Ruso and the Root of All Evils mi-3

by Ruth Downie

  ‘You wouldn’t!’

  ‘You know how it is. Whoever gets picked as the culprit will have all his private business pegged out for inspection in the Forum while the lawyers argue over his moral character.’

  A couple of thick-set men dressed only in grimy loincloths strolled across the courtyard and began to sort through the pile of nets, one of them displaying a lattice of scars across his back as he bent over. Others were beginning to emerge from the barrack-room. Shrieks of ‘Xantus!’ rose over a chant of ‘Am-pli-a-tus, Am-pli-a-tus!’ and hammering on the gates. Probus stepped aside in disgust as something that looked distinctly like female underwear landed in the dust near his feet. He glanced around to make sure he could not be overheard before murmuring, ‘I thought better of you than this, Ruso.’

  ‘We’re caught in the same net,’ said Ruso. ‘There’s nothing to be gained by fighting each other. Help me.’

  ‘If you try to take me down — or Claudia — I’ll ruin you. You think I don’t know you’re still in far more debt than the farm is worth?’

  ‘So. We share what we know and we help each other.’

  Probus appeared to be considering his options, and not liking any of them. Finally he said, ‘I have to get ready for the funeral. I can give you some time tomorrow morning. Come alone and don’t tell anyone. You’ve caused enough trouble already.’

  ‘I’ll be there,’ promised Ruso. Watching his former father-in-law cross the courtyard and enter a shadowed door in the corner, it struck him that, if Probus was involved in the murder after all, a lone and secret visit to his house was definitely not a good idea. But the banker was also taking a risk in associating with him. They could circle round each other, deciding whether to land the first blow, like the pair of fighters now donning their glittering armour in the afternoon sun, or they could try and behave like partners with a common interest in seeking the truth.

  In the meantime, he was off to visit some men who claimed they weren’t poisoners either. There seemed to be a lot of it about.

  40

  ‘You again,’ observed the dark young man, pausing as he loaded the stack of snake boxes into the hand-cart. ‘Make it quick. We’re going.’

  Ruso said, ‘Valgius?’

  The man nestled the boxes into the straw and checked the fastening on the top lid before turning and fixing unblinking snake-eyes on Ruso. ‘I might be able to find him.’

  ‘Gnostus still doesn’t want to buy that snake.’

  ‘You’re from Gnostus?’ The furrows in the hard face spread around an unexpected grin. ‘Why didn’t you say so before?’

  ‘He said you might be able to help me with something.’

  The young man glanced around to make sure nobody was listening. ‘Your poisoning?’

  Ruso nodded.

  ‘My father said it sounded a bit like rhododendron honey.’

  Ruso stared at him, vaguely recalling theoretical warnings about honey from bees that had fed on the wrong plants. He had never met it in practice.

  ‘How fast does it act?’

  ‘Depends how much you take. It tastes fine, so you could eat a fair bit and not know.’

  ‘I thought you could tell bad honey from the colour?’

  ‘Nah,’ said Valgius. ‘Not really.’

  ‘You mean it could have been an accident?’ An accident! Of course. It made perfect sense. The killers were the bees whose honey had been used to make Severus’ morning medicine. The investigators could simply trace the source of the rogue honey, and record the whole episode as a tragic accident. The lifting of a burden to which he had become so accustomed made Ruso feel positively light-headed. He had solved the mystery! He was free!

  He was free for the fractional moment that passed between his question and Valgius replying, ‘Nah. Must have been done on purpose.’

  ‘But if you can’t tell …’

  Valgius was shaking his head. ‘Ask yourself this,’ he said. ‘How many bees are there between Gaul, at one end of the sea, and Pontus, right up past the other? You wouldn’t end up with rhododendron honey here by accident. Mind you, I’ve not heard of anyone dying from it, but I suppose if you ate a lot …’

  ‘If a man with a weak heart,’ mused Ruso, ‘were to drink a large quantity of poisonous honey and rosewater on a hot day …’

  ‘It’s possible.’

  ‘So how would you get hold of the honey in a place like this?’

  ‘Ah,’ said Valgius, turning back to the cart. ‘That’s your problem. Me, I’ve got to get all the boys and girls loaded up before the old man gets back.’

  Ruso peered at the boxes, curious. ‘Can you really tell the boys from the girls?’

  ‘You can sometimes get an idea from the tail,’ said the man. ‘But if you want to be sure you need two people, a blunt probe, and — ’

  ‘Never mind,’ said Ruso, backing away with a hand held out in surrender. ‘Another time.’

  The man who had failed to sell Ruso the frankincense gave up pretending to be pleased to see him again when he found out why he had come. ‘I don’t know who’s been telling you that rubbish,’ he insisted. ‘I’m only a simple root-cutter. Remedies and cosmetics. I don’t sell food.’

  ‘That’s funny,’ said Ruso. ‘Because three of the people I’ve spoken to around here told me you were the man to ask.’

  ‘That lot?’ demanded the root-cutter, glancing round the other stallholders, who were beginning to pack up at the end of the afternoon’s trading. ‘What do they know? Like I tell them, if you want to sell as much as me, make the effort to invest in quality product. Walk the hills, find the best places, get out of bed before dawn every morning and get cracking. But oh, no. It’s easier to sit on your backside and gossip about other people.’

  Ruso said, ‘I’m disappointed. I’d have thought with your range, exotic honeys would have been a good complement.’

  The man upended the wooden tray on which he had displayed his produce and banged it to detach the mud and stray leaves. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Pity,’ said Ruso. ‘It would have been fun. Ah well. I suppose it’ll be the old laxatives-in-the-soup routine, then. Unless you know anybody else I could try?’

  The man wiped the rest of the dirt from the tray and said, ‘What is it you’re looking for, exactly?’

  Ruso told him.

  ‘You don’t want to eat rhododendron honey. Send you silly.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Ruso. ‘It’s my brother’s birthday coming up. We always play jokes on each other.’ He indicated his bandaged foot. ‘Look what he did to me.’

  ‘Funny kind of a joke.’

  ‘Family tradition,’ explained Ruso. ‘Point of honour.’

  The man looked as though he had more to say, but had stifled it in the face of a prospective sale. ‘You’d have to order it at least ten days in advance,’ he said. ‘There’s not much call for it.’

  Ruso muttered a curse in what he hoped was a disappointed tone, and explained that the birthday was the day after tomorrow. The root-cutter shrugged an apology and groped under the stall for an empty basket. He began to stack the unsold medicine pots in it.

  ‘What about your supplier?’ Ruso tried. ‘Could I go direct?’

  The man carried on working, clearly not such a fool as to reveal the name of his source and sacrifice his profit. ‘Too much could make him ill anyway,’ he warned. ‘You’d be safer with the laxatives.’

  Ruso wondered how much longer he could keep this up. Claudia’s voice floated into his mind, reminding him that he was a terrible liar. He was probably wasting his time. He should have gone back to ask Gnostus about local suppliers of dubious substances. Still, while he was here he might as well finish the job.

  ‘What about your last customer for it?’ he tried. ‘When did you last sell any? Would he have some left?’

  ‘She,’ corrected the man.

  Ruso felt his stomach muscles tighten. Trying to keep his voice even, he said, ‘If I could find her, I’d make he
r a good offer.’

  ‘I didn’t ask her name.’

  ‘What does she look like? Perhaps she’s somebody I already know.’

  The man’s eyes narrowed. ‘I don’t pass on my customers’ business. Now clear off. I’m an honest trader and I’m busy.’

  The man bent down to heave up another basket. The knife-point pressed against his left kidney took him by surprise.

  ‘I was lying,’ said Ruso, ramming the tip of his forefinger harder into the man’s back and hoping he could not turn his head far enough to see the knife Ruso hadn’t had time to get out still slung on his belt. ‘It’s not my brother’s birthday. It’s about a murder investigation. And if you don’t tell me who bought that honey, you’re going to have much nastier people than me round here trying to help you remember.’

  Ruso’s hands were shaking as he untethered the mule. It could not be true. It could not be …

  The man had no reason to lie.

  He had sold the poisonous honey several days ago to a respectable young woman who had known exactly what she wanted. A young woman with orange curls and lots of make-up. No, he couldn’t remember what she had been wearing, but he remembered what she had on her feet because she had trodden in something and blamed him for not keeping the pavement clean. So he had lent her a cloth to wipe the mess off her fancy sandals. Coral-pink sandals with pearls set in the front.

  41

  Severus’ funeral passed with neither incident nor enlightenment, and if anyone thought he was being disposed of with indecent haste, they did not say so in Ruso’s hearing. All the members of the Petreius family who were old enough to behave themselves had been marshalled at the little cemetery on the hill behind the Senator’s house. Marcia and Flora looked suitably drab and dishevelled and inappropriately cheerful. A funeral meant another day away from the privilege of studying music and poetry.

  Ennia spent most of the funeral weeping on the sloping shoulder of Zosimus the steward, breaking off only occasionally to glare at Claudia. Fuscus, as a respectable magistrate, stood well away from Probus, the financier, in the ranks of solemn-faced local worthies come to pay their last respects to the agent of My Cousin The Senator. Several drivers dozed by expensive carriages, ready to facilitate a quick escape for their masters when the funeral feast — to which the Petreius family had not been invited — was over.

  The grief and fear on the faces of the estate staff was all too real. Ruso counted at least thirty of them, and there would be others back at the house busily cleansing and purifying.

  As the burning wood crackled and the column of smoke rose into the clear sky the smell of incense failed to disguise the stench of burning flesh.

  Ruso glanced around the mourners. Everyone he knew who might possibly have a motive for poisoning Severus was here. If he were the Senator’s investigator, which one would he decide to accuse?

  The answer was obvious. The only certain way to save himself would be to reveal that Claudia had bought the honey. And if he did that, Probus would bring the fragile edifice of the family debts crashing down around him. He would survive as the powerless guardian of a family with nowhere to live. Tilla would have to choose whether to stay here and share his disgrace, or travel home alone.

  42

  This god did not have much of a house. Fifteen or twenty of his followers were crowded into a stone outbuilding that seemed to have been hastily cleared for the purpose. There was no statue. No shrine. No sacrifice this evening, either. Tilla was relieved about that. Galla did not seem the sort to be involved in murdering babies and drinking their blood, but she had heard that this dreadful practice was the reason the followers of Christos were only marginally more popular with Rome than the Druids. Mind you, much of what the Romans said about the Druids was lies too.

  When she asked about the sacrifice, Galla assured her that it had already been done. There was no sign of it. Tilla glanced out through the crack between the door-frame and the wall. All she could see in the narrow streak of vision was a massive kiln and a stack of wood ready to fuel it.

  There was no blood — just a motley selection of food and drink that the worshippers had brought and laid on the cloth in the middle of the floor. Galla had brought the bread she had saved from her lunch. Tilla, who had misunderstood her invitation to meet her brothers and sisters, was embarrassed to find that she had come to face a new god empty-handed. But what could she have brought? The fleece stuffed under her bed was inedible and she could not imagine a god — or anyone else — wanting the grape-and-feet juice she had helped to produce yesterday. Casting her eye over scattered loaves of bread, grapes, olives, two cheeses, small cakes and a platter of cold chicken, she considered the offering she had made to the goddess in Nemausus. Hair would definitely be wrong here.

  ‘Those who have, bring to share,’ explained Galla, evidently sensing her discomfort. One child had brought a striped cat, but since the sacrifice had already been carried out, it was presumably safe curled up on her lap. Two old women arrived without gifts and sat huddled under their shawls by the edge of the cloth. Moments later one of them appeared to be chewing. Either she was sucking her teeth from habit or she had sneaked something from the cloth before everyone else started.

  The man who seemed to be the leader welcomed everyone to the supper, ‘especially brother Solemnis, who has brought greetings from our friends by the river at Arelate …’ Brother Solemnis was a bony youth with buck teeth. ‘And it’s a joy to welcome two new sisters.’ He glanced at one of the old women. ‘Agatha from the town, and …’

  Tilla said, ‘Darlughdacha,’ at the same moment as Galla said, ‘Tilla.’

  ‘But you can call me Tilla,’ she conceded. The god would not know her by her British name anyway.

  ‘You’ve come a long way.’

  ‘From Britannia.’

  ‘It’s a delight to have you here, Sister.’

  She found herself returning his smile, surprised and a little suspicious that these people were so glad to see her. This was the warmest welcome she had received anywhere since they had left home.

  ‘You must take our greetings back to the believers in Britannia,’ continued the man.

  ‘I do not think there are any,’ she said.

  ‘Then the Lord has a job for you!’ The man seemed happy to hear this. ‘You will have the honour of telling them the good news!’

  Everyone looked so pleased at this prospect that Tilla decided not to explain how few Britons would be interested in announcements from the far end of Gaul, good or otherwise.

  Someone started singing. Others joined in. Knowing neither tune nor words, Tilla was obliged to listen. It became clear that this god welcomed both those who could sing in tune and those who only thought they could. Things would have been much improved by a few pipes and some dancing, but the food was taking up the only space left on the floor, and for some reason nobody suggested going outside. Indeed, even the singing was surprisingly restrained, although some of the participants closed their eyes and began to sway as if deeply moved. When it was over Galla leaned across and whispered, ‘It is safe here, but it is best not to draw attention.’

  By the time the leader had thanked Christos at length for the food and everyone had opened their eyes again, several little cakes had vanished from the platter and both old ladies were sucking their teeth.

  Privately Tilla thought that the leader would have been wiser not to speak to Christos about eating his flesh and drinking his blood. It was the sort of thing that got people into trouble. She suspected this group had been badly advised. They did not have a proper priest: the man in charge was dressed as an ordinary worker. It was the same at home. Her mother had always said that since the Druids went into hiding, odd ideas had been allowed to flourish like weeds.

  ‘We will eat and drink together until the Lord comes,’ announced the leader.

  ‘He is coming tonight?’ whispered Tilla, wondering whether this was an illicit party and the lord who owned the building w
ould expect to find his workers at their duties.

  ‘We never know,’ said Galla.

  No one seemed very worried. Perhaps they had set up some sort of a lookout. For some reason Tilla was reminded of a long-dead aunt who had set out a bowl every evening for her absent husband even though everybody knew he had set up home with another woman down in Eburacum.

  During the meal the leader and another man took turns to entertain the diners with Greek read from a battered scroll, while a woman translated into Latin. The story was not a patch on the stories they had at home. It was not a story at all. It seemed to be just some sort of letter urging people somewhere else to cheer up because their god was looking after them even if they ran out of food or clothes or if people attacked them. For a moment she wondered what was the point of worshipping a god who refused to defend his followers, then it occurred to her that this was uncomfortably close to the situation at home.

  When most of the food was gone and one of the old women had hidden half a loaf of bread under her shawl, it was time to pray to the god again. Tilla glanced around at the faces: the two old women, five or six sun-browned men with the hard hands and patched tunics of farm slaves, the girl stroking the striped cat, the leader and his wife, three women who were not wealthy, a couple of child slaves, and the bony youth from Arelate. All had their eyes closed. She supposed they were busy trying to picture the god they could not see but who, according to Galla on the way over here, was everywhere and loved everybody. Tilla let her own eyes drift shut and tried to imagine this god, but without success. How would you recognize him? Without a statue to show what he looked like, or even a tree or a rock to mark his special home, how could anyone tell whether he was somewhere — or nowhere?

  Since it seemed anyone could pray and everyone wanted to, the prayers went on a long time. Some of them were in Gaulish or Greek. One of the ones she understood was a request to the god to protect and guide the Emperor.

  Tilla pursed her lips. If any of them had seen what his Army had done in the north of her land, they would not be praying for the Emperor.