"So there's a discrepancy about when the incident occurred. Fulvia says it happened earlier in the afternoon; Milo says it happened not long before sunset. Is that important, Papa?"

"It means that one of them has to be mistaken – or deliberately lying."

"I shall try to contain my surprise!"

"Yes, but why lie about the time, Eco? And if Fulvia or Milo has lied about that, then what else might one or the other be lying about?"

"Do you think we're likely to find out, simply by going to these places and asking some questions?" "We can try," I said.

Mount Alba loomed straight ahead of us, steadily growing larger. Clouds had gathered at its summit, casting a shadow over the higher slopes, so that the mountain seemed to erupt from the surrounding sunlit plains like a brooding mass of doubt. Davus frowned, viewing the prospect with misgivings. He was not the only one.

Though we arrived at Bovillae before the fourth hour, the midday meal was already being prepared. Smoke rose from the cookhouse behind the inn, carrying smells of baking bread and roasting meat.

"I'm starving!" said Eco. Davus's stomach growled in sympathy.

"Good," I said. "We won't have to invent any pretences for why we're stopping at the tavern."

It was a two-storey building made of much-weathered stone. The land all around was cleared and trammelled by the passage of many feet over many years. It was to this place, according to Fulvia, that Clodius had fled when Milo's men overwhelmed him. He had taken refuge in the tavern. Milo's men had stormed the place. Fulvia knew no details of the battle, only that eventually a passing senator on his way to Rome had come upon Clodius's body lying in the road outside the tavern, and had sent it on to Rome in his litter.

Davus walked the horses to a hitching post beneath a nearby stand of trees. There was a trough with water for the horses and a bench for Davus to sit on while he watched them.

Before we went inside, Eco and I took a quick look at all four sides of the building, to see how defensible it looked. There were large, shuttered windows in the upper storey, inaccessible as there was no way to climb up to them. The shuttered windows in the rear and side walls of the lower storey were small and set high up. A man might have been able to wriggle through one, but only if given a boost and if there was no one inside to stop him. The back door, made of solid wood, opened onto a covered walkway to the cookhouse. The front door, which at the moment stood open, was also made of solid wood. The doorway was so narrow that Eco and

I had to turn sideways and step inside one at a time. The windows on either side of the front door were slightly larger and situated a little lower than the other windows on the ground floor, but a man would still have had a difficult time scrambling in or out of them.

All in all, the inn appeared to be a reasonably defensible building. Still, I saw the signs of a recent, losing battle.

So did Eco. "Did you notice the difference in the shutters, Papa?"

"Yes."

"The ones on the upstairs windows are all made of old, grey wood-"

"- while the shutters on every one of the downstairs windows are conspicuously new, as are both the front and back doors. There's a lot of new plaster around the doorway, as well. You and I know all too well how doors can be broken and need replacing."

"Where do you suppose everyone is, Papa?"

"Who would you expect to be here? There were no other travellers on the road this morning. We're probably early for the regular midday clientele." As my eyes adjusted to the dim light I saw a plain, rustic room with a few tables and benches. A steeply angled stairway to the upper floor began at the far left corner. Underneath the stairway a counter blocked off the back portion of the room. In the wall behind the counter there was a little archway with a cloth curtain tied back to show a shadowy storage room that led through to the rear door. After a moment the door rattled and opened to show the silhouette of a large woman outlined by bright sunlight. She closed the door behind her and waddled up to the bar, wiping her hands on the front of her coarse gown. She smelled of baking bread and roasting meat.

"I thought I saw someone come in." She peered at us with a squint that I took to be almost hostile until I realized she was waiting for her eyes to adjust to the dimness. She was a strong-looking woman with meaty arms and a round, open face surrounded by a tangle of greying red hair. "That's your fellow with the horses over by the trough?"

"Yes," I said.

"Three altogether, are you?" "Yes, travellers."

"Hungry travellers," added Eco, leaning against the bar.. She showed the hint of a smile. "We can take care of that, as long as you have something that jingles." Eco produced his coin purse.

She nodded. "I've got a couple of rabbits roasting. It'll be a little while before they're done, but I can bring you some bread and cheese in the meantime." She reached under the bar and produced two cups, then went back to the storage room and returned with a pitcher of wine and a pitcher of water.

"Could you take some food out to the fellow under the trees, too?" I said. "I can hear his stomach growling from here."

"Certainly. I'll send one of my boys to take care of him. They're out in the cookhouse watching the fire. With my husband," she added, as if making of point of letting us know that she was not a woman alone. "Travellers, you say. Headed north or south?"

"South."

"You've come from Rome, then?" She poured out generous portions of wine, then added splashes of water.

"We left early this morning."

"What's it like up in the city?"

"An awful mess. We're glad to be away from it."

"Well, it's been an awful mess around here, too, let me tell you. Ever since that accursed day…" She sighed and shook her head.

"Ah, yes, we must be close to where it happened – the skirmish up the road."

She snorted. "Call it a skirmish if you like, but I'd call it an all-out battle, to judge from the damage that was done and the dead bodies lying all about. And it may have started up the road, but right here's where it ended." She slapped the top of the counter.

"What do you mean?"

"Aren't we talking about the same thing? Milo and Clodius and all the blood that was spilled?"

I nodded. "No one in Rome talks about anything else these days. But everything is so confused and jumbled. Every new version contradicts the last one. Something happened on the Appian Way and Clodius ended up dead – that's about the only thing all the stories agree on. Where, when and how, nobody knows for sure."

She rolled her eyes. "So much suffering and destruction, you'd think people would at least bother to find out what really happened, if only to be glad it didn't happen to them. But you said you were hungry. I'll get you some bread, hot from the oven."

Eco opened his mouth to call her back, but I squeezed his arm and shook my head. "The woman is eager enough to tell us what she knows," I said in a low voice. "Let her do it at her own pace."

She returned with a steaming loaf of bread in a basket and a piece of cheese the size of a brick, then went back to the storeroom and returned with a heaped bowl of black and green olives. She put her elbows on the bar, leaned towards us and resumed her tale without any prompting. "It was my brother-in-law who owned this tavern, my little sister's husband. A hard-working fellow, from a long line of hard workers. Inherited the place from his rather; the family's owned this inn for generations. He wept with joy the day my sister gave him a son to leave it to." She sighed. "Who could have known how soon he'd be passing the place along? The boy's still a baby, and now that his papa is dead there's not another grown man on either side of the family to run the place. So we've taken it over, my husband and I, with our boys helping us, while my poor widowed sister stays with her baby. Ah, poor Marcus! That was her husband's name. There's always some danger when you run a place like this on the road, always the risk of being raided by bandits or runaway slaves who'd slash your throat without a thought. But Marcus was a big, stout fellow, not afraid of anything, and this inn was his whole life. Always had been, since he was a child. I think he didn't realize the danger that day when Clodius's men came running in, all bloody and out of breath. He didn't turn them away, he just asked them what he could do to help. Clodius staggered inside, wounded and bleeding, and told him to bolt the doors. Then they laid Clodius right here, flat on his back." She slapped the counter, hard enough to cause ripples in our cups. By the dim light I studied the mottled, stained surface of the old wood. A lot of wine must have been spilled on that counter over the years, I told myself but there were stains which might have been something else.