Tabula Rasa

Chapter 54

At first Ruso did not recognize the brothel keeper. The fox-pelt color was gone: Today her hair was a startling jet-black to match the makeup around her eyes, but the professional smile was the same. “What’s your pleasure, Doctor?”

“A word in private,” he suggested.

She led him into a little room that smelled as though the brightly colored rugs and cushions were concealing a bad damp problem.

“I’m told it’s harder to buy staff these days,” he said, lowering himself onto the little couch as instructed. “Since the change in the law.”

“I hope you’re not going to make me an offer, sir. We run a respectable house here.”

“I’m still looking for the boy. I need to know how your business works. You can’t just buy from anybody? What’s changed?”

“It’s the emperor, sir. May the gods bless him. He’s a great improver, isn’t he?”

“Undoubtedly,” said Ruso, aware that not everyone wanted to be improved.

“Says nobody can sell to us or the gladiator boys unless he can show a good cause in law.”

Ruso wondered what would constitute a good cause, and whether it would involve the bad behavior of the slave or the financial desperation of the owner. “What do you think of that?”

“Very commendable, sir.”

“And does everyone share that view?”

She tilted her head to one side. “I have heard it suggested, sir, that a business with standards can’t run on everybody else’s cast-off staff. These days lot of the better houses have taken to breeding their own workers. If you want happy customers, you can’t offer them riffraff.”

Ruso nodded. “Are there other sources?”

The lips pursed. “All my girls are legal, sir. You can check.”

“I’m not here to cause trouble,” he reminded her. “If some other owner wanted to buy a stolen boy, where would he-or she-go?”

She glanced at the door. “I have to do business with these people, sir. I can’t afford to have it said-”

“Branan is nine years old.”

She sighed. “I had a boy once. He died of a fever.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You won’t say who told you?”

“Not a word.”

She leaned closer. He had grown used to the damp, but now he was assailed by a sudden waft of garlic. “I hear things,” she whispered, “about Lupus over in Coria. Nothing definite, mind. Just rumors. Back-door deals.”

“Is Lupus the dealer who has an agent in Vindolanda?”

“That’s the one. Down the main street in Vindolanda, turn left just past the butcher’s shop and it’s the third door on the right. Ask for Piso.”

The stable hand had tied the bay up with a very short rope in order to brush him. “Vindolanda again already, sir?”

“I forgot something.” Ruso stepped back as the horse shifted sideways and nearly knocked the groom over. He had a feeling that he was going around in circles, but he didn’t know what else to try, and nobody else seemed to know, either.

The horse was happy to canter much of the way to Vindolanda: good, not only because Ruso was in a hurry, but also because he could speed past what was obviously turning into a major argument over a pile of broken red crockery at the side of the road. A driver was waving his arms about and shouting at a group of natives. Ruso overheard something about “I’ve been bloody searched twice already!” He urged the horse on before anyone might imagine he would like to get involved.

Most of Vindolanda’s shoppers had gone home now. A few off-duty soldiers were lounging outside the bars. He went down to the fort gate and reported the roadside fracas before heading off in search of Piso.

The dealer’s agent was down a side street, exactly where he had been told. He tethered the horse on a short rein, warning the small boys who offered to “watch him for you, mister” not to get too close.

But whatever he might have hoped to learn from Piso, he was out of luck. According to the hulking house slave, the agent had gone away on business. The slave either did not know where or had been instructed not to say. He was not allowed to let anyone in. There was no stock there. The master had taken all of them with him.

“Never mind,” Ruso assured him. “Perhaps you can get a message to him.” He leaned closer. “I don’t want to say this out in the street,” he explained, “but there’s a bit of a problem over the boy one of our men sold him the other day.”

“Yes, sir.”

Ruso was aware of trying to steady his voice. Yes, sir could mean anything. “I wanted to make sure your master knew about it.”

The slave eyed him for a moment, then said, “I think everyone knows, sir.”

Now it was the tremble in his hands he needed to steady as well. He waited until a gaggle of children had led a puppy down the street on a length of twine before he leaned forward again. “Your master’s problem isn’t the boy so much as the seller. He’s claiming your master arranged the deal in the first place, and all he did was deliver.”

“The seller’s been caught, sir?”

“He’s singing like a bird in a cage,” Ruso told him. “But nobody knows how much of it is true.”

The slave’s eyes narrowed. “Why should you want to help my master, sir?”

Indeed, why would he? “I can’t explain it on the doorstep,” said Ruso, truthfully.

He dropped the latch as requested, aware that the slave was at least half a hand taller than he was, and wide enough to block the hallway. The exit was behind him, but he would have to lift the latch and pull the door inward. Before he reached the street the slave would have plenty of time to haul him back. He swallowed. “The seller has been under suspicion for some time, but we have no proof.”

“ ‘We,’ sir?”

“The Legion,” Ruso explained, deciding to stick to the truth as far as possible. “I’m helping Tribune Accius sort this out.”

There was a sound behind the slave. Another figure was moving toward them. “Who’s there?” demanded a woman who sounded as though she was not expecting to like the answer. At that point it seemed to dawn on the slave that he had not asked.

“Medical Officer Ruso from Parva,” Ruso explained, rescuing him.

“He’s come to see the master,” the slave told her, shifting to one side in the gloom of the corridor to reveal a short woman with her hair pulled back from her forehead as if it were a nuisance.

She looked Ruso up and down. “The master’s not here.”

Ruso, wishing she would go back to wherever she had come from, carried on talking to the man. “We realize this puts your master in an awkward position, but if he’s willing to testify, we’re prepared to accept that he didn’t know he was receiving stolen goods.”

“The master doesn’t receive stolen goods!” exclaimed the woman. “Who’s been telling you that? This is an honest business.”

“We know,” said Ruso. “But anyone can be deceived. So the sooner he brings the boy back, the better.”

The woman said, “What boy?” at exactly the same moment as the man said, “I’ll tell the master when he comes home, sir.”

“Will that be today?”

“Probably not, sir.”

“When?”

“We don’t know,” said the woman.

“What do you do if anyone arrives to conduct business?”

“This great oaf takes messages,” the woman said, prodding the man in the ribs.

“Tell me how to find your master,” he said, “and I’ll go and sort things out with him before he gets into worse trouble.”

The man looked at the woman, who said, “We don’t know where he is.”

Ruso was losing patience. “Then how do you get messages to him?”

“He’ll send someone,” said the woman primly. “When he’s ready.”

Ruso wondered if it would be possible to get the official questioner back from wherever he had gone. This dancing around the truth was a waste of time. The gods alone knew where Branan would end up unless they got hold of him fast. Recalling the name mentioned by the brothel keeper, Ruso asked, “Has he gone to Coria to see Lupus?”

Again the man looked at the woman, and that told Ruso what he needed to know. He put one hand on the latch. “Tell him he needs to hand the boy in at the nearest army base straightaway and have them send a message back to the fort at Parva. The longer the boy is away, the worse it gets for your master.”

He stopped himself just in time from saying, Everyone will be looking out for the boy, so he can’t be sold. If that were the case, their master might think his safest course was to do away with Branan, deny all knowledge of everything, and blame his slave for talking nonsense. Instead Ruso thanked them for their help and stressed the urgency of the message.

He was at the end of the street, searching his purse for small coins for small boys, when he heard the man’s voice behind him requesting, “A quick word, sir.”

His spirits rose as the slave looked round to make sure the woman had not followed him. They sank again when he heard, “I wanted to ask about joining the Legion, sir.”

Ruso looked at him. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Only free citizens can enroll.”

“I’m hoping to be freed shortly,” the man explained. “Freedmen can join now.”

“Are you sure?” Ruso had heard this somewhere before. It seemed to be a common misconception.

“Your man who sold the boy. He’s a freedman. I recognized him.”

Ruso was about to respond when he heard the woman shout, “What are you doing out there?”

“You must be mistaken,” Ruso told him, willing the woman to go away. “What did you think his name was?”

The slave shook his head. “I’m no good with names, sir. And it was some years back, but I remember that face. We were sold by the same dealer. I think he went to a family down south.”

The woman was hurrying toward them. “What are you telling him?” she called. “You keep your mouth shut!”

“Describe the man you remember,” Ruso urged.

The slave looked nonplussed. “But you’ve got him locked up. You said.”

“I’m just trying to compare . . .” But Ruso was floundering, and the slave knew it. Ruso backed toward the horse and freed the reins.

“Where’s he going?” demanded the woman. “What have you said to him, you great lump?”

Ruso grabbed the saddle and vaulted up, but the slave had seized the horse by the bridle. He was saying, “Sir, my master-agh! Get off!”

Smacked on the nose, the horse unclamped its teeth from the man’s arm and danced sideways. Ruso kicked it into motion, not caring which way it went as long as it was out of there. By the time he managed to catch hold of the reins and regain some sort of control, he was careering up Vindolanda’s main street and terrified pedestrians were darting for cover. Glancing back, he saw people running after him. The slave was clutching the bitten arm, but whatever he was yelling was lost beneath the clatter of hooves on stone.

“Good horse!” Ruso told it as it swerved to avoid a pack mule and an old man with a sack over one shoulder. When he reached the road he turned east, speeding toward Coria.