Caveat emptor

29

The bartender was right. According to the eager farmer who dragged the gate open and ushered Ruso into his yard, the river monster was at least eight feet tall and broad as a bull. It had snatched the family’s boat from its mooring and hurled it into the middle of the river before chasing the terrified children into the woods. To Ruso’s relief, the farmer was able to explain all this in reasonably fluent Latin.

His children, whose ages ranged between about four and ten, were neatly lined up beside him. Their skinny frames were clothed in tunics that were patched but clean and their hair was combed. The girl, who was the eldest, wore a chain of fresh daisies around her neck. All three nodded enthusiastically every time they heard, “Ain’t that right, kids?”

They escorted Ruso down a muddy track to where the monster’s footprints could be seen across the open grass leading up from the empty mooring post at the river. The prints were marked by wilting clumps of wild garlic, which had miraculously sprung up the day after the visitation.

“Remarkable,” said Ruso, noting a swathe of similar plants growing under the trees on the far side of the clearing.

Lund and his group of witnesses led him around a curve in the bank to a freshly hollowed tree stump where a pinch of incense could be burned to appease Ver, the life-giving river. There was no charge for this service as long as you brought your own incense: Ver did not approve of exploiting his followers. He did, however, look especially kindly on those who left gifts glistening in his gravelly shallows. If the officer cared to look closely, he could see the sorts of offerings left by earlier visitors. Did he see the way the sun caught that gold coin over on the left, behind the big red pebble? The man who left that coin went straight home and found news of a legacy waiting for him when he got there. “Ain’t that right, kids?”

It seemed several visitors had reason to thank the native god. Another donor had been promoted to centurion. A third had been healed of a broken arm.

“Remarkable,” repeated Ruso, shielding his eyes with one hand and peering into the water to admire the shiny trinkets scattered there, one or two of which were already showing spots of rust. Behind him the eldest child observed in British, “He don’t look very rich, Da.”

“Shut up and keep smiling,” replied the father in the same tongue. “You can never tell with these foreigners.”

Ruso, who had truthfully told the man that he had only been in the province a few days, suppressed a smile of his own and wondered how best to deal with this. There was no malice in the harmless nonsense about the river monster. Clearly the family was not wealthy, and if they managed to make a little money out of gullible travelers, it was probably no worse than the followers of-

He curtailed that thought, just in case Mithras was able to read men’s minds. He was conscious of the family watching as he delved into his purse and pulled out one of Valens’s silver denarii. It would be worth more than all the rubbish in the river put together. “Does the god answer questions?”

The children looked at their father, who hesitated. It seemed nobody had made this request before. “What sort of questions?”

“I’m trying to find out what happened to a man who came from Verulamium,” Ruso explained. “He was badly injured and he ended up a long way down the river in a small flat-bottomed boat that seems to have been stolen. I’m wondering if the river god might have seen what happened to him.”

In the silence that followed, he was conscious of the gurgle of the water in the shallows and the distant cry of a drover on the North road.

“I don’t want to get anybody into trouble,” he said, flexing the base of his thumb so the coin on his palm lifted and tipped over. The sun glinted on the squat profile of Vespasian. “And I wouldn’t want to upset the monster. But perhaps one of you could have a word with the god and see if he could give me a few pointers.”

The father sent the younger children back to the house in the care of the oldest girl. When they had disappeared around the bend in the river, he said, “Please don’t be angry, sir. They are just kids. He frightened them.”

“And he grew into a monster?”

“Just a bit of fun. With the taxes and a sick wife and the price of seed corn, we need money.”

Ruso flipped the denarius over again, then held out his hand for the man to take it. “Tell me,” he said.

Soon afterward Ruso’s horse was picking its way back along the shady track toward the main road and its rider was deep in thought.

Very early on the morning after Asper had disappeared, Lund’s children had gone down to the river to fetch water. A terrifying figure with blood on his face and mud all over his clothes rose from the reeds farther along the riverbank and demanded to know where he was. The first Lund knew of it was when he heard them running toward the house screaming about a monster. By the time he reached the bank, the boat had been loosed from its mooring and was drifting out of sight around the bend in the river. He could not see if there was anyone in it.

He had accused the children of untying it and inventing the monster to avoid a beating, but they all told the same story and passed it on to the neighbors’ children. Within a couple of days the tale had grown and spread along the course of the river. It was some time before Lund heard about the disappearance of Julius Asper and began to wonder if the monster-who might originally have fit his description-had something to do with it.

“Are you sure there was just the one man? Could there have been somebody with him?”

“Just the one,” insisted the man. “We did him no harm, sir.”

“There were two men went missing.”

“If the brother was here, the dogs would find him,” said the man, grasping his meaning.

Ruso paused, distracted. “Is that your wife coughing?”

“The same all through the winter, sir.”

Most people suffered from coughs and chilblains through the damp British winter, but generally those who survived had recovered by now. “Has she seen a doctor?”

“They all try something different. Now she is thin as a stick and brings up blood.”

There was no point in offering a further prognosis. It would not be good. “Leek juice with frankincense might help a little,” he suggested, wishing he had brought his supplies with him. “And whatever they tell you, don’t let them bleed her more than once every three weeks.”

Before he left he remembered to tell the man where his boat was. It was not much consolation. Turning the horse’s head north, he rode past an elderly couple shuffling along carrying a basket full of cabbages and leeks between them. He wondered what sort of welcome Tilla had received in Verulamium. With luck he would sort out this Julius Asper business to Metellus’s satisfaction and her name would be erased from the list. If not, as soon as it was over he would suggest they pack up the red crockery and the baby clothes and take the next ship back to Gaul.