Ruso.”
“Serena!” His hands clamped over his groin as his eyes met the piercing gaze of a woman, who, had she been male, would have been considered handsome. He swallowed. “What are you doing here?”
“My cousin thought she recognized you.” The thick brows met in puzzlement. “Why are you hiding behind the door?”
“I thought you were a slave,” he explained with a lack of clarity that he felt was excusable in a man who had just found himself naked in a bedroom with his best friend’s wife. “Then I thought you might not be. Uh-how are you?”
Serena looked him up and down and gave a sigh that suggested the weariness of a woman who was used to dealing with naughty boys. “Put some clothes on, Ruso.”
As he fumbled his way gratefully into the clean tunic, he heard, “I suppose he’s sent you to ask me to come home.” Before he could reply she said, “Well, don’t bother. I shan’t listen.”
Finally emerging into daylight, he said, “To be honest, I didn’t know you were here.”
She pondered that for a moment. “But he knew you were coming?”
“Valens?”
“Who else?”
Ruso, seeing where this was heading, tried, “Possibly.”
“Possibly,” she repeated, as if she was trying the word to see whether or not she liked it. “Well, did he, or didn’t he?”
Ruso straightened a crease across his shoulder. “Yes.”
“So,” concluded Serena, raising the eyebrows and arching her neck in a way that reminded him of an intelligent horse, “my husband knew you were coming here, and he knows I am here, but he didn’t even trouble himself to send a message.”
Ruso reached for his belt. “I wouldn’t say he didn’t trouble himself, exactly…”
“No,” said Serena, seizing the door handle. “I don’t suppose you would. But then, what do you know about it?”
Before he could answer, the door slammed shut. “Not a lot,” he confessed, gazing past the space where she had just been standing and wondering if that crack in the plaster had been there before.
32
Clutching his bath token, Ruso stepped out of his private exit and into the alley that separated the mansio’s accommodation from its transport yard. The smell of hot metal and horse dung grew stronger, and the clang of hammer on iron signaled that even this late in the day, the stable workshops had a repair job under way. He locked the door behind him, dropped the key into his purse, and turned left. He must set aside for the moment the awkward and embarrassing coincidence of Serena’s cousin being married to the mansio manager. He must restrain the urge to scrawl a rude note to Valens, who should have warned him. He must get himself cleaned up, make an attempt to report to the Council-with luck it would be too late today-and then find Tilla.
He was approaching the doors of a bathhouse that would not have disgraced a small town at home when he heard a pair of studded boots striding up behind him. A voice said, “Investigator?”
It was another of the local guards. This one not only had the red tunic, the chain mail, and a silver-buckled belt, but also flamboyant scarlet braids woven through dark hair that hung below his shoulders. No attempt to emulate Rome here, then.
“Dias.” The man, slightly out of breath, was holding out a hand. “Captain of the town guard. We’ve been looking into the theft of the tax money. When do you want me to brief you?”
Ruso need not have worried about translation. The locals’ grasp of Latin was as impressive as their eagerness to cooperate. “I was going across to the baths,” he explained, “but if there’s somewhere we can talk…”
Dias assured him that the baths would be fine. Ruso handed his token to the attendant on the door and entered the echoing din of the entrance hall. The guard captain sauntered past with a nod. Moments later Ruso was seated beneath the high window of a private and overscented warm room. The other occupants had grabbed their towels and clattered out in their wooden bath shoes as soon as they saw Dias enter. Ruso felt his skin begin to prickle with sweat. Since the native was sitting upright on the bench opposite without so much as loosening his belt, it did not seem appropriate to undress.
Dias turned out to be the exact opposite of Caratius. His hairstyle might be unmilitary but his summary was professional and concise, and it confirmed what the magistrate and the stable overseer had already told him. Asper had collected the tax money from the town strong room without requesting a guard, and set off in the rain. He and his brother had last been seen driving out through the gates on the Londinium road. Next morning, the carriage had been found abandoned just off the main road between the second and third milestones. “I’m told Asper got to Londinium by boat,” he said. “My men searched the area where the carriage was found and we had a look downriver, but we still can’t find Bericus.”
“No, I haven’t traced him, either.” Ruso unpeeled his tunic from his back. “Asper was already alone when he took the boat, though, so they must have parted near here.” The dark eyes widened as Ruso explained about his inquiries into the river monster a couple of miles away.
Ruso hoped he had not just wrecked Lund’s moneymaking activities. “Your men don’t need to bother with the farmer,” he said. “He’s told everything he knows and he’s harmless.” He wiped a trickle of sweat from his forehead before venturing into more difficult territory. “I gather one of your magistrates had a personal grudge against Asper?”
Dias nodded as if he had been expecting the question. “Asper got Chief Magistrate Caratius’s wife pregnant. She left, or Caratius kicked her out, I don’t know which-but Asper had to take her in.”
“Do you think it’s relevant?”
“You mean, did the chief magistrate have a reason to have Asper murdered? Or did Asper have a reason to get out of town with no woman, no guards, and a big bag of somebody else’s money?”
“It certainly doesn’t seem to be a random theft,” said Ruso, deciding not to mention the claim that Asper had really been on the way to visit the chief magistrate when he vanished. For all he knew, Dias would be reporting the conversation back to the Council.
“We think the brother turned on him,” said Dias. “They used to argue a lot.”
As Ruso was considering this nugget of fresh information, Dias said, “I hear you haven’t brought any men with you. I’ll assign you a couple of guards.”
“If this whole thing was engineered by a dead man and a brother on the run, I doubt I’ll be in much danger.”
Dias grinned. “True,” he said, “but I don’t want your pals in Londinium thinking the natives don’t know how to make a man welcome. I served in the army too: I know the sort of things that get said about us. Besides, my lads can help you find your way around.”
The military service explained the Latin. “I was with the Twentieth for a while,” said Ruso, realizing Dias had noticed his old army belt, now adapted for civilian use. “You?”
“Five years with the Third Brittones over in Germania,” said Dias, adding, “Medical discharge” to explain the short duration of a service that would normally last a couple of decades. “Back trouble.”
Ruso eyed the lithe form, the good bone structure that meant Dias would grow old still handsome, and the colorful native hairstyle. “There’s a lot of back trouble in the army,” he observed. Much of it was completely unprovable, but he was not going to insult the man by saying so.
“It’s settled down now,” said Dias. “How about you?”
Clearly Ruso did not look like an aristocrat who had served briefly on the way to greater things, and he was not going to admit that he was a doctor with a short-term contract. He lifted one leg and said truthfully, “Broke my foot.”
Dias gestured toward it. “All right now, is it?”
“Fine.”
