Ruth Downie: Terra Incognita

“I heard you had to bring in reinforcements.”

“A professional colleague volunteered, sir.”

“So you didn’t even manage that by yourself.”

“No, sir.” There was no point in arguing. “Sir, I need to ask you something.”

Decianus sighed. “Go on.”

“I was hoping you could release the girl Tilla-the one you just saw- to help me gather evidence this morning.”

Decianus lowered his head and pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. Looking up, he said, “Is this some sort of practical joke?”

“Sir?”

“Did she put you up to this?”

“No, sir.”

“I suppose you’d like me to release the basket maker as well?”

“No, sir. We can do that if we find some evidence against Catavignus.”

“Catavignus is on our side, Ruso, and it’s time you learned to stand on your own feet instead of calling on colleagues and women to help you out. You’ve already told Metellus that your deputy did it. Next you’ll be telling me it was you. I’m not surprised the legion thought they could spare you. You’re as mad as the Greek and twice as useless. Now clear off, I’ve got more important things to do.”

Valens, who had evidently abandoned all hope of sleep, looked up from examining an ulcerated leg. “Successful visit?”

“Not exactly,” said Ruso.

“Thessalus is asking for you.”

“Tell him I’m trying to sort something out.”

“He said to remind you the governor’s due at midday.”

“Not now he isn’t,” put in the owner of the leg.

“Really?” said Ruso, his hopes lifting.

“My mate just saw a dispatch rider who said he passed them about an hour ago out on the south road.”

“Are you sure?”

“It’s true, sir,” put in the orderly. “Only it’s less than an hour now because I heard it three patients ago.”

“Miss Aemilia is at the baths, sir.”

“No matter,” said Ruso. “It’s you I want to talk to. It’s about laundry.”

He followed Catavignus’s housekeeper into the kitchen. He was rewarded with the sight of limp garments festooned across the back of the room. “We’ve got no space for any more,” said Ness, surveying the drooping lines of twine. “There’s a woman you could talk to down on the bridge road. We sometimes send out there when we’ve got too much.”

“It’s not for me,” said Ruso, trying to ignore the feminine underwear draped across the nearest line and examining the tunics beyond for the vestiges of bloodstains. “I’m trying to find out something about the laundry here. Whether you’ve been asked to wash anything-unusual.”

“Unusual?”

“Ah-unusually soiled. Or perhaps you’ve found something that somebody’s had a go at washing by themselves. In the last few days.”

The woman frowned.

“I wouldn’t be troubling you with this if it weren’t very important.”

“I’ll have to ask the master, sir.”

“I’m asking you.”

She folded her arms. “I couldn’t answer questions about the household without the master’s permission, sir. Or Miss Aemilia.”

“I know,” said Ruso. “Which normally would be admirable, but it’s vital that you tell me right now.”

“Shall I wake the master, sir?”

“No!”

The woman looked relieved.

“I’ve been given the prefect’s authority,” insisted Ruso, not adding that it had now been rescinded.

“I don’t answer to the prefect about my laundry. If the master or Miss-”

“I’ll find Aemilia.”

As she followed him to the door the woman said, “Sorry not to help you, sir,” and actually sounded as though she meant it.

The elderly bath attendant raised a hand to halt him in the doorway. “Sorry, sir. This is the women’s session.”

“I know,” said Ruso, “It’s a woman I’m after. Aemilia, daughter of Catavignus the brewer. Can somebody fetch her for me?”

The man looked around nervously. “Are you family, sir?”

“Yes,” lied Ruso. “And it’s urgent.”

The man shook his head. “I don’t think you are, sir. I-oh!”

Ruso had grabbed him by the arms and lifted him off the floor. “Sorry,” he said, putting the man down again to one side, “but I really haven’t got time to argue.”

The female scream was a ghastly sound at the best of times, but when several of them did it together in a room with a bad echo, the effect was hideous. Ruso clapped his hands over his ears and shouted, “Has anyone seen Aemilia?” over the cacophony, but nobody seemed to be listening.

A glance around the hall revealed that he would have to go deeper into the female sanctuary that was the Coria bathhouse before the sounding of the midday bell.

The cold room was empty. It was in the warm room that the real trouble started.

“A man!”

“Get out!”

“Aemilia?” ventured Ruso with his head around the door, his gaze darting about wildly in an attempt not to settle on any undressed females except the one he needed to talk to.

“Go away!” shrieked a woman whose vast and dimpled thighs seemed to be keeping her anchored on the bench as she lunged at him with a towel.

“Could somebody please-”

“Help!”

“Help, a man!”

The crashing open of the cold room door behind him warned Ruso that the attendant had fetched reinforcements. He ignored the shrieks as he strode across to enter the hot room.

The heat and the additional screaming-they had obviously heard what was going on next door and got themselves ready-both hit him at the same time. They were followed by a splatter of hot water in the face, a hail of bathing equipment, and a flurry of buffeting towels.

“Out!” screamed his tormentors. “Out, out, out!”

“Where’s Aemilia?” yelled Ruso, ducking to one side and trying to shield his head with his arms.

“Out!”

He finally retreated when they started to beat him over the head with their wooden bath shoes.

Back in the warm room he was seized by three bath attendants and a couple of scantily clad women. The bath attendants were apologetic and applied no more force than necessary. The woman weren’t and didn’t.

“I was told she was here,” he insisted as they bundled him back through to the hall. “I didn’t mean to-”

“Stop!” called a female voice. “Please, stop! Doctor, it’s me!”

Ruso and his handlers paused. One of the women gave him a final kick to remind him not to do it again.

“I was having my hair washed,” explained Aemilia, wrapping the towel tighter around her ample frame.

“I need your permission to talk to your housekeeper.”

Aemilia pushed a strand of wet hair behind one ear. “I knew you would come sooner or later,” she said sadly. “I’ll get dressed. You can talk to me.”

They were standing in the meadow behind the bathhouse, far enough away from the buildings for only the grazing horses to hear what they were saying. Aemilia’s hair was lank and dark with damp, and her eyes looked hollow. He realized she was older than he had thought.

“I need to know what happened, Aemilia.”

She lifted her skirts above the grass and began to walk slowly along the top of the meadow. “I have tried to believe that the doctor did it,” she said, “Or the Stag Man. But I can’t.”

Ruso, in step beside her, said nothing.

When she said, “What will they do to him?” he knew she was talking about her father.

“Tell me what happened.”

“I met Felix through Daddy. Felix was interested in investing some money in the brewery. Then he lent Daddy the money to start the new house and introduced him to the builder. But the builders had hardly got going when they raised the price. Daddy was cross and said if he’d been told the truth about how much it was all going to cost in the first place he would never have started.”