Caveat emptor

67

Someone had been in Suite Three again. It had happened while she was out, this time, and for the best of reasons. After the guards had finished their searching, the floor had been swept, the lamps filled, and the unmade bed straightened. Still, it made Tilla uneasy. She hoped the Medicus would finish his speech soon. Once he had explained what he had found out, they could leave.

She moved one of the chairs close to the open window, sat back, kicked off her boots, and yawned. She did not want to be in this room, but she was tired of all the questions and the sympathy. Besides, she wanted to leave Valens and Serena on their own.

So far, her plans had not gone well. It seemed the weedy clerk Albanus had arrived with a message for her from the Medicus just after she had been called away by the soldiers, and the clerk had created a terrible fuss because she was not there to receive it. Then minutes after Albanus had hurried away to hunt for her, Valens had arrived on the fast carriage to find that neither of his children were ill, but instead everyone was in a panic looking for Tilla. So he had left Serena alone with the children yet again while he rushed off to track down the Medicus and find out what was going on.

Now she finally had Valens and Serena in the same building, she had retreated and left them to find ways of talking to each other.

There were plenty of women who envied Serena her charming and handsome husband, but Tilla was not one of them. Valens was like a polished surface: Everything slid off him. As she retreated from their company, she had whispered, “You must pay some attention to her!” and Valens had beamed and said, “Of course!” as if it was what he had intended all along.

She yawned again, and gazed around the room. Apart from the dreadful business with the brazier last night-the guards had gone now, but some of the staff were still in tears-these were elegant lodgings. They were much better than most of the places she had stayed at with the Medicus on his travels. She would like to have shown this suite to some of the innkeepers they had met in Gaul who thought they were so superior. The only trouble was, with all those servants around there was nothing left for a normal person to do to occupy her time.

She had left Londinium in a rush and she had not thought to bring any work with her. Besides, she was tired of spinning to no purpose. Already there were three big bags of skeins stored in sacks down at Valens’s house, ready to be given to a reliable weaver as soon as they were settled somewhere. Perhaps that workshop around the corner from Camma’s house-

A shadow fell across the window.

“Tilla!”

The Medicus was reaching for her. His grip was feverish, as if he was afraid to let go.

“It is all right,” she assured him. His eyes were bleary and the lines around his mouth deeper than usual. After finding that brazier he must have been awake for the rest of the night. She leaned forward to plant a kiss on his nose. “I am feeling better, and I have a surprise for you.”

“But Valens said-”

“It was all a muddle.” She pulled her hands out of his. “Come in quick, before he sees you and wants to talk.”

Inside the room he still clung to her. “I told you to wait here for me!”

“The guards said your work was all finished,” she said, “and that you were giving a report to the magistrates. They said they would tell you where I was.”

“They didn’t.”

“Sit down and listen. You are worn out.” She rang the bell for the servant. While they were waiting she explained what the guards had told her-that after questioning people all morning, it turned out the brazier had been put in their room by the man who had been slipping the frightening notes under the door. “It was that Nico all along,” she said. “The one who was supposed to look after the money. It was him who paid somebody to attack me. After he thought he’d killed us, he went home and killed himself. Did you know?”

Instead of saying yes or no, he just looked at her with dull eyes. She was reminded of the times when the fighting had been at its worst in the North: He had come home from dealing with the never-ending queues of wounded men, too tired to wash or change, saying he could not sleep and then dozing while his food went cold in front of him. She was surprised: it should have gone well over at the Council. Still, he was tired. He was not a man who liked making speeches. And he must be upset that Nico had nearly managed to kill them both.

The servant arrived. Tilla ordered wine and began to tell him about the misunderstanding with the guards. At first she had been worried about going with them, especially since he had told her to stay here, but as soon as she looked across the street and saw that Gallonius’s wife really was there waiting for her, she had realized they were telling the truth. It was to be a surprise. “The Council are so pleased that you helped them find their money!”

“Is that what she said?”

“She wanted me to look at the house before they spoke to you.” She caught his eye. “We do not have to stay if you don’t want to. But it is a good house. And there would be plenty of patients coming through the mansio and Valens could come and visit and I could keep company with Camma and the baby until her family-” She stopped. She had not told him about the letters. No wonder he was looking blank.

“When you are not so tired,” she said, “you will think this is funny. I have started sending letters.”

“You?”

“I have come to see that there is a use for reading and writing. When someone is a long way away.” She smiled. “And you can pretend to be anybody in a letter.” She had gone to the scribe in the Great Hall and paid him to write two letters for her: one from herself, the midwife, to Camma’s family, telling them their sister was left on her own with a healthy and beautiful son, and one from somebody called Ruso to Valens, telling him to get here fast as young Marcus was seriously ill but he had not wanted to frighten Serena by telling her. “So here he is,” she said. “I knew you would not mind. It is not going well between them, but I think they are both even more unhappy apart than they are together.”

He said, “You were out looking at a house with Gallonius’s wife?”

“Just around the corner. With a garden. We could have hens.” She wrinkled her nose. “But not a cockerel.”

He ran a hand through his hair and made it stick up. “I came here to do a job for Firmus.”

“And you have,” she said. “Never mind if the speech was no good. If you are doctor to the mansio you will not have to make any more speeches.”

“Is that what you want? To live in a place like this with these people?”

She had chosen the wrong time to tell him: She could see that now. He was tired and bad tempered. “It is not home,” she agreed. “And it is the Catuvellauni. But we have to go somewhere.”

“The magistrates say they’re going to deal with Dias,” he said, not sounding as though he believed it.

“Dias cannot be trusted,” she agreed. “But Camma will curse him and perhaps the gods will bring justice.”

“I think he flattered one of the housemaids into lending him the key to our room. No wonder he wanted to question them all in private. And I’m sure he was Valens’s burglar. There’s nothing wrong with his back that I can see. If I had longer I’d-”

“But you are not an investigator now! It is finished. Let the Council deal with it. You are a Medicus.”

“I know it was him. And Rogatus over at the stables was helping him.”

She was not going to argue about that now. “When you are feeling better, you need to go to the baths,” she said, smoothing his hair down. “Serena’s cousin wants us all to have dinner together and I said they could use our dining room.”

Sometimes there was no pleasing him. A few moments ago he had been worried about her. Now it seemed he could not even bring himself to speak to her. When the servant arrived with the wine, he seized on it like a drowning man grasping for a rope.