While my sister's boy was being treated like a hero, I discovered that when the Sea Scorpion had started to wallow everyone had leapt overboard. Those who could swim, did. Milo was still tied up. My nephew's tricky conscience made him save the steward: no small task for a fourteen-year-old lad. Even when Larius edged a floating spar half under them, buoying up fifteen stone while Milo wrestled around in panic took a determined effort. By the time we found them, my boy looked pretty limp.
We rowed the Pax as close to the rocks as possible, and took bumboats ashore. We picked up a few more soggy crewmen, but both Laesus and Pertinax had made good their escape. They had been spotted heading up into the Lactarii Mountains together. Aemilius Rufus took the trireme into Positanum and made a great fuss organizing a search.
He had no success. Trust him.
I stayed in the port below the steep little town and bought a meal to revive Larius. Milo stuck to him too, with pathetic gratitude, but if I was hoping he would repay us by digging into his pocket for a flagon I was wrong. Once things quietened down around us, Larius murmured privately, 'Pertinax has a bolt hole he uses, back towards Neapolis-he said something to the sea captain about hiding up.'
'On the farm!'
The quiet voice came from Bassus. We had pulled that big, breezy man from the water after the trireme had sunk the Isis, just before he was submerged under the weight of his own gold amulets. Here he had been drinking heavily in silence: mourning the loss of his employer, the yacht, and especially his livelihood. I signalled him to join us. The bench sagged dangerously under his bulk as he huddled in with Larius, Milo and me.
'You been to this farm, Bassus?'
'No, but I heard him complaining to Crispus that it was grim. That was his excuse for coming aboard with us-'
'Bassus!' Bassus, who was already drably sozzled, frowned as he dimly deciphered that my appeal was made to him. 'Bassus, give us a clue about this hideaway.'
'He said it was a farmhouse-and it stinks.'
Then Milo contributed, 'Must be that run-down dungheap.'
'You know it?' I rounded on him urgently. 'You tailed him there? Can you find it again?'
'No hope, Falco. He was dashing all over the mountain that night, trying to shake us off. It was dark and we lost ourselves-'
'What mountain? Vesuvius? Near his father's estate?'
Larius laughed suddenly-a quiet, confident chortle deep in his throat.
'Oh no! Oh Uncle Marcus, you really will not like this-it must be the one where that man chased you: the one with the pretty girl-and the big friendly dog!'