Chapter 8I stared out the window of my villa at the smoking mountain in the center of the island.
It was a beautiful island, dangerous of course, as all things beautiful could be, but our home.
“My lord?” My Greek scribe, Basilius, waited for me to resume dictating.
I turned back to him. “Where were we?”
He cleared his throat and read in a self-important tone, “I, Lucius Maximus Sartorius, son of Fabius Crispus Sartorius, will now speak of the events that led to our arrival on this island one thousand eight hundred ninety-three years ago.”
So. Not very far indeed. “Very well.” I raised my goblet and sipped the wine a slave had poured for me. “Let us continue. According to our family’s history, the lady Messallina, wife of the emperor Claudius, had summoned our ancestress, Valeria Luci
