Ruth Downie - Ruso and the Root of All Evils

‘Yes!’ squeaked Ennia. ‘Somewhere in here. He said if anything ever happened to him, to look in the winery.’

‘You knew he had money?’ demanded Claudia. ‘Why didn’t he tell me? I had a right to know. I’m his wife!’

‘I didn’t kill him,’ insisted Ennia. ‘She did.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Ruso mildly, addressing Calvus and ignoring Claudia’s protests. ‘I suppose that’s what Ennia told you, isn’t it? She told you she’d overheard me talking to Claudia, and Claudia had been seen buying poisonous honey. If you’d bothered to go and check with the stallholder — ’

‘No point,’ said Calvus, throwing the spade across to the digger he had taken it from, who was trying to sneak back to join the others behind the winepress. ‘Oi! Back to work!’

‘No,’ said Ruso. ‘I didn’t think you had.’

‘Never mind him,’ said Stilo, for once quicker than his partner. ‘We’re here for the money. We don’t care who killed Severus.’

‘Right,’ agreed Calvus. ‘Shut up, Ruso.’

For a moment there was no sound in the winery but the crunch of shovels and the steady trickle of something leaking.

Ruso glanced around him, wondering what to do next. Nothing had changed as a result of his intervention. Ennia was still held with a knife to her throat. The diggers were still struggling on, weary and filthy and clearly distraught at ruining the precious vintage the farm slaves had worked so hard to produce. A call for help had — he hoped — been sent to town, but the impostors would be long gone before anyone could get here. Besides, Stilo was right: nobody would dare to attack them on the way out if they were holding hostages. All Ruso had managed to do was add himself to their list of potential choices.

What the hell had Gnostus put in that medicine? What had he been thinking? Had he really imagined that, just because he had finally begun to understand something of what was going on, Calvus and Stilo would kneel in surrender? It was difficult to see what he could do to salvage the situation, except to distract them and hope they made some sort of mistake.

‘It wasn’t Claudia who bought the honey, though,’ he said, hoping Calvus would not repeat his threat with the spade. ‘It was Ennia wearing one of Claudia’s wigs, and her pink shoes. I didn’t mention the colour of the shoes when I talked to Claudia, but when you told Fuscus, you knew they were pink. You haven’t spoken to the trader, so you must have got that from Ennia. She knew because she was the one wearing them. She even made sure she drew the stallholder’s attention to them. If we take both women down there, I daresay he’ll pick her out.’

Ennia’s curtailed squeak of ‘No —!’ might have referred to the identity parade or to some new threat from Stilo.

‘She poisoned her brother to get his money, and she was going to make sure Claudia got the blame.’

‘No!’

‘Except he died in my house. She didn’t plan that.’ Ruso turned to the diggers. ‘You can keep on digging if you like. At least it’ll make them go away. But Ennia’s not really worth much as a hostage. She’s going to be sentenced to death for murder anyway.’

‘It was Zosimus!’ shrieked Ennia.

Everyone had stopped to listen now. Stilo, curious at last, moved the knife a fraction to let her talk.

‘Tell them, Zosimus!’

The steward rammed his spade into the mud and stared at Ennia. In the silence, one of the diggers shifted position, and the mud squelched beneath him.

‘Tell them about my lovely brother.’

‘You knew all about it?’ demanded Claudia. Ruso motioned to her to be quiet.

Zosimus looked at Ennia. ‘Which lie would you like me to tell this time?’

Ennia swallowed. ‘No lies. Tell them what he did.’

Zosimus looked round at the faces all turned towards him in the lamplight. ‘Ennia was engaged to a man in Rome.’ There was no expression in his voice. He might have been reading a list of calendar dates. ‘Severus didn’t think he was suitable. The man died of a fever. Ennia moved here with Severus.’ He cleared his throat.

‘Tell them what you told me!’

‘I wasn’t happy about the way Severus did business here. He said that, if I refused to back him up, he would get rid of me like he had got rid of Ennia’s boyfriend.’

Stilo was the first to speak. ‘Very sad,’ he said, gesticulating with the knife towards the mud. ‘Now dig.’

‘Wait a moment,’ said Calvus. ‘Which of you did do it?’

‘She did,’ said Zosimus at the same moment as Ennia said, ‘He did.’

‘Who cares?’ demanded Stilo.

‘Dig,’ ordered Calvus. Zosimus sighed and heaved his spade out of the mud. Calvus moved across to murmur to Stilo, who glanced at the door and muttered something back.

‘I want to know who it was!’ insisted Claudia to no one in particular. ‘I’m the widow. I should be told.’

When nobody else seemed inclined to answer, Ruso said, ‘Ennia bought the honey. Zosimus must have put it in the kitchen. Afterwards he went there saying he was investigating the death, got rid of the medicine and cleared the rest of the honey out before it could do any more damage.’

A voice from behind the press cried, ‘You made us drink that medicine!’

‘You only had a little bit each,’ retorted Zosimus, bending to pick out a broad shard of broken pot from the mud. ‘It wasn’t dangerous.’

The voice said, ‘You didn’t drink any.’

‘I had to keep my head clear.’ Zosimus waved the pot towards Ruso. ‘Everything would have been fine if he hadn’t interfered.’

Claudia was on her feet, one hand gripping Ruso by the shoulder. ‘He killed my husband and — ’

She was silenced by an exclamation from Zosimus. He reached down and hauled a dripping bag out of the quagmire, resting it on the broken curve of pot. Something inside chinked as it settled in a pool of mud.

Calvus beckoned it over, peered inside and nodded to Stilo. He tied the muddy bag to his belt and lifted the bar off the door. He ordered the diggers to get back against the far wall with the others. Then, turning to Ruso, he said, ‘You go first.’

Ruso manoeuvred himself to his feet and gathered up the crutches. The pain flooded into his foot with an intensity he had not experienced since the day of the accident. At least he supposed it meant his mind was fully clear now.

His eyes, accustomed to the lamplight, could see nothing out in the blackness of the yard. ‘Tilla?’ he called before venturing out, just in case she had overheard his threat of the scythe.

‘We are here,’ replied Tilla.

As he blinked, Ruso could make out human shapes in the darkness. To his left, the prongs of a pitchfork rose in silhouette against a light patch of sky.

‘Tell those murderers,’ said Tilla, ‘that there are thirty strong men out here. All loyal to the Senator.’

Ruso limped out into the yard. ‘She’s not lying,’ he confirmed.

From inside the winery came a fresh shriek of ‘Gaius!’

There was a scuffle behind him and a gasp from some of the farm slaves as a bedraggled figure appeared in the doorway with Stilo’s arm around her throat. Instead of Ennia, he could just make out the cropped head of Claudia. ‘Anybody tries to touch us, and her ladyship’s dead,’ announced Stilo, dragging Claudia sideways so he had the winery wall at his back. ‘This one’s a proper hostage, doctor. Happy now?’

Calvus emerged to stand beside him. ‘We don’t want to hurt anybody.’

‘But we will if we have to,’ put in Stilo.

‘All we want,’ said Calvus, ‘is three horses. You men stand back and let us out, and once we’re clear we release the hostage.’