Ruth Downie - Caveat emptor

Beyond the hall the driver called over his shoulder, “I’ll have to drop you ladies and move on.”

“But we need help to unload!” Tilla insisted, careful not to announce to the girl scuttling past with a basket of eggs and her nose pinched shut that they had brought a body with them. “My friend has just had a baby. She should not be lifting things.”

Especially that sort of thing.

Instructed by Camma, the carriage passed a meat market on the right and then drew up in the middle of the street outside a row of narrow timber-framed houses and workshops. The driver jumped down. “I can’t wait here, missus.”

“You must help!” insisted Tilla. “My husband paid you extra.”

The driver’s eyes, red with the dust of travel, met her own. “They’ll have me for blocking the traffic.”

“The housekeeper should be home from market,” put in Camma, handing the box containing the sleeping baby out to the driver. He lifted it above the inquiring muzzle of a tethered mule and placed it in the doorway. “Grata will help us,” she said, accepting the man’s offer of a hand as she climbed down from the carriage. “She will be waiting for us.”

The complaints from the drivers jammed behind them fell silent as Julius Asper was unloaded onto the pavement. Even so, when their own man looked as though he might be stopping to help, there was a roar of, “If you don’t get a move on, sunshine, we’ll bury you and all!”

“Don’t stir yourself to help, will you?” retorted the driver, jabbing his middle finger into the air just to make sure his point was clear.

A voice from farther back yelled, “She don’t need no help taking his weight. She’s been doing it for months!”

Camma’s face was blank. With the shrouded body set down at the side of the street, the driver clambered back into his seat and urged the horses into a trot. The carriage jolted away down the street and the queue of traffic began to move at last.

Camma turned to one of the house doors with her hand raised ready to knock, and froze. “What’s this?”

Tilla frowned at the dribbly limewash letters slapped across the wood and decided it was probably just as well neither of them could read. She wrinkled her nose. Now that the cart had gone, there was a sharp stink of urine around the front of the house.

“Grata should have done something about this.” Camma bunched her fist and raised her arm, ready to thump on the lettering.

Tilla seized her wrist before she could make contact. “Wait!” There were pale gashes of freshly splintered wood where the lock met the upright of the door frame. “Don’t go in there.” She pushed the door ajar with the tip of her forefinger and drew back.

“But Grata is-”

“There is somebody inside,” murmured Tilla, hearing a crash from somewhere inside the building, “but I don’t think it’s your housekeeper. Who else is allowed in there?”

“Nobody,” said Camma, frowning. “Unless-” She stopped. “No, Bericus would have a key.”

Tilla turned back toward the street and called to the nearest driver, “We need help!”

“Sorry, missus. Can’t stop here.”

The next one said the same. The workshop next door was shuttered and padlocked. The guards who had been directing the traffic had disappeared. The only pedestrians in the street were a wizened old lady and a boy being pulled along by a goat.

Camma said, “We could try to find that guard.”

“Did you see where he went?”

“No.”

Tilla eyed the two bodies laid out at the foot of the wall: father and son, dead and alive.

“We can’t leave them lying here in the street.” She fingered the hilt of her knife. “We shall have to help ourselves.”

Tilla picked her way past a patch of leeks and cabbages and bean seedlings in the back garden. The shutters of the back window were open. She crouched under the rough sill to listen. Indoors, heavy footsteps were clumping about. Someone whistled a snatch of a dancing tune that pipers played at feasts. Whoever was in there was making no effort to keep quiet.

She risked a quick glance through the window. The embers beneath the fancy cooking grill were dead. The table held a bowl whose contents were now a sunken and congealed brown mass. Whatever had been poured into the delicate cup next to it had a thick skin on the top and there was a smell of rancid milk. Camma’s housekeeper had not been there for some time.

She ducked back out of sight as the footsteps grew louder. A deep voice shouted to someone in British to get a move on. Another man replied that he couldn’t manage by himself.

The first intruder gave a heavy sigh. The fading sound of footsteps suggested he had gone to help.

So. There were only two of them. She had the advantage of surprise, but that would not last long. If she cornered them, they might try to fight their way out. If she did not, they would run out of the front door and if Camma had still not found a guard to help by then, they would escape with whatever they could carry.

Tilla crouched on the hard earth between the bean patch and the wall and silently cursed the driver. If he had done the job he had been paid for, the intruders could have been dealt with by now. She was wondering what had happened to the housekeeper when she heard the shuffling and grunting that accompanies men carrying something heavy through an awkward space.

Back on her feet, she pressed herself flat against the wall and peered around the edge of the window again. She could see into the corridor, where two men were busy maneuvering a fancily carved cupboard out of a side room. They did not notice her.

In a moment they would be gone, and so would the cupboard. Tilla reached out an arm to try the latch on the back door. She unsheathed her knife and took a deep breath. Then she flung the door open, shouting loud enough to be heard across the surrounding yards and gardens, “Stop, thief!”

The second man halted.

“Thief!” she cried, turning around to shout across the neighboring gardens, “Help us, they are stealing!”

Hoping help was on its way, she strode into the abandoned kitchen. Any alarm in the thief’s dark eyes died when he looked past her and saw that she was alone. She was glad of the open door behind her. Stopping well out of his reach, she demanded, “Who are you?”

He glanced at whoever was holding the other end of the cupboard. One of the doors fell open as they lowered it to the floor.

“Who are you?” repeated Tilla. He was much better looking than a thief ought to be. “What are you doing here?”

“Who am I?” He reached down to close the cupboard door. As the black hair swung forward she saw that he had scarlet braids woven into it. “Who are you, Northerner?”

“I am a friend of Camma, Princess of the Iceni,” said Tilla, wondering if there might be something here she had misunderstood. The man did not look like someone who needed to steal. His scarlet tunic was clean and almost new. “What are you doing in her house?”

“Princess of the Iceni, eh?”

Tilla raised her knife to suggest a little more respect.

The man lifted his hands into the air and backed away in mock alarm. “It’s all right,” he assured her. “There’s no need for that.”

“You can explain to her. And to the guards.”

The man lowered his hands. His grin revealed dimples and even white teeth. “I’m the captain of the guards, miss. Put that knife away, or I’ll have to report us both to myself.”

A shadow fell across the kitchen. Camma’s voice said, “Dias? What are you doing here?”

Tilla, who had not heard Camma making her way past the vegetable patch, slid the knife back into the sheath.