A Great Hole In Rome

by Jeff Baker

“Master,” Quintus said, eyeing the tumbledown stone facade. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”

“It’s a perfect idea, Quintus,” Cato the young poet said. “This is a perfect site filled with drama and doubtless the long-ago cries of debtors and thieves. The perfect place to inspire an epic poem that will make me famous!”

Quintus sighed. He had belonged to Cato since they were boys twenty years earlier and knew the poet had one vanity; to be as famous as his more esteemed cousins. Cato’s approaching thirtieth birthday wasn’t helping much.

While Cato had been growing up the son of a wealthy man, Quintus had been a slave raised to work in the kitchen. But Quintus had been given to Cato as a seventh birthday present twenty years ago and had learned a lot from sitting in on Cato’s lessons as well as helping drill him on his studies. They had become as good friends as a slave and master could be in that year of Roman Consul Gaius Marius.

And over the years, Cato had learned to trust Quintus’ judgment, even to sometimes stake his life on it.

But Quintus looked down the gaping hole in the ground, the stone stairs trailing into the darkness of what had once been a prison for debtors and the like there on the Campius Martius which was now more likely a host for rats, wolves and maybe even bears.

Quintus had never seen a bear in Rome but he had heard stories. At least it was still daylight.

Cato stood at the edge of the hole and waved for the bag Quintus was carrying.

“This invention of Marcus Sibilus may actually have a use other than as a plaything for dogs.” Cato said. He pulled out several of the small hollow balls, made of the lightweight, thin material the inventor had discovered and tossed one of them down the stairs. It bounced down each step making a hollow popping noise as it went.

Quintus nodded. “This could tell us how deep the hole actually is. It shouldn’t be more than one or two stories unless there was a collapse of some kind.”

“Good thinking,” Cato said. He aimed one of the balls and tossed it at the darkest part of the hole.

The two men waited for the sound of the ball hitting the ground. Instead there was a sharp crack and the ball soared up out of the hole over the two men’s heads. As it fell downward at Quintus he swung at it with the writing tablet he had pulled out of the bag that Cato always wanted nearby in case inspiration struck the poet. The tablet hit the ball, propelling it over the hole into the bushes on the other side.

“I think I have my poem, let’s go!” Cato said quickly, moving away from the onetime prison almost as quickly.

“Yes, Master!” Quintus said, already several paces ahead of Cato. Something the young slave wasn’t supposed to do but neither of them cared.

“And THAT,” Cato said when they were some distance away. “Will be the only use of those strange white balls that will ever be found. Other than as a plaything for dogs.”

“And Marcus Sibilus may make a fortune with the dogs,” Quintus said.

—end—

AUTHOR’S NOTE: The totally random draws for the April Flash Fiction Draw Challenge were: An Ancient History Story, set in An Abandoned Prison, involving a bag of ping-pong balls. Did I say totally random? I thought I’d prompted myself into a corner. Then I remembered my Ancient Roman detective Quintus (Circa 107 B.C.) and figured his master, the poet and playwright Cato (Not that Cato!) could drag him into an adventure at a Roman Prison. Those prisons were detention centers with squalid conditions. Basically dungeons. As the slave of a scholar who inherited wealth, Quintus would have had it better than they did in the dungeons. The Tullianum in Rome may have held St. Peter. So I set my heroes at a fictionalized version of one of the others, but the description is accurate.

As for the ping-pong balls, I say “Artistic License.”

Totally Random…

—-jeff