Ruso and the Root of All Evils

63

Yesterday’s bread was dry, but cheaper. The two women were washing it down with a jug of watered vinegary wine, leaning over the ramshackle bar that opened on to a side street where two slaves were laying out a great length of fat rope. As Cass explained about the drowned brother, Tilla wondered how the grim-faced woman behind the counter could possibly have managed to lure away somebody else’s husband.

‘The only thing I know,’ said Phoebe, not looking up from stirring one of the huge pots set into the counter, ‘is that the dead don’t come back.’

Cassiana straightened her shoulders. ‘But we can remember them.’

‘What I’m saying,’ continued the woman, ‘is, you don’t want to listen to drunks and layabouts. So if you’re chasing this rubbish about ghosts, you’re wasting your time.’

‘Ghosts?’ Cass’s hands on the counter turned into fists. ‘Who has seen a ghost?’

The woman lifted out the spoon. ‘They all drowned. The captain and the owner and the crew and your brother. Don’t waste your time.’

‘Tell us about the ghosts,’ said Tilla.

‘A couple of fools who reckon they saw the captain and the owner. Late at night in a bar, of course.’

‘What are their names?’ Cass was almost on top of the counter now. ‘Which bar was it?’

‘I told you, it’s rubbish.’

Tilla handed her too much money for the breakfast and said, ‘You knew this captain and this owner?’

‘I’ve seen them once or twice. They reckoned they were too good for us in here.’ The woman counted the coins and did not offer to return any change.

‘And these two were the only ghosts anyone saw?’ asked Cass again.

‘Copreus and Ponticus.’

‘Tell us what these men looked like,’ urged Tilla. When the woman looked her in the eye she handed over another coin. At this rate they would be walking home.

Moments later a fat man who walked with two sticks rolled up to the bar and manoeuvred himself on to the stool. The woman abandoned her attempts to describe the missing Copreus and Ponticus, and moved away to greet her latest customer by name.

Tilla said, ‘One last question. Where do I find someone who has seen these ghosts?’

‘One of them cheap whorehouses downstream,’ said Phoebe, without turning round. ‘I wouldn’t know which. I’m a decent woman.’

Evidently the time Tilla had bought had run out.

Beside her, Cass murmured, ‘How can we go into places like that? What will Lucius say?’

‘It is not going in that is difficult,’ said Tilla, gathering up the two extra loaves she had bought to give to the chained slaves. ‘It is getting out. Besides, in a town this size we could spend all day finding them all.’ She weighed the purse slung around her neck. ‘We will have to buy more bad wine and make do with talking to bar girls.’ She glanced at her companion. ‘We will find out everything there is to know, Cass. Now we know that Captain Copreus is a muscly man with tattoos, and that this Ponticus wears a bronze ring with a ruby set in it. If they are alive, we will find them. I promise. Don’t cry.’

‘I am not crying for myself.’ Cassiana rubbed her fist across her eyes. ‘I am crying for my brother, here alone with all these wicked people.’