“Do you see what I mean? I shall not have to go to Syria and I’ll send the very best man for that job who can be found on earth. If anybody knows what I’m doing they’ll say that Almo is a lunatic and I am another to send him. But nobody will ever know and if everybody knows, what do I care. Father knew a good man when he saw one. I’ll take his word for it that Almo proved himself the greatest genius for desert fighting that the Republic has produced in a hundred years. And I’ll follow my own intuition that a swashbuckler whose own thoughts prompted him to challenge the King of the Grove as a cure for tedium, who had the nerve to carry out the idea and the skill to win a hundred and six fights in ten months must be a good all-round man and a real man clear through. I take it that being put in supreme command of a great expedition will brush the cobwebs from Almo’s brain and restore him to himself. Do you follow my idea?”
“I cannot conjecture,” Brinnaria replied, “how you expect to carry it out.”
“Simple enough,” said Commodus. “I’m not the man my Father was, not by a great deal. I am a natural all-round athlete, but I was never born to be an Emperor. All the same, when I buckle down to my job, I’m not such a bad hand at it. If I have a talk with Almo I’ll swing him my way without half trying.”
“But,” Brinnaria interposed, “even you, even as Emperor and Chief Pontiff, cannot free a man who has become King of the Grove. There is no record of any form of exauguration for a Priest of Diana of the Underworld. There would be an outcry. Once King of the Grove a man must live out his life as King of the Grove.”
“My dear,” he said, “there are more ways of killing a dog besides choking him to death on fresh curds.”
“You talk,” he said, “as if you had gone over all the records. Don’t you recall two cases where a King of the Grove died without being killed?”
“Two challengers were brought forward,” she said, “and they fought each other.”
“Just so,” said he, “and don’t you recall one case where a King of the Grove disappeared and was believed to have run away, but was never found, nor any trace of him?”
“Well,” he pressed her, “what was done in that case?”
“Two challengers fought each other that time also,” she allowed.