Ruth Downie - Caveat emptor

Tilla reached into the basket for another towel. “I hope so. Did you find the man who sent you the strange letters, husband?”

Ruso helped himself to a stool. “Yes, but he doesn’t know who attacked you.” Their eyes met and he knew she understood that there were things he could not tell her in Camma’s presence.

Tilla grasped a crumpled linen undertunic in both hands and snapped it out flat. The sound startled the baby, who flung his arms into the air. Ruso suspected that Grata was not the only woman here who was in a bad temper. The bluebells had been received politely, but without the gratitude a man deserved for being seen carrying a bunch of flowers through the streets. He wondered if his wife was jealous. She would be returning to Londinium tomorrow, leaving Grata here with the baby and the woman who had become her friend.

He felt partly responsible for Grata’s bad temper. Her upset state was his own fault. The sight of Bericus’s body would have shaken anyone, let alone somebody who had shared a home with him. Even Dias had seized her by the wrist to try and keep her away. Later he had rebuked Ruso for allowing her forward.

Something whispered at the back of Ruso’s mind. For a moment he could not think what it was. He ran over his thoughts again, trying to catch it. It was something Albanus had said this morning. Albanus was alone in the hall with Camma because the other one left to go off and argue with your guard chap.

He looked up. “Camma, what’s the connection between Grata and Dias?”

“Who knows?” she said lightly. “One minute they are friends, the next not. He is not the sort of man to settle with one woman. Why do you ask?”

Tilla said, “That is another reason for her bad temper. Camma, where do you want me to put these clothes?”

The two women carried on discussing the domestic arrangements as if nothing had happened. Meanwhile Ruso was considering the sudden collapse of the case against Caratius. Nico had already suggested that Caratius knew nothing about the murders. Anyone could have put the body on his land. The only real evidence against him was the message luring Asper and Bericus out of town. The message that only Grata had heard. Now it seemed that same Grata was close to Dias. What if Dias had persuaded her to lie?

A further thought struck him. Grata had been in the room when they had been discussing the coin mold. If she had told Dias, then he would know they had found the evidence of forgery.

Ruso would say nothing to Camma. He might be wrong. Even so, he would warn Albanus before leaving him in charge here this evening. Grata could not be trusted.

On the way out he beckoned Tilla into the garden. Gavo’s large form stood awkwardly amid the washing as he kept guard over the back of the house. When Ruso explained that he would like a moment alone with his wife, Gavo nodded and made his way back through the alleyway toward the street. Ruso noticed he did not look at Tilla. After the way she had stalked them through the woods on the way to dinner with Caratius, he probably thought she was dangerously unstable.

When they were alone together beside the bean patch, he gathered her into his arms. He kissed her for the benefit of anyone who might be snooping before murmuring his suspicions about Grata.

“Dias is definitely involved in forging money,” he said, “but I can’t get any more names out of Nico.”

She nibbled his ear and breathed, “It must be a man. A woman working in a forge would be noticed.”

He let her think he had already considered that possibility and dismissed it.

“What about the other man Dias was with when I found them stealing the furniture?”

“What other man?”

She broke away from him. “Wait here.”

She ran back into the house, and returned to whisper, “Camma says his name is Rogatus.”

“The overseer at the stables?” Ruso stared at her. Several things fell into place. Rogatus could intercept the post. He had access to a forge at the vehicle repair workshop. It was Rogatus who had sworn that Asper said he was going to Londinium and had sent him out in a carriage without even the basic protection of a driver. At last this wretched business was starting to make some sense.

He grasped both her hands. “Promise me you’ll stay in the house till I come and collect you,” he said. “And dress for dinner.”

There were many reasons why Ruso was glad he was not the emperor, but one that he had never considered until this evening was that the more power you appeared to wield, the more determined people were to impress you in inappropriate ways. The conversation in the dining room of Gallonius’s town house was conducted across a fleet of little tables while the staff appeared to be carrying out an experiment to see how much could be loaded onto each one before its expensively spindly legs gave way.

It was hard not to conclude that the food and wine had been arranged by Gallonius while the delicate furnishings and the tasteful red and marble effect walls had been the choices of his wife, a small pale creature whose skin seemed barely able to stretch over her bones and whose conversation consisted mostly of, “Yes, dear.” She did manage to ask Ruso whether he was finding Britannia rather cold and should she ask for more coals on the brazier, but when he assured her that he was quite warm enough, her husband said, “Our guest’s been here before, woman. Right up on the border. He knows what cold is.”

The wife retreated back into, “Yes, dear.”

“Boy? Go and see if the piglet’s done!” Gallonius gave a sonorous belch, sighed, and explained that he was a slave to his digestion.

“My poor husband has been to all sorts of doctors,” ventured the wife, perhaps feeling this was a safe subject on which to expand, “but they can’t do anything for him.”

Gallonius said, “My father was just the same,” as if eating too much and too fast were passed from father to son like a family heirloom.

Tilla reached up to check that the bluebells were still tucked into her hair and said innocently, “Have they recommended any special diets?”

As the staff began to clear the tables, Gallonius and his wife began to describe the various regimes he had followed in the hope of relief.

Ruso was not listening. Now that Tilla had given him the final name, it was all beginning to make sense. Realizing-perhaps with Grata’s help-that the tax man was on their trail, the forgers had arranged to murder Asper in such a way as to make it look as if he had run off with the tax money. Asper would be lured out of town by a false message to visit Caratius. Rogatus would tell everyone that he had gone to Londinium, but in fact he and Dias would have intercepted him just outside of town.

Things had gone wrong. Perhaps they had not been expecting Bericus to go too. Somehow Asper had escaped. The killers had also underestimated Camma. Instead of going to the local guards, where her testimony would have sunk without a trace, she had traveled twenty miles to appeal to the procurator.

The trouble was, if everybody stuck to their lies, he could not prove any of it.

Ruso was wondering what Dias was up to this evening-the guards currently waiting to escort them home were strangers-when a roasted piglet appeared on the table in front of him, accompanied by the sort of silence that told him his host was waiting for a reply.

The tentative “Er-” was a mistake. It implied that he had heard the question and was considering the answer.

“Have a try,” urged Gallonius, failing to stifle another belch.

It was Tilla who saved him. “It is no good asking my husband to guess what is in there,” she said. “He is from Gaul, where the food is very strange and has different names.”