In the meantime, Lucius was waiting for an answer.
Safely shut away in his bedroom, Ruso opened one of the blank writing tablets he had persuaded a dubious Albanus to part with (I have to sign for them, sir), and scrawled,
Greetings, brother. Thank you for your suggestion, but I am not prepared to relinquish the burden just yet. Interested to hear about the wedding plans. Are there any more on the horizon? Keep me informed. I am eager to hear all the latest news from home. In the meantime, I am arranging to send three thousand denarii, which I trust will fund a suitably substantial gift.
30
W HEN SOMEONE THUMPED on the door early the next morning, Ruso rolled over in bed, groaned, and pulled the covers over his head. Surely he had made himself quite clear yesterday? His bed was warm, it was almost comfortable, and he was not going to get out of it. Sooner or later, even Albanus would give up. If he tried opening the door, the dogs would frighten him off.
Instead of being frightened off, the man let himself in past the excited dogs and made his way into the kitchen. Moments later he was crashing about with the fire irons. Worse, he was whistling.
Ruso wrenched open the door of his bedroom and roared, "Albanus!"
The whistling stopped. A rotund stranger appeared in the kitchen doorway. " 'Morning, sir. Beautiful morning!"
"Who the hell are you?"
"Justinus, sir. Officer Valens said would I drop by and lend a hand, sir. Get the fire lit, fetch the water, let the dogs out, that sort of thing, sir."
"Did he tell you to make as much noise as possible?"
"Sorry, sir. Didn't know you were in."
Ruso, who felt he had earned the opportunity to sleep in, went back to bed. He had barely drifted back to sleep when he was woken by a knock on his bedroom door. The rotund man handed him a closed writing tablet. "From one of the centurions, sir. Thought it might be urgent."
Ruso undid the tie and squinted at the letters scraped in the wax. "Marvelous," he said. "Thank you."
"You're welcome, sir. Mind if I ask how you're getting on with the inquiries, sir?"
Ruso frowned. "What inquiries?"
"I heard you were looking into the murder of that girl, sir. Or is it supposed to be a secret?"
"No," growled Ruso, "because I'm not. I'm going back to sleep."
The man failed to secure the door properly. Moments later it swung open and a puppy bounded in. It disappeared under the bed and rushed out again with one of Ruso's sandals in its mouth. Ruso leaned over the side of the bed and flung the writing tablet after it. So he did, after all, have a use for the recipe for venison gravy.
31
The woman at the bakery handed Ruso his breakfast roll without being asked and remarked that it was a good day for a celebration.
"Is it?" inquired Ruso, still resentful at being woken to see it.
The woman looked surprised. "It's the birthday of the noble emperor Trajan, sir, may he walk with the gods. We're closing early today."
"So it is," said Ruso, who now vaguely recalled some notice to that effect and, feeling some other comment was needed, added, "Very good."
"And the gods have blessed us with good weather."
It struck Ruso that if the gods kept this up, he might not have to buy Tilla any winter clothes. "When do you think it'll start getting cold?"
The woman assured him there would be no frost for a couple of months. She then contradicted herself by adding that you could never really tell, could you? And if he didn't mind her saying so, it was nice to hear that somebody was still taking an interest in the business of that girl who was murdered, and had he caught anybody yet?
"No," said Ruso, wondering who had started this rumor and how he could stop it before it reached the ears of the second spear.
"We'd help you if we could, but she was hardly here more than a few days and we don't pay much attention to what goes on over there. It's not very nice sometimes, you know. Especially when it gets late."
"I can imagine."
"Shouting and swearing and banging on the shutters."
"Mm," said Ruso, groping in his purse for his money so he could escape.
"Those doormen do their best to keep order but really, it's terribly noisy. We keep ourselves to ourselves. All we knew about that one was that she had a pretty face and a foul mouth."
Ruso looked up. "Really?"
"Oh, yes!" The woman looked pleased at his interest. "She came across the street one day wanting to say something to us. So the doorman, the ginger-haired one-Stichus, is it? — he called her straight back. Which was quite right. We've told that Merula woman we can't have them hanging around here, you see, it puts the customers off, so he was quite within his rights. And when she didn't take any notice he came over and got her, and to be honest, Doctor, she seemed quite a nicely spoken girl up till then-but you should have heard what she said to him! Well, I expect you hear it every day in the barracks, but we don't expect it in the street. And from a young woman. We were quite shocked."
"And then what happened?"
"What happened?" Evidently the woman had already reached the climax of the story and Ruso was supposed to be impressed. "Well, nothing. He took hold of her and got her in and straight up those stairs and we didn't hear any more about it. The Merula woman did have the decency to come over later to apologize. I will say that for them, they do realize what a lot of trouble they cause for the neighbors."
"Tell me about the girl's hair," said Ruso, suddenly curious.
"Her hair?"
"Was it…" Ruso tried to think what questions he could ask, and resorted to, "Could you describe it for me?"
"It was red. Very red, not ginger. Natural, I think. But of course you can never tell."
"It was natural," said Ruso, without thinking. Luckily the woman did not pause to wonder how he knew.
"I don't know about the curls," she said. "They could have been done with tongs. And I think it was probably quite long, but it was all pinned up, so I couldn't really see."
"And it was definitely her own hair? Not a wig?"
"Oh yes, I think so. People say you can always tell, don't they, but of course if you couldn't tell you wouldn't know you couldn't, if you see what I mean, would you?"
"Right."
"To tell you the truth, I wasn't surprised when I heard what happened to her."
"No?"
"But I was sorry. Nobody deserves to die like that, do they?"
"No," agreed Ruso, handing over his money, "they don't."
"I wish I could be more help to you."
To his relief another customer arrived at the counter. "You're not alone," Ruso assured the woman. "Nobody else saw anything either."
She pressed the change into his hand and leaned closer to him. "Never mind, Doctor," she said. "I'm sure you'll catch him in the end."
Ruso sat on the sunlit bench outside the bakery to finish his breakfast and wondered what Saufeia had been so eager to say to the bakery staff. Probably nothing of any consequence. He decided he had been wrong about Saufeia. She was not a girl with education who had fallen on hard times, but a creature from the gutter who was sharp enough to pick up a cultivated accent and a few letters. He was aware that this should not have made a difference to his attitude: that the bakery woman was right and nobody deserved to die like that. But there were many worse ways. He had seen several of them. Perhaps everyone else had been right too. Saufeia had been offered protection. She should have had the sense to take it.
In the meantime, he had more pressing things to think about. He needed to decide whether to order some winter clothes now or wait until payday, when the legion would be besieged by traveling merchants eager to relieve it not only of its quarterly wages but also of any advance on Hadrian's promised bonus. When could a buyer secure the best deal? Claudia would have known. His former valet would have known. Until now, Ruso had never needed to know. Now that he had made the grand economy of selling his staff, he was finding day-to-day penny-pinching not only aggravating but quite baffling.