Ruso and the Root of All Evils

54

Ruso left his brother strutting about, shouting orders. He was making his way back past the dead fountain when his thoughts were interrupted by a wail of ‘Gaius!’

It was time to see what he could do to clear up the rest of this afternoon’s chaos.

‘They’ve been through our underwear, Gaius!’ shouted Marcia, leaning out over the porch balustrade, clearly eager to get her complaint in first.

‘Not while we were in it,’ added Flora.

‘Really, Flora!’ This last was from Arria, who was positioned at the top of the steps like a legionary about to defend a breach in the garrison walls. As he lurched unevenly up towards her, she said, ‘You must send a complaint to the Senator, Gaius! They’ve upset everybody and broken one of the best bowls.’

‘Only one?’ asked Ruso, relieved. While Calvus questioned the household, Stilo and three of Fuscus’ thugs had been searching the house for — he was not sure what. Poisons, he supposed. Stilo had emerged still clutching the knife in his disfigured hand. Perhaps he imagined that, if he found the poison, someone was going to force him to swallow it.

‘It was one of a set. A beautiful set. Your poor father bought them for me.’ She sniffed. ‘On our first anniversary.’

As he climbed the steps, he saw that his stepmother’s eyes were glistening with tears. The girls, noticing the same thing, retreated into the house.

‘It’s all right,’ he assured her, putting an arm around her shoulders and realizing this was probably the first time he had ever touched her voluntarily. ‘We’ll get another one.’

‘But they’ve been through all our lovely things!’

The lovely things were of secondary interest. ‘Is anybody hurt?’ The fourth member of the gang had been ordered to prevent him from leaving the garden. Ruso had been forced to wait out the questioning, limping back and forth along the gravel paths, listening for any sounds from the house and planning to beat Fuscus’ man aside with his walking-stick if he heard anyone scream. He had heard nothing, but he was still relieved when Arria confirmed that Calvus and Stilo had done no worse than frighten their victims.

‘And they’ve upset Cook! I knew they would. Goodness knows what we’ll get for dinner now, and we can’t cancel Lollia again. Those dreadful men made him open all the jars in the pantry and then they made the kitchen-boy eat something out of every one of them. No wonder he was sick.’

Ruso scowled, trying to stifle the guilty awareness that he might have spared them all of this by giving the investigators the evidence about Claudia buying rhododendron honey. ‘What about the others?’

‘Then they found some wretched dried leaves in the barn — Lucius says he uses them to get rid of wild dogs, but they’ve taken them away.’

‘Dogbane?’ suggested Ruso, summoning a vague childhood recollection of watching his father’s farm manager making dry leaves into cakes with suet and being told not to touch them.

‘Oh, who knows what he keeps in there?’ sighed Arria, letting him lead her out into the garden. ‘And now they’ve taken your lovely case …’

‘Nothing that was in my medical case will be a problem, I promise you,’ he insisted.

Arria sniffed. ‘But it was so beautiful, with all those pretty clips and places to put the little bottles — what would your father say?’

‘He’d say at least they let me keep the instruments,’ insisted Ruso, who was privately outraged at the confiscation. After all the arguments about duty and responsibility, the gift of the medical case had been the tacit sign of his father’s acceptance that Ruso was not going to stay at home and run the farm. ‘They promised to release it when they’ve checked the medicines.’ As if he had been likely to believe them.

‘Oh, Gaius, what are we going to do? I told that horrible man we don’t know anything, and it was all a silly fuss about nothing, but he still kept on asking questions and looking at me.’

‘A murder isn’t nothing, Arria.’

‘But he wasn’t murdered, Gaius! For goodness’ sake!’

This was unexpected. ‘Have you been talking to Lucius?’

‘I told him, you’re not that sort of doctor.’

‘What did you say to him, exactly?’

‘I told him the truth. Well, that was what you wanted, dear, wasn’t it?’

‘And the truth is?’

Arria paused to run her little finger along the lower lid of each eye and inspect it for stray make-up.

‘You look fine,’ he assured her, knowing he would get no sense out of her until her poise was recovered.

Arria patted her hair. ‘I explained to him,’ she said, ‘that you’ve been away in the Army.’ She put her hand on his arm. ‘Please don’t be cross with me. I’m sure you’re a very good doctor. I’m sure you know all about arrows and sword-cuts and what to do when people get their fingers stuck in those ballista things, but really, dear, the legionaries don’t go around poisoning people, do they?’

‘Not as far as I know.’

‘So you really don’t know an awful lot about it, do you?’

He bristled. ‘I know a lot more than most people.’

‘Yes, dear, but even you can still make a mistake. Can’t you?’

‘Of course, but — ’

‘And you’re tired after all that travelling and, to be frank, Gaius, you do have a tendency to over-dramatize.’

‘I have a what?’

‘You see? I knew you would be upset!’

‘A tendency to over-dramatize,’ he repeated, deliberately keeping his voice under control. ‘What else did you say?’

‘Nothing. I didn’t even know Severus was here until after he — until it was too late. Then I just asked Galla to make him look presentable for the family.’

‘Right.’

He sensed her movement as she straightened up beside him. ‘I only did it to help. I didn’t mean to make you cross.’ She sniffed again. ‘I know you’ve never approved of me, Gaius.’

‘I — what?’ He did not want to discuss this now. Or indeed, ever.

‘I know everyone thought I only married your father for his money.’

Ruso cleared his throat. ‘That was all a long time ago.’

‘I did my best, you know. It wasn’t my fault I could never be your mother.’ She wiped away tears with her forefinger, crinkling the skin beneath her eyes. ‘If you could try to like me just a little bit, Gaius — ’

Ruso cleared his throat again.

‘All this will blow over,’ he assured her, feeling the graze on his elbow stretch as he tightened his arm around her. ‘We’ll find a way to sort out the money, Lucius will bring Cass home, the investigators will find out we didn’t poison Severus, and in a few weeks it’ll all be forgotten.’

‘Really?’

‘Really,’ he assured her, ignoring the voices in his head that were demanding to know how all this was going to happen, and pointing out that he should have told her about Marcia’s gladiator.

‘And you’ll be nice to Lollia and Diphilus tonight, won’t you?’

Ruso, who had forgotten all about the wretched dinner, managed a grunt of assent.

‘Goodness knows what we’ll eat: some of the traders have been very tiresome. I wish these people would keep proper records. Of course Lucius has paid their accounts. Anyway, Cook says he’s found some oysters, and there’s enough here to manage. Now, the next thing is entertainment. If the girls do some practice perhaps they could — ’

‘Do they ever do any practice?’

She paused for a moment. ‘No. Perhaps we’d better just talk to each other. Seating is going to be awkward with an even number of diners, but I’m going to put you with Lollia at one corner, and then Diphilus and me at the other, and the girls …’

Ruso made an effort to care and failed. He would wait till after the dinner guests had gone and then tell her about Marcia.

Arria leaned her head against his shoulder. ‘I am glad you’re home, Gaius. I’m sorry you were let down by that girl. What did you call her? Tilla?’

‘At least she and Cass are together,’ said Ruso.

‘Cassiana is bound to come to her senses in a day or two. And that girl will find a way to survive. These foreigners are often cleverer than we give them credit for, you know.’

‘True.’

Arria lifted her head. ‘After all, she managed to work her way around you, didn’t she, dear?’

55

The stable lad looked up from heating a potion of what appeared to be melted fat and vinegary wine and declared the animal to be not too bad, considering. ‘This should fix him up, sir.’

Ruso explained about the unscheduled leap across the ditch, and the stable lad declared that idiots like them investigators shouldn’t be allowed on the road, which echoed Ruso’s sentiments precisely.

Spotting the water bottle slung over a hook, Ruso took it down. ‘I appreciated the drink,’ he said. ‘But this needs a good rinse through before it’s used again. It tasted a bit stale.’

‘Oh, it’s not ours, sir,’ explained the lad. ‘It was left slung over the saddle-pad, so I just filled it up for you.’

‘It’s not ours? You mean it came with Severus? The man who was poisoned?’

The lad looked sheepish. ‘Sorry, sir. I didn’t think.’

Ruso, who had drunk most of the contents on the journey back to the house, paused to ponder the state of his internal workings.

‘It was pretty much empty before, sir.’

‘Never mind,’ he said, hoping that the minor gurgles and rumblings of which he was suddenly acutely conscious were nothing to worry about. ‘Just keep it with the saddle for now and make absolutely sure nobody uses it.’

‘Are you feeling all right, sir?’

Ruso ran one hand through his hair. ‘I think so,’ he said, reminding himself that the snake man had said it wasn’t usually fatal and vaguely aware that he might just have found out how Severus had been poisoned after leaving home. ‘I’m going to go straight to the kitchen and drink a large quantity of salt water. If it doesn’t work, I want you to tell the investigators exactly what happened and who the flask belonged to. And make sure everybody knows it had nothing to do with tonight’s dinner.’

The stable lad’s eyes widened. ‘I’m really very sorry, sir.’

‘I don’t doubt it,’ agreed Ruso. ‘Hopefully, I’ll be in a fit state to tell you off properly when you get back from Arelate.’