Ruso and the Root of All Evils

72

The youth in the usher’s tunic stepped out in front of them. ‘Ladies only up here, sir!’

Ruso fixed him with a glare that suggested if he did not get out of the way, he would shortly find himself tumbling down the several flights of steps that the remnant of the Petreius family had just toiled up. ‘I’m escorting these ladies to their seats,’ he growled.

The youth glanced both ways along the corridor. Failing to spot any other officials amongst the spectators clambering around the stone labyrinth of the amphitheatre, he stepped smartly aside with ‘Of course, sir!’ as if this had been his intention all along.

The crush of people thinned as they climbed the final steps. Eventually the four of them stood blinking in the morning sun, staring out across the vast oval whose circumference was alive with the hubbub of spectators settling in for a day’s entertainment.

Arria glanced up at the canopy stretched out above the curving rows of benches. ‘Well, at least we shall be in the shade.’

‘I told you,’ said Flora. ‘It said on the notices. Shades will be provided.’

‘We’ll sit down here,’ announced Marcia, starting to pick her way along the front row before anyone could argue.

Arria called after her, ‘We’d be more private higher up, dear!’

‘I want to see!’

Arria pursed her lips and turned to Ruso as if to say, what can I do with her?

Marcia settled herself next to an aisle on the front tier of seats and flung the green stole sideways as far as it would reach to prevent any other hopefuls sitting too close before her family caught up. Ruso, who found the narrow space between the benches and the parapet no easier to negotiate than the stairs, edged along through the gap and finally unslung the sack of supplies from his shoulder. Arria busied herself pulling out the contents. Marcia leaned her elbows on the parapet and stared down at the small figures of the slaves raking the arena, as if glaring at an expanse of sand dotted with bushes in pots — presumably the forest for the morning’s wild animal hunts — would give her some clue about how events would unfold later in the day.

‘I don’t know why we have to sit up here,’ she grumbled. ‘We can’t see a thing.’

Flora grabbed a cushion from the bag and knelt on it, scanning the tiers of seats above them to see if she recognized any of the other females edging along the rows and snatching up their skirts to scale the stone steps.

‘Would you like a cushion, dear?’

When Marcia did not reply, Arria leaned around Flora and tapped her on the knee. ‘Do take one, dear, the seats are very hard.’

Marcia snatched the cushion with an ‘Ohh!’ of exasperation and slapped it down on the seat as if she were swatting a wasp.

Ruso removed the food basket and two leather-covered water-bottles from the sack. He was relieved to see that neither was the one that had belonged to Severus. ‘Anybody want a drink?’

‘I don’t need a drink!’

‘Marcia, please!’ said Arria. ‘There’s no need to be rude.’

‘I want some,’ said Flora, seizing one of the bottles and ignoring her mother’s plea to use a cup.

‘I’ll come and find you if I can,’ promised Ruso. ‘If I don’t — ’

His reply was interrupted by a shrill and slightly off-key blast of trumpets.

‘I know, dear,’ Arria assured him over the rising noise of the crowd. ‘We’ll make our way over to the Augustus gate and hire a carriage. Flora, really! What will people think? You really must — oh look, here they come!’

A roar rose like a tidal wave around the amphitheatre. Ruso glanced down into the arena. A standard-bearer on a white horse had just emerged from one of the tunnels and was trotting around the perimeter displaying a golden image of the Emperor to the crowd. He was followed by a man with the ceremonial birch rods and a chariot pulled by two more white horses. Inside the chariot stood Fuscus, fresh from the sacrifices at Jupiter’s temple, waving to the cheering spectators with one hand and clinging on with the other. The crowd yelled even louder as a parade of men marched out in his wake, their bright blue cloaks shimmering with embroidered gold.

‘Tertius!’ screamed Marcia over the din, leaping to her feet. ‘Tertius, look up, it’s me!’

Arria’s cry of ‘Marcia, behave!’ was barely audible.

The gladiators were followed by a squad of slaves displaying their armour to an audience that howled and stamped its approval.

Ruso squeezed back towards the exit past several women who looked as if they might push him over the parapet in their excitement. At the top of the steps he paused and looked back at his family. Arria had given up trying to restrain Marcia and was pretending not to notice the screaming and waving.

The last time he had been inside this place his father had been alive, Lucius had been courting Cass, and he himself had been a married man. Now his father was dead, Lucius and Cass were quarrelling, his little sister was in love with a gladiator, and Claudia was at home pretending to mourn the loss of a different husband.

He glanced down over the bobbing coiffures of late arrivals still clattering up the steps and caught the glare of the usher before starting to force his way down against the flow.

Ruso had never managed to work out exactly how the honeycomb of stairs and corridors fitted together to hold up the miracle that was the amphitheatre. Navigating by counting the arches, he made his way past the latecomers being directed up to their seats and paused to buy an apple from a fruit-seller in case there was no time for lunch. He showed his pass to the attendant, who moved aside to let him descend the steps into the area reserved for competitors.

As he went lower, the appetizing waft from the fritter-sellers outside was overwhelmed by a sour stink from the condemned cells. Above him, a sudden silence from the crowd told him the entertainment was starting in the arena. He was not going back up to watch. Hidden away deep beneath the seating, he unlatched the door of the dank vault that had been reserved for medical treatment.

As his eyes adjusted to the gloom he could see that the room was more or less empty apart from a couple of tables, two chairs, an empty brazier and some rubbish that had been cleared away and dumped at the far end. The larger of the tables was bare, ready for its first patient. The porters had stacked the other with the boxes of medical supplies that Gnostus had organized the day before and placed several buckets of water underneath.

Ruso unravelled his roll of instruments and began to lay them out on the side table. A room without much daylight was not an ideal place to perform emergency surgery, but then, nothing about this grandiose combination of sport, warfare and public execution was ideal.

A roar from the crowd washed through the corridors. Ruso neither knew nor cared what beasts had been winched up from the vaults for the hunters to chase around out there. He had more important things to think about.

He wished he could believe in the existence of some unknown woman with a grudge against Severus who would take the trouble to disguise herself as Claudia and had the chance to put poisonous honey in his drink, but he could not. Claudia’s denial had been vehement, but she had offered no alternative explanation except the vague suggestion that Ennia might have disguised herself and murdered her brother for no reason. It was true that Ennia could fit two sides of the triangle (the ‘who’ and the ‘how’), but only Claudia could supply a plausible ‘why’.

The truth, of course, could be found by dressing a selection of females in pink sandals and orange wigs, parading them in front of the man who had sold the honey and demanding that he identify his customer. To arrange that, he would have to confide in the investigators and incur the vengeance of Probus.

Ruso seated himself on the operating table and ran his fingertips over the rough edge of the wood. He envied Euplius, who had vanished from a difficult situation and re-emerged somewhere else as Gnostus. How easy life would be if a man had no responsibilities. He now saw how simple life had been in the Army compared to this: just himself and Tilla.

He was not going to wait around to be arrested. If Lucius did not reappear with the women, he would set off for Arelate as soon as he had finished here. But even if he found Tilla and all this mess were magically straightened out, would they ever be able to regain the trust they had lost?

He didn’t know the answer to the next question either, which was introduced by ‘Holy Jupiter, you gave me a turn sat there in the dark!’ and resolved into ‘Have you seen any hats with wings on them?’

Ruso blinked, dazzled by the sudden blaze of torchlight. ‘Pardon?’

‘Mercury hats,’ explained the man clutching the torch as Ruso tried to remember where he had seen him before. ‘I’ve found the boots,’ he continued, holding up a jumble of footwear with large flaps attached in the shape of wings. ‘They’re with the hooks in the toolstore, but nobody can remember what we did with the hats.’

Ruso finally recognized Attalus the Undertaker from Severus’ funeral, now evidently having trouble costuming the employees who would remove the dead from the arena.

‘Going to look bloody stupid out there with no hats,’ grumbled the man, raising the torch and peering towards the pile of junk at the back of the vault. ‘What’s in that lot?’

‘Not a clue,’ said Ruso. ‘Help yourself.’ He slid down from the table and held out a hand for the torch.

‘If you want something done, do it yourself, see?’ continued Attalus, groping his way through a pile of empty boxes and tipping a sackload of what appeared to be rags out on to the floor. ‘I told them to get all the gear checked over in advance, and what do they do? Leave it till the last minute and then come whingeing to me.’ He bent to examine the scattered rags and gave them a perfunctory poke with his toe. ‘The gods alone know what this rubbish is.’ He dragged out a board that appeared to be a piece of painted scenery and flung it aside. ‘You’re the doctor everybody thinks poisoned Severus, right?’

‘I didn’t.’

‘So I hear.’ Attalus kicked a sack aside and yelled as a rat shot out, ran across the floor and disappeared out of the door. ‘Ought to get a dog in,’ he said. ‘It’s a disgrace, the state of this place.’

‘What exactly did you hear?’ asked Ruso, moving the torch as close as he dared without setting the undertaker or the junk on fire.

‘Turns out it was the wife all along,’ said Attalus, tugging at the corner of a basket.

‘Who says?’

‘The investigators, or so I’m told.’ Attalus heaved the basket out and dropped it on to the floor before lifting the lid with his toe. ‘So that’s you in the clear, then, eh?’ He bent down to peer inside. ‘Got ’em!’ He snatched up the basket, flung the winged boots in on top of the contents and took back the torch. ‘Sorry about the mess,’ he said, stepping over it. ‘Got to run.’

‘Hey! How do they know it’s the wife?’

‘I’ll send somebody down to clear up.’

‘But how do they — ’

‘Who cares!’ retorted Attalus. His voice echoed down the corridor as he retreated. ‘Just be glad it’s not you!’