Ruth Downie - Caveat emptor

This whole business seemed to be as slippery as the burglar he had chased out of Valens’s entrance hall. He hoped it would make more sense when he got to Verulamium.

There was a cluster of buildings farther up the hill. As he drew closer a carriage pulled out from among them and began to head south. He shifted in the saddle, already beginning to relax muscles he had not realized were tense. This was what he was looking for: the official posting station.

He handed the ginger mare’s reins to a groom and ordered a fresh horse, then headed for the awning of a roadside snack bar. A few paces away, a large carriage with polished surfaces still visible through the dust had parked up on the scrubby gravel beside the road. Its cavalry escort seemed to have scattered in search of fodder and latrines, its driver was busy tending to the horses, and three faces were peering out the window. The woman was saying something to the children. Ruso caught the end of her sentence: something about, “No. It might be dirty.”

He commandeered a bar stool, refused the stew, and was wondering how rough the really cheap wine might be, if this was the medium, when the door of the carriage opened and a servant stepped down followed by the three he had seen just now. The small girl was shifting from foot to foot in a manner that betrayed their purpose. The bartender leaned out and pointed to the left. “Round the back behind the empties, missus.”

“Officer’s family?” Ruso speculated as they hurried away.

“Just in off the ship, I’ll bet,” observed the barman. “Too frightened to come out and eat with the barbarians.”

Having smelled the stew, Ruso did not blame them. As the bartender moved away to serve the family’s escort, he wondered how the woman would cope when she reached her destination. Probably she would dictate letters home with news of a terrifying journey and only leave the safety of her husband’s fort for escorted trips to visit other officers’ wives.

The voice of his own first wife echoed from the depths of his memory. You never take me anywhere nice, Gaius.

I’ve tried. You won’t go.

But how can I? The whole of Antioch is full of those dreadful people!

The barman returned, ostensibly to see if he had changed his mind about the stew. It seemed the cavalrymen were disinclined to gossip and the lone customer was a better bet. “You hear about that tax man being murdered?”

Ruso nodded.

“Used to stop here regular,” said the man. “Him and that brother they can’t find, and the guards.”

“Did you know him well?”

“Not what you’d call a big spender. Jug of wine, bread, and a bit of cheese. Always the same.” The man shook his head, as if the crime had deprived him not only of trade but of words. “Makes you think, don’t it? Him setting out thinking it was just a normal trip and he’d be home next morning.”

Ruso balanced the cup on the uneven planks that made up the bar and shrugged the stiffness out of his shoulders. “Do they know who did it?”

“Northerners,” said the bartender confidently, then, “Or it might be the Iceni, or some of their friends. But most likely Northerners. More and more of them hanging around these days.”

Ruso wondered if Tilla had stopped by for refreshment. “Do you get much trouble around here?”

“You don’t want to worry, boss. You got a fine day. Plenty of folk on the road. Just make sure you’re settled in somewhere before it gets dark.”

Ruso downed the rest of his drink and stood up. “I need to find a farmer called Lund.”

“Oh, everybody knows Lund.” The bartender chuckled. “Lives a couple of miles this side of Verulamium. Turn left at the split oak before the bridge and watch out for the monster. I hear it gets bigger every time he tells it.”

The bartender was right. According to the eager farmer who dragged the gate open and ushered Ruso into his yard, the river monster was at least eight feet tall and broad as a bull. It had snatched the family’s boat from its mooring and hurled it into the middle of the river before chasing the terrified children into the woods. To Ruso’s relief, the farmer was able to explain all this in reasonably fluent Latin.

His children, whose ages ranged between about four and ten, were neatly lined up beside him. Their skinny frames were clothed in tunics that were patched but clean and their hair was combed. The girl, who was the eldest, wore a chain of fresh daisies around her neck. All three nodded enthusiastically every time they heard, “Ain’t that right, kids?”

They escorted Ruso down a muddy track to where the monster’s footprints could be seen across the open grass leading up from the empty mooring post at the river. The prints were marked by wilting clumps of wild garlic, which had miraculously sprung up the day after the visitation.

“Remarkable,” said Ruso, noting a swathe of similar plants growing under the trees on the far side of the clearing.

Lund and his group of witnesses led him around a curve in the bank to a freshly hollowed tree stump where a pinch of incense could be burned to appease Ver, the life-giving river. There was no charge for this service as long as you brought your own incense: Ver did not approve of exploiting his followers. He did, however, look especially kindly on those who left gifts glistening in his gravelly shallows. If the officer cared to look closely, he could see the sorts of offerings left by earlier visitors. Did he see the way the sun caught that gold coin over on the left, behind the big red pebble? The man who left that coin went straight home and found news of a legacy waiting for him when he got there. “Ain’t that right, kids?”

It seemed several visitors had reason to thank the native god. Another donor had been promoted to centurion. A third had been healed of a broken arm.

“Remarkable,” repeated Ruso, shielding his eyes with one hand and peering into the water to admire the shiny trinkets scattered there, one or two of which were already showing spots of rust. Behind him the eldest child observed in British, “He don’t look very rich, Da.”

“Shut up and keep smiling,” replied the father in the same tongue. “You can never tell with these foreigners.”

Ruso, who had truthfully told the man that he had only been in the province a few days, suppressed a smile of his own and wondered how best to deal with this. There was no malice in the harmless nonsense about the river monster. Clearly the family was not wealthy, and if they managed to make a little money out of gullible travelers, it was probably no worse than the followers of-

He curtailed that thought, just in case Mithras was able to read men’s minds. He was conscious of the family watching as he delved into his purse and pulled out one of Valens’s silver denarii. It would be worth more than all the rubbish in the river put together. “Does the god answer questions?”

The children looked at their father, who hesitated. It seemed nobody had made this request before. “What sort of questions?”

“I’m trying to find out what happened to a man who came from Verulamium,” Ruso explained. “He was badly injured and he ended up a long way down the river in a small flat-bottomed boat that seems to have been stolen. I’m wondering if the river god might have seen what happened to him.”

In the silence that followed, he was conscious of the gurgle of the water in the shallows and the distant cry of a drover on the North road.

“I don’t want to get anybody into trouble,” he said, flexing the base of his thumb so the coin on his palm lifted and tipped over. The sun glinted on the squat profile of Vespasian. “And I wouldn’t want to upset the monster. But perhaps one of you could have a word with the god and see if he could give me a few pointers.”