Ruth Downie - Caveat emptor

“You could say,” said Satto, dropping the coin on the “No” pile, “That as long as everybody thinks it’s worth something, then it is. Only I wouldn’t agree with you because I can tell the difference.”

“Do you ever get asked to pretend not to notice?”

“I can’t pretend not to know what I know.”

Ruso was not sure if he had just been given a lesson in coinage or in philosophy.

“Where did you get this money?”

Ruso had anticipated the question. “Londinium.”

The man’s face betrayed nothing as he raked the “No” pile toward his side of the counter. “I’m sorry to say that someone in Londinium has swindled you. Julius Asper brought me a false coin from the same source a few months ago. If you can trace the forgers, they’ll be put before the governor and executed.”

“They?”

“It usually takes two men. One to hold the dies in position with tongs, one to bring down the hammer for the stamping. That’s always assuming one of them is the engraver, which isn’t always the case-it’s skilled work.”

Ruso watched the “No” pile being placed on a workbench at the back of the office. “Don’t I get them back?”

“It’s my duty to destroy false coins. I also destroyed the one Asper showed me.”

“I’ll have to track down these people in Londinium once I’ve finished here. Tell me how they make the forgeries.”

“These? A thin layer of silver stamped over a core of bronze. Sometimes they use iron, but there is the problem of rust.”

“And they make the core-how?”

“Usually in a clay mold: not as easy as it sounds. Your next question is, how does he engrave the dies for stamping the coin?”

“Yes.”

“And the answer is, not quite well enough. The S on HADRIANUS is damaged: I’d guess the engraver got confused when he was trying to reverse the shape and then had to correct it.” Satto picked up something that looked like a chisel. He placed a coin on the bench and aligned the edge of the chisel with its center. “But they are quite good,” he said, reaching for the hammer. “I wouldn’t like the procurator to think I was keeping them.”

The sound of the hammer smacking into the head of the chisel must have been heard outside in the Hall. Ruso wondered what the guards would make of it.

Only when he had finished mangling Ruso’s evidence did Satto say, “You should know that if Rome doesn’t send enough small change, a man who makes bronze coins is helping the soldiers spend their wages and his neighbors buy their bread.”

“Does that happen?”

“Not these days. And I’m talking about bronze, not silver. All I’m saying is, good men have made coins as well as bad.”

Ruso got to his feet. “Thank you. You’ve been very helpful.”

Satto handed him half of one of the ruined coins. “Two more things you should know, investigator. The first is that apart from the one Asper showed me, I’ve never seen denarii like these before in Verulamium.”

“And the other?”

“If a forger is caught, he has nothing to lose.”

The sooty-fingered boy who was mixing ink at the table in the Council clerk’s office had a lopsided mustache smeared beneath his nostrils. Ruso saw it just after the lad looked up in alarm and before the chain-mailed bulk of the guards came between them. Moments later the clerk was fiddling with the lock on Asper’s office door and muttering that this was all quite irregular: He had been told the investigation was over and he really needed permission from the quaestor.

He need not have worried. The cramped space contained nothing but furniture and disappointment. There was no money stashed away anywhere. No discernable notes about evidence or investigations. No lumps of iron with hammer scars on one end and the emperor’s profile engraved in reverse on the other.

Ruso put the last records box back on the shelf. Then he leaned against the wall, folded his arms, and stared around the room. If only he had Albanus here. Even if there were secrets hidden among the lists of names and figures in the records, the only thing Ruso could deduce from them was that neither Asper nor his brother was an overly tidy man.

The desk where Asper must have sat was the larger of the two. Carved legs, polished sheen on the surface, set squarely in the middle of the room facing the door. Designed to impress. The one that must have belonged to Bericus was crammed into the corner and had a chunk of wood wedged under one leg to level it up. Asper had a brass inkstand, Bericus a simple pot. He imagined the brothers had argued over more than Camma.

If only the man had spoken to her about his suspicions. If only he had left some hint of where he had found that coin mold. No one was going to admit to owning it, even if he could track down every metalworker in town to ask, and that would take hours. Camma’s neighborhood seemed to be full of them. The elderly bronzesmiths next door, the silversmiths farther down the street… then there were the repair shops and the wagon works at the stables, not to mention any number of forges scattered across the local farmsteads where smiths would call for trade or where laborers with some rudimentary skill might bash out repairs to damaged tools. It would be impossible to search them all and even if he did, what were the chances of him finding what the owners would be careful to hide?

Ruso leaned back in the chair and scowled at the door handle. It was possible that he was wasting his time. He was not even sure that the forgery business had anything to do with the murders. Caratius was as likely to be guilty as not. One thing of which he was certain, though, was that if he was going to find out anything else, he needed to do it quickly. He had fulfilled the procurator’s orders to look helpful. He should be on the way back to Londinium with a reassuring report about the links with Iceni. Tilla would be packing her bag in the morning and the Britons, to whom he had been seconded, were expecting him to leave.

One of them was desperate for him to leave.

For your own safety, get out of town.

If only he could track down the person who sent that message, he might find out what was really going on here. Whatever it was, he was convinced that Dias was involved in it.

There was still plenty of daylight, but the bustle of the day was over. Workshops had fallen silent, children had been called indoors, and there was hardly anyone about as Tilla hurried across the Forum on the way back to Camma’s house. She had hoped the scribe’s office might still be open, but the shutters were already in place. There was no reason to linger. Ahead, she noticed one of Dias’s men staring at her from the doorway of the rooms the guards used as their headquarters. How long had he been watching her?

She quickened her pace, telling herself he was probably just an ill-mannered man who was bored. Even though Dias could not be trusted, that did not mean all the other guards were corrupt too. She passed him and walked out under the arch to the street without glancing back.

Back at the house, Grata would be preparing the evening meal. Tilla had turned down the Medicus’s invitation to dine with him in his grand suite of rooms tonight, preferring one last evening with Camma and the lovely baby. Ruso had accompanied her across to the mansio and then left her to talk to Serena while he rushed off somewhere like a dog on a fresh scent. She had no idea where he was going, nor what time he would be back.

In the morning she would go with Camma to bury the ashes, and then talk to her about a name for the baby. Perhaps a name would mark a new start. After that she would go and visit the scribe again, and then she would be ready to leave for Londinium whenever her husband had finished his investigations.