Vita Brevis (12 page)

“My steward tells me Kleitos’s father is long dead,” put in Balbus. “And now it turns out the message saying he’d gone to visit him was delivered by some street brat that nobody can identify. I want to know what’s going on.”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“But I’ve promised that you’ll find out,” put in Accius, shooting a glance that Ruso interpreted as telling him to shut up.

“This all looks,” said Balbus, “as if someone’s trying to intimidate me.”

Ruso, sworn to silence about the theriac, looked at Accius for a clue as to how to proceed.

“Well?” said Accius.

Apparently he was now expected to speak. “The neighbors suggested he might be in debt, sir. We thought perhaps he was the one who was being intimidated.”

Balbus raised one hand and beckoned over his shoulder to the slave who was standing in the corner behind him clutching a note tablet. “Is Kleitos in debt?”

The man stepped forward and bowed. “The last time we checked, he was making a good living, sir.”

“You see?” said Balbus, as if Ruso had accused him of negligence. “I would have known. My clerk helps with his accounts.”

Accius said, “So if he isn’t in debt, why has he run?”

“Because someone’s threatened him, sir?” Ruso suggested, incurring a glare from Accius.

Balbus was running one hand over his bald head. “My man’s gone,” he mused. “If anybody knows where or why, they’re not saying. And whoever sent that message was trying to stop me from looking for him.” He leaned out over the desk and yelled, “Firmicus?”

“Perhaps he sent the message himself, sir,” Ruso suggested, deliberately not looking at his patron. “The note he sent to me said the same thing—he was going away to visit his father. Your steward saw it. He can confirm the handwriting. Perhaps Kleitos doesn’t want to be found.”

The tone of “We’ve known each other twenty years! Why would he leave, after everything I’ve done for him?” took Ruso by surprise. Horatius Balbus sounded genuinely upset.

Accius’s slave joined them outside and followed at a respectful distance. They were at least a hundred paces away from the house before Accius spoke. “Well, that was awkward.”

Ruso said, “Sorry, sir.”

“You should be. Up till now I was making a decent impression.”

In the past few weeks Ruso had imagined all sorts of duties that a Good Man might be called upon to perform, but facilitating marriages had never been one of them.

Accius was still talking. “Balbus needs to know what’s happened to his freedman. And don’t tell me you don’t have any ideas about what’s going on, because I don’t believe you.”

For a brief moment Ruso considered asking for a private audience safely away from eavesdroppers, and confiding his suspicions about Kleitos’s secret human dissections to Accius. But Accius was a politician, not a doctor. He would understand even less than Tilla had. “I think it’s possible Kleitos managed to conceal the real state of his affairs from his patron, sir. The neighbors have mentioned debt collectors. And his note to me had a warning that I should be careful who to trust.”

“Really? Why didn’t you say so?”

Ruso cleared his throat. “I wasn’t sure who I could trust to say it to, sir.”

“Jupiter’s bollocks!” Accius flung both hands into the air in exasperation. “This is ridiculous. I can’t insist to Balbus that we know his own man’s finances better than he does without some sort of proof. Why didn’t you at least take a proper look at the body? We need to know exactly what we’re involved in here.” He paused. “You don’t think Kleitos did away with him, do you?”

“Nobody’s suggesting that, sir.” At least, he hoped they weren’t. It was even less plausible than the debt story, but if it spread it would destroy any remaining confidence in the practice. “I didn’t examine the body because I would have been late for an
appointment,” he said, adding, “with Horatius Balbus. By the time I got back it had gone.”

“And now it’s been cremated,” said Accius, stating this fact with considerably less approval than he had shown earlier this morning, although with no more concern for the deceased.

They turned a corner to find a slave in a familiar tunic hurrying toward them. Accius paused to read the message the slave handed over, then sent him home.

“It seems this bartender caretaker person has confessed about the disposal business,” he said, snapping the tablet shut and handing it to the slave who was accompanying them. “He’s Balbus’s man, so I imagine Balbus will have plenty to say to him about it. As I could have told everyone myself if I’d been consulted, the undertakers aren’t contractually obliged to collect stray bodies on the same day unless they’re notified before the tenth hour. Which is rather annoying, since their headquarters is only just down the road outside the Praenestina gate. Apparently half the staff who would have fetched it were busy questioning somebody’s slaves, and the rest were out of town organizing a crucifixion.”

“Ah.” Since questioning of slaves was routinely done under torture, the staff must have been very busy indeed.

“A deeply distasteful business, undertaking,” Accius observed, voicing Ruso’s own thoughts. “Not the sort of people one wants to mix with. Anyway, the bartender chap told his slaves to roll the barrel somewhere around the back and hide it with their own stores, but the slaves were so frightened of having it outside their bedroom overnight that they waited until it was getting dark and shifted it onto somebody else’s patch, just to get rid of it. Unfortunately, they were seen.”

This was starting to sound like the script of a bad comedy.

“Apparently the bartender chap was full of apologies. He’s had the slaves soundly beaten, of course. Though frankly, one sometimes wonders if it’s worth the effort.”

They broke step to avoid a scatter of dung in the street. Accius ordered his man into the nearest shop to threaten the owner with a fine if it wasn’t cleared up straightaway. “Street cleaning may not be much of a job,” Accius observed as they waited, “but I need to be seen doing things properly.”

“Yes, sir.”

“As do you. Balbus was concerned that it’s not in your interests to find Kleitos, but I told him you were a good man and you would want to help a colleague who’d supported you.”

Ruso cleared his throat. “Sir, as I said, it’s possible that being found is the last kind of help Kleitos wants.”

“Never mind what Kleitos wants! The man’s run off without a word to his patron. For all we know, he could have been kidnapped.”

“With all his furniture, sir?”

“Don’t be facetious, Ruso.” The sound of raised voices caused Accius to glance into the shop. “Gods above, why is it so difficult to get the simplest thing done around here? Are you going to find Kleitos, or do I need to look for somebody else?”

“I’ll do it, sir.”

The slave emerged from the shop, followed by a scowling woman clutching a bucket and a shovel. They set off down the street again. As they passed a sundial, Ruso was unable to resist a glance.

“The auctions won’t be finished yet,” Accius informed him tartly and snapped his fingers. The slave stepped forward and handed him a leather purse. “My clerk will have drawn up the loan documents while we’ve been out. Go down there, get it over with, and then concentrate on sorting this mess out for Horatius Balbus. I want him to know I’m a man who gets things done.”

Shopping was the province of women. The purchase of items beyond the scope of shops—important items such as property, livestock, and household members—was man’s work. Still, as Tilla had pointed out, they needed to choose a slave they could trust with Mara’s life, and did he want to take responsibility for that all on his own?

Thus Kleitos’s apartment was once again locked and deserted while its new occupants hurried across the city to catch the end of the auctions. One was clutching a baby. The other had Accius’s cash concealed under his tunic. Apparently, having pointed out why lending the money was a bad idea, Accius’s clerk had then warned his master that allowing Ruso to fall into the clutches of moneylenders would be even worse.

They arrived breathless after several wrong turns, rushing into an enclosed courtyard that smelled of stale bodies and fried food. Pigeons strutted about in the sunshine, pecking at scraps while the owners of the food stalls under the colonnades were already packing up. The remaining buyers clustered around the auction block were not as well dressed as the men already queueing at the payment tables and collection points. Ruso and his small family
were joining the late bargain hunters, hoping to snap up the overlooked and underpriced.

At least, he hoped that was how it worked. Ruso had never actually purchased a slave at auction before. His father had owned a steward who dealt with all that, and later his brother had taken over the role along with managing the farm. His first marriage had been so brief that they were still relying on staff brought from their respective homes when it ended. Still, he had money, and he had common sense, and whoever he took home this afternoon would already have Tilla’s approval. There should be enough left over to buy a clean mattress where whoever-it-was could sleep next to Mara while he and his wife enjoyed some uninterrupted nocturnal privacy.

Whoever-it-was would not be the current slave standing on the block: A sullen young woman with spear-throwing shoulder muscles was not what a family man wanted to face every morning over breakfast. Ignoring the babble of the auctioneer, Ruso turned his attention to the figures lined up in chains behind the temporary barrier. He had arrived too late for the advance viewing, but he was used to assessing physical fitness. He would run through the same points he usually considered for military recruits, leaving out the parts that didn’t apply to women and letting Tilla deal with the extras that did. Physical fitness, however, was not all. How were they supposed to guess if someone would be a pleasure to live with or a scheming liar or a wet rag with no initiative? He had no idea. He was watching the young woman being led down from the block when someone cried, “Doctor!”

A portly figure he vaguely recognized was squeezing through a gap in the wooden barriers. “Simmias,” the man reminded him, transferring the pastry to his left hand and holding out the other, which was slightly sticky to the touch. “Doctor with the second night watch. We met the other day.”

“I remember.” Simmias was a lot friendlier now than when Ruso had visited the fire brigade’s headquarters last week on the hunt for work. He nodded toward the slaves as the auctioneer announced the next lot. “Are you buying?”

“Inspecting for a client,” the man explained. “They tell me you’re filling in for Kleitos. Glad to hear it.”

“I’ve been asked to cover for him till he gets back. You don’t happen to know how I can contact him, do you?”

Simmias shook his head before swallowing the last of the pastry. “Sorry. I hardly know him. Tell me, what’s all this about a body?”

So. It was not friendliness, but curiosity. Ruso glanced up at the block to make sure he was not missing a suitable baby-minder, then gave a brief summary of the story. He tried to make it as unexciting as a body in a barrel could possibly be made to sound, and to his relief Simmias restrained any urge to speculate.

Instead he said, “It must have been a nasty shock for your wife.”

“She didn’t sleep too well last night,” Ruso admitted.

“Not a good start for you, either.”

“Apparently there’s been some problem with debt collectors. I’m hoping people will realize it’s nothing to do with me.”

“Absolutely, brother.” Simmias reached out and patted him on the shoulder. “Let’s hope it’s soon forgotten. Anything I can do to help you settle in, let me know.”

“I’m very keen to track down Kleitos. If you hear anything—”

“I’ll be in touch.”

“And I’d welcome any recommendations about suppliers. I’ve got the basics, but I need to know about specialists.”

“Ah, now there I can help you.” But instead of offering names, Simmias broke off, his attention caught by something on the far side of the marketplace. A familiar female voice was calling out over the murmur of the crowd, demanding in a tongue that was wholly out of place at a Roman slave auction, “Is there anyone here of the Corionotatae?”

Tilla was standing on the high base of a column, clinging precariously to a marble pillar that was too broad to reach her arm around. With Mara clamped in the crook of the other arm, she was straining to see across the pen of unsold female slaves.

“Silly woman’s going to fall off there,” Simmias observed.

Ruso sighed. “That’s my wife.” It was hopeless to pretend otherwise.

“It’s no good her shouting in—what is it, Germanic?” said Simmias. “Tell her to try some Latin.”

“Anyone from the Brigantes?” Tilla cried, widening the net beyond her own obscure little tribe.

As Ruso shouldered his way through the crowd, someone who must have understood her shouted, “You’re a couple of years too late, love—we’ve sold ’em all!”

It struck him that they must be standing where the surviving British rebels had ended up after being marched away in chains. Some of them, he supposed, must still be serving in households here in the city. The rest would be long gone. He doubted any would ever see their homelands again.

“I am searching for women of the Brigantes!”

More and more heads were turning away from the auction block to watch the barbarian woman making a spectacle of herself. “Wait for me!” Ruso shouted, hoping to silence her. Inside the pen, any dealer who grasped what was going on would be busy checking his stock for women he could pass off as Brigante at inflated prices.

“Do you a nice Thracian, miss!” someone offered.

Ruso reached up and lifted Mara to safety before she slipped out of Tilla’s grasp and crashed onto the stone paving. “What the hell are you doing?” he whispered just as a gangly youth yelled from beyond the fence, “I am Dumnonii! I speak your tongue!”

“Brigante!” cried another. “I am of your people, sister!”

Tilla grabbed Ruso’s shoulder for support and leapt down, almost overbalancing as she landed. “There is a man of the Brigantes over there!”