Caveat emptor

12

Ruso had barely lifted his hand to knock on Valens’s door when it was wrenched open. Glimpsing a pile of luggage in the hallway behind his wife, he did not need to be told that she and the newly widowed Iceni woman had been waiting here for hours with everything packed, that all the transport to Verulamium had gone without them, and that if he wanted any lunch he was too late.

She told him anyway.

“I’m sorry, I got held up.” He was ashamed to hear himself adding with guile worthy of Valens, “Didn’t you get a message?”

“No.” She glanced up the stairs and lowered her voice. “Perhaps the dead man you sent forgot to tell me.”

Valens’s consulting rooms were separated from the main hallway by a narrow lobby that housed mops and brooms and smelled of vinegar and rising damp. He drew her into the dark space before asking, “How’s Camma?”

“She is tired and sore and frightened for her husband. And she wants to go home.”

“That’s him in there,” he murmured. “The dead man. I’ve found Julius Asper.”

He was unable to see Tilla’s face, but in the short pause that followed, he hoped she was framing an apology.

Instead she said, “You sent his body here with no message to his wife?”

“I was busy trying to find out what happened to him,” he said. “The porters were supposed to tell Valens to keep it quiet till I got here.”

“Valens and his apprentices were out. Your men came to the house door and told the kitchen boy that if he did not let them in they would leave the body in the street.”

“Oh, hell. Did Camma hear all this going on?”

“She was upstairs.”

“Good.”

“And now we are not going to Verulamium?”

“Not today at least. I need to talk to someone tonight who might have seen the brother.”

“So I must unpack the luggage?”

He groped for the latch of the surgery door. “Keep Camma out of the way a bit longer, will you? We’ll get him tidied up before she sees him.”

“You are still not going to tell her?”

“Of course I am. As soon as we’re ready.”

“I see.”

“Well, it won’t bring him back, will it?”

He ducked inside the consulting room to the sound of, “Wives do not need to be told anything!” and closed the door on, “Wives are not important!”

Turning, he was startled to see Valens and the apprentices watching him across an empty operating table. The tall skinny apprentice looked as though he was about to offer some comment. The short one elbowed him in the ribs.

“Glad you’re back,” said Valens, tactfully ignoring the argument he must have overheard. “The boys are keen to get a closer look at this body you’ve so kindly sent us. Ready, chaps?”

The shorter of the chaps looked more apprehensive than keen, but dutifully chorused, “Yes, sir!” with his eager-faced companion.

“You’re in luck,” Valens assured them. “You’re starting with a fresh one. I remember my first corpse when I was about your age…” He raised his voice as the youths disappeared into the adjoining storeroom to fetch the body, making sure they did not miss any of the graphic details of his first postmortem.

The short lad reappeared clutching one end of a stretcher with a sheet draped over it. Finally noticing the expression on his face, Valens added, “Don’t worry, he’s not about to sit up and complain. Bring him in and we’ll get him cleaned up.’

As the remains of Julius Asper were maneuvered into the surgery, a thump on the ceiling told Ruso that Tilla had just dropped one of the bags on the bedroom floor. While the body was being unloaded onto the table, a series of smaller thumps and bangs told him she was unpacking. Valens was observing, “Notice the rigidity? You may need to cut the clothes off,” when something screeched across the floor above him. Ruso guessed the box of crockery had been rammed back under the bed.

The short apprentice was approaching the body as one might a dangerous animal when a fierce knocking shook the outside door of the surgery. The clothing shears in his hand clattered onto the tiled floor.

Valens sent the tall boy to get rid of the caller.

“Very sorry, sirs,” Ruso heard the lad say. “The doctor’s-”

The door was flung open with a force that knocked the boy sideways. A voice bellowed, “The assistant procurator of the province of Britannia and Senior Magistrate Caratius of Verulamium!’

After this grand announcement, Firmus’s entry was something of a disappointment. He sidled in, shoulders hunched as if he was afraid he might brush against something unpleasant, and squinted at the body. He was followed by a tall man in a deep blue traveling cloak pinned by a magnificent enameled brooch in the shape of a prancing horse. The dusty sandals below and the grim expression above suggested he had come a long way to see this, and he was not impressed. Behind him, a massive native wearing chain mail ducked in under the lintel before Firmus’s elderly slave closed the door.

Firmus backed away to stand against the shelves. The grimfaced one who must be Senior Magistrate Caratius approached the table and leaned over the body of Julius Asper. A heavy gold earring glinted through the gray hair that had escaped the braid and straggled around his jaw.

“That’s one of them,” he confirmed. Despite his appearance, his Latin had no trace of a native accent. “Which of you is the investigator?”

Ruso introduced himself. He was about to offer condolences when the man interrupted with, “No sign of the money, I suppose?”

“Not yet, sir.”

“But you have men out looking for it?”

Wishing the magistrate would keep his voice down, Ruso glanced at Firmus for some guidance on how to proceed. The youth’s face was pale beneath the tan. He was gazing in the direction of Julius Asper’s feet. The elderly slave leaned forward and began to describe the body.

“Not now, Pyramus!” snapped his master. “I can see quite enough.”

Their presence made Ruso aware of how the mingling aromas of a doctor’s surgery and an unwashed dead body might strike an outsider and what his audience might be making of the saw cuts scarring the sides of the operating table. “We’re about to examine him in the hope of confirming what’s happened,” he explained. “Then if the magistrate could fill me in on-”

“Will that help you find the money?” interrupted Caratius.

“Possibly.” Ruso nodded to Valens to get on with it. He was about to usher the spectators to a position where they were no longer obstructing the medics and blocking the light when he caught the expression on Firmus’s face. He grabbed him by one arm and swung him around toward the internal door. “I think we’re a bit in the way here,” he announced, struggling to pull the pin out of the latch and wondering if his spare hand would have been better employed holding a bowl in front of the assistant procurator.

Behind him he heard Valens giving orders and the magistrate saying, “I think we should watch.”

“It’s very tedious, sir,” Ruso assured him, putting one knee to the door and jolting the pin out of place. He dragged Firmus through the lobby into the fresh air of the hallway. “If you could just keep your voices down, gentlemen, there are patients asleep upstairs…” Finally, with the door of Valens’s dining room safely closed, he continued, “Perhaps you could brief me about what’s been going on in Verulamium?”

Sipping a cup of Ruso’s wedding-present wine, Caratius sat very upright on one end of Valens’s uncomfortable couch and began to explain that he had been on the Council for many years just like his father before him, a man who was a respected leader of his people, eager to blend local tradition with modern ways, and whose own father had been educated in Rome…

Ruso supposed that explained the fluent Latin. Firmus, who must have heard this tedious preamble once already, sat on the other end of the couch and appeared to be more interested in keeping his lunch down.

Ruso tried to look as though he cared about the size of the Town Forum and the Council’s plans to build a theater and wondered how soon an investigator was allowed to interrupt a man who was the modern equivalent of a tribal chief. He was bracing himself to steer Caratius back to the point when he turned toward it by himself. It seemed the new men on the Council had refused to listen to the voice of experience when they voted to give Julius Asper the contract to collect the town’s taxes. They had allowed themselves to be dazzled by Asper’s glowing references, which were obviously forged, and-

“You mean that was obvious at the time?” interrupted Firmus, “or just after he’d disappeared?”

“Some of us never trusted him from the start.”

Ruso said, “When was the last time anybody saw him alive?”

Caratius’s account confirmed much of what Ruso already knew, except that his version of events included Asper removing the tax money from the town strong room before he set out. He had then collected a vehicle from the stables and headed south. The following morning the carriage had been found abandoned and there was no sign of either collector or cash. After the local inquiries had led nowhere, Caratius had come to the procurator’s office in the hope of hearing that the tax bill had been paid. “But I was right!” he announced, sounding more satisfied than stricken. “The man’s tried to make off with the province’s money.”

“Verulamium’s money,” Firmus corrected him.

Ruso said, “Isn’t it more likely that he was robbed on the way here? I can’t see why he would bother to steal from you. He must have been making a good living.”

Caratius gave Ruso a look that he had probably honed on rash young newcomers at Council meetings. “You didn’t know him as I did. I knew something was wrong as I soon as I heard he hadn’t taken any guards with him.”

“There was the brother.”

“Bericus was only his clerk.” Caratius indicated the chain-mailed native who was standing in the corner looking bored. “Normally he asked for three or four of our trained men to escort him to Londinium. This time, he left himself free to disappear with the money.”

“The woman says he didn’t have the money,” put in Ruso.

Caratius cleared his throat. “I’m afraid the woman is not reliable, investigator.” He turned to Firmus. “As I said before, I must apologize for the unfortunate way in which you were informed about the problem.”

Ruso pulled the writing tablet from his belt and offered it to Firmus. “I found this under Asper’s bed at the inn, sir,” he said. “It’s addressed to a Room Twenty-seven, but we don’t know where, and the content doesn’t appear to make any sense.”

Firmus held the wax close to his nose, frowned at it, and angled it to catch more light from the window. As he ran one finger along the squiggles and muttered to himself, Caratius’s pale eyes were fixed on the tablet with the gleam of a dog waiting to snatch someone’s dinner. Finally Firmus confessed that he could make no sense of it, and handed it over. Caratius held it at arm’s length, then turned it upside down. Ruso had been hoping for enlightenment, but all Caratius had to offer was, “It must be a coded message.”

Firmus said, “Wouldn’t a code be legible numbers and letters?”

“I’ll have it looked at,” Ruso promised, not wanting to admit his ignorance of spying techniques.

Caratius said, “When you find out what it says, I want to be told straightaway.” He swiveled on the couch to address Firmus. “As I said earlier, sir, it’s a great relief to know that the procurator’s office is already looking into this. If we can help in any way, the Council and the people of Verulamium are at your service.”

“And as I said,” put in Firmus, tactfully refraining from pointing out that the most helpful thing they could do was to send more cash, “our investigator’s already found your missing tax collector for you.”

“But not his accomplice, and not the procurator’s money.”

Ruso got to his feet. He had more important things to do than listen to them sparring over who was going to pay up if the money could not be found. Tilla was right: He should have told Camma about the death straightaway. “Excuse me a moment, will you? I’ll go and see if the doctor’s found any-”

He stopped. There was a living statue blocking his path. He heard a wine cup shatter on the tiles as the statue glided farther into the room, its long red hair flowing over white drapery. Firmus gave a squeak and dodged around to the far side of the couch. The native guard drew his dagger.

The realization that the statue was Camma and the drapery was a sheet did not lessen Ruso’s alarm. This was exactly what he had wanted to avoid. Where was Tilla?

The magistrate was demanding to know what this woman was doing here. The guard stepped between them, dagger leveled at Camma’s throat.

Caratius motioned him back. “It’s all right, Gavo.”

Camma pushed past the guard to stand over the couch. “Where is he?”

The magistrate placed both hands on the couch and got slowly to his feet without taking his eyes off her. Middle-aged man and pale young woman faced each other, their noses almost touching.

“This is a private meeting,” he told her. “You have no right to be here.”

“I know your voice when I hear it. What have you done to him?”

“What have I done? I have done less than I should, woman!”

Only when Ruso seized her by the arm did he realize she was trembling. “Come with me,” he urged. “There’s something we need to tell you.”

Camma looked at him as if she had only just noticed there were other people in the room. “What have they done to him?”

“Come,” he repeated.

“What have they done?”

He managed to persuade her to the doorway, where she spun around and stabbed a finger toward the magistrate. “You will be sorry!”

Tilla was hurrying down the stairs, a bundle of swaddled baby clasped against one shoulder and her spare hand reaching for Camma’s arm. She said something in British. Camma answered in the same tongue. Ruso did not catch all of the Iceni woman’s words as Tilla escorted her back up to her room, but beyond the accent he recognized the repetitive form of a curse.