Caveat emptor

18

Ruso was still considering the implications of Camma’s confession as he stretched his legs out across the floorboards and leaned back against the rough wall of Valens’s storeroom. At least he would not be bored during the long hours of the night. Watching over the remains of the man who was not Camma’s husband after all, he was going to have to go back over his conversations with Caratius. The ground had shifted beneath his feet. He understood now why she had said the baby was “the cause of all this.” He understood too why the magistrate had insisted that Asper was a crook and Camma a liar. Camma, in one simple sentence, had transformed Caratius from outraged victim to chief suspect.

She had also shaken Ruso’s confidence. What sort of an investigator did he think he was? How the hell had he failed to see it when the two of them had confronted each other in Valens’s dining room? Come to that, why had neither of them admitted it? He supposed neither had thought their complaint would be taken seriously if they told the truth.

It was possible-understandable, in fact-that the magistrate would want revenge. But a man planning to do away with his wife’s lover would surely keep the matter within his own family, or at least his own tribe. Why involve a large sum of public money and attract the attention of the procurator’s office? As for Camma’s claim that Asper had not been on the way to deliver the tax at all, but had disappeared after announcing a visit to Caratius-he would follow it up, but that would make the magistrate a fool as well as a murderer. Caratius did not seem like a fool. Still, it was obvious that he was glad to see the back of Julius Asper.

Maybe there was something in this curse business after all.

The room was growing chilly. Ruso reached for his cloak and threw it around his shoulders, wondering if Tilla would complain about the limewash making white marks on the wool and then reminding himself that he should be concentrating on praying for the spirit of Julius Asper. After all, hardly anyone else was likely to bother.

In the feeble yellow glow of the lamps he gazed at the shell of a human being laid out on the bed. This man had chosen to steal someone else’s wife, and possibly someone else’s money. He had then been murdered, dumped in an alley, haggled over, and jovially threatened with having his brain opened up.

There would be no more choices for Julius Asper.

The silence in the room felt thick enough to reach out and touch. Even the rogue cockerel seemed to be asleep. Ruso stood up to light the grains of incense in the bowl, recited what he hoped was a suitable prayer and began to run through the things he must do in the morning. He would probably have to pay handsomely for the women’s transport to Verulamium, since he could not transfer his travel warrant and he could hardly ask the grieving widow if she had brought any spare cash with her. Before they left, he would sit Tilla down and make it absolutely clear that the wife of a Roman citizen and a government investigator must not take sides in local disputes. Especially disputes between politicians and their wives.

Then he was going to find Caratius and ask the questions he should have asked today instead of listening to all that pompous speechifying. This time he would concentrate on asking him… Ruso yawned. On asking him…

He must stay awake and concentrate. He tried to frame some probing questions, but it had been a long day. A soft fog was drifting across his brain. He found the same phrases were repeating themselves, circling lazily around his mind. He felt his eyes drift shut. He would think about it later.

Something made him stumble on the threshold of sleep.

He tried to repeat the sound in his mind. The more he thought about it, the more convinced he was that he had heard the scrape of the street door opening downstairs.

It could not have been the door. He could not recall the corresponding scrape of it being closed again, and nobody would leave it open at this hour of the night. Besides, everyone was asleep. If Valens had received a night call, half the house would have heard the messenger arrive.

Shut in a dimly lit room with a dead body, he was starting to imagine things. Julius Asper’s spirit had not just slipped out of the room and left the house. Such things did not happen.

Probably.

He must think about something else. Pleasant, daytime thoughts. Where would he want to settle after this was over? There would be plenty of work in the North, mopping up the medical discharges who did not want to go home. Tilla would be near to what remained of her family. On the other hand, tensions would still be high after the recent troubles. He was not sure he wanted to have his domestic life punctuated by arguments about the governor’s latest peacekeeping policy.

Perhaps Tilla had a point about Verulamium. Of course it would depend on how the investigation went, but the Catuvellauni were friendly to Rome, aspired to civilization, and were close enough for him to keep in touch with Valens and Albanus.

His backside was going numb. He put both palms flat on the floor, and lifted himself a couple of inches. As soon as he relaxed, the numbness returned.

He closed his eyes and tried to picture himself in his consulting rooms in Verulamium, just a short stroll from proper baths and a decent wine shop. While he chatted about the latest play at the theater with his grateful patients, Tilla would be looking after their scrubbed and smiling children and doing things to food in the kitchen.

He was jolted awake by a sound like someone dropping a spoon on a tiled floor downstairs.

The lamp in the hallway had gone out. The foot of the stairs was even darker than the landing where he stood peering over the banister. The only sound was the soft sigh of his own breath: the only movement the thump of his heart. He shook his head. He was getting jumpy. He had slept badly last night. His imagination was not listening to reason. It was probably just the kitchen boy knocking something over on his way to the night bucket. Maybe the tall apprentice was wandering about in the dark, unable to sleep with a mind full of murder and prostitutes.

He picked his way back along the chilly corridor, seeking the solace of the lamp flame.

A dog was barking in one of the neighbors’ houses. The distant blare of the fort trumpet sounded the next watch, and he remembered that he had promised to get the unfinished letter looked at by a code expert. He had no idea how to find one, but Albanus had spent years as a medical clerk charged with deciphering doctors’ handwriting. It would be a start.

He stepped across to take a deep breath of air at the window, then stood at the foot of the bed and began to count backward from one hundred to keep himself awake.

He was trying to remember the rhyme for the causes and cures of gout when he heard something smash downstairs. It sounded as though it was in Valens’s surgery.

Perhaps he should call out. On the other hand, if he woke the whole house and it turned out to be a clumsy apprentice, or Valens indulging some nocturnal inspiration, he would look a fool.

He eyed the body on the bed. What if Asper’s spirit…

No. He was not going to think about that.

Perhaps he should just take a look downstairs.

He slid one finger along the latch. It lifted without a sound. Out in the corridor, he closed the door so he was not silhouetted against the lamp. He crept along the rough boards in his bare feet, praying the stairs would not creak beneath him.

He paused just above ground level. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he froze. A sinister figure was watching him from along the wall in the hallway. There was a dog crouching at its feet. Neither Ruso nor the figure moved. Gradually, the figure resolved itself into a collection of cloaks on a hook. The dog was a pile of boots. He let out a long breath and forced himself not to gasp for air as he replaced it.

He was moving toward the entrance to Valens’s surgery, careful to avoid knocking over the hall table, when he sensed a cool draft wafting around his feet. Something smelled wrong. He spun around.

He could see now that the street door was very slightly ajar.

Instinctively, he flattened himself against the wall and held his breath. He should have brought a weapon. He should have woken Valens. What had he been thinking?

Nothing was moving. He let out his breath and began to edge slowly down the corridor again.

Gods above, what was-?

As he glimpsed it, the shape exploded from the shadows of the alcove. He made a grab for it and ducked just before something crashed into the wall where his head had been. Shouting for Valens, he snatched at a passing flurry of fabric, lost his grip on an oily arm, and felt a blow to his shoulder as he hooked one foot behind the intruder’s knee. They both landed on the floor in a messy tangle of limbs and fists, Ruso still yelling as the intruder slithered out of his grasp, threw the table at him, and ran for the door.

Flinging the table aside, Ruso caught enough breath to bellow, “Stop, thief!” as he raced out into the starlit street. The hooded figure was barely ten paces away, heading down toward the river. He was gaining on it when it dissolved into the shadows of the buildings on the right.

Moments later he found himself staring into a narrow black gap between two shops and trying to listen for the sound of footsteps over the pounding of blood in his ears. He could see nothing. The alleyway might be empty. It might contain one man, or ten.

Alone and unarmed, he was not going in there to find out.

He glanced over his shoulder several times as he made his way back to the house, suddenly aware of shadowy hiding places all around him. He paused in the middle of the street and looked around, but as far as he could tell, there was nobody else out here.

A gaggle of bleary-eyed people in various states of undress had gathered in Valens’s hall to ask each other what was going on. Ruso locked the door, counted to make sure everyone was safe, and explained that he had chased off a man who had been trying to break into the house.

The confession that the man had succeeded, and that Ruso had allowed him to spend a long time sneaking around downstairs while most of them were asleep, could wait for daylight.