by R. S. Downie
Had Julius Asper been trying to protect himself in the same way when he told Camma where he was going? Or had he been lying to confuse any pursuers while he escaped with the money?
When Ruso emerged from the mansio he found the big guard lounging against the wall by himself. Gavo snapped to attention, explaining that his comrade had gone next door to check the arrangements for the horses. Ruso was not sorry. He wanted a private word with Gavo. He wanted to know what the young man had seen while he had been escorting the Magistrate around Londinium.
Making the excuse of collecting his cloak, Ruso led him back through reception and out past the garden towards Suite Three.
‘So, what did you make of being invited in to a post-mortem?’ was perhaps not the best way to start a conversation, but it turned out that Gavo was sorry he’d missed most of it. In fact, he was sorry he hadn’t been able to spend longer in Londinium. Freed from the watchful eye of his companion, he turned out to be remarkably talkative. Incredibly, since Londinium was only twenty miles away, it turned out to be his first trip. ‘As an adult, sir,’ he added, clearly eager to make sure Ruso did not think he was some sort of unsophisticated bumpkin. ‘We used to go there when my father was alive.’
Ruso concluded with some relief that Gavo on his own was unlikely to be much of a threat. While he gathered up his cloak, the young man explained that his father had been a leather worker, but he had joined the guards to better himself. ‘Dias says I might even be able to go for the Army in a year or two,’ he added. ‘He was on the way to being a centurion himself, sir. Till he got invalided out with his back.’
‘Sounds as though you’re getting good experience,’ said Ruso, locking the door once more and hoping the youth had not been too busy chatting to notice him checking his knife. ‘Were you Caratius’ sole escort, or part of a team?’
‘Just me and the Magistrate’s personal slaves, sir.’ Gavo looked pleased with himself. ‘Usually Dias gets all these –’ Whatever word he was about to use, he stifled it and said, ‘all the Londinium duties. But he put me on the roster to go instead.’
‘I don’t suppose you got much of a chance to look round, having to stay with the Magistrate and then come straight back.’
‘Oh, no, sir! Once the Magistrate was settled in with his friend I was off duty.’
As they clattered down the mansio steps Ruso said, ‘That was very generous of him.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Gavo cleared his throat as if there was something he was not supposed to say. ‘So I went out exploring.’
Ruso wondered if he should make inquiries about Caratius’ friend. There couldn’t be that many priests of Jupiter.
‘There’s a few good brewers down there, I can tell you.’ The big face split into a rueful grin. ‘I had a storming headache on the way home.’
‘You should be careful,’ said Ruso, alarmed by the very naivety he was himself exploiting. ‘It’s not a good idea to go drinking in a strange town on your own.’
‘Oh, I wasn’t on my own, sir,’ the lad assured him. ‘Dias showed me round.’
Ruso felt his whole body tense. As casually as he could he said, ‘So your captain was in Londinium as well?’
The youth looked uncomfortable. ‘It was a personal matter, sir. Nothing to do with the Magistrate. You won’t mention it to him tonight, will you sir?’
They turned in at the stable gate. Ruso glimpsed another chainmailed figure bending to tighten a girth as he chatted to the stable overseer. He said, ‘Is there a reason you don’t want me to mention it to Caratius?’
‘Not to Caratius, sir –’
The other guard straightened up, and Ruso saw who it was.
‘I’d rather you didn’t say anything to Dias, sir. He’s the other half of your escort tonight.’
36
They rode out beneath the arch of the south gate, Ruso automatically returning the gatekeepers’ salute as they passed. It was a scene that, captured in a painting, would have said all the right things about the benevolent rule of Rome. The Procurator’s Man on a gleaming bay gelding, accompanied by his smart native escort, all riding out of town on a Spring evening to enjoy dinner with an influential Briton in his country house.
The painter could not have depicted the thud of Ruso’s heart as they left the safety of the town and headed out past the cemetery that would soon hold the remains of the murdered Julius Asper. Dias had been in Londinium all along. No picture could have captured the turmoil in his mind as he eyed the lithe form on the horse beside him and tried to recall the shape he had grabbed in Valens’ hallway. Was that a bruise just visible under the scarlet sleeve? Had that hood been hiding, not a mangled ear, but a flamboyant hairstyle shot through with red threads?
Dias was about the right height and build. There was no evidence now of any back problem that might prevent him climbing in through the kitchen window. Either he had met a good doctor or he had made one of the miraculous recoveries that disaffected soldiers sometimes enjoyed after medical discharge.
If Dias had been secretly working for the Magistrate in Londinium it was not clear why he had bothered to take Gavo out drinking, but perhaps he was genuinely concerned to keep his protégé out of trouble. In any case, the youth’s presence might not have restricted him for long. Already flattered at being chosen for the Londinium trip, Gavo must have been thrilled to be offered a tour of the town in the company of his hero. He could have been too drunk to know when the evening ended or what either of them had been up to.
They were topping the gentle rise beyond the cemetery now. The spring sun was still above the trees but he was glad of his cloak: the sky was clear and it would be cold later. Apart from a donkey cart and a shawled woman hurrying along behind it, all of the traffic was heading the other way. Sensible travellers would be settled safely in town before nightfall. Ruso, on the other hand, was following the road out across open fields to visit a suspect who had a motive for murdering Julius Asper. He was in the company of an armed man he could no longer trust and a junior guard who, if the choice came, would follow his leader.
If I were you, I’d watch my back. Publius had warned him. Tilla had warned him. He was an official employee, and several people knew where he was going, but none of those things had saved Julius Asper.
He sneaked another glance at Dias, riding easily beside him. Now they were out on the open road, the man had added a long sword to his personal armoury, dwarfing the wicked-looking knife he always wore on his belt. Why was the captain of the Town Guard bothering to perform a simple escort duty? He recalled the confused fight in Valens’ hallway, and the crater left in the plaster that might easily have been in his own head. If Dias realized he was under suspicion, then Ruso was in trouble. Besides, with Dias watching his every move, how the hell was he supposed to investigate anything? On the other hand, if he investigated nothing, that would look suspicious too.
He nudged the borrowed gelding over towards Dias’ mount. Above the gentle jingling of the fancy bridle-trappings he said, ‘I’m told Asper owed you money?’
‘Not me. The lads. Wages for guard duty. I went to the house to find something to pay them with.’
‘Any luck?’
‘Didn’t have time. Some woman thought I was a burglar and went for me with a knife.’
Ruso could guess which woman that had been.
Dias carried on scanning the surrounding fields for the trouble that Ruso now suspected he was more likely to cause than to prevent. They were passing an overgrown track that led off to the left when he said, ‘That’s where the carriage was picked up. Stuck on a branch about twenty yards down.’
‘Where does it lead?’
‘A couple of farms. We asked around, but nobody saw anything.’
Ruso walked his horse slowly forward between the lush grasses bowing from either side. He stopped where the branch of an oak overhung the track. He could see no evidence of any attack that might have taken place here. The carriage could have been deliberately driven
along the track to get it off the road – or the horses, with all night to wander about, could have meandered down here in search of a roadside snack.
Returning to the others, he said, ‘While we’re out here, let’s see if we can see how Asper ended up on the river.’
Dias turned. The dark eyes seemed to be scrutinizing him, as if trying to assess how much he knew. Ruso forced himself to stay relaxed, knowing the horse might react to any tension, and Dias was not a fool.
Finally Dias said, ‘And what will that tell us, sir?’
Was there a whisper of insolence in the ‘sir’? Dias had had five years in the Auxiliaries to practise being just the right side of insubordination. ‘Probably not a lot,’ Ruso admitted. ‘But it’s your money, and you never know.’
Dias looked him up and down. ‘You haven’t got a bloody clue where the money is, have you?’
‘Neither have you,’ said Ruso, returning the candour, ‘or we wouldn’t be standing here.’
Dias’ face relaxed. ‘Move on!’ he called over his shoulder to Gavo, the harness jingling louder as he urged his horse into a trot. ‘The investigator wants to look at the river.’
As the road approached the meandering river it had been raised to cross flat watermeadows where the lowest patches were dotted with tufts of reed. Apart from the cover of the occasional willow tree, Ruso had to concede that it was a poor site for an ambush. The road was straight in both directions. The drivers of a couple of vehicles in the distance must have a clear and puzzling view of him and his escort, halting on each of the three bridges in turn. They could also be seen from the native farmsteads on the low hills around, most of which had been cleared of trees. There was a villa beyond a wood on one side of the road and, on the other, a grand stone memorial reminding travellers of some deceased landowner with plenty of money.
On the last bridge he stared into the dark water and watched long green fingers of weed waving downstream. The river was no more revealing now than it had been when he had paused to inspect it on the way here. Still, on Asper’s last journey it had been raining heavily. The traffic would have been lighter than usual, and the visibility poor. If Asper had been attacked by men he recognized, they might have been able to get alongside before he realized he was in danger. There would have been no pursuit or ambush to alert his fellow travellers.
The water would have been higher with the rain, too. High enough, perhaps, for a man to float downstream, abandoned for dead by assailants who needed to get away before someone else came along and saw what was happening. Further along, Asper could have crawled out of the water. By morning he had gathered enough strength to frighten Lund’s children and steal his boat.
It was all speculation. The ambush-on-an-open-road theory was just about plausible, but none of it answered the question of what had happened to the missing brother.
The wooden bridge gave a dull boom as Dias’ horse stamped with impatience. Its rider said, ‘Tell you anything, sir?’
‘Not really,’ said Ruso, tossing a very small coin into the water for luck and hoping Christos, if he existed, was listening to Tilla’s prayers. ‘I think I’m ready for some dinner.’
They turned right off the main road soon after, Dias leading the way along a narrow unmade lane where grass sprouted between the wheel ruts. The gelding picked up its pace, recognizing the route. Ruso was aware of Gavo drawing up beside him, waving one hand to attract his attention and mouthing, ‘Sir?’
He slowed the horse, letting Dias draw away in front of them.
‘Sir, I should never have said that about Dias. You won’t say anything to anybody, will you?’
‘I’m sure he can explain,’ said Ruso. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll have a word with him and sort it out.’
‘But sir –’
‘I won’t tell him who told me,’ said Ruso. The youth evidently had no clue that he might be involved in covering up a murder. ‘With luck, he’ll never find out.’
The youth glanced at Dias, still a couple of horse lengths in front. He moved closer until his and Ruso’s knees brushed against each other. ‘Please, sir! It wasn’t anything bad. He just went to meet a woman.’
‘I thought he spent the evening with you?’
Gavo shook his head. ‘In the end he had to, sir. Her husband was at home.’
‘Ah,’ said Ruso, who didn’t believe a word of it but could see why Gavo had been impressed.
‘Please don’t tell anyone, sir. If his girl finds out, I’m dead.’
With that, Gavo drew back and left him to ride on alone. The gentle plod of hoofs on dried mud was accompanied by evening birdsong as they followed the track through fresh green woods that would have been an ideal ambush site, but were implausibly far from the river.
After a couple of hundred paces the view opened to reveal the villa he had seen from the road: a two-storey building with tiles on the roof, paint on the walls and glass in several of the windows – which by British standards made it a high-class residence. Horses in the surrounding paddocks lifted their heads and trotted up to greet the new arrivals. A grey-headed figure that could only be Caratius appeared on the porch.
He had just raised one arm in greeting when there was a commotion behind them. The alarm calls of startled birds rose above the sound of someone crashing through undergrowth and shouting. Ruso wheeled the horse round. Where Gavo should have been was an empty track. Dias, spear raised, yelled, ‘Keep back!’ as he thundered past towards the woods. Over the hoofbeats, from somewhere deep in the trees, came a shrill and terrible scream.
It was all over by the time they got there. Gavo was standing triumphant, the tip of his spear pressed into the rough clothing of a prisoner who was lying face-down amongst the leaves.
‘Got her, boss!’ he announced proudly to Dias, and then to Ruso, ‘This woman was following us, sir.’
Ruso put both reins into one hand and swung down from the horse. As he knelt beside the prisoner, Dias approached and said something in British.
‘Tell your man to stand easy, Dias,’ said Ruso, relieved to see that the prisoner’s expression was one of indignation rather than pain. ‘There’s no danger.’
‘She’s the associate of the Iceni woman,’ said Dias.
‘Yes,’ said Ruso, sighing. ‘She’s also my wife. Would you mind letting her up, please?’
*
By the time Ruso emerged on to the track Caratius had arrived with a posse of farm workers clutching pitchforks and horsewhips. His own escort was still wandering about the woods, trying to catch the horse that had fled from Gavo in all the excitement. Ruso jumped the gelding back over the ditch, then turned and leaned down to grab his wife’s hand as she leaped across on to the track with her skirts bunched up into the other fist.
The embarrassment of having to explain the arrival of an uninvited dinner guest who was still picking twigs out of her hair was something Ruso would later try very hard to forget. Caratius made an effort to be polite but the tone in which he said, ‘From the North, I see!’ suggested that, if Ruso was going to marry a Briton, he might have made a more civilized choice. Indeed, it probably looked as though Ruso had failed to mention her before because he was ashamed of her.
As Caratius showed them around the estate Tilla seemed to be trying to make up for her bizarre behaviour by being unusually sociable. She was busy complimenting their host on the mares and foals grazing in the paddocks when Ruso wandered a few paces further along the track, which carried on past the house. He stopped. The river had not followed the course he had assumed. Instead it had swept round in a wide curve. Not only did it flow across Caratius’ land, but down there in the shifting shadows of the willow trees he could make out some sort of planking and mooring-posts.
It was difficult to concentrate on the tour of the stables. He barely noticed the tack room, hung with plenty of jingling decorations for Caratius’ slaves to polish. He had to force himself to pay attention to the conversation as they paused to watch a very small boy in man-si
zed boots hold the halter of a grey stallion while a man clamped its nearside hoof between his own thighs and circled it with a pair of long-handled pincers, clipping off a hard crescent of extra growth.
When Caratius finally left them in a hall that smelled of roasting beef and mould and went to warn the cook about the extra guest, he hissed, ‘What the hell are you doing here?’
‘I am here to protect you.’
‘I thought you couldn’t leave Camma on her own?’
‘She is not on her own,’ said Tilla, looking pleased with herself. ‘The housekeeper came to pay respects to her master. She said she will stay while I am out.’
‘Well don’t say anything careless. I think the guard captain was Valens’ burglar.’
‘I told you,’ she whispered, ‘you cannot trust these people.’
She lifted her hands to tuck a solitary primrose into her ruffled hair. She was still flushed after the chase through the woods. How did this woman always manage to be desirable at inconvenient moments?
‘Turn round,’ he ordered her as a slave approached clutching a towel. ‘Stand still. You’ve still got pieces of leaf stuck to your back.’
37
The men had gone into the dining-room ahead of her. Tilla settled herself on the stool, leaned against the wall and stretched out one leg so the slave could struggle with the knot in the damp leather lacing of her boot.
She had made a fool of herself, and the Medicus was embarrassed. Still, it was better to be a fool than a widow. Better to be embarrassed than to suffer some ‘accident’ at the hands of the Catuvellauni. He would come to see that in a day or two. And at least she was getting dinner.
When the slave had finished drying her feet and taken her boots away to clean, she was ushered into a big room where, instead of good beef, there was all sorts of fiddly food set out in red bowls much like their own on a low table. Her husband and Caratius stopped talking and turned to look at her as if they had been discussing something important and secret. Perhaps Caratius had been trying to find out what the Medicus knew about the murder. Or perhaps he had been giving his own side of the marriage story that both he and Camma had been too embarrassed to tell in Londinium.