Ruth Downie - Tabula Rasa

Her thoughts were interrupted by “That is the first time I have spoken with Petta since the business with Conn.”

Tilla twisted round to face her companion. “The business with Conn?”

“Petta and Conn were almost betrothed, did you not know?”

“I heard there was a girl,” said Tilla, struggling to fit the woman she had just met with the picture of Conn’s lost love that she had formed after listening to the gossip at Ria’s.

“She left Conn for a soldier. He got her pregnant and then he was posted somewhere else. Conn refused to take her back if she kept the child. So Petta needed a father for the child, Aedic’s father was widowed and needed a wife, and you see how it has turned out.”

Tilla said, “I heard the soldier forced her.”

“That is what she told Conn to start with, but it was a lie.”

The story was more complicated than the gossips had thought. “Conn should not be losing sleep over her.”

Enica said, “That is what we all told him. But Conn likes to be angry. So my husband still has no grandchildren.”

Tilla wondered why people who did not deserve children had no difficulty producing them, and then remembered to tell herself that, compared with many women, she had very little to complain about.

At first Ruso did not recognize the brothel keeper. The fox-pelt color was gone: Today her hair was a startling jet-black to match the makeup around her eyes, but the professional smile was the same. “What’s your pleasure, Doctor?”

“A word in private,” he suggested.

She led him into a little room that smelled as though the brightly colored rugs and cushions were concealing a bad damp problem.

“I’m told it’s harder to buy staff these days,” he said, lowering himself onto the little couch as instructed. “Since the change in the law.”

“I hope you’re not going to make me an offer, sir. We run a respectable house here.”

“I’m still looking for the boy. I need to know how your business works. You can’t just buy from anybody? What’s changed?”

“It’s the emperor, sir. May the gods bless him. He’s a great improver, isn’t he?”

“Undoubtedly,” said Ruso, aware that not everyone wanted to be improved.

“Says nobody can sell to us or the gladiator boys unless he can show a good cause in law.”

Ruso wondered what would constitute a good cause, and whether it would involve the bad behavior of the slave or the financial desperation of the owner. “What do you think of that?”

“Very commendable, sir.”

“And does everyone share that view?”

She tilted her head to one side. “I have heard it suggested, sir, that a business with standards can’t run on everybody else’s cast-off staff. These days lot of the better houses have taken to breeding their own workers. If you want happy customers, you can’t offer them riffraff.”

Ruso nodded. “Are there other sources?”

The lips pursed. “All my girls are legal, sir. You can check.”

“I’m not here to cause trouble,” he reminded her. “If some other owner wanted to buy a stolen boy, where would he-or she-go?”

She glanced at the door. “I have to do business with these people, sir. I can’t afford to have it said-”

“Branan is nine years old.”

She sighed. “I had a boy once. He died of a fever.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You won’t say who told you?”

“Not a word.”

She leaned closer. He had grown used to the damp, but now he was assailed by a sudden waft of garlic. “I hear things,” she whispered, “about Lupus over in Coria. Nothing definite, mind. Just rumors. Back-door deals.”

“Is Lupus the dealer who has an agent in Vindolanda?”

“That’s the one. Down the main street in Vindolanda, turn left just past the butcher’s shop and it’s the third door on the right. Ask for Piso.”

The stable hand had tied the bay up with a very short rope in order to brush him. “Vindolanda again already, sir?”

“I forgot something.” Ruso stepped back as the horse shifted sideways and nearly knocked the groom over. He had a feeling that he was going around in circles, but he didn’t know what else to try, and nobody else seemed to know, either.

The horse was happy to canter much of the way to Vindolanda: good, not only because Ruso was in a hurry, but also because he could speed past what was obviously turning into a major argument over a pile of broken red crockery at the side of the road. A driver was waving his arms about and shouting at a group of natives. Ruso overheard something about “I’ve been bloody searched twice already!” He urged the horse on before anyone might imagine he would like to get involved.

Most of Vindolanda’s shoppers had gone home now. A few off-duty soldiers were lounging outside the bars. He went down to the fort gate and reported the roadside fracas before heading off in search of Piso.

The dealer’s agent was down a side street, exactly where he had been told. He tethered the horse on a short rein, warning the small boys who offered to “watch him for you, mister” not to get too close.

But whatever he might have hoped to learn from Piso, he was out of luck. According to the hulking house slave, the agent had gone away on business. The slave either did not know where or had been instructed not to say. He was not allowed to let anyone in. There was no stock there. The master had taken all of them with him.

“Never mind,” Ruso assured him. “Perhaps you can get a message to him.” He leaned closer. “I don’t want to say this out in the street,” he explained, “but there’s a bit of a problem over the boy one of our men sold him the other day.”

“Yes, sir.”

Ruso was aware of trying to steady his voice. Yes, sir could mean anything. “I wanted to make sure your master knew about it.”

The slave eyed him for a moment, then said, “I think everyone knows, sir.”

Now it was the tremble in his hands he needed to steady as well. He waited until a gaggle of children had led a puppy down the street on a length of twine before he leaned forward again. “Your master’s problem isn’t the boy so much as the seller. He’s claiming your master arranged the deal in the first place, and all he did was deliver.”

“The seller’s been caught, sir?”

“He’s singing like a bird in a cage,” Ruso told him. “But nobody knows how much of it is true.”

The slave’s eyes narrowed. “Why should you want to help my master, sir?”

Indeed, why would he? “I can’t explain it on the doorstep,” said Ruso, truthfully.

He dropped the latch as requested, aware that the slave was at least half a hand taller than he was, and wide enough to block the hallway. The exit was behind him, but he would have to lift the latch and pull the door inward. Before he reached the street the slave would have plenty of time to haul him back. He swallowed. “The seller has been under suspicion for some time, but we have no proof.”

“ ‘We,’ sir?”

“The Legion,” Ruso explained, deciding to stick to the truth as far as possible. “I’m helping Tribune Accius sort this out.”

There was a sound behind the slave. Another figure was moving toward them. “Who’s there?” demanded a woman who sounded as though she was not expecting to like the answer. At that point it seemed to dawn on the slave that he had not asked.

“Medical Officer Ruso from Parva,” Ruso explained, rescuing him.

“He’s come to see the master,” the slave told her, shifting to one side in the gloom of the corridor to reveal a short woman with her hair pulled back from her forehead as if it were a nuisance.

She looked Ruso up and down. “The master’s not here.”