fled from Gavo in all the excitement. Ruso jumped the gelding back over the ditch, then turned and leaned down to grab his wife’s hand as she leapt across onto the track with her skirts bunched up into the other fist.
The embarrassment of having to explain the arrival of an uninvited dinner guest who was still picking twigs out of her hair was something Ruso would later try very hard to forget. Caratius made an effort to be polite but the tone in which he said, “From the North, I see!” suggested that if Ruso was going to marry a Briton, he might have made a more civilized choice. Indeed, it probably looked as though Ruso had failed to mention her before because he was ashamed of her.
As Caratius showed them around the estate, Tilla seemed to be trying to make up for her bizarre behavior by being unusually sociable. She was busy complimenting their host on the mares and foals grazing in the paddocks when Ruso wandered a few paces farther along the track, which carried on past the house. He stopped. The river had not followed the course he had assumed. Instead it had swept round in a wide curve. Not only did it flow across Caratius’s land: down there in the shifting shadows of the willow trees he could make out some sort of planking and mooring posts.
It was difficult to concentrate on the tour of the stables. He barely noticed the tack room, hung with plenty of jingling decorations for Caratius’s slaves to polish. He had to force himself to pay attention to the conversation as they paused to watch a very small boy in man-sized boots hold the halter of a gray stallion while a man clamped its nearside hoof between his own thighs and circled it with a pair of long-handled pincers, clipping off a hard crescent of extra growth.
When Caratius finally left them in a hall that smelled of roasting beef and mold and went to warn the cook about the extra guest, he hissed, “What the hell are you doing here?”
“I am here to protect you.”
“I thought you couldn’t leave Camma on her own?”
“She is not on her own,” said Tilla, looking pleased with herself. “The housekeeper came to pay respects to her master. She said she will stay while I am out.”
“Well, don’t say anything careless. I think the guard captain was Valens’s burglar.”
“I told you,” she whispered, “you cannot trust these people.”
She lifted her hands to tuck a solitary primrose into her ruffled hair. She was still flushed after the chase through the woods. How did this woman always manage to be desirable at inconvenient moments?
“Turn round,” he ordered her as a slave approached clutching a towel. “Stand still. You’ve still got pieces of leaf stuck to your back.”
37
The men had gone into the dining room ahead of her. Tilla settled herself on the stool, leaned against the wall, and stretched out one leg so the slave could struggle with the knot in the damp leather lacing of her boot.
She had made a fool of herself, and the Medicus was embarrassed. Still, it was better to be a fool than a widow. Better to be embarrassed than to suffer some “accident” at the hands of the Catuvellauni. He would come to see that in a day or two. And at least she was getting dinner.
When the slave had finished drying her feet and taken her boots away to clean, she was ushered into a big room where instead of good beef there was all sorts of fiddly food set out in red bowls much like their own on a low table. Her husband and Caratius stopped talking and turned to look at her as if they had been discussing something important and secret. Perhaps Caratius had been trying to find out what the Medicus knew about the murder. Or perhaps he had been giving his own side of the marriage story that both he and Camma had been too embarrassed to tell in Londinium.
She sat in the wicker chair, relieved that this house did not have those terrible dining couches to go with the foreign food. She had never understood how people could eat lying down. It was against all common sense. A slave poured her watered wine, then offered her olives and oysters. She knew it was an odd combination. She might be a Northerner but she had traveled across the sea to places that most men like Caratius could only dream about. She supposed he was trying to impress.
Perhaps she had been worrying about nothing. Caratius did not know he was under suspicion. Besides, the man had spent money on the dinner. He would not do that if he were planning to attack his guest. He had just brought the Medicus out here to tell him what to think.
She glanced at her husband’s bowl. He had stayed with the oysters. She helped herself to a couple of olives. The taste reminded her of Gaul. Caratius was boasting about his wine specially imported “from a man I know in Aquitania” and how their grandfathers had been friends and how he was thinking of inviting him over here to help set up a vineyard. The Medicus very politely did not say that his own family had been making wine back in Gaul for years and that anyone-even a British woman who preferred a good beer-could tell that it was better than the rubbish the grandfather’s friend was sending over.
Caratius carried on gulping down oysters and ignoring her. He was too busy explaining why the Council would do well to listen to him in future and how the Medicus ought to go about his investigating. The Medicus was saying very little, perhaps waiting for Caratius to give something away by mistake.
Her hand slipped down to massage her bare toes. She could have outrun that big lad. She had been watching them for most of the journey. Neither of the so-called guards had paid any attention to a woman in a nondescript shawl hurrying along the road to get home before dark. None of them had noticed her slip into the woods. Even when she had startled a magpie and the big one had spun around and spotted her, she could have gotten away. She flexed her toes and rubbed away a sliver of grazed skin. If only she had noticed that tree root.
She shivered. The evening air drifting in through the window was chilly and Grata’s shawl was damp after its roll in the leaves. Outside, she could see the Medicus’s guards leading the stray horse up the track from the woods.
One of the slaves came in to light the lamps. Caratius stopped talking for long enough to grab another oyster and order the shutters closed. Before he could start again she said, “Have you told the investigator that you invited Julius Asper here to see you on the day he was killed?”
The point of Caratius’s spoon skidded off the edge of the oyster and narrowly missed stabbing his thumb. The Medicus glared at her. Later on, no doubt, he would tell her he had a plan and she had wrecked it. When really, he was trying to find a way to ask, and not doing very well at it.
Caratius put the oyster down. “I think you are mistaken.”
“I have been told,” she said, “that he was not going to Londinium at all. He had a message to come here and see you. I have spoken to the housekeeper who took it.”
“Here? No, no, no. I never wanted to go near the man. Absolutely not.”
He turned to the Medicus. “This is the sort of thing I was telling you about earlier. False rumors. Cursing in public places. Vindictive behavior. I wasn’t even at home that day.”
That, of course, meant nothing at all. He could still have sent the message and ordered the murder. She said, “Asper thought you wanted to talk about-” She stopped. Outside in the hall, an old woman was shouting in British for help.
As they all leapt to their feet, Caratius was saying, “Please don’t disturb yourselves!” and heading for the door. It burst open before he got there. A little woman with sparse white hair was shouting in a cracked voice, “They are here! Warriors in the woods!”
Caratius moved to put himself between her and his guests. He said in British, “It’s all right, mother.” He took hold of one thin arm and tried to steer her back out of the room. “They’re just guards from town rounding up a loose horse. They won’t hurt anybody. Mother, have you been hiding food again?”
“Let go of my bag!” Her hands were like claws, clutching a grimy sack to her chest. “I need my bag!”
The waft of roasting beef from the kitchen mingled with something more pungent.
“Just go to your room, mother. Nobody wants your bag. Where’s that dratted girl?”
The woman peered past him. “What are those people doing in my house? Are they the ones who took our silver?”
“They’re visiting, Mother. Guests come to share a meal. It’s nothing to worry about.”
