town would now be hot on the trail, and a message would arrive at Corinna’s house if there was any news. Tilla was slightly uneasy about this part of the arrangement with Victor hiding there, but she could not think of anyone else to trust.
Slipping into the mansio by the side door, she managed to snatch a brief word with the slave of one of the visiting eastern ambassadors. The man spoke just enough Latin to swear that the visiting slaves had huddled indoors, protecting their masters. Nobody had seen any centurions or men with knives, thank the gods.
The gardener looked up from weeding the rose bed, hoped she had found no more pigs’ heads, and asked if there might be any more mandrake. Tilla would have fetched the whole bottle if it would have released more information, but the gardener knew nothing about the murder. He had enough troubles of his own with that lot (here he glared at the eastern slave) pinching herbs and pissing in the flower beds.
Before she could escape, the manager appeared, asked after her health, and ordered her to leave in a manner so polite that it almost sounded as though he were sorry. He had not seen Geminus, and his guests and staff had already been questioned by the authorities. He was not able to allow her in at the moment. The guests’ privacy had to be respected and the staff were very busy.
“When will they not be busy?”
The manager took a firm grip of her arm and steered her toward the street door. “My staff are always busy.”
Tilla moved on down the street. Nobody had anything useful to offer until a sallow-faced woman filling a water jar at the fountain told her that a man had been seen skulking around the ditch in a suspicious manner. He was wearing a red cloak “to hide the blood.” This became less credible when she added, “He had a bloodstained surgeon’s knife in his hand.”
“You saw all this in the dark?”
“Not me. A friend of someone I know.”
“Is the friend here now?”
“No.”
“Perhaps the person who told you?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“Because my own man will be executed if I do not find out who did this.”
“You’re the wife!” The woman snatched up her jar and backed away. “I can’t help you. Nobody knows anything.”
“If nobody knows anything,” Tilla called after her, “then stop spreading rumors!”
The shopkeeper’s small daughter was helping by passing him the nails one by one while he hammered a diagonal strut across a broken door shutter. He recognized Tilla and offered his sympathies on the Medicus’s arrest.
“He did not do it. Does anyone know who did?”
The man assured her that they knew nothing at all.
“No,” added the small daughter. “We’re not going tell anybody. My da says so.”
Tilla laid a hand on the arm clutching the hammer. “Shall we talk in private?”
The truth, once she had managed to extract it from him, was nothing to do with Geminus. Last night drunken looters had smashed their way into his shop, seized anything that took their fancy, and flung at him anything that didn’t. While he was begging them to stop, one of them began to climb the ladder to where his wife, his children, and his day’s takings were hidden in the loft. The shopkeeper tried to drag him away. Meanwhile, the wife leaned down and cracked the looter over the head with a chamber pot. The man fell senseless to the floor. The others ran off, leaving the shopkeeper and his wife to decide that the safest thing was to haul the dazed man away and dump him outside the temple of Mithras. “I went to look for him this morning,” said the man, “but he’d gone.”
Tilla surveyed the chaos of broken furniture and cabbage leaves. “I am sorry for your troubles.”
The heroine of the chamber pot appeared from somewhere at the back of the shop. “It could be worse.” She retrieved an onion and a shoe from under the counter. “Anything worth having was already sold, and they didn’t stay long enough to find the money.”
“We didn’t mean to hurt him,” the man said.
The woman said, “
The man ignored her. “We don’t want to lead off on the wrong foot with the new legion.”
“I think,” said Tilla, “that he and his friends will say nothing. They know they should not have been here.”
“That’s what I told him,” the woman agreed. “But he likes to worry.”
“But they will ask you about the dead centurion,” Tilla warned them. “You need to have the girl better trained. Never mind what she is not to say. Think what they might ask, and get her to practice what she will answer.”
As she was leaving she heard the woman’s voice rise from the back of the shop, “What do you mean, ‘much too hard’? Next time,
Chapter 53
Ruso shifted in the chains, wincing as the stiff muscles in his neck and shoulders were forced into movement. He wriggled his fingers to bring the blood back, then wriggled them again to disperse the stabs of pain as the feeling returned. What if the injury was permanent? What use was a surgeon with damaged fingers? What use were any sort of fingers if they cut his head off? He shifted his elbows, shrugged his shoulders up toward his ears, clenched and unclenched his fists, and wondered what time it was.
Daylight still bloomed around what passed for a window, but from where he sat with his back against the cold wall, it was as distant as the stars. He closed his eyes. There was nothing to do in here but worry and drift into a fitful sleep, and he knew which he preferred.
Sometime later, as he was floating back to reality, it dawned on him that there were two sandaled feet on the floor in front of him. The pain in his neck and shoulders as he looked up should have jerked him awake, but when he saw who the feet appeared to belong to, he realized this was one of those deceitful, half-coherent dreams that seemed like waking: the sort that the mind sometimes recalled as real even when reason proved they could not be. He blinked. The figure was still there.
“Valens?” The sound of his own voice startled him. Could a man hear his own voice in his dreams?
His old friend and colleague looked down at him with an expression of pity. “Gaius.”
This was definitely wrong: Valens was up on the border with the procurator, and nobody outside the family ever called him Gaius.
He tried closing his eyes and opening them again. Above him, the light from the window caught lines on the handsome face that Ruso had never noticed before. Valens looked tired and anxious. That was all wrong too.
Ruso squirmed against the wall and felt the ridges of the stones. If this was not a dream, what was it? A vision? Why a vision of Valens, of all people? Why not a god, or someone useful? Struck by a sudden fear, he said, “Are you dead?”
“No.”
This was not entirely reassuring. Valens was alive, and he himself was seeing things.
The vision spoke again. “I’ve come to try and help you.”
“Can you take these chains off?”
It shook its head. “Sorry, old chap. I did ask, but they said no.”
Ruso supposed that an apparition’s claim to have had a chat with his guards was no more surprising than its initial appearance.
It crouched in front of him. A pair of bleary dark eyes looked deep into his own as if they were searching for his soul. “Gaius, do you realize-”
“Why are you calling me Gaius?”
“Sorry. Ruso. I just thought, since you were a little confused, the family name might-”
Ruso said, “I know what my name is!” before it struck him that if he was rude to the vision, it might
