Ruth Downie - Semper Fidelis

Holy mothers, he must have spoken to Sabina! She must stay calm. She must think . He was trying to frighten her. If she gave way, what would it gain her? He was not the one in charge of the investigation, but he could still make trouble for them both. “Sir,” she said, “you were advise-” No, that was wrong. She tried again. “You advised me well before. My duty is to my husband.”

“A man of his rank does not have a wife.”

Before she could stop herself, she said, “And a woman of my rank does not let the army decide who she is married to!”

She waited for the blow to land. You did not challenge a man like this. You appealed to his vanity. “Sir,” she said quickly, “you are an honorable man. I know you will want justice for the death of the centurion.”

He gripped her by the shoulders. “Your husband tried to step over me to get to the emperor.”

She swallowed. “He did not kill Geminus, sir.”

Forcing her back against the wall, he said, “Nobody insults me like that.”

“Sir, he was with the doctors last night, and then he was with me.”

One hand was groping her breast. “We both know that’s a lie.”

“Sir, I beg you-”

But it was not her who made him pause. It was the secretary, tapping on his shoulder. “Sir! Please, sir!”

“What?” snapped Accius.

For a moment Tilla thought the secretary might be a decent man who had chosen to rescue her. But what had saved her was an urgent summons from the emperor. The secretary even asked Accius if they should keep the woman here until he returned.

“Don’t bother. I don’t have time to waste on native whores.”

She took a deep breath. “Sir, I will try to find out who really killed the centurion.”

“What?”

“The local people will not talk to your soldiers, but they talk to me.”

The fierce gaze was leveled straight at her. “Stay out of army business,” he said. “If I catch you near any of my men, you’ll be executed. Guards!” The door opened. “Take her away.”

It was not until the soldiers pushed her out of the east gate that Tilla noticed the state of the streets she had hurried through earlier. Parts of Eboracum’s civilian quarter stank of urine and looked as though they had been battered by a terrible storm. Flowers and weeds alike were trodden flat. A couple of people were wandering about with buckets, picking up broken glass for remolding. A slave was washing vomit from a wall and two men were removing a shutter that looked as though someone had punched a hole in it. Opposite the temple of Mithras, a thin trail of smoke still rose from a mess of stark black timbers. A man and a barefoot woman stood in front of the wreckage. The woman was crying. Tilla moved on.

As ordered, she would not talk to soldiers. But as for keeping out of army business … well, the murder of Geminus was her business too now.

She soon found there was no shortage of people eager to tell her what had happened last night. Many had damage to property or to themselves to show her. For a lucky few, the outrage was soothed by a good evening’s takings, but for most, it had been a costly night. For some, the worry was not over yet. They were now waiting for news of relatives who had been hauled in this morning for questioning.

The trouble was, nobody could tell her anything useful about Geminus. Most people assumed he had been killed by another soldier. Few seemed surprised. And as several people pointed out, all soldiers looked alike in the dark.

According to the sleepy girls behind the bruised but defiant doormen at the bar, soldiers didn’t all feel alike, but none had seen or felt Geminus last night. None seemed at all sorry about it, nor about what had happened to him. Tilla was fairly certain they were telling the truth.

While she was there, the small boy appeared with a stack of kitchen pans and seemed pleased that the lady whose bags he had carried had come back to visit his mother. Tilla promised two sestertii to be shared between him and any of his friends who could give new information about Geminus’s death. With luck, all the children in the town would now be hot on the trail, and a message would arrive at Corinna’s house if there was any news. Tilla was slightly uneasy about this part of the arrangement with Victor hiding there, but she could not think of anyone else to trust.

Slipping into the mansio by the side door, she managed to snatch a brief word with the slave of one of the visiting eastern ambassadors. The man spoke just enough Latin to swear that the visiting slaves had huddled indoors, protecting their masters. Nobody had seen any centurions or men with knives, thank the gods.

The gardener looked up from weeding the rose bed, hoped she had found no more pigs’ heads, and asked if there might be any more mandrake. Tilla would have fetched the whole bottle if it would have released more information, but the gardener knew nothing about the murder. He had enough troubles of his own with that lot (here he glared at the eastern slave) pinching herbs and pissing in the flower beds.

Before she could escape, the manager appeared, asked after her health, and ordered her to leave in a manner so polite that it almost sounded as though he were sorry. He had not seen Geminus, and his guests and staff had already been questioned by the authorities. He was not able to allow her in at the moment. The guests’ privacy had to be respected and the staff were very busy.

“When will they not be busy?”

The manager took a firm grip of her arm and steered her toward the street door. “My staff are always busy.”

Tilla moved on down the street. Nobody had anything useful to offer until a sallow-faced woman filling a water jar at the fountain told her that a man had been seen skulking around the ditch in a suspicious manner. He was wearing a red cloak “to hide the blood.” This became less credible when she added, “He had a bloodstained surgeon’s knife in his hand.”

“You saw all this in the dark?”

“Not me. A friend of someone I know.”

“Is the friend here now?”

“No.”

“Perhaps the person who told you?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“Because my own man will be executed if I do not find out who did this.”

“You’re the wife!” The woman snatched up her jar and backed away. “I can’t help you. Nobody knows anything.”

“If nobody knows anything,” Tilla called after her, “then stop spreading rumors!”

The shopkeeper’s small daughter was helping by passing him the nails one by one while he hammered a diagonal strut across a broken door shutter. He recognized Tilla and offered his sympathies on the Medicus’s arrest.

“He did not do it. Does anyone know who did?”

The man assured her that they knew nothing at all.

“No,” added the small daughter. “We’re not going tell anybody. My da says so.”

Tilla laid a hand on the arm clutching the hammer. “Shall we talk in private?”

The truth, once she had managed to extract it from him, was nothing to do with Geminus. Last night drunken looters had smashed their way into his shop, seized anything that took their fancy, and flung at him anything that didn’t. While he was begging them to stop, one of them began to climb the ladder to where his wife, his children, and his day’s takings were hidden in the loft. The shopkeeper tried to drag him away. Meanwhile, the wife leaned down and cracked the looter over the head with a chamber pot. The man fell senseless to the floor. The others ran off, leaving the shopkeeper and his wife to decide that the safest thing was to haul the dazed man away and dump him outside the temple of Mithras. “I went to look for him this morning,” said the man, “but he’d gone.”