CHAPTER NINE
When Albanus had finished talking, the centurion looked him up and down and said, “You?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I see.”
Curtius’s tone suggested that this made no sense to him whatsoever. Which Albanus could fully understand, because he himself had never understood what a girl like Virana might see in a scrawny schoolmaster with thinning hair and very average looks. “I know it’s hard to believe, sir.”
The centurion remained silent for a moment. Then he said, “Is that why you volunteered to help with the enquiries?”
“I didn’t volunteer, sir,” Albanus confessed. “Virana put me forward and—well, it was difficult to refuse, really.”
“Hm.”
“I’m sorry to have made things so awkward, sir. But whatever the widow’s told you about Virana, I swear by all the gods that she is the last person who would murder anybody. She was with me at the time of the shipwreck. The prefect saw us together. He even spoke to her.”
“She was with you the whole time?”
Albanus hesitated, but there was no point in lying: when Curtius finally realised he needed to question all the witnesses, the truth would come out. “She joined me as the ship went down, sir. Not long after I spoke to the prefect’s son, standing by the men with the artillery.”
Curtius let out a long sigh. “I suppose that gives you less time to have murdered him on her behalf.”
Now it was Albanus who was incredulous. “Me, sir?”
“That would also be hard to believe,” the man agreed. “Although you seem to have trouble refusing her anything. And since we don’t know when the baker was stabbed nor when he went over the cliff, it could be either of you before you met, both of you as a pair, or anybody else on that bloody clifftop.” As an afterthought, he added, “Except the men who were roped together.”
“Have any other witnesses come forward, sir?
“Not yet.”
Albanus wished he had not dissuaded the centurion from offering a reward for information. “Maybe the widow was the one who got somebody to do it for her.”
“Doubtless because she wanted to be poor and homeless.”
“I heard they argued a lot, sir. Partly about the girl, but also about other things. Virana might be able to tell you more. And you’ve established that the widow had a family to go home to.”
Curtius fixed him with what was probably a long-practised stare: the one that said he had better stop talking if he didn’t want to be in worse trouble. But Albanus dared not stop until he had said it all.
“You asked me to question the butcher’s wife, sir. The one who was injured in the—”
“I know who I asked you to question.”
“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir. Well, she said Simmias wasn’t very good at paying his debts. And it turns out he’d almost run out of supplies.”
“That’s no reason to kill him.”
“No, sir.” Albanus swallowed. Where had he been going with this? Nowhere. It was just, he realised, a distraction from Virana. And now a smell of fried chicken was wafting into the room. He was keeping the centurion away from his dinner. “Anyway, sir,” he continued, “whatever the widow might have thought, the girl wasn’t chasing the baker. She’d already complained to me that he was the one chasing her. That’s why she was glad to find another job.”
The centurion leaned back and adopted his hands-behind-the-head pose again. “So what did she want you to do about it?”
“Nothing, sir. She was afraid of losing her job and her lodgings.”
“Hm.”
Albanus did not like the sound of ‘Hm’.
“Well, she’s certainly worked her magic on you.” Curtius leaned forward again. “Let me give you some very disappointing news, schoolmaster. According to the widow, the girl’s not fussy who she beds. Before she came here she abandoned a baby that could have been fathered by any one of the recruits in Eboracum.”
“That’s not true, sir!”
The centurion’s grey eyes widened. “She did know who the father was?”
“Er—I believe not, sir, but the baby was adopted by the Medicus I used to work for. It wasn’t abandoned.”
“Hm.”
“A lot of local girls have ambitions to pair up with a military man, sir.”
“As the widow said. She’s a husband-hunter.”
“I believe some of the recruits took advantage of her good nature, sir.”
“And what about you?”
Albanus felt his glorious memories of the intimacy in that little room above the bakery suddenly crushed by the grip of shame. He swallowed. He must not allow himself to be side-tracked here. “I should have known better, sir. Virana is very young and very naïve. But in all the time I’ve known her, she’s never shown any interest in a married man.” Even though he had detected a certain flustered tone in the Medicus whenever he had dealings with Virana in the absence of his wife. “She dealt with the baker by getting away from him,” he pointed out. Then, because that smell from the kitchen wouldn’t be helping Curtius’s temper, he got to the point. “Sir, please can I put in a request that you consider an immediate release?”
“No.”
The word was spoken with that special technique that the best centurions used: that of tersely expressing their mind while showing no expression whatsoever, then remaining motionless while you squirmed. Albanus thanked the gods that he had now seen it so often he could pretend it wasn’t intimidating. “Then sir, if you might just call off the questioner—”
“If it wasn’t her, who was it?”
Albanus drew himself up to his full height, which was not great. “I’ll find out, sir.”
“The prefect wants someone in custody by tomorrow night. At present she’s the best name we have. I’m not giving you two the chance to run away into the sunset together. Now bugger off. If you can find me someone better, come back.”
“Will you call off the questioner, sir? Now that you know it was me in the bakery and—”
“Dismissed!”
Albanus was conscious of forcing all his muscles to stay still against their will. Conscious, too, that the wrath of Centurion Curtius was nothing to the terror Virana must already be feeling if she knew a professional questioner was on the way. The only part of him that moved was the part that repeated, “Will you call off the questioner, sir?”
The centurion’s grey eyes stared into his own. There was a long and deadly serious re-enactment of the childish who-blinks-first game. Albanus felt his skin begin to twitch. He blinked. He carried on staring. He reminded himself to breathe. Finally the centurion said,
“The questioner goes in at midday tomorrow.”
Leave a Reply