Persona Non Grata (23 page)

48

R
USO WAS APPLYING himself to the clumsy process of climbing the porch steps when he found himself facing his stepmother.

“There you are, Gaius! Where have you been? We need to talk about the seating plan.”

“Have you seen Tilla anywhere?”

“You will shave before dinner, won’t you? We want Lollia to think you’ve made an effort. When I think of the wonderful dinner parties we used to have when your poor father was alive . . .”

“Have you seen Tilla?”

“Now, the seating plan—”

“Tilla?”

“No, dear. I expect she’s with the farm slaves.”

Arria was as surprised as everyone else when he told her the senator’s investigators had arrived.

He said, “They’ll probably want to question us all.”

“But we don’t know anything!”

“We know what happened. We’re the only ones who do.”

She sighed. “Oh, Gaius. I do wish you hadn’t made such a fuss. Why can’t you just tell them you’ve changed your mind and you’ve just realized he was ill?”

“Why would I say that?”

“Well, dear, I would have thought that was obvious.”

It was, but he did not want to admit it. He said, “If you were poisoned, would you want somebody to pretend you weren’t?”

“Really, Gaius! There’s no need—”

“I’m trying to do the right thing, Arria.”

“So are we all, dear. So what shall I say to them?”

He said, “Tell them what you know.”

“But what I know looks so bad! There you are, shut up in a room with him, and the next thing that happens—”

“Had nothing to do with me,” said Ruso, edging past her in the direction of the kitchen.“If it did, I’d make up a better story. What’s for lunch?”

Arria put a restraining hand on his shoulder. “Please don’t upset Cook, dear. You can’t imagine what it does to the pastry. And by the way, what did you say to Marcia yesterday? She was terribly cross.”

“We talked about a dowry,” he said, not in the mood to go over what he had since learned about Tertius the gladiator. “I’ll explain later.”

“Well, you’ll have to settle something on her now, dear. Who’s going to marry her when everybody thinks you poisoned Claudia’s husband?”

Ruso knew quite well that the yolk of hard-boiled egg was prone to disintegration. He should have brought a bowl. Instead, he was seated in front of the pile of unpaid bills and making an undignified attempt to lick scattered gray and yellow crumbs out of his cupped hands when someone rapped on the study door.

“What?” he demanded, slapping the remains of the egg from his hands and wiping them on his tunic in a manner of which his mother would not have approved.

The end of Galla’s “Please, sir, may I . . .” was inaudible.

“Open the door, woman!” he called, wondering whether her common sense had finally deserted her or whether he really was as terrifying as she seemed to think.

He slapped a bill from the wheelwright shut and looked up to see her standing in the doorway clutching a tray of dirty wooden bowls and grubby napkins. “Is this important? I’m busy.”

Galla shuffled in and pushed the door shut with her foot. “Yes, sir.”

He leaned across the desk and helped himself to a small loaf of bread from the corner of the tray. Failing to find any sign of teethmarks or dribble on it, he said, “Has this been anywhere it shouldn’t be?”

“No, sir. Miss Polla didn’t want it.”

Ruso sat back and tore off a chunk of bread. “Well?”

“Thank you for letting me back in the house, sir.”

“It was only sensible. Is that what you came to tell me?”

“No, sir.” Galla appeared to raise herself to her full height— which was not great— before taking a deep breath and announcing to a point just below his chin, “Tilla is gone to Arelate, my lord.”

“She’s what?” The bread landed on top of the wheelwright’s bill.

The repeat of this surprising statement was mumbled to the tray, as if Galla had used up all her courage in saying it the first time.

“Gods almighty! Why didn’t you come and tell me this earlier? When did she go?”

“I couldn’t find you, sir. I think she went just after dawn. She told me to say she was sorry not to say good-bye.”

“But what in Jupiter’s name does she want to go there for?”

Galla gripped the outside of the tray and pushed the edge back into the folds of her tunic as if it were a protective barrier between them. “I asked her not to go, my lord.”

“This is ridiculous. I thought she’d got over this sort of wandering off. It’ll take her all day to walk that far in this heat, and she’ll probably be robbed on the way. Where’s she going to sleep?”

Galla cleared her throat. “She was hoping for a lift. She talked to a man with a cart.”

“Which man?”

“Solemnis, my lord.”

“Never heard of him. Who does he work for? What the hell does he think he’s playing at?”

Galla looked as though she was going to burst into tears. “He is . . . a friend of a friend, sir.”

“Can he be trusted?”

“He is a follower of Christos, my lord.”

“You mean she’s run off to join some weird religion?”

“No, sir. They have gone to find out about the ship.”

“They?”

“Mistress Cassiana is gone too.”

Ruso stood up and flung the first stack of bills back into the trunk. “Put that bloody tray down,” he ordered, snatching up his stick. “Lock the rest of this stuff away, then take the key down to Lucius in the winery. Tell him his wife’s run off to Arelate with Tilla and a—no, leave out the religious bit. Tell him I’ve gone to get them back before they get into trouble.”

“Yes, sir.”

“As if we haven’t got enough problems! Why didn’t you send me a message? Why didn’t you tell somebody?”

The girl opened her mouth as if she were about to speak, then closed it again.

“Don’t stand there gasping like a fish! Say it!”

Galla swallowed again. “I’m sorry, my lord,” she said, lifting a pile of documents from the desk. “I couldn’t find you, and I did not know who else to tell.” She knelt to tidy the jumble of tablets and scroll cases in the trunk.

She had a point. Who would she tell? Arria, who had let Tilla tread grapes? The girls, who had abandoned Tilla themselves?

“You could have told my brother.”

“Mistress Cassiana told me to look after the children and not to say anything, sir.”

Of course. Rocking sideways to rest his weight on the stick, Ruso said, “There must be times, Galla, when you wish you were part of a different house hold.”

“Never, my lord.”

“Really?” Swinging around to head for the door, he muttered, “It must be just me and Marcia, then.”

From the top of the steps, he could see over the wall to where the stable lad was lugging buckets of water across the yard. “I need Severus’s horse tacked up!” he called. “Now!”

49

B
ROTHER SOLEMNIS HAD hardly spoken a word since they set off this morning. Tilla watched him from her none-too-comfortable seat on a bundle of hides in the back of the cart and wondered if he was praying for the protection of his god. On top of the usual carter’s worries about lame animals, breakdowns, bad roads, damaged goods, and bandits, he had now been accosted by a barbarian woman and a stranger, demanding a lift to Arelate. She suspected he had only taken them because he was too frightened to refuse.

Cass was not much better company. She had chattered nervously as the cart first rattled and jolted them away from the farm. She had never been to Arelate. It was a big and beautiful town. The river was said to be huge. This would be an adventure.

As the sun rose higher, her excitement faded. When they passed a milestone she read, “Nemausus, eleven miles,” as if it were a mark of loss rather than a sign of progress.

Tilla reflected that more and more these days, she was thinking it might be useful to be able to read. Somewhere among the other letters chipped into the tall stone must be the good news of the diminishing distance to Arelate.

The milestone must have inspired Cass’s sudden, “We won’t be back to night, will we?”

“We will find an inn.” Had Cass only just thought of this? How fast did she imagine a mule cart could make a trip of over twenty miles?

Cass was chewing her lower lip. “What if they wake in the night?”

“Galla will deal with them,” said Tilla, guessing she was talking about the children.

“I’m their mother.”

“They will manage. They are used to Galla, and they are not babies.”

Cass fell silent again. Tilla leaned back, closed her eyes, and tried to pretend that she was still traveling with the Medicus to a peaceful land of blue skies and gentle breezes where she would be welcomed into a new family.

“Lucius will be furious.”

“Lucius will have to learn to treat you better,” insisted Tilla, secretly disappointed that so far neither the Medicus nor his brother had come after them.

Cass was saying something about, “. . . divorces me?”

“Of course he will not divorce you. He cannot afford a slave to do your work and nobody else would marry him.”

In the silence that followed, there was plenty of time to wish she had thought about that before she said it.

Cass said, “I hope somebody remembered to collect the eggs.” When Tilla did not answer she said, “What if the slaves eat all the provisions?”

“Then they will go hungry later.”

“We should never have left home.”

“We are doing a good thing,” Tilla insisted, pushing aside the urge to explain that if Cass had not turned up at the last minute, she would have abandoned the trip herself and been at the dinner to face the widow and all her money and watch the Medicus trying to make his difficult choice. “We will go and find somebody who knows about your brother’s ship.”

“But what if—”

“Most of
what if
never happens. Pray to Christos for help. Galla says you can do it anywhere.”

“If Galla hadn’t told you about Christos, we wouldn’t be here. When I get back Lucius will have her whipped.”

Tilla was glad she was not Galla. Somehow, everything was always her fault.

“Anyway,” continued Cass, “I can’t pray to Christos. You’ll have to do it. You’re not married.”

“Does that matter?”

“Christos’s followers are supposed to obey their husbands.”

Tilla tried to picture the women who had been at the meeting and wondered if they had all been there with male permission.

“I told my brother Lucius would never let me follow a foreign religion when we’ve spent all that money building Diana’s temple, so it was no good him telling me any more about Christos.”

The cart jolted in and out of a pothole. Cass pushed back one of the bundles that had slid sideways beneath her. “I should have let Lucius build a tomb.”

“You can build a tomb when you get home.”

“I tried to explain to him, but he wouldn’t listen.”

Tilla yawned and lifted Galla’s hat in the hope that some cool air might circulate around her head. She wished Cass would keep her worries to herself. It had all seemed so straightforward last night, in the enthusiasm of the singing and the cries of
Amen, sister!

“We are doing a good thing,” she repeated, wishing she was not doing it at all.

50

T
HE LEATHER WATER bottle thumped against his side as the horse thudded across the burned stubble of the wheat field, cutting off the corner where the track led up to the main road. Ruso jammed his fluttering hat lower on his head and glanced down to check that he had fastened the safety strap on his knife. He urged the horse to leap the ditch and flung it into a sharp turn to veer past a train of startled pack mules. Ignoring the angry yells of the driver, he dug his heels into the gray flanks and headed along the verge at a gallop.

He could hear nothing around him: only the rush of air and the thump of hooves. Ahead of him, a flock of sheep scattered at his approach. He yelled an apology to the shepherd— who should have had more sense than to use the road, anyway— and urged Severus’s horse on. It responded with a further burst of speed that would have set the stable lad laughing with delight. This was as near as a man could get to flying. At this rate, he might even catch them before they reached Arelate. Whatever transport this Solemnis had to offer, it would not be as fast as his own.

With luck, all that would be needed was to make Solemnis one very sorry carter and deliver a lecture on why women should never travel with strange men, even in a civilized country. If they were unlucky . . . Severus’s contact might be in the port. He did not want to dwell on what the man might do to silence two women who were asking the wrong questions.

Ruso squinted at the sky. It must be past the eighth hour by now. The sun was well over the zenith and it was appallingly hot. His eyes felt gritty. The kerchief he had tied over his nose was slipping down. He pushed it back into place, wrinkling his nose in a futile attempt to hold it there and finally yanking it down out of the way and swearing at it. He had never intended to hurtle across to Arelate at this speed. As usual, he was having to clear up somebody else’s mess. And as usual, instead of talking things over in a sensible manner, Tilla had decided to make his life far more difficult than it was already. Sometimes he wondered whether she did it on purpose. A one-woman rebellion against Rome.

Severus’s horse, out of condition from its enforced rest, was already beginning to tire. He would have to pick up a fresh animal halfway— and since he was not on active duty, he would have to pay. In the meantime, he slowed to a canter and swerved to overtake a heavy goods vehicle, not bothering to wonder what might be under the tarpaulin at the back. Nobody facing a journey of over twenty miles would travel by oxcart: It was quicker to walk. He was just urging the horse past a panniered donkey when it struck him that Tilla might well be doing what he least expected in order to avoid detection. On the other hand, if he paused to inspect every vehicle he might not catch up with them before the light began to fade and the town gates closed.

There was no sense in looking over his shoulder, but he did it all the same.

As he had expected, there was no blond head poking out from under the receding tarpaulin. Instead, the wagon was being overtaken on both sides. Two more riders were pounding toward him, evidently staging some sort of race.

The road ahead was clear to the next rise. Fields dotted with the orange roofs of small farms stretched away into the distance on both sides. He wondered if the shepherd had managed to regroup his flock before those two idiots thundered past and scattered it again. As he topped the rise to see more empty road ahead, he could hear the racers’ hoofbeats. He nudged his own horse aside to let them pass.

Two men with kerchiefs over their faces drew level with him, one urging on a black horse and the other a big roan. Both men looked old enough to know better. The roan was much too close.

“Move over!” he yelled, just as the roan barged him. Ruso’s horse leaped sideways. A front hoof slipped on the side of the ditch and he was sent lurching over its shoulder. The horse managed to scramble up and Ruso righted himself, wishing he had a cavalry mount and a decent saddle. He was still trying to calm the horse when he noticed the men were turning back.

“I’m all right!” he yelled, holding the animal steady in the middle of the road, well away from the ditch in case it decided to spook again at their approach.

They were coming too fast. Both shouting. He saw the odd movement of the hand. The flash of metal in the sunlight. For a moment he stared, unable to believe what was happening. To have survived Britannia only to be attacked by bandits here at home.

His fingers fumbled with the safety strap. They were almost on him now: the one on the black with knife raised, the other reaching forward, ready to seize the reins of his horse.

No time for his own knife. He urged the horse toward the gap between them, ready to barge the roan while hooking at the knife man’s arm with the end of his walking stick. He had to get away from them and go to warn Tilla.

It would have worked. It would have worked beautifully. In fact it was on the way to working when his own mount stumbled on that front leg. He heard the rider of the roan cry out as the two horses collided. Ruso’s lunge toward the knife man became a wild wave in midair as the gray horse gave way beneath him and they crashed to the ground in a crunching confusion of hooves and tail and elbows and gravel.

Ruso’s first instinct was to curl up, hands protecting his head. Only when the thrashing about had stopped did the pain start to burn its way through the shock.

Someone was nudging his shoulder. He wanted to say,
Don’t just poke the casualty, talk to him!
but then he remembered in whose company he had fallen. He lifted one arm—at least that much was working— and found himself staring into the whiskery nostrils of Severus’s horse, which was examining him with an air of puzzled concern.

He rolled over onto his back. A shadow fell over him and an oddly shaped fist clutching a knife filled the center of his vision. Beyond it, he managed to make out that the other man had unrolled some sort of document.

“In the name of Senator Gabinius Valerius,” announced the reader, “I order you to come with us. Put it away, Stilo. He’s got nowhere to run.”

The man backed away. As he sheathed his knife Ruso saw that someone had done an untidy amputation of the last two fingers. He sat up and began to inspect himself for damage. He said, “You’re the investigators.”

“Calvus and Stilo,” said the knife man, who must be the one the gatekeeper had described as the muscle. “I’m Stilo.”

Ruso wiped the blood off a scrape on his elbow and decided the rest of him was only bruised. Mercifully he had done no more damage to his foot. “Why didn’t you say so before?”

“If you didn’t know who we was,” countered Stilo, “why was you running away?”

Ruso unstrapped the bottle that the stable lad had filled for him. Evidently he had not bothered to rinse it: The water tasted disgusting. “I wasn’t running away,” he said. “I need to catch up with somebody.”

“A lot of people need to catch up with somebody when we want to talk to them.”

“Get back on your horse and come with us,” said Calvus, gingerly easing his shoulder backward and forward with the opposite hand and wincing as he did so. He was slightly built and several inches shorter than Ruso: a man who might be irritated by his gruff companion but who would need his bulk as backup.

Ruso stifled his professional curiosity about the state of Calvus’s shoulder and moved on to examine the gray horse.

He stumbled as a hand shoved him from behind. Stilo said, “He said, get back on.”

Ruso retrieved his stick and urged the horse forward a few paces. Its gait was not dissimilar to his own. He swore quietly. There was no way he was going to catch up with anyone on this animal. “I’m trying to get to a friend,” he said, without much hope. “She’s in danger. I need to borrow a horse.”

The answer was in the looks on their faces. The best he could do was to get home and try and persuade someone—Lollia Saturnina?—to let him borrow a fresh mount. “This one’s lame,” he said, “and so am I. It’ll take me hours to walk anywhere.” He glanced from one to the other of them.

“Get on Stilo’s horse,” ordered Calvus. “The exercise will do him good.”

The glare that accompanied Stilo’s handing over of the black horse’s reins suggested that Ruso would be sorry for this later.