At first she thought it was a fever.
Julia’s forehead seemed warm to the touch and she felt herself perspiring more than usual. She asked to be dressed in a lighter gown, and when this little relieved her, she removed her undergarments and lay in the cool of the garden. She didn’t wish to receive visitors, yet she wasn’t ill. She felt no pain. Her mind was sharp and swift and ideas for household improvements kept suggesting themselves: new experiments for meals, gifts she would find for her children.
Julia felt imaginative. She composed a comic letter to Tiberius in her mind, telling him how much she despised him for everything he had done and would ever do. He was low; this was why her father had never formally adopted him. He was not fit to be a Julian; he and Julia were mismatched from the start. Then she recalled events that had not happened but would make for more sensational reading. Like the time he beat her, the time that he took her forcibly in the mouth, or the time he murdered their child. Then she remembered that the last act was true and she felt the rush of tears at the bad memory. She was further surprised to find that she was not composing the letter in her head at all, but speaking it out aloud to me.
Julia snatched the wax tile from my hand. ‘I was just being silly. It’s a funny letter, not a serious one, Iphicles. Don’t bother me with it now.’
I kept my eyes from her breasts; the nipples were hard and pronounced in her gown.
Then her itch started. It wasn’t an insect bite or a rash – she knew what they felt like – this was something else, something deep inside her, an irritation to be soothed from within. She couldn’t reach it, there was no way to get to it – at least, to begin with.
When Julia awoke the next morning she felt neither refreshed nor at peace. Her sleep had been restless; she’d flown through many dreams but couldn’t remember any of them. When she went to sit up she found that the insides of her thighs were raw. She was scratched and grazed. Further investigation showed that her sex was tender too. Julia was frightened. Had she been assaulted in her sleep? Her feet kicked against something hard at the bottom of the bed. She found a wooden Mutinus Tutunus phallus, sticky to the touch. She threw it out the window.
Julia asked for a physician to attend her and was duly seen by Musa, her father’s favourite. He examined her privates, pondered in silence for some time, and then spoke to her of matters she would normally never have discussed with any man other than her husband. How long had it been since Julia had last had sexual intercourse? She could scarcely remember, but knew it would have been some time before the birth of her last baby. Since then she had barely spoken to Tiberius, let alone slept with him. Her husband’s own health, after all, had been fragile.
Musa frowned. It was unhealthy, he told her, for any adult person to abstain from intercourse for extended lengths of time. Julia needed to be penetrated. Perhaps she could join her husband in Greece? Julia thanked Musa for this suggestion but dismissed him. Afterwards the memory of him touching her was like a ghost upon her skin. Though he was ugly and bearded, his breath had seemed hot on her loins. He had peered at her sex for many minutes, saying nothing at all. When he had spoken to her at last, he had not stood up, clearly hiding something. It was obvious to Julia that her father’s physician desired her as a lover.
Julia’s appetite increased and she ate everything the new slave Martina served her. But the itch wouldn’t go away. Julia found her hands straying to her lap when she tried to occupy herself with household tasks. She removed her undergarments again and felt some comfort from the feel of silk against her skin. It was cooling. She sat in her chair with her legs placed on either side, allowing the tenderness to air. She walked ever faster laps of her garden, her imagination soaring with more comic letters of complaint. Twice she looked around her to be sure that she wasn’t speaking out aloud again, so vivid was her composition.
She didn’t see me as I wrote it all down.
When she varied her path she neared the terrace that led from her bedroom. There was the Mutinus Tutunus nestled inside the acanthus.
That night she nudged the phallus to her cleft, feeling guilty yet elated. She was fully conscious, wanting only relief, caring nothing for the distastefulness of her actions. No slaves were allowed to be near her, though I had my ways of knowing everything, of course. Julia found it easier to sit upon the doll at first, but when no climax was reached, she tried reclining and taking it inside her that way. Still she couldn’t reach a zenith, though she rubbed herself with increasing vigour until her arms ached. She fell asleep, having no idea of the hour. It was dawn.
When Julia woke again the phallus was the first thing she felt for. But the bed was empty. Martina was in attendance. Julia ate the breakfast she brought her carefully, not wishing to appear as ravenous as she felt, casting her eyes to the floor all the while and looking for the fallen Mutinus without mentioning it.
Martina asked her if she had mislaid something.
‘No, no. Nothing at all.’
With Martina dismissed, Julia flew about the room searching properly, turning over tables and emptying chests. She even looked inside the urns. There was no sign of the doll. Then she went to the terrace and shook the plants, beating the leaves, rooting beneath the stalks on her hands and knees. The phallus was gone.
The itch in Julia’s sex intensified. Seemingly carefree, she suggested a day of shopping at the markets behind the Forum Romanum. I accompanied her, but we had barely alighted from the litter when Plancina greeted us gaily. She, too, had felt like a shopping trip – it was a coincidence. Taking Julia by the arm, Plancina proved an inveterate haggler, bargaining every shopkeeper down to nothing. But she wanted only ornaments and fabrics. Julia’s eyes strayed left and right, searching the periphery for the type of stall she knew would be there somewhere. Plancina took them down an unexpected turn and the women found themselves face to face with row after row of phalli. It was a shop for little household gods.
‘Put one of these in your garden, ma’am – ‘ the stallholder juggled a string of them colourfully – ‘It’s a nice fat prick – he’ll make your flowers grow!’
Julia clawed behind her for the purse I carried. ‘I’ll have one – ‘
But Plancina drowned out her words. ‘Disgusting! Don’t you think we know what harlots use them for?’
The stallholder was all innocence. ‘For flowers, ma’am – they’re a good investment. Even harlots like a garden.’
‘You filthy man,’ Plancina railed. ‘Low, base women shove these things inside themselves. They spin on them like tops!’
When Julia was home again, Plancina invited herself to the midday meal and chattered mindlessly while Julia drew a chair right up to the table. Eating with one hand while she touched herself with the other, Julia believed she was unseen.
But when her friend departed, Julia’s reason departed too. She went through every room hunting for implements, things with handles, rolling pins or tubes. There was nothing. In the kitchens she ransacked the vegetables to pluck out anything that might be inserted. There was nothing of size.
When Martina came to Julia’s rooms at the eighth hour to escort her to the baths, she found her mistress in the act of placing the hilt of a sword in her sex. Martina screamed and snatched the weapon away. Julia wept with the shame of it and told her slave that the ailment she had seen Musa about was not abated. It was ten times worse. It was driving her mad.
Martina was kind and patient, though oddly naïve. She had trouble understanding what her mistress’s actual needs were. Did she have an infection? Julia believed that she did, though it was nothing that could be eased with ointments.
Martina pondered further. ‘Does my domina need a man?’
Julia shook her head feverishly. She was a married woman; the daughter of First Citizen Caesar Augustus. She could not have a man. That would make her an adulteress.
Martina tried to grasp this truth. ‘Perhaps my domina needs a slave?’
Julia was incredulous. Her father was proposing an edic
t before the Senate that would impose harsh penalties for immorality. How could Martina not know of this? No woman of high birth could ever couple with slaves.
Martina had no more answers but she persuaded her mistress that the hot and cold waters of the baths could only help, not hinder the problem. Julia let herself be guided, forcing her fingers into knots to keep them away from the hard little bead in her sex. Alone in the litter she mumbled prayers to Juno, and when they neared the Forum Romanum she shouted to Martina and myself as we walked outside, telling us to make the bearers turn and take her to Juno’s temple.
Hidden behind the litter’s curtains, every male voice to be heard from the street was a seduction call to Julia, an invitation to couple, a promise of easing her pain. She covered her ears against them. Juno would save her.
The litter drew to a stop and the bearers lowered the covered transport to the ground. Julia felt for her slippers – one had fallen out on the way. She would have to enter barefoot. Her hair had tumbled from its bun, and with dismay Julia realised she had again forgotten her undergarments. Her gown felt as thin as a spider’s web, clinging to her sweat-soaked breasts and hips. The goddess would strike her for such disrespect.
‘Martina?’ she called. ‘I need you.’ There was no reply, just the distant sound of others in the streets. ‘Iphicles, are you there?’
Julia brushed the curtain aside and saw where she was. It was not the Temple of Juno but a quiet lane somewhere on the Palatine. She stepped out of her litter to the flagstones, looking up and down.
‘Martina? Iphicles!’ The hunchbacked girl was gone, and I with her, along with all six of the litter-bearers.
A single bladder of water was dangling by a cord from the litter roof. Forcing back her panic at this abandonment, Julia took a gulp from it, and then another. She would not fall apart. She drank again. She was the First Citizen’s daughter. She had saved her child from a flash flood and had refound her own legs when the doctors held no hope of it. She had lost two husbands whom she had loved completely, and she still endured without complaint a third who loathed her. She had held her dead baby in her arms, saying not a word of accusation to his murderer. She would see this new peril out then have her servants found and crucified.
She drank the bladder’s final drops. Across the lane the door to a private home was open. The owner was late in receiving his salutatio clients. Julia peered into the half-light and saw the richly painted walls of the atrium. It was a room of taste. She would announce herself and her shocking predicament. She would ask to be taken to the First Citizen, from whom the kind homeowner would receive a reward.
When Julia balanced on the first stepping stone as she went to cross the lane, she felt her abdomen surge. At the second stone, the heat of this reaction made her privates burn. On the third step, she stuck her fingers inside her cleft, although she shouted at herself not to. But her hands wouldn’t be told. She rubbed the firm little bead like a gemstone, her hand growing slick and pungent.
As she entered the door, the gown slipped from her shoulder, exposing her nail-hard nipples to the air. Her garment fell down entirely, bunching around her wrists as she fingered herself with both hands, legs bowed and bent to contain them.
When she saw whose house she had entered her legs gave way beneath her, though her hands stayed fixed in her sex. She writhed on the floor, trying to explain, but her words only came out as gasps. Nothing mattered to the man who embraced her, tearing off his tunica and kicking closed the door to the street.
‘This is not what I want … This is not why I’m here,’ she tried to tell him, but the words died when Jullus pulled away her hands and thrust himself deep inside her.
The itch that had driven her to this moment melted into pleasure and release.
Alone in his lamp-lit study, Octavian reviewed a copy of the speech he had delivered to the Senate. Read out in his characteristic monotone, the words had made a great impact in spite of his poor delivery. He was pleased. Rome would embrace his new edict for the punishment of immorality. The city would be cleansed.
As Octavian slipped the scroll into its canister, an unread letter fell from his pile of correspondence. He recognised the hand as his own. Yet he had not written it. Gaius and Lucius had perfected his style; it was likely from one of them. Octavian opened it.
The letter was an accusation about Jullus.
Ganymede saw the strange naked woman before any of the other whores noticed her. She weaved and lurched through the Forum’s night shadows, her hands plucking at her bare breasts. He stared in amazement at the spectacle, then turned to Calypso, his friend. But the other transvestite had just been bought by a soldier. Ganymede was left alone.
For want of better company in the cold, he called out to the bare woman. ‘Is this how you normally work, sweetheart?’
She tried to focus on him.
‘Aren’t you freezing like that?’
Her flat voice answered from a distance, like a draught of stale air, ‘It’s this heat. I can’t bear this heat.’
Ganymede approached and touched her flesh. She was hot, damp with perspiration. ‘You must have some fire in your cunt,’ he joked. ‘But you’re not the only one like that around here. This place is full of pox. Just don’t tell the customers.’
Her glazed eyes went wide at him. ‘You know the fire? Do you have the same heat inside you?’
Ganymede laughed. ‘My cunt’s as hot as a pot of stew,’ he said, slapping his rear. ‘And that’s what I’m gonna buy with it just as soon as someone gives me the price.’
The woman rubbed at her loins as if a parasite had entered her. ‘The fire burns me whole, it sears my insides. Nothing will put it out, you see. It won’t stop burning me.’
She seemed disturbed in her mind and Ganymede felt uneasy. ‘Go and have a little sleep for a while. That’ll put it right.’
She was staring hard at the childish body beneath his gown. ‘What are you? Are you a girl?’
Ganymede was unsure which way to answer. ‘I’m a girl for whoever pays me to be.’
She grabbed between his legs, squeezing his penis. ‘Please – please help me get rid of it,’ she begged. ‘Relieve me of it.’
He tried to push her hands away but she tugged at him savagely, forcing back the skin. Ganymede looked around him, frightened in the dark. ‘There’s really not much meat down there, sweetheart,’ he said, trying to stay calm. ‘It’s not what they buy me for, anyway.’ A client stopped under a statue to watch their display. Ganymede made a signal. ‘Look out – he might want the two of us.’
The woman fell to her knees and shoved his penis in her mouth, gripping him tight in her teeth.
‘Ow!’ He slapped her head. ‘Get off – you’re biting me!’
She choked on him, trying to stuff all she could of his body inside herself. Ganymede pulled himself free, cursing and striking her with his fists. ‘You’re mad! You’re a bloody witch.’
‘Please help me,’ she sobbed. ‘Please find my father …’
‘Who in the gods’ names are you, you stupid sow?’
When the painted boy came to Palamedes, the First Citizen’s old steward, the functionary was angry. Such filth from the streets should never have been permitted to enter the house. Palamedes wanted answers about how he could have been admitted, but Ganymede was too garbled with the emergency. He repeated only what he had come here to tell.
Palamedes was further enraged upon hearing it, and ran out to the corridor to have the guards arrest him. Ganymede pleaded for his life; he was not a liar. He had seen with his own eyes what he told. He had come to the house of the First Citizen only in his duty as a Roman. That he was a catamite did not decrease his patriotism. Palamedes was the last in the room to bow when Ganymede had finished this avowal. The functionary looked stunned for moment that a prostitute’s loyalty could cause such sentiment in guards, then he saw why they were bowing. Octavian was there and had heard everything.
The First Citizen took
Ganymede aside and asked him to repeat the story. The painted boy felt comforted by the powerful man’s arm around his shoulders and lost his nerves. The things that he had seen tonight, he whispered, made him know how far he’d fallen as a man. Octavian was startled – Ganymede looked little more than twelve. That was his only gift, the catamite confessed. He was twenty-three years old but had scarcely grown hair in his armpits.
Gravely, the First Citizen promised to help him find a new way of earning a living, but only if the story he had told him was true. If it was not, Ganymede would be nailed to a gate.
For the second time in his life the painted whore took an unaccompanied Lord through the streets, though he knew nothing of Octavian’s connection to Tiberius. The First Citizen had insisted that the guards remained at home. He had travelled the streets alone many times, he said; he knew the way and would not be recognised. Indeed, with the catamite at his arm, he would not even be noticed at all – the streets of Rome were filled with stealthy pederasts. Soon they would feel the sting of his edict.
But the Forum Romanum at the hour of Inclinatio was like an underworld, a Rome that Octavian had never seen. Men and women flitted like moths among the columns and stairs. The only light was the moon, and when the clouds covered it, the sounds of the furtive activities amplified.
Ganymede led him past rows of marble heroes – sacred gods and figures from myth and history. The First Citizen’s eyes adjusted and he looked to where the boy pointed.
A group of men – some patrician in dress and others of lower castes – were arranged in a silent circle at the statue of Marsyas. Inside their ranks, another group were less silent. Some were naked, others wore only their swords. Most were laughing. Three of them were engaged in a theatrical performance. Splayed at their centre, with one man at her mouth and another at her sex, the First Citizen’s daughter strained to let the third man plough her proffered anus.
Octavian tapped Ganymede on the shoulder and directed him away. He would be rewarded later. Taking his own sword from its belt, the First Citizen approached the satyr’s statue. When those at the periphery saw him, they at first thought him another spectator and parted to let him join, but when he raised his sword above them they knew his purpose.
Empress Of Rome 1: Den Of Wolves Page 34
