by Ruth Downie
‘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 reached 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 his 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 — ’
‘People to kill,’ put in Tilla, who had almost recovered her normal colour.
Ruso shifted his stick sideways and planted it on her foot. She jabbed him with her elbow and spoke up again. ‘We want to stop your master making a very big mistake,’ she informed the guards. ‘Even though he does not deserve it. When he finds out that he is made a fool of because you have not let us save him, what will he do to you?’
The men looked at each other.
‘My father was an old friend of his,’ said Ruso.
‘And I am Darlughdacha of the Corionotatae, amongst the Brigantes,’ said Tilla.
‘Who of the what?’
She repeated her British name and tribe.
‘Dar …’ The man frowned. ‘Oh, bugger it. Come up and tell him yourself.’
Ruso had expected some reaction from the dozen or so occupants of Fuscus’ cushioned and perfumed private balcony, but the magistrate’s cry of ‘Ruso! Just in time!’ was unexpectedly welcoming.
He surveyed the row of people enjoying a light lunch beneath the cool waft of ostrich-feather fans. A scattering of bald pates and togas was interspersed with richly jewelled and colourful figures whom he assumed to be wives, and a couple of young lads who must be Fuscus’ sons. Most had swivelled round in their seats and were staring at Tilla: the women with alarm and the men with interest. Nobody seemed very concerned about the proceedings in the arena below, where the bear had been recaged and Attalus’ costumed men were dragging the remains of its victims away through the sand.
‘Very timely, Ruso,’ continued Fuscus, waving a slice of melon in the direction of Calvus and Stilo and almost poking it into the eye of a bored-looking girl next to him whom Ruso assumed to be his latest wife. ‘Come over here and listen to this.’
Calvus and Stilo were standing awkwardly at the far end of the balcony. Evidently they had not been invited to sit and were doing their best not to turn disrespectful backs on Fuscus, his guests or the entertainment he had so generously provided.
Ruso beckoned Tilla forward. Below them, the musicians’ horns blared, and a couple of tumblers performed cartwheels across the arena, while the maintenance slaves scurried to rake over the sand before the next event. Ruso slipped in front of Fuscus’ elegantly carved chair and perched himself on the balustrade, blocking the view of several of the dignitaries.
A familiar voice said, ‘Stand up, man! At least show some respect!’ and Ruso realized that one of the bald pates in the less prestigious seats belonged to his former father-in-law.
Probus was looking even less pleased to see him than usual. Ruso ignored both him and the guards, who were clearly waiting for instructions to throw these interlopers out. Leaning forward, he murmured to Fuscus, ‘This woman has some information you need to hear straight away, sir.’
The ‘sir’ had slipped out inadvertently, but Fuscus did not appear to be listening anyway. ‘My cousin the Senator’s men,’ he announced, waving the melon in the direction of Calvus and Stilo, ‘have completed their investigation. They’ve come here to give us all a summary of the report they’ll be delivering to Rome.’
Tilla’s ‘No, they will not!’ from behind was a surprise to everyone including Ruso, who had intended to approach the matter with more subtlety.
Fuscus, ignoring her, turned to Calvus and Stilo. ‘I’m listening.’
The row of dignified heads turned to face the far end of the balcony. Calvus squared his shoulders, waited to make sure everyone was paying attention and opened his mouth to speak just as Tilla cried, ‘He is not an investigator!’
‘Control that woman, Ruso!’ demanded Probus.
‘Yeah,’ agreed Stilo, exchanging a glance with Calvus. ‘Shut up and listen, Blondie.’
The dignified heads swivelled again, and a murmur of protest arose. Fuscus snapped his fingers, and more guards stepped forward.
‘You need to listen to her,’ urged Ruso, ducking away from the balustrade before the approaching guard could push him over it. ‘These two are impostors.’ Ignoring protests from Stilo, he pointed to Calvus. ‘He’s a middle-man who provided a rotten ship, and that’s the captain who — ’
‘Nonsense!’ cried Probus, leaping to his feet. ‘These men have carried out a full and fair investigation into a suspicious death, and it has nothing to do with ships.’
‘D’you lot want to hear who done it, or not?’ shouted Stilo over a growing cacophony of horns from the musicians’ enclosure. One or two of the dignitaries half rose from their seats, looking around for reassurance.
‘Shut up and listen, Ruso,’ ordered Fuscus.
One of the guards had position
ed himself behind Tilla. Ruso motioned to her to be quiet.
Calvus had a restraining hand on Stilo’s shoulder. ‘Gentlemen, ladies — please excuse my friend. He’s not used to civilized company. I keep him to deal with the low and dangerous types I have to mix with in the course of my investigations.’
Fuscus glanced both ways along the row at his guests, assured himself that Tilla was under control and ordered the musicians to be toned down and a slave to refill the drinks before he said, ‘Carry on. We want to know the result of the investigation. We can’t have poisoners running loose around the town.’
Calvus bowed and began, ‘Magistrates, ladies …’ He cleared his throat. ‘I came to Gaul on the orders of the cousin of Magistrate Gabinius Fuscus, Senator Gabinius Valerius — ’
‘You are a liar!’ shouted Tilla, squealing as the guard grabbed her and flung her over his shoulder.
Before Ruso could intervene the other guard seized his arm and wrenched it up parallel with his spine. As he was dragged further away from Fuscus he was aware of Tilla yelling, ‘You are both liars!’ as she was carried away.
‘Mad bitch!’ shouted Stilo as the words ‘You murdered Justinus!’ echoed back up the steps.
‘She’s telling the truth,’ Ruso gasped as the guard forced his wrist up between his shoulder-blades. He hoped Tilla had not made a terrible mistake.
Fuscus drained his wine in one gulp. ‘You’d better have a good reason for this performance, Ruso.’
‘You need to know. They’re swindlers and murderers. They killed my brother-in-law. They might have killed Severus as well.’
Fuscus turned back to Calvus for an answer, but whatever denial Calvus was about to make was interrupted by Stilo’s ‘Your honours don’t want to listen to them lies. That barbarian’s protecting him.’
The row of dignified heads was now turning frantically in an effort to take in Calvus and Stilo at one end of the balcony, Ruso at the other end and Fuscus lumbering to his feet in the middle, calling for order as if this were an unruly council meeting. The roar of the crowd said something was happening in the arena, but nobody on the balcony was watching.