Ruso and the Root of All Evils

26

Lollia Saturnina’s establishment was a model of neatness. The drying amphorae were laid out in military ranks to catch the late-afternoon sun. The fuel was in stacks of uniform height. Vegetables were standing to attention in their beds, and beyond them, past a row of freshly painted outbuildings, a slave was stationed by the entrance of a kiln that towered above two blackened fire-holes. She was busy emptying a trolley of wide-shouldered amphorae, heaving them up to a man whose voice boomed around the hollow oven in which he was stacking them ready for firing.

Ruso approached the woman and indicated the house on the far side of the yard. ‘Do you know if your mistress is in?’

‘No,’ said the woman, wiping her fingers on her worn brown tunic. ‘I’m here.’

Ruso swallowed. ‘You’re Lollia Saturnina?’

‘Yes.’

He had not made a good start. Ruso took in the ancient tunic, the battered sandals, the hair tied back with a simple braid. She was wearing neither jewellery nor make-up, but neither did she need them. To his consternation, beneath the pale smears of dried clay was a very attractive woman.

The woman leaned forward, called, ‘Just a minute!’ into the entrance of the kiln and was rewarded with an echoing ‘Right-oh, mistress!’

‘Perhaps,’ she prompted, moving away from the entrance, ‘when you’ve finished staring, you could tell me who you are and why you’re here.’

‘Ruso,’ he explained. ‘I live next door.’

‘Ah, Gaius Petreius, the famous medic! Your stepmother’s very proud of you.’

‘Really?’

‘Don’t worry, she did warn me.’

‘About what?’

‘That women make you nervous. But apparently you’re a nice chap underneath. So could we get underneath fairly soon, do you think? I’m no good at social chit-chat either, and I need to get this finished and clean up.’

Ruso cleared his throat. ‘Do you need a hand?’

‘No, I do this all the time.’

‘I just wasn’t expecting you to be so …’

‘Scruffy? Don’t worry, I will dress up for dinner.’

Ruso bit back the honest but inappropriate ‘attractive’ and substituted ‘forthright’.

She smiled. The gap between her front teeth only added to her charm. He wondered why nobody had told him and then remembered that Arria had tried: he just hadn’t believed her.

‘Now, what did you want to say to me?’

Ruso had practised various ways of describing the problem on the walk through the olive grove that adjoined Lollia’s property. All explanations of the afternoon’s events sounded either evasive or callous. In the end he settled for: ‘Arria’s sorry, but we can’t do dinner tonight because a man who came to see us this afternoon died in my study.’

‘Oh dear.’

It was not clear whether she was expressing regret about the death or the dinner.

‘He wasn’t a patient,’ Ruso added, then wished he hadn’t. ‘Not that that matters, of course.’

‘No. Who was it?’

He explained.

Lollia said, ‘Poor Claudia.’

‘Poor Claudia,’ he echoed, silently recalling the bitch has poisoned me.

There was an awkward pause, then Lollia bent to heave up the next amphora.

‘I expect Arria will want to rearrange,’ he said.

The gap-toothed smile appeared again. ‘I expect so.’

‘You might as well know,’ he said, ‘I think he was poisoned. But it wasn’t us who did it.’

‘I don’t doubt it.’

‘That he was poisoned, or that it wasn’t us?’

‘Both,’ she said, looking at him over the neck of the amphora. ‘I met Severus several times. Frankly, Claudia’s made some very bad decisions in the last few years. Now if you’ll excuse me, we need to get this fired up before it gets dark. Ready, Marius? Next one coming up!’