Ruth Downie - Ruso and the Root of All Evils

Brother Solemnis had hardly spoken a word since they had set off this morning. Tilla watched him from her none-too-comfortable seat on a bundle of hides in the back of the cart and wondered if he was praying for the protection of his god. On top of the usual carter’s worries about lame animals, breakdowns, bad roads, damaged goods and bandits, he had now been accosted by a barbarian woman and a stranger, demanding a lift to Arelate. She suspected he had only taken them because he was too frightened to refuse.

Cass was not much better company. She had chattered nervously as the cart first rattled and jolted them away from the farm. She had never been to Arelate. It was a big and beautiful town. The river was said to be huge. This would be an adventure.

As the sun rose higher, her excitement faded. When they passed a milestone she read ‘Nemausus, eleven miles’ as if it were a mark of loss rather than a sign of progress.

Tilla reflected that more and more these days she was thinking it might be useful to be able to read. Somewhere amongst the other letters chipped into the tall stone must be the good news of the diminishing distance to Arelate.

The milestone must have inspired Cass’s sudden ‘We won’t be back tonight, will we?’

‘We will find an inn.’ Had Cass only just thought of this? How fast did she imagine a mulecart could make a trip of over twenty miles?

Cass was chewing her lower lip. ‘What if they wake in the night?’

‘Galla will deal with them,’ said Tilla, guessing she was talking about the children.

‘I’m their mother.’

‘They will manage. They are used to Galla and they are not babies.’

Cass fell silent again. Tilla leaned back, closed her eyes and tried to pretend that she was still travelling with the Medicus to a peaceful land of blue skies and gentle breezes where she would be welcomed into a new family.

‘Lucius will be furious.’

‘Lucius will have to learn to treat you better,’ insisted Tilla, secretly disappointed that so far neither the Medicus nor his brother had come after them.

Cass was saying something about ‘… divorces me?’

‘Of course he will not divorce you. He cannot afford a slave to do your work and nobody else would marry him.’

In the silence that followed, there was plenty of time to wish she had thought about that before she said it.

Cass said, ‘I hope somebody remembered to collect the eggs.’ When Tilla did not answer she said, ‘What if the slaves eat all the provisions?’

‘Then they will go hungry later.’

‘We should never have left home.’

‘We are doing a good thing,’ Tilla insisted, pushing aside the urge to explain that, if Cass had not turned up at the last minute, she would have abandoned the trip herself and been at the dinner to face the widow and all her money and watch the Medicus trying to make his difficult choice. ‘We will go and find somebody who knows about your brother’s ship.’

‘But what if — ’

‘Most of what if never happens. Pray to Christos for help. Galla says you can do it anywhere.’

‘If Galla hadn’t told you about Christos, we wouldn’t be here. When I get back Lucius will have her whipped.’

Tilla was glad she was not Galla. Somehow, everything was always her fault.

‘Anyway,’ continued Cass, ‘I can’t pray to Christos. You’ll have to do it. You’re not married.’

‘Does that matter?’

‘Christos’ followers are supposed to obey their husbands.’

Tilla tried to picture the women who had been at the meeting and wondered if they had all been there with male permission.

‘I told my brother Lucius would never let me follow a foreign religion when we’ve spent all that money building Diana’s temple, so it was no good him telling me any more about Christos.’

The cart jolted in and out of a pothole. Cass pushed back one of the bundles that had slid sideways beneath her. ‘I should have let Lucius build a tomb.’

‘You can build a tomb when you go home.’

‘I tried to explain to him, but he wouldn’t listen.’

Tilla yawned and lifted Galla’s hat in the hope that some cool air might circulate around her head. She wished Cass would keep her worries to herself. It had all seemed so straightforward last night, in the enthusiasm of the singing and the cries of Amen, Sister!

‘We are doing a good thing,’ she repeated, wishing she was not doing it at all.

The leather water-bottle thumped against his side as the horse thudded across the burned stubble of the wheat-field, cutting off the corner where the track led up to the main road. Ruso jammed his fluttering hat lower on his head and glanced down to check that he had fastened the safety strap on his knife. He urged the horse to leap the ditch and flung it into a sharp turn to veer past a train of startled pack mules. Ignoring the angry yells of the driver, he dug his heels into the grey flanks and headed along the verge at a gallop.

He could hear nothing around him: only the rush of air and the thump of hooves. Ahead of him, a flock of sheep scattered at his approach. He yelled an apology to the shepherd — who should have had more sense than to use the road anyway — and urged Severus’ horse on. It responded with a further burst of speed that would have set the stable lad laughing with delight. This was as near as a man could get to flying. At this rate, he might even catch them before they reached Arelate. Whatever transport this Solemnis had to offer, it would not be as fast as his own.

With luck, all that would be needed was to make Solemnis one very sorry carter and deliver a lecture on why women should never travel with strange men, even in a civilized country. If they were unlucky … Severus’ contact might be in the port. He did not want to dwell on what the man might do to silence two women who were asking the wrong questions.

Ruso squinted at the sky. It must be past the eighth hour by now. The sun was well over the zenith, and it was appallingly hot. His eyes felt gritty. The kerchief he had tied over his nose was slipping down. He pushed it back into place, wrinkling his nose in a futile attempt to hold it there and finally yanking it down out of the way and swearing at it. He had never intended to hurtle across to Arelate at this speed. As usual, he was having to clear up somebody else’s mess. And as usual, instead of talking things over in a sensible manner, Tilla had decided to make his life far more difficult than it was already. Sometimes he wondered whether she did it on purpose. A one-woman rebellion against Rome.

Severus’ horse, out of condition from its enforced rest, was already beginning to tire. He would have to pick up a fresh animal halfway — and since he was not on active duty, he would have to pay. In the meantime, he slowed to a canter and swerved to overtake a heavy-goods vehicle, not bothering to wonder what might be under the tarpaulin at the back. Nobody facing a journey of over twenty miles would travel by ox-cart: it was quicker to walk. He was just urging the horse past a panniered donkey when it struck him that Tilla might well be doing what he least expected in order to avoid detection. On the other hand, if he paused to inspect every vehicle he might not catch up with them before the light began to fade and the town gates closed.

There was no sense in looking over his shoulder, but he did it all the same.

As he had expected, there was no blonde head poking out from under the receding tarpaulin. Instead, the wagon was being overtaken on both sides. Two more riders were pounding towards him, evidently staging some sort of race.

The road ahead was clear to the next rise. Fields dotted with the orange roofs of small farms stretched away into the distance on both sides. He wondered if the shepherd had managed to regroup his flock before those two idiots thundered past and scattered it again. As he topped the rise to see more empty road ahead, he could hear the racers’ hoofbeats. He nudged his own horse aside to let them pass.