Ruso and the Root of All Evils

13

According to Arria, the family carriage was being repaired. According to Marcia, it had been being repaired for the last six months, but Lucius was too mean to pay the wheelwright, and that was why Ruso was having to drive them and Tilla into town this morning in this awful embarrassing thing, and why they were so hot.

‘You can’t blame Lucius for the weather,’ he said, reining in the mules so that they were not trotting straight into the dust kicked up by the carriage that was currently speeding past the smoking kilns of Lollia Saturnina’s amphora factory. ‘Why don’t you both sit under parasols instead of wrapping up like dead Egyptians? I’m surprised you can breathe under all that.’

Marcia gave an exaggerated sigh that said she thought her brother was extremely stupid, but she was not foolish enough to say so. ‘Because someone might see us, Gaius. Riding around on this.’ The cart juddered as she emphasized the final word with a thud of her sandal against the footboard.

Ruso remembered the faces of legionaries who had struggled miles across the wet British hills carrying wounded comrades: faces he might never see again if he could not find a way to get the farm out of Severus’ clutches. He said, ‘You could always walk.’

She snorted. ‘I might have known you’d take Lucius’ side. And I don’t suppose you’ve done anything about the dowry, have you?’

‘Not yet,’ he agreed.

‘But I need it!’

‘Not this morning.’

‘When, then?’

‘I’m going to talk to someone.’

‘What? Lucius said you would sort it out! Who else do you need to talk to? You’re supposed to be my guardian!’

‘And you’re supposed to do what I tell you,’ he pointed out.

Marcia flung herself against the wooden backrest with a cry of ‘Ohh! What is the matter with this family? Nobody else has to put up with this!’

‘No, they don’t!’ chipped in Flora from behind, where she was sitting with Tilla. ‘They don’t, Gaius. Really. If you weren’t off marching around with the Army, you’d know.’

‘Over in Britannia,’ observed Ruso, ‘the men pay a bride price to marry the women. Maybe I’ll ship you across there and sell you.’

‘How much did you pay for Tilla?’

‘I’m not married to Tilla,’ said Ruso, who had no intention of admitting that he had bought her as a slave in the back streets of Deva.

‘There are girls my age who have been married for years,’ continued Marcia.

Ruso said, ‘Not from ordinary families like ours.’

‘At this rate I shall be as shrivelled as a prune by the time you get round to it. And there’ll be nobody nice left to marry.’

They were approaching the vineyards that fringed the entrance to the estate of the absent Senator. Marcia’s hand on his arm was a welcome distraction from the tricky meeting he would face later with the Senator’s devious lying bastard of an agent.

‘Gaius, you wouldn’t make me marry somebody repulsive, would you?’

There was genuine anxiety in the hazel eyes, which were the only part of her face that was visible and which seemed to be blacker around the edges than was natural. ‘No,’ he promised, wondering if he was about to shut off a useful source of income. ‘I wouldn’t make you.’

‘Good!’ The note of triumph in her voice alerted him to the fact that he had just helped her score some sort of point.

‘Of course,’ he said, ‘I might ask you to volunteer.’

‘Oh!’ With this final sigh of exasperation Marcia leaned back, folded her arms, and lapsed into a sulk.

Marcia and Flora disembarked at the roadside, rearranging their stoles around their elaborately pinned curls and shaking off the dust of the road. He had offered to drive them right up to the Augustus gate, the broad stone arches of which were now visible in the town walls, but they had refused. Evidently the girls would rather traipse the last few hundred paces along the tomb-lined road in stifling heat than suffer the shame of being seen dismounting from a farm cart outside the gates.

Ruso considered asking them who was likely to care what vehicle they arrived in. Then he remembered Claudia demanding to know why he always had to argue with people like some beardy old Greek philosopher: a complaint that was especially memorable since it had been preceded by a loud howl and the use of a make-up pot as a missile.

So instead he limped quietly aside as Tilla refused his help to climb down from the back of the cart, then murmured, ‘Sorry about my family.’

She plucked at the fabric of the pale yellow tunic Arria had insisted on lending her, and which did not suit her. ‘Your stepmother says I must wear this while I look after your sisters. I am going with them to see all the things my people are not foolish enough to want.’ Reaching up to adjust the brim of the battered straw hat, she added, ‘Perhaps I shall bring some of the things back with me.’

‘Please don’t,’ he urged and raised his voice for the others to hear. ‘I’ve got business to see to. I’ll have one of the men meet you at the seventh hour outside the Augustus gate.’

‘Come on, Tilla,’ urged Marcia, pausing to push one of Flora’s hairpins back into place and then flinging the green linen stole over her shoulder. ‘Leave our boring brother to get on with his business. We’re going shopping!’

Ruso parked the cart under a tree and left it in the charge of a small boy, who promised to keep the mules in the shade. As he headed towards the town on foot, he caught a glimpse of green stole vanishing under the pedestrian archway of the Augustus gate. For the first time in his life, he wished he were going shopping.