The Medicus was peering out into the dusk. ‘Turn round. Take the turn a hundred paces back, uphill between the vineyards.’
‘The Senator’s place? You sure about that?’
‘No!’ called Tilla. ‘He is ill. I am taking him home.’
‘I want to go to the Senator’s estate,’ insisted Ruso.
‘Make your minds up!’ came the voice from in front. ‘I’m not driving around all night in the dark. One or the other. Quick, or you get out and walk.’
‘The estate.’
With some grumbling, the driver manoeuvred the vehicle around in a tight semi-circle and set off back the way they had come.
Tilla said, ‘You are going to see the old wife.’
‘I need to make sure she’s safe.’
Tilla sighed and leaned against the back of the carriage. ‘Still, you think you are the only one who can save her. She is making a fool of you.’
‘Possibly,’ he said. ‘But I don’t think Calvus and Stilo ever came here for a social visit. I think they came here to find something, and they’ve been looking for it ever since. And if I’m right, they won’t want to leave without it.’
80
The carriage was already disappearing into the dusk when the Medicus rapped on the gates of the big estate for a second time.
After a moment Tilla pointed out, ‘Nothing is happening.’
He said, ‘There should at least be a dog.’
‘Why would this Calvus and Stilo come here when everyone knows they are liars and there will be men looking for them?’
The Medicus seemed to be wondering that himself. Perhaps his mind was still lost inside the pain-fighting medicine. Perhaps this really had just been an excuse to come and visit the old wife. She wished she had insisted on overruling him about the carriage. Still, if he really thought they could catch the men who had murdered Cass’s brother … ‘Bang on the gate.’
‘No,’ he said, fiddling with the latch and pushing at the studded wood with one shoulder. ‘I don’t want the whole household to hear.’
She could not resist a sigh of exasperation. ‘Very good. The driver has gone back to town. Everyone here has locked the doors and gone to bed early, and you do not want to wake them up. So now we have a long walk home.’
‘Not yet,’ he said, pushing harder at the gate. It gave way slowly, as if there were something heavy behind it. He bent to examine what he had just pushed out of the way.
‘It’s the gatekeeper.’ He was feeling for a pulse when she tapped him on the shoulder and pointed. The dog lay motionless, surrounded by a dark stain. No wonder it had failed to bark.
While the Medicus tended the injured man, she unsheathed her knife and crept out of the far end of the gatehouse.
She stopped dead.
The place was full of tall people.
She ducked back under the gatehouse. Her heart continued to thud furiously even as her brain registered her mistake. The people were not tall. They were on plinths. They were statues. She was entering a grand garden.
She took a couple of deep breaths, then moved forward again. On the left of the garden was an expanse of water and beyond it, the dark hulk of a house. She hesitated, chewing her lower lip. The Medicus had not bothered to tell her why he thought the false investigators were here or what they might be looking for. All he had said was that he wanted to make sure the old wife was safe. That would be interesting. How much danger should a woman leave an old wife in before it was necessary to help her?
It was a question she would have liked to debate around the fire late one night with her own people. Instead, she had a more pressing problem. The wife would be in the house. The house was reached by the paths, and the paths were deep gravel.
She could walk quickly towards the house, or she could walk quietly. Since she needed to do both, there was only one way to do it. Tilla veered sideways, lifted her skirt above her knees and sank one foot into the soil of a flowerbed. The scent of crushed rosemary wafted around her. She smiled to herself as she marched past the pond. The old wife would not be able to complain: the barbarian was here on the orders of the Medicus, and they were coming to save her from the murderers who called themselves Calvus and Stilo. Although why he thought they would be here was a mystery.
She crept across the gravel that separated the last flowerbed from the house, and tried to peer round the shutters of a side window. Everything inside was dark. The next window was the same, and the third. It did not seem right. There should have been servants moving about. Lamps being lit.
When she returned, the Medicus had laid the gatekeeper on his side. She whispered, ‘There is nobody there. Will he live?’
‘I think so. Are you sure?’
‘No. I cannot see through walls. Do you want to go in?’
‘Not yet.’
When he did not suggest anything else, she said, ‘What is happening?’
‘I don’t know yet.’
‘I am not going to stand here all night. What are this Calvus and Stilo looking for?’
‘Money.’
‘There is plenty of money to steal back in Arelate,’ she pointed out. ‘Why come here?’
‘They’d already stolen it,’ he said. ‘Or rather, Severus stole it for them.’
This did not make a great deal of sense, but he seemed to have lost interest in explaining. He was pointing to the shapes of what must be farm buildings looming on the far side of the garden. ‘I thought I heard something over there.’
‘Walk through the flowers,’ she told him. ‘Not on the path.’
‘What?’
‘Otherwise you might as well shout hello, here we come.’
The Medicus followed her, lifting the crutches, plunging them down through the plants and swinging his feet to land heavily further forward. There would be a fine mess in the morning, and it would be obvious who had made it.
The gate that led through the garden wall to the farmyard had been left open. Trying to peer ahead without being seen, she could make out an empty cart and the complicated shape of some sort of wooden harvesting machine under a shelter on the far side. She held her breath as something moved in the machinery, then the sleek black shape of a cat jumped down into the yard and melted away into the shadows. Somewhere, an animal snorted and stamped.
The Medicus was about to go through the gateway when there was a muffled burst of laughter from inside one of the buildings that opened on to the yard. Tilla pulled at his tunic to drag him back. ‘Was that what you heard?’
‘No,’ he whispered. ‘That’s just the slaves in the bunkhouse.’
The slaves did not sound as though they knew there were murderers about. Nor did they yet know that there was another pair of intruders sneaking around the yard in the dark. Once they found out, they would have no trouble catching the one on crutches and beating him up in the name of the Senator.
‘This is not a good idea,’ she whispered.
‘I know,’ he agreed, ‘but I haven’t got any others.’
‘If we do find those men, what are we going to do?’
