From Almo news came frequently through Flexinna.
His campaign, deliberately prepared and relentlessly carried out, progressed evenly and without any reverse.
The nomads nowhere withstood his legions and their attendant cloud of allied cavalry; one after the other their strongholds were reached and stormed, methodically and unhurriedly he reduced tribe after tribe to submission, his prestige growing from season to season and from year to year.
When Brinnaria’s term of service was drawing to an end and only about eleven months of it remained, all Roman society was convulsed by what was variously referred to as the Calvaster scandal, the great poisoning trial or the murder of Pulfennia.
Pulfennia Ulubrana, one of Calvaster’s great-aunts, was a dwarfish creature, humpbacked and clubfooted.
She was an only child and her parents, in spite of her deformities, were devoted to her. They lavished on her everything that fondness could suggest, and, as they were very wealthy, she not only lived but enjoyed life in her way and to a very considerable extent.
To begin with she never had an ill hour or an ache or a pain from her earliest years. Then, like many cripples, she had great vitality and a wonderfully alert mind. Amid the small army of maids, governesses, tutors, pages, litter-bearers, and so on, with which her parents surrounded her she did not become merely peevish, exacting and overbearing, as might have been expected. Even the services of her personal physician, of three expert readers to read aloud to her and of a half dozen musicians to divert her whenever she pleased, did not spoil her. She was imperious enough, self-willed and obstinately resolute to have her own way in all matters, but she had a great deal of common-sense, realized what was possible and what impossible and was considerate of her entire retinue, even of such unimportant slave-girls as her three masseuses.
She was greedy of all sorts of knowledge and acquired an education altogether unusual for a Roman woman.
Withal she was feminine in her tastes, spent much time on embroidery and was justly proud of her complex and beautiful productions in this womanly art. She overcame her disabilities to a great extent and, with no lack of conveyances, became a figure almost as well-known in oman society as Nemestronia herself.
As she had an accommodating disposition, an excellent appetite and a witty tongue, she was a welcome guest at banquets and went about a great deal. Also she entertained lavishly.