"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 the little stick that Eco used to make his daily marks and etched brackets around the first three marks. "Now, if we count the marks remaining, the undisputed number of days will be -"
"Damned rats!" One of the creatures had sneaked into the cell again and was sniffing at the bit of bread we had put aside the previous day. Our keepers usually brought us fresh bread every morning, but not always; sometimes they skipped whole days, so we had learned to save a portion of food for the lean days. The rats were a new phenomenon, and had appeared only in the last few days. Eco ran across the small cell and stamped his foot at the creature, which squeaked and scurried away into a rocky crevice we hadn't managed to fill with dirt. "Can you believe it, Papa? The little monsters are coming out in broad daylight now!"
"Not exactly broad daylight." I rolled my eyes up, looking beyond the iron bars, overhead to the ceiling far above, where gaps in the slats admitted a few beams of sunlight. The pit had been dug in the earth floor of a disused building. The irregular walls around us were made of packed earth and stones. Covering the pit (and extending an unknown distance all around it, for we had tried to dig at the edges without success) was a grate made of iron bars. If we jumped, we could reach the bars; this at least allowed us a way to exercise our arms every day. I had been able to poke my head between the bars, but there was little to see; the building appeared to be a disused stable. Far above the grate was the ceiling, which badly needed repair. The place was dim and draughty, but our keepers had given us plenty of smelly blankets to huddle under at night.
"Better the rats should come out in daylight than during the night," I said ruefully. Nights in the pit were as black as pitch, except for a few stars which occasionally glimmered through the holes in the ceiling. In such utter darkness, the scurrying and squeaking of the rats was almost more than I could stand.
"The rats aren't the only ones who're hungry," said Eco.
"I know. I hear your stomach growling, son. Perhaps you should eat that crust of stale bread, before the rats get to it."
"I don't know. What time do you think it is?"
"Hard to say. Noon, perhaps, judging from the light. Maybe they're not coming to feed us today." Maybe they won't come back at all, I thought, but didn't say it aloud, though the same morbid thought must have occurred to Eco from time to time. Abandoned entirely, we would have a chance to try to dig our way out without being stopped; but without food and water, would our strength last that long? We were at the mercy of men we never saw, who had never revealed their intentions. They looked after us in a desultory fashion, feeding us on most days, occasionally hauling up and emptying the bucket we used to relieve ourselves and supplying us with enough fresh water to drink and clean ourselves. Why had they not killed us and left us on the Appian Way, as they had done with Davus? Why had we been taken so far from Rome – or were we indeed such a great distance from the city? Perhaps the four days of travel which Eco claimed to remember so clearly had been spent going in circles to confuse us. Why were they bothering to keep us alive at all, and for how much longer would they do so? What did they ultimately plan to do with us? Who were they?
"Forty days!" I said. "You know the story Bethesda tells -" My voice caught in my throat, saying her name aloud. What had become of Bethesda and Diana in my absence? After a certain point I had tried simply not to think about them, for it was too unbearable. And yet what else was there to think of that could offer me any comfort?
"She tells that old Hebrew tale she learned from her father, about the virtuous man and the great flood. He built a huge boat and loaded specimens of every creature on it, and then it rained for forty days and nights without stopping. Imagine having to endure that – forty days in a cramped boat stinking of every sort of animal, sodden and seasick with the rain coming down."
"At least he didn't have to go hungry," said Eco, whose stomach growled. "He had all those animals he could eat."
"I think the point was to save the animals," I said. "Anyway, be glad it's hardly rained at all." During the one significant storm that had occurred since our captivity began, rain had poured in through the leaky roof above and collected in a pool on the floor of the pit. "We're very lucky that one of us hasn't become seriously ill."
"Not necessarily, Papa."
"What do you mean?"
"If they've kept us alive this long, it must be because they've been ordered to do so. Maybe if one of us fell ill, they'd let us go, or at least move us out of this horrible place."
"I suppose they might…"
"Oh, this is maddening!" Eco suddenly spun about and pounded his fist against the earth wall, striking a spot already pummelled by many previous blows. At least twice every day, and sometimes in the middle of the night, he would be seized by a sudden fury that could only be relieved by hitting something.
I envied the release this action gave him. Our captivity was indeed maddening, and the hardest thing I had ever had to endure. There is something in the spirit of a Roman that cannot acquiesce to such an unnatural condition. In other lands, where kings rule, imprisonment is a common punishment. This is because a king wishes to see his enemies suffer. What better way than to lock them in a cage or throw them into a pit where he can watch their inevitable physical and mental decline, tell them about the suffering of their loved ones outside, listen to their pleas for mercy and taunt them with false-promises of release? But in our Republic, punishment is not designed to bring pleasure to a given ruler; it is meant to permanently remove an offender from the community, either by killing him (sometimes, admittedly, with rather gruesome punishments involved, especially for religious crimes), or by allowing him to choose exile instead of death. The notion that anyone should be indefinitely locked away, even for the most horrible crime, is too cruel even for Roman tastes.
I remembered the debate which took place in the Senate when
Cicero was consul and announced he had uncovered a conspiracy by Catilina's circle to bring down the state. Cicero wanted them executed on the spot. Others disagreed, and it was Caesar who had suggested that those involved be rounded up and placed under permanent arrest. Against this novel idea was the practical problem of where such alleged criminals were to be incarcerated, since Rome has no prison to speak of, only a few small holding cells where malefactors are kept for a short while to await execution. There was also the danger of establishing a precedent for lengthy imprisonment, for once the state was allowed to take away a citizen's freedom of movement, where would such a course lead? Surely implicit in the very concept of citizenship was an individual's right to come and go as he wished, unlike a slave; if an individual had done something so terrible that he should no longer have the most basic right of a citizen, then surely he deserved either exile or death.
In the end, of course, Cicero had prevailed. The alleged conspirators (including Marc Antony's stepfather) had been rounded up and strangled to death without a trial. Many disagreed, later if not at the time, and their anger, harnessed by Clodius, eventually led to Cicero's exile for sixteen months. But even his worst enemies had never proposed that Cicero should be put into a prison, like a slavish courtier who had offended a monarch.
Such repetitious, circular meditations were my means of dealing with the madness of our situation. They wore a groove into my mind, just as surely as Eco's fist had impressed its shape into the earth wall that held us prisoner.
Eco stopped his pounding. From the unseen world above we heard the familiar sound of a wide, rickety door swing open and shut. I smelled the aroma of fresh bread, so faint I might have only imagined it. Eco's belly growled louder than ever, and I began to salivate, as dogs do when they know they're about to be fed. How ruthlessly imprisonment strips away a man's dignity. How swiftly it reduces him to me status of an animal.
The next day was the forty-first of our captivity, according to Eco's reckoning. I decided to calculate the exact date, but the imposition of the leap-month of Intercalarius complicated the matter. I knew that Februarius was past – we had been captured two days after the Ides, which in Februarius fell on the thirteenth – and I knew that all of Intercalarius had come and gone, so we were somewhere in early Martius.
"Of course, the leap-month of Intercalarius doesn't always have the same number of days," I said. "It's only inserted into the calendar every other year, and even then not always, and each time the priests adjust it according to however many days are needed to fill out the year properly."
Eco frowned. "So how many days are in the leap-month this year?"
"Twenty-seven, I think."
Eco shook his head dubiously. "That just doesn't sound right to me. I thought Intercalarius always had the same number of days as Februarius."
"No."
"But-"
"Besides, this year Februarius had only twenty-four days." "Not twenty-eight?"
"No. This year Januarius had twenty-nine days, as always, Februarius had twenty-four, Intercalarius had twenty-seven, and Martius will have the customary thirty-one. Eco, this information has only been posted on scrolls in the Forum every day since the new year began. How can you not have seen it?"
"I never pay attention to such things, Papa. I have enough garbage in my head already."
"But how do you keep up with which days the Senate is meeting, and when the holidays fall, and when the banks are open?"
"I ask Menenia. Women always know these things. They have an instinct for it. They know which markets are open on which days, and which are closed, and when you have to buy extra food because there’s to be a holiday, and so on."
"Do you always ask Menenia when you need to know the date?"
"Yes."
"Say you're writing an important letter, and you need to know the day of the month -" "I ask Menenia!" "And she knows?"
"Always. Doesn't Bethesda always know the date?" "Now that you mention it…" "Try it. Next time you need to know, ask her." "You mean, instead of following the postings in the Forum, and making my own calculations-" "Just ask Bethesda."
"It can't be that simple. When I think of all the hours and the days I've wasted over the years -" We both laughed.;
I regrouped my thoughts. "So, if this is indeed day forty-one -"
"How on earth do the priests calculate how many days to put into Intercalarius, anyway? And why don't they leave Februarius alone?"
"Not 'how on earth', Eco, but 'how in the heavens?' It all has to do with the movement of the stars and the phases of the moon and the length of the seasons and so on. The years go round and round, each pretty much like the last, but not exactly. Some cycles have more days in them than others, and there's no perfect system to account for the discrepancy. So the calendar has to be adjusted every two years."
"Except when it's not."
"Other people have other sorts of calendars, you know -" "Just as other countries have kings." "Which Rome shall never have again -" "Unless it does."
"Be quiet! The Roman calendar is the most perfect yet devised. It has twelve months."
"Except when it has thirteen, as this year."
"And all of these months have either thirty-one or twenty-nine days."
"Except for Februarius, which has twenty-eight Only this year, according to you, it has only twenty-four." "It works out in the end."
"Or does it? I mean, the calendar is so permanently out of joint now that sometimes the seasons don't match the traditional holidays."
"Yes, and I've seen it get progressively worse in my lifetime. I suppose it would be even worse without snipping away at Februarius and inserting Intercalarius as needed."
"That's another thing, Papa – 'as needed'. The priests always seem to decide to insert the leap-month at the last moment. Can't they tell a year in advance whether they'll need it?"
"Apparently not"
"I'd say the Roman calendar needs serious reforming."
"It's interesting that you say that. Your brother recently mentioned in a letter that Caesar thinks the same thing. It's one of his pet projects. When he has time, in between slaughtering Gauls and dictating his memoirs on horseback, the general likes to fiddle with ways of fixing the calendar."
"A new calendar for Rome? It would take a king to force a change like that."
He meant for me to laugh, but I frowned instead. "You shouldn't talk that way, Eco. You shouldn't even joke about it" "Sorry, Papa."
"Anyway," I said, "if Caesar can fix the calendar, surely you and ' I can at least figure out what day this is."
"Without Menenia and Bethesda to tell us?"
"Entirely on our own! Now, if it's been -"
I sucked in a breath as I heard the familiar rattle of the door swing open and shut in the room above. I let out a low moan and slumped down against the wall, bowing my head and clutching my stomach.
The hatch in the grate creaked open. A rope slithered and I knew that a basket of fresh bread was being lowered to us. Eco unhooked it and attached the empty basket from yesterday.
I moaned again, trying to make it sound as if I were stifling the sound instead of forcing it. A proud citizen does not like to show weakness to the slave of his enemy.
"What's wrong with him?" asked a voice from above.
"What do you care?" said Eco.
I kept my head lowered, resisting an urge to look up. I could never make out much of our captors' faces, anyway. Due to the dim light and the distance, they were nothing more than hulking silhouettes.
"Would you empty the bucket?" said Eco.
"Again? I emptied it just yesterday."
"Please?"
The man made a grunt of disgust. "Oh, all right. Here's the rope."
Eco attached the bucket. There was a faint sloshing noise as the man pulled it up, fist over fist. As he walked away, I heard him mumble, "What's this?" There was a pause, and I imagined him squinting, grinding his jaw, wrinkling his nose as he studied the watery contents. Then he resumed his walk to the door and pulled it open. From somewhere farther away I heard the ghost of a hushed conversation and then a distant splash as they emptied the contents.
A little later the man returned and lowered the bucket back into the pit. "Is he all right?" he said.
I stifled a moan and pulled my hands from my stomach.
"Just go away," said Eco coldly.
Footsteps departed. The door opened and shut.
After a while I said to Eco, "How do you think it went?" "You seemed convincing to me."
I nodded. We both looked towards the little mound of earth which covered the body of the rat Eco had killed that morning, whose blood we had copiously added to our own urine in the bucket.
"Do you think we'll be able to catch another rat as easily?" I said.
"In broad daylight if we have to," Eco assured me.