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Updated: August 9, 2024
His estates are beyond Vediamnum and he has never taken sides in the feud any more than Ducconius or my family." "Do you ever see Ducconius?" he asked. "Oh, never," said I, "we take care never to recognize each other, I assure you. We cannot help meeting occasionally, but I never see him and he never sees me. We meet mostly on the road.
"I have been told that on the eighth day before the Ides, you entered Vediamnum early of a rainy morning, with an escort so numerous that none could have conjectured that the cavalcade was yours; that, when three or four of the inhabitants of the village accosted you civilly and asked who you were and where you were going, your men, without any reply, fell on them and beat them unmercifully; that, when the population of Vediamnum rushed to the assistance of their fellows, your convoy set upon them and started a pitched battle, mishandling them so frightfully that the street was strewn with stunned and bleeding villagers; that you not only participated in the affray, but fomented it and led it; that the two men who have since died, fell under blows from your own quarter-staff.
I explained all the circumstances, narrated Tanno's unexpected arrival, his quizzical bantering of the persons whom he encountered on the road, my tenants' petition, my agreement with Marcus Martins, the accretion of Hirnio and Murmex to our party, Tanno's insistence on reaching the Salarian Highway through Vediamnum, and all the other trivial factors which had conspired to my undoing; I described the affray in Vediamnum, both as I had seen it and as Tanno and Agathemer had told me of it; similarly the fight below Villa Satronia.
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.
My head man has a keen scent for incipient trouble; he managed to have one of his helpers get among the ambushers in Vediamnum and another among those on your byway, Satronius.
For I could not credit that she would be incensed with me because of my involvement in the affray in Vediamnum nor that she would condemn me unheard, especially as Tanno had told me, in the Stadium of the Palace, that he had taken care to call on Vedia, and give her his version of my mishap. She glowered at me. "Your effrontery," she burst out, "amazes me.
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.
"Of my dinner guests he lives furthest away and so he always comes in first to any festivity." "How far beyond Vediamnum does he live?" Tanno enquired. "On the other side of the Vedian lands," I explained. "His property is over the divide towards the Tolenus, in between Villa Vedia and Villa Aemilia." Entedius it was, as I made sure, when he drew nearer, by his magnificent black mare.
Not until after midnight that night did it suddenly pop into my head that he was the same man whom I had first seen on horseback in the rain on the crossroad above Vediamnum, the man whom Tanno had asserted was a professional informer and accredited Imperial spy, the man who had glanced into Nemestronia's garden and seen me with Egnatius Capito.
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.
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