The Governor's Man by Jacquie Rogers (best beach reads TXT) 📕

dinner-time, and it took some effort to secure them a single small chamber. Quintus expected they would sleep little that night; the mansio was full of guests.

‘Take this cloak and dry it,’ he said sharply to the serving girl who brought wine up to their room. ‘And bring a brazier to warm this freezing box.’ She looked astonished, and said she didn’t know as how her master would feel about that, not being in the way of warming the bedchambers beyond the winter months.

‘It is still bloody winter. Just get a brazier.’ She blinked and hurried away. Quintus saw with resignation that the second bed was a mere truckle rolled under the main bed.

He thought back to his briefing in Londinium.  Claudius Bulbo apparently lived in a pretentious house in Iscalis, a small town at the foot of a striking gorge where the river Axe broadened out enough for a small river port. From there lead ingots from Vebriacum were transported to the coast for onward shipment around the Empire. Key to uncovering any fraud would be finding out whether and how silver was expropriated and then sold on. Getting proof might be tricky. A lot of money was at stake, and Quintus well from his years of investigative police work that money is frequently the cause of trouble.

Quintus stretched his arms out above his head, feeling his spine stiff from the wet journey. He lay down on the bed, muddy boots and all, and closed his eyes for a moment. He and Tiro would need to step carefully…

His nose wrinkled at the thought of Tiro. Where in Hades was that provincial layabout? He should have been back from stabling the horses by now. Then he noticed that the noise below had subsided and complete dark had fallen outside. How long had he been lying here dozing?

Strapping on his dagger, Quintus hurried downstairs and outside. The path to the stables was muddy and rutted, but Quintus was light on his feet. His knife was ready in his right hand. A lamp shone above the stable doors. Shifting clouds revealed glimpses of the waxing moon. He listened for a moment outside the stable door. All was silent. He entered cautiously. It was dark inside. His horses had been turned out into loose boxes and whickered gently at his approach, but there was no-one else there. Then he heard a soft dragging sound, outside. He went quickly out of the stable to investigate, but once away from the lamplight he tripped and almost fell. He reached down to feel a heavy birrus like the one Tiro had. The dragging sound stilled. It was sheer good fortune that Quintus looked up just as the moon was briefly unveiled, casting a fleeting gleam onto the edge of an uplifted dagger barely a pace away. Quintus leapt aside, thrusting his own knife hard. He had no idea which way his assailant was facing, but he did recognise the satisfying sensation of his knife sliding deep between ribs. There was a grunt, a thud, as something jarred against his leg and landed heavily on his foot. It was a body. He crouched down to find a widening pool of hot sticky blood, and the gurgle of a final breath.

It seemed he had killed someone.  But had the dead man already found Tiro?

Quintus unhooked the stable lamp and brought it back to light the scene. Two bodies: Tiro, his face a mask of blood; and a stranger, skinny, dirty and dressed like a sewer rat. He heard a groan and a British curse in the unmistakable accents of Londinium. Quintus leaned over the swearing Tiro, checking him for wounds.

‘Bastard got me while I was settling the horses. Must have slugged me over the head with something. Where is he?’ Tiro tried to peer around, blood dripping into his eyes from a wide shallow cut across his brow.

‘Right here, and dead now,’ said Quintus.

‘Blimey, boss, that was quick work.’

‘At any rate you’re alive and not much hurt.’

‘Apart from a bloody great hole in my head.’

‘Just a cut. You’ll live,’ Quintus said, pulling Tiro to his feet. Tiro paused to look at the dead man. ‘Seen you before, somewhere…Gods, my head! Sometime, somewhere—where have I seen you, you bastard?’ It seemed recollection wasn’t coming just yet, so Quintus supported his bleeding stator back into the inn.

The innkeeper was horrified. He armed his barmen with cudgels and sent them outside to retrieve the body and check the area for more brigands.

‘We keep a good company here, sir,’ he assured Quintus, looking worried. ‘We never have trouble, apart from the odd drunken dustup, not mostly anyway. Was anything stolen from your man?’

Quintus shook his head. He was keen to keep the incident as quiet as possible. He did not believe for a second that the attack was a coincidence, and anyway the innkeeper wouldn’t want word to get around that his guests were being attacked.

‘Nothing missing,’ he assured the unhappy man. ‘But I’d like you to come out and take a look at the body. You might recognise him.’

Quintus wasn’t holding out much hope. Potential witnesses were frequently as blind as a forum beggar. But the Calleva mansio-keeper was observant, making it his job to remember his customers. He looked closely at the corpse, clothes now blood-stained over the filth of long wear, narrow face frozen in a death snarl.

‘Yes … I have seen him, sometime recent. Let me think—‘

‘He was here along of two other fellows just last week, Master.’

The stable-boy, none too bright but keen, had loitered to hear the gossip and now broke in. ‘I see’d them all, three of them drinking together. Him and two others.’

‘What did the other two look like?’ asked Quintus.

‘Dunno, sir, it was too dark-like. Just one tall, the other smaller.’

‘Did you hear their conversation?’

‘No, sir, and