Caveat emptor

26

This is it,” Camma said.

Tilla stretched, stiff from the long journey, and shifted her balance on the seat as the carriage began to descend another slow incline. Nearer the town, the road was lined on both sides by graves and grand carved wooden memorials. It occurred to her that Asper would not be allowed such an honor even if Camma could afford it. In a town where she had no friends and a powerful enemy, she would be lucky if she were allowed a stick to mark his place. Tilla watched as she gathered up her shawl and the remains of the bread that neither of them had felt hungry enough to finish, and wondered whether she had thought of that. If the people here really believed Asper had betrayed the town, his remains might not be welcome here at all.

How did you honor a disgraced man? It was one of the many questions the Druids would have been able to answer, but Rome had seen to it that Druids were hard to find these days. Tilla was not sure she had ever met one. Nowadays ordinary people had to muddle along with only memory and tradition and guesswork, while the leaders of the tribes squabbled over whatever power the governor was prepared to give them. With no one to settle the dispute over his wife, Caratius had been left to take his revenge. The whole thing had led to this dreadful mess-and it was not finished yet.

There was a shout from the roadside. The carriage drew up beside the deep ditch and gatehouse that marked the edge of the town. Someone was asking the driver if he had seen a man called Bericus on the road. Camma whispered, “They have still not found him.”

The driver denied all knowledge of the missing man and the carriage jerked into motion again.

Camma leaned forward to direct the driver. They passed a triangular temple precinct that smelled of incense and a grand inn that boasted glass windows and entered a busy street full of bars and shops and lodging houses-all, Tilla supposed, placed to tempt the travelers passing through. A couple of local men with chain mail over their scarlet tunics were lounging against a wall as if they had nothing better to do. Tilla peered into a bone worker’s shop and was startled when the workman glanced up and winked at her. Farther along, a woman dressed in gold and green plaid shouted at a tethered donkey while one of her children howled and clutched at his foot.

Tilla rejoiced in the unfussy hairstyles, the bright jewelry, and, among the plain workaday browns, the bold stripes and cheerful colors that spoke of a people not afraid to enjoy themselves. After the pale and washed-out drapery that the Medicus’s people thought was tasteful, it was like a feast for the eyes. Yet oddly, instead of having ordinary round houses, this southern tribe dressed in their no-nonsense tunics and trousers seemed to live like foreigners. Straight-sided buildings were crammed in precise rows. Beyond them rose the dome of a bathhouse and the red roofs of a Forum and a Great Hall like the one they had left behind.

She had not expected a tribal gathering place to look like this. Londinium was a town of soldiers and merchants, created by Rome in its own image-but she had expected Verulamium to look more like home. How could you roast an ox over a good fire in the middle of all those buildings? Where could you all sit in a circle around the embers with the soft grass beneath you and your backs to the dark and children falling asleep in their mothers’ arms, listening to the stories of your people? The Catuvellauni had turned their meeting place into something that was more welcoming to strangers from across the sea than to the people of their own island.

Out in the street, progress slowed to a crawl and then stopped altogether. A man rapped on the back of the carriage and cried, “Looking for a bed, travelers?” before glancing in at the shrouded body and hastily backing away. The driver reached into his bag for the remains of his lunch.

Tilla stood up and peered past him. A string of pack ponies had somehow spread themselves across the road and got tangled up with a flock of sheep. Passersby were making futile grabs as woolly brown shapes leapt between shying ponies, parked vehicles, and a man trying to deliver barrels. A terrier had decided to join in the fun and was rushing about snapping at the sheep, ignoring the whistles of its frantic owner. A couple of men in chain mail arrived and began to shout orders, but nobody seemed to be listening.

By the time there was a clear route through the chaos, a manure cart had drawn up behind them. “Take the first on the left, up by the bakery,” Camma called, grimacing at the stench.

“I hope you ladies aren’t wanting to stop near the Forum.”

“No, go on past, by the meat market.”

They were moving again. Mumbling something that ended in, “after a bloody market day,” the driver swung the vehicle around and urged the horses forward in the shadow of the Great Hall that made up one end of the Forum. Vehicles were parked on both sides of the road in such a way that there was barely room to fit another carriage in between. To Tilla’s disgust, the manure cart followed them. She lifted her overtunic and inhaled through the fabric. It made no difference.

Beyond the hall the driver called over his shoulder, “I’ll have to drop you ladies and move on.”

“But we need help to unload!” Tilla insisted, careful not to announce to the girl scuttling past with a basket of eggs and her nose pinched shut that they had brought a body with them. “My friend has just had a baby. She should not be lifting things.”

Especially that sort of thing.

Instructed by Camma, the carriage passed a meat market on the right and then drew up in the middle of the street outside a row of narrow timber-framed houses and workshops. The driver jumped down. “I can’t wait here, missus.”

“You must help!” insisted Tilla. “My husband paid you extra.”

The driver’s eyes, red with the dust of travel, met her own. “They’ll have me for blocking the traffic.”

“The housekeeper should be home from market,” put in Camma, handing the box containing the sleeping baby out to the driver. He lifted it above the inquiring muzzle of a tethered mule and placed it in the doorway. “Grata will help us,” she said, accepting the man’s offer of a hand as she climbed down from the carriage. “She will be waiting for us.”

The complaints from the drivers jammed behind them fell silent as Julius Asper was unloaded onto the pavement. Even so, when their own man looked as though he might be stopping to help, there was a roar of, “If you don’t get a move on, sunshine, we’ll bury you and all!”

“Don’t stir yourself to help, will you?” retorted the driver, jabbing his middle finger into the air just to make sure his point was clear.

A voice from farther back yelled, “She don’t need no help taking his weight. She’s been doing it for months!”

Camma’s face was blank. With the shrouded body set down at the side of the street, the driver clambered back into his seat and urged the horses into a trot. The carriage jolted away down the street and the queue of traffic began to move at last.

Camma turned to one of the house doors with her hand raised ready to knock, and froze. “What’s this?”

Tilla frowned at the dribbly limewash letters slapped across the wood and decided it was probably just as well neither of them could read. She wrinkled her nose. Now that the cart had gone, there was a sharp stink of urine around the front of the house.

“Grata should have done something about this.” Camma bunched her fist and raised her arm, ready to thump on the lettering.

Tilla seized her wrist before she could make contact. “Wait!” There were pale gashes of freshly splintered wood where the lock met the upright of the door frame. “Don’t go in there.” She pushed the door ajar with the tip of her forefinger and drew back.

“But Grata is-”

“There is somebody inside,” murmured Tilla, hearing a crash from somewhere inside the building, “but I don’t think it’s your housekeeper. Who else is allowed in there?”

“Nobody,” said Camma, frowning. “Unless-” She stopped. “No, Bericus would have a key.”

Tilla turned back toward the street and called to the nearest driver, “We need help!”

“Sorry, missus. Can’t stop here.”

The next one said the same. The workshop next door was shuttered and padlocked. The guards who had been directing the traffic had disappeared. The only pedestrians in the street were a wizened old lady and a boy being pulled along by a goat.

Camma said, “We could try to find that guard.”

“Did you see where he went?”

“No.”

Tilla eyed the two bodies laid out at the foot of the wall: father and son, dead and alive.

“We can’t leave them lying here in the street.” She fingered the hilt of her knife. “We shall have to help ourselves.”