Caveat Emptor (4 page)

7

T
HE EXPENDITURE CLERK
with no front teeth was of little help, but the clerks of the income department in the procurator’s office were clearly delighted to be allowed to discuss the latest scandal instead of sitting hunched in silence over their ink pots. Julius Asper was swiftly confirmed as the tax collector for Verulamium, with a description matching the one Camma had given. The existence of a brother was a matter of some debate, although all were convinced they would have noticed a man with half an ear. What was without doubt was that Verulamium had been due to deliver seven thousand five hundred and thirty-two denarii three days ago. It had not arrived. This was unusual, since the town always paid on time.

“Unlike some,” added one of the clerks, eliciting murmurs of agreement. Ruso suspected that complaining about the lateness of tax collectors was a regular office pastime when they did not have the whereabouts of missing ones to ponder.

Nobody had known anything about Julius Asper’s wife until she had arrived this morning, which was hardly surprising. There was an enthusiastic discussion about where two men with a lot of money might have gone, but when Ruso probed further it was clear they did not know how Asper might have traveled, or anything about his usual security arrangements. In the past he might have had one, perhaps two, or possibly three henchmen, but nobody had paid much attention and none could recall any names. To the staff’s obvious disappointment, Ruso thanked them and declared that he would not take up any more of their time.

The gate guards could not remember anything at all about Julius Asper but confirmed Ruso’s impression that no sensible tax collector would wander around with a large sum of money and no proper security. No, they could not remember ever seeing a man with only half of one ear, but if he were guarding the tax money, might he not be wearing a helmet?

Having confirmed at least some of Camma’s story, Ruso spent what was left of the afternoon on a fruitless but necessary round of visits to ships and warehouses, offices and inns, a cheerful brothel and a depressing one, and the local baths. Despite the offer of a reward—something he had forgotten to warn Firmus about—nobody could remember a man with graying brown hair and a scar beneath the right eye, who might or might not be calling himself Julius Asper. Nor could they recall Julius Bericus, or his mangled ear.

The sun was beginning to slide down toward the horizon, and Ruso was hungry. For all he knew, the brothers might have avoided the obvious route south and fled in some other direction. He would have to go to Verulamium tomorrow and start again from there.

He turned away from the river and headed back to find out where Valens was thinking of buying tonight’s dinner. He hoped it was none of the places he had visited so far.

He would not have noticed the slight figure approaching along the street but for the two small boys who were following and imitating his gait. It was a moment before he realized the figure was calling to him.

“Doctor Gaius Petrieus, sir!”

Ruso stopped. “Albanus?”

He blinked in surprise at his former clerk. Neither seemed to know whether to embrace the other. Albanus solved the problem with a snappy military salute that was immediately parodied behind him. Ruso returned the salute and glared at the boys, who fled.

Invalided out of the army, Albanus was attempting to make a living by teaching boys like the ones Ruso had just frightened away. Although, as he observed, most of the boys were even less eager to learn than their parents were to pay: a fact which was borne out by the patches on his tunic. “I get by, sir. But if you need a clerk, I’d be very happy to help.”

“Not at the moment, I’m afraid. I’ve got a temporary job with the procurator’s office. They seem to have a clerk in every corner.” He explained about the hunt for the missing brothers. “But if I hear of anybody who needs a good man, I’ll mention your name.”

The smile was pathetically grateful. “Thank you, sir. They can find me at Albanus’s School for Young Gentlemen. We’re in the southwest corner of the Forum every morning. Reading, writing, and mathematics as standard; Greek, logic, and rhetoric by special arrangement. In the meantime I’ll spread the word about your tax men. And if I hear of anybody who needs a good doctor, I’ll tell them you’ll be available shortly.”

Ruso grinned. “Thank you.”

“You will be careful, won’t you, sir? People can turn very nasty when there’s money involved.”

Ruso’s smile faded as he watched Albanus walk away down the street. He had always felt vaguely responsible for the head injury that had ended Albanus’s career in the army, but at the moment he barely had the resources to look after himself and Tilla, let alone employ a clerk he didn’t need. It was unlikely they would ever work together again, and he suspected both of them would be the poorer for it.

8

T
ILLA WAS EATING
upstairs with the new mother. Down in the dining room, Valens poked at the wick on the lamp with the sharp end of his spoon. The flame rose higher. He wiped the spoon on the couch, seemingly unaware of the oily streak it left behind. He poured himself another generous helping of Ruso’s wedding-present wine while Ruso helped himself from the platter of salmon that the boy had just fetched from the inn around the corner.

“This is the life!” Valens observed, adjusting the cushions behind him before lifting his feet onto the couch. “Just us chaps together. It’s a pity you’ve got to rush off to Verulamium in the morning. You know”—here he took a mouthful of salmon and carried on talking around it—“sometimes I miss the old place back in Deva.”

Ruso licked the overspiced sauce from the spoon. “Didn’t we spend most of our time in the old place looking for ways to get out of it?”

“Ah, Ruso,” said Valens, “how I’ve missed your delightfully glum presence.” He grinned. “I never thought I’d say this, but it’s more fun with you around.” Seeing Ruso’s surprise he added, “It’s an honor to tend the great and the powerful, but frankly it’s not very entertaining.”

Ruso took another swig of wine and marveled at how Valens’s life must have changed if this evening was his idea of fun. He said, “I ran into Albanus this afternoon.”

“We should have invited him,” said Valens. “I didn’t think.”

Ruso was about to say, “He’s looking for a job,” and then considered what it might be like to work for Valens and kept quiet.

If Tilla were here, she would be hinting that this was the time to ask about the mysterious absence of Serena.

“So,” said Valens in a tone that implied he was about to say something that had been on his mind for a while. “Women, eh?”

“Women,” agreed Ruso, hoping Valens would get to the subject of Serena without any embarrassing prompting.

“Tell me, what do your family make of Tilla?”

Perhaps he was approaching the topic by a roundabout route. “Some of them quite like her,” he said. “The rest are somewhere between horror and resignation.”

“Ah,” said Valens. “Well, as long as you’re happy.”

“Mm.” Ruso glanced down at his cup. “Pass the jug over, will you?”

Valens refilled his own cup before complying. Eyeing his old friend over the top of the jug he said, “What
do
women want, exactly?”

Ruso felt a faint twinge of alarm. This was not supposed to happen. Valens had always been the man with the answers. “You’re asking me?”

“Well, you married two of them. You must know something.”

Ruso watched the stream of wine cascading into the cup and pondered the question. “Tilla wants to settle down and have children,” he said. He was about to ask what Serena wanted when Valens said, “And Claudia?”

Ruso pondered that for a moment. “I tried asking her once.”

“And?”

“She said it was obvious.”

“If it were obvious,” said Valens, “surely you wouldn’t have been asking?”

“That’s exactly what I said.”

“And then?”

“She told me I’d just proved her point.”

Valens frowned. “So what was her point?”

The wicker chair creaked as Ruso leaned back in it. “I don’t know.” He made a careful attempt to sound casual as he asked, “What about Serena?”

Valens appeared to ponder this for a moment, then said, “Well, whatever it is, I can’t do much about it if she isn’t here, can I?”

9

A
S
R
USO LIFTED
the covers and fell into Valens’s spare bed, it dawned on him that not only had he eaten too much, but that he and Valens must have drained the amphora deeper than he had realized. From where he lay, his wife now appeared to be clutching a glass vial in one hand and tiptoeing around the bed with the exaggerated gait of a slave about to deceive a master in a silly comedy.

He closed his eyes, told his slithering mind to get a grip, and looked again. Now she was standing with her loosened curls haloed in the lamp, swirling sludgy gray liquid around in the vial and apparently mouthing words to it.

There would be an explanation. There was always an explanation with Tilla, but not necessarily a logical one and not one he wanted to listen to after a long day. He had a vague memory of wanting to ask her something, but whatever it was could wait. He let his eyes drift shut and left her to carry on. Thus he was totally unprepared to be woken by a rush of cold air, a warm body straddling his overfull stomach, and a voice announcing from above, “I am ready for you, husband!”

“Huh?”

“Now. While the medicine is working.”

He opened his eyes and surveyed his naked and wild-haired wife with more alarm than desire. “What medicine?”

“It is spring, and the moon is waxing. It is a good time to make a child.”

He swallowed. “Right now?”

The eyes that were not blue but were not really green, either, fixed on his own. “Right now,” she declared, and reached across him to pinch out the bedside lamp.

Sometime later, vaguely aware that it was still dark despite the screech of a neighbor’s cockerel, he heard her say, “And another thing. This bed is too hard.”

He mumbled, “Perhaps the beds will be better in Verulamium.”

“I hope many things will be better.” He guessed this referred to their latest attempt to produce an heir, which had been swiftly concluded and followed—as far as he could remember—by his drifting off to sleep while she was still talking. She said, “I have told Camma she can travel with us tomorrow.”

He grunted his assent.

Outside, the cockerel again shrieked the start of a nonexistent dawn. He said, “Somebody ought to put that bloody bird in the pot.”

“It is good we are not at home in Brigantia.”

In the silence that followed, he wondered what the Brigantes did with poultry.

“Nobody at home will find out I have married a tax man.”

Ruso sighed. There was, he decided, a fundamental incompatibility between women and men. Women could not just get on and do things. They had to decide how they felt about doing them, and then they had to tell you how they felt, and then they expected you to do something about it, no matter how irrational their feelings might be. He had tried to explain to her that modern living needed money, that for ordinary people money came from taking a job, and that a job inevitably involved a man going where he was told and doing what he was paid to do when he got there. There were times when the question of whether his wife would approve was not uppermost in his mind.

“I’m not a tax man,” he pointed out, deciding it would not help to admit that he could not care less whether the Britons paid their taxes. “I’m an investigator. Besides, you were the one who wanted me to look for the missing husband.”

“I have been thinking about that. Do not look too hard.”

“What?” He rolled over to face her in the dark. “It’s too late now. I’ve got everybody from the procurator’s office downward on the lookout. Even Albanus is spreading the word.”

“He does not deserve her, or his beautiful son. What sort of a man leaves his family for a bag of money?”

“She says he hasn’t taken the money.”

“Of course she says this. He is a tax collector. He has lied to her and run away with his brother. She will be better off without him.”

Ruso lay on his back with his eyes closed and marveled at the speed with which his wife could change her mind.

Outside the window there was a soft pattering of rain, followed by the unsteady rhythms of dripping from the eaves. Farther along the landing he could hear the rasping cry of the newborn child keeping its mother awake in the room usually occupied by Valens’s children. Tomorrow, he vowed, he would go and find the temple of a suitable god. He would give thanks for a safe journey and offer whatever the priests thought might be appropriate in exchange for an heir. It could do no harm.

He was just beginning to drift back to sleep when the cockerel jolted him awake with another fanfare. He felt a flash of irritation. Somebody ought to wring that feathery neck. He would cheerfully do it himself. But that would mean leaving a warm bed, groping for his boots, creeping down the stairs, and prowling wet lanes and gardens in the dark. Instead he said, “There should be a law against keeping a bird like that in town.”

“He should be in a house with a good low roof to keep his head down,” said Tilla. “When you find proper work and we have a home, I shall keep hens.”

“It’ll be easier to get work as a medic now I’m here,” he promised her. “I’ll start writing to people in a day or two.”

“Perhaps they will want a doctor in Verulamium.”

He said, “Don’t say that to anybody up there, will you?”

“You are proud to work for the tax man and ashamed to be a healer?”

“I can’t get on with inquiries if people keep asking me to look at their bunions.”

“Be careful, husband. It is bad enough this Julius Asper is a tax collector, but a man who would leave a wife like that will do anything. If they are still around and they know you are chasing them, they will try to stop you.”

He slid one arm around her waist, drawing her close so that her hair tickled his nose. “I’ll be safe,” he promised. “I’ve got a fierce British warrior-woman to defend me.”

Tilla said something that sounded like, “Hmph.”

He remembered what he had wanted to ask her earlier. “Has Valens said anything to you about Serena?”

“She was a fool to marry him.”

Ruso assumed this insight had originated from Tilla rather than Valens. A worrying thought crossed his mind. “You haven’t been talking to him about us, have you?”

“You think I would talk to Valens?”

He had to admit it was hard to imagine. “So where did you get that medicine?”

There was a pause, then, “From somebody I met.”

Clearly she was not going to tell him. “And did this somebody tell you what was in it?”

After a moment’s hesitation she said, “Ashes of hare’s stomach in wine.”

“Ah.” He had heard hare recommended as a treatment for barrenness. “Anything else?”

“Roast sparrow.”

Another cure more often endorsed by rumor than by experience. “Let’s hope it works.”

“She would not tell me the other things.”

“Probably just as well,” he said, glad that they would be leaving in the morning. Whoever had sold Tilla that concoction would have to find some other desperate woman to exploit.