Andivius Hedulio: Adventures of a Roman Nobleman in the Days of the Empire. Edward Lucas White
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