Ruth Downie - Ruso and the Root of All Evils

‘The Marsi?’ This was good news.

‘If it was up to me, I wouldn’t let ’em through the gates,’ grumbled the man. ‘It’s dangerous, bringing snakes into a place like this. One of these days someone’s going to get bitten. Then we’ll see what their cures are like. What was it you wanted?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Let me do you a deal on that frankincense, sir. I wouldn’t want you to be going home with some of the rubbish they sell down the road.’

‘Thanks, I’ll think about it,’ said Ruso, giving the man a smile that they both knew was no compensation for a lost sale.

Shoppers had begun to desert the stalls around him and drift towards the new crowd that was gathering. The women from the cosmetics counter tottered past, craning to see what the fuss was, clutching their baskets with pink-and-black-streaked hands.

Ruso could not move fast enough to get to the front, but the mountain-man’s shrill voice above the notes of the flute made it clear that the townsfolk were seeing the power of magic over the deadliest of snakes. The effect on the onlookers was conveyed by their gasps and exclamations of ‘Oh, look!’

Beside Ruso, a father lifted his small daughter on to his shoulders to get a better view. ‘Can you see the snake?’ he demanded, unable to see it himself. ‘What’s it doing?’

‘Snake!’ cried the child, pointing and wriggling. ‘Snake!’

Ruso leaned back against the shutters of a shop selling perfumed oils and bags of fresh lavender and rose petals. He had seen too many deadly snakes in Africa to want to watch one being provoked, magic or no magic. He hoped the performance was not going to go on too long. His foot was aching. His stomach was reminding him that it had been a long time since breakfast. But he needed to talk to the Marsi.

By the time the Italian mountain-men had finished their show and sold snake products to the eager crowd, several of the stallholders had begun to pack up for the day. The shoppers drifted away, heading for home or the baths, several pausing to slake their thirst in the shade of the nearest snack bar. The two Marsi, their skin already tanned to leather and their eyes as dark as those of the unblinking snake still draped around the older man, seemed not to notice the heat. The younger one was stacking up boxes that could have contained the performers or the remedies that were made from them. The older man looked up, lifted a fat coil of reptile from his shoulder and gave Ruso a gap-toothed grin before asking in a rough country Latin how he had enjoyed the show.

Ruso, unable to identify the species of snake, stepped forward to just outside striking distance. When he introduced himself as a medicus, the man’s smile widened.

‘Medicus, eh? We got what you want!’ The man gestured to his son to bring one of the boxes across. ‘A live helper of Aesculapius!’

Ignoring Ruso’s protests, he lifted the lid from the top of the box to reveal a set of dark coils with no discernable markings. ‘You’ve heard the stories. Get your hands on the real thing.’

‘I’d rather not,’ said Ruso.

‘Take a look. He don’t bite.’ The man slid one skeletal hand into the box by way of encouragement.

‘I think some of my patients would be frightened off.’

The man chuckled and tied the lid back over the snake. ‘So what else can we do for you?’ He lifted one of the pots stacked beside him on the pavement. ‘Snakeskins boiled in wine, good for earache and toothache.’ He placed it in front of Ruso and reached back for another pot. ‘Roast viper salts,’ he announced, showing the pot to the snake before placing it beside the other. ‘Recommended by Dioscorides himself. Sharpens the eyes, releases tight tendons, reduces swollen glands.’

Ruso bought a pot of the boiled skins, hoping they would not only cure earache but loosen the man’s tongue. ‘Perhaps you could help me with something else,’ he said.

‘Perhaps,’ agreed the man. ‘Who knows?’

The younger man had paused to listen.

‘I had a difficult patient the other day. Confusion, aggression, odd feelings around the mouth, vomiting, diarrhoea, loss of vision — ’

‘What happened to him?’ demanded the younger man, stepping forward.

‘He died.’

‘And you want my father to tell you what it was?’

‘What can you suggest?’

‘What I suggest,’ said the youth, ‘is that you take your skins and clear off. We’re honest traders. We got nothing to do with that sort of thing.’

‘I didn’t mean to imply — ’

‘That the Marsi know all about poisons? So why did you ask?’

‘Stop!’ The older man’s hand rose to silence his son. ‘The Medicus didn’t mean no harm. He’s here to learn. He reckons his patient got bit by a venomous beast.’

‘Exactly,’ said Ruso, although Severus had denied being bitten, and he had found no trace of a puncture on the body.

The youth glowered at him and said nothing.

The old man’s smile was not as broad this time. ‘We can’t help,’ he said. ‘We don’t know no snakes what give them symptoms.’

‘Perhaps it wasn’t a snake,’ said Ruso. ‘Do you know anyone I could ask?’

‘No, we don’t.’

‘I’d pay.’

‘And I’d take your money,’ said the man, ‘but I still wouldn’t know nobody.’

Ruso sighed. He was not going to argue with someone wearing a large and unidentifiable snake, even though he was certain that the man was lying. At the moment, he couldn’t run fast enough.

Galla was over in the shade of the stone barn, eating with the other farm workers. Tilla had followed her across as soon as the horn was blown, picked up a wooden platter from the pile and joined the queue for bread and the strange stuff these people thought was cheese. Then she had turned to find there was no obvious place to sit. Galla, her sticky feet now dark with the dust of the barn floor, was already sharing a rough bench with the stable lad. They were too busy chatting to notice Tilla. She recognized the odd word of Gaulish, but they were speaking fast, and she could not pick out the meaning. The other workers, some asleep, were sprawled across all the available space in the shade. One or two of the men were staring at her with more interest than was necessary, but no one offered to move. No one smiled and said, ‘Come and eat with us!’ Nobody showed any concern when she wandered away.

Safely alone in the quiet of the winery, she laid the platter on the corner of the juice trough, settled down beside it and tried to tell herself she was not miserable.

She could not expect to fit in here. She was not a servant. It was obvious that the staff knew that, even if Arria refused to understand it. She was not a member of the family. She was not the Medicus’ wife. She was neither a Gaul, like the farm workers, nor a Roman, like the Medicus. She was not a Gaul pretending to be a Roman, either, which was what most of the people in the town seemed to be. In every imaginable way, she was an outsider here.

She supposed the only barbarians these people had come across were either slaves or the naked figures she had seen carved on some of the funeral monuments lining the road out of town. Warriors with wild hair and long moustaches, being beaten down and trampled under the march of Roman progress. Perhaps the sight of a free Briton wandering about the place made them nervous.

She took a mouthful of bread and eyed the unappetizing green slop in the trough beside her. It had never struck her until now that the Medicus, who had been so rude about British beer, preferred a drink in which strangers had trampled their sweaty feet.

She wondered what he was doing. What he had said to the old wife. Whether he was still with her now. It occurred to Tilla that she did not know a great deal about the old wife, except that she was the one who had left and demanded a divorce. The Medicus had never seemed to want to talk about her. He had not wanted to mention the widow next door again, either, until she had asked.