The food seemed the worst feature of our misery. So, in fact, it appears
to have seemed to our despicable companions. Certainly, of the food they
complained more than of the toil, the cold, the vermin, the malignity of
the overseers or even of the barbarity of the Scythian guards. Anyhow
their fury at the quality of their food brought to me and Agathemer an
alleviation of our misery. For some hotheaded wretches, goaded beyond
endurance, jerked the bars of their mill from their sockets and with them
felled, beat to death and even brained the cook and his two assistants.
After their corpses had been removed, the floor swabbed up and the
murderers turned over to the gloating Scythians to be done to death by
impalement, Scythian fashion, with all the tortures Scythian ferocity
could devise, the manager went from cellar to cellar, all through the
_ergastulum_, enquiring if any prisoner could cook. No one volunteered,
and, when he questioned more than a few, everyone denied any knowledge of
cookery.
A second time he made the tour of his domain, promising any cook a warm
tunic, a bunk with a thick mattress and two heavy quilts, all the food he
could eat and two helpers; the helpers to have similar indulgences.
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