They were preparing to torture the procurator
to make him reveal the hiding place of his bullion, when the yelling and
galloping horsemen scared them away."
I congratulated her and we ate with even more relish. Both of us, however,
were sparing of the wine, though I gloated at the savor of the first
really good wine I had tasted for more than two years.
And garum sauce! I had not realized how I had craved such luxuries as
garum.
I told my story to an accompaniment of Vedia's exclamations. She was
amazed at all of it; at our crawl through the drain, at the loyalty of old
Chryseros, at my involvement with Maternus, at my encounter with
Pescennius Niger, at my involvement with the mutineers; but most of all,
at my having been present in the great circus, an eyewitness of the most
spectacular day of racing Commodus ever exhibited under his transparent
pseudonym of Palus and his last day of public jockeying; and, equally, at
Agathemer's device by which we survived the massacre.
We had finished our leisurely meal and I had finished my story, neither
our appetites nor the flow of my narrative marred by the distant squalls
of leopards and roars of lions, nor by the uncanny sounds made by the
hyenas, when, all of a sudden, a lion uttered a powerful and prolonged
roar within a dozen yards of us.
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