Moments later he found himself staring into a narrow black gap between two shops and trying to listen for the sound of footsteps over the pounding of blood in his ears. He could see nothing. The alleyway might be empty. It might contain one man, or ten.
Alone and unarmed, he was not going in there to find out.
He glanced over his shoulder several times as he made his way back to the house, suddenly aware of shadowy hiding places all around him. He paused in the middle of the street and looked around, but as far as he could tell, there was nobody else out here.
A gaggle of bleary-eyed people in various states of undress had gathered in Valens’s hall to ask each other what was going on. Ruso locked the door, counted to make sure everyone was safe, and explained that he had chased off a man who had been trying to break into the house.
The confession that the man had succeeded, and that Ruso had allowed him to spend a long time sneaking around downstairs while most of them were asleep, could wait for daylight.
19
Someone was shaking his shoulder. Tilla wanted him to know that the sun had risen, everyone else was up, and she had prepared breakfast.
“Uh,” said Ruso, rolling over and closing his eyes to catch the last tail of sleep as it fled.
“It was a busy night.”
“Uh.” He had a feeling there was something he should remember, and it was connected with the ache in his ribs. “Thanks for taking over.”
After all the excitement of the burglar, Tilla had helped him rub salve into his bruises and volunteered to take over the vigil.
“Valens has been looking around the house,” she said, “We are all lucky you did not give that man a chance to steal anything.”
Ruso wondered how thoroughly Valens had checked. It was difficult to gauge the passage of time at night, but the prowler must have been creeping around for at least half an hour after he had scraped open the front door ready to make his getaway.
“I am glad you have had a good sleep.” Tilla was smiling down at him. It seemed his efforts to protect the household had aroused an unusual degree of wifely devotion.
He rubbed his eyes and wondered if there was time for a further attempt to create an heir before breakfast. “I’ve got some bruised ribs you could kiss better.”
The kiss was perfunctory. Instead of drawing closer, Tilla sat up and started chattering about next door’s cockerel. “He has stopped crowing at night now: Did you notice?”
He agreed without thinking, and reached for her. “I’m well rested. Come here.”
She dodged his hand and stood up, still looking more cheerful than anyone who had been awake half the night had any right to be. Only slowly did it dawn on him that there might be a link between the silence of the cockerel, Tilla’s smile, and the rather stringy meat in last night’s stew.
He was not going to ask. Instead he rolled over and grabbed her. Breakfast could wait.
An hour later, the morning traffic came to a halt in the street as the occupants of Valens’s house stood to watch a shrouded body being loaded onto the floor of a carriage. Camma was pale and tight lipped, her grief marked only by the damp patches on the shawl wrapped around her fatherless baby.
Ruso, who had paid the driver well with Firmus’s money, accompanied the carriage to the edge of town. When it reached the gates to the North road he bade the women good-bye and reminded the driver of his duty to deliver them to their door. The carriage passed under the arch and out toward the cemetery under an overcast sky, picking up speed as the driver urged the horses into a trot. Ruso lifted one hand in a last farewell, but if there was any response, it was hidden by an oxcart coming toward him.
They were gone.
Yesterday Ruso had been an object of interest to the procurator’s staff, providing relief from the daily routine. Today he had sunk to being just another nuisance, making annoying requests and placing demands upon their time. They had indeed suffered a visit from Tetricus the boatman yesterday afternoon, and the expenditure clerk seized his chance to point out that if Ruso planned to go around the town announcing rewards, it would help if he warned the office first.
“Sorry,” said Ruso, and meant it.
The resigned tone of, “Never mind, sir,” suggested that the staff was used to being uninformed and underappreciated. Ruso’s attempts to improve things did not seem to help. They did not look at all pleased to be told that others might be arriving to report sightings of the missing Julius Bericus.
“I’ll clear all this with Firmus,” said Ruso, correctly guessing that this would not impress them either.
“He’s in a meeting with the procurator, sir.”
“Any idea how long he’ll be?”
The expenditure clerk’s, “No, sir,” somehow also conveyed the information that since nobody in authority ever told the office anything, only a fool would have asked such a stupid question.
“You don’t happen to know where the Catuvellauni magistrate’s staying, do you?”
“That would be the one who turned up yesterday, sir?”
“Caratius. Yes.”
“I believe he lodges with a friend opposite the west gate of the Forum when he’s in town, sir.”
“Excellent!” said Ruso, pleasantly surprised. “Thank you.”
He was almost out of the door when the man added, “But he’s not there now, sir.”
Apparently the magistrate had been summoned to meet the procurator first thing in the morning, and left for Verulamium immediately afterward.
Ruso left Firmus a note explaining that he needed to question Caratius again. He would have tried to catch him on the road, but he had promised to have that incomprehensible letter looked at, and in all the confusion, he had forgotten to retrieve it from the apprentices this morning.
“Would you care to tell us when you’ll be back, sir?”
Ruso looked the clerk in the eye. “Later,” he said, then relented. He had suffered from enough unreliable colleagues to know how aggravating it was to work with someone who might or might not turn up at any moment. “I’ll drop by for messages when I get here,” he promised.
The smirk on the face of the expenditure clerk suggested his concession had been seen as a sign of weakness.
He headed back to Valens’s house to collect the letter, glancing around occasionally to see who else was in the street. The events of last night had left him uneasy. While everyone else had been reassuring themselves that no harm had been done, nothing had been stolen, and the only damage was a serious fright, Ruso had been mulling over the identity and the intentions of the intruder. Pausing to lean on the rail of the footbridge while an elderly man and a dog ushered four sheep across the stream, he wondered if he should have taken the tall apprentice’s sighting of a hooded man more seriously. What if they really had been followed? Whoever it was must know where they lived-although why anyone should care was a mystery. Besides, any sensible burglar would try to disguise himself. A hood was the easiest way to do it.
There was no answer to Ruso’s knock at Valens’s street door. After last night’s events he was not surprised to find it firmly locked. Three patients were lined up on the bench outside the surgery entrance. That was closed too.
He walked along the side of the building and turned into the back lane. From here he could see into the garden, but his plans to vault over the wall were thwarted by a group of figures outside the kitchen window. The figure in the middle with the toga draped untidily over his head was Valens. He was lifting a cup into the air and speaking to it while the apprentices and the kitchen boy looked on, wide eyed. Then he tipped the cup and a pale stream of wine cascaded down into the scrubby undergrowth. Evidently he had taken the break-in seriously enough to seek divine protection.