Ruso and the Root of All Evils mi-3

by Ruth Downie

  ‘Who said you could take a rest?’ The voice was familiar, and alarmingly close.

  Tilla grabbed the nearest part of the Medicus, which turned out to be his knee. She was about to whisper, ‘Stilo!’ when the woman aimed her shovel at the next jar, missed, slipped in the mud and landed on her backside. As the woman put her head in her hands and began to sob, something moved and blocked Tilla’s line of vision — but not before she had recognized the one who called himself Calvus stepping forward across the mud.

  The slap and the order to shut up were followed by a third, oddly strangled-sounding voice: a girl, who seemed to be standing just behind the door where Tilla was listening. ‘Please!’ she whimpered. ‘Please, just do what they want!’

  ‘I can’t!’ wailed the woman.

  ‘You can!’ insisted the girl.

  Tilla, still unable to see, straightened up. From inside the winery she heard Calvus say, ‘All right. Put your shovel down and get back in the corner. You — yes, you — move across and take over.’

  ‘Can I make a suggestion?’ It was a thin, officious voice.

  ‘No,’ said Stilo. ‘Shut up and dig.’

  ‘Only it would be more efficient if we — ’

  His suggestion was drowned by a squeal of pain from close by the door. Tilla winced.

  ‘See?’ said Stilo. ‘That’s what happens when you make suggestions. Just find the money. Then nobody gets hurt.’

  Tilla felt the warmth of the Medicus’ breath on her cheek. ‘They’ve already got the steward in there,’ he whispered. ‘Go across to the bunkhouse, find out who’s in charge and get them to send a couple of sensible men into town to tell Fuscus what’s going on, and fetch Probus.’

  ‘Will they send help?’

  ‘I doubt they’ll get here in time. Tell the rest of the men to round up every sort of weapon they can think of — there should be plenty of scythes and things in the barns — and come over here and surround the exit to the building without making any noise.’

  ‘What if the slaves are all locked in for the night?’

  ‘You’ll think of something.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  The Medicus straightened his crutches and hitched himself forward. ‘I’m going in for a chat with our so-called investigators,’ he said.

  81

  Ruso had intended to wait until the farm slaves were armed and in position before making a move, but a long wait followed by a reverberating crash loud enough to wake the spirit of Severus and all the Senator’s illustrious ancestors told him that the slaves had indeed been locked in, and that Tilla had thought of something.

  He hopped back out of the way just as the heavy door creaked open and a head appeared.

  ‘Calvus!’ he said, guessing in the poor light.

  The head swivelled round to face him.

  ‘Sorry about all the racket,’ he continued. ‘Mind if I come in?’

  ‘Ruso? What are you doing here?’

  ‘Bloody crutches,’ said Ruso, ignoring the question. ‘Knocked over some old piece of farm junk out here, sorry. I’ll have to apologize to them in the morning. Can I come in and sit down? This wretched foot’s playing up again.’

  Calvus stared at him for a moment, then stepped back. The door opened wider, and Ruso swung in. Calvus closed the door and gave him a shove that nearly sent him flat in the mud.

  ‘Get over there with the others.’

  For the first time, Ruso was able to see what was going on in the parts of the winery that had not been visible through the crack in the door. As he picked his way across the slippery upheaval of the floor he could make out frightened faces watching him from the far wall, lined up behind a pair of looming winepresses very much like the one at home. One of the faces belonged to Flaccus the kitchen-boy. The one that cried out ‘Gaius!’ as he approached was Claudia.

  ‘You must do something, Gaius!’ she urged. ‘They’re going to murder us one by one if we don’t find Severus’ money!’

  Ruso seated himself on the corner of the tank surrounding the first winepress. As he had guessed, Stilo had repeated this afternoon’s hostage trick and was now standing behind the door with a wide-eyed Ennia clutched up against him. A knife glinted at her throat. In front of them, he recognized the slender figure of Zosimus amongst the half-dozen wretched diggers struggling to unearth the money that Calvus and Stilo evidently believed was buried under one of the wine-jars.

  ‘Don’t just sit there, Gaius!’

  ‘What would you like me to do?’

  ‘I don’t know! Think of something.’

  ‘Well,’ he said casually, ‘I have got the building surrounded by armed men.’

  Stilo gave a snort of contempt.

  ‘For goodness’ sake, Gaius! This is no time for your silly jokes.’

  ‘Take a look,’ suggested Ruso mildly, wondering if Tilla had them organized yet.

  Calvus and Stilo glanced at each other. Before Calvus could take up his suggestion, he added, ‘I’ll order them to let you get away if you give up and release Ennia now.’

  ‘Bollocks,’ said Stilo.

  Calvus’ hand was moving towards the door.

  ‘Carefully,’ said Ruso. ‘Don’t stick your head out. A slice with a scythe is very hard to stitch up.’

  ‘He’s bluffing,’ said Stilo.

  Ruso grinned. ‘Am I?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter anyway,’ said Calvus, reaching for the bar and swinging it down to drop into the slot on the far side of the door. ‘When we’re ready to leave, we’ll have plenty of hostages to choose from.’

  Stilo smirked at Ruso over Ennia’s shoulder. ‘Didn’t think of that, did you, smartarse?’

  Ennia whimpered as he jerked her back towards him.

  ‘Get on with it, you lot! Keep digging!’

  ‘They don’t believe you, Gaius!’ hissed Claudia. ‘Think of something else!’

  ‘Find the money,’ he suggested. ‘Then they’ll go away.’

  ‘How do we know it’s even here?’ demanded Claudia.

  ‘Good question,’ agreed Ruso, turning to Calvus. ‘How do you know it’s here?’

  ‘None of your business,’ said Calvus.

  ‘You know something?’ said Stilo to Calvus. ‘I never liked that one. Big mouth. Always asking questions.’

  ‘This isn’t a question,’ said Ruso, hoping Tilla really would have the slaves in position soon. ‘This is a statement. Claudia did not kill Severus. Did she, Ennia?’

  ‘You know she did!’ gasped Ennia, her voice sounding strangled by the effort of leaning away from the knife. ‘You covered up for her — ow!’ Stilo had shifted his grip again.

  ‘Keep up the digging, boys,’ urged Calvus as if he were encouraging them in a genteel sport. ‘The sooner you find it, the sooner we’re off.’

  ‘Yes, keep digging,’ agreed Ruso. ‘After all, Severus did owe these two a large share of it. By the way, what did happen to Justinus on that ship?’

  From behind him, Claudia demanded to know what on earth they were talking about.

  ‘Justinus had an accident,’ said Stilo.

  ‘What sort of accident?’

  By way of answer, Calvus snatched a spade from the nearest digger, stepped across to Ruso and rammed the blade up against his throat. ‘The sort you’re going to have if you don’t shut up.’

  ‘Don’t hurt him!’ shrieked Claudia.

  Ruso leaned away from the cold metal. The mud trickling down his neck smelled of grape juice. ‘I can see why you’re annoyed,’ he said, desperately trying to think what to do next. ‘You went to a lot of bother to earn that money.’ He raised one hand to indicate Ennia. ‘Are you absolutely sure she doesn’t know which pot it’s under?’

  He felt a fractional easing of the pressure on his throat. Calvus was looking at him oddly, as if trying to work out how much he knew.

  ‘You can’t trust her, you know,’ continued Ruso, silently praying that Calvus would be sufficiently intrigu
ed not to finish him off with an angry thrust of the spade. ‘Did you know she poisoned her brother?’

  ‘I didn’t!’ gasped Ennia.

  The spade moved away from Ruso’s throat. As Calvus turned his attention to Ennia, Ruso let out a quiet breath of relief and straightened up, wiping the mud with the back of his hand. He ignored Claudia’s whispered, ‘I knew it. I knew it was her.’

  Calvus positioned himself beside Ennia with his back to the wall, keeping the rest of the prisoners in sight, while he said to her, ‘You told me the wife did it.’

  ‘She did!’

  ‘Don’t trust her, Calvus,’ warned Ruso, hoping this did not sound as improvised as it felt. ‘She’s a good actress. You should have seen her weeping over the body. She had me fooled for a long time.’ He turned to the diggers. ‘Do keep working, please, gentlemen. I’m sorry I can’t help, I’ve broken a bone in my foot. But the sooner you find the cash that Severus was planning to share with these two, the sooner this will be over and we can all go home to bed.’ He turned back to Ennia. ‘You’re absolutely sure this is where he hid it?’

  ‘Yes!’ squeaked Ennia. ‘Somewhere in here. He said if anything ever happened to him, to look in the winery.’

  ‘You knew he had money?’ demanded Claudia. ‘Why didn’t he tell me? I had a right to know. I’m his wife!’

  ‘I didn’t kill him,’ insisted Ennia. ‘She did.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Ruso mildly, addressing Calvus and ignoring Claudia’s protests. ‘I suppose that’s what Ennia told you, isn’t it? She told you she’d overheard me talking to Claudia, and Claudia had been seen buying poisonous honey. If you’d bothered to go and check with the stallholder — ’

  ‘No point,’ said Calvus, throwing the spade across to the digger he had taken it from, who was trying to sneak back to join the others behind the winepress. ‘Oi! Back to work!’

  ‘No,’ said Ruso. ‘I didn’t think you had.’

  ‘Never mind him,’ said Stilo, for once quicker than his partner. ‘We’re here for the money. We don’t care who killed Severus.’

  ‘Right,’ agreed Calvus. ‘Shut up, Ruso.’

  For a moment there was no sound in the winery but the crunch of shovels and the steady trickle of something leaking.

  Ruso glanced around him, wondering what to do next. Nothing had changed as a result of his intervention. Ennia was still held with a knife to her throat. The diggers were still struggling on, weary and filthy and clearly distraught at ruining the precious vintage the farm slaves had worked so hard to produce. A call for help had — he hoped — been sent to town, but the impostors would be long gone before anyone could get here. Besides, Stilo was right: nobody would dare to attack them on the way out if they were holding hostages. All Ruso had managed to do was add himself to their list of potential choices.

  What the hell had Gnostus put in that medicine? What had he been thinking? Had he really imagined that, just because he had finally begun to understand something of what was going on, Calvus and Stilo would kneel in surrender? It was difficult to see what he could do to salvage the situation, except to distract them and hope they made some sort of mistake.

  ‘It wasn’t Claudia who bought the honey, though,’ he said, hoping Calvus would not repeat his threat with the spade. ‘It was Ennia wearing one of Claudia’s wigs, and her pink shoes. I didn’t mention the colour of the shoes when I talked to Claudia, but when you told Fuscus, you knew they were pink. You haven’t spoken to the trader, so you must have got that from Ennia. She knew because she was the one wearing them. She even made sure she drew the stallholder’s attention to them. If we take both women down there, I daresay he’ll pick her out.’

  Ennia’s curtailed squeak of ‘No —!’ might have referred to the identity parade or to some new threat from Stilo.

  ‘She poisoned her brother to get his money, and she was going to make sure Claudia got the blame.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Except he died in my house. She didn’t plan that.’ Ruso turned to the diggers. ‘You can keep on digging if you like. At least it’ll make them go away. But Ennia’s not really worth much as a hostage. She’s going to be sentenced to death for murder anyway.’

  82

  ‘It was Zosimus!’ shrieked Ennia.

  Everyone had stopped to listen now. Stilo, curious at last, moved the knife a fraction to let her talk.

  ‘Tell them, Zosimus!’

  The steward rammed his spade into the mud and stared at Ennia. In the silence, one of the diggers shifted position, and the mud squelched beneath him.

  ‘Tell them about my lovely brother.’

  ‘You knew all about it?’ demanded Claudia. Ruso motioned to her to be quiet.

  Zosimus looked at Ennia. ‘Which lie would you like me to tell this time?’

  Ennia swallowed. ‘No lies. Tell them what he did.’

  Zosimus looked round at the faces all turned towards him in the lamplight. ‘Ennia was engaged to a man in Rome.’ There was no expression in his voice. He might have been reading a list of calendar dates. ‘Severus didn’t think he was suitable. The man died of a fever. Ennia moved here with Severus.’ He cleared his throat.

  ‘Tell them what you told me!’

  ‘I wasn’t happy about the way Severus did business here. He said that, if I refused to back him up, he would get rid of me like he had got rid of Ennia’s boyfriend.’

  Stilo was the first to speak. ‘Very sad,’ he said, gesticulating with the knife towards the mud. ‘Now dig.’

  ‘Wait a moment,’ said Calvus. ‘Which of you did do it?’

  ‘She did,’ said Zosimus at the same moment as Ennia said, ‘He did.’

  ‘Who cares?’ demanded Stilo.

  ‘Dig,’ ordered Calvus. Zosimus sighed and heaved his spade out of the mud. Calvus moved across to murmur to Stilo, who glanced at the door and muttered something back.

  ‘I want to know who it was!’ insisted Claudia to no one in particular. ‘I’m the widow. I should be told.’

  When nobody else seemed inclined to answer, Ruso said, ‘Ennia bought the honey. Zosimus must have put it in the kitchen. Afterwards he went there saying he was investigating the death, got rid of the medicine and cleared the rest of the honey out before it could do any more damage.’

  A voice from behind the press cried, ‘You made us drink that medicine!’

  ‘You only had a little bit each,’ retorted Zosimus, bending to pick out a broad shard of broken pot from the mud. ‘It wasn’t dangerous.’

  The voice said, ‘You didn’t drink any.’

  ‘I had to keep my head clear.’ Zosimus waved the pot towards Ruso. ‘Everything would have been fine if he hadn’t interfered.’

  Claudia was on her feet, one hand gripping Ruso by the shoulder. ‘He killed my husband and — ’

  She was silenced by an exclamation from Zosimus. He reached down and hauled a dripping bag out of the quagmire, resting it on the broken curve of pot. Something inside chinked as it settled in a pool of mud.

  Calvus beckoned it over, peered inside and nodded to Stilo. He tied the muddy bag to his belt and lifted the bar off the door. He ordered the diggers to get back against the far wall with the others. Then, turning to Ruso, he said, ‘You go first.’

  Ruso manoeuvred himself to his feet and gathered up the crutches. The pain flooded into his foot with an intensity he had not experienced since the day of the accident. At least he supposed it meant his mind was fully clear now.

  His eyes, accustomed to the lamplight, could see nothing out in the blackness of the yard. ‘Tilla?’ he called before venturing out, just in case she had overheard his threat of the scythe.

  ‘We are here,’ replied Tilla.

  As he blinked, Ruso could make out human shapes in the darkness. To his left, the prongs of a pitchfork rose in silhouette against a light patch of sky.

  ‘Tell those murderers,’ said Tilla, ‘that there are thirty strong men out here. All loyal to the Senator.’
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  Ruso limped out into the yard. ‘She’s not lying,’ he confirmed.

  From inside the winery came a fresh shriek of ‘Gaius!’

  There was a scuffle behind him and a gasp from some of the farm slaves as a bedraggled figure appeared in the doorway with Stilo’s arm around her throat. Instead of Ennia, he could just make out the cropped head of Claudia. ‘Anybody tries to touch us, and her ladyship’s dead,’ announced Stilo, dragging Claudia sideways so he had the winery wall at his back. ‘This one’s a proper hostage, doctor. Happy now?’

  Calvus emerged to stand beside him. ‘We don’t want to hurt anybody.’

  ‘But we will if we have to,’ put in Stilo.

  ‘All we want,’ said Calvus, ‘is three horses. You men stand back and let us out, and once we’re clear we release the hostage.’

  ‘Four horses,’ corrected Ennia, remarkably calm. ‘You don’t think I’m sharing with her, do you?’ She dragged the winery door shut and turned the key in the lock, leaving the diggers trapped inside.

  As Zosimus shouted, ‘Ennia, let me out!’ through the door, Tilla’s voice rang out from somewhere in the darkness.

  ‘We will give you nothing. You are trapped. As soon as you kill the hostage we will kill you.’

  There was an indistinct squeak from Claudia and a chuckle from Stilo. ‘I’m not going to kill her, Blondie. Not yet. I’ll just take her fingers off. One by one.’ His voice hardened. ‘Get the horses.’

  There was movement out in the darkness. The pitchfork wavered.

  ‘Do not do it!’ said Tilla. The movement stopped.

  Ennia called, ‘Acratus, are you out there?’

  ‘Yes, miss,’ came the automatic reply just before someone else hissed, ‘Shut up, you fool!’

  ‘Acratus, fetch the horses straight away.’

  ‘Do not do it!’ insisted Tilla.

  ‘All of you slaves out there,’ put in Stilo, ‘are going to be dinner for the lions once word gets out you was told to do something to help this lady and you didn’t do it. Who wants to catch the first finger?’

  ‘Do not listen to him,’ urged Tilla over Claudia’s squeal of terror. ‘We have them trapped.’