Oracle of the Dead

7

Two days later we were back at my temple headquarters. This time the crowd seemed no larger, but it didn’t seem any smaller, either. I also learned something else. They weren’t all here for the festive atmosphere. The times were unsettled, with everyone on edge over the possible outbreak of civil war, and all the oracles, both traditional and impromptu, were doing a booming business, with nervous people asking them about what was to come and would they survive it. Or else, how to make a profit from everyone else’s upcoming misery, always a popular concern.

I was just getting comfortable in my curule chair, about to start the day’s proceedings, when something utterly unexpected happened. The crowd fell silent. This unprecedented quiet piqued my interest. Some sort of commotion was coming down the road to the north. It looked like a lot of men, some walking, some riding. I didn’t see any glitter of polished armor or standards, but it had a definite military look to it.

“What is all that?” I asked no one in particular. “Am I never to have a peaceful court day?”

Just moments later, the procession began marching into what had become my little town. First to arrive, to my unutterable dismay, were twelve lictors in a double file. Only a consul is entitled to twelve lictors. Or a proconsul. The consuls were in Rome and wouldn’t leave in times as uncertain as these. And there was only one serving proconsul in Italy.

Sure enough, a bit later there rode in none other than Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus himself. My lictors lowered their fasces in salute to a higher magistrate. I had, perforce, to stand and descend the steps of my dais to greet him.

“Hail, Proconsul,” I said, as the throng gaped. “What brings the distinguished Pompey to my court? Surely the demands of office should require you in the north.”

He looked down at me from his lofty horseback perch. Looking down at people was something he did well, having had so much practice. “Indeed they should, but it seems a matter here puts greater demands upon my attention. Why has this business of the murdered priests not been cleared up?”

I held on to my temper. He was, after all, the great Pompey. “Perhaps you could dismount and we can discuss this in a more quiet environment.”

“Very well.” He heaved himself from his saddle-and “heaved” was the word for it. The once hard, soldierly Pompey had gone soft and corpulent in his long years of peace. Even this effort left him winded and his aides had to catch him to steady him lest he fall. It removed the last vestige of uncertainty I nursed for the outcome of a showdown between Pompey and Caesar. It would be no contest.

We climbed the temple steps and sat in the shade of the portico while slaves quickly brought a table, pitchers of wine and water, and platters of food, all with great and silent efficiency.

Pompey took a great gulp of watered wine and I did the same, only with less water. “Now, Metellus, why is this business not resolved?”

“By what authority do you ask?”

“By the authority of a proconsul, by Hercules!” he all but shouted.

I remained admirably calm. “You are proconsul in Spain. Here in Italy you are overseer of the grain supply. It is an important and responsible position, but its duties are administrative, not military and not judicial. I, on the other hand, am praetor peregrinus, with imperium and the authority to judge cases involving foreigners all over Italy.”

He dropped the bluster and grinned slyly. “Then why are you embroiled in this case that, as far as I can tell, involves no foreigners? Why not leave it to the local authorities?”

He had me there. “Because I want to, just as you do whatever you want, no matter what rules the Senate and law tables have laid down.”

He barked out a short laugh. “Spoken like a true Metellus. You’re an arrogant lot, no doubt of that.” He leaned close. “Look here, Decius Caecilius. I need this matter settled quickly. I’ll be knee-deep in a war with Caesar soon and I can’t have any distractions plaguing me here in the south.”

“Why do you think whatever happens here can amount to a distraction for the likes of Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus? This is a piddling, local affair. It’s nothing on the big game board of world power. There are only two players on that board now, you and Caesar.” The game board image was one Clodia had thrown at me years before, along with her withering contempt for my not being one of the big players. Clodia was the sister of my old enemy Clodius, and the most notorious woman of that time.

“Never mind that,” he said, suddenly cagey. “I have my reasons for wanting this matter over and forgotten, and they’re none of your business.”

“None of my business?” I said, feeling my face begin to flame. “You come in here with no authority and tell me to hurry up and solve this mess and you say your reasons are none of my business?”

He jumped up and his chair went over backwards. “My authority is the authority of a man who can whistle up twenty legions, all loyal to him alone. Nothing else counts these days. Remember that, Metellus.”

I stood too, wanting to tell him how useless his twenty legions would be against Caesar’s veteran killers. But I didn’t and I felt it was incumbent on me to keep the peace. “Oh, sit down. We can discuss this in a civilized fashion. No sense drawing swords before the war has even started.”

He sat without looking back to see if a slave had put his chair under him. Of course, the chair was right where he wanted it. That was always the way with Pompey. “Actually,” he said, “it’s about those legions that I’m here, not your case. I want my men to be prepared to mobilize at a minute’s notice. If Caesar dares to cross the Rubicon, which I doubt he will, he won’t leave me much time.”

He wasn’t a total dunce. He just didn’t understand how little time he would really have. “Will you be here long?”

“Longer than you’d like, but that’s just too bad. Before I leave, I want the crime solved and the killers executed.”

“This is a criminal investigation, not a military campaign. You can’t rush it along with a few floggings and summary executions.”

“I don’t see why not. Who are the most likely suspects?”

“At the moment, the devotees of Hecate.”

He spread his hands. “Well, then, there you are. Try them and execute them. Problem solved.”

“Somehow I knew you would suggest the simplest possible solution. I take it then that you are more interested in having things done with than finding the actual killer or killers.”

“As you’ve said, I have far more important matters to concern me. Personally, I don’t care who killed the priests, and what matter if some half-crazed priests of a foreign goddess are done away with? As long as the countryside is quiet, I will be satisfied.”

“The countryside will not be quiet if I execute the priestesses-most of Hecate’s clergy here are women, by the way-without glaring proof of their guilt. The cult is very ancient and deeply rooted in these parts. It has many more adherents than the Temple of Apollo. Plus, the local merchants have come to depend on the business that the Oracle brings to the district.”

He fumed for a while. “Just find someone to execute and do it soon.” He stood. “I’ll be off. I’ll be raising at least one legion from this district. I will need to requisition supplies from all the local towns. The men have their own arms and equipment, but I’ll want animals, tents, wagons, and a hundred other things.”

“See the city officials of the towns about that,” I advised him. “I’m just visiting.”

When Pompey rode out, amid much pomp and fanfare, the crowd cheered him lustily. As I’ve said, Pompey was a popular man in the south. Of course, they would have cheered Caesar just as happily. They were both popular men, but few of the men present planned to enlist in their legions. Whoever won, they would be content.

I heard my cases and there were few of them. In fact, I could have left at any time. I was only prolonging my stay because of the murders. That, and because I just liked the place. I had a pile of cases to hear in the north and in Sicily. That was a thought. Go to Sicily and dawdle there, wait out my year, and when I returned to Rome perhaps everything would be settled and I could keep out of it. At lunch that day I broached the subject to Julia and wished I hadn’t.

“What?” She looked at me as at some vile reptile. “You want to be clear out of Italy when great events are happening here?”

“It’s not so far,” I protested. “You can see across the Strait of Misenum to the Italian mainland.”

“It ill becomes you to behave in such a cowardly fashion. I think you should write to Caesar right now and offer him your services.”

“I still have the rest of the year of my praetorship to conclude,” I said.

“You have imperium,” she said pitilessly. “You do know what that means, don’t you? In case you’ve forgotten, I’ll tell you. It means you have the power to raise and command armies. What are you going to do when the Senate orders you to raise an army and march against Caesar? Have you thought of that?”

“Believe me, Julia, I’ve thought of very little else for months.”

“Then it’s time to make up your mind and decide which way you are going to go.”

“I have decided,” I told her. “I’ve decided that Sicily is a very fine place to be. I will go there as soon as this murder business is settled.”

She was furious but, for once, she held her tongue. This may have been for any of a number of reasons. She might have decided to comport herself as a good, patrician Roman wife and bow to her husband’s will. What a laugh. Or she may have decided to hammer at me late at night when I should be tired, a favorite tactic of hers and, I suspect, of all wives. She may have actually given the matter some sober thought and realized what a terribly dangerous predicament this put me in. Moreover and most likely, I suspected she was already writing her uncle and plotting with him, wangling a high position for me on his staff. Between Julia and the Senate and Pompey and Caesar it was like having my limbs tied to four elephants, each of them with orders to seek the home of one of the principal winds.

That afternoon, there being no nearby public baths, I walked into the virtual tent city that had sprung up near the Temple of Apollo. The place had become nearly self-sufficient, as food vendors and farmers and shepherds from the countryside had established a little forum where the transient population could purchase necessities. No more than a hundred paces from the encampment a stream furnished abundant water of excellent quality. As for what they were using for sanitary facilities, I did not inquire.

Some tents, sheds, and lean-tos housed nothing but individuals and families. These were the ones who had come with questions for the Oracle. I was tempted to tell them to watch out for oracular advice concerning money, but forebore. I was certain that my trial, when I should hold one, would expose the fraud sufficiently. The larger and more colorful shelters belonged to traveling merchants and mountebanks who lived on the roads all the year round, stealing when they could and selling when they had to. Italy had veritable tribes of these peripatetic folk, whom no one trusted but who seemed to serve a necessary function and were therefore tolerated, albeit with suspicion.

An itinerant cutler displayed his wares from an ingenious upright chest that opened out into three large panels on which hung everything from sickles to cleavers to daggers. Leaning against the chest were a dozen or so fine swords, some with jeweled sheath mounts suitable for officers and centurions. These piqued my interest and I spoke with the man, a bald-headed Bruttian.

“Do you always travel with so many swords?” I asked him. “I would think agricultural implements would be your stock in trade in this area.”

“You think that’s a lot of swords, Praetor?” he said, inclining his shiny head toward the display. “That’s just the fancy pieces for officers and the rich men’s sons who’ll be joining the cavalry. In my wagon I have six chests of plain legionary’s swords and now Pompey’s here I imagine I won’t have a single one in ten days. I wish now I’d brought more.”

“Men of your trade have been preparing for trouble, eh?” I said.

“If you deal in arms, you keep your ear to the ground. War’s been in the air this last year and every cutler and arms maker in Italy’s been laying in swords, daggers, spearpoints, and arrowheads for a long time. Go to a port and you’ll see pig lead coming in from everywhere it’s mined. Do you think it’s all for plumbing pipes and roofs?”

“Slingstones?” I said.

“There you are. Men who make it their business to know such things say war is coming and a wise man had better be ready to meet the demand for arms.”

“Civil war, you mean,” I said.

“Well, that means you can sell to both sides, doesn’t it? Most wars, you only get to sell to one.” This simple commercial philosophy was fairly typical of the times. Deplorable as the situation might be, it presented wonderful possibilities to a man of enterprise.

Of course, it presented noncommercial possibilities as well, especially for men of my own class. My family had been prominent in Roman political life for centuries, but we had become the greatest of the plebeian families when we backed Sulla against Marius. There is much to be said for picking the right side. Now my family had thrown in their lot with Pompey, which I thought an unwise move. Yet, should I choose to join Caesar, the great men of the family would not object. Why? Because it is always a good idea to have a family member or two on the other side, just in case. That way, should the majority have chosen wrongly, at least the family would survive and would not lose all its lands. Such were the realities of politics and family in those days.

At other vendors’ booths I saw a similar enterprise at work: soldiers’ tunics and belts, hobnailed boots, canteens, oil flasks suitable for hard campaigning, all the gear a man needed for war. The legion would have stores from which to draw such gear, but it was often ill-fitting and overpriced, so a wise soldier showed up at muster with all his own equipment.

Not all the itinerant business people were so sanguinary in their wares. There were the usual souvenirs of the site, statuettes of Apollo and Hecate, lamps decorated with those deities or their symbols. One such vendor had no stall but sat on the ground with her wares displayed on a cloth before her. Among them were a number of the little arrows I had seen near the mundus on Porcia’s estate. Alongside them were bundles of fresh and dried herbs and small amulets made of bone, intended to ward off the evil eye or protect health. The woman was some sort of saga: a low-level witch.

“How is business here?” I asked her. “People seem to be on edge, so I suspect it has been brisk.”

“Oh yes, sir,” she agreed, smiling to show a small number of yellow teeth. “Just since you’ve been here I’ve had to go home three times to replenish my stock. Between the murders here at the temple and all this talk of war, people can’t have enough protection.”

I nudged the arrows with my toe. “And these?”

“Why, they’re offerings to Apollo, Praetor. He’s Apollo the Archer at this temple.”

“Doesn’t this offering have a specific meaning?” I asked her.

She lowered her eyes. “None I know of, sir. Just an offering, like. To ask the favor of the god.”

I didn’t blame her for prevaricating. Selling baleful charms might get her charged as an accomplice in murder, for which the penalties were severe. They were not as bad as those for selling poison, but bad enough. People fear supernatural evil more than a dagger in the back. Important persons fear poison most of all. Poisoners are regarded as witches of the worst sort.

So somebody wanted revenge. People always want revenge, for some reason, good or bad, but usually bad and not only bad but petty and unworthy. It told me nothing. Fortune-tellers were doing a thriving business as well. Fortune-tellers were the poor man’s oracle. Oracles are not paid, of course. That would be sacrilegious. They do, however, accept gifts, and if you aren’t able to offer a generous gift, you might as well not even ask the priests for access to the Oracle. Fortune-tellers, on the other hand, will oblige you for a few copper coins. There were diviners who threw bones, those who gazed into bowls of clear water, even some who used the behavior of small animals or snakes to foretell the future.

Fortune-tellers were frequently banned and driven from Rome by the aediles for fomenting popular discontent and influencing politics. After all, if the fortune-tellers get the populace to believing that some calamitous event will happen, it just might. Naturally, they always came back. Somehow, when there is a demand for services, the services always appear.

It was as if all Italy was sick with anticipation.

That afternoon I called Hermes to my side. “We’re missing something,” I said.

“You’ve been saying that for some time,” he said. “What do we do about it now?”

“You know what I’ve taught you. We can’t expect new evidence to come to us. The woman Floria was a stroke of luck unless she was something more sinister. We have to find it ourselves. So how do we do that?”

He thought a bit. “We go back and reexamine what we’ve already seen and look for what we missed.”

“Right. We’ll start where this all started, in the tunnel of the Oracle. This time with no mumbo-jumbo to distract us. No drinks, we bring our own torches and make our own smoke, and it had better be clean smoke with no funny colors in it. Come to think of it, get new torches with linen-wrapped heads and soaked in the best olive oil. I don’t care about the expense, I want as little smoke as possible. Same oil for the lamps. No chanting, no prayers, no uncanny voices. It will be just like when I was an aedile and we went down to inspect the sewers or the basements of buildings.”

He grinned. “I always loved sewer-crawling.”

“Bring three or four of our best men to carry torches and lamps; I want plenty of light. All armed. We know that there are people who don’t want us finding out things. They’ve committed a number of murders already and won’t scruple at a few more.”

An hour later we were in the valley of funerary growth and standing before the tunnel. Our purposeful little band, clinking with swords and daggers on bronze-studded military belts, had attracted some attention and a number of idlers, bored with the ongoing festival, had followed in hopes of seeing some action.

Iola rushed up to us with some of her acolytes or whatever they were, robes disheveled and dignity lost in their haste. “Praetor! What is going on?”

“Iola, I am going down into your tunnel to find out whatever is to be learned there. Everyone here has been lying to me or at least withholding the truth. I intend to get to the bottom of this and I propose to begin at the literal bottom, in the chamber of the Oracle.”

“You cannot do this!” she shouted, eyes and hair wild. “It is sacrilege!”

“Iola, Roman law recognizes sacrilege only as an offense against the gods of the state. Hecate is not a god of the state, but a foreign deity. My good friend Appius Claudius is censor this year and he is purging Rome and Italy of evil influences. He is a very upright and energetic man and he hates foreign cults. If you don’t want to be driven from Italy and your tunnel filled with rubble, you had better not hinder my investigation in any way. Do I make myself clear?”

She looked fit to have a stroke, but abruptly she caved in. “Very well, Praetor.”

“Now tell me something, Iola. Who was the chief sacerdote here ten years ago? Was it you?”

“No, Praetor. I came here from Thrace, homeland of the goddess, seven years ago. The priest ten years ago was Agathon, but he died right about that time. Then Cronion succeeded to the high priesthood. He was quite old and perished about the time I arrived. Hecabe became high priestess then and made me her acolyte. She died three years ago from the bite of a serpent and I succeeded her.”

“Yours is a hazardous priesthood.” I observed.

She shrugged. “People die. It happens all the time.”

“You stay up here. I want none of your people in the tunnel while we are there.”

She closed her eyes and let out a deep sigh. “As you will, Praetor. But this is a terrible violation of our shrine. I shall make protest to the Senate.”

“Feel free to do so. But you have no idea how busy they are going to be soon. They will have very little attention to spare for the likes of you.”

I got my men together at the entrance of the tunnel. “I want two of you to precede us with torches. We will descend very slowly. I want to examine everything very closely-the walls, the ceiling, the floor, everything.”

“What are we looking for, Praetor?” asked one of the men.

“Anything that doesn’t have an obvious reason for being there. If you see any sort of opening, anything that looks like a door or access to some other place, I want you to draw it to my attention. Now, let’s go.”

The two torchbearers went ahead, one before the other due to the narrowness of the tunnel. The uncommonly fine torches I had specified indeed made almost no smoke as we crept slowly down the passageway. I examined every niche, lifting its lamp and feeling the level spot and its back. Hermes and my other men ran their fingers over the walls and felt the ceiling, trying to find any irregularity. The work was so exacting that we felt none of the supernatural trepidation of my previous visit, and little even of the natural discomfort that comes with being in cramped quarters underground.

“Here, Praetor,” said one of the men. He had found a narrow slot in the ceiling. It was as long as a finger and no wider. I held a torch to it and the flame fluttered slightly away from it.

“Probably a ventilation shaft,” I said. “But I can’t imagine how they cut so fine a hole. Whoever did this did things with stone I can’t comprehend.” We found more such slots, evenly spaced about every five paces along the shaft. The walls, however, yielded no secrets, nor did the floor. In this laborious fashion did we make our way to the chambers at the bottom. First, we searched of Hecate’s shrine. The men were apprehensive at first, working under the gaze of the uncanny statue of Hecate.

“It’s just stone,” I said. “And not very well carved stone at that.”

“Maybe you should perform a little propitiatory rite,” Hermes whispered. “It might make them feel better.”

So I asked the goddess’s indulgence for thus profaning her shrine, pleading the necessity of one bound by duty and on the service of the Senate and People of Rome. Then I cut off a small lock of my hair and burned it on her altar among all the other rubbish. Then my men set about their work with lightened spirits. I resented losing the lock. My hair had been getting thinner of late and I could ill afford to lose more.

This work was even more tedious than searching the tunnel, though far less cramped. The roughness and irregularity of the stone walls made it difficult to detect cracks or protuberances that did not belong there. Polished or at least smooth stone would have been far more accommodating.

“There’s something odd about this,” Hermes said, as the other men worked over walls, ceiling, and floor.

“You mean there’s something about this that isn’t odd?” I said.

“It’s just that the tunnel is so straight and relatively smoothsided-a bit rough, but flat and true all the way down, while this chamber and the Styx chamber below are no more regular than a cow’s stomach. They’re more like natural caves.”

“It’s another oddity to go along with all the others,” I commented. “I suppose it should be no surprise. If the tunnelers could drive their shaft through solid stone straight to the river, why shouldn’t there already be some natural caves already down here to make their task a bit easier?”

I personally searched Hecate’s altar and her statue. First I had one of the men clear away all the accumulated rubbish from the altar, a task he performed efficiently but with no small repugnance. I could hardly blame him. Along with everything else, I inspected the altar litter and it was as strange an assortment of items as I had ever run across. Predominating were bones, some of them quite familiar, including the aforementioned skeletons of infants. These gave us pause.

“Could we prosecute them for human sacrifice?” Hermes asked. “It’s strictly forbidden.”

“Do you see any traces of blood?” I asked him. “As near as I can see, nothing living has been sacrificed here. These could be the skeletons of stillborns for all we know. It’s bizarre, but in violation of no law familiar to me.”

There were other bones, the skeletons of birds, of small animals, nothing bigger than a fox, a great many dogs, and some of creatures never native to Italy, at least not in many generations. One appeared to be the skeleton of a tiny man, but I recognized it as a monkey. I had seen the skeletons of monkeys and apes on display in the Museum at Alexandria. There were reptiles of conformations I had never seen anywhere.

“Remind me to ask Iola about this,” I told Hermes.

“I will. Speaking of that woman, she says she’s from Thrace, but she doesn’t have a trace of Thracian accent.”

“She has a rather odd accent,” I said, “but I agree it doesn’t sound Thracian.”

“I think it’s fake,” he said. He would know. As a slave, he had socialized with other slaves from the far parts of the world. We masters tend not to notice these things.

The altar itself, cleared of its exotic detritus, was a natural block of stone, hewn from the same rock as the floor. At first it seemed awfully convenient that an altar-shaped stone should be here, but then I saw that the statue of Hecate, too, was in one piece with the floor. I saw how they lined up, and that the wall behind Hecate was planed smooth, unlike the rest of the chamber wall.

“There used to be a rock outcropping coming out from that wall,” I said. “The tunnelers, or at least whoever converted this place into Hecate’s shrine, carved the altar and the statue from that outcropping.”

“You don’t think it was the same people?” Hermes said.

“Unlikely. The tunnel is unthinkably ancient. You can feel it. This statue is old, but nowhere near that old. If the Aborigines carved the tunnel, it was for some Aboriginal purpose, incomprehensible to us. This must have been carved within recent generations, maybe a few centuries ago.”

“Do you think there’s anyone who could tell us when it was made?” Hermes said. “I don’t know much about sculpture, but it looks pretty crude to me.”

“Probably not,” I said. “I know a lot of art connoisseurs, but they always think that there was no sculpture worth noticing before the great age of Athens and don’t pay much attention to the older stuff. I doubt it’s very important to our investigation in any case. It just tells us what I expected: that this unbelievable place has served a number of peoples in a number of functions over the centuries. That means there’s nothing terribly sacred about the relationship of the Hecate cult with this place. They’re just another pack of immigrants who moved in and adapted it to their own purposes.” In addition I was beginning to suspect that the Hecate cult itself, or at least some of its adherents, had been using this convenient facility for a number of differing purposes, among them murder and robbery.

We found a few more of the vent holes, but nothing more. “All right,” I said. “To the river chamber.” So we made our way lower into the chamber where this had all begun, when the priest Eugaeon had surfaced in the bubbling water. Here I had extra torches ignited and lamps lit. Soon we had a very tolerable light, dimmed and diffused somewhat by the ever present mist from the water. While I set the other men to searching walls, floor, and ceiling, Hermes and I stripped and went into the water. In the excellent light, this was quite pleasant, making up for the lack of a decent bathing facility near the temples.

I went first to the place where the water, as we now knew, emerged from the other place, an unknown distance away, where it was accessed from the other tunnel. The current was quite strong, making it difficult to hold my place. The water was chest-deep to me, the bottom perfectly smooth beneath my feet. There seemed to be no growth of lichen or any of the usual slimy stuff that grows where water and stone meet. The heat of the water may have accounted for that, or possibly its sulfur content. The channel where the water entered seemed to be almost as wide as my outspread arms, and the same distance from the surface of the water to the floor. I felt that, had I been able to make my way against the current, I might have walked to the access from the other temple.

From there I went to the opposite wall of the chamber, where the water ran out. Hermes was examining the bottom, feeling every inch of it carefully, with his feet. “Absolutely smooth,” he reported. “No rocks, no sand, nothing-wait.” He stooped, ducked under the water, and came up a moment later with something. “Felt it with my foot,” he said, handing the thing to me. It was a bone pin about as long as my hand, the sort women use to dress their hair.

“Let’s keep searching the bottom,” I said, and commenced to feeling with my soles. In a short time we came up with a bronze stylus for writing on wax tablets, a necklace of blue Egyptian beads with the clasp broken, and a woman’s sandal, but nothing more.

“What do we make of this?” Hermes said. “Offerings?”

“It’s an impoverished god who’d accept such trash as sacrifices,” I said. “Petitioners have to wade into the water to get their prophecy. Maybe this stuff just got dropped and lost in the water over the years.”

I waded on, still feeling with my feet, until I was almost at the far wall and the current around my feet and calves began to quicken. I turned to the men who were searching the chamber. “Anything yet?”

“Nothing, Praetor,” said one man who stood on another’s shoulders to search the ceiling. “Not even one of those vent holes in this room. It’s probably why the mist stays here.”

“Well,” I said, feeling my way closer to the outlet, “you just keep on. . Awwk!” Something that felt like a giant hand grabbed my ankles and jerked me beneath the water. I was almost to the wall and I grabbed at it, my hands scrabbling at the rough rock, nails scraping and splintering against it as I was dragged into the outlet fissure, feeling my legs scrape against the side. I was drowning and I knew that this was definitely not the way I wanted to die, unable to breathe in the utter darkness of a subterranean tunnel.

I was losing what little purchase I had on the rough stone, knowing I was lost forever, when strong hands seized my wrists and pulled hard, almost disjointing my shoulders, so powerful was the current that was trying to drag me the other way. Then other hands grasped me and tugged and I was free of the fearful current. My head broke water and I coughed and sputtered and they carried me from the water and sat me on the stone floor.

After a few minutes I got my breathing under control and my lungs cleared of water and, best of all, my heart stopped hammering like a mad blacksmith pounding hot iron which, incidentally, is what my chest felt like.

“What happened?” Hermes wanted to know. He’d just saved my life, but then, that was his job. His expression was decidedly odd and I took that to mean he was relieved that I was alive, but there was something more to it. He looked amused. I looked around at the other men and they were all trying to hide smiles, unsuccessfully. One began to chuckle, then they all chuckled, then roared with laughter.

“Let me in on the joke,” I said in my deadliest voice.

“P-Praetor,” said one when he could talk. “If you could have heard the sound you made just before you went under!”

“And the look on your face!” said another. Then they were all off laughing again.

“I can only regret,” I said, “that I didn’t drown and make your mirth complete.” This set them rolling on the floor. Hermes, too. True, they had saved my life, but there is such a thing as carrying gratitude too far. I waited until they returned to sanity. I needed the time anyway, to get my breath under control.

“What did happen?” Hermes asked at length.

“Something I should have anticipated. I’m no aqueduct engineer, but I know a little about how water moves. The tunnel where the water comes in is almost man-height and just as wide. Where it goes out is a tunnel not one-fourth as large. Yet the level of the water here in the cave stays the same. How can that be?”

“The same amount flows out as flows in?” Hermes hazarded.

“Precisely. And how does it do that?”

He thought for a moment. “It has to flow out a lot faster than it flows in.”

“That is right. Just as when a river flows through a narrow canyon. At the spot it enters, the water speeds up and foams and rapids form. Same here. The current is strong coming in, and it has terrible force going out. I should have been more cautious. So you found nothing else?”

“Nothing, Praetor,” reported one of the men.

“Very well. Let’s get out of this place.”

Hermes and I resumed our clothes and we began the trudge back to the surface. “Do you think we’ve learned anything?” he asked. “Other than to watch out for fast water?”

“I think we have. It may not be apparent just yet, but we know more of that cave than we knew before, and when we know a little more, these things may fall into place.”

“I hope so,” he said. “At least we’re through wandering underground.”

“No, we are not,” I told him. “Now we’re going to do the same thing with the other tunnel.” Hermes groaned. So did the others. Now it was my turn to smile. Laugh at me, would they? We’d see about that.

At least the priests of the Temple of Apollo were all dead and didn’t try to hinder us. I got a good close look at the trapdoor first. There were what appeared to be bloodstains on its underside. I thought about this for a while, then I realized what I was looking at.

“Hermes, you remember when we found the bodies of the priests and their hands and forearms were battered?”

“Yes, we figured they’d been defending themselves from their attackers.”

“We were wrong. They were bashing their fists against this stone, trying to get out after it had been shut behind them.”

He thought about the implications of this. “Then we’re back to the possibility that there was just a single killer. Let them suffocate down there, then dispose of the bodies afterward at your leisure.”

“That is how I see it. I suspect there was more than one, but it was certainly an easier task than it appeared at first.”

Next we examined the tunnel, and I left a man to guard the trap with drawn sword to make sure that it stayed open. I had no desire to emulate the example of the late priests. The tunnel told us nothing at all. The smooth-dressed stone would have revealed any irregularities immediately and there were none.

The chamber below was no better. It looked no different than it had before, except for the absence of corpses. As before, the air quickly grew close from our profusion of torches and lamps and our own exhalations.

“Greeks are supposed to know everything,” Hermes said. “Why didn’t they think to provide ventilation, when those Aborigines thousands of years ago did?”

It was a good question. “Maybe,” I said, “they didn’t think it would be needed. A small number of men don’t require a lot of air if they’re only going to be down here a short time, and with the trap above open, it isn’t too bad.”

“I was wondering about that,” Hermes said. “There’s enough air coming up from the hole there to keep us breathing here. Why did the priests suffocate so easily?”

“I can’t say I know much about the properties of air,” I admitted, “any more than I do about those of water. But it seems to me that the air rises from the water tunnel and is sucked up the passageway. Maybe when the trap is shut, the flow of air stops.” Something struck me.

“That’s how Eugaeon ended up in the water! He was leaning down into the hole to get what air was left, lost consciousness, and fell in to resurface so fortuitously in front of us!”

“Why not the others?” Hermes asked.

“He was the ranking man and the others let him have the water hole. Or maybe they were all up the shaft, pounding their fists against the stone. They probably suffocated even faster up there.”

I had the men lower torches into the well and stuck my head down there, like the late Eugaeon. What I could see looked like natural tunnel. I was tempted to have the men lower me into it, but somehow I had had enough adventuring in water for that day. I came back up.

“I wonder how we can measure the distance to the other chamber?” I mused. I sat down and tried to think like an engineer.

“We could tie something that floats to a piece of rope,” Hermes suggested. “Tie a knot every cubit. Toss it in, and when it comes out the other side, count the cubits.”

I nodded. “That makes sense. How would you know when it came out the other side?”

He thought a while longer, as did I. “Have a man in the other chamber. As soon as it comes out, he grabs it and gives a tug. Then you know not to pay out any more line.”

I clapped him on the shoulder. “You’ll make an engineer yet. Tomorrow I want you to do exactly that.”

“What will you be doing?” he asked.

“Sleeping, I hope.”