‘I’m in the middle of supervising the vintage, remember? Good old reliable Lucius, here every year — ’
‘We’ve been through this. We need to — ’
‘I stay here and work while you float around the Empire picking up women. You don’t have the faintest idea what responsibility really means, do you? Now I’m going to be gone for who knows how long, because somebody who can walk on both legs needs to go and get my wife out of the clutches of that woman so she can come back here and do her duty!’
Lucius paused for breath, and Marcia’s voice floated across the yard. ‘Are you two going to have another fight?’
The unified ‘No!’ was one of the few things they had agreed on since Ruso’s return.
‘I’ll take the cart,’ growled Lucius to the approaching stable lad. ‘The farm will have to manage without it because my brother’s wrecked the only fast animal we’ve got our hands on and that woman he brought — ’
‘Yes, all right!’ snapped Ruso. ‘If you’d taken your wife seriously in the first place, you wouldn’t need to chase after her now.’
‘Hah! You’re advising me about marriage?’
Ruso took a deep breath, consciously unclenched his fists and said, ‘Neither of us did anything to help, so Cass and Tilla have gone to Arelate by themselves to see what they can find out about the
‘What man?’
‘All I know is that his name is Ponticus, and if he finds out why they’re there, he’ll try to silence them.’
Lucius ran a hand through his thinning hair. ‘I can’t believe this. You knew my wife was in danger and you didn’t even tell me?’
‘If we leave now — ’
‘Oh, no. This time
‘But — ’
‘I’ll take the stable lad. You can stay here and do all the work for a change. You can have the old mule that’s left, and that horse will want delivering back to the estate in the morning.’
‘But — ’
Lucius’ fist shot out and grabbed a handful of his tunic. ‘Just for once, Gaius, just once — will you bloody well let me make my own decisions?’
54
Ruso left his brother strutting about, shouting orders. He was making his way back past the dead fountain when his thoughts were interrupted by a wail of ‘Gaius!’
It was time to see what he could do to clear up the rest of this afternoon’s chaos.
‘They’ve been through our underwear, Gaius!’ shouted Marcia, leaning out over the porch balustrade, clearly eager to get her complaint in first.
‘Not while we were in it,’ added Flora.
‘Really, Flora!’ This last was from Arria, who was positioned at the top of the steps like a legionary about to defend a breach in the garrison walls. As he lurched unevenly up towards her, she said, ‘You must send a complaint to the Senator, Gaius! They’ve upset everybody and broken one of the best bowls.’
‘Only one?’ asked Ruso, relieved. While Calvus questioned the household, Stilo and three of Fuscus’ thugs had been searching the house for — he was not sure what. Poisons, he supposed. Stilo had emerged still clutching the knife in his disfigured hand. Perhaps he imagined that, if he found the poison, someone was going to force him to swallow it.
‘It was one of a set. A beautiful set. Your poor father bought them for me.’ She sniffed. ‘On our first anniversary.’
As he climbed the steps, he saw that his stepmother’s eyes were glistening with tears. The girls, noticing the same thing, retreated into the house.
‘It’s all right,’ he assured her, putting an arm around her shoulders and realizing this was probably the first time he had ever touched her voluntarily. ‘We’ll get another one.’
‘But they’ve been through all our lovely things!’
The lovely things were of secondary interest. ‘Is anybody hurt?’ The fourth member of the gang had been ordered to prevent him from leaving the garden. Ruso had been forced to wait out the questioning, limping back and forth along the gravel paths, listening for any sounds from the house and planning to beat Fuscus’ man aside with his walking-stick if he heard anyone scream. He had heard nothing, but he was still relieved when Arria confirmed that Calvus and Stilo had done no worse than frighten their victims.
‘And they’ve upset Cook! I knew they would. Goodness knows what we’ll get for dinner now, and we can’t cancel Lollia again. Those dreadful men made him open all the jars in the pantry and then they made the kitchen- boy eat something out of every one of them. No wonder he was sick.’
Ruso scowled, trying to stifle the guilty awareness that he might have spared them all of this by giving the investigators the evidence about Claudia buying rhododendron honey. ‘What about the others?’
‘Then they found some wretched dried leaves in the barn — Lucius says he uses them to get rid of wild dogs, but they’ve taken them away.’
‘Dogbane?’ suggested Ruso, summoning a vague childhood recollection of watching his father’s farm manager making dry leaves into cakes with suet and being told not to touch them.
‘Oh, who knows what he keeps in there?’ sighed Arria, letting him lead her out into the garden. ‘And now they’ve taken your lovely case …’
‘Nothing that was in my medical case will be a problem, I promise you,’ he insisted.
Arria sniffed. ‘But it was so beautiful, with all those pretty clips and places to put the little bottles — what would your father say?’
‘He’d say at least they let me keep the instruments,’ insisted Ruso, who was privately outraged at the confiscation. After all the arguments about duty and responsibility, the gift of the medical case had been the tacit sign of his father’s acceptance that Ruso was not going to stay at home and run the farm. ‘They promised to release it when they’ve checked the medicines.’ As if he had been likely to believe them.
‘Oh, Gaius, what are we going to do? I told that horrible man we don’t know anything, and it was all a silly fuss about nothing, but he still kept on asking questions and looking at me.’
‘A murder isn’t nothing, Arria.’
‘But he wasn’t murdered, Gaius! For goodness’ sake!’
This was unexpected. ‘Have you been talking to Lucius?’
‘I told him, you’re not that sort of doctor.’
‘What did you say to him, exactly?’
‘I told him the truth. Well, that was what you wanted, dear, wasn’t it?’
‘And the truth is?’
Arria paused to run her little finger along the lower lid of each eye and inspect it for stray make-up.
‘You look fine,’ he assured her, knowing he would get no sense out of her until her poise was recovered.
Arria patted her hair. ‘I explained to him,’ she said, ‘that you’ve been away in the Army.’ She put her hand on his arm. ‘Please don’t be cross with me. I’m sure you’re a very good doctor. I’m sure you know all about arrows and sword-cuts and what to do when people get their fingers stuck in those ballista things, but really, dear, the legionaries don’t go around poisoning people, do they?’
‘Not as far as I know.’
‘So you really don’t know an awful lot about it, do you?’
He bristled. ‘I know a lot more than most people.’
‘Yes, dear, but even you can still make a mistake. Can’t you?’
‘Of course, but — ’
‘And you’re tired after all that travelling and, to be frank, Gaius, you do have a tendency to over- dramatize.’
