Terra Incognita: A Novel of the Roman Empire Page 27

  “Please,” said Ruso, gesturing to the bench and forcing himself to look the girl in the eye, “sit down.”

  In the privacy of the closed bar she seated herself with her back to him, then curled both knees up to her chest and swiveled around in a flurry of skirts. She used both hands to shift the bosom so it was resting on the table, and inquired, “What can I do for you?”

  Ruso tried to concentrate. “I’m making some inquiries,” he said, “about the murder of a soldier the other day.”

  “Poor Felix,” she said, frowning. “I only found out last night. What a shock, eh?”

  “So you haven’t spoken to anyone else about this?”

  “ ’Course I have. Everybody’s talking about it. It’s not a secret, is it?”

  “Anyone official, I mean.”

  “Only you, sir.” She leaned closer and dropped her voice to a husky whisper. “Ask me anything you want.”

  Ruso cleared his throat again and said, “You were working here that night?”

  She nodded.

  “Tell me what happened.”

  The account she gave added little to what he already knew. A busy night, a beer shortage, Rianorix shouting at Felix and twice being thrown out into the street.

  “You know Rianorix?”

  “Everybody knows him. He’s the good-looking one who sells baskets at the market.”

  Ruso was already having enough difficulty focusing on the facts without being reminded of the charms of Rianorix. “And afterward?”

  The girl wrapped a dark curl around her finger and pulled it toward her mouth. “Well, that was it, wasn’t it? If Rianorix came back for a third go, I didn’t see him.”

  “And when did Felix leave?”

  “A bit later on.”

  “With his friends?”

  “No,” said Dari, suddenly monosyllabic. The curl sprang back into place.

  “I heard he stayed to talk to you.”

  “What if he did?”

  “What were you talking about?”

  The bosom lifted off the table. The girl sat back and folded her arms beneath it. “What happened wasn’t anything to do with me,” she said.

  “We talked, and then he left. I didn’t do anything. I didn’t go anywhere. I was clearing up. Then we all went to bed. Ask Susanna.”

  “You were talking about money, weren’t you?”

  “Who’s been—?” She stopped. “Her, I suppose? Nosy cow.”

  Ruso said nothing.

  “Felix gave me a loan a few weeks ago to buy some new shoes. I said I would pay him that night and I did. That’s all.”

  “And a few hours later he was dead.”

  “I told you, it’s nothing to do with—”

  “Did he say where he was going when he left?”

  “It was a business arrangement, all right? He wasn’t my boyfriend.”

  “What did you pay him?”

  “Does it matter?”

  Had the girl been more cooperative Ruso would not have bothered questioning her much further. As it was, she was giving the impression of having something to hide.

  “Why did you leave town the next morning?”

  “My mother was ill.”

  “And if I check with her neighbors they’ll confirm that, will they?”

  The girl sucked in her lower lip and chewed at it for a moment.

  “It doesn’t look good for you, does it?” prompted Ruso. “You’re the last to see him, you hand over some money you probably don’t want to part with—”

  “How many times? It wasn’t me! I was here all the time!”

  “So why run away?”

  Dari glanced around to make sure nobody was listening. “I had a reason,” she said. “I can’t tell you what it was.”

  “If they take you in for questioning,” he said, “you’ll have to tell them. And it will hurt. If you tell me, I may be able to keep it quiet.”

  “That’s not much of a choice.”

  “It’s the best offer you’ll get.”

  The bosom sagged onto the table. “I didn’t steal it,” she muttered. “I found it. Finding’s not stealing.”

  “You found some money?”

  She frowned. “Of course not. I wouldn’t have to tell you that, would I? Money all looks the same. I found a ring. Under a bench in the bathhouse. A gold ring. Felix wanted his money and I didn’t have any. So I used it to pay him.”

  Susanna emerged from the kitchen and gave Ruso a look that said she was disappointed in him. He pretended not to see it. “Tell me about this ring,” he said.

  “It was one of those lattice patterns,” she said. “So it looks fancy but it doesn’t use much gold. There were letters in the pattern.”

  “Did you know what they said?”

  She shrugged. “Not a clue. But it can’t have been anybody’s name or he’d have asked me how I got it, wouldn’t he?”

  Not, reflected Ruso, if Felix was simply going to use it to buy off Rianorix, who doubtless couldn’t read either.

  “It wasn’t really stolen,” she insisted, “but I knew there might be a fuss when he tried to sell it. So I thought I’d stay out of town for a while. Then I heard he’d been murdered the same night.”

  “So you guessed it was safe to come back.”

  She nodded.

  “One last thing,” said Ruso. “When you paid him, did he make a note of it?”

  “He wiped me off his list. I watched him do it.”

  He got to his feet. “Thank you, Dari,” he said. “You’ve been very helpful.”

  “It wasn’t me.”

  “I know.”

  “And you won’t tell anybody?”

  “Not if I can help it,” he said.

  57

  TILLA HAD BEEN surprised by the sudden cacophony of “Aemilia!” echoing around the hall of the bathhouse as a group of young women in the corner noticed their arrival. There had followed a flurry of greetings and compliments and surprise, as it seemed everyone needed to assure everyone else very loudly—in Latin—how lovely it was to see them and how Aemilia wasn’t looking at all terrible and she was being wonderfully brave and—finally—who was her friend?

  “This is my cousin,” announced Aemilia, putting an arm around Tilla’s shoulders. “Her name is Darlughdacha.”

  This seemed to cause some confusion. “Hasn’t she got a Roman name?” demanded one of the girls.

  “Does she speak Latin?”

  Tilla eyed the eager faces framed with fancy hairstyles and decided that she did not wish to hear her beautiful name mangled by the lips of strangers. “Tilla,” she said. “You can call me Tilla.”

  Aemilia pulled up a stool and introduced her to each girl in turn, declaring the names as if she were proud to have so many friends.

  “I remember you,” said Tilla, accepting the space on a bench beside a girl with a squint who was introduced as Julia but who had been called something very different when they had last met. She slipped back into the ease of her native tongue. “You lived in one of the houses near Standing Stone Hill. Your da used to work a lathe.”

  The girl tossed her head and replied in Latin, “Oh, that was a long time ago! Now I live here in a proper house.”

  “Julia has a son,” confided Aemilia. “Her man is with the Tenth. Like—”

  Tilla saw apprehension in the faces of the other girls.

  “—my poor Felix,” finished Aemilia. She gulped, and made a sudden grab for her purse. “We need some oil. Come and help me choose, cousin.”

  As Tilla followed her cousin across the hall, she was almost sure the jumble of echoed voices around her held a hiss of, “She really doesn’t know, does she?”

  Tilla adjusted her towel and leaned back against the wall of the warm room, closing her eyes to the sight of the painted dolphins leaping across the walls and, beneath them, the unpleasant things women were having done to themselves in the pursuit of elegance. She wished she could also close her nose to the stench of competing
perfumes and her ears to the babble of voices laced with the occasional grunt from the massage couch and “Ow!” as the plucker of unwanted hairs delivered her own particular form of torture. The smell, the heat, and the noise were making her head ache. It was hard to imagine why anyone would want to come here at all, let alone turn up every day to be exposed and prodded by strangers.

  She let out a long breath and let her head fall slightly to one side, mimicking sleep. Around her, the brittleness of the chatter became more obvious as she shut out the wide eyes and overeager smiles. It was as if, with few shared memories to link them, these women were so far apart that they needed to keep reassuring themselves by waving and shouting across the gap.

  She thought of the long comfortable silences at home. The nights snuggled under warm blankets, listening to the low murmur of adult voices. The heavy crunch of another log being thrown onto the fire. The gentle trickle of beer being poured. Later, sometimes, the giggling and shuffling and gasping from her parents’ bed that she and her brothers were not supposed to hear.

  A sudden wail followed by, “Sorry, miss!” brought her mind back to the bathhouse. This, perhaps, was what people who abandoned their ancestors and surrendered their souls to the foreigners became. Brittle shapes, clinging to one another and shrieking to drown the shame.

  Her mind was drifting above the conversation around her when she heard a change of tone and realized an argument was starting.

  “Look!” her cousin was insisting.

  Tilla opened her eyes to see Aemilia tugging off her precious gold ring.

  “Look!” she repeated. “It is my name. In Greek. Aemilia.”

  The middle-aged woman standing over her gave a derisive laugh. “You can’t read Greek!”

  “Can you?”

  “No,” she retorted, “but I know what that says. It says, Long Life to Elpis. Ask anybody. That’s my ring. And you’re the little thief who pinched it from me last week.”

  58

  RUSO WAS LEAVING Susanna’s when both of the girls he now needed to talk to emerged from the bathhouse and scurried along the wet street. Aemilia, the buxom daughter of Catavignus, was holding a towel over her head to protect her hair from the drizzle.

  “Tilla!” he shouted. He was going to get this difficult encounter over before tackling Aemilia about the gold ring.

  Both girls turned. Aemilia had clearly spent too long in the steam room and was still very pink in the face. Tilla said something to her and she hurried on.

  “I want to talk to you,” he said to Tilla, wondering who had given her that dress whose shade picked up the color of her eyes and why she was wearing perfume. “Where can we go?”

  Tilla shrugged. “I have no house. I am not allowed in the fort because I am not a soldier. Soon I am not allowed in the baths because I am not a man, and Susanna’s is closed.”

  “We’ll sit outside,” he said, heading toward the benches underneath the sodden awning.

  “You will sit with me where everyone can see?” She sounded pleased.

  Choosing the only table not under a drip, he realized she was not calling him “my lord” anymore. And he realized he did not know how to start this conversation. He had imagined speaking with her in private, but there was nowhere private to go.

  Before he could decide how to begin, she said, “Do you know who it is yet who kills the soldier?”

  He cleared his throat. “No.”

  “I have some new things to tell you. That Felix is a thief and a liar. He has given a ring to my cousin to keep her quiet. It was a stolen ring. She is shamed in front of all the women.”

  Ruso said, “Oh.”

  She chuckled. “And last night my uncle’s housekeeper says she sends away a drunk, because I forget to tell her you are coming.”

  “Where were you the night before?”

  The smile faltered. “With a friend.”

  “Rianorix.”

  She paused. “If you know, why do you ask?”

  “Because I was hoping you would deny it,” he said.

  There should have been some sort of hesitation while she considered her shame. Instead she shot back, “I am visiting Rianorix, who is a friend of my brothers, who are in the next world, and that snaky one comes with his soldiers and—”

  “What were you doing sharing a bed with him?”

  “Why are you spying on me?”

  “I’m not. I trusted you. I didn’t want to believe it when they told me.”

  “Then choose not to believe it.”

  “You just told me yourself it was true!”

  “There is one bed. One blanket. But I do not betray you with this man. That snaky one is telling you these things.”

  “I trusted you, Tilla. Holy gods, of all the men you could have chosen!”

  She folded her arms. “The soldiers will not let me in the fort. I have to go somewhere.”

  “You had an uncle here. Or you could have stayed at Susanna’s.”

  “Where I sleep at night is my own business.”

  He took a deep breath. “If you were my wife, I would divorce you for saying that.”

  “I am not your wife!” she retorted. “I am your housekeeper. This is what I hear you telling people. Housekeeper. You share a bed with your housekeeper!”

  He got to his feet. “You made a choice, Tilla. I have never forced you. Never.”

  “I am not your wife,” she repeated, louder, standing on the opposite side of the table so their eyes were level. “And I am not your slave either. Do you know how Claudius Innocens gets me to sell?”

  He did not. He had never wanted to turn over that particular stone.

  “The wives of Trenus do not like Trenus coming to my bed any more than I do,” she said. “So one day when he is not there, they sell me to a trader who is traveling past. I am never theirs to sell. So, I am never yours either.”

  “But I have a sale document,” he said, feeling like a man falling over a cliff and grabbing at a leaf for support.

  “False.”

  “Why didn’t you say this before?”

  “I try. You do not want to listen. You never want to hear things you do not like. Now listen to this. Rianorix is a man of honor and he does not kill that soldier, and I am not lying to you. And if you will not help him, I will.”

  He did not know what to say. He stepped back. The bench tipped over and crashed onto the ground. He kicked it out of the way and strode off into the drizzle.

  He was some distance down the street and determined not to look around when he heard her shout, “And he does not have the thing the snaky one is looking for!”

  When he marched back and grabbed her by the shoulders, she cried out in pain. He let go and looked around to see the barber and his wife watching with interest.

  “Do you know what Metellus is looking for, Tilla?”

  “No. They come to the house at night shouting, ‘Where is it?’ Rianorix does not know what they want or why.”

  “Do you know what I said to Metellus?” said Ruso, keeping his voice as even as he could manage. “I said that Tilla, who is a person I trust, told me that Rianorix didn’t do it: You should be looking for another killer. And do you know what he said?”

  “He tells you reasons why you should not trust me.”

  Ruso stared into her eyes for a moment and said, “Yes.”

  “And now you do not know who to believe.”

  “You spent the night with another man,” he said, and walked away.

  59

  CATAVIGNUS TOOK A pinch from the contents of the bowl the ancient servant was holding out to him, bit into it, and nodded.

  “Try some,” he suggested to Ruso, who had just been shown into his office. The bowl contained some sort of grain.

  “Barley,” said Catavignus.

  Ruso took a couple of the grains and wondered whether his host knew that the army considered barley rations to be a form of punishment. He bit warily, not inclined to sacrifice his molars for the sake of
politeness. To his surprise the grains crunched between his teeth and the flavor was unexpectedly rich and nutty.

  “Malt,” explained Catavignus as the servant left. “Sprouted and dried at just the right time and temperature. That’s the challenge of this business: getting the malt right. Do you know there are tribes across the sea who use good malt as currency?” He smiled. “If only we could all grow our own money. What can I do for you, Doctor?”

  “I was hoping you’d allow me a quick word with your daughter now that she’s finished at the baths.”

  “My daughter?”

  “It’s about Tilla,” said Ruso, untruthfully.

  “Ah, yes. In fact if you have a moment, I would like to speak to you myself.”

  Ruso, who did not have a moment, wished he had gone straight to the house and asked to see Aemilia instead of trying to observe social niceties.

  “As you can probably see,” said Catavignus, nodding toward the window, through which Ruso could see almost nothing, “this settlement has enormous potential.”

  Ruso, who had been expecting to discuss Tilla rather than town planning, grunted something that might have been assent.

  “A fine location at a major river crossing and a road junction, fertile land, and plenty of local building stone for something more permanent. It’s already a holiday destination for the men stationed up in the hill forts, and I’ve lost count of the number who say they’d like to move here when they retire. And we have the advantage of being right at the forefront of the empire.”

  “The forefront?” repeated Ruso, wondering if the man had chosen the wrong word to translate a native concept.

  “On the prow of the ship. On the edge. A lamp shining civilization out onto barbarian ignorance. And a customs post always draws plenty of trade.”

  “I see,” said Ruso.

  “Of course it’s all on a modest scale at the moment, but this is the time to invest. Get in at the beginning. That’s why I’ve expanded the brewery and had a malt house built and a water supply put in. That’s why the guild of caterers is very keen to do all it can to support the emperor’s protectors. Because once the rebels are dealt with, Coria has the potential to become one of the finest towns in Britannia.”