Ruth Downie: Terra Incognita

This sounded horribly like the tale of Ruso’s family shrine to Diana.

“Felix said Daddy should have asked the builder for proper figures right from the start.”

It was exactly what Ruso and Lucius had said to each other when they found out the extent of the debt.

“Daddy told me to stay away from him, but by then I thought I was having a baby. I didn’t dare tell Daddy. But Daddy was still being nice to him because Felix had a lot of business connections and he didn’t want him to cause trouble in the guild. That’s why I couldn’t believe Daddy would do anything to hurt him.”

“Did your father know that Felix had come to see you after he left the bar that night?”

“I have thought about this,” she said. “I thought he was asleep in bed but he must have heard us.”

“Did you hear your father leave the house after that?”

“No. But I woke up later to hear him banging on the door. Ness had locked up and gone to sleep, and he couldn’t get in. I got up but she was already there. So I went back to bed.”

“Did you see him come in?”

“No. It was dark. Ness was just carrying a small lamp. I heard her say something, and he told her not to make a fuss.” Aemilia’s fingers crept toward her mouth. “He said it was only a nosebleed and he was all right now.”

“I see.”

She hung her head. “When I first heard about Felix I was frightened that he might have done something terrible. Then I told myself I was being silly. He is my father! And then the doctor confessed and I thought I must be wrong.” She turned away from him, gazing down across the meadow to where the horses were swishing their tails against the flies.

“Does your father often get nosebleeds?”

“No.”

“Did he say where he went that night?”

“He told Ness he had been to check something at the brewery.”

Ruso said, “Do the brewery staff sleep on the premises?”

“The foreman sleeps in the loft, but he’s very deaf. Daddy has a key. He could go in there without anyone knowing.”

So the story might have been true. He said, “Where’s your father now?”

“When I left, he was ill in bed,” she said. “He is usually ill after the caterers’ dinners.”

“Do you know what he was wearing that night?”

“There was no blood on his cloak,” she said dully. “I looked. Under that, the tunic with the blue stripe that is lost in the wash.” She paused. “Could he have taken his cloak off before he…?”

“Yes,” said Ruso. “Yes, he could.” After he had stunned Felix, the brewer had been clear thinking enough to realize that the mutilation that would help to incriminate Rianorix was going to incriminate him too if he wasn’t careful.

“We shall have to apologize to the washerwoman,” she said. “The tunic never went there, did it?”

“What do you think he might have done with it?”

She shrugged. “Anything.”

“Was it the sort of thing lots of people wear? Or could it be identified as his?”

“It was an old one,” she said. “But it was expensive. He bought it from a trader from Londinium. It was a very fine weave.”

“He won’t have dumped it where someone might find it, then,” said Ruso, glancing down toward the river and hoping it was not wrapped around a lump of stone lying on the bottom.

“Ness has already searched the house for it,” said Aemilia. “She couldn’t remember sending it to the washerwoman, but I think she didn’t know who else to blame.”

“Tell her to search again,” said Ruso. “And this time we’ll help her.”

Ruso knelt beside the blackened slabs of the firing hole by Catavignus’s malting floor. They had already caused a disruption inside the brewery and scrabbled fruitlessly through the damp malt that had been loaded onto the floor ready for drying. This was the last possible hiding place he and Aemilia could think of.

“Do you clean this out every time you light it?” he asked, peering past the kindling into the murk of the low tunnel that led under the raised floor of the building to the flue.

“It won’t need doing today, sir,” the slave boy assured him, bending toward the kindling with the glowing brand he had just fetched from inside the brewery.

Ruso grabbed his wrist. “Don’t.”

“Miss Aemilia?” The youth looked at her in the hope of being saved from this interfering officer and allowed to get on with his work.

“When was the last time it was raked out?” asked Ruso.

“About a week ago. The barley ran out so the master had to wait for them to send some down from the granary.”

“Do it now, will you?”

“Rake it out?” The slave looked understandably appalled. “I’ve just got it ready to fire! The malt needs to be dried now or it’ll go over. The master’s very particular.”

“Please,” said Aemilia, taking Ruso by the arm. “Do as he says.”

“But miss, your father-”

“I’ll tell him it was my fault.”

“Have you noticed any odd smells in the burning lately?” inquired Ruso as the slave knelt by the hole and began to gather up the kindling.

“There’s always odd smells,” grunted the youth, reaching for the rake and crouching to insert it at an awkward angle. “If it burns, it goes in here.”

Ash began to pile up outside the mouth of the tunnel. The youth’s hands and arms and knees were smeared in soot. He had a black mustache where he had wiped his nose on his arm. “I can’t get any more out, sir. You’ll have to get a little kid to go right inside if you want it done properly.”

“We haven’t time,” said Ruso, imagining what a ghastly job it would be.

“I’ll just get something to put this ash in, miss.”

When he was gone Ruso took the rake and poked at the crumbling flakes of wood ash.

“Nothing,” said Aemilia.

He took a deep breath, got down on his knees, and reached an arm into the stinking black depths of the flue. He could feel the soft powder rising in the air, entering his nose and eyes and coating his skin. This, he realized with disgust, was where Catvignus had hidden the sack containing the head until he had decided to deposit it as evidence outside Rianorix’s house. He groped about in the grit of the ash that remained on the floor, ramming his shoulder farther in, praying for one of Tilla’s miracles. He realized he was no longer interested in proving anyone’s innocence or guilt. He was desperately hoping to prove-to himself, if nobody else-that he was not a total fool.

His fingers closed around brittle half-burned sticks. Scraps of broken pot. Then something thin and woven and pliable. He drew it out, blew off the dust, and lay it on top of the brushwood waiting to be burned. He and Aemilia stared at it.

It was a scorched fragment of old green rag.

Ruso swore.

Aemilia said, “That’s an old tunic Ness was using for cleaning.”

“I suppose Ness can testify to what she saw that night,” said Ruso, disappointed. “It’s not very conclusive, though.”

A nosebleed would surely make stains very different from those of an attack on another human being. The tunic would have been just the evidence he needed, but he was not going to find that evidence now. In the distance, a trumpet sounded. Ruso scrambled to his feet and looked over the wall of the yard and down toward the river. A carriage with a large escort was making its way across the bridge. A red-cloaked formation of Batavian cavalry, glittering and immaculate in the sun, was trotting down the road to welcome it.

“I’ve got to go,” he said, wiping the soot from his hands onto his tunic.

“What shall I do?”

“Talk to Ness. Find out exactly what she saw and tell her she must talk to officer Metellus.” It might make a difference, although Ruso suspected not. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”