Terra Incognita

84

Ruso knelt beside the blackened slabs of the firing hole by Catavignus’s malting floor. They had already caused a disruption inside the brewery and scrabbled fruitlessly through the damp malt that had been loaded onto the floor ready for drying. This was the last possible hiding place he and Aemilia could think of.

“Do you clean this out every time you light it?” he asked, peering past the kindling into the murk of the low tunnel that led under the raised floor of the building to the flue.

“It won’t need doing today, sir,” the slave boy assured him, bending toward the kindling with the glowing brand he had just fetched from inside the brewery.

Ruso grabbed his wrist. “Don’t.”

“Miss Aemilia?” The youth looked at her in the hope of being saved from this interfering officer and allowed to get on with his work.

“When was the last time it was raked out?” asked Ruso.

“About a week ago. The barley ran out so the master had to wait for them to send some down from the granary.”

“Do it now, will you?”

“Rake it out?” The slave looked understandably appalled. “I’ve just got it ready to fire! The malt needs to be dried now or it’ll go over. The master’s very particular.”

“Please,” said Aemilia, taking Ruso by the arm. “Do as he says.”

“But miss, your father-”

“I’ll tell him it was my fault.”

“Have you noticed any odd smells in the burning lately?” inquired Ruso as the slave knelt by the hole and began to gather up the kindling.

“There’s always odd smells,” grunted the youth, reaching for the rake and crouching to insert it at an awkward angle. “If it burns, it goes in here.”

Ash began to pile up outside the mouth of the tunnel. The youth’s hands and arms and knees were smeared in soot. He had a black mustache where he had wiped his nose on his arm. “I can’t get any more out, sir. You’ll have to get a little kid to go right inside if you want it done properly.”

“We haven’t time,” said Ruso, imagining what a ghastly job it would be.

“I’ll just get something to put this ash in, miss.”

When he was gone Ruso took the rake and poked at the crumbling flakes of wood ash.

“Nothing,” said Aemilia.

He took a deep breath, got down on his knees, and reached an arm into the stinking black depths of the flue. He could feel the soft powder rising in the air, entering his nose and eyes and coating his skin. This, he realized with disgust, was where Catvignus had hidden the sack containing the head until he had decided to deposit it as evidence outside Rianorix’s house. He groped about in the grit of the ash that remained on the floor, ramming his shoulder farther in, praying for one of Tilla’s miracles. He realized he was no longer interested in proving anyone’s innocence or guilt. He was desperately hoping to prove-to himself, if nobody else-that he was not a total fool.

His fingers closed around brittle half-burned sticks. Scraps of broken pot. Then something thin and woven and pliable. He drew it out, blew off the dust, and lay it on top of the brushwood waiting to be burned. He and Aemilia stared at it.

It was a scorched fragment of old green rag.

Ruso swore.

Aemilia said, “That’s an old tunic Ness was using for cleaning.”

“I suppose Ness can testify to what she saw that night,” said Ruso, disappointed. “It’s not very conclusive, though.”

A nosebleed would surely make stains very different from those of an attack on another human being. The tunic would have been just the evidence he needed, but he was not going to find that evidence now. In the distance, a trumpet sounded. Ruso scrambled to his feet and looked over the wall of the yard and down toward the river. A carriage with a large escort was making its way across the bridge. A red-cloaked formation of Batavian cavalry, glittering and immaculate in the sun, was trotting down the road to welcome it.

“I’ve got to go,” he said, wiping the soot from his hands onto his tunic.

“What shall I do?”

“Talk to Ness. Find out exactly what she saw and tell her she must talk to officer Metellus.” It might make a difference, although Ruso suspected not. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

Behind him, he heard the slave begin to restack the kindling in the stoke hole.