Tilla passed her a cloth to wipe her eyes. “I will go with you to take him home in the morning, Sister.”
Camma shook her head. “I cannot go home.”
It was not the right moment to tell her she could not stay here, either.
“I will take him to Verulamium.”
Ruso supposed that if they were all like Caratius, it was hardly surprising that she did not think of Verulamium as home. He said, “Did your husband know people down here?” Catching Tilla’s warning glance, he added, “I mean, is there anyone else in town we should fetch to mourn him?”
“Only the tax men,” Camma said. “I do not want them here. I will keep vigil alone.”
He said, “You should get some rest. I’ll stay with him tonight.”
A small rasping cry sounded from farther along the landing. She sighed. “That is the cause of all this.”
“I will go,” said Tilla. “We will leave you to speak with your man.”
As they left the room, Camma called out something to her husband in British. Moments later, with the door closed, Tilla hissed, “This is not the time for questions!”
“It’s my job.”
“I know,” she said. “But it is a very bad job.”
At that moment, he was inclined to agree.
In the nursery she scooped up the angry baby and laid him against her shoulder.
“I can’t escort a body to Verulamium,” Ruso told her over the din of the crying. “I’m supposed to be tracking down the brother and the money.”
With one hand supporting the baby’s wobbly ginger head, Tilla began to croon the song they had heard from the riverside bar yesterday morning. She was swaying to the rhythm of the music. Despite the terrible squalling in her ear, she looked more contented than Ruso could remember seeing her for a long time.
To his relief, the frantic cries began to fade. The small red face relaxed back into human shape. His wife kissed the baby’s head before finally returning her attention to him. “I did not say you would go.”
“But-”
“We will be quite safe without you,” she continued. “We are two married ladies escorting each other, and it is not far. I knew you would say yes.”
“But-”
“You always say yes in the end.”
She ignored his protest of, No I don’t. “I will try and ask her your questions later. But she has enough troubles. Let her grieve for a fine husband who was attacked and robbed by bandits.”
He said, “I’m beginning to have doubts. Why did he leave town with only a clerk to guard him? And if he’d been robbed, why not ask for help instead of hiding away at the Blue Moon?”
When Tilla looked blank, he realized nobody had told her what he had been doing all morning. When he had explained he added, “Obviously I didn’t tell Camma about the back alley. She can think he died in his bed and stayed there.”
“I shall say nothing,” Tilla promised, resting her head against the baby’s. Then she said, “Perhaps when you have finished being a tax man in Verulamium you can stay and be a doctor.”
“So you can stay and help look after the baby?” Out on the landing, he lowered his voice in case the woman could hear. “This isn’t more of that Christos business, is it? Finding widows and orphans to look after?”
“You think without Christos I would leave a woman to give birth in the street?”
“Of course not.” He gestured to her to go first down the stairs. “But you do seem very attached. You barely know the woman.”
“If I was living with the Catuvellauni and my husband was killed-”
“I know. But be careful how much help you promise.”
“There is a housekeeper to look after her when she gets home.”
“Good. You can’t fight her battles for her, Tilla.”
The silence that followed was punctuated by the eerie sound of wailing from the storeroom. To his surprise, Tilla paused at the foot of the stairs and kissed him on the cheek. “You and I should never part in anger,” she said. “Hear how it is for her now, begging his forgiveness.”
He said, “I’ll raid Valens’s medicines. See if I can find something to calm her.”
“She should not be left alone with the baby.”
“Did I really hear her say he was the cause of all this?”
“That,” said Tilla, running a finger along the crinkled curl of the baby’s ear, “is why she should not be sent home alone with you, little one. There is a storm inside her mind. Whoever caused this, it was not you, was it?”
16
The evening chill was creeping up from the river as Ruso went in search of Tetricus the boatman. He was the only person who might know what had happened to Julius Asper between his leaving Verulamium with a brother and possibly seven thousand denarii, and his lone arrival, destitute and fatally injured, at the Blue Moon.
Valens was busy seeing patients. He had offered Ruso an escort of apprentices as if he were doing him a favor, insisting that nobody in his right mind would wander the passages behind Londinium’s riverfront when the workshops and warehouses were closing for the evening. Thus it was a group of three that picked its way along the deserted wharf just after sunset and turned left into a narrow street. Forty paces farther and a right turn took them into the gloom of the weed-fringed alleyway leading to the home of Tetricus the boatman.
A couple of urchins who were bouncing a ball off the high wall of the grain warehouse fled at the sight of them. Ruso could make out several doorways opening onto the alley. The nearest was a patched construction with a heavy plank nailed across the rotten section at the bottom. He was about to knock when he was startled by the tall apprentice whispering, “Sir!” in his ear.
“What?”
“Sir, I think we’ve been followed.”
Ruso glanced back along the empty alleyway, wondering if the body and the coded letter had overexcited the youths’ imaginations. “Really?”
“He looked suspicious, sir. He was wearing a hood.”
To be wearing a hood on a clear spring evening was certainly unusual, but whoever it was had gone about his business elsewhere by the time Ruso and his escort retraced their steps to the street. The only people now in sight were an old man hobbling toward them on two sticks and a heavily made-up girl in a doorway. The girl had not seen anyone in a hood, but it was a pleasure to meet three such handsome men, and would they like to come and join her friends for a drink?
Ruso told her they were busy and drew the apprentices out of earshot. The tall one looked disappointed. The short one looked relieved. It occurred to Ruso that any sensible boatman seeing these three handsome men arriving at his front door would lock up and hide under the bed.
“Stay here on the corner and keep a lookout for your man in the hood.”
The tall boy nodded. “We’ll get him for you, sir.”
“I don’t want you to get him,” explained Ruso. “Just watch where he goes. Stand well away from that girl, stay together, don’t wander off, and don’t talk to anybody while I’m gone. Understood?”
“Will you be all right without us, sir?” The short one was evidently taking his duties seriously.
“Make a note of the door I go into,” said Ruso, who felt a more pertinent question was whether they would be all right without him. “If I’m in trouble, I’ll whistle for you.”
The tall one looked delighted. The short one said, “Then what do we do, sir?”
“I want both of you to run and fetch Valens,” said Ruso, who could imagine what their parents would say if he got them involved in some sort of fracas. “And if you’re in trouble, come and get me.”
He made sure they were stationed up on the street corner before rapping on the door in the alley.
Nothing happened. He knocked again. This time the voice of an old woman shouted something in British that he was fairly sure translated as, “Bloody kids! Clear off!”
He explained who he was. The second reply was even shorter than the first: a summary of the woman’s views on men who worked for the tax office.
The only reply from the second building was the yapping of a small dog. He was about to knock on the third when a scrawny man appeared from a door farther along. His gait reminded Ruso of rolling waves and swaying ships.