Terra Incognita

78

Gods above, Ruso, look at you! Where have you been?”

Ruso surveyed the lamplit wreckage of spills and leftovers that was all that remained of the guild of caterers’ dinner. A lank-haired woman in a dingy tunic bent down, peered at the floor, and retrieved a lone shoe from under a table. She turned it over, looked around for something to do with it, then placed it in the middle of the table and carried on piling dirty crockery onto her tray. “I went to look for Tilla,” said Ruso. “I got delayed.”

“Well, you might have sent a message!” Valens lowered his voice. “I’ve had a very difficult evening on my own.”

“So have I.”

“And you didn’t even send Tilla.”

“I know,” said Ruso, who had last seen her being marched toward the fort with the other prisoners.

“My host offered me vast quantities of drink, far too much food, and a chance to form an alliance with the brewing trade. I was hoping for an emergency call, but everyone back at the infirmary is disappointingly healthy. Even Albanus let me down.”

“Sounds better than the evening my hosts offered me,” said Ruso. “I’d better go and apologize to Catavignus for not turning up.”

Valens wrinkled his nose. “Not looking like that, I wouldn’t. Where have you been, a farmyard? There’s mud on your clothes, straw in your- is that blood?”

“Probably.”

“And you smell of cows.”

“I’ll tell him I fell off my horse. Back me up, will you?”

Valens shrugged. “Why not? I can’t think how else you’d end up like that.”

Catavignus was splayed across a chair in the far corner of Susanna’s kitchen. He seemed unaware of Ruso’s arrival. “ And another thing!” he announced, flinging one arm wide to illustrate the vastness of the additional thing he was about to reveal.

Susanna, clearing a space on the table for more dirty crockery, greeted Ruso and Valens with obvious relief.

“I have never, ever looked at another woman since I saw…” Catavignus’s expression slowly rearranged itself into one of surprise. “Doctor! The food’s all gone. We’ll find you a drink.” Raising one finger to indicate a pause, he leaned forward and narrowed his eyes. “You don’t look well.”

Catavignus was effusive in his sympathy when he heard about the fictitious riding accident. Ruso doubted he would remember it-or very much else-in the morning. Finally Ruso suggested that the two medics would walk Catavignus back to his house.

“I’m very busy,” said Catavignus, indicating the kitchen with another expansive sweep of the arm. “Lots to be done. Clearing up.”

“Oh, clearing up is for women and servants,” said Ruso. “Come on, we’ll walk back with you. You can show us around the brewery.”

Catavignus nodded. “Good idea,” he said. “Very good-oops. Can’t get up. Very low chair.”

As Ruso and Valens took an arm each and hauled him up and out of the kitchen, Susanna gave them the sort of smile Catavignus was probably hoping for and was never going to get.

Ruso had no particular plan when he extricated Catavignus from Susanna’s kitchen and waved aside the servants who had offered to help. He merely hoped that, since the man was probably guilty and definitely drunk, some sort of admission might slip out. Had he been less tired himself, and in less of a state of nerves after his ordeal with the natives, he might have been able to devise an ingenious sequence of questions that would lead to a confession. As it was, he could only interrupt Catavignus’s sentimental ramblings with a heavy-handed, “Just as well there’s three of us. You know what happened to Felix.”

“Felix!” exclaimed Catavignus, tripping over an invisible obstacle and sending the three of them lurching sideways into the empty street. “Dead.”

“What exactly was it the natives did to him?” demanded Valens, steering back in the right direction and oblivious to Ruso glaring at him across the back of Catavignus’s neck. “Nobody seems to know.”

“Nobody knows,” said Catavignus, shaking his head. “Nobody knows about Felix. Terrible.”

“What do you think happened to him?” asked Ruso.

“From what I hear,” chipped in Valens before the suspect had time to answer, “It was quite unpleasant-steady now. Right turn. Nearly there. Shall I knock?’

“When was the last time you saw him?” asked Ruso.

“Can’t see anybody now,” said Catavignus. “Very tired. Always tired after the guild of caterers’ parties. It’s all the organizing, you know.”

The servant was unbolting the door. Running out of time, Ruso tried one last desperate move. “Catavignus,” he said, twisting to look into the man’s face and enunciating his words very clearly, “Did you kill Felix?”

Catavignus looked past him and smiled. “Aemilia!” he exclaimed. “Ut vales, filia mea?”

“Of course she heard, you idiot!” hissed Valens, pulling up the blankets over the now snoring Catavignus. “Why do you think she rushed off to her room? What on earth got into you to say something like that?”

“Because it’s true,” muttered Ruso miserably. It seemed a poor justification. Aemilia had already endured the loss of both her lover and her dignity. Now he had given her fresh cause for grief.

“Perhaps,” suggested Valens softly, “you might do me the honor of joining me in our host’s reception room to consume some of his wine and explain what on earth is going on.”

“I’ll tell you on the way back,” said Ruso.

“Back to where?”

“The infirmary. They’ll need some help treating the injured.”