Andivius Hedulio: Adventures of a Roman Nobleman in the Days of the Empire. Edward Lucas White
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.
CHAPTER VI
A RATHER BAD DAY
Next morning, strangely enough, I wakened at my normal, habitual time for wakening when in town, and wakened feeling weak indeed and still sore in places, but entirely myself in general and filled with a sort of sham energy and spurious vigor.
By me, when I woke, was Occo, my soft-voiced, noiseless-footed, deft- handed personal attendant. At my bidding he summoned Agathemer. When I told him that I proposed to get up, dress and go out as I usually did when in Rome, in fact that I intended to follow the conventional and fashionable daily routine to which I had been habituated, he protested vigorously. He said that both Celsianus and Galen, the two most acclaimed physicians in Rome, who had been called in in consultation by my own physician, but also he himself, had enjoined most emphatically that I must remain abed for some days yet, must keep indoors for many days more, if I was to continue on the road to recovery on which their ministrations had set me, and that all three had bidden him tell me that any transgression of their instructions would expose me to the probability of a relapse far more serious than my initial illness and to a far longer period of inactivity.
I was determined and obstinate. When he added that I must not only remain quiet, but must not talk for any length of time nor concern myself with any news or any matters likely to excite me, I revolted. I commanded him to obey me and to be silent as to the physicians' orders.
I began by asking him what day it was. I then learned that I had been ill fifteen days since reaching Rome, for I had left my villa on the eighth day before the Ides of June and it was now the ninth day before the Kalends of July.
Next I asked after my tenants. Agathemer said that they had most dutifully presented themselves each morning to salute me and attend my reception, if I should be well enough to hold one; to ask after my progress towards recovery if I was not; that Ligo Atrior, as recognized leader among them, had also come each evening between bath-time and dinner-time to ask personally after my condition; that, as all the physicians had, the day before, stated that I must by no means be allowed to see anyone save Tanno or to leave my bedroom, for some days, he had told Ligo the evening before not to diminish his and his fellows' time for sight-seeing by coming on this particular morning; that Ligo had expressed his unalterable intention of coming each evening in any case.
I commended Agathemer's discretion but told him to tell Ligo, when he came in the afternoon, that I intended to hold a reception next morning and wanted to see all nine of them at it.
I then asked about Murmex. Agathemer said that Tanno had offered to bring him to the Emperor's notice, but that Murmex had declined, thanking him, but remarking that, as I had offered to bring him to the Emperor's notice, it would be bad manners on his part to appear under the countenance of any other patron and would moreover be inviting bad luck instead of good luck on his presentation.
Agathemer said Murmex had called twice to ask after me and had told him where he lodged. I instructed him to apprise Murmex of my intention to hold a morning reception. I knew Agathemer would send out notifications to all my city clients of long standing without any admonition of mine.
He told me that no message of any kind had come from Vedia nor from Vedius Vedianus, the head of her clan, nor from Satronius Satro. I could not conjecture just why Vedia had remained silent, and I was not only worried over the fact of her silence and aloofness, but felt myself wearied, even after a very short time, by the uncontrollable turmoil of my mind, puzzling as to why she had ignored me.
As to Vedius and Satronius, I was vividly aware of their state of mind and acutely wretched over it.
Only nineteen days before I had seen my triclinium walled and floored with flowers presented by the local leader of one clan; had seen my dinner table groan under the fruit sent me by the local leader of the other clan, had known that both clans were competing for my favor and that I was high in the good graces of each.
Now I felt that all men of both clans must be bitterly incensed with me, for I knew their clan-pride. No man of either clan would weigh the facts: that neither fight had been of my seeking; that both fights had been forced on me; that I could not by any exercise of ingenuity have avoided either, once the onset began; that each had been the result of the headlong impetuosity and self-deception of my assailants, that both were the outcome of conditions which I could not be expected to recognize as dangerous beforehand, of a mistake not of my causing, for which I was in no way to blame. I knew that every man of both clans, and most of all the head of each clan, would consider nothing except that I had participated in a roadside brawl in which men of their clan had been roughly handled, some of them by me personally, and from which their men had fled in confusion, routed partly by my participation.
I saw myself embroiled with both clans, conjectured that the two fights were the staple of the