Ruth Downie: Caveat emptor

“Yes.”

“I’ve never met an investigator before,” the youth confessed. “At least, not as far as I know.” The squint reappeared. “You’re not what I expected.”

“I was with the Legion as a medical officer,” said Ruso, wondering what an investigator should look like.

“Ah,” said the youth, nodding slowly. “Very clever. Good cover.”

“I’m not a spy,” Ruso explained. “To tell you the truth, I’m not really-” He stopped.

“Not what?”

Ruso hesitated. Assuming she survived, Camma would be expecting him to look for her husband. Silently cursing Tilla’s eagerness to help and Valens’s ability to tell the wrong lies for all the right reasons, he said, “I’m not really here on business.”

Firmus’s eyebrows rose. “I hope you’re not suggesting you have something more important to do than to help the emperor’s personally appointed finance administrator?”

Ruso cleared his throat. “No, sir.”

“Excellent. So, where do you want to start?”

Ruso scratched one ear with his forefinger. “I’ve had a word with the Iceni woman already, sir. She says his brother’s gone missing as well.”

“There are two of them now? Why didn’t she say that before?”

“She may have been distracted, sir. Apparently the brother’s called Bericus. He only has half of one ear, so he should be easy enough to find.”

“I hope we aren’t running around chasing the fantasies of a madwoman.”

Ruso pondered this for a moment. Tilla had been convinced by the woman’s story, but they barely knew her. “We could send a messenger to Verulamium to check,” he said, “but we’ll lose the rest of the day waiting for an answer. Are we sure the money’s missing? What do your staff know about Asper?”

Evidently Firmus had not thought to ask.

“I’ll get a description out along the docks in case they try to leave the province.” It was a commonsense move that Firmus should have made straightaway, and even then it would probably have been too late.

The youth’s eyes widened. “You think they might be here?”

“If they’ve stolen a lot of money and one of them’s abandoned his wife, I’d imagine they’ve already left on the first ship they could find.”

“Ah.” Firmus pondered that for a moment. “If they have, we’d better keep it quiet until we check with the procurator. We don’t want a big fuss with the natives, especially when we’re leading up to the emperor’s visit.”

“Hadrian’s really coming at last?” asked Ruso. There had been unfulfilled rumors about an Imperial tour of Britain for years. “Do we know when?”

“When he decides,” said Firmus, who evidently did not know himself. “He’s on the way to Gaul now. We’ve already had orders to tighten up on government transport. I’m personally organizing a survey of milestones. Whenever it is, we intend to be ready. Now, do you have everything you need?”

“Almost,” said Ruso, wondering what else an investigator should ask for. “We just need to talk about payment.”

Firmus recoiled, as if payment were not a suitable subject to be discussed in a finance office. He left Ruso to listen to the sound of hammering while he went to consult someone else. Moments later he reappeared with a short balding clerk who lisped through the gap in his teeth, “We will arrange an official travel warrant, sir.”

“And the fee?”

“It’s not policy to offer fees in addition to salary, sir.” The sir was added in a tone of practiced insolence that suggested years in some division of military service involving neither danger nor discomfort. “You’ll have the honor of serving the procurator.”

“But I’m not on a salary,” Ruso pointed out. Another problem occurred to him. “I’ll need a translator if I’m going out into the countryside.”

Firmus glanced at the clerk. “You can ask the Council to give you somebody when you get there,” he said, seizing the wrong ground to fight over.

“The Iceni woman’s saying the Council can’t be trusted,” Ruso pointed out. “Their man could lie to me. I wouldn’t know.”

The youth gave him a look that said he was not sure whether he could trust Ruso, either. The clerk offered to send a message over to the fort. “They might be able to spare somebody, sir.”

“No need,” put in Ruso before they could lumber him with an unwanted helper. “I know someone who can do it.” Interpreting the local accent would not only get Tilla out of Valens’s house but-with luck-take her mind off babies and tableware.

The lisping clerk looked doubtful. “I hope his name’s on the official list, sir?”

“It’s unlikely.”

“But are you sure he’s a reliable man?”

“Speaks it like a native,” said Ruso, skirting the question. As for reliability-since Tilla viewed Southerners and Romans with equal mistrust, bias would not be a problem.

“It’s very unusual, sir,” murmured the clerk, managing to invest the word unusual with meanings that ranged from “extravagant” to “rash” via “setting a dangerous precedent.”

“If you can find somebody who’ll do this job cheaper,” said Ruso, “go ahead. You’d be saving treasury money.”

Firmus glanced at the clerk, who shook his head. “I’ve inquired about the investigator we usually use, sir. He’s not available.”

“Why not?”

“Knifed by a farmer who didn’t want to pay his corn tax, sir.”

Firmus wrinkled his patrician nose.

“But that was up North, sir,” the clerk assured Ruso. “The natives have more manners down here.”

Ruso, who had spent several years serving up North, hoped he was right.

“Well, we don’t have a choice,” said Firmus. He turned to the clerk. “Give him ten denarii. Ruso, after that you’ll have to send a note of your costs into the office and I’ll ask my-I’ll ask the procurator if they can be reimbursed.”

The clerk leaned closer and murmured, “You’ll want to set a maximum sum, sir. A limit beyond which further authorization-”

“Thirty denarii,” said Firmus, suddenly decisive.

“Are you quite sure, sir?”

“Yes.”

“It’s your decision, of course, sir-”

“Yes, it is.”

The clerk gave Ruso a hard stare before gliding out of the room.

Firmus’s chair scraped back across the concrete as he rose to ask the most intelligent question of the whole meeting. “Am I doing the right thing in hiring you, Ruso?”

“You’re doing something,” Ruso parried.

“But is it the right thing?”

“Nobody ever knows that until later,” said Ruso, warming to the youth. “If the first thing doesn’t work, you try something else. After that, it’s up to fate.”

He was glad none of his patients were listening.

The baby’s squashed features held an expression of puzzlement, as if he would work out what had just happened to him if he lay quietly and thought about it for long enough. Tilla lifted a loose strand of his mother’s hair-the same color as his own-from his face without waking her, and bent to kiss the top of his head. Then she tucked the bundle of soiled bedding and washcloths under one arm, picked up the basin of water, and nudged the door open with her foot.

Downstairs, she could hear muffled voices from Valens’s consulting rooms. Her husband’s was not among them. He had gone out to talk to a man in an office about hunting for the baby’s missing father.

Still faintly surprised every time she took a step and found that the floor was not rolling beneath her feet, she made her way to the back of the house. The slave boy rammed the dirty linen into the top of a bag that smelled as though someone should have taken it to the laundry days ago, and then flung the contents of the bowl out the back door into a display of last year’s dead plants.