look for a woman.' He stopped. It was, he realized, an unfortunate start. Worse, his audience showed no sign of understanding it. Faced with impassive stares, he asked, 'Does anyone here speak Latin?'
The small boy blinked. There was no other response.
'I am looking for the woman who is my servant,' he said, pulling out the sale document. 'Her name is…' He read out the complicated name again, suspecting that he was pronouncing it all wrong. 'She is missing. She has curly fair hair'-with a twirling motion he indicated his own, which was indeed hair, but entirely the wrong color-'and her arm is-' He made a chopping motion with his left hand on his lower right arm, and then mimed winding a bandage around it. 'Her arm is broken.' Although by now they probably thought he was threatening to chop it off. 'I want her to know that if she comes home she will not be punished.' Even though, he wanted to add, she very much deserves it.
He cleared his throat. 'I am anxious to know that she is safe,' he said.
A cockerel strutted across the mud that separated him from his audience. The small boy tried to stuff a fistful of his mother's skirt into his mouth. Without taking her eyes off Ruso, the woman crouched and gathered the child into her floury arms.
'I want to know that she is safe,' Ruso repeated. He surveyed the blank faces. 'If I had any money,' he continued, 'I would be offering a reward. But I don't, so I can't. And if I thought any of you understood a word I was saying, I would tell you that even if I can't find Tilla, I'd like to find out what the condition is underneath that splint. I'd like to find out because I want to know whether there's anything I've done since I came to your miserable country that has made it worth the bother of coming here. So. There you are. Well, thank you all for being so tremendously helpful.'
As he tramped out through the mud in the gateway-he was not going to pick his way around the edge as if a Roman officer were afraid of getting dirty-the dogs began to bark again. This time no one tried to stop them. A few yards beyond the gate he looked over his shoulder.
They were still watching.
64
There was no sign of her at the house, where he only stopped long enough to clean off the mud before going to the hospital. There he found two messages: Albanus was trying to track him down, and Priscus wanted an urgent meeting. Ruso managed to find Albanus first. As they entered the surgery the clerk asked,
'Any word on your housekeeper, sir?'
'Nothing. What did you want me for?'
'Officer Priscus says-'
'Yes, I know. Urgently Was that it?'
'No, sir, not entirely.' Albanus checked to make sure the surgery door was closed. 'It's about that delicate matter, sir,' he began. 'I told them at HQ that I'd lost a document and it was all rather embarrassing, and they let me have a private hunt through the post records. You'd be amazed at the volume of correspondence, sir.'
'And?'
'I've been through every list for the last two months, but I can't find a letter from a Saufeia anywhere.'
'Damn,' muttered Ruso.
'Would you like me to go back any farther, sir?'
Ruso shook his head. 'There's no point.'
'If there's anything I can do to help you find your housekeeper, sir…'
Ruso settled himself on the corner of his desk and folded his arms. There were things he needed to know, but he was more likely to acquire a broken jaw from the second spear than any information. Valens had offered to sound out his friend in civilian liaison, but the only sounds forthcoming were negative ones. Ruso was going to have to consult a source he despised: army gossip.
'Albanus,' he said, 'who or what do the men think was responsible for the deaths of those two girls?'
Albanus's eyes widened. 'Do you think the same person might have taken your housekeeper, sir?'
'I hope not. But I'm running out of other ideas.'
Albanus thought for a moment. 'To be honest, sir, nobody seems to know. Most people just think there's a madman around who likes killing women.'
'I've been through that. Why two from one bar?'
'It could be a very important customer. Somebody the management is scared of.'
'How important?'
Albanus scratched his head. 'I can't see the legate or any of the tribunes frequenting there, to be honest, sir, can you? It's more likely somebody with a grudge against the management.'
'Right. How many people would that include?'
'If you count all the men who've ever been thrown out of Merula's?
Quite a lot, sir. That's before you consider the staff there.'
Ruso decided not to mention doctors who had been poisoned by the food. Even if both the girls had been victims of one man with a grudge, that grievance must have been incurred long before his own arrival in Deva. His chances of discovering the right complainant-and quickly-were slim.
'Of course, there might be no connection at all, sir.'
'Do you think Asellina really did try to run off with a sailor?'
'To tell you the truth, sir, most people think she led poor old Decimus on a bit of a dance. It would have taken him years to save up enough to buy her. And he's still got fifteen years to serve, so he couldn't run away with her instead-not unless he deserted, and then what would they have had to live on? So, she decided to go with the sailor instead.'
'Does anyone know anything about this sailor? Nobody seems to have seen him.'
Albanus frowned. 'I don't know, sir. It was all looked into at the time. Then it all blew over and everybody forgot about it. Except Decimus, of course. And I suppose the people at the bar.' He glanced up. 'Perhaps that was why Saufeia thought she'd give it a try, sir. Because she thought Asellina had gotten away with it.'
It suddenly occurred to Ruso that he might have been looking in the wrong place for a letter. What if Saufeia had been trying to contact the last successful runaway? 'Do you happen to know,' he said, 'whether Asellina could read and write?'
Albanus shook his head. 'I shouldn't think so, sir. From what I hear, Saufeia was a bit unusual.'
'She certainly doesn't seem to have been as popular as Asellina.'
'No, sir. Of course there are the other theories about Saufeia.'
Ruso was beginning to suspect that the hospital staff had spent more time considering this case than the official investigators. 'Tell me.'
'Well, one is that her own people killed her because of the shame she'd brought on the family by working at Merula's, sir. Which does sort of make sense, because what was a girl who could read and write doing in a place like that?'
'I don't know. From what I hear, she'd probably been hanging around with soldiers for years. Anything else?'
'I did hear a rumor that it was one of the married officers who'd had a fling with her and didn't want his wife to find out what he was up to.'
'No name, I suppose?'
'No, sir. But most people seem to think she wandered off, then had an argument with a client who didn't want to pay and he turned nasty.'
'Hm,' said Ruso. 'Well, that seems to cover every possibility.'
'Cheer up, sir. If it was any of those, then your housekeeper's disappearance has nothing to do with the others, does it?'
'No,' agreed Ruso, scratching his ear. 'It doesn't.' The thought should have been reassuring, but it wasn't, because it left him with nowhere to look.
'Unless there really is a madman, of course.'
