Читать книгу Andivius Hedulio: Adventures of a Roman Nobleman in the Days of the Empire - Edward Lucas White - Страница 18

Next morning I was wakened by a dash of cold water over me and sat up in bed dripping and angry. Tanno was bending over me.

"I had to souse you," he explained. "I've been shaking you and yelling at you and you stayed as fast asleep as before I touched you. Get up and let's start for Rome."

We enjoyed a brief rubdown and after Entedius joined us each relished a small cup of mulled wine and one of Ofatulena's delicious little hot, crisp rolls.

In the east courtyard we found our equipages and I descried my tenants outside the gate, all horsed and each muffled in a close rain-cloak, topped off by a big umbrella hat, its wide brim dripping all round its edge, for the weather was atrocious; foggy mist blanketing all the world under a gray sky from which descended a thin, chilly drizzle.

Hirnio was inspecting Tanno's litter and chatting with Tanno about it.

"Never saw one with poles like this," he said. "All I have seen had one long pole on each side, a continuous bar of wood from end to end. What's the idea of four poles, half poles you might call them, two on a side?"

"You see," Tanno explained, "It is far harder to get sound, flawless, perfect poles full length. Then, too, full-length spare poles are very bothersome and inconvenient to carry. With a litter equipped in this fashion one man can carry a spare pole, and they are much easier and quicker to put in if a pole snaps."

"I should think," Hirnio remarked, "that the half-poles would pull out of the sockets."

"Not a bit," said Tanno, "they clamp in at the end, this way. See? The clamps fasten instantly and release at a touch, but hold tenaciously when shut."

Under the arcade my household had gathered to say farewell and wish me good luck. I spoke briefly to each and thanked Ofatulena for her distinguished cookery, both in respect to the credit her masterpieces had done me at dinner and also for the taste of her rolls, which yet lingered in mouth and memory. Tanno also expressed his admiration of her powers.

Last I said farewell to my old nurse and foster mother Uturia, who, when I was scarcely a year old, had closed the eyes of my dying mother, and not much later of my father, and who had not merely suckled me, but had been almost as my real mother to me in my childhood.

She could not keep back her tears, as always at our partings; the more as she had had dreams the night before and she took her dreams very seriously.

"Deary," she sobbed, "it has been revealed to me that you go into great perils when you set out to-day. I saw danger all about you, danger from men and danger from beasts. Beware of strangers, of narrow streets, of walled gardens, of plots, of secret conferences. All these threaten you especially."

I kissed her as heartily as if she had been my own mother.

"Don't worry, Uturia," I said, "as long as I live I'll take care of you and if I die you shall be a free woman with a cottage and garden and three slaves of your own."

But she only sobbed harder, both as she clung to me and after I had mounted.

Tanno, of course, rolled into his litter and slid the panels against the rain. His bearers were muffled up precisely like my tenants. So was Tanno's intendant, so was Hirnio, so was I. The entire caravan was a mere column of horses, cloaks and hats, not a man visible, all the faces hid under the flapping hat-brims, no man recognizable.

Hirnio and I led, next came Tanno in his litter, then his extra bearers, next his intendant on horseback, then my nine tenants, each horsed and leading a pack-mule, last the mounted servants, Tanno's, Hirnio's and mine, similarly leading pack-mules, in all twenty-seven men afoot, sixteen mounted and twelve led mules.

As we strung out Tanno called to me:

"Luck for us if we don't blunder into one of those ambushes we heard about at dinner last night. With all this cavalcade everybody we meet cannot fail to conjecture that so large a party can only be from either Villa Vedia or Villa Satronia, such an escort misbefits anyone not of senatorial rank. If we do blunder into an ambush either side will know we are not their men and will assume we are of the other party. No one can recognize anybody in this wet-weather rig. Any ambush will attack first and investigate afterwards or not at all."

Had I heeded his chance words I might, even then, have saved myself. But while my ears heard him my wits were deaf. I called back:

"There are no ambushes. Each side spreads such rumors to discredit the other, but neither so much as thinks of ambush. If Xantha or Greia is located, the clan concerned for her freedom will gather a rescue-party and there may be fight over her, but there are no ambushes."

At the foot of my road Hirnio and I turned to our left. Tanno from his litter emitted a howl of protest.

"Nothing," he yelled, "will induce me to traverse that road again. I told you so. You promised to take the other road. What do you mean?"

"Don't worry, Opsitius," Hirnio reassured him. "We turned instinctively according to habit. You shall have your way. It is not much farther by the other road."

"Anyhow," I added, "Martius is not in sight. He was to have been here before us. If we went this way we should have to wait for him. If we go the other we shall most likely meet him at the fork of the road."

We turned to our right towards Villa Vedia and Vediamnum. About half way to the entrance to Villa Vedia, at the top of the hill between the two bridges, the rain for a brief interval fairly cascaded from the sky. During this temporary downpour, as we splashed along, we saw loom out of the rain, fog and mist the outline of what might have been an equestrian statue, but which, as we drew up to it, we found a horse and rider, stationary and motionless to the south of the road, on a tiny knoll, facing the road and so close to it that I might have put out my right hand and touched the horse's nose as we passed.

Like everyone in our convoy the rider was enveloped in a rain-cloak and his head and face hidden under a wide-brimmed umbrella hat. He saluted as I came abreast of him, but his salutation was merely a perfunctory wave of a hand, an all-but-imperceptible nod and an inarticulate grunt.

I barely caught a glimpse of his face, but I made sure he was no one I had ever seen before and equally sure that he was not a Sabine.

When we reached the entrance of Villa Vedia, which was also the crossroad down which Marcus Martius and his bride must come, there was no sign of a travelling carriage, nor any fresh ruts in the road.

We halted and peered into the mist. Nothing was in sight on the road, but there was a stir in the bushes by the roadside. Out of them appeared a bare head, with a shock of tousled, matted, rain-soaked gray hair, a hatchet face, brow like a bare skull, bleared eyes, far apart and deepset on either side of a sharp hooked nose like the beak of a bird of prey, high cheekbones under the thin, dry, tight-drawn skin above the sunken cheeks, a wide, thin-lipped mouth and a chin like a ship's prow. The rain trickled down the face.

Up it rose, till there was visible under it a lean stringy neck, a tattered garment, and the outline of a gaunt, emaciated body, that of a tall, spare, half-starved old woman.

I recognized the Aemilian Sibyl, as all the countryside called her, an old crone who had, since before the memory of our oldest patriarchs, lived in a cave in the woods on the Aemilian Estate, supported by the gifts doled out to her by the kindness, respect or fear of the slaves and peasantry living nearest her abode, for she had a local reputation for magical powers in the way of spells to cure or curse, charms for wealth or health, love philtres, fortune-telling, prophecy and good advice on all subjects likely to cause uncertainty of mind in farm-life.

She towered out of the dripping shrubberies and pointed a long skinny finger at me.

"I know you under your cloak and hat, Hedulio," she wheezed. "Well for you if younger folk than I had such, eyes in their heads as I have in my spirit. I know you, Andivius Hedulio. You turn your face towards Reate, but you shall never see Reate this day. You might as well take the road to Rome and be done with it, for to Rome you shall go, whether you will or not. Whether you will or not, whatever road your feet take, you will find it leads you to Rome, whatever ship you take, no matter to what port she steers, will land you at Rome's Wharf. They say all roads lead to Rome. For you, in truth, every road leads to Rome, whether you face towards Rome or away from Rome.

"Be warned! Yield to your fate! If you would have luck, go to Rome, abide in Rome; and if you must leave Rome, return to Rome.

"And hearken to my words, let them sink deep into your mind, remember them and heed them; beware of a man with a hooked nose, beware of secret conferences, beware of plots, walled gardens, beware of narrow streets, for these will be your undoing."

Agathemer had edged his horse along the roadside the length of our cavalcade and had joined me. He dismounted, strode to the hag and held out his hand to her, some silver pieces on its palm, saying:

"My master thanks you for your warning and offers you these as a guerdon."

"Greek!" she screamed. "I warn not for guerdons, but at the behest of the God of Prophecy. Begone with your silver! Silver I scorn and gold and all the treasures of mankind's folly and all the joys of mankind's life. I am the Sibyl!"

And she tramped off through the crackling underbrush till the trees hid her and the noise of her going died away, till she was so far off that we heard the rain drops drip from the boughs and the horses fret at their bits.

So at a standstill, as we stared expectantly up the crossroad, we saw come into sight, not a travelling carriage, but a horseman, looming huge out of the fog, a vast bulk of a man on a big black horse like a farm work-horse.

He drew rein and saluted civilly, tilting up his hat. His face was ruddy, his eyes blue, his expression that of a mountaineer from a village or small town.

"I have lost my way," he said. "My name is Murmex Lucro. I come from Nersae and am bound for Rome. I was told of a short cut that should have brought me out on the Salarian Road near Trebula. But I must have taken a wrong turn, for I was wholly at a loss at dusk yesterday and so camped in the woods by a spring. I have not met a human being since daylight. Where am I and how can I reach the Via Salaria?"

"You are not far from it," Hirnio told him. "We are bound for Rome and if you join us you can reach Via Salaria with us by the road on which we are going. Should you prefer to follow the road along which we have come, which is rough, but less roundabout, you can, by taking every turn to the right, reach the Via Salaria some miles nearer Rome than where our road will bring us out on it."

"I'll join your cavalcade, if you have no objection," the stranger said.

Hirnio and I expressed our entire willingness to have his company.

Hirnio asked him:

"Are you in any way related to Murmex Frugi?"

"He was my father," Murmex replied, simply.

"Was!" Hirnio repeated. "The word strikes ominously on my ear. Someone from this neighborhood, I forget who, was in Nersae since the roads became fit for travelling this spring and returned from there, or perhaps some wayfarer from Nersae stopped with someone hereabouts. At any rate we heard he had seen Murmex Frugi still hale and sound, even at his advanced age."

"My father," said Murmex, "was still hale and sound on the Kalends of May and for a day or two thereafter. He fell ill with a cough and fever, and died after only two nights' illness, on the Nones of May, barely more than a month ago."

"He lived to a green old age," said Hirnio, "and must have enjoyed every moment of his life."

"He seemed to," said Murmex.

"And I conjecture," I put in, "that he was proud of his son."

"He seemed so," Murmex admitted, "but he was never a tenth as proud of me as I of him."

"It is an honor," I said, "to be the son of the greatest gladiator of our fathers' days, of the man esteemed the best swordsman Italy ever saw live out his term of service and live to retire on his savings."

"It is," Murmex said, as simply as before.

Here we were interrupted by a yell from Tanno, as he leaned out of his litter.

"Are we going to take root here," he bawled, "like Phaethon's sisters? We were supposed to be journeying to Rome. We appear to be bound for Hades; we shall certainly reach it if we continue sinking into your Sabine mud!"

"Martius agreed to wait for me, if I was late," I shouted back to him. "I agreed to wait for him; I keep my word. If you choose, we'll get out of your way and let you pass on. We can catch up with you."

"Bah!" he roared. "No going it alone on a Sabine road for me! I'm tied to you hand and foot. But this waiting in the rain is no fun! Did you notice that man on horseback we passed on the road?"

"I did," I called back.

"Do you know who he is?"

"Never set eyes on him before," I replied.

"Do you know what he is?"

"No," I answered, "I do not. What is he, according to your conjecture?"

"I'm not depending on any conjectures," Tanno bellowed, "I know to a certainty."

"Then tell us," I called.

"Not here!" cried Tanno. "I'll tell you later."

He pulled his head inside his litter.

We again stared up the crossroad. Nothing was in sight.

"It seems to me," Hirnio again addressed Murmex, "that not only your father was a Nersian, but also Pacideianus and that I have heard that he also was living in retirement at Nersae."

"He is yet," rejoined Murmex, laconically.

"Then you know him?" Hirnio queried.

"My mother," said Murmex, "is his sister."

"Your uncle!" cried Hirnio, "son to one of the two greatest retired gladiators in Italy, nephew to the other! Living in the same town with them! Did either of them ever teach you anything of sword play?"

"Both of them," said Murmex, "taught me everything they knew of sword play, from the day I could hold a toy lath sword."

"Hercules!" I cried, "and what did they say of your proficiency?"

"My father with his last breath," said Murmex solemnly, "and my uncle Pacideianus as he bade me farewell, told me that I am the best swordsman alive."

"Why have you never," I asked, "tried your luck in the arena?"

"My father forbade me," Murmex explained. "He bade me wait. He trowed a grown man was worth ten growing lads, and he said so and stuck to that. On his death-bed he told me I was almost seasoned. After we buried him I felt I could abide Nersae no longer. Uncle agreed with me that I had best follow my instincts. I fare to Rome to seek my fortune as a swordsman on the sand in the amphitheatres."

"You have fallen into good company," I said, "for I can bring you at once to the Emperor's notice."

"I should be most grateful," said Murmex.

At that instant we heard an halloo from the road and saw a horseman appear out of the mist, then a travelling carriage behind him. It was Martius. When he was near enough I could see his grave, handsome, mediocre face far back in the carriage, and beside it Marcia's; small, delicate, shell-pink, her intense blue eyes bright even in that blurred gloomy daylight, shining close together over her little aquiline nose.

We conferred and he agreed to fall in behind Tanno's extra bearers, between them and my farmers, Tanno's intendant getting in front of the litter where he normally belonged.

We got properly into line as arranged and plodded on down the road.

Just outside of Vediamnum was, as Tanno had related, the village idiot, guarding his flock of goats. He mowed and gibbered at us and then spoke some intelligible words, as he occasionally did.

"I know you, Hedulio," he called. "You can't hide yourself under that hat nor inside that raincloak. I know you, Hedulio. But nobody but an idiot would ever recognize you inside that rig and with all this escort. I know you, you aren't Vedius Vindex, you aren't Satronius Sabinus. You're Andivius Hedulio. I know you. But nobody else will guess who you are. Nobody else around here is an idiot!"

Again, as with Tanno's utterance when we were leaving my villa, the words fell on my ears but did not penetrate to my thinking consciousness. Had I noted what I heard, had I thought instantaneously of what the idiot's words really signified, I might even then have saved myself.

We plodded on, a long cavalcade of horsemen and bevy of men afoot, convoying a shut litter and a closed travelling carriage.

Round the turn of the road, after passing the idiot and his goats, with the brawling stream of the Bran Brook, now swollen to a respectable little river, on our left, with the wooded hills rising on our right, we entered the long, narrow winding single street of Vediamnum, a paved lane along the close-crowded tall stone houses built against the hillside on the northeast, with the stream along it to the southwest, and houses wedged between the street and the stream, brokenly, for about half of its length, with open intervals between.

As we entered the village I saw ahead on the street not a human form, saw no face at any door of any house. I wondered over this, wondered uncomprehendingly. I had never seen the street of Vediamnum. wholly deserted, not even in rains much harder than that which descended on us. Still wondering, still uncomprehending, when we were far enough into the village for the travelling carriage to be already between the first houses, I saw fall across the roadway, in front of me, two stout trunks of trimmed trees, straight like pine trees; I heard the crash as they jarred on the stones of the stream-side wall, I saw them quiver as they settled; breast high and shoulder high from house-wall to house-wall, effectually blocking the highway.

At the same instant there sounded a chorus of yells, shouts, calls, cheers and commands; and men poured out of the house doors, out of the alleys between the houses, up the river bank in the unbuilt intervals; men hatless and cloakless, clad only in their tunics, men with clubs, with staffs, with staves, with bludgeons, with cudgels, men yelling:

"Greia! Greia! Rescue Greia! Club 'em! Brain 'em! Chase 'em! Vedius forever! At 'em boys! Mustard's the word! Make 'em run! Rescue Posis!"

They clubbed us. They clubbed the horses, they clubbed the mules, they clubbed the bearers and their reliefs. They gave us no time to explain, and though I yelled out who I was and who was with me, though Hirnio and Tanno and Martius yelled similarly, their explanations were unheard in the hubbub or unheeded. Also our effort to explain was brief. Swathed as we were in our cloaks the hot gush of rage that flamed up in us drove us instinctively to free our arms and fight.

Now anyone might suppose that it would be an easy matter for some eighteen horsemen to ride down and scatter a mob of varlets afoot. So it would be in the open, when the riders were aware of the attack and ready to meet it. We were taken wholly by surprise whereas our assailants were ready and agreed. For a moment it looked like a rout for us, our horses and mules rearing and kicking, our whole caravan in confusion, jammed together higgledy-piggledy, with all our attackers headed for the carriage, mistaking Marcia for Greia.

Marcia never screamed, never moved, sat still and silent, apparently calm and placid.

They all but dragged her out of the carriage.

In fact we should indubitably have been frightfully mauled and Marcia carried off had it not been for Murmex and Tanno.

At first onset Tanno had yelled explanations; but almost with his first yell he rolled out of his litter, snatched a spare pole from a relief, and with it laid about him; Murmex did the like. The two of them, one on the right of the litter and carriage, the other on the left, bore the whole shock of our attackers' first rush and alone delayed it.

Somehow, probably by Tanno's orders, perhaps by their own instincts, the reliefs with the other poles handed them to Hirnio and me as we dismounted. Three of the clever blacks caught our horses and Murmex's. Others detached the poles from the litter and the four biggest bearers seized them and used them vigorously.

Thus, actually quicker than it takes to tell of it, eight powerful, skillful and justly incensed men on our side were plying litter poles against the cudgels of our attackers.

I was severely bruised before I warmed up to my work; when I did warm up I laid a man flat with every blow of the pole I wielded.

When my adversaries had had a sufficient taste of my skill to cause them to draw away from me, as far as they could in that press of men, horses and mules, and I had cleared a space around me, I looked about.

Agathemer, light built as he was, had wrenched a bludgeon from some Vedian and was wielding it not ineffectually.

Hirnio was doing his part in the fighting like a gentleman and an expert.

But Murmex and Tanno chiefly caught my eye.

It was wonderful to see Tanno fight. Every swing of his pole cracked on a skull. Men fell about him by twos and threes, one on the other.

If Tanno was wonderful Murmex was marvellous. Never had I seen a man handle a staff so rapidly and effectively.

By this time my nine tenants were afoot, and uncloaked. Now a Sabine farmer, afoot or horsed, is never without his trusty staff of yew or holly or thorn. These the nine used to admiration, if less miraculously than Tanno and Murmex.

Since there were now a round dozen skilled fencers plying their staffs on our side, and four huge and mighty Nubians doing their best (with no mean skill of their own, either) to assist us, we soon were on the way to victory.

The remnant of our adversaries still on their feet fled; fled up the alleys between the houses, into the houses, down the bank towards the stream or into the stream, over the barricade of the twin logs.

That barricade made it impossible for us to go on. The number of men laid low, some of whom were reviving from their stunned condition and crawling or staggering away from under the hoofs of the crazed horses and mules, made it unthinkable that any explanation of the mistake which had led to the fracas could be possible, or if possible, that explanation could quench the fires of animosity which blazed in the breasts of all concerned.

With one accord, without any conference or the exchange of a word, our party made haste to escape from Vediamnum before our assailants rallied for a second onset. No horse or mule was hamstrung or lamed, no man had been knocked senseless. All of us were more or less bruised and sore, some were bleeding, two of my tenants had blood pouring from torn scalps, but every man, horse and mule was fit to travel.

We carried, lifted, dragged or rolled out of the way the disabled Vedians in the roadbed, making sure that not one was killed, we somehow got the travelling carriage turned round, no small feat in that narrow space; we readjusted the litter-poles, Tanno climbed in, Hirnio and Murmex and I mounted, Tanno's extra litter bearers led my farmers' horses and mules and we set off on our retreat, my nine tenants, even with two of them half scalped, forming a rearguard of entirely competent bludgeoners; certainly they must have impressed the Vedians as adequate, for no face so much as showed at a doorway until we were clear of the village and my tenants remounted. Then came a few derisive yells after us as the mist cut off our view of the nearest houses.

We made haste, you may be sure. Outside of the village we passed the idiot and his goats. He mowed and grinned at us, but uttered no word. We saw no other human figure till we had passed the entrance to Villa Vedia and felt safer. Nor did we pass anyone between that cross-road and the foot of my road, save only the same immobile horseman on the same knoll, in the same position, and, apparently, at precisely the same spot, as if he were indeed an equestrian statue. His salutation was as curt as before.

At the foot of my road we held a consultation. Hirnio advised returning to my villa and demanding an apology from Vedius, even instituting legal proceedings at Reate if he did not make an apology and enter a disclaimer. But Tanno, Martius and all my tenants, even the two with cracked heads, were for going on, and, of course, Murmex, who talked as if he had been a member of our company from the first.

"Hercules be good to me," Tanno cried, "to get out of this cursed neighborhood I am willing even to face the horrors of the bit of road I suffered on as I came up. Let us be off on our road to Rome."

"With all my heart," I said. "But first tell me who or what is that voiceless and moveless horseman we passed twice between here and the crossroads. You said you knew."

"I do know," Tanno grunted, "and I'm not fool enough to blurt it out on a country road, either. Let's be off. Attention! Form ranks! Ready! Forward! March!"

Off we set, ordering our caravan as at first, except that Agathemer rode by me, with Hirnio and Murmex in advance.

We plodded down the muddy road, through the fine, continuous drizzle, wrapped in our cloaks, all the world about us helmed in fog, mist and rain, the trees looming blurred and gray-green in the wet air.

Without meeting any wayfarers, with little talk among ourselves, we had passed the entrance to Villa Satronia and were no great distance from the Salarian Highway, when, where the road traversed a dense bit of woodland, the trees of which met overhead, the underbrush on both sides of the road suddenly rang with yells and was alive with excited men.

It was almost the duplicate of our experience in Vediamnum, save that our assailants were more numerous and shouted:

"Xantha, Xantha, rescue Xantha!"

"Satronius forever! Eat 'em alive, boys! Get Xantha! Get Xantha!" and such like calls.

This time we had an infinitesimally longer warning, as the bushes to right and left of the road were further apart than had been the houses lining the streets of Vediamnum; also we reacted more quickly to the yells, having heard the like such a short time before.

The fight was fully joined all along the line and was raging with no advantage for either side, when I missed a parry and knew no more.

Afterwards I was told that I fell stunned from a blow on the head and lay, bleeding not only from a terrific scalp wound but also from a dozen other abrasions, until the fight was over, our assailants routed and completely put to flight, and Tanno with the rest of the pursuers returned to the travelling carriage and litter to find Marcia, pink and pretty and placid, seated as she had been when she left home, and me, weltering in a pool of blood.

A dozen Satronians lay stunned. Tanno reckoned two of them dead men.

I was the only man seriously hurt on our side.

Agathemer was for convoying me home.

Tanno hooted at the idea, expatiating on the distance from Reate and the improbability of such a town harboring a competent physician, on the number of excellent surgeons in Rome, on the advisability of getting me out of the locality afflicted with our Vedian-Satronian feud, and so on.

He had me bandaged as best might be and composed in his litter.

He took my horse.

To me the journey to Rome was and is a complete blank. I was mostly insensible, and, when I showed signs of consciousness, was delirious. I recall nothing except a vague sense of endless pain, misery and horror. I have no memory of anything that occurred on the road after I was hit on the head, nor of the first night at Vicus Novus nor of the second at Eretum. I first came to myself about the tenth hour of the third day, when we were but a short distance from Rome and in full sight of it. The view of Rome, from any eminence outside the city from which a view of it may be had, has always seemed to me the most glorious spectacle upon which a Roman may feast his eyes. As a boy my tutors had yielded to my importunities and had escorted me to every one of those elevations near the city famous as viewpoints. As a lad I had ridden out to each many times, whenever the weather promised a fine view, to delight my soul with the aspect of the great city citizenship in which was my dearest heritage. To have been born a Roman was my chief pride; to gaze at Rome, to exult at the beauty of Rome, was my keenest delight.

More even than the acclaimed viewpoints, to which residents like me and visitors from all the world flocked on fine afternoons, did I esteem those places on the roads radiating from Rome where a traveller faring Romeward caught his first sight of the city; or those points where, if one road had several hill-crests in succession, one had the best view possible anywhere along the road.

Of the various roads entering Rome it always appeared to my judgment that the Tiburtine Highway afforded the most charming views of the city.

But, along the Salarian Highway, are several rises at the top of each of which one sees a fascinating picture when looking towards Rome. Of these my favorite was that from the crest of the ascent after one crosses the Anio, just after passing Antemnae, near the third milestone.

This view I love now as I have always loved it, as I loved it when a boy. To halt on that crest of the road, of a fair, still, mild, brilliant afternoon when the sun is already visibly declining and its rays fall slanting and mellow; to view the great city bathed in the warm, even light, its pinnacles, tower-roofs, domes, and roof-tiles flashing and sparkling in the late sunshine, all of it radiant with the magical glow of an Italian afternoon, to see Rome so vast, so grandiose, so majestic, so winsome, so lovely; to know that one owns one's share in Rome, that one is part of Rome; that, I conceive, confers the keenest joy of which the human heart is capable.

It so happened that Tanno had his litter opened, that I might get all the air possible, and the curtains looped back tightly. Somehow, at the very crest of that rise on the Salarian Road, on a perfect afternoon, about the tenth hour, I came to myself.

I was aching in every limb and joint, I was sore over every inch of my surface, I was all one jelly of bruises, my head and my left shin hurt me acutely. More than all that I was permeated by that nameless horror which comes from weakness and a high fever.

Now it would be impossible to convey, by any human words, the strangeness of my sensations. My sufferings, my illness, my distress of mind enveloped me and permeated me with a general misery in which I could not but loathe life, the world and anything I saw, and I saw before me the most magnificent, the most noble, the most inspiriting sight the world affords.

At the instant of reviving I was overwhelmed by my sensations, by my recollections of the two fights and of all they meant to me of misfortune and disaster, and I was more than overwhelmed by the glory spread before me. I went all hot and cold inside and all through me and lost consciousness.

After this lapse I was not conscious of anything until I began to be dimly aware that I was in my own bed in my own bedroom, in my own house and tended by my own personal servants.

Strangely enough this second awakening was as different as possible from my momentary revival near Antemnae. Then I had been appalled by the rush of varying sensations, crowding memories, conflicting emotions and daunting forebodings, each of which seemed as distinct, vivid and keen as every other of the uncountable swarm of impressions: I had felt acutely and cared extremely. Now every memory and sensation was blurred, no thought of the future intruded, I accepted without internal questionings whatever was done for me, and lay semi-conscious, incurious and indifferent. Mostly I dozed half-conscious. I was almost in a stupor, at peace with myself and all the world, wretched, yet acquiescing in my wretchedness, not rebellious nor recalcitrant.

This semi-stupor gradually wore off, my half-consciousness between long sleeps growing less and less blurred, my faculties more alive, my personality emerging.

When I came entirely to myself I found Tanno seated by my bed.

"You're all right now, Caius," he said, "I have kept away till Galen said you were well enough for me to talk to you."

"Galen?" I repeated, "have I been as ill as all that?"

"Not ill," Tanno disclaimed, "merely bruised. You are certainly a portent in a fight. I never saw you fight before, never saw you practice at really serious fencing, never heard anybody speak of you as an expert, or as a fighter. But I take oath I never saw a man handle a stave as you did. You were quicker than lightning, you seemed in ten places at once, you were as reckless as a Fury and as effectual as a thunderbolt. You laid men out by twos and threes. But jammed as you were in a press of enemies you were hit often and hard, so often and so hard that, after you were downed by a blow on the head, you never came to until I had you where you are."

"Yes I did," I protested, "I came to on the hilltop this side of

Antemnae."

"Not enough to tell any of us about it," he soothed me. "Anyhow, you are mending now and will soon be yourself."

I was indifferent. My mind was not yet half awake.

"Did I fight as well as you say?" I asked, "or are you flattering me?"

"No flattery, my boy," he said. "You are a portent."

Then he told me of the result of the fight with the Satronians, of their complete discomfiture and rout, of how he had brought me to Rome, seen me properly attended and looked after my tenants.

"They are having the best time," he said, "they ever had in all their lives."

And he told me where he had them lodged and which sights of Rome they had seen from day to day.

"Just as soon as I had seen to you and them," he said, "I called on dear old Nemestronia and told her of your condition. She is full of solicitude for you and will overwhelm you with dainties as soon as you are well enough to relish any."

He did not mention Vedia and I was still too dazed, too numb, too weak, too acquiescent to ask after her, or even to think of asking after her or to notice that he had not mentioned her.

"While I was talking to Nemestronia," Tanno said, "I took care to warn her about that cursed leopard. She would not agree to cage it, at least not permanently. She did agree to cage it at night and said she would not let it have the run of her palace even by day, as it has since she first got it, but would keep it shut up in the shrubbery garden, as she calls it, where they usually feed it and where you and I have seen it crawl up on its victims and pounce on them."

I could not be interested in leopards, or Nemestronia or even in Vedia, if he had mentioned Vedia. I fell into a half doze. Just on the point of going fast asleep I half roused, queerly enough.

"Caius!" I asked, "do you remember that man on horseback we passed in the rain between my road entrance and Vediamnum?"

"You can wager your estate I remember him!" Tanno replied.

"What sort of man was he?" I queried, struggling with my tendency to sleep. "You said you knew."

"I do know," Tanno asserted, "I cannot identify him, though I have questioned those who should know and who are safe. I should know his name, but I cannot recall it or place him. But I know his occupation. He is a professional informer in the employ of the palace secret service, an Imperial spy.

"Now what in the name of Mercury was he doing in the rain, on a Sabine roadside? I cannot conjecture."

This should have roused me staring wide awake.

But I was too exhausted to take any normal interest in anything.

"I can't conjecture either," I drawled thickly.