Ruso and the Root of All Evils mi-3

by Ruth Downie

  Even Britannia was not home. By now someone else would be renting that little upstairs room outside the fort. Some other soldier’s woman, perhaps. Someone who would never be part of the Army but who was no longer part of her own people either. Someone to whom marriage did not seem important, but who might one day find herself desperate for a welcome amongst the family of a man who was not her husband.

  Lucius had already told them about the surprise arrival of the investigators as they had driven out of Arelate. He was now giving Cass a repeat account of exactly what they had said to him and what he had said back. Lucius’ part in the story was getting bigger every time he told it. She caught the sound of a yawn. Cass must be weary after all that lying awake worrying about spiders, but she was still loyally pressing her husband with questions as if he were the cleverest, bravest and most interesting man in the world. And then what happened? And what did you do? No, really? So what do you think will happen about the dogbane?

  Lucius moved on to describing his trials during his search for them in Arelate, and how he had visited all five of the marine shipping offices, ‘but nobody could remember seeing you’. Tilla could hear the accusation in his voice. She saw now that she had gone about everything in the wrong way. She did not understand how things worked here. She had never even heard of marine shipping offices. No wonder she had failed. They had found neither the mysterious Ponticus that Lucius had come to warn them about nor any real trace of the ghostly Captain Copreus.

  She was lucky they had not been pursued for knifing Onion-breath in the bar. She supposed she would have to tell the Medicus about that before one of the others did. It was not the sort of thing a Roman looked for in a woman. She was willing to bet that the widow next door had never killed a man in a bar fight. Even the old wife had used poison, so that she could pretend she hadn’t done it and the Medicus could imagine that he believed her.

  Tilla trapped the far end of the cloak between her feet and tugged it down. She wondered what the Medicus had said to the investigators. She saw now what a terrible mistake this trip had been. She should have stayed back at the farm, loyally supporting him as if she thought he too was the cleverest, bravest and most interesting man in the world. That was what Roman men seemed to want. Instead, afraid of looking a fool over dinner and convinced she could do something about Cass’s brother when everyone else had failed, she had run away.

  Tilla yawned and shifted the bag that she had folded into a lumpy pillow. The Medicus had once asked her to marry him. She had refused. He would not ask again now.

  Lucius and Cass were still talking softly as her jumbled thoughts gradually settled into stillness. For a brief moment she was aware that something important had just drifted past her. It was the sort of unexpected clarity that sometimes lit the mind in the middle of the night: an understanding usually followed by the thought, I must remember that in the morning, but already when she tried to catch it, it was gone.

  70

  The morning light was barely outlining the shutters when Ruso opened his eyes and remembered two things: firstly that Tilla was not here and secondly that this was the day of the games, and he had not yet given Tertius’ money to the aunt. Since he could hardly stroll on to Lollia’s property without greeting her, he supposed that would mean yet another meeting. Arria would be proud of him.

  Later, watching the early sun gild Lollia’s hair as she took the two coins from him to give to Tertius’ aunt, he wondered where that same sun would find Tilla and Cass this morning. He had already spoken to the household gods on their behalf. Since the gods could not be relied upon to act unaided, as soon as he had discharged his duties at the amphitheatre, he was going to hire a decent horse and ride to Arelate.

  Making his way back across the olive grove in search of breakfast, it occurred to him that, until recently, if he had ever felt in the mood to marry again, he would have been searching for someone exactly like Lollia Saturnina. Now, distracted by worries about Tilla, he could not recall a single word of what she had just said to him.

  71

  They were on the barge, and he was telling her she must not get her words muddled up. Calvus and Stilvicus. Calpreo and Ponto. Repeat after me. Pons, Pontis, Ponticorum, Ponticuli, Ponticissimissimus. You must learn to speak Latin properly in a peaceful country, Tilla!

  The widow who had lamed his horse was catching up with him now, leaping over the rows of amphorae with her hair streaming out behind her. Tilla tried to follow, but her feet were mired in the grape juice, and as soon as she pulled one free she remembered the other one and found it was stuck again. She knew she should pray for help but she could not remember the right words in Latin, and then the drowned ship’s captain who was lying in the corner of the winery woke up, pointing at the knife in his chest with two fingers and laughing. With a huge effort, she leaped out of the trough, fled across the winery, crashed her forehead into the beam of the winepress and found herself lying on the ground underneath a big wooden box, stunned and terrified.

  A familiar voice said, ‘Are you all right, miss?’ She tried to remember where she had heard it before.

  ‘You forgot where you were,’ said the stable lad. ‘There’s no room to sit up under here. Is your head all right?’

  She ran a hand over her forehead and decided it was. Then she lay back beneath the cart and allowed her mind to poke at the edges of the fear, proving to herself that it could not rise and swallow her. It had been a dream: a confusion of all the things that had happened to her. She was getting everything and everybody mixed up, especially the nasty men. Lucius had told them how one of the investigators had frightened the children by waving the stumps of his fingers in their faces. The other one … had nothing to do with it. The other one was some Onion-breathed sailor who thought it was funny to terrify innocent women and who had lived to regret it, but not for long.

  She saw again the twin fingers of Onion-breath stabbing towards her eyes in that horrible bar. His fingers had not been missing, just tucked away in the palm of his left hand when he had pretended to be Copreus …

  She narrowly missed banging her head on the cart again.

  ‘Lucius, wake up! How many fingers does this investigator man not have?’

  ‘Uh?’

  Cass’s sleepy voice repeated the question.

  Lucius grunted, ‘Two.’

  ‘Which hand?’

  ‘What’s for breakfast?’

  ‘Close your eyes,’ insisted Tilla, leaning over the side of the cart so he could see her upside down. ‘See him in your mind. Which hand?’

  Lucius yawned. She ducked out of range as he stretched his arms into the early-morning air.

  ‘Think!’ she urged.

  Cass, seeing the expression on Tilla’s face, said, ‘This might be important, husband.’

  ‘Um … right.’

  ‘Tell me what else he looks like. And the other one.’

  Lucius gave a grunt of protest, then slowly described the heavy build and the cropped hair and the tattoos.

  Tilla recalled the description they had been given of Ponticus by the grim-faced Phoebe. ‘Is the other one short, about thirty years old, with a clever face and he wears a ring with a red stone?’

  Lucius frowned. ‘If you already know, why are you waking me up?’

  She said, ‘Calvus and Stilo. Ponticus and Copreus. They are not drowned, Cass! Lucius has met them at the farm, and the Medicus is back in Nemausus asking questions about the things they have done.’

  ‘Holy gods,’ said Lucius, pushing strands of hair out of his eyes and sitting up. At last he seemed to have understood. ‘Wake up, wife. We need to get back and warn Gaius.’

  72

  The youth in the usher’s tunic stepped out in front of them. ‘Ladies only up here, sir!’

  Ruso fixed him with a glare that suggested if he did not get out of the way, he would shortly find himself tumbling down the several flights of steps that the remnant of the Petreius family had just toiled up. ‘I�
�m escorting these ladies to their seats,’ he growled.

  The youth glanced both ways along the corridor. Failing to spot any other officials amongst the spectators clambering around the stone labyrinth of the amphitheatre, he stepped smartly aside with ‘Of course, sir!’ as if this had been his intention all along.

  The crush of people thinned as they climbed the final steps. Eventually the four of them stood blinking in the morning sun, staring out across the vast oval whose circumference was alive with the hubbub of spectators settling in for a day’s entertainment.

  Arria glanced up at the canopy stretched out above the curving rows of benches. ‘Well, at least we shall be in the shade.’

  ‘I told you,’ said Flora. ‘It said on the notices. Shades will be provided.’

  ‘We’ll sit down here,’ announced Marcia, starting to pick her way along the front row before anyone could argue.

  Arria called after her, ‘We’d be more private higher up, dear!’

  ‘I want to see!’

  Arria pursed her lips and turned to Ruso as if to say, what can I do with her?

  Marcia settled herself next to an aisle on the front tier of seats and flung the green stole sideways as far as it would reach to prevent any other hopefuls sitting too close before her family caught up. Ruso, who found the narrow space between the benches and the parapet no easier to negotiate than the stairs, edged along through the gap and finally unslung the sack of supplies from his shoulder. Arria busied herself pulling out the contents. Marcia leaned her elbows on the parapet and stared down at the small figures of the slaves raking the arena, as if glaring at an expanse of sand dotted with bushes in pots — presumably the forest for the morning’s wild animal hunts — would give her some clue about how events would unfold later in the day.

  ‘I don’t know why we have to sit up here,’ she grumbled. ‘We can’t see a thing.’

  Flora grabbed a cushion from the bag and knelt on it, scanning the tiers of seats above them to see if she recognized any of the other females edging along the rows and snatching up their skirts to scale the stone steps.

  ‘Would you like a cushion, dear?’

  When Marcia did not reply, Arria leaned around Flora and tapped her on the knee. ‘Do take one, dear, the seats are very hard.’

  Marcia snatched the cushion with an ‘Ohh!’ of exasperation and slapped it down on the seat as if she were swatting a wasp.

  Ruso removed the food basket and two leather-covered water-bottles from the sack. He was relieved to see that neither was the one that had belonged to Severus. ‘Anybody want a drink?’

  ‘I don’t need a drink!’

  ‘Marcia, please!’ said Arria. ‘There’s no need to be rude.’

  ‘I want some,’ said Flora, seizing one of the bottles and ignoring her mother’s plea to use a cup.

  ‘I’ll come and find you if I can,’ promised Ruso. ‘If I don’t — ’

  His reply was interrupted by a shrill and slightly off-key blast of trumpets.

  ‘I know, dear,’ Arria assured him over the rising noise of the crowd. ‘We’ll make our way over to the Augustus gate and hire a carriage. Flora, really! What will people think? You really must — oh look, here they come!’

  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.’