12
Ruso had barely lifted his hand to knock on Valens’s door when it was wrenched open. Glimpsing a pile of luggage in the hallway behind his wife, he did not need to be told that she and the newly widowed Iceni woman had been waiting here for hours with everything packed, that all the transport to Verulamium had gone without them, and that if he wanted any lunch he was too late.
She told him anyway.
“I’m sorry, I got held up.” He was ashamed to hear himself adding with guile worthy of Valens, “Didn’t you get a message?”
“No.” She glanced up the stairs and lowered her voice. “Perhaps the dead man you sent forgot to tell me.”
Valens’s consulting rooms were separated from the main hallway by a narrow lobby that housed mops and brooms and smelled of vinegar and rising damp. He drew her into the dark space before asking, “How’s Camma?”
“She is tired and sore and frightened for her husband. And she wants to go home.”
“That’s him in there,” he murmured. “The dead man. I’ve found Julius Asper.”
He was unable to see Tilla’s face, but in the short pause that followed, he hoped she was framing an apology.
Instead she said, “You sent his body here with no message to his wife?”
“I was busy trying to find out what happened to him,” he said. “The porters were supposed to tell Valens to keep it quiet till I got here.”
“Valens and his apprentices were out. Your men came to the house door and told the kitchen boy that if he did not let them in they would leave the body in the street.”
“Oh, hell. Did Camma hear all this going on?”
“She was upstairs.”
“Good.”
“And now we are not going to Verulamium?”
“Not today at least. I need to talk to someone tonight who might have seen the brother.”
“So I must unpack the luggage?”
He groped for the latch of the surgery door. “Keep Camma out of the way a bit longer, will you? We’ll get him tidied up before she sees him.”
“You are still not going to tell her?”
“Of course I am. As soon as we’re ready.”
“I see.”
“Well, it won’t bring him back, will it?”
He ducked inside the consulting room to the sound of, “Wives do not need to be told anything!” and closed the door on, “Wives are not important!”
Turning, he was startled to see Valens and the apprentices watching him across an empty operating table. The tall skinny apprentice looked as though he was about to offer some comment. The short one elbowed him in the ribs.
“Glad you’re back,” said Valens, tactfully ignoring the argument he must have overheard. “The boys are keen to get a closer look at this body you’ve so kindly sent us. Ready, chaps?”
The shorter of the chaps looked more apprehensive than keen, but dutifully chorused, “Yes, sir!” with his eager-faced companion.
“You’re in luck,” Valens assured them. “You’re starting with a fresh one. I remember my first corpse when I was about your age…” He raised his voice as the youths disappeared into the adjoining storeroom to fetch the body, making sure they did not miss any of the graphic details of his first postmortem.
The short lad reappeared clutching one end of a stretcher with a sheet draped over it. Finally noticing the expression on his face, Valens added, “Don’t worry, he’s not about to sit up and complain. Bring him in and we’ll get him cleaned up.’
As the remains of Julius Asper were maneuvered into the surgery, a thump on the ceiling told Ruso that Tilla had just dropped one of the bags on the bedroom floor. While the body was being unloaded onto the table, a series of smaller thumps and bangs told him she was unpacking. Valens was observing, “Notice the rigidity? You may need to cut the clothes off,” when something screeched across the floor above him. Ruso guessed the box of crockery had been rammed back under the bed.
The short apprentice was approaching the body as one might a dangerous animal when a fierce knocking shook the outside door of the surgery. The clothing shears in his hand clattered onto the tiled floor.
Valens sent the tall boy to get rid of the caller.
“Very sorry, sirs,” Ruso heard the lad say. “The doctor’s-”
The door was flung open with a force that knocked the boy sideways. A voice bellowed, “The assistant procurator of the province of Britannia and Senior Magistrate Caratius of Verulamium!’
After this grand announcement, Firmus’s entry was something of a disappointment. He sidled in, shoulders hunched as if he was afraid he might brush against something unpleasant, and squinted at the body. He was followed by a tall man in a deep blue traveling cloak pinned by a magnificent enameled brooch in the shape of a prancing horse. The dusty sandals below and the grim expression above suggested he had come a long way to see this, and he was not impressed. Behind him, a massive native wearing chain mail ducked in under the lintel before Firmus’s elderly slave closed the door.
Firmus backed away to stand against the shelves. The grimfaced one who must be Senior Magistrate Caratius approached the table and leaned over the body of Julius Asper. A heavy gold earring glinted through the gray hair that had escaped the braid and straggled around his jaw.
“That’s one of them,” he confirmed. Despite his appearance, his Latin had no trace of a native accent. “Which of you is the investigator?”
Ruso introduced himself. He was about to offer condolences when the man interrupted with, “No sign of the money, I suppose?”
“Not yet, sir.”
“But you have men out looking for it?”
Wishing the magistrate would keep his voice down, Ruso glanced at Firmus for some guidance on how to proceed. The youth’s face was pale beneath the tan. He was gazing in the direction of Julius Asper’s feet. The elderly slave leaned forward and began to describe the body.
“Not now, Pyramus!” snapped his master. “I can see quite enough.”
Their presence made Ruso aware of how the mingling aromas of a doctor’s surgery and an unwashed dead body might strike an outsider and what his audience might be making of the saw cuts scarring the sides of the operating table. “We’re about to examine him in the hope of confirming what’s happened,” he explained. “Then if the magistrate could fill me in on-”
“Will that help you find the money?” interrupted Caratius.
“Possibly.” Ruso nodded to Valens to get on with it. He was about to usher the spectators to a position where they were no longer obstructing the medics and blocking the light when he caught the expression on Firmus’s face. He grabbed him by one arm and swung him around toward the internal door. “I think we’re a bit in the way here,” he announced, struggling to pull the pin out of the latch and wondering if his spare hand would have been better employed holding a bowl in front of the assistant procurator.
Behind him he heard Valens giving orders and the magistrate saying, “I think we should watch.”
“It’s very tedious, sir,” Ruso assured him, putting one knee to the door and jolting the pin out of place. He dragged Firmus through the lobby into the fresh air of the hallway. “If you could just keep your voices down, gentlemen, there are patients asleep upstairs…” Finally, with the door of Valens’s dining room safely closed, he continued, “Perhaps you could brief me about what’s been going on in Verulamium?”
Sipping a cup of Ruso’s wedding-present wine, Caratius sat very upright on one end of Valens’s uncomfortable couch and began to explain that he had been on the Council for many years just like his father before him, a man who was a respected leader of his people, eager to blend local tradition with modern ways, and whose
