Ruso and the Root of All Evils mi-3

by Ruth Downie

  ‘Dear me,’ she observed before he could open his mouth, ‘that sage is looking very squashed. I hope it wasn’t the children.’

  Ruso followed her gaze to the battered flowerbed at the foot of the pergola and said, ‘Cass, I need to know exactly what happened when Severus came here.’

  ‘We haven’t made Tilla very welcome either, have we? I hear Arria has plans for you and Lollia Saturnina instead.’

  ‘Arria has plans for lots of things.’

  ‘Lollia Saturnina is a very nice woman, Gaius. But I don’t think she’s looking for a husband.’

  Following his sister-in-law up the porch steps, he said, ‘I doubt anyone’s looking to marry a suspected poisoner.’

  Cass giggled. ‘Oh, Gaius. Anyone who knows you knows that you couldn’t possibly have done a thing like that.’ They crossed the hall, and she paused with her hand on the latch of the children’s room. ‘Come in and say goodnight to them,’ she urged. ‘Then we can talk.’

  They were greeted by the sight of a naked Little Gaius beaming at them from his pot. Around him was an array of beds that were all empty except the one from which the laundrymaid had just sprung up, patting her bedraggled hair back into place. Apparently Master Lucius had taken the other children to the kitchen in search of supper.

  Cass dismissed the maid, inspected the contents of the pot and informed their producer that he was a very good boy. ‘Isn’t he a good boy, Uncle Gaius? Stand up, baby, and let’s give you a nice wash.’

  ‘He’s a fine little chap,’ observed Ruso, noting with approval that all of his namesake’s parts were in the right places and wondering if one ever got to the end of a conversation once one was blessed with children. ‘Cass, I need to — ’

  ‘But he doesn’t talk yet,’ replied his mother, pursuing the toddler across the room and deftly manoeuvring a tunic over his head before he could escape. ‘All the others did. Do you think we should do something?’

  ‘I don’t know much about children, to be honest,’ said Ruso. ‘He looks healthy enough.’ Judging by the all-over tan, young Gaius took frequent exercise in the fresh air, as unencumbered by clothes as any Greek athlete. ‘His hearing seems fine. He’ll probably talk when he’s got something to say.’

  She placed the pot on top of a cupboard beside a bowl of peaches, apparently oblivious to her son’s offering within, and wiped her hands on a damp cloth. ‘Bless you, Gaius. I’m sure you’re right. It’s very reassuring having a doctor in the family. Children are such a worry. You know how it is. And Lucius is under such a lot of strain, coping with everything. I’m really glad you’re home.’

  ‘Lucius isn’t.’

  She reached towards the pot without looking, realized her mistake and picked up the bowl instead. ‘He’s just worried about the money. He’s glad to have you here really.’

  Ruso marvelled afresh at the way some women could interpret their husbands’ statements to mean exactly the opposite of what they said.

  Cass was saying, ‘… none of us wants to think what could happen if we were accused of poisoning Severus.’

  ‘That’s why I need to ask you — ’

  ‘Have a peach, Gaius. Tell me something. You never really got on with Arria, did you?’

  As Ruso took a peach, his namesake ran across and reached up for it, dancing on the tips of small pudgy feet and crying, ‘Aah!’ in case Ruso failed to notice him.

  ‘He can have a slice,’ suggested his mother.

  ‘Aah!’

  ‘In a minute,’ Ruso promised him, unsheathing his knife to slice round the stone and wondering whether children really should be rewarded for wandering about instead of going to bed, even if peaches were good for the digestion. ‘When you see what she’s done to the family,’ he said, twisting the two halves apart and cutting a generous slice, ‘I think I had good reason.’

  ‘Say thank you to Uncle Gaius.’

  The child looked at his mother as if she had just suggested something very odd and retreated with peach juice dripping down his chin and soaking into his clean bedtime tunic.

  He indicated the child. ‘There’s no money to bring him up, nor his brothers and sisters, because she wouldn’t stop spending, and Father wouldn’t stand up to her.’

  Cass weighed a peach in one hand and pondered that for a moment. ‘Your father once said to me that he only wanted to see her happy.’

  ‘What about the rest of us?’

  ‘He said she had a difficult time fitting in here. Everybody was very fond of your mother.’

  Ruso wondered how much Cass had been told about the arguments. About the times when he had used ‘You’re not my mother!’ as a weapon. Now he thought about it, his new stepmother could not have been much older on arrival than Marcia was now. The thought of Marcia being left in charge of two small boys was frightening. The thought of Marcia being given a limitless budget was positively terrifying.

  Marcia borrowing money. That wretched rumour was another thing he was going to have to tackle tomorrow. So far he had failed to get any relevant sense out of Cass, whom he liked and who appeared to like him. How he was going to worm any truth out of Marcia, who didn’t like him at all, he had no idea.

  ‘You were asking about Severus,’ said Cass, unexpectedly returning to the subject she had ignored earlier.

  ‘Yes.’ How did women do that, he wondered? And why?

  ‘I won’t be wasting any tears on him, despicable man. Lucius has hardly slept for weeks with all the worry.’

  ‘So yesterday …?’

  ‘He turned up not very long before you did. He said he knew you were home and not to try and make out you weren’t.’

  Ruso nodded, pretending not to notice Little Gaius spitting a lump of peach on to the floor behind his mother’s back.

  ‘I said you were in town and we’d ask you to call on him when you got back,’ continued Cass, ‘and he said no, he’d wait. I offered to go and find Lucius, but he said no to that, too.’

  ‘Did he seem ill to you?’

  ‘I thought he might have been drinking. I fetched him some water and hoped you would come home quickly.’

  ‘Where did you get the water?’

  ‘I called the kitchen-boy to fetch it from the well so it was cold. There was nothing wrong with it: I had a sip myself before I took it into the hall. Then you arrived.’

  ‘How long was he alone in the hall?’

  ‘Just as long as it took to get the water.’

  ‘And you were waiting — where?’

  She frowned. ‘In the kitchen, Gaius. If I’d had some poison handy I might well have put it in his cup while Cook wasn’t watching, but I didn’t.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘I know. You have to ask. I don’t suppose you’ve had a chance to find out anything about my brother?’

  ‘Not much, I’m afraid.’ There was no point in upsetting her by passing on the gossip Tilla had heard about the poor state of the Pride of the South. ‘Though I did wonder why he was on the ship in the first place. If Severus was responsible for the cargo, why didn’t he send one of the Senator’s men to look after it?’

  ‘It wasn’t anything to do with the Senator,’ she explained. ‘Severus was running the venture for himself. Justinus was there because his employer was the one who had loaned Severus the money.’

  Ruso’s attempts to disentangle this were complicated by Little Gaius’ efforts to climb up his leg in search of more peach.

  Cass prised the child off and stood on tiptoe to kiss Ruso on the cheek. ‘You’re a dear man, Gaius. We must all try not to worry. It’s lovely to see you happy with Tilla and I know you’ll do your very best to sort everything out.’

  Was he happy with Tilla? Tilla certainly did not seem happy with him.

  Ruso rolled off the bed and shoved his feet into the indoor sandals Arria had insisted Lucius lend him. The connection between Cass’s brother Justinus and Severus was bothering him, although it probably had nothing to do with the deaths of either
of them. Anyway, Justinus was one of the very few people who definitely hadn’t murdered Severus.

  In the unlikely event that they might help him find out who had, Ruso decided to offer some of Lucius’ best wine to the household gods before dinner. Then, while Tilla enjoyed the company of the servants, he would eat with his family amidst the dancing cupids of the dining room.

  He did not feel like a dear man. He suspected that even his very best was not going to be good enough to sort this mess out. He recalled the way Little Gaius had run about the bedroom with peach juice dripping down his chin, oblivious to the fears of the adults whose duty it was to protect him.

  Unless Ruso could expose the real poisoner of Severus before the investigator got here, he might be too busy fighting for his life in a court case to do anything about saving the farm. If the family were turned off the land, the sight of Little Gaius would be one of the memories that would haunt him.

  37

  Disaster might be looming, but discipline had to be maintained. The next day, as Ruso led Marcia towards the stone bench in the garden, he was silently mourning the erosion of the power of the Paterfamilias. There had been a time — he was not sure when, but he knew there had been one — when the head of a Roman household had enjoyed absolute power as well as ultimate responsibility. When orders were obeyed without question. When women were grateful to be protected — grateful, indeed, not to be left on the rubbish dump at birth — and happy to be married off whenever and to whomsoever the family deemed appropriate. When a decent man could keep his household in order by threatening them not only with a sound beating, but with execution.

  He had to concede that the beheading of unruly relatives seemed a little harsh, but obviously one would exercise discretion. The point was, in the old days, a man had commanded respect. What would his ancestors have done, had any of them been faced with a scowling Marcia, arms folded, demanding, ‘You said you were going to talk to somebody. So have you talked to them?’

  ‘Not in the way you mean,’ said Ruso, lowering himself on to the bench.

  ‘Gaius, you promised — ’

  ‘Sit down.’

  ‘But you said — ’

  ‘Sit down, Marcia.’

  ‘But you promised you would — ’

  ‘Sit down.’

  ‘I’m not going to sit down if you shout at me!’

  ‘I wasn’t,’ said Ruso, who hadn’t been and was not sure why he had got himself into an argument about sitting down when she could hear what he had to say quite well standing up. ‘But if you don’t listen to me, I will shout like a centurion ordering his men on a parade ground. And then your mother will come out and hear what I’m going to say.’

  His satisfaction as she slumped down beside him on the bench was short-lived. He had, he realized, effectively promised not to tell Arria. Still, Marcia was listening now. At least he assumed she was listening, although she seemed to have found something that urgently needed gouging out from beneath one of her fingernails.

  ‘Are you particularly short of money for some reason, Marcia?’

  ‘We’re all short of money in this family. Lucius is mean and so are you.’

  ‘Because I’ve been told,’ he said, ‘that you’ve been trying to borrow against your dowry.’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘Never mind. Is it true?’

  ‘Is it true?’ The wide hazel eyes that reminded him of Arria met his own in an expression of innocence and outrage. ‘Of course it’s not true! How could I? I haven’t got a dowry. That’s the whole point!’

  ‘That would be one of the reasons you’ve been refused, I expect,’ he ventured, still unable to believe that Probus’ guard would have invented such a tale.

  ‘I haven’t — I can’t believe I’m hearing this!’

  ‘So you can assure me you haven’t been trying to raise money on the quiet? Because obviously that would be very embarrassing. Not only for me as your guardian, but for the whole of the family.’

  ‘You’re always trying to raise money. You and Lucius. Everybody knows.’

  ‘That’s different.’

  ‘Well, I haven’t! And I think you’re horrible even to think I might. What would I need money for?’

  ‘You tell me.’

  ‘Who was it? I bet it was that barber, wasn’t it? I bet he said it just to stop you complaining about that haircut.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with my haircut, and it wasn’t the barber. Look, I’m sorry about the dowry. Maybe I should have explained what’s going on.’

  ‘I know what’s going on, Gaius. Lucius made a mess of paying Claudia’s husband, so he was threatening to take us to court in Rome to get all of our money — not that we’ve got any, according to Lucius — then he came over here and dropped dead, and now everybody’s saying you poisoned him.’

  Ruso cleared his throat. ‘Well, I suppose that’s more or less it.’

  ‘But I shan’t believe them, Gaius. Do you know why? Because I don’t go round listening to gossip.’ She got to her feet. ‘And neither should you. Can I go now?’

  He watched his sister stalk back towards the house, the sunlight filtering through the leaves over the pergola and dappling the linen of her tunic. Perhaps, prejudiced by the mother’s past excesses, he had misjudged the daughter. That must be the answer, because the other possibility was not fit to contemplate. Surely a veteran of his wide international experience could not have been so easily outmanoeuvred by an almost-sixteen-year-old girl?

  38

  Ruso seemed to be doing no better at finding out who had poisoned Severus than he had at disciplining Marcia. ‘Who, how and why?’ might be the right questions, but he did not like the answers he had found so far and he was running out of places to search for new ones. He had even toyed with the idea that the man might have poisoned himself, only to dismiss it as a sign of his own desperation.

  He scowled at the crack in the side of the pond. The news of the death would not even have reached Rome yet. There was still time for him to sort out this mess. Meanwhile, he needed to clear his head. He needed a change of scene. He needed to get back to work. He might be a man hovering on the brink of ruin, but he knew how to wield a scalpel. There was one man in town who might be glad to see him, and just possibly that man might know something about poisons.

  As he was reaching for his stick, a figure he did not recognize strolled in through the gate, patted the dog on the head and made for the house. Arria appeared in the doorway and bustled down the steps to meet him, crying, ‘There you are!’ and holding out a hand to be kissed.

  Moments later Ruso found himself being introduced to Diphilus the builder, a man on the oily side of handsome. He was, as Arria announced with joy, available for dinner tomorrow evening. Ruso suspected Diphilus was the sort of man who was available for dinner any evening as long as he wasn’t paying for it.

  ‘Are you available for clearing drains this morning?’

  ‘Gaius is just out of the Army,’ said Arria, as if she had to excuse him. ‘Wounded by those dreadful Britons.’

  Diphilus smiled at them both and said he would be honoured to look at the drains of a war hero. Arria looked delighted. Ruso, feeling outnumbered, went across to the stables. He would probably get more sense out of the mule.

  Two early shoppers had paused to chat in the shade of the Forum wall. Ruso was relieved to see that the latest exhortation to support Fuscus, partially obscured behind them, was not long enough to begin with ‘G. Petreius Ruso, Veteran of the …’ His relief was short-lived. Glancing back over his shoulder as he rode past, he saw the wall from a different angle.

  He had just made out ‘The town poisoner says vote for …’ when the shorter of the two women shouted, ‘Oi! Who d’you think you’re staring at?’

  Ruso urged the mule on down the street, pursued by a cry of ‘We’re respectable married women! You keep your eyes to yourself!’

  The games were not taking place for another two days, but a
s he squinted up at the glaring white stone of the amphitheatre he could see small silhouettes moving about on the parapet, slotting in the masts for the sails that would be pulled across to shade the audience from sunstroke. Below them, other shapes appeared and vanished again, hurrying around the stone lattice of arches and corridors that formed the massive and elegant oval in which Fuscus’ entertainment would take place.

  A cart piled high with animal cages was being manoeuvred in beneath the carved bulls’ heads that adorned the main entrance. Whatever was in the cages was smelly but silent, and hidden by a sailcloth that had been thrown over the top as a rough shade. Ruso rode on around the outside of the building. As he passed, some sort of animal noise — a roar or a bellow, it was hard to say which — echoed from deep within the arches. The mule pricked up its ears but plodded on past the municipal slaves busy sweeping the flagstones. Presumably whatever had made the sound would have its blood mixed in with the sand of the arena in a couple of days.

  Further around, someone was applying fresh paint to the entrance numbers on the sides of the arches. Traders were unloading their vehicles. A sweet stall, a fritter vendor and a souvenir salesman had already claimed the shade under the trees across the street, hoping to attract early trade. All were no doubt grateful to Fuscus for the opportunity to make a little extra money. As, in a roundabout way, was Ruso.

  The gladiators’ barracks in the building next door were marked by a gaggle of excited females clustered around the heavy gates, waiting for a glimpse of their heroes. Ruso hoped that Marcia and Flora had never stooped to cupping their hands around their mouths and yelling encouragement through the cracks in the woodwork. Still, these alarmingly forthright young women might be of use to him now. Their devotion would have armed them with the information he needed.

  Ruso dismounted and led the mule into the haze of competing perfumes.

  ‘What’s the name of the doctor in there?’ he asked a couple of pink-cheeked girls whose diaphanous outfits were made even more distracting by the way they stuck to their owners in the heat.