Ruth Downie - Ruso and the Root of All Evils

‘I am well,’ she insisted, although her voice was barely stronger than her pulse had been. ‘You must find your sisters.’

‘Marcia and Flora can wait,’ he said, tipping more vinegar into the bowl and mixing it in. ‘Keep drinking.’ He was not going to leave her until he was happy that she was recovering. This was his fault in more ways than one. He should have sent that cart and he should have thought to warn her. In a town with a fine supply gushing from the street fountains, it had never occurred to him that Tilla might not stop for more than a couple of sips of water all through a hot morning. He had seen enough cases like this in his first post with the Army, when men marching under the African sun had run short of water. It began with heat and over-exertion and dehydration and, if it was not treated, it ended very badly indeed.

He dipped the sponge in the mixture and began to wipe it down her neck, across her shoulder and along one arm.

She wrinkled her nose. ‘Vinegar?’

‘In the Army they used to complain about the roses.’ He turned the compress over and stepped round the bed to sponge down the other side. ‘Any dizziness, nausea, stomach cramps?’

‘Just the headache, and I am very tired. Please. Go and look for the sisters. This is not a good way for me to start with your family.’

‘They should have had the sense to stay with you.’

‘What will I do if you do not find them?’

‘I’ll find them,’ he growled. ‘They’ll be tired of shopping by now.’

‘You are not afraid for them?’

‘I’ve got bigger things to worry about. They’re not children.’

She took another gulp of water. ‘I am sorry. You have enough troubles with that man wanting money.’

‘Not any more.’ He explained about Severus’ fatal visit.

She sighed. ‘This is worse. Everyone will think it was you.’

Ruso hesitated. At the moment, Tilla was a patient, and a patient should be kept away from unnecessary anxiety. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he assured her, dabbing the sponge into the bowl. ‘I’ll tell everybody what happened to him, and it’ll all be sorted out. Now, where exactly did you last see my sisters?’

Alone in the Medicus’ bedroom, Tilla put the smelly sponge back into the bowl and forced herself to pour yet another cup of water. Further down the corridor, the Medicus’ brother and his wife were quarrelling. It was hard to grasp what the argument was about. She could hear the raised voices, but the words were muffled by the walls. Only the occasional phrase from Lucius broke through: ‘… comes back here and makes a mess of everything!’ was followed by an indistinct reply. Moments later, ‘What do you mean, I always take the easy way out?’ was clear enough. He was demanding, ‘… any idea how hard I work?’ when there was a scream of ‘The girls! They’re home!’ from Arria, followed by the sound of footsteps running along the corridor.

Wincing at the pain in her head, Tilla wrapped herself in the sheet and climbed down from the bed. She made sure there was nobody in the corridor before crossing to the window that looked out over the garden and adjusting the shutter so she could peer through the gap by the hinge without being seen. Marcia and Flora were marching up the path towards the house, looking furious. Arria hurried down the steps to fling her arms around them, crying, ‘Where have you been? Are you all right? I should never have left that woman to look after you. I told you I didn’t trust her.’

‘We don’t know where she went,’ grumbled Marcia, slapping straw off her skirt. ‘We’ve been looking for her for hours.’

‘But she’s here!’ exclaimed Arria. ‘She told us she’d come home to fetch the cart for you.’

‘We didn’t know what to do,’ said Marcia. ‘We just turned round and she’d gone. We waited at the Augustus gate for hours and hours, but nobody came.’

‘We had to beg a lift home on one of Lollia Saturnina’s delivery carts,’ said Flora.

‘Lollia? Oh, whatever will she think of us? And we’ve had to cancel the dinner!’

Marcia said, ‘Why?’ but Arria was not listening.

‘Your brother’s gone rushing off to fetch you. Didn’t you see him on the road?’

‘He’s a bit late,’ pointed out Marcia.

‘We might have missed him,’ said Flora, picking another strand of straw out of her sister’s hair. ‘We were so tired we had to lie down for a rest in the back of the cart.’

‘That woman abandoned you in town, strolled back here without you and lied to us?’

‘She probably didn’t know what to do,’ said Flora.

‘I expect she just said whatever came into her head,’ said Marcia. ‘It’s not her fault. I don’t suppose her people understand that sort of thing.’

‘This is not good enough. I’m going to have to talk to Gaius.’ Arria’s voice grew louder as they climbed the porch steps. ‘You’d think if he was going to bring one home he would have …’ Tilla missed what came next, dodging back into the bedroom as they entered the house.

Back on the bed, she lay still until the throbbing in her head subsided. She supposed the Medicus would now be hobbling around the city streets in search of two girls who were safely back at home. Nobody else seemed to have thought about that.

The pain that had nailed her head to the pillow was gone. Tilla opened her eyes, gazed at the cracks in the ceiling of the Medicus’ room and wondered if he was back yet.

There were no voices outside. No footsteps in the corridor. She managed to time her ascent of the stairs so that nobody saw her slip into her stuffy little bedroom clad in one of the Medicus’ old Army tunics. Inside, she changed into her own clothes. On the landing she bumped into the slave who had slept in her bed the previous night.

‘Have you seen the mistress and the master’s sisters?’

‘In the bath-house, miss.’ The girl leaned forward to mouth across a pile of folded linen, ‘It is safe to come out.’

It was, but now that she had the temporary freedom of the house, Tilla could not think of a single place within it where she would feel at ease. She went across to the window. Nothing was moving in the regimented garden, which was still baking in the late afternoon sun. Beyond the wall, a tall grey horse was tethered in the shade of the stable building. There was some sort of compress on its foreleg. Feeling they were fellow sufferers, she went downstairs to talk to it.

When she got there, the stable lad was busy replacing the compress. His morose expression defied the jolly tangle of curls around his temples.

She said, ‘This is a fine horse.’

‘He is, miss. Pity he’s not ours.’

She took the animal’s head to distract it from investigating the stable lad’s curls. ‘What is the matter with him?’

‘He’s not looking too happy on the nearside foreleg.’ Glancing up, he saw she was interested. ‘It’s an old injury. I’d have rested him for a day or two more, myself. You don’t want to mess about with a good animal like this.’

‘Your master has taken the mule-cart?’

The lad nodded. ‘That’s all there is now, miss. We don’t have horses here no more.’

She supposed they had been sold.

The lad tucked in the ends of the bandaging and added, ‘I wouldn’t have been cleaning the harness if I’d known he needed it.’

‘You had the harness in pieces when the master wanted the cart?’

‘I made him late.’

She said, ‘So did I. But he was very late anyway. Was he cross?’

Instead of replying the lad straightened up and slapped the horse on the shoulder. ‘Good boy.’

‘When the master is feeling better,’ she said, ‘he will thank you for taking such good care of this horse.’