The sea captain Laesus was a wonderful find; though it has to be said that having rescued me, he took me to an eating house that made me horrendously ill.
I found my way back to the mansio, awash with saffron pottage, though not for long. There must have been a bad oyster in my soup. Luckily I have a finicky stomach; as my family often joke, when they decide they have waited long enough for their legacies, poisoning me is the last solution they will try.
While my fellow travellers were gnawing at the landlord's unspeakable boiled belly pork, I lay on my bed groaning privately; later I had a slow scrape in the bathhouse, then sat out in the garden with something to read.
About the time the meal ended, other guests straggled out to enjoy jugs of wine in the last light of day. I just had a beaker of cold water to aid my recovery.
There were plenty of tables in the recreation area; it saved the landlord, who was the usual idle scamp, from filling the spaces with flowerbeds that would require his attention. Most of these tables were empty. No one needed to invade my privacy, so when people did head towards me I froze into the character of a man who would rather give himself eyestrain over his holiday reading than look up and let strangers insist on making friends.
This had little success.
There were two of them. One was a bad dream on legs-the legs were like elm trunks, below a mass of well-organized muscle with no visible neck; his sidekick was a whiskery shrimp with a mean look and rickety build. Everyone else in the garden hid their noses in their wine beakers; I nuzzled my scroll short-sightedly, though without much hope. The new arrivals glanced around, then fixed on me.
The two of them sat at my table. They both had that knowing, expectant air which means the worst. An informer needs to be gregarious, but I tread warily with locals who seem so sure of themselves. The other customers studied their drinks; no one offered to help.
It is quite common in the south for tricksters to smile their way into a mansio, settle round some quiet group, then bully them out for an evening in the town. The travellers get off lightly if they escape with just a headache, a beating, the loss of their money, a night in a jail cell, and a sordid disease they pass on to their wives. A man on his own feels safer; but not much. I looked scholarly; I looked reserved; I tried hard to project the impression that the pouch on my belt was too empty to cope with a long night drinking sour red wine while a swarthy maiden with a tambourine danced at me.
Thanks to the market pickpocket, the empty pouch was true. Fortunately it was my decoy purse again; I kept my serious funds with my passport, round my neck. So far I still had them. But Vespasian's retainer was too puny to tantalize a tambourinist with grand ideas.