Then he was gone, the door gaping behind him. For a moment Antistia stood where she was, undecided. Her husband hadn't taken the lamp he could see in the dark as well as any cat so there was nothing to stop her following save her own knowledge that probably he wouldn't like it. Well, bother that! Wives were surely entitled to share news important enough to invade the master's sleep! So off she went with her little lamp barely showing her the way down that huge corridor flagged and walled with bare stone blocks. A turn here a flight of steps there and suddenly she was out of the forbidding Gallic fortress and into the civilized Roman villa, all pretty paint and plaster. Lights blazed everywhere; the servants had busied themselves to some effect. And there was Pompey clad in no more than a tunic yet looking like the personification of Mars oh, he was wonderful! He might even have confided in her, for his eyes did take her presence in. But at the same moment Varro arrived in startled haste, and Antistia's chance to share personally in whatever was causing the excitement vanished. "Varro, Varro!" Pompey shouted. Then he whooped, a shrill and eldritch sound with nothing Roman in it; just so had long dead Gauls whooped as they spilled over the Alps and took whole chunks of Italy for their own, including Pompey's Picenum. Antistia jumped, shivered. So, she noticed, did Varro. "What is it?" "Sulla has landed in Brundisium!" "Brundisium! How do you know?" "What does that matter?" demanded Pompey, crossing the mosaic floor to seize little Varro by both shoulders and shake him. "It's here, Varro! The adventure has begun!" "Adventure?" Varro gaped. "Oh, Magnus, grow up! It's not an adventure, it's a civil war and on Italian soil yet again!" "I don't care!" cried Pompey. "To me, it's an adventure. If you only knew how much I've longed for this news, Varro! Since Sulla left, Italy has been as tame as a Vestal Virgin's lapdog!" What about the Siege of Rome?'' asked Varro through a yawn.