by Ruth Downie
It was an uncomfortable reminder of his brother’s struggles to pay off the family debt. He said, “Where is this wedding they’ve gone to, exactly?”
“No idea,” Marcia admitted. “But they said they’ll be away for several days and they only went yesterday.”
It was bad news, in more ways than one. Wherever Lucius went, the key to the ornately carved, iron-bound chest in the corner went too. With it went any chance of getting at the documents that would tell Ruso how much the family had owed to young Publius’s late father—and presumably now owed to young Publius. Ruso could hardly go and visit, even to offer condolences, without some sort of grip on his own affairs. He glanced in the direction of the chest and wondered if he should fetch a crow-bar.
“Actually,” Marcia said, “I’m here to do you a favour. I’m bringing advance warning that Mother’s planning to accost you about expansion plans for the west wing.”
“What on earth for, if we can’t even afford a bath slave?”
“I’m guessing,” said Marcia, flinging herself on the couch, “that since you’ve just been on holiday in Rome, she thinks you’ve got some money.”
“I haven’t been on holiday!”
“That’s not what you said before. You said Rome is a very good place for a—”
“Yes, but—”
“And you’ve bought yourself two slaves.”
“Well whatever I had,” he told her, “I’ve spent it. And I don’t know how much there is here, because Lucius is away and I can’t get into the money chest.”
Marcia was on her feet again. “I’ll fetch a light. Don’t lock me out, because if you do, you’ll regret it.”
He had barely closed the shutters to keep the moths out when she was back, dark curls casting shadows over her face from the glow of lamplight. This time she secured the latch behind her. “I’ll tell you where the spare key to the chest is,” she announced, “if you tell me what’s going on with Flora’s boyfriend.”
Spare key? Why had no-one ever told him about this? Now he was going to have to negotiate for it, because any appeal to Marcia’s better nature would be a waste of time. “As I said at dinner,” he told her, “they didn’t let me see him.”
“They could have told you to go away at the gate. What did they let you in for?”
“To pay my respects to Titus. Where’s this key?”
“You must have found out something. I promise I won’t say a word to Flora.”
Ruso leaned back in the chair and put his hands behind his head. “How do I know there really is a spare?”
Marcia shrugged. “Suit yourself. I’m not bothered whether you get in there or not.”
“I’m the head of the household,” he pointed out. “I can insist you give me the key.”
“And I can tell Flora you lied to her.”
“I didn’t.”
“But you haven’t told me everything. I can tell.” She raised the lamp to get a better view of him. “Don’t let Mother catch you leaning Pa’s chair on the back legs, Gaius. She’ll make your life a misery.”
Ruso fought down a childish urge to lean even further. “Tell me something. What do you think of Verax?”
Marcia pondered this question for a moment. “Boring,” she said. “He’s quite good looking, but… Well, when we went to the races, all the normal people were cheering on the horses and shouting for the drivers, but Verax—he didn’t say a word. So we asked him what was the matter and he said nothing was the matter, he was just busy watching.”
Ruso scratched one ear with his forefinger. “That’s not what I meant.”
“You mean do I think he’d kill somebody? I shouldn’t think so, not unless he bored them to death. But he’s quite well-built with all that sawing and hammering, so I suppose he wouldn’t find it hard.”
“And Titus was his half-brother.”
“So they say. I can’t see him murdering Titus out of jealousy, though. I mean he’s not going to get invited to dinner parties or inherit the estate just because Titus is dead, is he? So, do you want this key or not?”
Ruso paused. “How well do you know Publius Germanicus?”
Marcia pursed her lips while she pondered this change of direction. “I know his sister.”
“That might be useful. I need to talk to them. The party where Titus died was at their house.”
“Hah! I might have guessed.”
He waited to be enlightened.
“Publius and his sister have been squabbling ever since their pa died. They had another huge argument the other day. He says she fell down the stairs, but everyone knows he pushed her. Anyway, she’s gone off to the country house to get away from him. I suppose he thinks he can have parties every night now.”
“What can you tell me about the parties?”
She raised her eyebrows. “Nothing. I’m a respectable married woman.”
He held out his hand, palm up. “Key.”
Marcia leaned down sideways from the couch. “Lift this corner of the desk, will you?”
He obliged, and when she reappeared there was an object wrapped in grubby linen in her hand. “It sits under the leg and stops the desk from wobbling,” she explained, picking apart a knot in the linen and letting it unravel. A key clattered onto the desk. “I found it ages ago. I knew it would—” She stopped. “Verax is still alive, isn’t he?”
“I believe so.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means,” he told her, “he was spoken of as if he was alive.”
“What did they say?”
“I’m not telling you.”
“I gave you the key!”
“And I told you where the party was.”
She said, “I’ll tell Mother you’ve got it, so you’re ready to talk money with her.”
He shrugged. “Go ahead. I’m not as frightened of her as you seem to be.”
“Did you really ask to see Verax when you went in there? Or did you just make polite conversation?”
He got to his feet. “That’s it, Marcia. If you can think of anything that’ll help, let me know.”
She grinned. “Fair enough. Mother isn’t really coming, by the way. She and Lucius don’t argue about money any more. Not since she married that dopey builder. Lucius just says yes to everything and then she asks Dopey to do it and he says he’ll put it on his list, and it never costs anything because he never gets around to doing it.”
It was Ruso’s turn to smile. Because Lucius was coping with their stepmother better than he’d thought, and because Marcia was as sharp as ever, but mostly because she had just helped him to get access to the information he wanted without being told what it was.
The smile didn’t last long after she had gone. It faded as soon as he found the right account and saw how exactly much money the young party host could decide to call in from them if things got awkward.
8
The dog had not barked for long, but the sound had been enough to raise the alarm. Ruso lifted his head from Flora’s pillow and waited, trying to make out the shape of the room in the darkness. Before long, as he expected, there was a soft tap on the door. Then the tapping turned into a gentle scratching and a whisper of, “Flora?”
Ruso rolled out of bed, taking the blanket with him. He felt his way to the door, lifted the latch and stepped aside.
He was prepared for the violence of a desperate man. What he wasn’t prepared for was the clumsy embrace of muscular arms, hot breath on his cheek and a brief scrape of stubble against his own before the visitor cried out in alarm and sprang back.
Ruso flung the blanket. The visitor dodged. Ruso grabbed at him. He missed, but the visitor gave a sudden lurch sideways, swore and crashed to the floor. Ruso threw himself on top and they both rolled across the bedroom tangled in the blanket.
Finally they came to a halt against the wall, both breathing heavily. The blanket was wound around them, forcing an unwanted intimacy with Ruso on top. He still had no idea what Flora’s boyfriend looked like,
but it was clear that Marcia was right: years of working with wood and iron had given him the sort of physique that could kill an enemy with one blow.
The visitor growled, “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Good,” Ruso told him. “I don’t want to be hurt.”
“Who are you? What have you done with Flora?”
“We need to talk.”
“Let me go.” Verax began to struggle, but as long as Ruso remained where he was, the blanket held them swaddled together. Finally the thrashing about stopped. Verax strained away from him. “Flora!” he yelled. “Flora, where are you? Flo-ra!”
“Shut up!” Ruso struggled to get a hand free to clamp over the man’s mouth. “Do you want to get caught?”
“Let me go!”
“Half the house must be awake by now. If you try and run, they’ll catch you and send you back.” Ruso rolled away from the wall. “Stay where you are and keep quiet.”
He staggered upright just as the inevitable footsteps came padding along the corridor and faint yellow streaks appeared around the door. Anxious voices began asking each other what was going on, and “Did you hear that shouting?” and “Something about Flora?”
Ruso lifted the latch and put his head out. He glanced around at the cook, the kitchen boy, a tousled Marcia on the arm of her young husband, and then the figure of his own wife approaching from the far end of the corridor. He said, “What’s going on?”
“Somebody was shouting,” said Marcia.
“Oh, sorry,” he said. “It was probably me again.”
She peered at him. “What are you doing in Flora’s room, Gaius?”
“I talk in my sleep,” he told her. It keeps the family awake, so I’ve come in here to give them a quiet night. Flora’s over with the cousins.”
“You talk about Flora in your sleep?” demanded Marcia, clearly incredulous.
Ruso scratched his head. “So it seems.”
More footsteps were approaching, and another lamp. He hoped it wasn’t Flora herself, who would point out that she had been evicted from her room on the grounds that he and Tilla needed a rest—together—from their sleepless baby. To his relief it was only his stepmother, her skin glistening with face cream.
“It’s all right, Mother,” Marcia told her. “It’s just Gaius gone mad.”
His stepmother, who seemed to find this entirely credible, shuffled away down the corridor.
“He talks at night when he is very tired, or he is anxious about something,” put in Tilla. “When it is really bad, he shouts.”
“It’s true,” said Ruso, seizing the lifeline she had thrown him. “We were very worried about Flora this afternoon.”
Tilla said, “Your sister is safely home, husband. Go back to sleep.”
He glanced around the figures gathered in the corridor: bare feet, rumpled tunics, bedtime hair framing anxious faces. “Sorry I disturbed you all,” he said. “I’ll try not to do it again.”
Marcia said, “How are you going to stop yourself if you’re asleep?”
Tilla stepped forward and placed a hand on his arm. “I will stay with him,” she said.
“Mad!” muttered Marcia, turning to steer her own husband in the direction of the stairs. “No wonder he couldn’t find a job in Rome.”
9
Tilla had brought a lamp, so Ruso was at last able to see the uninvited guest now eying them from behind the door. The square jawline reminded him far more of a younger Sabinus than Titus’s delicate features had done. “Sit down,” he said, indicating the foot of Flora’s empty sleeping-couch and settling himself at the head.
Verax remained standing. “You’re Flora’s other brother? The doctor?”
“I am.”
“Can I see her now?”
“No.” Ruso retrieved the jumbled blanket from the floor and tucked it around his wife, who had curled up in the wicker chair. Meanwhile the wheelwright shifted from one foot to the other and glanced at the door. “What are you going to do?”
Ruso said, “I’ve been wondering that ever since I saw you in the vineyard.”
Verax sighed. “I knew coming here was a bad idea.”
Ruso, who had promised Sabinus he would keep an eye open for the fugitive, said, “It’s the first place anyone would look.” Fortunately he had avoided promising to do anything about it if he found him.
“I just want to say goodbye to her.”
Tilla said, “Flora asked us to help you.”
The man shot a glance at Ruso. “Will you let me see her?”
“Probably not.”
“Once I’ve spoken to her I’ll go away and you’ll never see me again.”
“Nothing would please me more,” Ruso admitted. “But unfortunately, that’s not what everyone else wants.” He leaned back into the corner of the couch. “I went to Sabinus’s estate this afternoon and paid my respects to young Titus.”
“It wasn’t me who killed him, sir.” Verax had now recovered his senses enough to show some respect.
“Do you know who did?”
“No, sir. But that doesn’t matter, does it? They all think it was me.”
“Who do you think did it?” put in Tilla.
The bed creaked as the wheelwright sat down at last. He had no idea who the murderer might be. The only thing of which he seemed certain was that it would make no difference what the truth was: Titus’s friends would all stick together and their slaves would say whatever they were told to say. This was offered more as a statement of fact than a complaint, and Ruso had no doubt he was right.
The prompt of “Tell me about Titus” brought a less honest assessment. Contrary to Flora’s account, it seemed the dead youth had been full of promise: clever, lively, obviously destined for high office.
“Did you like him?”
“It wasn’t my business to like him.”
At least he hadn’t lied. “I’m told you were brothers.”
Verax nodded. “My mother was a slave. His mother was the wife.” He looked up. “I wasn’t jealous of him, sir. Who’d want to live like that?”
“Like what?”
The young man rubbed his unshaven chin, apparently struggling to find words. Finally he said, “He was never allowed to do anything useful.”
Tilla said, “Why did you talk about hurting him?”
Verax jerked round to face her. “Who told you that?” The lamp flame reflected in the dark eyes as he looked from one to the other of them. “It was just talk,” he said. “I wouldn’t have done it.”
Ruso said, “What wouldn’t you have done?”
“He upset Flora,” Verax explained, confirming what Tilla had said earlier. “I went to see him in private and told him if he ever went near her again I’d break his nose.”
Ruso said, “And?”
“He never bothered her again, and I kept away from him.”
Tilla’s question of “What about other girls? Did he bother them?” seemed to cause him some difficulty. Finally he said, “See, I thought, last night… only he wasn’t.” He cleared his throat. “It turns out there’s a lot more to driving than just driving.”
They finally untangled the events of the party from a confused account that was punctuated with “I know nobody will believe this.”
Tilla said, “But why did you try to pull the girl away?”
“Because I’m a fool, miss.”
“You do not seem like a fool to me,” she told him. “And I think Flora would not waste her time with you if you were.”
The young man shrugged awkwardly, as if embarrassed by the compliment. “It sounds stupid now,” he said. “But I thought that this Xanthe might be—you know, a decent girl who’d had too much wine. And that Titus was taking advantage of her. Then when she told Titus to get rid of me I thought she must be a hanger-on wanting a ride out to the estate so she could play at being rich. But she was just one of the girls they hire for parties, earning a living.”
Tilla said, “So you were doing your be
st to look after them both.”
Verax mumbled, “I suppose.” He glanced up. “I didn’t make a very good job of it, did I?”
“I am sure you tried to do the right thing,” Tilla assured him.
“Titus was very young,” Verax said suddenly. “And not as clever as he thought he was.”
“You are the older brother?”
He nodded. In the pause that followed he glanced at the door again. “I was hoping Flora might find me something to eat.”
Tilla promised to go and see what was in the kitchen in a moment.
Ruso was not sure he shared his wife’s sympathy. What if the man were just a plausible liar? He said, “Who helped you escape this afternoon?”
The dark head jerked up. “Nobody, sir.”
“You got past the locks yourself?”
“Yes, sir.” There was a slight pause before, “Really.”
“Fortune must have been kind to you,” Ruso observed, choosing not to demand how, exactly, he had gone about picking the locks.
Verax had recovered enough to look him in the eye. “I wanted to see your sister, sir.”
At least that much was true. As was the fact that Verax was a hopeless liar and was obviously trying to defend whoever had let him out.
Tilla said, “Where will you go?”
“A long way from here,” he told her. “Wherever I can get work.”
“In the meantime,” Ruso put in, “the person who murdered your brother will get away with it.”
“Sir, nobody else is going to be accused. The kitchen girl told everyone she found me standing over Titus with the jug still in my hand.”
Tilla said, “That girl needs to be properly questioned.”
Verax shook his head. “That’s what she saw.” Catching Ruso’s eye, he added, “I thought he’d fallen down drunk, sir. The jug was lying on top of him. I was moving it so it didn’t get broken when I pulled him up.”
“You’re sure nobody saw you hit him?”
“I didn’t hit him!” Before Ruso could reply Verax lifted his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Sorry, sir,” he said. “But if the regular driver hadn’t sprained his wrist, I’d never have been there. And I wouldn’t be here begging to say goodbye to Flora. I’d be asking to marry her.”