Medicus (37 page)

77

R
USO, HUNCHED IN his room with his spare cloak around his shoulders and his feet warmed by a sleeping dog, reached for another tablet of the
Concise Guide.
He flipped it open and squinted at the lettering in the lamplight. Then he breathed on the wax to warm it and ran the flattened end of the stylus across the sheet to wipe away the writing he had spent so many hopeful hours composing.

Stacked at a safe distance from the lamp were the final plans of the
Concise Guide
and a couple of tablets full of notes. These were the only parts he intended to keep. The rest was being finally and irrevocably scrapped. He was never going to finish it: he realized that now. Even if he had not been as tired as he was—and it had taken a lot of night duty to pacify Valens for being left alone on payday—he knew he was not blessed with the powers of concentration that a real author needed. A real author would not have sat for hours in front of an uncompleted work, pondering the answers to irrelevant questions like what had happened to his former servant and whether she was safe. Wondering if she might think of him occasionally. Wondering whether he would ever find out where she was. Wondering whether, if he had been more insistent, she would have stayed. And if she had stayed, what might have happened.

Ruso picked at the twine tying the two leaves of the next tablet, tugged at the end, and scowled as it tightened into a knot. He had managed without Tilla before she came. He would manage without her now that she was gone. In time—and it was obviously going to take longer than the thirty days he had so far been without her—she would become no more than an interesting memory. In time he would stop feeling a fool for having offered her a choice in the hope that she might want to stay Perhaps in time he would forget the whole business. Perhaps in time he would even be able to walk the streets of Deva without feeling tainted by the human misery that he now knew lay behind the entertainment of the legion he served.

He glanced across at the damp stain that had blossomed beneath his bedroom window. Of course she wouldn't have wanted to stay. Even Valens would have had trouble enticing a woman to stay in this moldering excuse for a home. Ruso, the man who had considered selling Tilla for a profit, had not stood a chance. No wonder the last he had heard of her was a message saying she had gone north and taken Phryne with her.

He sliced the tip of his knife through the knot and breathed warmth onto the next sheet. The stylus scraped across the surface, filling the scratches and catching up the misted droplets where his breath had condensed on the cold wax. His careful thoughts on "where a broken bone is suspected" sank into the past.

He had signed the death warrant of the
Concise Guide
three weeks ago, when the camp prefect had called him and Valens in separately for "a chat." The chat had not been a cozy experience. Evidently the camp prefect knew more than Ruso would have wished about his performance since joining the Twentieth. There was nothing to be gained by explaining that he was normally very reliable and that the downhill slide was the result of his colleague eating a dish of bad oysters. When the prefect had said, "And if you were in charge of the medical service, what would you change?" he had come up with the brightest idea he could think of at the time, which was that practical first-aid training for every man in the unit would mean faster treatment of injuries, less time off sick, and less pressure on the hospital.

The chief medical officer had been appointed the following day. He was a Greek medic from the Second Augusta, based farther south. He was generally agreed to possess connections, competence, and no charm whatsoever. Unfortunately, though, Ruso's bright idea had not died with his ambitions. The prefect passed it on to the new CMO, who congratulated Ruso on his initiative and gave him the job of organizing the training. Since no legionary would pay for something the army would give him for free, Ruso found himself organizing the destruction of the market for his own work.

Valens's response to being overlooked was to announce that he was glad to be able to carry on practicing real medicine, instead of being mired in administration like the CMO. Apparently the second spear's daughter was very impressed with his devotion to his calling. Ruso was impressed too: not with Valens's devotion but with his ability to weave a useful lie in with the truth. The new man had indeed taken over the reins at a difficult time, following the suicide of the hospital administrator.

It was a month since Priscus's manservant had gone to wake him and found him dead in his bed. A doctor was called. According to Valens, the sight of the administrator's ghastly grimace of pain beneath his beautifully combed hair was the stuff of nightmares. The note on the bedside table had given typically detailed instructions for his funeral—Priscus was an administrator to the last—but no reason for the taking of his own life. The second spear, charged with investigating both this death and a murder on the same night in the adjoining bar, dismissed Ruso's suggestion that the two were connected with, "You again! I suppose you're going to tell me you saw him do it?"

"No, sir."

"Then don't come bothering me with any more of this rubbish. The pen-pusher from the hospital killed himself for reasons I know but you needn't, and from what I hear, the doorman was a nasty piece of work who could cheerfully have been knifed by a couple dozen suspects. And since the woman who owns the place has run off, it's pretty bloody obvious which one of them did it."

"Sir, with respect—"

But the look on the face of the second spear told Ruso that respect was not required. What was required was to shut up, go away, and stop being a nuisance.

It occurred to Ruso that only he, Tilla, and possibly Merula would ever know the real story behind Priscus's suicide. Ruso had been ignored, Tilla had gone away, and Merula, wherever she was, was certainly not going to say anything that would reveal her own failure to protect the Roman citizen whom they had all known as Saufeia. As for Asellina, the slave put to death by her owner for having a fit of the giggles—Ruso tried to find something comforting to say to Decimus, and failed.

In the absence of fact, speculation was both rife and confident. Even Albanus could not resist hinting to Ruso that irregularities had been found in the hospital accounts and in the Aesculapian Thanksgiving Fund. "And when you hear what's in his will, sir, you'll see what I mean."

At Priscus's request the funeral had been attended by all the hospital staff. As instructed, a clerk read the will to the assembled company. The wish that his manservant be granted his freedom was of scant interest to the mourners. The desire that all his property be sold for the benefit of the Aesculapian fund, however, caused raised eyebrows and the exchange of more than one knowing glance. Ruso caught Albanus looking at him before both resumed a dutifully funereal expression. The camp prefect, who was turning out to be a more perceptive man than Ruso had imagined, described Priscus in his funeral oration as "an outstanding administrator and a man of many contradictions."

To Ruso's intense relief, the money loaned to Stichus had been repaid shortly after Stichus and Chloe reappeared from wherever they had been hiding. He had waited in vain, though, for a demand to pay it back to the Aesculapian fund. Finally his conscience sent him to see the unfortunate clerk who had been given the task of wrestling Priscus's outstanding administration into a shape presentable to the imperial auditors.

The man hunched over onto one elbow while he ran a chewed fingertip down the accounts. Finally the finger paused.

"You did have a loan," he agreed. "It was paid back on the twelfth before the Kalends of October."

"No, that's not right."

"Well, that's what it says."

"There must be some sort of mix-up."

The man sighed, swiveled the record around, and slid it across the desk, the finger pointing to an entry in Priscus's precisely-spaced hand.

"Look."

Ruso read it twice. The meaning was unmistakable. About the same time as the administrator had persuaded him to sign over Tilla as guarantee, Ruso's loan had been repaid in full. There was no mention of a slave in the fund records. The only explanation Ruso could think of was that Priscus had chosen to take over the debt himself. If Ruso failed to pay up, Priscus would take Tilla for his own purposes—and as he must have guessed, when he tired of her she would still be worth far more than the loan had cost. But if the loan had been paid, Priscus would merely have broken even . . . Ruso paused. He had never been able to settle the business of the fire in his own mind, nor that accident under the bathhouse scaffolding. But now that he thought about it, the fire had happened just after he had signed the loan guarantee. Priscus had been in the hospital that night and could have slipped out to push something burning through the shutters of the bedroom window. He had not been on the building site, but he had been a man of wide influence. Perhaps Ruso would go and have a chat about him with Secundus from the century of Gallus. Because, of course, if Ruso had burned to death or had his skull split by the trowel, he would never have paid and Priscus would have had his signature on the document handing over Tilla . . . A document that he had not bothered to read before signing it. Had he signed Tilla over to the fund itself, or to its administrator?

"Satisfied?"

"Mm." Ruso scratched his ear. "I suppose," he said, "as all Priscus's money was bequeathed to the fund, I'm morally obliged to consider paying it myself anyway."

The man looked horrified. "You can't do that! I've only just got it to balance. You'll mess up the whole system."

So instead, he had sent the money to another good cause: a family in southern Gaul.

Ruso wiped out the final line of "in cases of fever" and reflected that truth might be an honorable concept, but very few men actually wanted to hear it. And of those who did, some would regret having asked. He leaned back in his chair and eyed the pile of tablets waiting to be erased. Months of work. Ahead of him, several tedious and penny-pinching hours saving the cost of tablets he would never need again because he was not going to write a book. Ever. He reached forward, scooped them up, pulled his feet from under the dog, and strode into the kitchen.

The embers in the kitchen hearth were still glowing. The first tablets were beginning to smoke as he threw the last one on. A yellow flame popped up through a gap, wavered, and grew tall.

The
Concise Guide
was illuminating the kitchen with a merry blaze when the main door scraped open and Valens called, "Darling! I'm home!" before appearing in the kitchen doorway and giving an exaggerated sniff. "What's that you're burning?"

"Just some rubbish I didn't need."

"Well, burn some more and perhaps we'll be rehoused sooner than we thought." Valens, his ambition for the CMO's house thwarted, was now eagerly trying to engage better lodgings. He bent to peer at the contents of the fire. "That reminds me. I was supposed to bring you a letter."

Ruso reached out his hands to warm them over his disappearing masterpiece. "From?"

"Londinium. That chap you sent to get his cataracts looked at. Albanus gave it to me and I left it in the surgery. Big handwriting. Did it himself, apparently. They're naming their son after you. The worst eye's been done and it seems to have worked."

"Good."

"They'll discharge him anyway, you know. The sight will never be up to much."

"I know," said Ruso, recalling the battle with Priscus about the cost of the operation. The administrator had been right, but for all the wrong reasons.

Valens lifted the lid of the bread bin.

"It's empty," said Ruso, reaching for the poker to prod at the settling flames.

Valens lowered the lid with a disappointed sigh. "I can't eat out, I'm on call. I'll have to wander back to the kitchen and see what I can scrounge up. We're going to have to do something about another slave, Ruso."

"Yes," agreed Ruso, not adding that they had agreed this more than once, but neither of them had done anything about it. They needed a slave to go and find them a slave.

"Oh, and there was another message. Apparently Albanus thinks I've become his assistant. He said to tell you something about a girl being home safe."

Ruso stopped. "Tilla?"

Valens looked pained. "I would have remembered if it was the lovely Tilla, Ruso, whom you so rashly allowed to abandon us with an empty bread bin. No. This is another of your many women. Let me think . . . something Greek."

"Phryne?"

"That's it. Phryne."

"Who brought the message?"

Valens shrugged. "Some urchin brought it to the gate, apparently."

The poker clattered back on the hearth. Ruso snatched up his cloak from the chair where he had thrown it. "I've got to go out."

"Do I know this Phryne? Can she cook?"

Ruso squeezed the shaft of his cloak pin into the catch. "No," he said, answering both questions with one word on his way out of the house.

78

S
TICHUS NODDED A greeting from his old place on the door. From his shadow, a small figure in an identical tunic grinned at Ruso. A quick inquiry confirmed that Lucco had not been the urchin. He had, as he announced with pride, been at work all day. "I've been helping the painter." He pointed at the outside of the wall beside him. "Look." The torch lit up freshly painted lettering. "I can read all the letters," added the boy. "It says: 'Chloe's.' "

"Very good," observed Ruso, stepping inside. The bar was doing a brisk trade. Ruso nodded to Mariamne, who was serving at the tables. He reached for his purse and waited while a youth tried unsuccessfully to haggle over the price of a beer. After the youth had lost—but still bought the beer—Ruso asked a girl he did not recognize to pour him a large cup of the best wine Chloe's had to offer.

It was the first drink he had ordered here since the day he bought Tilla, and the first time he had been back to the bar since the dreadful events of payday. He had just enough money for the wine. On the way over he had promised himself he was not going to buy anything or anybody else, and if there was the least hint of trouble anywhere near him, he was going to walk away without a second glance.

He was handing over the cash when Chloe's voice cut across the hubbub. "Don't let him pay for that!" Moments later she was kissing him on the cheek like a long-lost friend. "Come and see the baby!" she urged. "Where have you been?"

Steadying his wine as she dragged him by the arm, he followed her toward the kitchen and a fine smell of stewed lamb. "I got your package," he said. "Thank you."

Chloe laughed. "I bet you were worried when you found out we'd gone."

"Just a little."

"I told you he'd pay you back."

Ruso nodded, wondering who really did own the money he had finally sent to Lucius.

Daphne was standing at the kitchen table, cracking brown eggs into a bowl two at a time with a swift and economical technique that made him suddenly nostalgic for Tilla's frustrated struggles to manage his kitchen left-handed. Daphne looked up at his approach, smiled, and pointed toward the other end of the table where a drawer rested on the tabletop. Inside, a small fuzz of dark hair was visible under one end of a blanket.

Ruso said the things people were supposed to say about babies. Indeed, this one was a particular miracle, even though it looked just like all the others and its cloths smelled as though they needed changing.

He glanced from Chloe to Daphne. "I came to see if you'd heard the news. Phryne is safely home."

Daphne's thumbs-up sign trailed a long string of egg white.

"Do you know who brought the message?"

Chloe shook her head. "Nobody's been here." She took his arm again. "Come and eat," she urged, pausing to exchange a word with the cook and inspect the contents of a couple of steaming pans before leading him back into the bar and beckoning Mariamne over. "Whatever the doctor wants," she said as the girl gathered empty cups onto a tray. "And the Falernian. He's our guest of honor. And tell Flora to smile, will you? People come here to enjoy themselves."

Ruso glanced at the customers and the girls clustered around the lamp-lit tables and reflected that a couple of months ago, he would have been embarrassed to be made welcome in a place like this. Now he was happy about it. He had nowhere to go this evening and all he had eaten was two sausages scrounged from a patient who wasn't eating his food. He placed his cup on the table and settled into an empty seat as Mariamne placed another cup and a brimming wine jug beside him and went to fetch him a bowl of lamb stew.

Chloe sat down beside him, helped herself to his wine, and was pouring him a fresh cup from the jug when a large hand landed on the table and a swaying legionary leaned over her. "That bitch over there," he announced, waving at a table across by the bar, "won't go upstairs with me."

Chloe put the jug down and placed a hand over his. "Marcus, I hope you were a gentleman and offered her something nice in exchange?"

"You're in charge. Tell her to do her job."

Chloe shook her head. "All our girls work for themselves, Marcus."

She leaned closer to him. "And they're specially selected and trained by me. You might find she's asking a little bit more than you'd pay somewhere else, but I promise, you won't be disappointed."

The legionary stared at her for a moment. "She's asking a bloody fortune! Forget her. What else have you got?" He looked her up and down. "You working tonight?

Chloe smiled and pointed toward the door, where Stichus was glaring across at them. "I'm a one-man woman these days, my love. Isidora!"

She beckoned over the girl who had turned at the mention of the name. "Isidora, this is my very good friend Marcus. Marcus, this is the girl for you." She reached for their hands and joined them.

When they had gone Chloe sank back in her chair with a sigh of exasperation. "Silly bitch, I'll have to talk to her. If it's not one thing here, it's another." She leaned her elbows on the scarred wood and opened her hands to indicate the sweep of the bar. "Well? What do you think?"

"I take it you're the new Merula?"

"A girl can't keep working for ever, you know. I always wanted to get out before everything started to sag."

Ruso, not sure if a compliment was expected at this point, mumbled something, took a long drink of the wine she had poured him, then drew back and asked, "What's this?"

"Weren't expecting that, were you?" asked Chloe, clearly proud of it.

"It's Falernian. A present from a client. Don't ask, because I won't tell you. We're very discreet here."

It wasn't, but he didn't have the heart to tell her. At least it was a better imitation than Merula had sold him. He said, "You seem to be doing well."

She nodded. "We lost a few girls to start with, people who went back home, but most of us either haven't got homes or wouldn't be welcome if we went there. And there's been no trouble recruiting. Not now that word's got around I'm not running things the way that old cow did. The girls work here for their keep. If they take a customer upstairs, they pay me to use the room and they hold on to the rest themselves."

"I see."

"It should all work very nicely, if the girls just use a bit of common sense. They provide a good service, they get the cash. Before, everything got handed over to the management."

"That's very enterprising."

Chloe grinned. "And I can tell the tax man we're letting out rooms. So it's all nice and legal."

Ruso looked at her over the rim of the wine cup. " Really?"

She leaned across him and adjusted the fold of his cloak over his shoulder. "It is unless somebody tells, Doctor."

"It's none of my business. But someone's going to figure it out before long."

"From what I heard," said Chloe, "the bar wasn't mentioned in Priscus's will."

Ruso nodded. "I imagine he didn't trust his witnesses to keep it quiet. Being involved in running a, um—"

"Whorehouse," put in Chloe.

"It wouldn't have done much for his reputation."

"Exactly," said Chloe. "That's why he always let everybody think the business belonged to Merula. Even a lot of the staff didn't realize. So as far as anybody knows—anybody except you me and Stich, that is—the name's only been changed because murder's bad for trade, and she's left me in charge till she gets back."

"Is she coming back?"

"I wouldn't hold your breath. She took all her jewelry with her and she won't want to be tried for what she did to Saufeia."

Chloe reached out a manicured fingernail, lifted his chin, and pouted a kiss. "Cheer up, Doctor. Lucco's safe, Daphne's got her baby, and everyone's glad those bastards aren't in charge here anymore."

Ruso took another long drink and swilled the not-quite-precious wine dangerously close to the rim of the cup. "Asellina is dead and her boyfriend doesn't know why. Saufeia's family will never know where she's buried. And I don't know what's happened to Tilla."

"Asellina died in an accident, Doctor, still wearing the necklace poor old Decimus gave her as part of their tragic love affair. She loved him to the end. That's what I told him, and if you tell him anything else, we'll have him down here every night getting drunk and picking fights."

"True."

"Tilla and Phryne were from the same people, weren't they?"

"The Brigantes."

"So if one's home safely, then the other must be as well. Look, here comes your supper. Now have a taste of that and tell me if it isn't the best lamb stew in town. And don't think about Saufeia. You can't tell her family anything that'll be of any comfort to them."

Mariamne placed a steaming bowl on the table. "Compliments of the house, sir."

"When you've finished," added Chloe, getting to her feet and leaning forward to stroke one fingertip along his cheek, "choose yourself a girl and tell her Chloe sent you for the special."