Lord.'
'And Innocens didn't steal you?'
'He paid money, my Lord.'
'Hm. Not as much as he told me he did, I'll bet.'
She smiled. 'No, my Lord. I think not.'
53
To Ruso's surprise and mild embarrassment, the urgent message from Priscus had been a referral to a private patient with a toothache. By the time he arrived at the office the administrator had gone out, but Albanus introduced him to a small boy who had been waiting to take the first available doctor to his grandmother.
He followed the boy out through the fort gates and down a street behind the amphitheater to a barber's shop. A veteran with a spectacular scar running down into a patch over one eye was perched on a stool by the entrance, steadily stropping a wicked-looking razor and ignoring the sound of raised female voices from somewhere in the depths of the building. He stood up as Ruso entered the shop.
'I was told you needed a doctor.'
The veteran's one good eye glanced down from Ruso's growing beard to his medical case, then across at the boy who had brought him. He said something to the boy in British. The boy's reply seemed to satisfy him.
'It's the mother-in-law.' The man jerked his head toward the back of the shop. 'Needs a tooth pulled. Good luck.'
The boy picked up a broom and began to sweep clumps of hair off the floor. Ruso made his own way past shelves stacked with towels and basins and stoppered jars. He rapped on the door.
The younger of the two voices in the back room launched into a fierce tirade of British that seemed to be aimed at someone else. The only word he understood was medicus.
'I'm the doctor,' he announced, and pushed open the door in search of his patient.
The room smelled of smoke and boiled cabbage. It contained a table, two stools, an unmade bed, and an exasperated woman. The woman was standing by another door that led to the back of the house. This door was closed. From behind it came a speech in which he could again make out the word medicus. This time it sounded like an accusation.
The woman pushed a strand of hair out of her eyes. 'Well, Doctor, you've worked a miracle already. My mother is out of bed.'
'I understand she wants a tooth pulled.'
'She doesn't. We do.'
Ruso said, 'Ah.'
'All week,' announced the woman, still in Latin but slowly, and loud enough to be understood from the other side of the closed door, 'All week she has been tormented with worms in her tooth. We have tried everything we can think of. We have bought medicines to drive the worms out. My husband offered to pull it. We have taken her to the healer. She is still in pain. Now my husband has called for a medicus
…'
The stream of British from the other side of the door contained the words Roman and medicus in a tone that suggested they were interchangeable with bloodthirsty and maniac.
'My husband,' continued the woman, 'whose life was saved by a Roman medicus, has hired a surgeon for my mother at his own expense, and my mother shames us all by refusing to see him.'
'Sit down, Doctor,' offered the veteran's voice from behind him. 'The wife will pour you a beer.'
'I've told her he's here,' explained the woman, unnecessarily. 'She still won't open the door.'
'This often happens with toothache,' observed Ruso, suspecting he was only a transient player in a long- running dispute. He offered to leave some paste to pack around the tooth. For answer, the woman placed one of the stools in front of him. Then she took down a cup from the shelf and poured beer from the jug on the table.
'How do you usually get them out?' inquired the veteran.
'The worms?'
'The patients.'
Ruso took a sip of the beer and decided it would have been better used on the tooth worms, which, if they existed, must be devious little beasts because neither he nor anyone he knew had ever seen one. 'I don't,' he said.
The woman banged a cup down in front of her husband and poured more beer. The husband peered at it with his one eye. 'Steady on, woman. You could drown a fly in that.'
The woman shrugged and returned to her station by the door. She seemed to be listening for movement. The veteran helped himself to more drink, evidently not troubled by the mysterious objects floating in it. 'Women, eh?'
Ruso braved another mouthful of the beer. 'Tell me something,' he said, 'you do women's hair as well as men's?'
The barber shook his head. 'Never had much chance to practice in the army. I'll do a quick trim on the locals, but we don't go in for all that fussing with pins and curling tongs.'
'I just wondered if you'd had anyone in asking about selling hair.'
The barber hooked something out of the beer with his little finger and wiped it off on the edge of the table. 'I might look at something valuable. Blond, or red. Mouse brown you might as well use for stuffing cushions.'
'Have you had anyone in asking about red?'
The one eye met his. 'Is this about that tart in the river? I heard some doctor was poking around.'
'This isn't official. I was the one who took the body in. I just wondered how far the inquiry had got.'
'Well, nobody's come bothering me.'
'Right.' Ruso was beginning to wonder if the second spear was doing anything at all about the dead girls. At this rate Innocens would die of old age before anyone found the time to question him. 'Well, if you should happen to hear anything-'
'If we get anyone around here, I'll tell them what I'm telling you. I don't want nothing to do with it.'
The woman began to pound the door with the heel of her hand.
The man leaned forward to be heard over the din and said, 'From what I heard, those girls were well looked after at Merula's. Compared to some of the places down the Dock road, Merula's bar is a palace. They took it into their heads to run off-' He broke off. 'Will you stop that, woman? The old bat might be daft but she's not deaf!' He turned back to Ruso. leaving the wife to deliver another tirade in British. 'Don't take a genius to work out what happened to them, does it?'
'I know what happened to them, and at least one of them didn't die by accident. What nobody seems to be able to find out is who did it.'
'If I was you, Doctor, I'd stay out of it. You start asking too many questions, you upset people. I know who I buy from. I don't buy from murderers.'
'I wasn't suggesting-'
''Course you weren't. But you should be careful who you ask. People who go around poking into other people's business can end up in a whole lot of trouble.'
'Why would anybody shelter a murderer?'
'I'm not saying they would. I'm just saying, watch out. Me, I mind my own affairs and I don't let my woman wander around this place after dark.' The man rocked his stool back to lean against the wall and turned to the aforementioned woman. 'Did I just hear you tell her I'd take the door down?'
The woman stabbed a finger toward Ruso. 'Our money is sitting there, doing nothing!'
'Do you know how much it costs to fix a door, woman?'
Ruso rubbed his chin and decided to ask now before he or the barber drank any more of the beer. He gestured toward the shop, which since it opened westward onto the street would still catch the best of the daylight. 'Any chance of a shave while I'm waiting?'
An hour or so later the patient lay on her bed in a drugged stupor, minus two disgusting black molars that
