Camma’s height and her bright hair made her easy to follow in the crowd, and he watched as the women edged along the back wall to find a space. Albanus had probably brought them here to keep them safe, but he had done it at the worst possible moment.
“Get on with it, man!”
There was no time to explain.
“Some of you will know what this is,” he said, returning his attention to the mold. “If you don’t, it’s a mold for making coin blanks. But of course coins can only be made with the approval of the emperor.” He held up something else. “This looks like a denarius. It isn’t. Your money changer has confirmed that it’s a fake. The silver is just a coating.”
There was a murmur of unrest around the room.
“I’m sorry to say that a proportion of the money in your theater fund is made up of this sort of thing,” said Ruso.
The unrest swelled to outrage and disbelief. The words money changer and fraud rose from the general hubbub.
“It isn’t-” Ruso stopped, waiting for quiet. “It isn’t your money changer’s fault,” he said. “The coins were switched after they had been counted and checked and stored in the strong room.”
The uproar he had been expecting erupted. Everyone was either talking to his neighbor or shouting at Ruso. One voice was demanding, “Why the theater fund?” That was when Satto appeared and shouted, “Because you idiots will never get round to spending it!” and was engulfed in a storm of accusations and demands to know why he hadn’t spotted it before. “Because it was stashed away in the theater fund!” did not seem to satisfy anyone. Dias’s hand rose in a signal to a group of guards. They pushed their way forward to drag Satto and a couple of councillors apart before a fight started.
Gallonius lumbered onto the podium and raised both hands in the air, shouting, “Order!” to little avail. The clerk appeared with the horn and blew an off-key blast that had to be repeated three times before anyone took any notice.
When Ruso could finally make himself heard, he said, “The unfortunate death of the quaestor means he can’t shed any light on how this was done.”
“He was the one doing it,” prompted Gallonius, squeezing back into his seat.
“Not alone,” Ruso said. “He wouldn’t have enough hands. Forging money is at least a two-man job. And if he was putting false coins into the theater fund so he could steal the real money, what was he doing with it? Did anyone see any evidence of him being wealthy?”
For once, nobody had anything to say. Gallonius glared at him. This was a departure from the script.
“I think Nico was forced to help,” Ruso said, “by someone who had some power over him. Someone who had caught him out in some way, or threatened him.”
Both magistrates were listening intently now. Ruso tried to look over the heads of the crowd, to catch Camma’s attention. Their eyes met. He was about to say more or less what he had been told to say, and he willed her to understand that he had no choice. He hoped Albanus had warned her that Tilla was being held hostage. He hoped the guards here would have the decency to protect her when he had finished speaking. Lifting up the evidence again, he hoped he wasn’t about to make things worse for everybody. “I found these things,” he said, “including this copy of the money changer’s seal, in with the possessions of Julius Asper and his brother.”
Camma’s scream of “No!” penetrated the uproar. Someone yelled, “Where’s our money, bitch?” Caratius was shouting, “I warned you about him! Didn’t I warn you?”
People were crowding toward the back of the room. He could not see her now. He felt a sudden lurch of panic. What if the Dias’s men stood back and refused to intervene?
He leapt down from the platform shouting, “Keep away from her!” and was instantly surrounded by a gang of councillors. As he struggled to push past them, an elbow landed in his ribs, a boot on his toes, and he had to grab at someone’s arm to avoid being knocked over. By the time the guards reached him, he had barely made it as far as the second bench. Shouting, “Keep them away from her!” and “Where’s my wife?” he was hauled back toward the platform. Breathless, unable to yell above the din, he gazed out over the chaos and saw a commotion going on at the far end of the hall. Dias and a couple of his men were blocking the doorway with their shields, sticks raised to beat anyone who dared to approach. Ruso scanned the crowd but could not see Camma or Grata anywhere.
“It’s all right, Investigator.” Gallonius’s voice in his ear made him jump. He had not noticed the magistrate joining him on the platform. “We’re not barbarians. Our guards allowed the women to leave safely.”
“Where’s my wife?”
“I’m sure she can’t be far away. Finish your speech and we’ll send someone to look for her.”
“I’ve got no more to say.”
“That was a good speech, but you left out who murdered Julius Asper.”
He had left out a great number of things. It was just as well that logic was not the Britons’ strong point. His listeners had leapt to the conclusions they were supposed to reach, despite the fact that much of his statement was equivocal and there were wide enough gaps in it to drive one of Boudica’s chariots through. Ruso looked Gallonius in the eye. “I’m not going to tell anybody Nico killed Asper,” he said. “You might have got them believing Asper was a forger, but they’d never fall for that. Just remember that Camma’s got the procurator’s protection, so if anything happens to her, you’ll be getting more visits from investigators. Where’s my wife, Gallonius?”
Gallonius beckoned to the clerk. “Have the guards escort the investigator back to the mansio, will you?” He turned to Ruso and smiled. “Thank you, Investigator. I think you’ll find that, as I said, we are not barbarians.”
67
Someone had been in Suite Three again. It had happened while she was out, this time, and for the best of reasons. After the guards had finished their searching, the floor had been swept, the lamps filled, and the unmade bed straightened. Still, it made Tilla uneasy. She hoped the Medicus would finish his speech soon. Once he had explained what he had found out, they could leave.
She moved one of the chairs close to the open window, sat back, kicked off her boots, and yawned. She did not want to be in this room, but she was tired of all the questions and the sympathy. Besides, she wanted to leave Valens and Serena on their own.
So far, her plans had not gone well. It seemed the weedy clerk Albanus had arrived with a message for her from the Medicus just after she had been called away by the soldiers, and the clerk had created a terrible fuss because she was not there to receive it. Then minutes after Albanus had hurried away to hunt for her, Valens had arrived on the fast carriage to find that neither of his children were ill, but instead everyone was in a panic looking for Tilla. So he had left Serena alone with the children yet again while he rushed off to track down the Medicus and find out what was going on.
Now she finally had Valens and Serena in the same building, she had retreated and left them to find ways of talking to each other.
There were plenty of women who envied Serena her charming and handsome husband, but Tilla was not one of them. Valens was like a polished surface: Everything slid off him. As she retreated from their company, she had whispered, “You must pay some attention to her!” and Valens had beamed and said, “Of course!” as if it was what he had intended all along.