Ruth Downie - Ruso and the Root of All Evils

Letting one hand trail down, she ran a finger over the parched lichen that had formed on the stone leg of the bench. She found herself picturing the brittle thorns she had seen by the roadside, offering nothing but crops of white snails so maddened by the sun that they climbed up nearer to it to bake themselves under the brilliant sky. She pushed the picture away. It was making her feel hotter. Instead she tried to imagine herself paddling in the willow-fringed shallows of the river at home. It did not help.

Arria’s insistence that she be led away to be fed and watered had probably been kindly meant. The half-sisters had taken the trouble to show her around the umpteen rooms of the house, dutifully pointing out decoration and glass windows, and she had done her best to think of a new way of admiring each one. She had wanted to ask about the farm: are you worried that the soil is baked so dry? When does it rain? How many cows do you have? What else can you grow apart from grapes and olives? But the girls did not seem interested in the farm. When they were not showing off the house they seemed to do nothing but talk about clothes and boys and get in the way of the staff.

Tilla was reflecting that at least the Medicus had found time to warn her about them, if not the other way around, when she felt a painful jab in her ribs and opened her eyes to see those same half-sisters standing over her.

‘She’s awake!’ exclaimed Marcia, who had no right to be surprised since she was the one who had just poked her.

Tilla blinked as her eyes adjusted again to the glare filtering through the leaves.

‘Good news,’ announced Marcia. ‘Mother says you can chaperone us into town tomorrow.’

‘It’s not our turn for the tutor tomorrow,’ said Flora, the younger of the two. Then, as if Tilla might not know what a tutor was, she added, ‘In our family you have to learn poetry, even if you’re a girl. And music.’

‘It’s a privilege,’ put in her older sister. ‘But we won’t have to put up with it much longer, hopefully. Anyway, after we’ve bathed and had dinner you can spend tonight unpacking, or whatever it is you do for our brother. Then if you get him to give you some money we can all go shopping.’

Tilla sat up, rubbing her eyes. ‘Shopping?’ she repeated, wondering why anyone would want to tramp around buying things in this heat. Surely the family had enough servants to fetch whatever they needed?

The girls looked at each other. Marcia said, ‘What did I tell you? She doesn’t understand.’

‘Don’t you have shops in Britannia?’ asked Flora.

Marcia said, ‘They probably don’t have money, either. Come on, Tilla. We’ll show you what a bath-house is before the others get in there and mess it up.’

Ruso dropped the lid of the trunk and sat on it as if he could keep the family’s troubles trapped inside. He said, ‘I might have guessed the Gabinii were involved in this somewhere.’

Gabinius Fuscus and his cousin had been friends of their father: the sort of friends who insisted on lending him large sums of money. Their offers were so cordial that Publius Petreius had failed to extract any details about when they would want the cash back, or how much interest they were expecting. Since his death, their unpredictable demands for repayment had been causing the Petreius brothers major headaches. While the brothers had struggled to remain solvent, Gabinius Fuscus had risen to become a senior magistrate on the local city council, and his even wealthier cousin was now a Senator down in Rome.

‘Is it just one of them, or both?’ asked Ruso.

‘Neither,’ said Lucius, propping his elbows on the worn surface of the desk and cradling his head in his hands. ‘Well, both. Indirectly.’

Ruso waited, wondering if Lucius’ inability to define the problem might be part of the reason he had failed to solve it.

‘At least the Senator won’t be bothering us,’ said Lucius. ‘Not in person. He’s too busy down in Rome, trying to find ways of undermining Hadrian.’

‘Good.’

Lucius looked up. ‘No, it isn’t. In the meantime he’s let a shark called Severus loose to manage his estate.’

‘Who’s he?’

‘Some distant relation from Rome, apparently. Everybody reckons they’ve sent him and his sister up here to get rid of them.’

‘And this Severus is the one who’s trying to get the seizure order?’

‘Severus,’ said Lucius, snatching up a stylus and emphasizing each word with a stab of the point into the desk, ‘is a Devious, Vindictive, Lying Bastard.’

‘Ah.’

‘That money was all there, whatever he says. I put it in front of him myself.’

Ruso decided not to interrupt. If he listened for long enough, Lucius would start to make sense.

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ said Lucius. ‘You’re thinking, why didn’t you wait while he counted it?’

‘You know what the Gabinii are like.’

Lucius tossed the stylus aside. ‘When your wife’s in floods of tears and your son’s howling in pain, Gaius, it’s hard to care what the Gabinii are like.’

Lucius had been sitting where he was sitting now, counting the money for the latest instalment of the loan repayment, when there was a commotion in the entrance hall. News had arrived that Cass’s brother was drowned. While everyone was absorbing this shock Little Lucius, aged four, wandered into the yard, climbed up a ladder and fell off the roof of the stables.

‘His arm was bent the wrong way at the elbow. The doctor thought he might have to amputate.’

‘Nasty,’ agreed Ruso. ‘Nobody would blame you if you miscounted.’

‘I didn’t!’ snapped Lucius. ‘Severus took advantage. We rushed into town to find a doctor and I just stopped off at the estate to dump the cash on his desk. The evil bastard must have been able to hear the child crying, but he left me standing there while he chatted to his steward. When I told him I was in a hurry he took the money and said, “Don’t let me hold you up; I’ll send the receipt over later.”

‘Ah,’ said Ruso.

‘And he smiled when he said it.’

‘Ah.’

‘Only instead of a receipt we got a demand saying it was two hundred short, and when I didn’t fall for that, he said he’d take us to court.’

‘I see.’

‘I thought the Senator might want to know he’d got a crook running his estate, so I went and told Fuscus what was going on. Fuscus told me to go home and not to worry about it, so I didn’t.’ Lucius cleared his throat. ‘Only he didn’t do a thing. It should never have come to a court hearing, Gaius. Severus was lying. I thought if I called his bluff he’d back down.’

‘Ah.’

‘Don’t keep saying “Ah” in that tone of voice. You weren’t here. And anyway, you’d think local magistrates would back a decent farmer against some fly-by-night from Rome, wouldn’t you? Especially since half of them used to spend the evenings lolling round our dining tables pretending to be Father’s friends.’

Ruso was less surprised than his brother seemed to be. Their father had probably borrowed money from most of the local dignitaries at one time or another. Still, no matter how annoyed they might have been, he could not understand how a small squabble had led to bankruptcy proceedings. There was something else that Lucius was holding back. ‘Just tell me the rest and get it over with, Brother. I’ve had a long day and my foot’s aching.’

The pitch of Lucius’ voice rose, as it always did when he was lying. ‘Tell you what?’

‘Whatever it is that turned a row over the cost of a decent amphora of wine into an attempt to ruin us.’

‘It’s not my fault, Gaius!’

Ruso shifted sideways and stretched his leg out along the trunk. ‘I didn’t say it was.’