truthfully.

  He dropped the latch as requested, aware that the slave was at least half a hand taller than he was, and wide enough to block the hallway. The exit was behind him, but he would have to lift the latch and pull the door inward. Before he reached the street the slave would have plenty of time to haul him back. He swallowed. “The seller has been under sus
picion for some time, but we have no proof.”

  “ ‘We,’ sir?”

  “The Legion,” Ruso explained, deciding to stick to the truth as far as possible. “I’m helping Tribune Accius sort this out.”

  There was a sound behind the slave. Another figure was moving toward them. “Who’s there?” demanded a woman who sounded as though she was not expecting to like the answer. At that point it seemed to dawn on the slave that he had not asked.

  “Medical Officer Ruso from Parva,” Ruso explained, rescuing him.

  “He’s come to see the master,” the slave told her, shifting to one side in the gloom of the corridor to reveal a short woman with her hair pulled back from her forehead as if it were a nuisance.

  She looked Ruso up and down. “The master’s not here.”

  Ruso, wishing she would go back to wherever she had come from, carried on talking to the man. “We realize this puts your master in an awkward position, but if he’s willing to testify, we’re prepared to accept that he didn’t know he was receiving stolen goods.”

  “The master doesn’t receive stolen goods!” exclaimed the woman. “Who’s been telling you that? This is an honest business.”

  “We know,” said Ruso. “But anyone can be deceived. So the sooner he brings the boy back, the better.”

  The woman said, “What boy?” at exactly the same moment as the man said, “I’ll tell the master when he comes home, sir.”

  “Will that be today?”

  “Probably not, sir.”

  “When?”

  “We don’t know,” said the woman.

  “What do you do if anyone arrives to conduct business?”

  “This great oaf takes messages,” the woman said, prodding the man in the ribs.

  “Tell me how to find your master,” he said, “and I’ll go and sort things out with him before he gets into worse trouble.”

  The man looked at the woman, who said, “We don’t know where he is.”

  Ruso was losing patience. “Then how do you get messages to him?”