running around after his own slave.
He was glad Valens couldn't see him now. Valens already thought he was crazy Valens had arrived home last night, tipped the contents of his kit bag onto his bedroom floor, and wanted to know where all his stuff had gone. Ruso had explained about Tilla moving in and he had grinned. 'I thought you'd never get 'round to it. So, tell me. What's it like with a one-armed woman?'
Ruso had given him the look he usually gave malingerers. 'She's a patient.'
Valens crouched down and let the dog lick his face. 'I suppose you could give her some interesting hand exercises.'
'I told you, she's a-'
'You smell better,' Valens informed the dog as he pushed her away so he could stand up. 'Has somebody bathed you?'
Ruso shrugged. 'I think Tilla took it for walks. Can you bathe a dog when you've only got one arm?'
'She seems to be able to do most things. You're a lucky man. She hasn't got a sister, has she?'
'I wouldn't introduce you if she had.'
'Dear me, you are grumpy.' Valens lifted the lid of the beer barrel. 'I see you've developed a taste for this stuff at last.'
Ruso peered into the empty barrel. 'Tilla must have thrown it out,' he said. 'She wasn't too impressed with our housekeeping arrangements.'
'I'll ask for wine next time.' Valens dropped the lid back down. 'Well done, Ruso. I knew I could rely on you to come up with a decent servant in the end.'
'I told you, we're not keeping her.'
'We're not keeping her,' Valens had repeated in triumph. 'There you are. She's become our housekeeper. Excellent! I'll chip in with the costs if you like. I promise not to bed her without asking first.'
'Nobody's going to bed her!'
Valens had eyed him curiously before shaking his head. 'Ruso, Ruso.
You are a good chap and I love you dearly, but you really must learn to relax and enjoy yourself a little.'
Ruso scowled at the hems of his trousers. It was all very well for Valens to say he should relax. Valens didn't have the responsibility of shoring up a secretly bankrupt family in Gaul and finding a decent place for a slave over here. A slave who was, he now realized, too attractive for her own good.
Claudia had often complained that her maids were stupid and lazy but never once, as far as he could recall, that they weren't pretty enough. He was beginning to see that Bassus was right. There was a market for beautiful slave girls. It was not in the homes of happy families. He was not proud of it, but the people who depended on him were going to need the kind of price that market would pay
He glanced up. Apart from a group of cavalry horses approaching in the distance, the road ahead of him was empty. Tilla had turned left, crossed the ditch, and was making her way over the open expanse of the shoulder toward a patch of woodland.
If she had turned to look, she would have seen him step onto the heavy tree trunk that provided a dry foothold across the ditch, then scramble up onto the narrow, muddy path that led through the long grass. Instead she took not the slightest precaution, hurrying into the woods like a woman late for an appointment.
Anxious not to lose her among the trees, he lengthened his stride until there were only twenty or thirty paces between them. The path twisted and turned through the gloom of the woods. The road he had just left was out of sight. Moments later he could barely hear the shuffle of hoofbeats on gravel as the cavalry troop passed. His own boots padded along on mud made slippery by damp leaves. Knotted roots had broken through the surface of the path. Brambles snatched at his trousers. More than once he had to adjust his stride suddenly to avoid snapping a dead branch. Several times he stopped to listen, and was reassured that Tilla was making no effort to be silent. Whoever she had come to meet would know she was approaching. As long as he was careful, Ruso would be able to take him by surprise.
The sunlight filtering through the branches caught the blue of the cloak moving ahead of him. Ruso hurried on, stepping over another dead branch while his right hand moved to unlatch the knife at his belt.
It wasn't there.
In place of the knife was an uncomfortable bundle of trouser fabric. He was cursing himself for leaving the weapon on the counter back at the weaver's shop when he realized the path was leading into an empty clearing. Ahead of him lay open grass dappled with sunlight. The blue cloak was there, dangling from a branch. Tilla was nowhere to be seen.
Ruso stepped off the path and hid behind a broad tree trunk that trembled with ivy. He held his breath, straining unsuccessfully to hear the sound of footsteps. Peering though the ivy, he surveyed the clearing.
Grass. Bushes. Bracken. The folds of the empty cloak shifting slightly in the breeze. There seemed to be at least two paths leading away, but he could not believe she had had time to take either of them unseen and there was no sign of unnatural movement among the leaves. Nor was there any sign of anyone else. He would have heard if she had greeted a friend, and she could hardly have been attacked without him noticing. This was the woman who had planned to knock out a legionary with a soup bowl. She must be hiding somewhere, waiting for whomever she had come to meet. Or perhaps she had seen Ruso after all, and was hoping if she kept out of sight for long enough, he would give up and go away.
Somewhere ahead of him, he could hear the trickle of a stream running though the woods. He hoped Tilla's patience would give out quickly. He was due on duty at the seventh hour and it must be past noon by now.
A black bird with a yellow beak hopped across the clearing. Gently, slowly, Ruso shifted his weight into a more comfortable position. Undisturbed, the bird continued to stab at something in the grass. There was no other sign of movement.
Hiding behind a tree trunk with his back exposed to the rustling undergrowth, it occurred to Ruso that following a native into the woods unarmed had not been a sensible thing to do. He was beyond shouting distance from the road. If there were more than one man to deal with, or if that man were carrying a weapon, he was in trouble.
That was probably why the voice terrified him. Only for a second, though, as he assured himself later. Of course he had not believed for more than a glancing moment that he was hearing the triumphant war cry of a native about to hack him to pieces. Or that a vengeful ghost had come to steal his spirit away in the depths of the woods. He had known, as soon as he had recovered from the surprise, that the sound was nothing to fear. Unfortunately his head did not communicate this knowledge to his heart, which continued to pound against the wall of his chest as if he were being pursued through the forest by a pack of howling wolves, instead of leaning against a tree trunk listening to a woman singing.
Tilla's singing in the kitchen had never been like this. At first shrill and ululating and eerie, then gradually descending, becoming breathy and resonant and peculiarly intimate. Ruso moved slowly forward to peer through the leaves again. He could see her now. She seemed to be alone. He frowned with confusion before guessing she must be standing down in a dip, which was hidden by the undergrowth on the far side of the clearing. Her good arm was raised to the sky. Her face glistened with water. Darkened tendrils of wet hair stuck to her forehead. Her eyes were closed in concentration. The expression on her face was little short of ecstatic. He released a long breath. His servant had not ventured into the woods to meet a lover, but a god.
A thin trail of smoke rose into the air. The question of how Tilla had lit a fire in the middle of the damp woods merged in his mind with the question of what she had been carrying in the basket. He suspected he was now going to have to add 'theft of firewood' to her list of misdemeanors.
The song rolled on. It was, in a peculiar barbaric way, beautiful. Sometimes there were strains of a tune Ruso felt he should recognize, then the notes soared away in unexpected directions. Sometimes the same tune seemed to repeat and tangle around itself before giving way to a different one. Another high eerie section gave way to huskiness and a tune that meandered about in a sequence he thought he remembered from the kitchen.
Ruso retreated behind the tree and surveyed the damage to his new trousers. They were now snagged in several places. The bottoms hung limp and muddy around his feet. As he watched, a beetle scurried across the front of his boot. He shifted his foot. The beetle scuttled off and buried itself under a leaf.
The song, or collection of songs, was still going on. Ruso began to experience a familiar sensation. It was the feeling that usually crept over him during the first few verses of after-dinner poetry recitals: the sense that time was slowing down around him and that this damned performance was going to go on all night. Tilla, however,
