"No. You're quite sure you haven't seen her?"
"It's still wet. Only came in yesterday. You have to give us-" But Ruso was already out the door.
Back on the street, he spotted her immediately. Although she had been expressly forbidden to wander, Tilla had passed the laundry and kept walking. She was now a distant figure, moving briskly along the side of the road in the manner of a woman who knew exactly where she was going and was anxious to get there.
Ruso was conscious of the fact that there were plenty of things he should be doing this morning, most of which began with a shave and a haircut and none of which included trotting along the Eboracum road in a pair of ridiculous trousers, following a disobedient slave. Common sense dictated that he should shout to call her back now. Curiosity tempted him to continue just a little farther and find out where she was going.
She was approaching the cemetery. He was catching up with her. He wondered whether he had time to duck behind one of the grander gravestones and slip off the trousers. He had settled on a six-foot monument when the sound of wailing alerted him to a group of mourners approaching beyond a clump of trees, close enough to be offended.
Tilla was clearly in a hurry. She hardly bothered to step aside for a couple of cavalrymen trotting past: one of the horses, obedient to instinct rather than its rider, shied to avoid her at the last minute. The rider twisted in the saddle and appeared to shout something at her back. She took no notice. She bustled past a row of carts trundling into town under a weight of timber, and mercifully had the sense to cross to the opposite shoulder while a military road gang downed their picks to watch her pass. A voice bellowed at them to get back to work. Ruso was relieved. It meant they were too busy to gawk at his clothing.
Even if he had managed to put them on properly, it was entirely the wrong weather for trousers. He was beginning to understand why people said the climate here was as unpredictable as the natives. Yesterday the rain had been torrential. Today, sunlight flashed on the metal heads of the picks as the road gang swung back into action. The feathery seed heads of the grasses on the road's shoulder waved gently in a light breeze. His encumbered legs carried him along behind Tilla, feeling hotter with each movement.
He tried to imagine what his servant could be doing out here. Several possibilities came to mind, none of them reassuring. Despite the fate of Saufeia and now apparently Asellina, she could have taken it into her head to run away. But in that case surely she would have spent his grocery money on shoes. Whereas she seemed to be carrying a full shopping basket-which was puzzling in itself. If she was intending to return, why shop first and haul it all the way out of town? Unless, of course, she had used his money to stock up for her journey.
On the other hand, she could be on a repeat expedition to gather whatever she had found yesterday to put in that stinking medicine. In which case he would be faced with the uncomfortable task of punishing her.
He tried to remember what he had seen out here on the training run.
Beyond the stubbled fields where a couple of plough teams were now plodding muddily along behind their oxen lay an area where the road and its wide shoulder had been cut through thick woods. Beyond the woods he could remember very little. Pasture? Scrub? He knew there was a native settlement about four miles from the fort, because they had passed the milestone just before the broken ankle incident. Could she be intending to carry the shopping all the way out there?
A worse possibility occurred to him: that she was on the way to some sort of rendezvous. Surely she would have more sense than that? But Tilla seemed to have more faith in her goddess than in any of the practical steps he had suggested to keep herself safe, and any number of unsavory characters could have crawled into her confidence while she was at Merula's. If there really was a madman, he could have come back for a second-or was it a third? — victim, this time choosing an isolated spot away from the danger of witnesses. Well, whoever he was, he would be getting a surprise visit from the medical service.
She was still about fifty paces ahead, showing no sign that she realized she was being followed. This, he told himself, is ridiculous. If he had never downed that cup of fake Falernian, if he had never decided to interfere at the fountain, if he had kept his mouth shut and let events take their course, he would not now be wasting his morning running around after his own slave.
He was glad Valens couldn't see him now. Valens already thought he was crazy Valens had arrived home last night, tipped the contents of his kit bag onto his bedroom floor, and wanted to know where all his stuff had gone. Ruso had explained about Tilla moving in and he had grinned. "I thought you'd never get 'round to it. So, tell me. What's it like with a one-armed woman?"
Ruso had given him the look he usually gave malingerers. "She's a patient."
Valens crouched down and let the dog lick his face. "I suppose you could give her some interesting hand exercises."
"I told you, she's a-"
"You smell better," Valens informed the dog as he pushed her away so he could stand up. "Has somebody bathed you?"
Ruso shrugged. "I think Tilla took it for walks. Can you bathe a dog when you've only got one arm?"
"She seems to be able to do most things. You're a lucky man. She hasn't got a sister, has she?"
"I wouldn't introduce you if she had."
"Dear me, you are grumpy." Valens lifted the lid of the beer barrel. "I see you've developed a taste for this stuff at last."
Ruso peered into the empty barrel. "Tilla must have thrown it out," he said. "She wasn't too impressed with our housekeeping arrangements."
"I'll ask for wine next time." Valens dropped the lid back down. "Well done, Ruso. I knew I could rely on you to come up with a decent servant in the end."
"I told you, we're not keeping her."
"We're not keeping her," Valens had repeated in triumph. "There you are. She's become our housekeeper. Excellent! I'll chip in with the costs if you like. I promise not to bed her without asking first."
"Nobody's going to bed her!"
Valens had eyed him curiously before shaking his head. "Ruso, Ruso.
You are a good chap and I love you dearly, but you really must learn to relax and enjoy yourself a little."
Ruso scowled at the hems of his trousers. It was all very well for Valens to say he should relax. Valens didn't have the responsibility of shoring up a secretly bankrupt family in Gaul and finding a decent place for a slave over here. A slave who was, he now realized, too attractive for her own good.
Claudia had often complained that her maids were stupid and lazy but never once, as far as he could recall, that they weren't pretty enough. He was beginning to see that Bassus was right. There was a market for beautiful slave girls. It was not in the homes of happy families. He was not proud of it, but the people who depended on him were going to need the kind of price that market would pay
He glanced up. Apart from a group of cavalry horses approaching in the distance, the road ahead of him was empty. Tilla had turned left, crossed the ditch, and was making her way over the open expanse of the shoulder toward a patch of woodland.
If she had turned to look, she would have seen him step onto the heavy tree trunk that provided a dry foothold across the ditch, then scramble up onto the narrow, muddy path that led through the long grass. Instead she took not the slightest precaution, hurrying into the woods like a woman late for an appointment.
Anxious not to lose her among the trees, he lengthened his stride until there were only twenty or thirty paces between them. The path twisted and turned through the gloom of the woods. The road he had just left was out of sight. Moments later he could barely hear the shuffle of hoofbeats on gravel as the cavalry troop passed. His own boots padded along on mud made slippery by damp leaves. Knotted roots had broken through the surface of the path. Brambles snatched at his trousers. More than once he had to adjust his stride suddenly to avoid snapping a dead branch. Several times he stopped to listen, and was reassured that Tilla was making no effort to be silent. Whoever she had come to meet would know she was approaching. As long as he was careful, Ruso would be able to take him by surprise.