Ruth Downie - Ruso and the Root of All Evils

‘About the same. Cass, I need to talk to you about yesterday.’

‘Well, you haven’t really had a chance to rest it, have you? Poor Gaius. It hasn’t been much of a homecoming for you. What a shame.’

Ruso gave an embarrassed shrug and mumbled something about it not mattering. Indeed, until this moment, it had not struck him that nobody had bothered to thank him for coming home. Now he was about to repay Cass’s thoughtfulness by questioning her as part of a murder investigation.

‘Dear me,’ she observed before he could open his mouth, ‘that sage is looking very squashed. I hope it wasn’t the children.’

Ruso followed her gaze to the battered flowerbed at the foot of the pergola and said, ‘Cass, I need to know exactly what happened when Severus came here.’

‘We haven’t made Tilla very welcome either, have we? I hear Arria has plans for you and Lollia Saturnina instead.’

‘Arria has plans for lots of things.’

‘Lollia Saturnina is a very nice woman, Gaius. But I don’t think she’s looking for a husband.’

Following his sister-in-law up the porch steps, he said, ‘I doubt anyone’s looking to marry a suspected poisoner.’

Cass giggled. ‘Oh, Gaius. Anyone who knows you knows that you couldn’t possibly have done a thing like that.’ They crossed the hall, and she paused with her hand on the latch of the children’s room. ‘Come in and say goodnight to them,’ she urged. ‘Then we can talk.’

They were greeted by the sight of a naked Little Gaius beaming at them from his pot. Around him was an array of beds that were all empty except the one from which the laundrymaid had just sprung up, patting her bedraggled hair back into place. Apparently Master Lucius had taken the other children to the kitchen in search of supper.

Cass dismissed the maid, inspected the contents of the pot and informed their producer that he was a very good boy. ‘Isn’t he a good boy, Uncle Gaius? Stand up, baby, and let’s give you a nice wash.’

‘He’s a fine little chap,’ observed Ruso, noting with approval that all of his namesake’s parts were in the right places and wondering if one ever got to the end of a conversation once one was blessed with children. ‘Cass, I need to — ’

‘But he doesn’t talk yet,’ replied his mother, pursuing the toddler across the room and deftly manoeuvring a tunic over his head before he could escape. ‘All the others did. Do you think we should do something?’

‘I don’t know much about children, to be honest,’ said Ruso. ‘He looks healthy enough.’ Judging by the all-over tan, young Gaius took frequent exercise in the fresh air, as unencumbered by clothes as any Greek athlete. ‘His hearing seems fine. He’ll probably talk when he’s got something to say.’

She placed the pot on top of a cupboard beside a bowl of peaches, apparently oblivious to her son’s offering within, and wiped her hands on a damp cloth. ‘Bless you, Gaius. I’m sure you’re right. It’s very reassuring having a doctor in the family. Children are such a worry. You know how it is. And Lucius is under such a lot of strain, coping with everything. I’m really glad you’re home.’

‘Lucius isn’t.’

She reached towards the pot without looking, realized her mistake and picked up the bowl instead. ‘He’s just worried about the money. He’s glad to have you here really.’

Ruso marvelled afresh at the way some women could interpret their husbands’ statements to mean exactly the opposite of what they said.

Cass was saying, ‘… none of us wants to think what could happen if we were accused of poisoning Severus.’

‘That’s why I need to ask you — ’

‘Have a peach, Gaius. Tell me something. You never really got on with Arria, did you?’

As Ruso took a peach, his namesake ran across and reached up for it, dancing on the tips of small pudgy feet and crying, ‘Aah!’ in case Ruso failed to notice him.

‘He can have a slice,’ suggested his mother.

‘Aah!’

‘In a minute,’ Ruso promised him, unsheathing his knife to slice round the stone and wondering whether children really should be rewarded for wandering about instead of going to bed, even if peaches were good for the digestion. ‘When you see what she’s done to the family,’ he said, twisting the two halves apart and cutting a generous slice, ‘I think I had good reason.’

‘Say thank you to Uncle Gaius.’

The child looked at his mother as if she had just suggested something very odd and retreated with peach juice dripping down his chin and soaking into his clean bedtime tunic.

He indicated the child. ‘There’s no money to bring him up, nor his brothers and sisters, because she wouldn’t stop spending, and Father wouldn’t stand up to her.’

Cass weighed a peach in one hand and pondered that for a moment. ‘Your father once said to me that he only wanted to see her happy.’

‘What about the rest of us?’

‘He said she had a difficult time fitting in here. Everybody was very fond of your mother.’

Ruso wondered how much Cass had been told about the arguments. About the times when he had used ‘You’re not my mother!’ as a weapon. Now he thought about it, his new stepmother could not have been much older on arrival than Marcia was now. The thought of Marcia being left in charge of two small boys was frightening. The thought of Marcia being given a limitless budget was positively terrifying.

Marcia borrowing money . That wretched rumour was another thing he was going to have to tackle tomorrow. So far he had failed to get any relevant sense out of Cass, whom he liked and who appeared to like him. How he was going to worm any truth out of Marcia, who didn’t like him at all, he had no idea.

‘You were asking about Severus,’ said Cass, unexpectedly returning to the subject she had ignored earlier.

‘Yes.’ How did women do that, he wondered? And why?

‘I won’t be wasting any tears on him, despicable man. Lucius has hardly slept for weeks with all the worry.’

‘So yesterday …?’

‘He turned up not very long before you did. He said he knew you were home and not to try and make out you weren’t.’

Ruso nodded, pretending not to notice Little Gaius spitting a lump of peach on to the floor behind his mother’s back.

‘I said you were in town and we’d ask you to call on him when you got back,’ continued Cass, ‘and he said no, he’d wait. I offered to go and find Lucius, but he said no to that, too.’

‘Did he seem ill to you?’

‘I thought he might have been drinking. I fetched him some water and hoped you would come home quickly.’

‘Where did you get the water?’

‘I called the kitchen-boy to fetch it from the well so it was cold. There was nothing wrong with it: I had a sip myself before I took it into the hall. Then you arrived.’

‘How long was he alone in the hall?’

‘Just as long as it took to get the water.’

‘And you were waiting — where?’

She frowned. ‘In the kitchen, Gaius. If I’d had some poison handy I might well have put it in his cup while Cook wasn’t watching, but I didn’t.’

‘Sorry.’

‘I know. You have to ask. I don’t suppose you’ve had a chance to find out anything about my brother?’

‘Not much, I’m afraid.’ There was no point in upsetting her by passing on the gossip Tilla had heard about the poor state of the Pride of the South . ‘Though I did wonder why he was on the ship in the first place. If Severus was responsible for the cargo, why didn’t he send one of the Senator’s men to look after it?’

‘It wasn’t anything to do with the Senator,’ she explained. ‘Severus was running the venture for himself. Justinus was there because his employer was the one who had loaned Severus the money.’