"Satisfied?"
"Mm." Ruso scratched his ear. "I suppose," he said, "as all Priscus's money was bequeathed to the fund, I'm morally obliged to consider paying it myself anyway."
The man looked horrified. "You can't do that! I've only just got it to balance. You'll mess up the whole system."
So instead, he had sent the money to another good cause: a family in southern Gaul.
Ruso wiped out the final line of "in cases of fever" and reflected that truth might be an honorable concept, but very few men actually wanted to hear it. And of those who did, some would regret having asked. He leaned back in his chair and eyed the pile of tablets waiting to be erased. Months of work. Ahead of him, several tedious and penny-pinching hours saving the cost of tablets he would never need again because he was not going to write a book. Ever. He reached forward, scooped them up, pulled his feet from under the dog, and strode into the kitchen.
The embers in the kitchen hearth were still glowing. The first tablets were beginning to smoke as he threw the last one on. A yellow flame popped up through a gap, wavered, and grew tall.
The Concise Guide was illuminating the kitchen with a merry blaze when the main door scraped open and Valens called, "Darling! I'm home!" before appearing in the kitchen doorway and giving an exaggerated sniff. "What's that you're burning?"
"Just some rubbish I didn't need."
"Well, burn some more and perhaps we'll be rehoused sooner than we thought." Valens, his ambition for the CMO's house thwarted, was now eagerly trying to engage better lodgings. He bent to peer at the contents of the fire. "That reminds me. I was supposed to bring you a letter."
Ruso reached out his hands to warm them over his disappearing masterpiece. "From?"
"Londinium. That chap you sent to get his cataracts looked at. Albanus gave it to me and I left it in the surgery. Big handwriting. Did it himself, apparently. They're naming their son after you. The worst eye's been done and it seems to have worked."
"Good."
"They'll discharge him anyway, you know. The sight will never be up to much."
"I know," said Ruso, recalling the battle with Priscus about the cost of the operation. The administrator had been right, but for all the wrong reasons.
Valens lifted the lid of the bread bin.
"It's empty," said Ruso, reaching for the poker to prod at the settling flames.
Valens lowered the lid with a disappointed sigh. "I can't eat out, I'm on call. I'll have to wander back to the kitchen and see what I can scrounge up. We're going to have to do something about another slave, Ruso."
"Yes," agreed Ruso, not adding that they had agreed this more than once, but neither of them had done anything about it. They needed a slave to go and find them a slave.
"Oh, and there was another message. Apparently Albanus thinks I've become his assistant. He said to tell you something about a girl being home safe."
Ruso stopped. "Tilla?"
Valens looked pained. "I would have remembered if it was the lovely Tilla, Ruso, whom you so rashly allowed to abandon us with an empty bread bin. No. This is another of your many women. Let me think
… something Greek."
"Phryne?"
"That's it. Phryne."
"Who brought the message?"
Valens shrugged. "Some urchin brought it to the gate, apparently."
The poker clattered back on the hearth. Ruso snatched up his cloak from the chair where he had thrown it. "I've got to go out."
"Do I know this Phryne? Can she cook?"
Ruso squeezed the shaft of his cloak pin into the catch. "No," he said, answering both questions with one word on his way out of the house.
78
Stichus nodded a greeting from his old place on the door. From his shadow, a small figure in an identical tunic grinned at Ruso. A quick inquiry confirmed that Lucco had not been the urchin. He had, as he announced with pride, been at work all day. "I've been helping the painter." He pointed at the outside of the wall beside him. "Look." The torch lit up freshly painted lettering. "I can read all the letters," added the boy. "It says: 'Chloe's.' "
"Very good," observed Ruso, stepping inside. The bar was doing a brisk trade. Ruso nodded to Mariamne, who was serving at the tables. He reached for his purse and waited while a youth tried unsuccessfully to haggle over the price of a beer. After the youth had lost-but still bought the beer-Ruso asked a girl he did not recognize to pour him a large cup of the best wine Chloe's had to offer.
It was the first drink he had ordered here since the day he bought Tilla, and the first time he had been back to the bar since the dreadful events of payday. He had just enough money for the wine. On the way over he had promised himself he was not going to buy anything or anybody else, and if there was the least hint of trouble anywhere near him, he was going to walk away without a second glance.
He was handing over the cash when Chloe's voice cut across the hubbub. "Don't let him pay for that!" Moments later she was kissing him on the cheek like a long-lost friend. "Come and see the baby!" she urged. "Where have you been?"
Steadying his wine as she dragged him by the arm, he followed her toward the kitchen and a fine smell of stewed lamb. "I got your package," he said. "Thank you."
Chloe laughed. "I bet you were worried when you found out we'd gone."
"Just a little."
"I told you he'd pay you back."
Ruso nodded, wondering who really did own the money he had finally sent to Lucius.
Daphne was standing at the kitchen table, cracking brown eggs into a bowl two at a time with a swift and economical technique that made him suddenly nostalgic for Tilla's frustrated struggles to manage his kitchen left-handed. Daphne looked up at his approach, smiled, and pointed toward the other end of the table where a drawer rested on the tabletop. Inside, a small fuzz of dark hair was visible under one end of a blanket.
Ruso said the things people were supposed to say about babies. Indeed, this one was a particular miracle, even though it looked just like all the others and its cloths smelled as though they needed changing.
He glanced from Chloe to Daphne. "I came to see if you'd heard the news. Phryne is safely home."
Daphne's thumbs-up sign trailed a long string of egg white.
"Do you know who brought the message?"
Chloe shook her head. "Nobody's been here." She took his arm again. "Come and eat," she urged, pausing to exchange a word with the cook and inspect the contents of a couple of steaming pans before leading him back into the bar and beckoning Mariamne over. "Whatever the doctor wants," she said as the girl gathered empty cups onto a tray. "And the Falernian. He's our guest of honor. And tell Flora to smile, will you? People come here to enjoy themselves."