Caveat emptor

8

Tilla 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?”