"_Hau!_" he roared. "By the Bull, only now do I think of it! You attend the mistress? And she still shares her husband's town house? Then you have seen Flavius in Rome this winter! You have seen _her_!" "Let me go!" she shrieked. He shook her so her teeth rattled. "How is she? You must have seen her, a tall fair girl, her name is Hwicca. What has become of her?" Phryne set her jaws against the pain. "If you let me go, barbarian, I will tell you," she said. His hands dropped. He saw finger marks cruelly deep on her white skin. She touched the bruises with fingers that trembled while tears ran silent down her face. She caught her lip in her teeth to hold it steady. "I am sorry," he mumbled. "But she is my wife." Phryne leaned against the tree. At last she looked up, still hugging herself. The violet eyes were blurred. She whispered, "It is I who must ask pardon. I did not realize it was the same--I did not know." "How could you have known? But tell me!" He held out his empty hands like a beggar. "Uicca ... I saw her once in a while. The Cimbrian girl, they all called her. She seems well thought of by Flavius. He keeps her in a room of her own, with her own servants. He is--often there. But no one else sees her much. We never spoke. She was always very quiet. Her servants told me she was gentle to them." "Flavius--" Eodan covered his eyes against the unpitying day. Phryne laid a hand on his shoulder. It shuddered beneath her palm. "The Unknown God help you," she said. He turned around and looked upon her, then reached out and gathered her against him. He kissed her so her mouth was numb. She writhed free, scraped down his ankle with a sandaled foot and clawed with her nails until he let her go. She was white; her loosened dark hair fell about her like a thunder-cloud. "You slobbering pig!" she cried. "So that is all you miss of your wife!" She spun about and ran. "Wait!" he cried. "Wait, let me tell you--I only--" She was gone. He stood upon the fallen blossoms and cursed. Hwicca would have understood, he thought in wrath and desolation; Hwicca is a woman, not a book-dusty prune, and knows what the needs of a man are. He looked down, and up again, and finally north, toward Rome. Then he picked up the bridle and went on to the stables. That day he contrived to be given a task at the forge, shaping iron, and the courtyard rang with his hammerblows until dark. The days passed. The flax was sown. They paid less heed to the ancient festivals now than formerly; once these acres had belonged to free men; now it was all one plantation staffed with slaves. But some custom still lived. The week of the Floralia was observed, not as immoderately as in Rome, but with a degree of ease and a measure of wine. On the day before the Floralia the physician examined Eodan's leg. "It has knit," he grunted. "Give me back my crutch." Eodan asked wearily, "Will they return me to the fields?" "That is not my province." The physician left him.