Julia, in order to enjoy the fish, raised herself on her elbow and inclined her body crosswise on the couch. This removed her thigh. For the first time she spoke to Lucanus in conversation, and with another of her charming smiles. “You do not like the fish, Lucanus?” she asked, and now, for some peculiar reason, her voice was not so objectionable to the young Greek, whose head was swimming curiously.
Her breast was against his shoulder now, and his eye could not help straying to it, and he thought, Though she is not young, she has considerable beauty, if no shame. He murmured, “I come from an austere family, and luxuries are unknown to me.”
She smiled, and a deep pink dimple appeared at the corner of her red mouth. She lifted her plucked and gold-dusted eyebrows quizzically. “We must remedy the austerity,” she said. She touched his cheek lightly with the back of her soft hand, then pinched it. The word ran quickly, even among the drunken diners. Julia had made her favors known. From this time on this handsome young Greek would be a formidable power in the palace, and some of the senators, less drunk than the others, meditated briefly. Hyacinth and Oris flushed, exchanged glances, then gave Lucanus a look of the deepest hatred, which he ignored. The two athletes fell to brooding.
Perhaps the musicians and the singers had moved closer, in the background, to the tables, for Lucanus could hear them with a strong and sudden clarity. A woman with a rich and eloquent voice began to sing.
“Thou dost ask me why I weep, my maid.
Now hark, while I tell thee why.
I weep for a corpse that is barely laid,
And the light in a vanished eye.
For lips I loved and no longer love:
For these do I groan and sigh.
“Better it is to love in vain
And yearn for an unknown bliss,
And to be enthralled in an endless pain
For a joy I must ever miss,
Than it is to yawn in fulfilled desire
And flee from an offered kiss!”
Julia’s lips were against Lucanus’ ear, and he kept himself from shrinking, partly from a warning instinct and partly because he could not insult even this debauched woman. She whispered, “ ‘And yearn for an unknown bliss!’ ”
Now Lucanus understood what she intended for him, as he looked into her strange, dilated eyes and saw the wetness of her lips and the swelling of her breast. He was appalled, and his disgust was a strong nausea in his throat. Julia’s blandishments had not been the mere flirtatiousness of a shameful woman, bestowed on any man. They had been invitations and commands. A sudden anger seized him, and a feeling of personal degradation. Julia was holding her own goblet to his lips, and he was forced to drink the wine. Though he was filled with stormy emotions, he was also dizzy. The tables and their occupants swayed gently before his eyes, as if they floated on a vessel. Lucanus said to himself, unable to move from the hand that now lay against his neck, caressingly, I am not only disgusted and frightened and repelled; I am drunk and hot. Julia’s fingers were lightly and delicately exploring his neck, and so expert were her touches, so knowing, that he felt an answering heat. Urges and thrills suddenly ran over his flesh; his sense of shame only heightened them. He gulped wine.
Julia laughed softly and understandingly. She removed her hand, for the servants were bearing in another even huger platter on which lay a wheel of young suckling pigs wallowing brownly and juicily in a pungent sauce and roasted oranges and hearts of artichokes. This was accompanied by other platters containing roasted veal and assorted delicacies. The servants again wiped the fingers of the guests and gave fresh napkins.
The noise in the portico took on formidable proportions. Shrieks of wild laughter burst from the women, and hoarse shouts from the men. The smack of kisses, the smack of palms against soft flesh, resounded against the music. Imitating Julia, the women had stripped to the waist, and white, pink, and amber breasts gleamed in the lamplight. Lucanus stared avidly; he was no longer the objective physician; he did not think of this turbulence of naked bosoms as a display of mere mammalian organs. The writhing thighs of the women fascinated him, and stirred him. He forgot to abstain from the wine, and as his goblet was refilled he drank of it thirstily. The whole bacchanalian scene merged into one great surge of glittering color, nudity, sensual odors, and blazing many-hued lights. It seemed to him that the columns of the portico had a moonlike glimmer of their own, and were illuminated from within, and that the statues in the entrances to the grottoes were alive and beckoning solely to him with obscene and libertine gestures.
He started. Julia’s lips were against his throat, and her hand wandered. A powerful urge filled him. She seemed to him the most beautiful and desirable of women. He shuddered with a shameful ecstasy. Her eyes, smoldering, laughed up at him, and she nodded as if satisfied, and lifted herself away from him, wetting her pulsing mouth. Then she capriciously and mockingly devoted herself to her former favorites, who had been meditating Lucanus’ death. But the traces her fingers had left on Lucanus burned like fire.
Time became endless for Lucanus, but also hotly imminent, dazzling, seething with clangorous desires, confusion, momentary darknesses, and silences filled with shifting rainbows and stupendous clamorings. He kept blinking his eyes to clear them of mists of rose and silver and blue and scarlet; his ears thundered with voices and music. Once he asked himself, believing the question the most serious and important in the world: Who am I? There were delightful tastes on his tongue; the wine was maddening. He lurched against the table; he clung to the edge of the couch for fear of falling off, for it swung under him. He was certain that his thoughts contained the wisdom of the ages, that he had come on tremendous secrets gushing in to him from the eternities. Julia’s left hand, on his thigh, seemed a delicious pressure. I have missed so much, he thought solemnly, and his eyes filled with tears of self-pity. This company was delightful, and all the guests perfect as gods and goddesses, charming, wonderful in their friendship, sophisticated, and loving. The moon was the shield of Artemis; he studied it, expecting that the radiant virgin goddess would emerge from behind it, argent in her beauty. The statues danced in the grottoes frenziedly. The wreath of rosebuds slipped on Lucanus’ head, and he meticulously, and with slow and careful gestures, replaced it in the proper position. For some reason this appeared absolutely necessary. I am certainly not drunk, he said to himself, severely. It is just that never before have I known what it is to live. Again his eyes wet with tears, and he sobbed for his former deprived self. His hands and feet were numb, but his body throbbed. He did not think of Rubria and Sara. But the diffused image of them remained, like faceless ghosts, heightening his present dazed exhilaration. His limbs sprawled.
Eons passed, quivering with pleasure, with immeasurable thoughts, with conversation. Lucanus came to himself, very briefly, to discover that he was conversing in happy earnestness with a lady near him, and, apparently, had been so conversing for some time. But what he had said to hold her in such black-eyed enthrallment he did not know. He shook his head, as if puzzled, and she murmured to him, “You speak ravishingly. Continue.” He shook his head again, and that was another shining hiatus. Yet all his senses were illuminated, heightened; he retired within himself for a while to reflect joyously on this. He was excessively drunk.
The slaves carried out a broad platform of wood and placed it on the grass near the portico. They threw baskets of rose leaves over the guests and sprayed the warm air with perfume. The moon seemed to step closer, until she seemed within a hand’s touch, and a brisk breeze rose from the garden, and the tops of cypresses crowned themselves with spikes of silver fire. Dancers appeared, wrestlers, singers, actors, but they performed almost unnoticed, for the majority of the guests were either snoring noisily, engaged with a neighbor, or blinking stupidly. But Lucanus watched the athletes, trying to see them through a rosy mist. He said to the lady whom he had enthralled, “They are a poor demonstration.” Oris was asleep, but Hyacinth heard Lucanus’ words and cried, “They do
not use magic! They are honest men.” His eye sparkled with rage and jealousy.
Lucanus said with great solemnity, “I could vanquish them all.” He drank, nodded, and repeated with heavy emphasis, “I could vanquish them all.”
Julia turned to him and kissed his shoulder and murmured, “Yes, so I know, my divine Apollo.”
There was a sharp blare of trumpets, and the colored lamps beamed more resplendently on the platform. Slaves threw roses upon it. Five young men, their legs and feet covered to resemble the goatish legs and hoofs of Pan, their loins circled with wreaths of red poppies, sprang upon the platform with high and delirious cries. They held pipes to their lips, and, accompanied by the other music, filled the air with thin and half-mad pipings. Their wild and vivid eyes darted about like dragonflies as they danced, cavorted, and bounded into the air. The pipes assaulted the ear, and even those who snored and drowsed heavily awakened and became interested. The dark gardens were a perfect background for these sensually dancing young men; their cloven hoofs rattled and tapped on the platform; sweat streamed from them; they panted; they circled and pranced, their poppy-covered loins heaving. Their gestures were lewd and inviting, their savagely grinning faces excited passions. The music and the pipings became madder, faster, more demanding.
A group of girls dressed like nymphs in floating white transparent dresses, and crowned with lilies, blew upon the platform, their right arms lifted and holding gossamer veils before their pretty faces. Demurely they danced, their glances shy and apparently unaware of the Pans leaping about them. They evaded clutching hands, singing softly to themselves. The Pans became frenzied; their red tongues emerged, licking the air. The pink bodies of the girls glistened through their garments; their young breasts trembled, their thighs daintily swayed. Their eyes shone behind their veils, glimmering black and blue and brown, and their long hair drifted about them. The Pans bounded higher, frantic and lustful, pursuing the nymphs as they circled and floated, singing.
Lucanus did not know at exactly what moment he became coldly sober, in mind if not in body. He looked at the dancers with sudden disgust and revulsion. He wanted to rise and leave, and his temples pounded. It was as if some awful danger threatened him. But his flesh would not obey his command; it half lay, flaccid, on the couch. He was aware of Julia’s hot breath on his cheek, her hand stroking his arm, her murmurous voice uttering shameless things. Sickness overpowered him, and a loathing for himself. He wished to leap into cool water and cleanse not only his body but his thick hot mouth, and his mind. He looked at the guests, at their partly opened mouths through which their breath gushed, tainted with wine; he looked at the women with their naked breasts, and a kind of horror came to him, a detestation of them and of himself. His eyes burned dryly, and his stomach retched.
The nymphs were screaming with mingled delight and simulated terror, for the Pans had caught them in their nimble arms. The Pans then, to wilder and more rapid music, tore the veils and the garments from the girls and clasped their nude bodies, winding their hairy legs about them. The guests shouted, maddened, and some half rose, screaming. The Pans lifted the girls in their arms, raised them over their heads like living statues, and bore them into the darkness, with animal whinnyings of triumph and desire.
As if this were a signal, every light in the portico and in the gardens was immediately extinguished, and only the moonlight streamed down on grass and trees and the disordered and reeking tables. The guests sat in the following silence, as if stupefied, silent themselves. Then, couple by couple, clinging together, they staggered to their feet and moved away to the waiting grottoes, and into distant gardens where only the moon filtered. Lucanus watched them go, and the powerful loathing was renewed in him.
Then he was alone with Julia and the two athletes. Oris snored, oblivious, and Hyacinth’s face was bloated with lust. When the Empress rose, shimmering in the moonlight, Hyacinth rose with her, but she turned from him. She smiled at Lucanus and took his hand and whispered, “Come,” and drew him to his feet.
His body was still numbed and stunned with wine; his knees trembled under him. But the sense of terrible menace came to him more strongly. Now he could think of Tiberius, the mighty Caesar. He regarded Julia with hatred, and his blue eyes flashed in the silver light. She thought this a sign of eagerness and desire, and threw herself upon his breast. He staggered under the impact, for she was not a slight woman, and he was weak.
Hyacinth, drunk and inflamed with wine and jealousy, circled about Lucanus and Julia, and then seized Lucanus by the shoulder, howling obscenities and threats. Lucanus thrust the Empress from him, and strength returned to his body. He grasped Hyacinth, whirled him around, and flung him violently into Julia’s arms. They fell in a tangled heap of bodies and legs and arms on the couch.
Then Lucanus ran. He ran down the length of the portico, dodging tables and chairs. He ran into the palace. He rushed down the silent polished floor shining under scattered lamps. He heard someone racing behind him, coming closer, and he swung about, his clenched fists raised. But it was only Plotius.
“Quick!” cried the young Praetorian, seizing his arm. “By all the Furies, be quick!”
He swung Lucanus down a marble passageway, long and narrow, and they flew down it like young Mercuries. “Are you mad!” exclaimed Plotius, panting.
“Did you think I should lie with her?” cried Lucanus, infuriated.
“No, but there are less strenuous ways of rejecting a lady,” said Plotius. He groaned. “And I was assigned to you by Caesar as a bodyguard!” He pulled Lucanus to a sudden stop, and his eyes scanned the passageway. Praetorians, yet unaware of their presence, paced with drawn swords at the end. Plotius drew Lucanus behind a huge marble pillar. He whispered now.
“You are in deadly danger. The Augusta will not forget this. She will have your life if possible, for you have humiliated her beyond endurance.” He groaned softly. He took off his helmet and wiped his sweating face with his strong brown arm.
“Listen to me! There is a bronze door eight paces on the left, and officers only have a key, for it leads to our quarters below. I will go on, affect to examine the lock. Then I will engage my men yonder in conversation. At an advantageous moment run to the door I have unlocked, open it swiftly, enter the passageway beyond, and there wait for me.” There was a harsh urgency in his voice.
He glanced behind them from the way they had come. Then with a formidable glare at Lucanus, who was feeling violently sick, he left the young physician. He moved in a swift military fashion down the hallway, and stopped at a door and pretended to examine it. Then he marched along and encountered his men, who stopped and saluted him.
Gasping with his nausea, and with sour eructations spilling upwards into his throat, Lucanus peered around the pillar carefully. He waited until Plotius had maneuvered the Praetorians so their backs were to him. He heard their rough young laughter as Plotius jested with them. Then he ran to the bronze door, swung it open as quietly as possible, and darted into the cold and gloomy passage behind it, and closed the door on his heels. He leaned against the damp stone wall, folded his arms tightly across his belly, and closed his eyes against the thundering pain in his head.
Chapter Thirty
The passageway was narrow as well as dank; little trickles of water ran between the gloomy stones, and the low arched ceiling pressed down. At the end a lantern, feeble and yellow, swung on a hook, and beyond it was another passage, running at right angles. Here was a deep and heavy silence, broken only by the thin tinkle of the water.
After he could control his nausea Lucanus looked about him and thought. It seemed that he had been waiting a considerable time for Plotius. He frowned. Never in his life before had he been suspicious or wary. He reflected that his life had been too sheltered, too restricted, too scholarly, bounded by home, family, and studies. He had been precipitated into a scene and an experience tonight which had left him appalled. He had heard of these orgies; he had seen one or two smaller versions in
Alexandria, which had not moved him, for he had not been part of them. If I revolt so violently now, how will it be when I come fully upon a raw world? Like an infant again?
It disgusted him when he remembered that he had considered Tiberius Caesar only another man, mighty, all-powerful, but only another man. Now he was a terror, ruler of the world, husband to a harpy, master of legions, absolute master of all men. Would he avenge Julia? There was Plotius, devoted to Caesar. Could he be trusted? Had he lured him, Lucanus, into this narrow passageway in order to do him to death? Was he even now with Tiberius, though it was almost dawn, considering these matters? The son of Diodorus Cyrinus could not be executed publicly, as a criminal. His death must be seen by no one, witnessed by no one, and here was the perfect place and the perfect time. Then his body would be thrown into the Tiber, and it would be given out that he had died mysteriously while under the very protection of Caesar.
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