Ruso and the River of Darkness

by R. S. Downie

  Maybe there was something in this curse business after all.

  The room was growing chilly. Ruso reached for his cloak and threw it around his shoulders, wondering if Tilla would complain about the limewash making white marks on the wool and then reminding himself that he should be concentrating on praying for the spirit of Julius Asper. After all, hardly anyone else was likely to bother.

  In the feeble yellow glow of the lamps he gazed at the shell of a human being laid out on the bed. This man had chosen to steal someone else’s wife, and possibly someone else’s money. He had then been murdered, dumped in an alley, haggled over, and jovially threatened with having his brain opened up.

  There would be no more choices for Julius Asper.

  The silence in the room felt thick enough to reach out and touch. Even the rogue cockerel seemed to be asleep. Ruso stood up to light the grains of incense in the bowl, recited what he hoped was a suitable prayer and began to run through the things he must do in the morning. He would probably have to pay handsomely for the women’s transport to Verulamium, since he could not transfer his travel warrant and he could hardly ask the grieving widow if she had brought any spare cash with her. Before they left, he would sit Tilla down and make it absolutely clear that the wife of a Roman citizen and a Government investigator must not take sides in local disputes. Especially disputes between politicians and their wives.

  Then he was going to find Caratius and ask the questions he should have asked today instead of listening to all that pompous speechifying. This time he would concentrate on asking him … Ruso yawned. On asking him …

  He must stay awake and concentrate. He tried to frame some probing questions, but it had been a long day. A soft fog was drifting across his brain. He found the same phrases were repeating themselves, circling lazily around his mind. He felt his eyes drift shut. He would think about it later.

  Something made him stumble on the threshold of sleep.

  He tried to repeat the sound in his mind. The more he thought about it, the more convinced he was that he had heard the scrape of the street door opening downstairs.

  It could not have been the door. He could not recall the corresponding scrape of it being closed again, and nobody would leave it open at this hour of the night. Besides, everyone was asleep. If Valens had received a night call, half the house would have heard the messenger arrive.

  Shut in a dimly lit room with a dead body, he was starting to imagine things. Julius Asper’s spirit had not just slipped out of the room and left the house. Such things did not happen.

  Probably.

  He must think about something else. Pleasant, daytime thoughts. Where would he want to settle after this was over? There would be plenty of work in the North, mopping up the medical discharges who did not want to go home. Tilla would be near to what remained of her family. On the other hand, tensions would still be high after the recent troubles. He was not sure he wanted to have his domestic life punctuated by arguments about the Governor’s latest peacekeeping policy.

  Perhaps Tilla had a point about Verulamium. Of course it would depend on how the investigation went, but the Catuvellauni were friendly to Rome, aspired to civilization and were close enough for him to keep in touch with Valens and Albanus.

  His backside was going numb. He put both palms flat on the floor and lifted himself a couple of inches. As soon as he relaxed, the numbness returned.

  He closed his eyes and tried to picture himself in his consulting rooms in Verulamium, just a short stroll from proper baths and a decent wine shop. While he chatted about the latest play at the theatre with his grateful patients, Tilla would be looking after their scrubbed and smiling children and doing things to food in the kitchen.

  He was jolted awake by a sound like someone dropping a spoon on a tiled floor downstairs.

  The lamp in the hallway had gone out. The foot of the stairs was even darker than the landing, where he stood peering over the banister. The only sound was the soft sigh of his own breath: the only movement the thump of his heart. He shook his head. He was getting jumpy. He had slept badly last night. His imagination was not listening to reason. It was probably just the kitchen boy knocking something over on his way to the night bucket. Maybe the tall apprentice was wandering about in the dark, unable to sleep with a mind full of murder and prostitutes.

  He picked his way back along the chilly corridor, seeking the solace of the lamp flame.

  A dog was barking in one of the neighbours’ houses. The distant blare of the fort trumpet sounded the next watch, and he remembered that he had promised to get the unfinished letter looked at by a code expert. He had no idea how to find one, but Albanus had spent years as a medical clerk charged with deciphering doctors’ handwriting. It would be a start.

  He stepped across to take a deep breath of air at the window, then stood at the foot of the bed and began to count backwards from a hundred to keep himself awake.

  He was trying to remember the rhyme for the causes and cures of gout when he heard something smash downstairs. It sounded as though it was in Valens’ surgery.

  Perhaps he should call out. On the other hand if he woke the whole house and it turned out to be a clumsy apprentice, or Valens indulging some nocturnal inspiration, he would look a fool.

  He eyed the body on the bed. What if Asper’s spirit …

  No. He was not going to think about that.

  Perhaps he should just take a look downstairs.

  He slid one finger along the latch. It lifted without a sound. Out in the corridor, he closed the door so he was not silhouetted against the lamp. He crept along the rough boards in his bare feet, praying the stairs would not creak beneath him.

  He paused just above ground level. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he froze. A sinister figure was watching him from along the hall. There was a dog crouching at its feet. Neither Ruso nor the figure moved. Gradually, the figure resolved itself into a collection of cloaks on the hook. The dog was a pile of boots. Just as well he had not roused the household.

  He was moving towards the entrance to Valens’ surgery, careful to avoid knocking over the hall table, when he sensed a cool draught wafting around his feet. Something smelled wrong. He spun round.

  He could see now that the street door was very slightly ajar.

  Instinctively, he flattened himself against the wall and held his breath. He should have brought a weapon. He should have woken Valens. What had he been thinking?

  Nothing was moving. He let out his breath and began to edge slowly down the corridor again.

  Gods above, what was –?

  As he glimpsed it, the shape exploded from the shadows of the alcove. He made a grab for it and ducked just before something crashed into the wall where his head had been. Shouting for Valens, he snatched at a passing flurry of fabric, lost his grip on an oily arm and felt a blow to his shoulder as he hooked one foot behind the intruder’s knee. They both landed on the floor in a messy tangle of limbs and fists, Ruso still yelling as the intruder slithered out of his grasp, threw the table at him and ran for the door.

  Flinging the table aside, Ruso caught enough breath to bellow, ‘Stop, thief!’ as he raced out into the starlit street. The hooded figure was barely ten paces away, heading down towards the river. He was gaining on it when it dissolved into the shadows of the buildings on the right.

  Moments later he found himself staring into a narrow black gap between two shops and trying to listen for the sound of footsteps over the pounding of blood in his ears. He could see nothing. The alleyway might be empty. It might contain one man, or ten.

  Alone and unarmed, he was not going in there to find out.

  He glanced over his shoulder several times as he made his way back to the house, suddenly aware of shadowy hiding-places all around him. He paused in the middle of the street and looked around, but as far as he could tell, there was nobody else out here.

  A gaggle of bleary-eyed people in various states of undress had gathered in Valens
’ hall to ask each other what was going on. Ruso locked the door, counted to make sure everyone was safe, and explained that he had chased off a man who had been trying to break into the house.

  The confession that the man had succeeded, and that Ruso had allowed him to spend a long time sneaking around downstairs while most of them were asleep, could wait for daylight.

  19

  Someone was shaking his shoulder. Tilla wanted him to know that the sun had risen, everyone else was up and she had prepared breakfast.

  ‘Uh,’ said Ruso, rolling over and closing his eyes to catch the last tail of sleep as it fled.

  ‘It was a busy night.’

  ‘Uh.’ He had a feeling there was something he should remember, and it was connected with the ache in his ribs. ‘Thanks for taking over.’

  After all the excitement of the burglar, Tilla had helped him rub salve into his bruises and volunteered to take over the vigil.

  ‘Valens has been looking around the house,’ she said. ‘We are all lucky you did not give that man a chance to steal anything.’

  Ruso wondered how thoroughly Valens had checked. It was difficult to gauge the passage of time at night, but the prowler must have been creeping around for at least half an hour after he had scraped open the front door ready to make his getaway.

  ‘I am glad you have had a good sleep.’ Tilla was smiling down at him. It seemed his efforts to protect the household had aroused an unusual degree of wifely devotion.

  He rubbed his eyes and wondered if there was time for a further attempt to create an heir before breakfast. ‘I’ve got some bruised ribs you could kiss better.’

  The kiss was perfunctory. Instead of drawing closer, Tilla sat up and started chattering about next door’s cockerel. ‘He has stopped crowing at night now: did you notice?’

  He agreed without thinking and reached for her. ‘I’m well rested. Come here.’

  She dodged his hand and stood up, still looking more cheerful than anyone who had been awake half the night had any right to be. Only slowly did it dawn on him that there might be a link between the silence of the cockerel, Tilla’s smile and the rather stringy meat in last night’s stew.

  He was not going to ask. Instead he rolled over and grabbed her. Breakfast could wait.

  An hour later, the morning traffic came to a halt in the street as the occupants of Valens’ house stood to watch a shrouded body being loaded on to the floor of the carriage. Camma was pale and tight-lipped, her grief marked only by the damp patches on the shawl wrapped around her fatherless baby.

  Ruso, who had paid the driver well with Firmus’ money, accompanied the carriage to the edge of town. When it reached the gates to the North Road he bade the women goodbye and reminded the driver of his duty to deliver them to their door. The carriage passed under the arch and out towards the cemetery under an overcast sky, picking up speed as the driver urged the horses into a trot. Ruso lifted one hand in a last farewell, but, if there was any response, it was hidden by an ox-cart coming towards him.

  They were gone.

  Yesterday Ruso had been an object of interest to the Procurator’s staff, providing relief from the daily routine. Today he had sunk to being just another nuisance, making annoying requests and placing demands upon their time. They had indeed suffered a visit from Tetricus the Boatman yesterday afternoon, and the Expenditure clerk seized his chance to point out that, if Ruso planned to go around the town announcing rewards, it would help if he warned the office first.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Ruso, and meant it.

  The resigned tone of ‘Never mind, sir,’ suggested that the staff were used to being uninformed and underappreciated. Ruso’s attempts to improve things did not seem to help. They did not look at all pleased to be told that others might be arriving to report sightings of the missing Julius Bericus.

  ‘I’ll clear all this with Firmus,’ said Ruso, correctly guessing that this would not impress them either.

  ‘He’s in a meeting with the Procurator, sir.’

  ‘Any idea how long he’ll be?’

  The Expenditure clerk’s ‘No, sir,’ somehow also conveyed the information that, since nobody in authority ever told the office anything, only a fool would have asked such a stupid question.

  ‘You don’t happen to know where the Catuvellauni Magistrate’s staying, do you?’

  ‘That would be the one who turned up yesterday, sir?’

  ‘Caratius. Yes.’

  ‘I believe he lodges with a friend opposite the west gate of the Forum when he’s in town, sir.’

  ‘Excellent!’ said Ruso, pleasantly surprised. ‘Thank you.’

  He was almost out of the door when the man added, ‘But he’s not there now, sir.’

  Apparently the Magistrate had been summoned to meet the Procurator first thing in the morning and had left for Verulamium immediately afterwards.

  Ruso left Firmus a note explaining that he needed to question Caratius again. He would have tried to catch him on the road, but he had promised to have that incomprehensible letter looked at, and in all the confusion he had forgotten to retrieve it from the apprentices this morning.

  ‘Would you care to tell us when you’ll be back, sir?’

  Ruso looked the clerk in the eye. ‘Later,’ he said, then relented. He had suffered from enough unreliable colleagues to know how aggravating it was to work with someone who might or might not turn up at any moment. ‘I’ll drop by for messages when I get here,’ he promised.

  The smirk on the face of the Expenditure clerk suggested his concession had been seen as a sign of weakness.

  He headed back to Valens’ house to collect the letter, glancing round occasionally to see who else was in the street. The events of last night had left him uneasy. While everyone else had been reassuring themselves that no harm had been done, nothing had been stolen and the only damage was a serious fright, Ruso had been mulling over the identity and the intentions of the intruder. Pausing to lean on the rail of the footbridge while an elderly man and a dog ushered four sheep across the stream, he wondered if he should have taken the tall apprentice’s sighting of a hooded man more seriously. What if they really had been followed? Whoever it was must know where they lived – although why anyone should care was a mystery. Besides, any sensible burglar would try to disguise himself. A hood was the easiest way to do it.

  There was no answer to Ruso’s knock at Valens’ street door. After last night’s events he was not surprised to find it firmly locked. Three patients were lined up on the bench outside the surgery entrance. That was closed too.

  He walked along the side of the building and turned into the back lane. From here he could see into the garden, but his plans to vault over the wall were thwarted by a group of figures outside the kitchen window. The figure in the middle with the toga draped untidily over his head was Valens. He was lifting a cup into the air and speaking to it while the apprentices and the kitchen boy looked on, wide-eyed. Then he tipped the cup, and a pale stream of wine cascaded down into the scrubby undergrowth. Evidently he had taken the break-in seriously enough to seek divine protection.

  Distracted by the sight of this unusually diligent appeal to the household gods, Ruso was startled to hear a heavy sigh beside him. A pair of muscular arms leaned on the wall. They were attached to solid shoulders encased in plates of armour. Above the armour a thick neck led to a square jaw, a broken nose and an Army haircut.

  Valens finished his devotions and looked up. ‘Can I help, sir?’

  ‘I’m a friend of the landlord,’ said the centurion. ‘Saw the address on the night watch report. Any damage?’

  Valens unwrapped his toga and rolled it into an untidy bundle as he made his way through the weeds to the garden wall. ‘Just a downstairs window forced. Ruso there chased him off before he could take anything.’

  The gaze was aimed at Ruso while the broken nose veered slightly off to the left. ‘Don’t suppose you got a description?’

  ‘It was dark,’ Ruso
said. ‘I tried to stop him getting past me but I couldn’t get hold of him. He was covered in something slippery, he was wearing a hood and he’d left the door open to make a quick escape.’

  ‘Greased himself to avoid capture,’ said the centurion, as if it was something Ruso should have expected. He glanced at the apprentices and the kitchen boy. ‘Any of you lot see anything?’

  The taller lad looked delighted to be asked. ‘I’m almost sure there was a man with a hood following us down behind the wharf last night, sir.’

  ‘I meant here.’

  ‘No, sir. We were asleep till we heard all the crashing around and the ladies calling out, sir.’

  The man grunted. ‘I’ll put in a report.’ He gestured towards the window, said, ‘Get some bars put on it,’ and walked away.

  While Valens was dealing with his patients, the short apprentice emerged from the surgery with a small box of broken pot. Part of the disturbance Ruso had heard last night was a jar of bear grease smashing on the tiled floor.

  ‘He took the hall lamp in there, sir,’ the lad observed. ‘He must have been clever not to wake anybody. But he wasn’t much of a burglar. Doctor Valens’ equipment was all laid out in there, but nothing’s been taken.’

  ‘Good,’ said Ruso, his unease growing. Quality medical instruments were precision-made, portable and costly, and a thief as intelligent as this one seemed to be should have stolen them. He had been prowling around the house for longer than Ruso cared to remember. What had he been doing?

  It was a mystery he did not have time to ponder.