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I told him that I would do anything in my power to make him well, comfortable and happy, except setting him free, from which I was restrained by my uncle's behests. He asked to be allowed to return to Villa Andivia as soon as the physicians pronounced him fit to travel.
So he made two extra helves and had a dozen cornel-wood pegs ready to drive out the bit of broken handle next time I broke it; as I did, according to his laughing forecast. The incessant labor of our days hardened both of us. Our muscles were like steel rods. We slept on our mattresses by that ash-covered fire as I had never slept at Villa Andivia or at my mansion in Rome.
He uttered admiring ejaculations as I told of wrestling with the leopard on the terrace at Nemestronia's and of how Agathemer and I crawled through the drain at Villa Andivia, also at my tale of my branding and scourging and of the loyalty of Chryseros Philargyrus. But, when I came to our discovery of the hut in the mountains, he stirred uneasily in the rustling straw and muttered in his throat.
At this point of his discourse he told me that the Praetorians had already departed from Villa Andivia leaving in charge Gratillus, a treasury officer of the confiscation department, a man whom I knew too well as also a member of the secret service, an articled Imperial spy and an active professional informer, moreover a man who had always hated my uncle, and who had hated me from my boyhood.
It was, it certainly was, the very same man I had seen in the very same guise on the road below Villa Andivia as Tanno and I passed by on our way to our fatal brawl at Vediamnum; the very man who had peered in at me and Capito during his fatal conference with me in Nemestronia's water-garden, the man whom Tanno had asserted that he knew for an Imperial spy.
This led to my exposure to the oddest and most alarming peril which I had run since Agathemer and I crawled through the drain-pipe at Villa Andivia; greater I think, than the risk I ran when I nearly encountered Gratillus at Placentia. This happened about eleven months after I came to Rome with Falco, in the spring of the year when Pedo Apronianus and Valerius Bradua were consuls.
Had I been a freeman I should have been commiserated by all as a gentleman who had had the misfortune to find his best friend foully murdered; as a slave I would be assumed by all Rome to have been caught in the act of assassinating my kind and indulgent master; and, recalling Tanno's invectives against me at my last dinner at Villa Andivia, I knew I was liable to be tortured until I confessed my guilt!
Neither Chryseros nor Agathemer had any doubt that a close watch was being quietly kept to make sure that I could not now return to Villa Andivia without being caught; nor yet leave it if I did return or had returned. As a result of his discussion with Agathemer they had agreed that we were to leave by night and on foot, as we had originally intended.
Then arena-slaves carried in and set down on the sand a full hundred feet from the hoop and chains, a dozen or more wicker crates full of quacking white ducks with yellow bills. They and the noise they made recalled unpleasantly to me my sensations as I clung to the alder bush immersed in Bran Brook, after Agathemer and I had crawled through the drain at Villa Andivia.
Mount and order your bearers to take your empty litter home. Follow the Praenestine Highroad till it meets the Via Labicana. Then take the first crossroad to the Highroad to Tibur. From Tibur press on to Carseoli. Prom there return to Villa Andivia as you judge best. Provide for yourself thereafter as best you may. "Farewell." I recognized Vedia's handwriting. I trusted her implicitly.
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