His brother scoffed, but I thought young Mopsus might be right. Fulvia had said nothing of a secret passage to me, nor had she mentioned these two boys; she had only said that her son somehow managed to elude Milo's men when they came to the villa and terrorized the slaves. Possibly her son had been unformcorning with details, and she had not wanted to press him; or perhaps young Publius was as good at keeping secrets as his father.
'So you took Publius off to the secret passage, to hide from Halicor. I wish that you could show me. Of course, if the house is locked — '
'Oh, but that's the wonderful thing about the secret passage,' said Androcles. 'You don't have to go into the house to use it. You can enter the passage from, outside the house. Come, I'll show you.' He took my hand. His older brother looked dubious, and shot a wary glance at Eco, but followed along, persuaded by a newfound trust, or else by his fear of being chased down and tackled again by a laughing Davus.
Androcles led us around the comer of the house and down the steep hill into the woods at the base of the house. From a distance, this side of the house appeared almost featureless except for the long portico along the top. Closer at hand, I could see numerous openings set in rows, not so much windows as apertures for ventilation and light, set too high in the wall to be reached and too small for even a child to climb through. The foundation was largely hidden by trees and dense thickets. It was amid this growth that Androcles showed us a path, and at the path's end, in what appeared at first sight to be a featureless wall, was a hidden entrance. A section between two upright posts appeared to be immovable but in fact was a sliding panel that could be opened just enough to allow a man to slip inside. I have seen several examples of hidden doors in my life, especially in my early travels, but seldom had I seen one as well concealed. Most so-called secret entrances are not really hidden, but are daunting because the means of opening them is secret. This door was simple to open, but would have been almost impossible to detect unless one knew of its existence.
The opening led to an ascending stairway, and then through a very narrow, dark hall that seemed to run through the very heart of the lower floors of the villa, those subterranean sections which had been constructed in the excavated hillside. The way was lit only by tiny openings which served as spyholes into the various rooms we passed. The rooms themselves were mostly undecorated and empty except for a few crates and odd pieces of furniture. Some were pitch black. Some had not yet been properly finished by the carpenters. Like Clodius's house in the city, the villa had been in a state of expansion at the time of its master's death, full of the promise of his grandiose schemes for the future. -
'All these gloomy underground chambers-what did Clodius need them for?' said Eco.
'This was obviously to be more than a simple country villa,' I said. 'More of a stronghold, I imagine — a place to store treasure, stockpile weapons, house a private army of gladiators…'
'Or keep prisoners?'
'I hadn't thought of that. Yes, it's not hard to imagine these rooms as cells or torture chambers.'
'Perhaps his city house has secret passageways in the walls as well.'
'It wouldn't surprise me. More work for Cyrus the architect!'
We ascended more stairs, which were lit by tiny openings with direct sunshine, indicating that the stairwells were located at one end of the building. We walked down more narrow corridors, looked into more cavernous, gloomy, unfinished chambers. At last there was a change in the pattern and we found ourselves in a labyrinthine passage that snaked this way and that. We were somewhere in the upper, older part of the villa now, where the addition of a hidden passage between the existing walls had required the architect Cyrus to exercise considerable ingenuity. The rooms now revealed by the spyholes were adorned with opulent decorations and furnishings, full of all the things that make a home — except people to live there. The rooms were silent and still. Even on a sunshiny day such as this, with the first hint of an early spring in the air, all the shutters were closed, casting the whole house in a deep-shadowed gloom.
At last Mopsus gestured for us to stop. 'Here — this is where we were when it happened.'
'Who was here?'
'Androcles and I. And Publius, of course, hiding from Halicor. Publius thought it would be great fun to spy on the grown-ups. He could hardly stop giggling whenever he looked through the hole.'
The nearest spyhole was at eye level for a boy, closer to waist high on a man, so that I had to stoop to look through it. The floor of the secret passage was substantially higher than that of the adjacent rooms, so that I actually found myself looking down into the room beyond. It appeared to be an office for transacting business and keeping records. Pigeonhole scroll cases lined one wall, but were mostly empty, their contents scattered on the floor along with various writing materials — wax tablets, styluses, jars of ink and sheets of papyrus spattered and smeared with something that looked more like blood than ink. The room reminded me of my own ransacked study.
'So the three of you were here,' I said. 'What did you see?'
'Halicor and the foreman, talking about Publius,' said Mopsus.
'And not too nicely, either!' added Androcles.
'What did they say?'
'Alot of things,' said Mopsus. 'They talked about how impossible it was going to be to control Publius, especially with his father gone.
They argued. The foreman said it was Halicor's fault for letting Publius out of his sight. Halicor said that he was a tutor, not a bodyguard, and it wasn't his job to keep Publius safe, and that was what the master really cared about. That sort of thing. Lots of yelling. Grown-up talk.' 'And then?'
In the deep shadows of the corridor I saw Androcles's eyes glitter with tears as he stepped behind his older brother, holding on to him like a shield. Mopsus straightened his back and put on a hard face. 'Then there was yelling from somewhere else in the house. I don't think Halicor and the foreman heard it at first, because they were yelling at each other. Then the door flew open, so hard it banged against a shelf and knocked some things off. Men ran in: They carried swords-'
'And there was already blood on the swords!' said Androcles, peering around his brother's shoulder.
Mopsus wrinkled his brow. 'And then Milo came in — ' 'How did you know it was Milo?'
'Because that's what Halicor called him. 'Milo!' He shouted the name as if Hades himself had come up through the floor. I whispered to Publius, 'Who is Milo?' and he whispered back, 'The worst man in the world, except for Cicero!' '
'Clodius was already teaching the boy to know his enemies,' observed Eco.
I nodded. 'And then what happened?'
'Milo and his men swarmed into the room like bees. They pushed Halicor and the foreman against the wall and poked their swords at them. Milo was angry. 'Where is he?' he shouted. 'Where is Publius Clodius?' And the foreman said, 'He's not here, we don't know where he is,' but that just made Milo angrier.*You!' he said to Halicor. 'Who are you?' And Halicor said, 'I'm just a tutor, the boy's tutor, but the boy has run off, he's hiding from me.' And Milo shouted at him to shut up and knocked him down and kept yelling, 'Where is Publius Clodius?' And then they were stabbing the foreman, and cutting off pieces of Halicor's fingers-'
'It was awful,' said Androcles. 'I thought I was going to throw up, but my belly was empty. I was glad when they dragged Halicor and the foreman into the hall. At least we couldn't see what they were doing.'
'But we could hear the screaming,' said Mopsus. 'We all covered our ears. Poor Publius. He could have spoken up, yoiisee, shouted out, 'Here I am!' Maybe he could have saved Halicor.'
I shook my head. 'If the men came for Publius and found him, they'd have had no reason to leave Halicor alive.'
'What would they have done to Publius?' said Androcles.
'Taken for him for a hostage, probably,' said Eco grimly. 'Or else finished him as they finished his father.'
'Two of the men were so big,' said Mopsus, shivering as he remembered. 'Even bigger than the elephant here. They were the ones who did most of the cutting.'
Eco looked at me. 'Eudamus…'
'… and Birria. Never one without the other.'
'Halicor screamed and screamed,' said Mopsus. 'I bet he would have told them where Publius was, if he'd known! But he didn't, so they just kept cutting off pieces.'
His little brother began to weep. I put my arm around him.
'We couldn't even run away, or else they might have heard us,' said Mopsus. 'We just had to stay very still.
