Ruth Downie - Ruso and the Root of All Evils

She tried to cut a slice of the cheese. It stuck to the knife. How could these people be so pleased with themselves? They could not even make cheese!

She was wiping the blade with one finger when she heard movement outside the doors. Whoever it was, they must not see her alone in here feeling sorry for herself. Licking the finger, she hid behind a stack of the big two-handled baskets the men had been using that morning to carry in the grapes. She slipped her knife silently back into its sheath. She would not give them cause to say that barbarians hid in corners clutching weapons, waiting to pounce.

By the time she peered around the back of the stack and realized the visitor was the Medicus, the scrape and bang of the great door closing out the sunshine drowned the sound of her greeting.

A man who was shutting himself into a farm building in the dark was likely to want to be alone. Therefore a person who found herself hiding barely four feet away from him should immediately call out to warn him of her presence. But before she could speak, the Medicus had hurled his stick to the floor. He raised both fists and pounded the air, filling the building with a prolonged roar of something that sounded like, ‘Aaaargh!’

Perhaps this was not the time to reveal herself.

‘Aaaargh!’ bellowed the Medicus again. ‘Holy gods almighty! Jupiter’s bollocks! Give me strength!’

This unusual prayer ended with the slamming of a fist into the nearest suitable object. Tilla could not hold in the shriek as the stack of baskets landed on her and knocked her backwards against the wall.

For a moment he glared down at her as if she were a rat he had just caught trying to steal his dinner. Then, without speaking, he grabbed her arm and pulled her up.

She stood rubbing the bruise on the back of her head while he limped across to haul the door open. When he returned he said, ‘What are you doing in here?’

‘Is your foot hurting?’

‘Never mind my foot. What are you doing in here?’

‘You should sit down and rest. It is making you cross again.’

‘I’m not angry because of my foot, Tilla! I’m angry because of everything else!’ He bent to retrieve the stack of baskets. ‘I’m angry because — ’ The baskets creaked and complained as he flung them back into the corner. ‘Never mind. It’s too complicated.’

The Medicus was not the most patient of men, but she had never seen him quite this exasperated before. She was not sure what to do to calm him. ‘I have bread,’ she tried, pointing across to the platter still propped on the corner of the trough. ‘And cheese. The cheese is not set and it smells bad, but you can share if you want.’

‘Not now. I have things to do.’ He reached down for the walking-stick, but she was faster.

With the stick behind her back, she said, ‘If you go now, you will do the things badly.’

‘I haven’t got time to play games.’ He held out his hand. ‘Give it to me.’

Instead she took the outstretched hand in her own. ‘Sit and eat this strange cheese, my lord.’

He let out a huff of exasperation, glared at her, then gave in and let her lead him across to where they could sit side by side with their backs against the trough. When he had stretched out his legs between the broad shoulders of the two nearest jars buried in the floor, she handed him a chunk of bread.

He said, ‘D’you know, you’re the only person who’s offered me anything to eat since breakfast?’

‘Did you see her?’

‘Remind me why I thought it was a good idea to come home.’

‘She is not your wife now. You do not have to listen.’

‘It’s not Claudia,’ he said, ‘it’s all the others.’

She held out the platter so he could pull off a blob of cheese. ‘Tell me about the others.’

As far as she could understand, a difficult meeting with the old wife had been followed by a useless trip to town, where he had been kept waiting for hours, practically accused of murder, heard alarming rumours about his sister and found his name was ‘slapped up all over the bloody walls’.

No wonder he was upset. Clearly gossip travelled just as fast here as at home. ‘You should write something back!’ she said. ‘It is not your fault that man died.’

‘The writing’s got nothing to do with Severus,’ he said, adding, ‘at least, not yet. But if I don’t find out who really poisoned him, they’ll soon think of something worse to put up there. It’s because of the election.’

She said, ‘The what?’ but he had moved on complain that he had barely closed the gate on his return when he heard Marcia and Flora shrieking at him from their bedroom window that Arria had locked them in and was trying to starve them, and he must get them out right now.

Inside the painted entrance hall he had found Cass and a gaggle of small loud people begging him to make Arria let Galla back into the house to look after them. When he tracked down Arria she would not talk about any of these things unless he would agree a new date to have dinner with the widow next door. Then he escaped to the yard and found the farm slaves pleased to see him because the brother had gone out somewhere, and they wanted someone to tell him it was all wrong to have women treading the grapes.

‘Actually…’ He paused, as if he had only just noticed, ‘Why are you in here? You haven’t really been treading grapes, have you? You don’t have to listen to Arria.’

‘I am here because Galla is made to work in here,’ she explained. ‘And it is not fair. You must tell your stepmother.’

‘Ah.’ The Medicus closed his eyes. Then he laced his fingers together and placed them behind his head. ‘I think,’ he said slowly, ‘I am becoming a god.’

She frowned. ‘It is the wine in the air.’ Or perhaps the smell of the cheese.

‘The last reported words of the Emperor Vespasian.’

She wiped up the last smear of the cheese with the final crust of bread and waited for him to explain.

He said, ‘Do you know what emperors do, Tilla?’

That was easy. ‘Send soldiers to steal the land and make us pay taxes.’

‘They spend half their waking hours listening to people who want things. As, it seems, do gods. Maybe it wasn’t as much of a transition as everyone thought.’

‘They all want you to be a god who comes home across the sea and mends everything.’

‘Apparently, though none of them invited me. How d’you think I’m doing so far?’

‘Terrible. Now I have seen what peace is like, I understand why you come to Britannia.’

‘I wish we’d never left.’

‘You do not have to worry about that man,’ she said, reaching forward to pick a flake of bread-crust from the front of his tunic. ‘I can tell you who poisoned him. It is the father of your old wife.’

He opened his eyes. ‘Probus? What do you know about Probus?’

‘He paid for the ship where Cass’s brother was drowned.’

‘But why would that make him want to poison Severus? I mean, any more than anybody else would?’

She explained what the fish-sellers had said about the ship when they thought there was nobody around to hear them.

The Medicus listened carefully, then said, ‘I can’t see Probus handing over money to a man who knew nothing about choosing a vessel, even if he was his son-in-law.’

‘But — ’

‘I’ll look into it, but I’d imagine Severus only borrowed the money. If the ship sank, he’d have had to pay it back.’

‘Perhaps he was killed because Probus was angry at losing his servant Justinus.’

The Medicus did not look convinced.

‘Or perhaps because he did not pay the money back.’

The Medicus shook his head. ‘Respectable bankers don’t go around murdering people who owe them money, Tilla. It’s bad for trade.’