Caveat emptor

3

The trouble with you, Ruso,” said Valens, glancing to check that the door was closed before propping his feet on one of the polished tables in his remarkably ornate dining room, “is that you’re never satisfied. Look at me. Here am I, burdened with a massive rent to pay, two children and a dissatisfied wife to support, an endless round of demanding patients, two of the dimmest apprentices in Londinium-and do you hear me complaining?”

“What you promised to do,” said Ruso, guessing that Valens’s patients must be not only demanding but also wealthy, “was to keep an eye open for a surgical job.”

“Exactly!” exclaimed Valens. “Throw me one of those cushions, will you, old chap? You wouldn’t believe what she paid for this couch and it’s the most uncomfortable-Thanks. You’re much better off on the chair, believe me.”

Ruso tossed over one of his cushions, removed the pull-along wooden horse that explained the lumpiness of the other, and placed it on the floor.

“Sometimes I think she chose it to keep me awake while I listen to her. Anyway, where was I? Oh, yes. Knowing how desperate you always are for cash, I assumed the operative word in your letter was job. ” The handsome grin that had once charmed his dissatisfied wife reappeared. “And on the very morning you turn up, I’ve found you a job. Not only for you, but one for your lovely wife as well. You didn’t warn me you were going to be picky.”

“I’m not being picky,” pointed out Ruso. “I’m being realistic. I don’t know the first thing about finding missing-” He stopped as a cry of pain echoed down the stairs. “Should one of us go up and have a look at her?”

Valens shook his head. “I saw her just before you got here. The apprentices will call me if anything happens, but she’ll probably be hours yet. It’s a first baby. What was it you were saying?”

“I said, I don’t know anything about finding missing tax collectors.”

“Don’t worry. You’ll get the details this afternoon.”

“I haven’t said I’ll do it.”

The brown eyes widened. “You aren’t going to let me down, are you? That would be horribly embarrassing. I’ve just been telling the procurator’s assistant what a marvelous chap you are.”

“Why would he employ a medic to conduct a manhunt?”

“Well, you wouldn’t be anyone’s first choice, obviously.” Valens glanced at the slave in the corner and nodded toward his cup. The boy stepped forward and poured more wine. “But I said you helped me work out who murdered that soldier up on the border, and-”

“ I helped you?”

Valens shook his head. “There you go again, being picky. And I told him you’d had a good go at finding out what happened to those bar girls in Deva-”

“I did find out.”

Valens paused. “Really? I don’t remember. Anyway, I managed to convince him that you’re just what he’s looking for.”

“A surgeon.”

“If it would have helped to tell him you were a surgeon, I would have. But he wanted an investigator. And you can’t resist poking your nose into things, so you are a sort of investigator, aren’t you? Admit it, Ruso. Find something that intrigues you and you’re like a dog with a bone.”

There was another wail from upstairs. Valens frowned. “Shouldn’t the lovely Tilla be here by now? I promised the woman a midwife would be here any moment.”

Ruso had barely finished saying, “They must be taking a long time to unload,” when there was a commotion out in the hall and the door crashed open. Valens removed his feet from the table and swung around to see a figure stagger into the room carrying a jumble of bags and bundles.

“Tilla!” Valens sprang up from the couch. Tilla, evidently not wanting to drop the luggage, was unable to move until he released his embrace. “Dear girl, you shouldn’t be carrying all that. Didn’t he get you some help?”

Ruso said, “I thought you’d get the driver to bring it in.”

“That driver is a clumsy oaf,” explained Tilla. Ruso guessed that he had not treated the crockery with sufficient respect.

Valens stepped back and gestured to his slave. “Give her a hand, will you? Into the guest room.”

As the boy began to ferry the bags back into the expanse of the hall, Valens turned to Tilla. “You have no idea how glad we are to see you. The young woman upstairs will be even happier. I’m sorry to ask you to take over the moment you arrive, but we chaps aren’t much good at this delivery business. And you speak the language.”

Tilla looked both weary and confused. “Your wife is having a baby?”

“Emergency patient,” Valens explained. “A long way from home, can’t find her husband, and her waters popped in the middle of the tax office. I’m sure she’d rather see you than any of us.”

The tone of Tilla’s yes suggested she had more to say but she was saving it for later.

“Still a bit thin,” Valens observed after she had gone, “but charmingly freckled. The Gaulish sunshine’s done her good.” He flung himself back onto the couch. “I practically dropped the letter when I read that you’d married her, you know.”

Ruso could hardly believe it himself at times. He was still not sure how a destitute British slave with a broken arm had managed to slip past the defenses of an educated and civilized man-especially a man who had been determined not to repeat the mistake of his first marriage. It was not as if Tilla had deliberately set out to lure him. She had consistently refused to embrace the qualities one might seek in either a slave or a wife. She showed neither obedience nor respect, and both he and Valens had given up hoping that she would ever learn to cook properly. Yet he had found that he was much happier with her than without her. Back at home, with their relationship under the dubious scrutiny of his family, marriage had seemed the natural-even the honorable-thing to do.

“But then I thought,” Valens continued, “what harm can it do? And I’m delighted to see you both. Not to mention that rather promising amphora I notice has arrived with you. You, me, Tilla-it’ll be just like the old days in the Legion.”

Ruso, noting the absence of mold on the walls and beer stains on the furniture, said, “Not quite.”

“Well, no, we’ve come up in the world since then. At least, I have. Did you notice my rather lovely consulting rooms on the way in? Once word gets around that you’re a personal physician to the famous

…” He smiled and spread his hands in a gesture that was somewhere between a modest shrug and an attempt to demonstrate the enormity of the good things that had come his way since they both left the army. “Anyway, let’s hope young Firmus likes you. Then who knows how high you might go?”

Ruso frowned. “Who’s Firmus?”

“Some sort of junior relative who’s in charge while the procurator’s laid up.” It was not a ringing endorsement of Firmus’s competence as an employer. Ruso suspected that Valens, having failed to find him a job despite all the breezy assurances in his letters that it would be no problem, had now offered his services to the first person who looked open to persuasion.

“Tell me about him.”

“Looks as though he’s cracked a couple of ribs, and he’s seriously shaken up. Not to mention embarrassed. Between you and me, I’d imagine that when the governor’s away on tour he’s supposed to be sitting in his office running the province, not gallivanting around chasing wild boar. Especially a man of his age.”

“I meant Firmus,” explained Ruso, who was not interested in the accident that had temporarily disabled one of Hadrian’s two top men in Britannia.

Valens shook his head. “Frighteningly young, Ruso. As they all are these days. He came trotting in while I was strapping his uncle up and said he had a mad native ranting about a missing husband and stolen money, and now she was about to give birth on the floor of his office and what should he do?” The grin reappeared. “Unfortunately I’d just filled the procurator with poppy juice, so he wouldn’t have cared if Juno herself was giving birth in the office. Young Firmus was looking a bit desperate, and I’d just heard that your ship was coming in on the next tide, so everything fell into place rather neatly.”

“You told him I’d rush all over Britannia for the tax office, hunting down this woman’s missing husband?”

“From what I can gather, all he needs is someone to nip up the road to Verulamium-which is a pleasant enough place, by the way-chat to the locals, and confirm whether this fellow’s really abandoned his wife and run off with all their money. Just come back with a report the lad can hand over when the procurator gets back to work. What could be simpler?”

“If it’s so simple, why can’t he find someone else to do it?”

Valens sighed. “He could, Ruso. Frankly, I should think the next-door neighbor’s dog could do it. But you’re the one with no money and no job. I’ve solved your problem and his at the same time, you see? You might try and be grateful.”

Ruso said, “I’ll do my best.”

Another cry from upstairs penetrated the room. Valens winced. In the silence that followed he said, ‘I hope she doesn’t go on too long, poor woman. You can hear it all over the house.”

Ruso got to his feet. “I suppose if I’m going to look for her husband,” he said, “I’d better try to talk to her while she’s still listening.” It seemed like bad luck to say, While she’s still alive, although given the number of women who did not survive childbirth despite the best of help, it might have been more honest.