Persona Non Grata (28 page)

66

R
USO PRESENTED HIMSELF at the gates of the senator’s estate without much hope, but to his surprise a slave escorted him into the garden where Claudia was sharing the shade of a summerhouse with her sister-in-law. Both were sitting with their hands in their laps and their backs very straight. As Ruso approached, Claudia’s expression betrayed a warmth of welcome he had rarely experienced when she was his wife, whereas Ennia’s pinched face grew even tighter. In response to his polite inquiry, Ennia burst out, “Of course we are not well! What do you expect? My brother is dead!” She turned to the slave who had escorted Ruso across the garden. “Why was he allowed in?”

The slave mumbled that he did not know.

“He is here,” put in Claudia, “because I left instructions that if he called, I would see him.”

“My brother would never have allowed him in!”

“Your brother is not here.”

Ruso said, “I’d like to talk privately with Claudia, Ennia.”

Claudia replied, “Of course,” at the same moment as Ennia said, “Well, you can’t.”

In the silence that followed, the girl looked from Ruso to Claudia and back again. “Oh, all right,” she said, and got to her feet.

She was still within earshot when Claudia said, “Really, she’s such a child!”

Ruso waited until he heard Ennia’s footsteps retreat along the gravel path behind the tall cypress hedge before saying, “She’s bound to be upset.”

“She doesn’t have to be completely unreasonable. Even if she does think you poisoned her brother.”

Ruso seated himself on the bench Ennia had just vacated and said, “We both know that’s not true, don’t we?”

Claudia gave a dramatic sigh. “Gaius, what is the matter with you? Daddy keeps saying do I want to tell him something, but I don’t. You’re as bad as the investigators, both of you.”

“Claudia, I know what happened.”

“They’ve been crawling all over us like lice. They’ve turned out all the bedrooms, and the farm buildings, and you wouldn’t believe the chaos they caused in the kitchen. Zosimus is furious. The staff had been getting the preserves in for the autumn and that Stilo opened up every single jar and made the kitchen boy eat some.”

“Flaccus?” asked Ruso. “Is he all right?”

“They even went through my makeup.”

“I hope they didn’t make you eat that?”

“Don’t be silly, Gaius. They got one of the girls to do it. And of course she was sick too. I did warn them.”

“Do you want me to look at them both?”

“They keep saying I must know where Severus kept his money. I’ve already told Zosimus to show them the strongbox in the office, but they keep saying there’s more hidden somewhere.” She gestured toward the elegant garden with its tranquil fishpond. “Severus didn’t own any of this, you know. He wasn’t rich. Besides, I’m the victim. They’re supposed to be nice to me.”

Ruso was beginning to wonder if Calvus and Stilo were reaching the same conclusions about the murder as he had himself. He said, “So they tested the honey, then?”

“They tested everything.”

“They wouldn’t be able to tell from the taste,” Ruso continued. “And you’d need a substantial dose.” He had proved that himself.

Claudia’s “So you really have found something out!” seemed excited rather than alarmed.

“Of course if the victim was known to have a weak heart . . .”

“You have found something! Oh Gaius, bless you, I knew you would!”

This was hardly the reaction he had been expecting. Maybe his wife was much cleverer than he had ever realized.

It would not do to dwell on that thought. “I didn’t come here to play games, Claudia. I spoke to the man you bought the honey from. He sold it to a woman wearing the same sandals as you, and she had . . .” Even now he could not bring himself to upset her by calling it orange. “She had hair the same color as yours. It’s hard to mistake.”

All around them the air was live with the singing of the cicadas. Claudia tightened one hand around the edge of the wooden bench, and then released it again. When she said, “You really do think I did it!” her voice was husky.

“The bitch has poisoned me.”

The neatly plucked eyebrows drew closer together. “I can’t understand . . .”

“You were seen buying the poison. There’s a witness. If I tell that to the investigators, your father will ruin my family. Please, Claudia. You can still do something good for other people. Confess.”

“But it wasn’t me. I told you that.”

He sighed. “I wanted to believe you.”

“Then believe me! Anyone can buy a pair of shoes. Dozens of girls have hair this color. It’s very fashionable.”

Ruso shook his head. “It’s too much of a coincidence. Severus was unfaithful, he’d lost your father a lot of money, you didn’t love him—”

“I didn’t love you, either,” she retorted, tearing the pins out of her hair in distress. “But I didn’t murder you!”

To Ruso’s surprise, Claudia’s strength of feeling was such that she grabbed the top of her head and began to tug at her curls. He was even more surprised when the curls came detached from the head and she flung them at him.

“There! Anybody can buy my hair too!”

He stared in disbelief at the dark cropped head that now faced him. Claudia’s hair was not very much longer than his own. More interestingly, the tips of the hair were olive green. He lifted up the wig, shook it, and pretended to examine it while he struggled not to laugh.

“I had the hairdresser flogged,” said Claudia. “But it won’t bring my hair back any faster. Well, what’s the matter with you? Haven’t you ever seen a wig before? I can show you the other one if you like, still tousled from the funeral. Anyone can buy red hair too! It wasn’t me.”

Ruso was still considering his reply when they heard footsteps and looked up to see Zosimus striding toward them, followed by several garden slaves brandishing hoes and scythes in a manner that did not look horticultural. Ennia emerged from behind the hedge to join them. Claudia snatched back the wig and crammed it onto her head, whispering, “Perhaps it was Ennia in disguise!”

Ruso said, “Why?”

“I don’t know, do I? Because she’s a horrible little toad and she hates me. Shush. If you mention my hair I’ll kill you.”

The steward stopped at a safe distance and announced, “The investigators have forbidden any contact between the suspects.”

So Claudia was a suspect. Ruso reached for his stick and got to his feet. “I was just going.”

As he joined Zosimus to be escorted back to the gate, he heard Ennia say, “I told my brother he was a fool to marry you!”

Suddenly Ruso wondered how long the girl had been lingering behind that hedge. He had heard her footsteps retreat along the gravel, but that would be easy enough to counterfeit. Distracted by the arrival of Zosimus, he had not noticed the sound of her approach. How much had she overheard?

67

T
HE DOOR BAR had barely clunked down into its socket when Tilla heard someone outside hammering on the wood and yelling, “Open up! Man needs a drink!”

Onion Breath called, “We’re closed!” at the same time as Cass cried, “Help us! We’ve been—” It ended in a scream as Onion Breath stepped across and hit her in the face.

Too late, he remembered about Tilla’s knife. As he staggered backward, staring at her in disbelief, there was a crash from across the room. The door, frame and all, collapsed inward with two men on top of it.

The men tried to get up but were knocked aside by drinkers clambering over them to flee into the sunlit alleyway. The old man in the corner rose from his seat and staggered out after them.

Onion Breath was slumped beneath one of the tables. He was not moving. Tilla stared at him. Was that it? Was that how easy it was?

A voice was saying, “Are you all right, miss?”

She leaned back against the wall, waiting for her heart to stop thudding.

“Miss?”

She knocked the hand away from her arm, then realized it was meant in friendship. “Sorry,” she said to a curly-haired youth she vaguely recognized. She was aware of a strong smell of horse as he took the bloodied knife from her hand.

The second rescuer was still sprawled along the length of the door, largely because Cass was on top of him, wiping blood off his chin with her skirt and crying, “Lucius! Oh, Lucius, my love, where are you hurt?”

Tilla rubbed her eyes in confusion. What was Lucius doing here? And was that the Medicus’s stable lad?

Lucius was not so badly hurt that he could not cling to his wife and gasp, “Cass! When we saw that thief running down the street with your bag I thought—”

“Oh, my darling, you’re so brave!”

The stable lad looked at the reunited couple, then at Tilla. “Master Lu-cius knocked the thief down and took your bags back, miss. Then he made him tell us where he got them. I don’t know if everything’s in them.”

Tilla moved one hand to indicate the body of Onion Breath. The lad stepped across the fallen door and bent to peer at him.

Lucius lifted his head and noticed Onion Breath for the first time. “What happened to him?”

“It is the sort of thing that happens in a place like this,” said Cass, suddenly decisive. She got to her feet and took the knife from the stable lad. “None of us saw anything.”

Tilla was still staring at the body, vaguely aware of Cass bustling about with water and a cloth. The stable lad touched her arm. “We ought to go, miss,” he murmured.

Tilla looked up. Lucius seemed to be suffering from no more than a bitten lip. His wife had a red mark on her cheek that was already beginning to swell. “That will teach you,” Lucius announced to Onion Breath, “to mistreat the wife of an honest farmer.”

“Yes,” said Cass. She handed Tilla the knife, now clean, and picked up the striped bag that the stable lad had retrieved. “I would like to go home now, please, husband.”

They stepped out into the narrow street. Apart from a long rope and a stray dog, it was empty. Evidently the rope makers had decided not to see anything, either.

68

A
RRIA PAUSED ON her way to the bath house and informed Ruso that there was no sign of poor Lucius coming back from Are-late. No, there was no word of Cassiana or That Girl, either. “The staff keep asking me to decide things. Why don’t they know how to do it themselves? What’s the point of buying slaves if we have to do all the work? As if I don’t have enough to do!”

Ruso, preoccupied, let the wave of complaint wash over him and only surfaced to hear, “. . . and join us in the baths. All the young people are there. The children have hardly seen you since you’ve been home.”

“I need to go and check on the farm staff,” he said, suspecting it was Arria rather than the children who wanted some adult company. “Then I’ve got to get ready for the Games tomorrow.” He ran his fingers over the soft leather of his purse, feeling the circle of the iron ring inside. “Could you tell Marcia to come and find me as soon as she’s free?”

The mindless rhythm of the iron blade sliding along the sharpening stone usually soothed whatever agitation Ruso might be feeling, but this afternoon it had not had time to work its magic when there was a knock on the study door. He laid the scalpel back in the linen roll where he now kept his instruments, and hid them behind the desk. Then he retrieved the ring from his purse and called, “Come in!”

Marcia closed the door behind her and leaned back against it. “Did you give him my letter?”

Ruso nodded, trying not to stare at the rags tied around the curls in his sister’s damp hair, which gave her the odd appearance of a cavalry horse being prepared for parade.

“Did he tell you it was respectable?”

“Yes.”

She attempted a smile as she said, “I knew you’d be too stuffy to read it!” but he saw the way her fingers were twisted around each other.

“He looks in good shape,” he told her. “He’s very confident. That’s half the battle.”

Marcia seemed to find that more reassuring than she would have had she realized how little her brother really knew about gladiators.

“They’ll be having the grand dinner to night,” she said. “They do that, you know. Before the Games.”

“I know.”

“And then tomorrow there’ll be the sacrifices to Jupiter and he’ll be in the procession.” There was no need for her to explain what came next.

“He didn’t have time to write a reply,” he said, holding out the ring. “But he asked me to give you this.”

She took it. Instead of slipping it onto her finger she turned it around, examining it. “I have been thinking,” she said. “If he is not dead, but horribly mutilated, what will happen?”

“I’ll do my best. Men often recover far better than you expect.”

“I mean, what shall I do? With a cripple?”

He could not answer that.

She gave a sudden howl of grief, ran forward, and flung her arms around him. “Oh, Gaius!” she sobbed, her rag-tied head pressing hard against his chest. “I can’t bear it, I really can’t!”

69

L
UCIUS HAD HARDLY spoken to Tilla from the moment he had burst into the bar until they had turned the cart off the road to settle under the trees for the night. She knew that he blamed her for his wife’s sudden rebellion. When she had said she would sleep under the cart beside the stable lad, there had been no offer of a more comfortable night with Cass up under the leather canopy.

Rolled in their cloaks on the hard ground, Tilla and the stable lad both seemed to be pretending that the other was not just two feet away in the darkness. Inside the black bulk of the cart above them, Cass was asking Lucius about the children. Had Sosia’s tooth come out yet? Did Publius eat his dinner? Had they gone to bed without a fuss? When they asked where she was, what had he told them? Had they been upset?

Listening to the replies, Tilla felt sadness weighing down on top of nighttime chill and exhaustion. Cass and Lucius had a home to go to, and a family waiting for them. Tilla was no longer even sure that her family was waiting for her in the next world. It seemed that Heaven, like god, was everywhere, but not everyone was allowed to go to it. None of her people had worshipped Christos. Perhaps they had been rejected at the gates, like soldiers who did not know the password.

Even Britannia was not home. By now someone else would be renting that little upstairs room outside the fort. Some other soldier’s woman, perhaps. Someone who would never be part of the army but who was no longer part of her own people, either. Someone to whom marriage did not seem important, but who might one day find herself desperate for a welcome among the family of a man who was not her husband.

Lucius had already told them about the surprise arrival of the investigators as they had driven out of Arelate. He was now giving Cass a repeat account of exactly what they had said to him and what he had said back. Lucius’s part in the story was getting bigger every time he told it. She caught the sound of a yawn. Cass must be weary after all that lying awake worrying about spiders, but she was still loyally pressing her husband with questions as if he were the cleverest, bravest, and most interesting man in the world. And then what happened? And what did you do? No, really? So what do you think will happen about the dogbane?

Lucius moved on to describing his trials during his search for them in Arelate, and how he had visited all five of the marine shipping offices, “but nobody could remember seeing you.” Tilla could hear the accusation in his voice. She saw now that she had gone about everything in the wrong way. She did not understand how things worked here. She had never even heard of Marine Shipping Offices. No wonder she had failed. They had found neither the mysterious Ponticus that Lucius had come to warn them about, nor any real trace of the ghostly Captain Copreus.

She was lucky they had not been pursued for knifing Onion Breath in the bar. She supposed she would have to tell the Medicus about that before one of the others did. It was not the sort of thing a Roman looked for in a woman. She was willing to bet that the widow next door had never killed a man in a bar fight. Even the old wife had used poison, so that she could pretend she hadn’t done it and the Medicus could imagine that he believed her.

Tilla trapped the far end of the cloak between her feet and tugged it down. She wondered what the Medicus had said to the investigators. She saw now what a terrible mistake this trip had been. She should have stayed back at the farm, loyally supporting him as if she thought he too was the cleverest, bravest, and most interesting man in the world. That was what Roman men seemed to want. Instead, afraid of looking a fool over dinner and convinced she could do something about Cass’s brother when everyone else had failed, she had run away.

Tilla yawned and shifted the bag that she had folded into a lumpy pillow. The Medicus had once asked her to marry him. She had refused. He would not ask again now.

Lucius and Cass were still talking softly as her jumbled thoughts gradually settled into stillness. For a brief moment she was aware that something important had just drifted past her. It was the sort of unexpected clarity that sometimes lit the mind in the middle of the night: an understanding usually followed by the thought,
I must remember that in the morning
, but already when she tried to catch it, it was gone.