tendons, reduces swollen glands.’
Ruso bought a pot of the boiled skins, hoping they would not only cure earache but loosen the man’s tongue. ‘Perhaps you could help me with something else,’ he said.
‘Perhaps,’ agreed the man. ‘Who knows?’
The younger man had paused to listen.
‘I had a difficult patient the other day. Confusion, aggression, odd feelings around the mouth, vomiting, diarrhoea, loss of vision — ’
‘What happened to him?’ demanded the younger man, stepping forward.
‘He died.’
‘And you want my father to tell you what it was?’
‘What can you suggest?’
‘What I suggest,’ said the youth, ‘is that you take your skins and clear off. We’re honest traders. We got nothing to do with that sort of thing.’
‘I didn’t mean to imply — ’
‘That the Marsi know all about poisons? So why did you ask?’
‘Stop!’ The older man’s hand rose to silence his son. ‘The Medicus didn’t mean no harm. He’s here to learn. He reckons his patient got bit by a venomous beast.’
‘Exactly,’ said Ruso, although Severus had denied being bitten, and he had found no trace of a puncture on the body.
The youth glowered at him and said nothing.
The old man’s smile was not as broad this time. ‘We can’t help,’ he said. ‘We don’t know no snakes what give them symptoms.’
‘Perhaps it wasn’t a snake,’ said Ruso. ‘Do you know anyone I could ask?’
‘No, we don’t.’
‘I’d pay.’
‘And I’d take your money,’ said the man, ‘but I still wouldn’t know nobody.’
Ruso sighed. He was not going to argue with someone wearing a large and unidentifiable snake, even though he was certain that the man was lying. At the moment, he couldn’t run fast enough.
34
Galla was over in the shade of the stone barn, eating with the other farm workers. Tilla had followed her across as soon as the horn was blown, picked up a wooden platter from the pile and joined the queue for bread and the strange stuff these people thought was cheese. Then she had turned to find there was no obvious place to sit. Galla, her sticky feet now dark with the dust of the barn floor, was already sharing a rough bench with the stable lad. They were too busy chatting to notice Tilla. She recognized the odd word of Gaulish, but they were speaking fast, and she could not pick out the meaning. The other workers, some asleep, were sprawled across all the available space in the shade. One or two of the men were staring at her with more interest than was necessary, but no one offered to move. No one smiled and said, ‘Come and eat with us!’ Nobody showed any concern when she wandered away.
Safely alone in the quiet of the winery, she laid the platter on the corner of the juice trough, settled down beside it and tried to tell herself she was not miserable.
She could not expect to fit in here. She was not a servant. It was obvious that the staff knew that, even if Arria refused to understand it. She was not a member of the family. She was not the Medicus’ wife. She was neither a Gaul, like the farm workers, nor a Roman, like the Medicus. She was not a Gaul pretending to be a Roman, either, which was what most of the people in the town seemed to be. In every imaginable way, she was an outsider here.
She supposed the only barbarians these people had come across were either slaves or the naked figures she had seen carved on some of the funeral monuments lining the road out of town. Warriors with wild hair and long moustaches, being beaten down and trampled under the march of Roman progress. Perhaps the sight of a free Briton wandering about the place made them nervous.
She took a mouthful of bread and eyed the unappetizing green slop in the trough beside her. It had never struck her until now that the Medicus, who had been so rude about British beer, preferred a drink in which strangers had trampled their sweaty feet.
She wondered what he was doing. What he had said to the old wife. Whether he was still with her now. It occurred to Tilla that she did not know a great deal about the old wife, except that she was the one who had left and demanded a divorce. The Medicus had never seemed to want to talk about her. He had not wanted to mention the widow next door again, either, until she had asked.
She tried to cut a slice of the cheese. It stuck to the knife. How could these people be so pleased with themselves? They could not even make cheese!
She was wiping the blade with one finger when she heard movement outside the doors. Whoever it was, they must not see her alone in here feeling sorry for herself. Licking the finger, she hid behind a stack of the big two- handled baskets the men had been using that morning to carry in the grapes. She slipped her knife silently back into its sheath. She would not give them cause to say that barbarians hid in corners clutching weapons, waiting to pounce.
By the time she peered around the back of the stack and realized the visitor was the Medicus, the scrape and bang of the great door closing out the sunshine drowned the sound of her greeting.
A man who was shutting himself into a farm building in the dark was likely to want to be alone. Therefore a person who found herself hiding barely four feet away from him should immediately call out to warn him of her presence. But before she could speak, the Medicus had hurled his stick to the floor. He raised both fists and pounded the air, filling the building with a prolonged roar of something that sounded like, ‘Aaaargh!’
Perhaps this was not the time to reveal herself.
‘Aaaargh!’ bellowed the Medicus again. ‘Holy gods almighty! Jupiter’s bollocks! Give me strength!’
This unusual prayer ended with the slamming of a fist into the nearest suitable object. Tilla could not hold in the shriek as the stack of baskets landed on her and knocked her backwards against the wall.
For a moment he glared down at her as if she were a rat he had just caught trying to steal his dinner. Then, without speaking, he grabbed her arm and pulled her up.
She stood rubbing the bruise on the back of her head while he limped across to haul the door open. When he returned he said, ‘What are you doing in here?’
‘Is your foot hurting?’
‘Never mind my foot. What are you doing in here?’
‘You should sit down and rest. It is making you cross again.’
‘I’m not angry because of my foot, Tilla! I’m angry because of everything else!’ He bent to retrieve the stack of baskets. ‘I’m angry because — ’ The baskets creaked and complained as he flung them back into the corner. ‘Never mind. It’s too complicated.’
The Medicus was not the most patient of men, but she had never seen him quite this exasperated before. She was not sure what to do to calm him. ‘I have bread,’ she tried, pointing across to the platter still propped on the corner of the trough. ‘And cheese. The cheese is not set and it smells bad, but you can share if you want.’
‘Not now. I have things to do.’ He reached down for the walking-stick, but she was faster.
With the stick behind her back, she said, ‘If you go now, you will do the things badly.’
‘I haven’t got time to play games.’ He held out his hand. ‘Give it to me.’
Instead she took the outstretched hand in her own. ‘Sit and eat this strange cheese, my lord.’
He let out a huff of exasperation, glared at her, then gave in and let her lead him across to where they could sit side by side with their backs against the trough. When he had stretched out his legs between the broad shoulders of the two nearest jars buried in the floor, she handed him a chunk of bread.
He said, ‘D’you know, you’re the only person who’s offered me anything to eat since breakfast?’
‘Did you see her?’
