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Agathemer will see to all that, with Occo to help him. Do you promise to acquiesce?" "I promise," I said. "Remember," he cautioned me, "that the number, variety and severity of the blows rained on you in your two fights were so great that you were almost beaten to death.
"We'd be locked up as runaway slaves," I said, "advertised, sold to the highest bidder if unclaimed and henceforth kept in slavery." "I'm in slavery now," said Agathemer. "You, if kept in slavery, would at least be alive and in no danger of being recognized." "Let us go," said I. We looked at each other and burst out laughing.
Somewhere in the Etrurian hills north of Arretium I overheard part of a conversation between Maternus and Caburus. They were talking of me and Agathemer. "You cannot be sure," said Maternus. "By every rule of reason Hedulio ought to hate Commodus consumedly.
There I had a very brief and very light lunch, Agathemer hovering over me and reminding me of Galen's orders for my diet, so that I found myself forbidden every viand which I craved and asked for, and limited to the very simple fare which had been prepared for me. After lunch I went to bed and to sleep. I woke soon and very wide awake.
The crossing of the Tolenus and Himella should give us no trouble whatever. We would pass south of Cliternia and north of Fisternae. Chryseros questioned Agathemer closely as to his knowledge of the byroads, and applauded him highly, only on a few points correcting him or amplifying what he knew. North of Fisternae we could gain the mountains and work northwards.
We went back to the hut, drank a second draught of the strongest and sweetest wine and drank it unmixed, as we had drunk our first before we set about carrying the corpses into the forest. Nona renewed her adjurations to begone. But neither I nor Agathemer would listen to her.
Agathemer, who knew the former slaves and present freedwomen of the Palace far better than I, whispered that the others were the sister and wife of Perennis and the wife of Cleander, like him a former slave and pampered freedman, and for long his rival.
To prove his vast superiority and his prowess, he poured more wine down his throat, spilling some down into his tunic. Agathemer winked at me and fingered the strap of his wallet. I groped for mine and fumbled at it. Clitellus, with a hiccough, slid to the floor beside Summanus. I was for trying to rise.
"After what I told you," Agathemer protested, "do you seriously advise us to set sail for Rome?" "I do," Doris declared. "Any place on earth is healthier for you two than Marseilles. Were you in trouble in Rome before you got into trouble in Placentia?" "We were," said Agathemer, "and trouble of the deepest dye."
When we first went to her in the morning she was unconscious and as if in a stupor, but showed no signs of fever. She did not struggle against feeding as on the previous day, but swallowed, a spoonful at a time, as much milk as Agathemer thought good for her.
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