The southbound carriage would have been heading here. “She can’t remember any more of the address?”
“Numbers are easy. Words are hard to read.” Tilla, who could not read herself, sliced something away from the bird’s tail end and tossed it into the waste bucket in the corner.
It occurred to Ruso that his wife seemed to have a particular talent for anything involving a knife. She would probably have made a far better surgeon than she was a cook.
“It wasn’t a planned escape,” he mused. “If it had been, he wouldn’t have needed to steal the boat. It’s looking more and more as if they both took the money and then the brother murdered him for it.”
Tilla sniffed, either from disdain or from onion: It was hard to tell. “She says Caratius is lying.”
“We’ve been round this already. They looked to me like old enemies.”
“She says he must be lying because Asper was not on the way to Londinium, he was only going to visit a neighbor just outside town. And the neighbor was Caratius.”
“What? Why didn’t she say so?” Why had the magistrate himself not mentioned it? He considered the problem while Tilla hacked the torso of the bird into quarters. He was going to have to question the man again. “Maybe Asper lied to her about where he was going.”
“Or else Camma is right and that magistrate is not telling the truth.” The cauldron hissed and spat as she upended the contents of the bowl into it. “What is funny?”
“Last night you were convinced Asper was the villain because he was a tax man.”
“But now I have seen the magistrate and I do not trust him, either.”
“You hardly met him.”
“I have met men like him before.”
“That’s more or less what he said about Asper.” No wonder Albanus was reduced to dinning letters and numbers into small boys: The art of logic did not seem much prized among the Britons. Ruso leaned back against the wall, folded his arms, and watched as she wiped the table clean and wrung out the cloth.
She said, “You can tell Valens that dinner will not be long.”
Her words reminded him of another mystery. “Has he said anything about Serena coming back?”
“If you really want to know, why do you not ask yourself?”
“You know what Valens is like.”
“Hm. I expect Serena has found out what he is like too.”
Fond as he was of Valens, he had to admit that she had a point.
“I think we should listen to Camma,” Tilla continued. “She is not a fool. When we get to Verulamium I will try and find out the truth.”
“I’d rather you concentrated on looking after your patients,” he said, alarmed by the prospect of Tilla arriving in a strange town and confronting the chief magistrate. “I’ll be there as soon as I can, but get the driver to take you right to the door and be careful who you talk to. If Camma’s neighbors think her husband’s stolen their money, I don’t think you’ll be getting a warm welcome.”
Tilla raised her chin. “The Catuvellauni have always been a tribe that likes to rule over others,” she said. “A warm welcome in their hometown is not something to be proud of.”
“Stay out of trouble, Tilla.”
“I am not going there to make trouble,” she said. “I am going there to-oh!”
The Iceni woman was standing in the doorway. Even in a creased mud-colored tunic that was too short, one hand rubbing sleep out of her eyes and her hair wilder than usual, she was beautiful. She said, “There is something you must know before we go to Verulamium.”
Tilla pointed to the chair by the fire. “Come and sit while I cook.”
Camma did not move. “When I tell you, you may not want to come with me.” She paused, as if she was hoping Tilla might promise to come no matter what she said. When the silence grew awkward, Ruso offered to leave.
“No, you must know this too. I am to blame for what has happened.”
Tilla looked up from stirring the pot and assured her that nothing was her fault.
Camma took no notice. “It was my husband,” she said. “My husband put a curse on him.”
Ruso had very little faith in that sort of irrational nonsense himself, but for people who believed in its power, a curse could stir up an untold amount of trouble. “Your husband put a curse on Caratius?” he said. “What for?”
“No!” She was sounding impatient. “My husband was the one doing the cursing. He cursed Julius Asper.”
For a few seconds it made no sense. Then Tilla said, “So Asper was not-”
“Julius Asper is the father of my baby,” explained Camma. “My husband…” She stopped to clear her throat. “My husband is Chief Magistrate Caratius.”
18
Ruso was still considering the implications of Camma’s confession as he stretched his legs out across the floorboards and leaned back against the rough wall of Valens’s storeroom. At least he would not be bored during the long hours of the night. Watching over the remains of the man who was not Camma’s husband after all, he was going to have to go back over his conversations with Caratius. The ground had shifted beneath his feet. He understood now why she had said the baby was “the cause of all this.” He understood too why the magistrate had insisted that Asper was a crook and Camma a liar. Camma, in one simple sentence, had transformed Caratius from outraged victim to chief suspect.
She had also shaken Ruso’s confidence. What sort of an investigator did he think he was? How the hell had he failed to see it when the two of them had confronted each other in Valens’s dining room? Come to that, why had neither of them admitted it? He supposed neither had thought their complaint would be taken seriously if they told the truth.
It was possible-understandable, in fact-that the magistrate would want revenge. But a man planning to do away with his wife’s lover would surely keep the matter within his own family, or at least his own tribe. Why involve a large sum of public money and attract the attention of the procurator’s office? As for Camma’s claim that Asper had not been on the way to deliver the tax at all, but had disappeared after announcing a visit to Caratius-he would follow it up, but that would make the magistrate a fool as well as a murderer. Caratius did not seem like a fool. Still, it was obvious that he was glad to see the back of Julius Asper.
Maybe there was something in this curse business after all.
The room was growing chilly. Ruso reached for his cloak and threw it around his shoulders, wondering if Tilla would complain about the limewash making white marks on the wool and then reminding himself that he should be concentrating on praying for the spirit of Julius Asper. After all, hardly anyone else was likely to bother.
In the feeble yellow glow of the lamps he gazed at the shell of a human being laid out on the bed. This man had chosen to steal someone else’s wife, and possibly someone else’s money. He had then been murdered, dumped in an alley, haggled over, and jovially threatened with having his brain opened up.
There would be no more choices for Julius Asper.
The silence in the room felt thick enough to reach out and touch. Even the rogue cockerel seemed to be asleep. Ruso stood up to light the grains of incense in the bowl, recited what he hoped was a suitable prayer and began to run through the things he must do in the morning. He would probably have to pay handsomely for the women’s transport to Verulamium, since he could not transfer his travel warrant and he could hardly ask the grieving widow if she had brought any spare cash with her. Before they left, he would sit Tilla down and make it absolutely clear that the wife of a Roman citizen and a government investigator must not take sides in local disputes. Especially disputes between politicians and their wives.
Then he was going to find Caratius and ask the questions he should have asked today instead of listening to all that pompous speechifying. This time he would concentrate on asking him… Ruso yawned. On asking him…
He must stay awake and concentrate. He tried to frame some probing questions, but it had been a long day. A soft fog was drifting across his brain. He found the same phrases were repeating themselves, circling lazily
