Kelli Stanley - The Curse-Maker

He sucked his teeth thoughtfully. “Yes, I know.”

I was starting to run out of patience. “Can you tell me how all this works?”

“Well, as to how it works, I leave it to the goddess, but I can tell you how they run their business. Come with me.”

He walked ahead, his toga dragging the dirty pavement. It wasn’t draped properly, and I noticed it was wet along the bottom. Not exactly an advertisement for clean and healthy Aquae Sulis.

We stopped at the end of a row. A man in his late forties was hammering out a sheet of lead on a board. This one wasn’t rotten.

The priest jerked a thumb at me. “He wants to know what curse-writers do, Peregrinus. He’s trying to find out about Bibax.”

The scribe looked from the priest to me and then kept hammering.

“Don’t know anything about him,” he said carefully, “but I’ll tell you what we do. All of us are a bit different, though we all use roughly the same curse books, and the materials are the same.”

“Curse books? Are they like spell books?”

The priest folded his arms across his chest and seemed to be enjoying himself. Peregrinus answered patiently.

“They are. There are formulae we use that are tried and true, for all sorts of problems and situations. Oaths, court cases, love problems-you love someone, she doesn’t love you-gambling and races, so your horse comes a winner-not so much of that here, as we don’t have chariot racing. Not yet, anyway. Here, of course, the most common problem is health or stealing. People constantly losing clothes and goods at the baths.”

He pounded the lead a few more times, then picked it up and gave it a satisfied look. Then he handed it to me.

“Some people use thicker sheets because they’re in a hurry-or maybe the client’s in a hurry. Or because they’re too lazy or clumsy to hammer it right. But the better ones among us, when we get a commission, we take a thick piece of lead, square cut, and we hammer it out thin. It not only saves us on lead, but it shows up the writing better-don’t have to press as hard.”

I handed it back to him. “Do you hammer it before or after you get a commission?”

“Oh, afterwards, of course. You can see for yourself the lead’s too delicate to sit around here waiting for someone. As soon as I get a client, I prepare the lead. This is for a lady who wants a ring back. I’ll have it ready for her when she comes out of the baths, and then she’ll throw it in the spring.”

He turned to rummage in a shallow box and pulled out a very small, thin stylus. “This is my favorite stylus. Writes real fine. Writing’s important, don’t you believe those who tell you it isn’t. They just can’t do it properly. The goddess likes it done nice.”

I took the stylus and looked at it carefully. I started to understand why Bibax, Rat Face, and Peregrinus were all on the small side. The tablets were tiny, and the writing could be a delicate process.

“So I take my stylus, and I write. This one’ll say something like ‘May the person who took my ring-be it man or woman, slave or free-be tormented with no sleep, no rest, and never be free from pain, and may their insides rot from within, until they return my ring to the temple.’ She might want more detail, and more specific punishment, and she may even give me a list of suspects. We can include that, too. This lady just paid for a general.”

“You pay more for more detail?”

“Of course. It’s more work. For me and the goddess, eh, Calpurnius?” He laughed, and the priest joined him.

“What makes the goddess listen to you?”

He grew serious. “That I can’t say. We put in a formula to get the goddess’s attention, and the client promises to give her something. This lady may even give her the ring, once she gets it back.”

“So she’ll pay you to ask for the goddess’s help, and then once Sulis finds and punishes the thief, she’ll pay the goddess. Seems like they’d lose less money if they just bought another ring.”

Peregrinus winked. “Well, don’t be spreadin’ that around. We’d be out of business. The final thing to do is fold up the curse-it’s important that it be folded right, because that helps bind the spell. That’s another reason for hammering it out so thin. Some of these amateurs”-he looked around and spat contemptuously-“they don’t understand you can’t just throw in a thick piece of lead and have the magic work.”

He looked up at the sun. “I’d best be getting back to this. Hope that helped you. Terrible thing, what happened.”

“Yes. Thanks. The council’s asked me to find the killer.”

He squinted up at me from underneath his gray-red eyebrows. “Well, if you can’t, Sulis will.” Then he went back to work.

Calpurnius was smiling sardonically. “Did that answer your questions?”

I looked at him. “I always have more.”

He sucked his teeth again. “I have a few minutes before I’m needed at the temple.”

“What do you do there?”

He laughed without mirth. “I’m a temple cleaner. Lowest of the low. A priest in training, suckling the hind tit of Sulis, and lucky to get a few drops.”

“How does the temple collect its taxes? From people like Bibax, I mean.”

He raised his eyebrows and said in a dry voice: “You’ll have to ask Papirius about that. I don’t get to touch the money.”

“Did you know Bibax?”

He shrugged. “Not personally. I saw him around. He wasn’t the best or the worst of his kind.”

I asked slowly: “Will the lady get her ring back?”

He gave me a funny look. “Maybe. Sometimes they do. Fairly often, in fact. The curses are a way to keep order in this town. We’re far away from Rome-that little fortlet doesn’t give a damn about us-and we don’t have vigiles or even a native system left to enforce the laws. And it’s a small place, Aquae Sulis, for all the cosmopolitan airs it puts on. And that’s only been within the last few years, anyway.”

“How do curses enforce the law? I don’t understand.”

“Don’t you? You can’t keep secrets in this place. Take a look around. Between everyone going to the baths, and the sellers at the marketplace-who would sell their grandmother’s teeth if they could find a buyer-everyone knows everyone else’s business. If Flavia’s ring gets stolen, there are a limited number of people who probably did it. If word gets around that she’s had them cursed, well-why take chances? Just leave it at the temple anonymously.”

“Why should a thief care?”

“Because a thief has to live here, too. And a thief depends on Sulis’s waters, just like the rest of us.” He shivered. “I’m getting cold. I’d better go back.”

“Calpurnius-what if the thief isn’t a local?”

He paused and smiled. “Ah. That would be a problem, wouldn’t it? We hope fear will keep them all in line.” Then he turned to leave again.

I changed tactics. “Do people die here?”

That stopped him midstep. “What did you say?”

“Do people die here?”

He laughed again, a dry wheezing sound that sounded frozen and empty.

“Have you looked around you? Of course, people die. They come here sick-wills made out-she can’t save all of them, can she? Not even a precious medicus could do that.”

He gave me a withering look and headed back to the Temple, his toga still trailing a growing collection of dirt. On an impulse, I ran after him.

“ Ultor -the message. Was Bibax killed because he was a failure? Because his curses didn’t work?”

He was only a few feet away from the temple, and there were other priests on the steps. He stood for a moment, wavering. Then he turned around and stared at me.

His voice was lowered. “Oh, no. I don’t think so.” He looked from left to right, then up at me, his brown eyes narrowed and penetrating. “I think Rufus Bibax was killed because his curses came true.”