Vita Brevis (28 page)

Nor, it seemed, was he. “We’re talking as if they’re coming back this morning. We still have two days. We could ask Metellus.”

“Metellus? Husband, are you losing your mind?”

“Possibly,” he said. “But if anyone can find Kleitos, he can.”

She took a deep breath. “I am sorry,” she said. “I thought you meant you would ask Metellus for money.”

“Mm. We could try that too if Kleitos won’t pay up.”

“Tell me you are teasing me.”

He shrugged. “You complain when I turn down all your ideas.”

“Perhaps the men will come back today to fetch Kleitos’s things,” she said, trying to find something hopeful to say. “Then we will find him and he can sort everything out and we will have no need to do anything.”

“Perhaps.”

It was as near an apology as she was going to get. She reached up to flatten a spike of hair that was sticking out above his ear. “You must comb this before you see anyone. You look like a man who has slept with his head on upside down. Did I tell you what Narina said about the followers of Christos?”

This time he made the effort to grasp her peace offering. “Tell me.”

“She said, ‘If he is a powerful god, why does he put up with that Sister Dorcas?’”

The smile was not broad, but it was there. And that was when he told her the other thing that was worrying him: how Accius had fallen out with him because Ruso was refusing to help prove that Curtius Cossus the builder was a murderer.

She was saying, “He wanted you to prove
what
? What is the matter with him?” when they both heard the scrape of boots on stone very close by. Then something scratching at the door, as if someone were trying to work out a way of getting in.

She put her hand on his arm. He nodded, and she ran to the kitchen to warn Narina, who grabbed a cloth and moved the porridge pan off the heat. The one thing they had all agreed on this morning was a plan. If there was danger, Narina would snatch up the baby and run—in the daytime, to the baths, where there would be plenty of people. At night, she would try to get up the steps to Phyllis, or knock on any door where there was a light showing, or … The nighttime plan needed more thought. But not right now, because her husband called through to say it was only Timotheus measuring up the door. Cossus had told all his workers to take the morning off and line the streets for Horatius Balbus’s funeral procession.

Out in the courtyard, Tilla took a great lungful of the nearest thing this city had to fresh air, and told her heart to slow down again.

She hoped her husband had remembered what he was supposed to say. With Timo standing there, it was the ideal chance to work the conversation around to family life and babies. Slipping back inside to listen, she heard him thanking Timo for everyone’s help last night—but as far as she could tell, the chance to say how precious Mara was went by unused. Timo said he hoped those men wouldn’t be back, and her husband agreed, and then there was a silence.

“Two six,” said Timo. There was a pause, then, “Six four.” When she looked, he was holding a wooden rule up against the door. “Top, three and a quarter inches.” He clamped the rule between his teeth and the little slave boy beside him held out a tablet and stylus so he could write the numbers down.

Her husband went back to work, sorting through the jumble of documents in the box under the workbench.

“Done,” said Timo, handing the rule back to the boy, who knelt
to put it in the battered leather tool bag. “If I can get that sawn this afternoon, I’ll do it tonight.”

Her husband said it was very good of him, and Timo grunted that the wife had told him to do it. No, he didn’t need money in advance for the timber.

“We’ll pay you when it’s sorted, then. Thanks.”

At this rate the ideal moment would be wasted. And so would the chance to repeat the other story that needed to be passed on to the neighbors at every opportunity. Tilla stepped forward, greeted Timo, and said, “You and Phyllis have been very kind. We are so sorry that Kleitos’s debts have caused so much trouble. If we had known what a bother it would all be for everyone, we would never have come here.”

Timo seemed just as surprised as everyone else had been at the news that Kleitos had debt problems. Tilla could hear the disbelief in his tone. She supposed this was how it was going to be, even with people she had begun to look on as friends. Everybody would think they had brought trouble to this place themselves, and now they were trying to blame somebody else.

“I have work to do,” she told him, retreating toward the kitchen. “But if there is anything we can do to help you in return, you must say so. And please tell Phyllis you are both welcome here at any time.”

Her interruption had made the men talk to each other, but not in the way she had hoped. As she retreated she heard Timo telling her husband he was sorry if they had troubles, but he had told Phyllis she was to stay away from here in the future. “I can’t have my wife near men like that,” he said. “Not with her on her own and me out at work all day.”

With one ear pressed up against the crack in the door she heard her husband say, “Of course not,” and “Absolutely,” and “We’re very grateful to you,” because there was nothing else he could say, and then Timo went through his reasons all over again, perhaps because he was embarrassed or perhaps because he was enjoying being seen protecting his wife. So there was some more “Absolutely” and “Yes, I understand,” and now instead of willing their visitor to stay, she was willing him to go.

At last he seemed about to leave, when she heard her own husband say, “While you’re here, I’m sure there was something I had to say to you.”

“It was nothing!” she called, hurrying out to join him and hooking one arm through his. The whole point of telling Timo how happy they were with their adopted daughter was that her husband had to slip it in casually and pretend that it was his own idea. That nobody had asked him to say it and certainly no one—least of all Phyllis—had ever mentioned the barrenness of Timo’s marriage. “Husband, our neighbor is a busy man. He does not want to spend all morning here talking to you.”

But instead of agreeing he said, “Ah, I’ve got it!” and turned back to the carpenter.

She tightened her arm around his. “There is a funeral procession to dress for, husband!”

“Sawdust,” he said. “Could you let us have a sack for sweeping up? We’ve run out.”

“Sawdust,” repeated Timo, bending to pick up his toolbag. Then, as if he too had remembered something, “The wife said to ask you about Paullus. A good friend of yours, is he?”

“Paullus?” Her husband shook his head. “I don’t know him.”

“She saw you in the gardens with him yesterday.”

Metellus, the man who could look like no one and anyone. And no better to have around than the undertakers. Tilla said, “She is mistaken. That was a man we know from Britannia.”

“That’s him, then,” said Timotheus. “Clerk in the urban prefect’s office?”

Her husband said, “Something like that.”

“That’s the one,” said Timo. “Metellus Paullus. Next time he’s around, tell him to drop in. We haven’t seen him for a while.”

Tilla could not believe it. “Metellus is a friend of yours?”

Timo glanced sideways at the steps to his apartment, as if he was wishing he had not started this. “Sort of.”

“Surely he is not a follower of Christos?”

Timo sniffed and rubbed his nose with his free hand. “Don’t say anything. It might not go well for him at work. But he’s on our side.”

“We will keep it quiet,” Tilla promised. Not because she wanted to save Metellus from embarrassment at the prefect’s office, but because she was certain he was never on anyone’s side but his own.

The first patient of the day arrived at the back door. Tilla was surprised to see the girl from upstairs, now no longer pregnant but carrying a very small and angry baby and a water jug.

“Oh, what a clever girl you are! Let me see!”

The girl was on the verge of tears. “It won’t feed,” she said, waving the water jug in frustration. “And Ma says I’ve got to get rid of it.”

Remarking that it sounded healthy enough, Tilla fetched a chair into the surgery and gestured to her husband and Esico to get out of the way. The girl sank gratefully onto the cushion.

“Why did you not call me when you were in labor?”

“Ma said she could manage.”

Assuring her she had done very well, Tilla checked the baby, who was a boy, and congratulated the mother again. Somebody had to. She bit back a question about the name: If a child was not to be kept, it was best not to think of one. “I’d have come if I’d known.”

“I thought I was going to die,” the girl told her. “I was hoping you would hear me.”

“I am sorry to have missed it.” Tilla wrapped the protesting baby in a blanket while she examined the mother.

“Ma said I wasn’t to come here,” the girl told the ceiling. “She says you’ll take it away and give it to the followers of Christos.”

Since the grandmother wanted to get rid of the baby anyway, this did not seem to make much sense. “You have done very well indeed,” Tilla said, changing the girl’s cloth for a clean one. “You and your ma. You can sit up now, and I will help you feed him.”

With the baby finally settled at the breast, the girl visibly relaxed. “I was thinking,” she said, “if it stops crying, somebody might want it.”

It was one of those moments when it was best to say nothing, because it was not fair to raise false hopes.

“At least it’s a boy. People want boys, don’t they? Perhaps somebody might buy him to bring up.”

There was no point in telling her this was unlikely: no doubt her own mother would be quick to inform her that households who wanted newborn slaves usually bred their own. At least that way you knew what you were getting.

“I just don’t want him to go to no followers of Christos.”

“Why is that?”

“They meet in secret and kill babies and eat them, Ma says.”

“Your ma has been misinformed,” said Tilla, because that sounded better than
Your ma is an ignorant gossip.
“And I would never do anything with your baby if you didn’t want me to.”
So you can tell her that from me.

The girl did not stay long: She had only slipped out with the excuse of fetching water. Tilla watched her go, heavyhearted.

A rich man’s funeral procession was a fine excuse to abandon work, and there were already plenty of people lining the street by the time Ruso and his household went out to join their neighbors on the Vicus Sabuci. The tables at Sabella’s were packed and many of those standing on the pavement were clutching drinks. Timo and Phyllis must have got there early: They had places at the front. Ruso noticed that Tilla made no attempt to approach them. She must have overheard the carpenter’s complaints about the company they kept.

He was glad she had not seen the anonymous sliver of wood Esico had found pushed under the surgery door just after dawn. He had slipped it into the kitchen fire before she could read the simple message scratched across the grain: GO HOME.

“It’s a good turnout,” observed a spectator somewhere to his left.

“Come to make sure he’s really dead,” said somebody else.

There followed a frank exchange about Horatius Balbus’s shortcomings as a landlord, ending with the glum reflection that at least they knew what to expect with the old man, whereas with the girl…

“She won’t be in charge. They reckon it’ll be Curtius Cossus.”

“Who?”

“The one who’s building the emperor’s new temple down the hill.”

“No? Well! I’ll have a mosaic in the dining room and columns ’round the front door, then.”

The conversation became a debate on what pictures the tenants would like painted around the cracks in their wall plaster and how much rents might rise as a consequence, all of which kept Ruso moderately entertained until he heard the distant blare of horns and trumpets. All heads were turned in the direction of the baths. A couple of black-clad slaves appeared first, herding the onlookers back onto the pavement. Then came the musicians. The lighter notes of the flutes were audible now, and the sound of wailing. As the procession rounded the corner three wild-haired women appeared, flinging their hands in the air and beating themselves on the chest in a dramatic and professional show of grief. Just as Ruso recognized one of them as the woman from the undertaker’s yard, another let out a particularly bloodcurdling howl. It frightened Mara so much that Narina had to take her away to recover.

Standing on tiptoe to see over the people in front, Tilla said, “That is the man who came to the house!”

“Firmicus,” Ruso agreed over the din. “Balbus’s steward. He must have been freed in the will.” Glancing along the line of oddly matched pallbearers, he saw several more wearing the caps of newly freed slaves. “Some of the other household staff have been freed too.”

“Not the one with the eyebrows,” she corrected him. “The one waving the incense thing.”

Some other man who had come to the house? Squeaky was nowhere in sight. Hopes raised, he stood on tiptoe, and leaned sideways to peer over the shoulder of the man in front. To his disappointment the figure swinging the incense was not the auctioneer who might give them a link to Doctor Kleitos, but Birna, the skinny man with the limp who had come to collect payment for the barrel. Ruso shifted one elbow to dig into his wife’s ribs. The last thing they needed was any further association in the neighbors’ minds between themselves and the undertakers.

Behind them someone was telling her friend that this bier was not as smart as the senator’s last week. “His had ivory panels and brass handles.”

Tilla said, “Do they have a long walk to the cremation?”

He said, “I suppose so.” It must be a good way outside the city gates.

“Good,” she said in British, raising her fist at Birna. “May your foot hurt every step of the way, you wicked, slimy …”

He was not sure what the last word meant, but doubtless it was graphic. Fortunately she had had the sense to stay in her native tongue for the curse. Glancing at the fist, he saw the head of the little wooden horse poking out between her finger and thumb, lending power to the words. If the followers of Christos ever decided to expand into Britannia, they were going to find it an interesting challenge.