The Fugitive from Corinth

The Fugitive from Corinth is the 10th book in the popular Roman Mysteries series by Caroline Lawrence, published in 2005. It is set in Greece in AD 80, between Corinth and Athens. It focuses on the legends surrounding the Furies.

Plot summary

Flavia and her friends have been travelling the Greek islands with other passengers aboard Lupus's ship, the Delphina, captained by Flavia's father. They have rescued kidnapped children in the previous novel and now they relax for a while in her tutor Aristo's home city of Corinth.

But on the night before their departure, Aristo stabs Flavia's father in bed; feverish and suffering from amnesia, he falls into a deep coma. Helen witnessed Aristo's near-murder but has run off. Believing him guilty, Flavia, along with her friends and the sailor Atticus, sets off to catch him.

They save a young beggar boy, Nikos, and he provides information and, when everyone they ask describes Aristo in two different ways, he says that Aristo's brother Dion could be trying to catch him too. They find out that Nikos is actually a girl who lives beside Aristo's house in Corinth. She loves Dion. After asking a Pythia's advice about how to catch Aristo, which Flavia believes to be useless, Lupus sneaks into the temple to ask which temple his mother is in but is surprised to find out that the Pythia is his mother. He decides to leave her to help his friends. Nubia finds Aristo, and she believes his innocence. They arrive in Athens and chase up the Acropolis in which they lose him. They meet a beggar boy called Socrates and Flavia discovers Nubia is trying to stop them from catching Aristo. Jonathan storms off, Atticus is nowhere to be seen, and the 'two Aristos' (Dion and Aristo) descend into the Cave of The Kindly Ones (Furies). Nubia and Flavia follow, and Flavia locks them in. As they are dying they forgive each other, then Jonathan, Lupus and a priest let them out. Flavia eventually forgives Dion and they go back to Corinth to find that her father is still in a coma. Flavia has already asked the Pythia how to wake him up but she does not understand and ends up crying over his body. He wakes up, cured of his amnesia, and they realise that the Pythia's prophecy had come true.