‘If a man with a weak heart,’ mused Ruso, ‘were to drink a large quantity of poisonous honey and rosewater on a hot day …’
‘It’s possible.’
‘So how would you get hold of the honey in a place like this?’
‘Ah,’ said Valgius, turning back to the cart. ‘That’s your problem. Me, I’ve got to get all the boys and girls loaded up before the old man gets back.’
Ruso peered at the boxes, curious. ‘Can you really tell the boys from the girls?’
‘You can sometimes get an idea from the tail,’ said the man. ‘But if you want to be sure you need two people, a blunt probe, and — ’
‘Never mind,’ said Ruso, backing away with a hand held out in surrender. ‘Another time.’
The man who had failed to sell Ruso the frankincense gave up pretending to be pleased to see him again when he found out why he had come. ‘I don’t know who’s been telling you that rubbish,’ he insisted. ‘I’m only a simple root-cutter. Remedies and cosmetics. I don’t sell food.’
‘That’s funny,’ said Ruso. ‘Because three of the people I’ve spoken to around here told me you were the man to ask.’
‘That lot?’ demanded the root-cutter, glancing round the other stallholders, who were beginning to pack up at the end of the afternoon’s trading. ‘What do they know? Like I tell them, if you want to sell as much as me, make the effort to invest in quality product. Walk the hills, find the best places, get out of bed before dawn every morning and get cracking. But oh, no. It’s easier to sit on your backside and gossip about other people.’
Ruso said, ‘I’m disappointed. I’d have thought with your range, exotic honeys would have been a good complement.’
The man upended the wooden tray on which he had displayed his produce and banged it to detach the mud and stray leaves. ‘Sorry.’
‘Pity,’ said Ruso. ‘It would have been fun. Ah well. I suppose it’ll be the old laxatives-in-the-soup routine, then. Unless you know anybody else I could try?’
The man wiped the rest of the dirt from the tray and said, ‘What is it you’re looking for, exactly?’
Ruso told him.
‘You don’t want to eat rhododendron honey. Send you silly.’
‘Exactly,’ said Ruso. ‘It’s my brother’s birthday coming up. We always play jokes on each other.’ He indicated his bandaged foot. ‘Look what he did to me.’
‘Funny kind of a joke.’
‘Family tradition,’ explained Ruso. ‘Point of honour.’
The man looked as though he had more to say, but had stifled it in the face of a prospective sale. ‘You’d have to order it at least ten days in advance,’ he said. ‘There’s not much call for it.’
Ruso muttered a curse in what he hoped was a disappointed tone, and explained that the birthday was the day after tomorrow. The root-cutter shrugged an apology and groped under the stall for an empty basket. He began to stack the unsold medicine pots in it.
‘What about your supplier?’ Ruso tried. ‘Could I go direct?’
The man carried on working, clearly not such a fool as to reveal the name of his source and sacrifice his profit. ‘Too much could make him ill anyway,’ he warned. ‘You’d be safer with the laxatives.’
Ruso wondered how much longer he could keep this up. Claudia’s voice floated into his mind, reminding him that he was a terrible liar. He was probably wasting his time. He should have gone back to ask Gnostus about local suppliers of dubious substances. Still, while he was here he might as well finish the job.
‘What about your last customer for it?’ he tried. ‘When did you last sell any? Would he have some left?’
‘She,’ corrected the man.
Ruso felt his stomach muscles tighten. Trying to keep his voice even, he said, ‘If I could find her, I’d make her a good offer.’
‘I didn’t ask her name.’
‘What does she look like? Perhaps she’s somebody I already know.’
The man’s eyes narrowed. ‘I don’t pass on my customers’ business. Now clear off. I’m an honest trader and I’m busy.’
The man bent down to heave up another basket. The knife-point pressed against his left kidney took him by surprise.
‘I was lying,’ said Ruso, ramming the tip of his forefinger harder into the man’s back and hoping he could not turn his head far enough to see the knife Ruso hadn’t had time to get out still slung on his belt. ‘It’s not my brother’s birthday. It’s about a murder investigation. And if you don’t tell me who bought that honey, you’re going to have much nastier people than me round here trying to help you remember.’
Ruso’s hands were shaking as he untethered the mule. It could not be true. It could not be …
The man had no reason to lie.
He had sold the poisonous honey several days ago to a respectable young woman who had known exactly what she wanted. A young woman with orange curls and lots of make-up. No, he couldn’t remember what she had been wearing, but he remembered what she had on her feet because she had trodden in something and blamed him for not keeping the pavement clean. So he had lent her a cloth to wipe the mess off her fancy sandals. Coral-pink sandals with pearls set in the front.
41
Severus’ funeral passed with neither incident nor enlightenment, and if anyone thought he was being disposed of with indecent haste, they did not say so in Ruso’s hearing. All the members of the Petreius family who were old enough to behave themselves had been marshalled at the little cemetery on the hill behind the Senator’s house. Marcia and Flora looked suitably drab and dishevelled and inappropriately cheerful. A funeral meant another day away from the privilege of studying music and poetry.
Ennia spent most of the funeral weeping on the sloping shoulder of Zosimus the steward, breaking off only occasionally to glare at Claudia. Fuscus, as a respectable magistrate, stood well away from Probus, the financier, in the ranks of solemn-faced local worthies come to pay their last respects to the agent of My Cousin The Senator. Several drivers dozed by expensive carriages, ready to facilitate a quick escape for their masters when the funeral feast — to which the Petreius family had not been invited — was over.
The grief and fear on the faces of the estate staff was all too real. Ruso counted at least thirty of them, and there would be others back at the house busily cleansing and purifying.
As the burning wood crackled and the column of smoke rose into the clear sky the smell of incense failed to disguise the stench of burning flesh.
Ruso glanced around the mourners. Everyone he knew who might possibly have a motive for poisoning Severus was here. If he were the Senator’s investigator, which one would he decide to accuse?
The answer was obvious. The only certain way to save himself would be to reveal that Claudia had bought the honey. And if he did that, Probus would bring the fragile edifice of the family debts crashing down around him. He would survive as the powerless guardian of a family with nowhere to live. Tilla would have to choose whether to stay here and share his disgrace, or travel home alone.
42
This god did not have much of a house. Fifteen or twenty of his followers were crowded into a stone outbuilding that seemed to have been hastily cleared for the purpose. There was no statue. No shrine. No sacrifice this evening, either. Tilla was relieved about that. Galla did not seem the sort to be involved in murdering babies and drinking their blood, but she had heard that this dreadful practice was the reason the followers of Christos were only marginally more popular with Rome than the Druids. Mind you, much of what the Romans said about the
