Murder on the Appian Way by Steven Saylor

Author:Steven Saylor
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Historical
Published: 2010-05-25T22:00:00+00:00

"Forty," announced Eco. Then he counted again, wagging his finger at each scraped mark on the earth wall in turn, moving his lips as he pronounced the numbers. Towards the end he counted aloud. "Thirty-seven, thirty-eight, thirty-nine, forty. Forty days, exactly."

"Perhaps. You're assuming that it took them four days to bring us here," I complained. "How can you know that? It was all so miserable and confused. They gave us almost no food or water, and kept us blindfolded so that I never knew day from night. It might have been three days, or five, or six."

"Might have been, but wasn't," said Eco matter-of-factly. "The trip from the Monument of Basilius to this place, wherever in Hades it is, took four days."

"How can you be so sure, when I'm not?"

"They hit you on the head, remember, Papa? I think you were more dazed than you realized."

"I was awake enough to know when we passed through Rome. We should have made a noise then and there, and taken our chances."

"Chances? Papa, we've been over this a thousand times. We had no chance at all. I had a dagger poking into me the whole time, and so did you, until we were through the city and well out the other side."

"You're sure it was the Fontinalis Gate that we passed through?" "Certain. I overheard -"

"Yes, I know: you overheard someone asking directions to the Street of the Silversmiths, and someone else telling them to go straight ahead and turn right."

"Exactly. So at that moment we had to be passing through the

Fontinalis Gate, heading north out of town on the Flaminian Way."

"Past the Field of Mars," I mused, "and the voting stalls. They must be overgrown with weeds by now."

"Right past Pompey's villa up on the Pincian Hill," said Eco ruefully. "Maybe the Great One himself looked down from his garden and thought, 'I wonder where that wagon with all those lumpy sacks of onions is headed? And when will I hear back from that Finder fellow and his son?' "

"If Pompey has spared a thought for us at all. If it wasn't Pompey himself who's put us here!" I paced, as much as I could in the cramped space of the pit. "And then on we rolled, into the countryside, heading north and west for a miserable eternity."

"Only it wasn't an eternity, Papa. It was four days. I clearly remember."

"Nonetheless, I insist we draw brackets around those first four marks of yours, since we can't be certain of them."

"Since you can't be certain. If you draw those brackets again, I'll only rub them out again,"

The two of us were play-acting, in a way, since we had already engaged in this same argument a hundred times. There was only so much to talk about, stuck in a pit with bars across the top for forty days - or was it closer to thirty-seven? I sometimes wondered if we both had gone mad already. How would we be able to tell? I picked up

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