"Great King," said Eodan, "I have so little to bring you I am ashamed. May you live forever! All the world lays its wealth in your hands. I can but offer the salvage price of my ship, paid at Rhodes, which Arpad insists is his. I leave to your judgment, Wise One, whether the monies do indeed belong to him, or to me who would give them as an offering to Your Majesty. But one gift at least I bring, if you will accept it—my story, what I have done since leaving my own realm, and what I have seen from Thule to Rhodes and from Dacia to Spain. Since this tale is my gift to you, I did not think it fit that Arpad, your servant, should have its maidenhead."
Mithradates opened his mouth and bellowed with laughter.
"Well, your gift is accepted," he said at last, "and I shall not be miserly myself if the tale be rich. From what country are you?"
"Cimberland, Great King."
"I have heard somewhat of the Cimbri. Indeed, one of my neighbors sent them an embassy a few years ago. Surely this will be a night's entertainment, though you humble my pride by making me hear it in Latin. Chamberlain! See to it that these three are given a suite, changes of raiment and whatever else they require." Mithradates said it in the Roman tongue, doubtless for Eodan's benefit, since he must repeat it in Greek. "Go, I will see you at the evening meal. And now, Arpad, about those monies."
"Great King of All the World," wailed Arpad, flat on his belly, "may your children people the earth! It was but that I, your most unworthy subject, thought to offer you—"
As he went to the guest chambers, Eodan asked the slave who led him—an Italian, he saw with glee—what the king had meant, that he was ashamed to hear the tale in Latin. "Know, Master," said the boy, "that our puissant lord keeps no interpreters on his own staff, for he himself speaks no fewer than two and twenty languages. You must indeed have come from far away."
The suite was as luxurious as one might have expected. Phryne said doubtfully, "We build our hopes on Vesuvius. The soil there is surpassingly rich, but sometimes the mountain buries it in fire. I will be happy if we can get from here unscathed."
"Why," said Eodan, surprised, "I would have thought you could dwell here more gladly than any place else in the world. They are a mannered folk, it seems."
"They are more alien to me, a Greek, than the Romans—or the Sarmatians—or the Cimbri." She looked out the window, down to gardens where paths twisted so a man could lose his way. "If we stay long enough, you will understand."