Ruth Downie - Caveat emptor

This close, even Firmus could see that she was the sort of woman his mother had warned him about. Six feet tall, red hair in a mass of rats’ tails, and a pregnant belly that bulged at him like an accusation. The only thing that separated them was a folding desk, and even that wobbled when he placed both hands on it. He sensed a movement behind him. Pyramus’s breath was warm on his ear.

“Shall I call the guards, master?”

Firmus opened his mouth to say yes, then realized what a fool he would look if she proved to be harmless. He gestured the slave back to his place. Perhaps, beyond the boundaries of Londinium, this was what all the Britons looked like. He squinted at the sweat-stained folds of her tunic and hoped the guards had at least checked her for weapons.

“Are you the procurator?” she repeated.

Of course not, he wanted to say. Do you really think Rome would send a shortsighted seventeen year old to look after all the money in Britannia? Instead, he straightened his back, pushed aside the wax tablet on which he had been compiling a list of Things To Ask Uncle, and said, “I’m his assistant.”

“I must talk to him.”

Firmus swallowed. “The procurator’s not available.”

She took another step forward so that her belly protruded over the desk. He forced himself not to flinch. She smelled hot and stale.

“I have traveled twenty miles to ask for his help,” she announced. “Where is he?”

Outside, the relentless clink of chisel on stone rang around the courtyard. Someone was whistling. The world was carrying on as normal, but the woman was between him and the door that led to it. Pyramus, crippled with rheumatism, would be no help at all. Should he have called the guards? How fast could a woman in that condition move?

“The procurator won’t be here all day,” he said. This was not strictly true, since his uncle was only two rooms away, but the thought of interrupting him while he was with the doctor was even more terrifying than facing the woman.

She said, “All day?”

“All day,” he said, wondering how he was supposed to manage if the Britons were all like this, and why no one except his mother had warned him.

“If you put your request in writing,” he tried, “I’ll pass it on to the-”

“Writing is a waste of time. I must talk to him.”

“But he isn’t here,” Firmus insisted, ignoring a roar of pain from the direction of the procurator’s private rooms.

“I will go to find him.”

“He’s ill.” It sounded better than admitting the great man had fallen off his horse. “You can talk to me.”

He could see her eyes narrow as if she were assessing him. She glanced around the chilly little room, taking in the one cupboard and the triangular blur on the back of the door that was his cloak, hung on a rusty nail. “You are very young to be Assistant Procurator.”

It was what they all said. Usually he explained about his eyesight and the army and how grateful he was to his uncle for finding him a post where he could get some overseas experience, but after a taste of that experience, Firmus was not feeling grateful at all. His uncle gave the impression of being perpetually annoyed with him and the staff seemed to think he was a joke. That one with the front teeth missing had practically laughed out loud when Firmus had explained that, as part of the emperor’s tightening up on the Imperial transport service, he had personally been put in charge of the Survey of British Milestones. They were probably listening in the corridor now, and sniggering.

Firmus decided he might as well tell the truth. “I’m only here because the procurator is my uncle.”

To his surprise, this seemed to reassure her. “So, you really are his assistant?”

“Yes.”

“And you will help me?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Who are you?”

Her breasts lifted in a distracting fashion as she took a deep breath to launch into her speech. “I am Camma of the Iceni,” she announced, “I am wife of…”

Firmus had no idea who she was the wife of, because although he tried to pay attention, all he could see was the swell of the magnificent breasts, and all he heard was one word.

Iceni.

Several of the things he had read about Britannia before leaving Rome had turned out to be misleading-where were the woad-painted wife swappers? — but he was fairly certain that the last time a tax official had annoyed an Iceni woman, it had been a very big mistake indeed. Especially since his own grandfather had been one of the officers killed in the ill-starred attempt to rescue the settlers of Camulodunum.

The books said that the Iceni had been crushed years ago, but this one did not look crushed. This one looked tall and fierce and none too clean: exactly how he imagined the raging queen Boudica at the head of her savage hordes.

When future histories were written about Britannia, Firmus did not want to appear in them as the man who had been fool enough to upset the Iceni again.

He cleared his throat. She stopped talking.

“Sorry,” he explained, making an effort to look her in the eye. “I’m having trouble following your accent.” He reached for the stylus and picked up the tablet. “Could you say all that again, a bit slower?”

“I said,” she repeated, louder rather than slower, “something has happened to my husband.”

“We don’t deal with husbands and wives here. This is the finance office.”

“I know it is the finance office! I am not stupid!”

Firmus gulped. “No! No, of course not.” He recalled the advice of a distant cousin who had served here as a tribune: Half the challenge of dealing with the natives was working out what the problem was, and the other half was deciding what poor bugger you could pass it on to.

“This is why I have come to you,” the woman was explaining. “My husband is a tax man.”

“Your husband works in the tax section?” he asked, wondering how that had been allowed to slip through security.

“His name is Julius Asper.”

“Julius Asper,” he repeated, scraping the name into the wax. “What’s happened to him?”

“He is missing.”

“Missing,” he repeated, then looked up. “I see. Thank you for coming to tell us. We’ll look into it. If you could leave your details with the clerk…”

She folded her arms and rested them on top of her belly. “How can a boy like you assist the procurator when you do not know anything?”

“I’ve only been here a week,” he said. “You’ll have to explain a bit more.”

“My husband collects the taxes in Verulamium.”

“Ah!” Firmus felt a sudden wave of relief. He was on safer ground now. According to his research, Verulamium was a relatively civilized town just a few miles up the North road. For reasons he could not begin to guess, this Camma had married a tax collector in one of the places her tribal ancestors had burned down. “If he works for the Council at Verulamium,” he said, seeing a way out, “you should go to them.”

“I spit on the Council!” To his relief, she did not demonstrate. “They will lie to you,” she said. “That is why I am here. Whatever they tell you about stealing the money is lies.”

“Stealing the money?”

“The tax money.”

“Your husband has gone missing with the tax money?”

“No, that is a lie.”