by Ruth Downie
‘I’ve got my own reminder, thanks,’ said Ruso, holding up his hands. He had pulled on a clean tunic to walk back to the gladiators’ barracks, but he had not had time for a thorough scrub. The vendor retreated with a look that mingled respect with alarm.
Tilla said, ‘I think I will see this place in bad dreams.’
Ruso put one arm around her shoulders. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
‘We should have caught that Stilo man.’
‘Somebody will. Tell me what happened in Arelate.’
After a moment she slid a hand around his waist. It was not the sort of thing one would normally be able do in public.
‘At least this wretched foot is a good excuse for something,’ he observed, leaning on her to limp forward.
By the time they reached the gladiators’ barracks the usual crowd had dwindled to a few subdued young women, two of them clutching babies. To Ruso’s surprise, both gates swung open as they approached. The women rushed forward, pleading for information, only to be beaten off by the gatekeeper, who shouted, ‘No news! Clear the way there!’ The opening of the gates was explained as the closed wagon in which Gnostus had travelled back with the wounded gladiators emerged. Ruso guessed it was returning to the amphitheatre to collect their dead comrades.
‘She’s with me,’ he informed the gatekeeper, leading Tilla inside before the man had time to object, then ordering her to wait by the gate. She had seen enough: she did not deserve to be put through whatever might be waiting in Gnostus’ medical room.
To his surprise, all was quiet. Gnostus was busy unloading the wooden boxes of medical supplies that had been piled on the back of the wagon.
‘Eight dead, seven badly wounded, five with minor injuries,’ observed Gnostus, slapping down the lid on an empty box and kicking it out of sight under a bench. ‘What a way to earn a living.’
‘Us, or them?’ said Ruso, glancing across the exercise yard to where one of the assistants was helping a wounded fighter wash himself over the water-trough. A slave emerged from the men’s quarters, carrying a chamberpot.
‘Both,’ said Gnostus. He indicated the drugged figure of Tertius, lying with his leg heavily bandaged on a bed in the side room. ‘Boss wants him out tonight.’
‘After what he did?’ Ruso was incredulous. The boy had run back to don his kit after hearing the announcement that, since one of the fighters had been unexpectedly withdrawn, the winner of the latest contest would stay in the arena to face the next opponent. No doubt that decision had been made by Fuscus. Ruso wondered how many people had noticed that a common gladiator had more moral sense than a magistrate.
Gnostus shrugged. ‘He’s a free man. He chose to fight. As far as the boss is concerned, the school doesn’t have to pay for his treatment. That’s up to the woman who bought him out.’
‘What woman?’
‘Just turned up, offered the boss a cash deal too good to refuse and disappeared.’
‘Yes, but who was she?’
‘Dunno. Never seen her before. She didn’t look the type who’d need to pay for it. Not like some of the dogs we get making offers for the men.’
Ruso was relieved. After Marcia’s performance this afternoon there was no doubt that Gnostus would have recognized her. It had never occurred to him that she might have a rival. He suspected it had never occurred to Marcia, either. ‘So where’s this woman now?’
‘Who knows? She probably won’t want him now he’s damaged.’
‘I’ll take him home if she doesn’t turn up,’ said Ruso. ‘But he shouldn’t travel tonight.’
Gnostus glanced across to where Ruso was leaning against the wall with his aching foot resting on his sound one. ‘You’re not looking too good yourself. Want to bunk down here for the night?’
Ruso explained that he had to take somebody home. ‘Just give me something to help get me there, will you?’
By the time the gatekeeper let Ruso and Tilla out of the gladiators’ barracks, the supporters had dispersed. Two small boys armed with wooden swords were chasing each other in and out of the shadowed doorways while their parents strolled down the street behind them.
‘Do be careful, boys!’ called the mother.
‘If you two don’t stop fighting,’ put in the father, ‘I’ll take those swords away.’
Ruso waited for the family to pass, then planted the heels of the borrowed crutches on the worn stone surface and swung forward. The pain was still there, but somehow duller around the edges. Or perhaps it was his mind that was duller. Either way, Gnostus’ secret painkilling potion was doing its job.
79
Hiring transport to get home was not easy on the day of the games, and by the time Tilla helped the Medicus clamber up into the only carriage that was prepared to leave town at this hour, the sun had gone, and the colour was draining away from the day. The driver, who had insisted on payment in advance, whipped the reluctant horses into a trot. Tilla was not sorry to speed past the long rows of tombstones leading away from the Augustus gate. The area looked distinctly unwelcoming, and there was an autumnal chill in the air.
The Medicus seemed surprisingly happy now the medicine had taken effect. He was lying across the seat with his feet halfway up the wall of the carriage and his head resting on her lap. It was not a dignified position for either of them, and Tilla was glad there were few people about to see it.
She ran a thumb along his unshaven jaw. She wished she could tell the driver to carry on into the night: to take them both away to somewhere private, far from his family and their parched land with its hideous love of cruelty. She wished they had never left Britannia. Even if he wanted her here, how could she bear to stay?
The Medicus stirred in her lap, gave a murmur of contentment and said something that sounded like, ‘All home now.’
She laid a hand across his forehead. ‘Sleep,’ she murmured as the carriage jolted them on down the road towards the farm.
Suddenly his eyes opened. ‘Why did they come here?’ he asked, looking up at her as if they had been carrying on a conversation. Perhaps he had been dreaming.
She said, ‘Who?’
‘Calvus and Stilo.’
‘To visit their friend Severus to plan more stealing, I suppose,’ she said. ‘Or perhaps they met him on the road to your house and poisoned him. Go back to sleep.’
The eyes drifted shut. The carriage jolted on. Tilla closed her own eyes and felt her head beginning to nod.
‘But after he was dead, why did they stay?’
Tilla, whose mind had wandered back to other journeys in Britannia, had to remind herself who the Medicus was talking about. ‘To find out who killed him?’ she suggested. ‘What did they say to that fat man on the balcony?’
The Medicus explained that a woman looking like Claudia had bought poisoned honey. ‘Ennia must have overheard us talking and told Calvus and Stilo, or whatever their names were.’
‘You see? I told you it was the old wife who did it.’
‘She says it wasn’t, and I think I believe her.’
She sighed. Even now, he could not face the truth.
‘Why did they care?’ he asked.
‘Who?’
‘Why did Calvus and Stilo care who killed Severus?’
‘Perhaps they liked him and they wanted to avenge him,’ she suggested. ‘Perhaps they wanted to make some money from finding the poisoner. Why are you lying down if your mind is working and you are not asleep?’
He snuggled against her. ‘I can think better down here. Listen. Even if they did like him, it isn’t their duty to avenge him, it’s his family’s. And why would they risk hanging around, knowing that somebody might work out who they were at any moment? It makes no sense. Who’s to say the Gabinii would have paid them for helping anyway? Besides, they’d already got the money Severus had helped them swindle out of Probus for the ship.’
She shrugged. ‘Who cares? They are just bad men.’
He wriggled, pulled himself up to sit proper
ly and peered out of the side of the carriage. ‘Where are we?’
‘On the way back to your home.’
He was upright now, leaning forward, calling, ‘Stop!’ to the driver.
She grabbed the neck of his tunic and pulled him back. ‘What are you doing? This is the middle of the road!’
‘Stop!’ he yelled louder, grabbing one of the borrowed crutches and banging on the floor. The driver allowed the horses to slow and called, ‘Something the matter, boss?’
The Medicus was peering out into the dusk. ‘Turn round. Take the turn a hundred paces back, uphill between the vineyards.’
‘The Senator’s place? You sure about that?’
‘No!’ called Tilla. ‘He is ill. I am taking him home.’
‘I want to go to the Senator’s estate,’ insisted Ruso.
‘Make your minds up!’ came the voice from in front. ‘I’m not driving around all night in the dark. One or the other. Quick, or you get out and walk.’
‘The estate.’
With some grumbling, the driver manoeuvred the vehicle around in a tight semi-circle and set off back the way they had come.
Tilla said, ‘You are going to see the old wife.’
‘I need to make sure she’s safe.’
Tilla sighed and leaned against the back of the carriage. ‘Still, you think you are the only one who can save her. She is making a fool of you.’
‘Possibly,’ he said. ‘But I don’t think Calvus and Stilo ever came here for a social visit. I think they came here to find something, and they’ve been looking for it ever since. And if I’m right, they won’t want to leave without it.’
80
The carriage was already disappearing into the dusk when the Medicus rapped on the gates of the big estate for a second time.
After a moment Tilla pointed out, ‘Nothing is happening.’
He said, ‘There should at least be a dog.’
‘Why would this Calvus and Stilo come here when everyone knows they are liars and there will be men looking for them?’
The Medicus seemed to be wondering that himself. Perhaps his mind was still lost inside the pain-fighting medicine. Perhaps this really had just been an excuse to come and visit the old wife. She wished she had insisted on overruling him about the carriage. Still, if he really thought they could catch the men who had murdered Cass’s brother … ‘Bang on the gate.’
‘No,’ he said, fiddling with the latch and pushing at the studded wood with one shoulder. ‘I don’t want the whole household to hear.’
She could not resist a sigh of exasperation. ‘Very good. The driver has gone back to town. Everyone here has locked the doors and gone to bed early, and you do not want to wake them up. So now we have a long walk home.’
‘Not yet,’ he said, pushing harder at the gate. It gave way slowly, as if there were something heavy behind it. He bent to examine what he had just pushed out of the way.
‘It’s the gatekeeper.’ He was feeling for a pulse when she tapped him on the shoulder and pointed. The dog lay motionless, surrounded by a dark stain. No wonder it had failed to bark.
While the Medicus tended the injured man, she unsheathed her knife and crept out of the far end of the gatehouse.
She stopped dead.
The place was full of tall people.
She ducked back under the gatehouse. Her heart continued to thud furiously even as her brain registered her mistake. The people were not tall. They were on plinths. They were statues. She was entering a grand garden.
She took a couple of deep breaths, then moved forward again. On the left of the garden was an expanse of water and beyond it, the dark hulk of a house. She hesitated, chewing her lower lip. The Medicus had not bothered to tell her why he thought the false investigators were here or what they might be looking for. All he had said was that he wanted to make sure the old wife was safe. That would be interesting. How much danger should a woman leave an old wife in before it was necessary to help her?
It was a question she would have liked to debate around the fire late one night with her own people. Instead, she had a more pressing problem. The wife would be in the house. The house was reached by the paths, and the paths were deep gravel.
She could walk quickly towards the house, or she could walk quietly. Since she needed to do both, there was only one way to do it. Tilla veered sideways, lifted her skirt above her knees and sank one foot into the soil of a flowerbed. The scent of crushed rosemary wafted around her. She smiled to herself as she marched past the pond. The old wife would not be able to complain: the barbarian was here on the orders of the Medicus, and they were coming to save her from the murderers who called themselves Calvus and Stilo. Although why he thought they would be here was a mystery.
She crept across the gravel that separated the last flowerbed from the house, and tried to peer round the shutters of a side window. Everything inside was dark. The next window was the same, and the third. It did not seem right. There should have been servants moving about. Lamps being lit.
When she returned, the Medicus had laid the gatekeeper on his side. She whispered, ‘There is nobody there. Will he live?’
‘I think so. Are you sure?’
‘No. I cannot see through walls. Do you want to go in?’
‘Not yet.’
When he did not suggest anything else, she said, ‘What is happening?’
‘I don’t know yet.’
‘I am not going to stand here all night. What are this Calvus and Stilo looking for?’
‘Money.’
‘There is plenty of money to steal back in Arelate,’ she pointed out. ‘Why come here?’
‘They’d already stolen it,’ he said. ‘Or rather, Severus stole it for them.’
This did not make a great deal of sense, but he seemed to have lost interest in explaining. He was pointing to the shapes of what must be farm buildings looming on the far side of the garden. ‘I thought I heard something over there.’
‘Walk through the flowers,’ she told him. ‘Not on the path.’
‘What?’
‘Otherwise you might as well shout hello, here we come.’
The Medicus followed her, lifting the crutches, plunging them down through the plants and swinging his feet to land heavily further forward. There would be a fine mess in the morning, and it would be obvious who had made it.
The gate that led through the garden wall to the farmyard had been left open. Trying to peer ahead without being seen, she could make out an empty cart and the complicated shape of some sort of wooden harvesting machine under a shelter on the far side. She held her breath as something moved in the machinery, then the sleek black shape of a cat jumped down into the yard and melted away into the shadows. Somewhere, an animal snorted and stamped.
The Medicus was about to go through the gateway when there was a muffled burst of laughter from inside one of the buildings that opened on to the yard. Tilla pulled at his tunic to drag him back. ‘Was that what you heard?’
‘No,’ he whispered. ‘That’s just the slaves in the bunkhouse.’
The slaves did not sound as though they knew there were murderers about. Nor did they yet know that there was another pair of intruders sneaking around the yard in the dark. Once they found out, they would have no trouble catching the one on crutches and beating him up in the name of the Senator.
‘This is not a good idea,’ she whispered.
‘I know,’ he agreed, ‘but I haven’t got any others.’
‘If we do find those men, what are we going to do?’
‘I’m glad you said “we”.’
‘I have to. You are not much use on your own.’ She pushed past him and slipped in through the gateway. ‘Stay there.’
She heard the crutches tap on the cobbles as he hissed, ‘Wait for me!’
She was waving a hand to tell him to stay where he was when she heard the scream. Then a man’s voice. Then some sort of muffled thump.
‘In that building
over there.’ She jumped when she realized that the Medicus had moved close enough to whisper in her ear without her noticing.
After what seemed an age keeping lookout with her back against the warm stone of the building while the Medicus peered through a gap by the door hinge, Tilla began to wonder if they had been mistaken. The sounds she could make out from inside the building sounded more like work than murder. The sharp crunch and rattle of earth being dug and shovelled away. Indistinct murmurs of conversation. Then a hollow clunk as if something were being smashed, the slosh of liquid and, seconds later, the rich smell of grape juice. This must be the estate winery.
Beside her, the Medicus crouched down, trying to get a better view.
She slid down the wall to breathe in his ear, ‘What can you see?’
He did not seem to have heard. When she repeated the question he took her arm, pointed to the narrow gap between the door and the wall and eased himself back to his feet.
Tilla closed one eye and pressed her face against the gap. For a moment she could make no sense of what she was looking at. She had expected an ordered winery like the one back at the Medicus’ house: rows of buried jars brimming with sparkling foam. Instead she was watching an unlikely bunch of people deliberately and silently wrecking the place. As far as she could make out in the lamplight, jars had been dug up and smashed. Piles of earth and broken pottery had been dumped against the walls and inside the juice vats. The wreckers, several men and a bedraggled woman with smeared make-up and short, strangely coloured hair, were squelching about in a quagmire of mud mixed with fermenting juice. It was hard to see why they were doing it, since they did not seem to be enjoying themselves. As she watched, one of the men picked up his shovel and deliberately shattered the shoulder of the closest jar. The woman stepped aside to avoid the juice that was forming a glistening pool around her feet and glanced towards the door. For a moment Tilla thought she had sensed there was someone watching her. Then she realized the woman was looking at something inside the winery.