half an hour.
They entered it by the side door, and hunted through the passages for the others. The place was strangely silent, and they stopped in the atrium, dismayed. The walls threw back the empty echo of their footsteps.
'Where is everybody?' said Karen. 'There's no one here at all.'
'They must have left already,' said Kleon, 'and gone to the country.'
Of course, thought Karen, they must have ... but they weren't supposed to be leaving until this evening. Probably Julia got nervous. When they went through the family's rooms, most of the hangings and valuable furniture had gone and also the children's toys. She smiled when she saw Julia's cosmetic box open and empty. Julia never went anywhere unprepared.
'They've gone without us,' she said. 'I don't know whether to be glad or sorry.'
'Glad. We're free now, remember. I wonder how many of the others nipped off. Have they left anything to eat? I'm hungry.'
The kitchen turned out to be well stocked with wine, bread, and salad, so they had a good meal with some cold chicken as an afterthought. While they were sitting at the table, Karen heard a bird singing. She followed the sound to Julia's bathroom, where she found the pet canary in his cage. He was hanging on a hook by the window, singing and chirruping, and the sun's rays made a golden halo of the quivering feathers on his throat.
'Oh, have they left you behind?' said Karen, lifting the gilded cage down. 'What a shame! You're lucky we're here.'
She carried the cage into the kitchen. 'Let's feed him,' she suggested. 'Is there any birdseed?'
After a hunt round among the jars on the shelf, they found it in a little painted pot. The canary alighted on the cage floor with an eager chirrup and gobbled it down along with some fresh water. He was a pretty little bird, fat and finchlike, and he chirped conversationally when Karen spoke to him.
'We'll have to let him go,' she said, 'but not yet.' The truth was that she had a canary at home and he reminded her of it.
It was glorious to have the whole vast house to themselves and not to have to bother with washing-up. They went at last to the Lady Julia's room, and flopped down on the bed, for it was the most comfortable place. Karen sighed happily and turned to Kleon. He put his arms around her and she lay close to him while he kissed her face.
'I love you,' she muttered, 'but what are we going to do now? I feel sort of lost.'
He smiled and grinned. 'Don't worry about that now,' he said. Karen laughed and, twisting over, rose from the bed.
'Let's spend the afternoon here,' she said, closing the shutters. 'This is the first time we've been alone together.'
They left the house at sunset, when the long shadows thrown by the buildings softened and enveloped the whole city. At a whim, Karen stalked out by the grand front-entrance, swishing an imaginary silk train behind her and sweeping elegantly down the marble steps. Several passers-by stared.
'Where shall we go?' she asked and Kleon suggested trying to find Rhoda and the rest.
'Wait a minute,' he said. 'I've got a hunch,' and he disappeared into the alley running round the house. Soon he came back, grinning and waving something. It was a wax tablet, the same sort as the previous one. This time there was a different message on it.
'It says: "IN THE CATACOMBS",' Kleon said in an undertone. 'What do they mean by that?'
Karen thought it over, and suddenly the message clicked as she remembered her history book. The Catacombs were a series of underground galleries and tomb-chambers, and the Christians used to hide in them when they were persecuted. Thrasyllus and the others must be in there.
'Where are the Catacombs?'
Kleon said that he thought there were one or two along the Via Sacra, at the bottom of the Caelian hill.
'Let's go there, then,' said Karen. 'That's where Thrasyllus'll be waiting. How far is it?'
'I don't know exactly. Some distance; so let's hurry.' They ran down the hill. It was quicker getting to the Via Sacra than they had imagined, for there were several short cuts available where the tenement rows had been completely razed. The ground was unpleasant to walk on, however, being covered in ashes and pieces of charred timber.
They turned left along the high road, which was broad and paved, with gutters running along either side- an amenity the narrower ways lacked.
As they were going along, they heard a commotion behind them. There were not many people around at this evening hour, and in a few minutes they could see what the fuss was about.
Down the wide road a girl came tearing, at full speed, in the van of a great multitude of people who were chasing her. The girl had long black hair and a fringe; even from a distance she looked familiar, and Karen realized with a shock that it was Rhoda. The crowd must have found but somehow that she was a Christian. Karen clutched Kleon's arm. 'We must do something!' she said desperately. 'Where are the Catacombs now?'
'I think that's one,' said Kleon, pointing to a low building; half-concealed in a cypress-grove. 'We can give that lot the slip easily enough.'
When Rhoda caught up with them they ran with her half-supporting her for she was nearly at her last gasp, and was too blown to look surprised. As they ran, a stone struck Karen between the shoulder-blades, and an angry voice cried, 'That fer yer Christian God! And that!' And more stones whizzed past.
Dodging them skilfully, they dived off the road into a group of olive trees about a hundred yards past the Catacomb and ran around in a big circle.
The foremost in the crowd had seen them turn off, but they could not find them among the gnarled trunks. In actual fact the fugitives were right up in the trees- Karen sitting in the fork of two branches high up, and Rhoda close by doing her best not to breathe. The thick, grey leaves obscured the girls well in their light-coloured dresses, and Kleon was a master in the art of hiding.
'They can't've got far,' remarked the man who had thrown the stone at Karen. 'Hunt around, everyone. They're sure t'be here somewhere. Can't've just vanished.'
'If you arsk me,' said another. 'They'm doubled back to t'road, and we'll never find 'em now. Let's go 'ome, I say.'
'That's as may be,' said the stone-thrower, 'for them as 'as got 'omes, like, wot ain't been burned dahn by these same bloomin' Christians as we're lookin' for.'
There was a low muttering, but several others felt like the first speaker that the hour was late, and despite the stone thrower's protests, the crowd dispersed.
Sighing with relief, Karen was just about to slide down from her tree when she saw Kleon motion for caution. Sure enough, one man had stayed, almost hidden behind a tree-trunk.
'Nearly fell into that little trap,' Karen said to herself. 'What an idiot I am! It's a good thing Kleon noticed. Oh, go away, you suspicious so-and-so!' She could think of several names for him, but none of them was very ladylike.
Finally, to the immense relief of all three fugitives, the man shrugged his shoulders and walked off. Kleon was the first to jump down after waiting to make sure he had really gone.
'Phew!' he said. 'Suspicious blighter!'
They sneaked along to the Catacomb under cover of the long grass by the road, noticing even in their distress that now that they were well away from the crowded centre of the city the district was pleasant, with trees, grass and gardens- things unheard of in the middle of Rome.
The Catacomb was something like an iceberg in temperature, the greater part of it being under the ground. The entrance to it reminded Karen of an air-raid shelter, being an eerie flight of steps leading steeply down. There was a great stone doorway at the bottom, with a painted arch at the top, and in the dim light Karen could vaguely see ancient carvings.
Once inside the doorway, they saw that the Catacomb was a vast burrow of passages and tombs and niches. A few windows, high up in the wall of the main hallway, sent down long shafts of light that were soon lost in the surrounding gloom. The footsteps of the slaves bounced back against a thousand faces of stone, and the vast tomb was filled
with the echoes.
Karen stopped, awed. 'It's enormous,' she whispered. 'How old is it?'
Kleon didn't know, but Rhoda said, 'Very old. Hundreds of years, I think. Anyhow, it's a good place to hide. Some of the Christians are buried here, and one or two actually died for the faith.'
'Are there many who have so far?'
'Quite a few, especially under Nero. He's an inhuman monster. Have you ever seen him?'
'Yes, at the shows in the Amphitheatre. This is a creepy place, isn't it? It's so vast. How big is it?'
'Oh, there's a lot more of it than this,' answered Rhoda. 'This is only the entrance-hall. All those passages leading off branch and turn till there's a labyrinth of 'em. And they get really narrow, too, or so I've heard; once you're in there no one looking for you will find you. I was meaning to come here when someone saw the cross round my neck, and before I knew where I was they'd turned on me. It was dreadful. Good thing you were there. Thank you.'
'Yes, you were lucky,' said Kleon. 'But where's Thrasyllus? He should be here somewhere.'
'We are here, brothers,' said a voice, and Karen jumped with fright before she saw that it was Thrasyllus himself and breathed a sigh of relief.
'Are we glad to see you!' she said. 'We thought you might have been caught.'
Thrasyllus smiled. 'We were in the back passages,' he explained, 'and at first we did not know whether you were friend or foe. Pyrea and Myros are here with me. We came directly when the crowd had