Vita Brevis (31 page)

“Yes. Yes, of course.” The cakes disappeared back into the cupboard. “I was rather afraid you had.”

“About the men who have come to our house.”

“Oh, dear. Yes. A terrible thing. I was so sorry to hear about that, dear lady. How is your slave?”

Tilla blinked. “The slave?”

“Your husband told me someone was attacked.”

“Yes.” He must think she had come to talk about Squeaky and his friends, not the men who came to value the furniture. Whatever had happened between her husband and this man over in the gardens of Livia, it had clearly given him a serious fright. Now he seemed to think he was about to be attacked by a barbarian.

“It really was nothing to do with me, you know. I can quite understand why your husband was angry, but I didn’t—oh, dear. There was no need for you to visit, you know. I was going to bring it over myself when I had a moment.”

For a moment she thought he was going to offer the cakes again, but this time he delved lower into the cupboard, grunting with the effort of bending down. Finally upright again, he thrust a leather purse toward her. “There’s almost three hundred sesterces in there. I’m afraid it’s all I can manage. I was saving it to move to a new apartment. The stairs— You wouldn’t understand. The stairs are too much for a man of my age.” He jerked the purse up and down as if to prove from the chinking within that there was money in it. “You must have it, of course. I see that.”

Tilla took the purse and pulled the drawstring open. A pile of
denarii slid into her palm like silver fish. Times four to make sesterces … the number seemed about right.

She tipped them back into the purse without comment. She had come here to look for the missing doctor, but she was not going to turn the money down. “Where is Kleitos?”

“I really don’t know. Please. You have to believe me.”

She took a step closer. “You sent men to our house to collect Kleitos’s things and sell them. You must know where he is.”

Any remaining color drained from Simmias’s face. He groped behind him for a chair and collapsed down onto it. “Oh, dear. Oh—”

“Stop saying
oh, dear
!” Tilla snapped. The whiny act was very irritating when you were the one who had to put up with it. “If you are dealing with Kleitos’s affairs, you must know where he is. If you do not tell me, I will send the undertakers ’round to visit you instead.”

Simmias gulped. “I know. Your husband told me.”

Tilla turned and reached for a stool to buy some time while she tried to fathom what he was talking about. It seemed her husband had already used the threat of Squeaky to demand money. Now Simmias thought she had come here to collect it.

When she turned back there were beads of sweat glistening on Simmias’s forehead. She began to fear that he would faint before she could get any sense out of him. Seating herself at what he might think was a safe distance, she lowered her voice and repeated the one thing of which she could be certain. “Some men came this afternoon to value Kleitos’s things. They told me you sent them.”

“Yes. Yes.”

“You did send them?”

The chins wobbled frantically as the head nodded. “It seemed such a harmless thing—just a few sticks of furniture and some supplies—he would never know, and you would bring your own things anyway, and I needed the money. For the new apartment. It’s more expensive to live at street level, you know.”

Tilla gripped the sides of the stool. “You were trying to sell your friend’s things?”

Again the frantic nodding.

“Holy mothers!” She was on her feet now, towering over him, not remembering how she got there. “You were stealing from him?”

The “Yes” was very faint.

“What?”

“Yes. Yes, yes! I didn’t mean any harm!”

“So where is he?”

The head shook from side to side. “I don’t know! I don’t know where he’s gone! Please, please—don’t send those men!”

Tilla let Narina carry Mara home. Neither of them spoke. With each step, the purse she had slung beneath her clothing banged against her ribs like an accusation. She had deprived a not very clever man of his savings, and the trail that she had hoped would lead to Kleitos, and to the rediscovery of her husband’s pride, was a dead end. It had not been a good afternoon’s work.

Ruso could tell from the tone of Tilla’s “There is some good news” that there was other news as well, and that he was not going to like it.

“Tell me,” he said, briefly diverting his attention to correct Mara’s cry of “Ah!” to “Pa!” and scoop her up from the sheepskin.
“Papa,”
he told her. “Say
Papa
.”

The chuckle that accompanied a fresh “Ah!” was one of the better moments of the evening. That, and the fact that the door had been fixed while he was out, so he was spared another awkward conversation with the carpenter. Better still, Tilla had somehow managed to extract almost three hundred sesterces from Simmias.

But, like his brief moment of being marvelous with a dying patient, the joy didn’t last. Neither of them had managed to track down Kleitos, and now it seemed their one hope of finding him had ended in failure. The auctioneers who wanted Kleitos’s belongings had been sent by Simmias. In addition, Tilla wanted to know exactly what he had said to Simmias that had made the man part with his savings, and when he told her, she said, “He says he did not tell Squeaky those lies about you complaining to the authorities.”

“He must have,” he pointed out. “He’s the only one who knew what was going on.”

“Even so. He acts like a man who is telling the truth.”

He cupped the purse of silver in one hand, feeling the weight.

She said, “He was saving up to move to an apartment with no stairs.”

“He was in on this barrel business with Kleitos,” he reminded her, wondering if there was any way he could have been wrong about Simmias’s betrayal. “And he was trying to sell Kleitos’s property. He’s got off lightly. What’s for supper?”

It seemed Tilla had managed to fill Narina’s afternoon with auctioneers and deceitful doctors. “But there is good bread, and some of that cheese left, and we fetched sausages and pastries from Sabella’s.”

“Hm. Remind me again why we bought a slave who can cook.”

“Sabella says her husband wants to talk to you.”

“I know,” he said, not in the mood to listen.

In the indifferent light of the bedroom, he pulled out the box and lifted the top of the padded tunic that was wrapped around what Tilla always called
your soldier things
. It smelled of another life: of old sweat and leather and wool and the olive oil he had used when he cleaned the kit back in Deva. He placed the helmet on the bedpost. The empty space where his face would have been watched him as he buckled the segments together and lifted them so they rose into the shape of a man’s chest. He lowered the shoulders and the metal soldier sank back into itself on the bed. The stiffness of the leather and the rough feel of the surfaces told him the armor had suffered in the damp of the sea voyage. It needed a cleaning it wasn’t going to get.

The sword slid out of the scabbard and back in with reassuring ease. He laid it on the side where his right hand would be, and the dagger on his left. The metal strap ends jingled as he uncoiled the belt. The shield had gone to a needy recruit back in Britannia, but he had kept the rest of the kit, because who knew? Some Legion—perhaps even the Twentieth—might be short of a medical officer again soon. Whatever the official rules were about recruitment, arrangements could be made for the right medic. There had been a time when he was that medic. Now he wasn’t so sure. Especially
since he had managed to annoy Accius, the only man in Rome who was likely to recommend him for a posting.

For a mad moment he considered whether a trained legionary with a freshly honed sword and a sharpened broomstick for a spear could hold the door, defend his family …

The moment passed. There were no scouts to warn him when Squeaky was approaching; no trained comrades on either side of him to lock their shields with his, even if he’d still had one. The only reinforcements standing behind him were a British youth with a bang on the head and two women armed only with their personal knives and anything they could grab from the kitchen. And then there was Mara.

Most of the kit went back in the box. Ruso unthreaded his civilian belt and tossed it on the bed. The thick leather tongue of the military belt snaked back into its well-worn position through the buckle, like a man slipping on his favorite pair of boots.

As he walked toward the door, Ruso heard the familiar clink of the strap ends and felt the weight of the dagger resting where it should be. For the first time in weeks, he stopped feeling like a man who was pretending to be somebody else.

As Narina laid out this evening’s food on the table in front of him, he leaned back and shouted, “Esico?”

The slave, whose black eye was developing nicely, appeared in the doorway.

“I’m making a few changes around here,” he announced in Latin. “From now on, I only want to see patients who are going to make the doctor feel better. I don’t want any constant grumblers, any nonpayers, anybody who decides they know better than I do, or anybody who won’t do exactly what they’re told. I don’t want to see anything long lasting and incurable, and I don’t ever want to hear that the other doctor didn’t do it like that. All I want is patients who are going to be very grateful for anything. Or better still, for nothing. Can you manage that?”

When the full message had been conveyed by Tilla, Esico looked stunned.

Tilla murmured, “He is joking.”

“No, I’m not.”

Esico looked from one to the other of them, and intoned gravely, “Yes, master.”

“Excellent!” He turned to Tilla. “You see how easy it is once you have good staff?”

“You are out of your mind,” she told him, but he could tell from the way she gave him an extra pastry without asking that she was glad of the pretense.

The good mood lasted until after the lamps were lit. It lasted while talk of nothing important flowered and faded, and the household was getting ready to go to bed. It lasted right up until the moment when some drunk started banging on the door and slurring, “Ish me, Ruso! Lemme in!”

Esico grabbed the broken broomstick. Narina crouched beside the sleeping Mara, ready to snatch her up and flee. Tilla gestured to them to stay back. This was not a man she counted as a friend, but neither was he a threat.

“Lemme in!” repeated the drunk. “I’m losing her, Ruso!”

“Just a moment, sir!” The door shuddered under more hammering as her husband fumbled with the rearranged lock. Something more for the neighbors to complain about.

“Lemme in! I’m losing her!” Accius stumbled into the surgery, collided with the workbench, and told it, “I’m losing her! You’ve got to help me!”

“The master’s rather tired, Doctor,” put in one of the slaves who had arrived with him. “We’re taking him home.” The slave’s hair and the clasp of his cloak were awry. It seemed Accius did not want to go home.

“Tired, yes.” Accius slumped downward. To Tilla’s disappointment, his other slave dived across and shoved a stool into position underneath him, saving him from landing on the floor as he deserved. Not even noticing the near miss, he swayed toward her husband and grabbed a handful of tunic. “You’ve got to help me, Ruso. I’m losing her.”

“We’ve just come from Horatius Balbus’s house,” the first slave explained. “Some of the guests went back to the house for refreshments after the funeral.”

Accius was hanging on to her husband’s arm for support and gazing around the surgery. “Where are we?”

“In my treatment room, sir.”

“Think I’m a bit drunk,” Accius confided. “Don’t tell the men. Got to set an example.”

“I won’t tell them, sir.” He moved Accius’s grasp to the edge of the workbench. To the slave he murmured, “No chance of getting a chair to carry him home, I suppose?”

“Not at this time of night, sir.”

“What happened?”

The man’s attempt to explain was drowned out by, “I love her, Ruso! I love her, and she loves me. I’m going back to find her!”

Tilla would have slapped some sense into him, and felt unreasonably let down when her husband put a friendly hand on his shoulder. “She doesn’t need to see you like this, sir.”

Accius pondered this for a moment, and then agreed. “You’ve always been straight with me, Ruso. You and that whats-her-name … Blond … That one.” He swiveled ’round and pointed at Tilla. “You don’t care what anyone thinks, you just tell them …” He groped for a word, and missed. “You just tell them.”

After that he seemed to fall into a daze, his head nodding gradually toward the floor.

She sent his junior slave to the kitchen for some water. When he was gone the other one said softly, “Apparently the master overheard the young lady’s new guardian asking Curtius Cossus to help the family with their business affairs, sir.”

“Did your master say anything?”

“I don’t think so, sir, but I was out in the courtyard with the other staff. Balbus’s staff noticed the master getting rather, ah—”

“Drunk.”

“Yes, sir. They told the master there was a message for him at the door to get him to leave, and here we are.”

The water arrived. Her husband seemed pleased with Accius’s efforts to drink it. There was talk of making up a bed. She said, “He can go in here with Esico.”

Narina brought the spare blankets from the chest. The slaves were sent home to reassure the household that the master was under the care of his doctor, and to arrange a chair to collect him in the morning. No sooner had they left than Accius declared her husband to be his best friend in the whole world and the only man he could trust, and then he vomited all over the floor. As the best friend said, it was a good thing he’d remembered to ask Timo for a fresh bag of sawdust.

Finally everyone was settled down for the night, with one lamp still burning in the surgery and the snoring Accius propped up on his side in case he should vomit again. The best friend looked surprised when Tilla offered to sit with Accius for a while, but agreed to go to bed and leave her there in her night things, wearing a pair of winter socks and wrapped in a blanket.