suppose.'
'And yet, when he died, his sister wept. And Fulvia — do you remember the way she tried to show nothing when we were in the room? But afterwards, in front of that crowd, the way she shrieked and wailed. I thought it was an act at the time, but now-I think she was truly suffering, lost, hopeless. I think of Menenia and Bethesda, grieving for us, frightened of the future, and I think of Clodia and Fulvia, and I feel a great sadness for them all.' He wrinkled his brow and turned his eyes upward to the patches of sunlight that showed through the bars and the roof. 'But we're still not talking about the real worry, are we? We're talking about them grieving for us. What I really meant is — '
'What if something has happened to them?'
'Yes.'
I sighed. 'It all comes back to Pompey. He promised he would see that they were kept safe while we were gone. Pompey is a man of his word.'
'But we've been gone far longer than he could have expected. He probably thinks we're dead, too.'
'Yes, probably. If he thinks about us at all.'
'And what if Pompey isn't in control of the city? What if he's been assassinated? Or what if something totally mad has happened, a civil war with Caesar, and Pompey's gone off to Spain to rally his army there?'
'We have no way of knowing, Eco No way of knowing…' I put my face in my hands.
The stable door rattled and opened. Eco took a deep breath.
The basket for bread was raised and lowered, along with a bucket of fresh water.
'What's wrong with that one?'
'My father, you mean. Why can't you say, 'What's wrong with your father?’ ' Eco sounded genuinely angry. I kept my head lowered and clutched myself Despair was what I felt; it was simple enough to feign distress.
'All right, what's wrong with your father?'
'He's not feeling well.'
'Seems to be eating the same.'
'He's hardly eating at all.'
'Then what happened to all the bread I brought yesterday?
Did you eat it all yourself? Taking food from your sick father's mouth?'
'I ate what I needed The rats took the rest of it last night, if you have to know.'
The man grunted. 'So, do you need the bucket emptied again today?' 'No.'
'Are you sure?'
'Just go away now, if you don't mind. I think you're only making my father feel worse.'
'Why don't you let me empty it anyway? Get rid of the smell for you.'
'Just go away!'
Eco bent over me, much as he had bent over me when he woke me from my dream that morning. There was a long pause, then footsteps retreated and the door swung open and shut. I strained to listen and thought I could hear a murmur of discussion outside the stable.
We had not been able to catch another rat that day, after all
The next day, however, Fortune smiled on us, and not on a certain especially plump, especially curious and (most important for us) especially slow fellow-inhabitant of the pit. This was good, since our keeper insisted on emptying the bucket that afternoon. Eco assured me that his face showed great displeasure at seeing so much blood amid the urine. Once again there was a discussion outside the stable. The voices were raised noticeably louder than before, and both carried a distinct tone of recrimination. The keeper's seldom-seen companion came in and had a look at me himself. 'Where do you hurt?' he asked gruffly. I grunted.
'His belly, you fool,' said Eco, managing to sound as if he were both angry and anxious and trying hard to show neither.
Our keepers withdrew in silence, but there was another heated discussion outside the door, receding into the unseen, unknown distance.
'Since we'll be getting out of here soon' I began.
Why not be madly optimistic? It was the forty-fourth day of our captivity, seven days before the Ides of Martius, the fourth day of my feigned malady. Eco had again succeeded in capturing, killing and bleeding a rat. 'His craving for a bit of bread outweighed his better judgment,' to quote the solemn eulogy which Eco delivered as we buried the creature in a corner out of sight, and hopefully out of smell.
'Yes?' prompted Eco.
'Since we'll soon be out of here, I think we should try to figure out as best we can who had a reason to put us here.'
'Perhaps we'll be able to find out from our keepers.'
'If all goes well, either we will be running from our keepers or they will be running from us. I doubt that there will be much conversation. Anyway, going over the known facts of our dilemma will give us something to puzzle over for an hour or two.'
'Again?'
'Humour me. Unless you have an appointment to be somewhere at a certain time? I thought not. Well then, what did we discover on the Appian Way? Or more to the point, what did we not discover?'
'That's a question fit to give Aristotle a headache, Papa! You might as well ask me to prove a negative.'
'You're right. Step by step, then. If we believe the account of the priestess Felicia, Milo and Clodius met on the Appian Way by accident. There was no ambush. The two parties passed without incident until they were nearly clear of each other. Clodius uttered a parting insult to Birria. Birria, on impulse, turned and hurled his spear at Clodius. It was no more premeditated than a brawl in a tavern.'
'But it's possible, Papa, that Birria intended to throw the spear all along, on his master's orders. Perhaps Birria hurled an insult at Clodius first and Felicia didn't hear it; Clodius responded and Birria used that as a pretext to begin the attack. It could have been premeditated, or perhaps Milo issued an order to Birria on the spur of the moment, when the two parties met. Milo had the superior force. Perhaps he saw his chance to kill Clodius and seized it.'
'A good point, Eco. At any rate, we've seen no evidence whatsoever that Clodius planned or instigated the skirmish in any way, except by hurling an insult at Birria. The conflict probably occurred spontaneously, or possibly at Milo's instigation. What ensues? Clodius's outnumbered men are quickly overwhelmed. Some are killed on the spot, others flee into the woods. The wounded Clodius, without his horse and cut off from his villa by Milo's entourage, is assisted by some five or six of his men downhill towards Bovillae. He takes refuge at the inn, where the innkeeper knows and likes him.'
I rubbed my hands together to warm them. The pit seemed especially dank that day. 'Milo's men do not follow immediately. Felicia says they ran about like hounds who'd lost a scent, until Milo came up. He was furious at first, especially at Birria.'
'Because Birria had attacked Clodius on his own — or because he had failed to finish the job?' said Eco.
'I suspect the first Once Milo calmed down he held a sort of conference, and only then did he dispatch Eudamus and Birria and several others to pursue Clodius. This seems highly significant to me; had Milo planned all along to assassinate Clodius, I think his men would have been prepared to pursue Clodius at once and would have done so, especially since he was wounded and moving slowly on foot. Why did they wait? I think it must be that they needed instructions from their master, who was completely taken aback by what had happened. Why did he upbraid Birria? Because the gladiator had acted rashly and stupidly and without his consent. True, Milo might have been mad at his men for failing to make a clean killing of Clodius, but I favour the idea that the incident was spontaneous and unplanned, and that when Clodius made off on foot no one was quite sure what to do next.'
'But they did eventually pursue him.'
'Yes, because Milo made a decision to finish what his men had already started, without his consent. Which was more dangerous to him, Clodius wounded, or Clodius dead? Wounded, Clodius could return to Rome, rally his forces, bring legal proceedings against Milo for attempted murder, end Milo's bid for the consulship. If Clodius was dead, Milo would be liable for murder, but at least Clodius's followers might be paralysed with confusion, and Clodius himself wouldn't be around to accuse him. Either way, Milo was facing the ruin of everything he'd worked for. That's another reason I can't believe that the incident was premeditated. To have murdered Clodius by poison or stealth would have been one thing, but to have done so in such a clumsy fashion could only hurt Milo in the end. I
