Vita Brevis (22 page)

Ruso blinked. “Why?”

“To get his wrinkly fingers on all of Balbus’s properties, of
course! And on Horatia—the bastard. The poor girl’s not in a fit state to deny it: She can hardly speak. He’s got to be stopped. In fact—” Accius paused, as if listening to another wild idea being announced inside his head. “Don’t you see? He must have found some way to get rid of Kleitos!”

“But, sir—”

“Listen to me, Ruso. He’s got to be stopped.”

“You’re saying Curtius Cossus got rid of Balbus’s doctor so he could murder Balbus?”

“Of course that’s what I’m saying! So he could poison him.”

Ruso took a deep breath. “Sir, I need to explain to you about—”

“You were with him at the end. Did he say anything?”

“He was already unconscious when I got there, sir.” No point in adding that Firmicus hadn’t understood his master’s last words, or that Latro thought he had said he felt ill. Latro might have misheard. It might have been indigestion.

“Well, never mind. You’re a medical man. I want you to find out how Cossus did it.”

Deliberately calm, Ruso said, “I don’t think he did, sir. Why would he get rid of Balbus before he’d got a proper betrothal agreed?”

Accius sighed. “Do wake up, Ruso. Because he would never
get
a proper betrothal, would he? Between you and me, Horatia was certain it was only a matter of time before Balbus accepted my offer for her.”

It all made some kind of horrible sense. It also had the dubious merit of casting the blame a long way from Ruso.

Accius had not finished. “Now apparently the poor girl will be under the guardianship of some cousin she hardly knows, and if Cossus can convince this cousin that he’s the one Balbus wanted her to marry…”

“But if you could convince the cousin she was supposed to marry you, sir—”

“Horatia will back me up, of course, but we don’t know if he’ll listen. For all we know, Cossus has been working on him already. Anyway, I’ve told her not to worry. I’ll find a way to sort this out. Meanwhile I’ve told Firmicus to tell the cousin not to listen to a word Cossus tells him, and to make sure he knows my men are looking into it.”

“Men, sir?” As far as Ruso was aware he was Accius’s only man when it came to investigating suspicious circumstances. All the others were domestic staff or workers on some distant agricultural estate.

“I’m not saying you’re not up to the job, Ruso. But everyone knows you’re my man, so you’re not going to get anything out of Cossus’s household without help. And besides, you’ve got patients to look after. Luckily, I know just the chap. With your medical skills and Metellus’s—”

“Metellus?”

“Yes. You must remember him from Britannia. Did you know he’s here now? He’s always remarkably well-informed. You’ll have to keep it quiet that he’s working for me, of course.”

Ruso was groping for words. “Sir, Metellus is … Well, his methods are—”

“I’m not asking you to marry him, Ruso. I’m just asking you to work with him. And frankly, given the methods of the man we’re up against, I don’t think we can afford to be too fussy. There’s a lot of property at stake here. Cossus may try to poison me too if I get in his way.”

“But, sir—”

“Metellus doesn’t feel the same way about you. In fact, his note said he was looking forward to seeing you again.”

Unable to say anything positive, Ruso was silent.

“You’re not sulking, are you?”

“No, sir.”

“I wouldn’t like you to think I’ve lost faith in you after you left that body to be dumped in the street. Did you buy a slave, by the way?”

Ruso felt his spirits sink even farther as he recalled his houseful of barbarians. “Yes, sir.”

“Good. I don’t want you distracted. Anyway, I’ve canceled all my meetings today. I’m not leaving Horatia on her own with that murderer Cossus around.”

“I don’t think she’s in immediate danger, sir. It sounds as though he plans to marry her.” Ruso stopped short of
before he murders her
.

“Exactly!” His former senior officer reached across the stained bedcover, gripped him by the arm, and informed him with an
intensity he had never shown before, “You must help me save her, Ruso. She deserves better. She deserves me.”

Accius was right, of course. Metellus was just the chap, as he had demonstrated many times back in Britannia on behalf of the Imperial cause. If Ruso had been asked to write a list of all the people he disliked and rank them in order of deviousness, Metellus’s name would have come so far ahead that everyone else’s would have been written on a different sheet altogether. But as Accius said, he was remarkably well-informed. Metellus was the kind of man who knew what people were thinking—usually because they were too frightened not to tell him. Back in Britannia he had placed Tilla on a list of potentially treacherous natives, and even though he was probably right, Ruso had never forgiven him.

Still, that was a long time ago. Tilla was now a somewhat ambivalent citizen of Rome, Ruso’s chief patient was dead, and Accius was in love. The world had changed, and he and Metellus were going to have to find a way to work together.

The man who came to the gate of the auctioneer’s yard was neither of the ones Tilla now regretted chasing away from Kleitos’s house. He had greasy hair and a quick glance that seemed to assess visitors’ worth before he invited them in. As soon as Tilla, Mara, and Narina were through the gate, he slammed it shut behind them.

There was a smell here that Tilla did not like. She gazed ’round at a covered area crammed with the insides of other people’s homes. A dozen upright bedframes leaned like a row of drunks. Two cupboards glared at each other, so close that the drawers of neither could be opened. The lumpy yellow cushion on the couch beside her bore the marks of dried puddles.

“What can I do for you, lady?”

Those quick dark eyes, the hair slicked back behind pink ears, the way the teeth reached forward as if they were racing to get ahead of the nose—Tilla pressed her feet against each other and tried not to think about rats. If finding Kleitos would restore her husband’s spirits, then she must find him. “My family have moved into the rooms of Doctor Kleitos in the Vicus Sabuci,” she told the man, “and we would like to make him an offer for the things he left behind.”

“You want me to value them for you?”

“I need to find the men he sent to ask about them. I want to tell those men we have changed our minds.”

“It wasn’t me, lady.”

“I know it was not you,” she agreed, “but I do not know who they were, and they did not leave a name.”

The man dislodged a few clumps of hair with one finger, then tucked them back behind his ear. “Let me get this right,” he said. “You’ve got the furniture somebody else left behind when he moved out. He sent a man to ask you to pay for it, and you said no.”

“Two men.”

“And these two men went away, leaving you with the stuff.”

“Yes.”

“And they haven’t come back to ask for money.”

“Not yet.”

The man glanced at Narina, as if wondering if she might take her mistress home for a quiet lie-down. “But you’re trying to find them so you can pay anyway,” he said.

“Yes.” Put like that, she had to admit that it did not make a great deal of sense. She lowered her head and looked up at him from under the wisps of hair that always escaped no matter what she did to tame them. “My husband was not at home when they came,” she told him. “I didn’t want to let strangers into the house, so I sent them away. But now I am afraid Doctor Kleitos will sell it all to somebody else and then they will send the men to collect it and we will lose it and I will be in trouble.”

“Ah.”

“So that is why I am trying to find the men who are dealing with it.” She tugged at a strand of hair in a way that she hoped would look nervous. “I was thinking if you can find them for us, you could have a commission or something.” She was not sure if that made any sense at all, but at least the man did not laugh at the idea.

He held out one dirty hand as if he would have liked to touch her but did not quite dare. “I’ll put the word out, miss,” he promised. “Don’t you worry. I’ll see you’re all right.”

“I hope so.” She gave him her very best silly-wife smile and said, “You are very kind.”

“And if I can’t find them,” he said, “You come back with your husband and I’ll do you a good deal on a few things here.”

“Out?” Ruso demanded. “Out where?”

Esico didn’t know. The mistress had only said she would not be long.

“What are you supposed to do if patients come?”

“I ask them to wait.” Esico pushed open the door and announced proudly in Latin, “There he is.”

He was, but the man standing examining the contents of the shelves was not a patient.

“Ruso!”

“Hello, Metellus.”

“I seem to have come at an awkward time.”

“Sorry you’ve had to wait. I think Tilla’s been called to an emergency.”

“Of course,” said Metellus, who probably understood enough British to know what had been said at the door. “Good to see you’ve found a place, although I was sorry to hear about your difficult start.”

“It’s all sorted out now,” Ruso assured him, wondering if he had been here long enough to search the whole apartment or just the surgery.

“A body. It must have been very unpleasant. Someone playing some sort of practical joke, do you think?”

Ruso hitched himself up to sit on the table and indicated a seat to Metellus. “We suspect my predecessor was in debt.” Having started this story, he was going to have to stick to it.

Metellus swung a leg over the patients’ stool. “I could help you find out.”

“I think we have more urgent things to deal with.”

“Sadly, yes. The murder of your very important patient.”

“He hit his head on the pavement. We don’t know he was murdered.”

“Yes we do, Ruso. We’re working for Publius Accius, and that’s what we have been hired to prove.”

Ruso let out a long breath. “I’m surprised you were prepared to take this on, given your view of Accius.”

“I have no particular view of Accius. I merely told you you’d need better connections to get on here. He’s a young man with very limited influence, not because he’s an opponent of Hadrian—I don’t think he is—but because ever since some of Hadrian’s rather overeager supporters executed one of his relations, people haven’t trusted him.”

“That hardly seems fair.”

“I agree. He was a good officer when we were in Britannia, and he needs help.”

“And the urban prefect’s office is happy for you to do that?”

“The urban prefect is always keen to maintain good order. The murder of a successful businessman by one of the emperor’s building contractors could lead to all sorts of difficulties.”

“What is it you do for the prefect’s office, exactly?”

But before Metellus could slide around the question they were interrupted by a call of “We are back!” from Tilla, who had evidently been warned that he was with a patient.

“Metellus is here, wife!” Ruso named the visitor in a cheery tone, as if their visitor were someone she might be pleased to meet.

A face appeared around the door. “What did you—?” She stopped.

Metellus got to his feet and bowed.

After a moment Tilla remembered to close her mouth. Then she said, “What is he doing here?”

“Darlughdacha of the Corionotatae. A pleasure to see you again after so long.”

“Is it?”

As far as Ruso knew, this was the first time anyone had addressed Tilla by her proper name since they had said their farewells to her family in Britannia.

“It must be—how long since Eboracum?” Metellus ventured. “A year?”

Instead of replying, Tilla urged Narina to hurry through to the kitchen and take the baby with her. It seemed she did not even want their visitor to hear Mara’s name.

“Metellus is working for Publius Accius too,” Ruso told her, trying to convey as much information as possible before she said something they would both regret. “We’re going to be investigating the death of Balbus.”

She said, “Why?”

“Accius is concerned that—”

“I think what she means is,” Metellus put in, “why me?”

“That is what I mean.”

Metellus stepped aside, offering her the stool he had been sitting on. Tilla glanced at her husband, then brushed invisible dirt from the seat before using it. “Well?” she demanded, looking from one to the other of them.

Metellus gestured to Ruso, inviting him to speak.

“You try,” Ruso offered. “It’s beyond me.”

“Publius Accius,” Metellus began, “believes Balbus was poisoned by a builder who wants to marry Horatia. He believes that by combining your husband’s skills as a medicus with my skills in obtaining information, we can reveal the truth.”

“In Britannia, you tortured people.”

Metellus nodded. “Britannia is a difficult province,” he said. “I won’t deny it: There were things that had to be done. But your people did them too.”

Having accepted the offer of the seat, Tilla was obliged to look up to see their visitor’s face.

“Britannia is also a long way away,” he continued. “You have no tribe to defend here, Darlughdacha. You are a citizen of Rome called Tilla, and the wife of a citizen who served the emperor in the Twentieth Legion.” He held out his hand. “None of us can forget
what happened in Britannia, but now that I am working with your husband, perhaps we can agree to put the past behind us.”

Very slowly, Tilla got to her feet. Leaving the outstretched hand untouched, she said, “This is my home for now, and the people who live here are my people. You will swear to respect us all. You will speak only the truth to us, and about us, and you will defend my daughter to the last drop of your blood.”

It was not until Metellus said, “I swear,” that she took his hand.

Ruso and Metellus crossed the street and went up the steps into the walled gardens of Livia to conduct their discussion. Anyone watching them would have seen two friends chatting as they strolled past the statues and fountains in the dappled shade of the elegant vine-covered portico. There would be no way of confirming this, however, because while the men kept walking there was no way for anyone to eavesdrop. Which was precisely why they were there. Given the complicated personal life of the emperor Augustus’s wife—the Livia after whom Ruso supposed the venue was named—it seemed very appropriate.