“Oh, no! I would never hurt anybody.”
That much at least was credible.
Nico clamped one hand against his forehead in a gesture that would get him a job in the new theater if it were ever built. “You will think I am deranged.”
“Try me.”
“I was trying to warn you,” he said. “I have dreams. Terrible dreams, always the same. A man is being stabbed in the back, and I am supposed to save him but I can’t move. I never knew what it meant until you arrived. Then I realized. You are the man in the dream!”
“Rubbish,” said Ruso, hoping he was right. He had heard plenty of stories of premonitions in dreams. Some were true and others were nonsense, but he had never heard of one quite so specific.
“And now your wife has been attacked!” Nico shuddered. “I don’t believe in these things, either, but how would I feel if it came true?”
“Not as bad as I would,” said Ruso. “So in your dream, who’s doing the stabbing?”
“I don’t know. I never see his face.”
“Let me help you,” suggested Ruso. “There isn’t a dream, any more than there’s an illness. You and I both know there’s something illegal going on here, and whoever’s doing it is desperate to cover it up. Dias is involved in it, and probably another man too, and it’s something to do with forged denarii.”
Nico gave an anguished howl. As he was saying, “I don’t know anything! Help!” the landlady’s voice sounded up the stairs. “Are you all right in there, gents?”
Ruso grabbed the undersides of Nico’s bent knees through the blanket and jerked them upward, tipping him flat before clamping a hand over his mouth. “Shut up,” he hissed. Nico’s arms flailed helplessly as Ruso called down the stairs, “We’re fine, thank you.” He removed the hand. “Talk.”
Nico took a deep breath, as if he had been starved of air. “Go away. Please, go away before they come after you too. I can’t tell you anything.”
Ruso closed the shutters and checked the door again. Returning to stand over the bed, he said softly, “If you really want to help me, tell me what’s going on.”
“I can’t. Just go away.”
“Do you want me to go to the procurator and tell him you’re part of it? They’ll put you in chains and have you tortured.”
Nico snatched at the blanket and pulled it up over his chin. “They made me do it,” he whispered. “I didn’t want to.”
“Do what?”
His head jolted from side to side as if he was trying to burrow down backward into the pillow. “I can’t! I can’t tell you!” He seemed to be having trouble breathing.
The man was reaching a state of panic in which there would be no chance of getting any sense out of him. Ruso seated himself on the floor, leaning back against the bed so he could not see Nico’s face. “This is very difficult, isn’t it?” he observed to the flaking paint on the wall. “I need to know some things in order to protect my wife and find the money you’re supposed to be responsible for, but you don’t want to tell me them.”
“It isn’t that I don’t want to!” exclaimed Nico. “I can’t. You saw what happened to Asper and Bericus.”
“It’s all a bit of a mystery, really,” Ruso continued, as if he was thinking aloud. “And you know one of the things I can’t understand? It’s why an obviously decent man like yourself got involved in it. I mean, you don’t look the type.”
“I’m not! They made me.”
Ruso waited. He could hear the landlady moving about downstairs. He had hoped Nico would feel the need to fill the silence, but as the moments drifted by he began to wonder if the man had fallen asleep. Outside, a distant blast on a horn signaled midday. He was about to try again when he heard, “It was when I went to Londinium.”
Ruso held his breath.
“The Council sent me to hire the architect for the theater plans. I had quite a lot of money for the deposit.”
There was another long pause during which Ruso wondered if he was supposed to guess the rest.
“I couldn’t see him till the next morning,” Nico continued. “There was what seemed like a nice bar down the road from where I was staying, and there was this very friendly girl…”
Ruso had a feeling he knew what was coming.
“And when I woke up,” said Nico, leaving events with the girl to Ruso’s imagination, “she was gone and so was the money. The people at the bar said they’d never seen her before. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t come home and say I’d lost it. I’d have been shamed. So… somebody said he would help me.”
“Dias?”
“I didn’t say the name!”
“No,” agreed Ruso. “So Dias helped you-how?”
“He knew somebody who could lend me the money.”
“And in return?”
“I can’t talk about that. They’ll kill me!”
Ruso turned to crouch beside the bed. “We can protect you,” he promised, hoping it was true. “We’ll get you sent somewhere out of their reach.”
“I shouldn’t have told you anything.”
“You won’t be safe until these men are caught.”
“You don’t understand.”
Ruso’s patience snapped. Grabbing the scrawny throat, he hissed, “What I understand, Nico, is that my wife’s been dragged into an alleyway and threatened with heaven knows what if I don’t keep out of this investigation and she doesn’t keep her mouth shut. If I can carry on, so can you. What did they make you do?”
“Let me go!” Nico seemed to be shriveling in terror.
“It’s something to do with forging money, isn’t it?”
“Please!”
“It must be someone who knows about metalwork. Someone whose family used to make coins in the old days?”
“You can’t hurt me! You’re a doctor!”
“Someone with access to a forge. Are we talking about someone in town, or outside? Is it somebody on the Council?”
“Help!” Whatever else Nico would have said came out as a strangled gurgle.
Ruso looked down into the bulging eyes for a moment, then sighed and relaxed his grip.
Nico took a gulp of air, grabbed the blanket, and pulled it up over his head. From underneath came a muffled, “I can’t tell you anything. Please, go away!”
“Caratius’s grandfather worked in silver. Is it Caratius?”
“Go away!”
“Why did he invite Asper to visit him?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did Caratius know about the plot to murder Asper and his brother?”
“I don’t know! I don’t think so. No.”
“Did you?”
“I had nothing to do with it! They just told me to take Asper into the strong room in the morning.”
“And do what?”
“Nothing! I’ve done nothing!” Nico was still hiding under the blankets. “I didn’t know they were going to kill anybody. I just did what I was told. Please, I beg you. Go away.”
“Where’s the money now?”
“I don’t know!”
“Where do the false coins go after they’ve been minted?”
There were footsteps on the stairs. Nico gave a muffled squeal. “They’re coming!”
Ruso, hand on the hilt of his knife, moved to shield the bed from whoever was opening the door.
