The Book of the Beast (14 page)

To please her, he said.

He had loved her then, she said.

He apologised, which was cruel.

She cried. On his cue, he left her.

The East-West Road ran straight through the town, straight through the forum, with its market, law-courts, temples, straight on to the East Gate and the Fort. The plan of the town was still pure, whatever else crumbled, whatever slums accrued, the two highways unswerving as ruled lines, the original buildings symmetrical. Above the town, to the south, west, east and north, were the endless ups and downs of the hills that held the river valley. The route east, the view of the hills, even the bustle of the forum—when going in
this
direction—cheered Vusca up. The sight of the Fort itself, though it was the cradle of his disappointments (his life had had little besides), had a look of home which the Insula Juna never did.

Vusca was a man who preferred to be among men. He distrusted women, did not understand them. The life of the legions suited him, with its fellowship of the march, camp or barracks, the orderly routines marked out by trumpets. Though he had yearned in his youth for more active service, now even that had stopped its gnawing. The practice skirmishes of his corps of Velites ably substituted. He realised it was a kind of make-believe. They all indulged in it: the code—that they were ready to repel the hordes, and could do so; the symbol—of Rome astride the world for ever. Rome was not going to last. She was tearing her own heart out. For the hordes, they were those same smiling tribesmen who had their hutment the other side of the river, who bartered with the Fort and in the market, sent stray daughters to train in the brothel, or crossed the water entirely to take up Roman ways, like Lavinia’s grandfather. One knew the horde was still there, of course, behind the friendly obligement, the tunic or
dalmatic
. It could turn into a snarl, that smile. And then what? The other bet was, Rome would pull the Auxilia in as she had pulled in her legions already, leaving the frontiers bare, letting go. Then you must decide on marching home to the Mother you could scarcely remember. Or deserting.

No, Vusca did not delude himself. He simply, along with the other centurions, and doubtless the Pilum Commander, lived in the moment.

One thing, if the Auxilia was recalled, he could go to Rome and leave Lavinia here.

He was thinking of this in the forum, and its wryness amused him, when he saw a woman coming down the steps of the Temple of the Father and Mother.

There was nothing in that, everyone but the Christians -and sometimes even some of those—went to make offerings to Jupiter or Juna Anga. But she was not dressed like a Roman. Her garments looked more Eastern, and her face was covered by a wisp of veiling. There was an element in her walk, provocative, liberated, that suggested the hetaera rather than the she-wolf. A Greek prostitute’s freedom.

No doubt she was a whore, for she had that other look, too.

Something about her aroused him, even as he sat on the horse fresh from Lavinia’s howling. Desire did not come so readily now. He wondered what it was about this one that stirred it. He was not even close enough to catch her perfume.

Behind her trotted a slave, hurrying with a parasol like a huge pansy-flower to shade her mistress. They went away towards the Julian Baths.

Vusca rode on towards the Fort.

“There’s a new woman. She’s set up house behind the Julian Baths. The chief Lupa’s roaring. Reckons this one will put her girls out of business.”

Dianus laughed, and the dark sunlight of evening glinted on his eyes and on the silver of his service bracelets.

“Ah?” said Vusca cautiously.

“An Eastern bit, or so they say. I’ve not been there. Yet. Her name’s some foreign thing, Lilu, Lillit—so they call her Lililla.”

“If she’s an Easterner, she’ll be a Christian.”

“The Christians can’t be whores, their thighs
are
done up,” said Dianus. “This one worships properly.”

“I maybe saw her,” said Vusca.

“You maybe did. Come and see her again. Or do you want to go back to your wife?”

It was dusk, and up on the roof-walk of the Light Tower the men were igniting the brazier. As they walked away from the Fort, the flame fountained behind them, Dis Light, for a guide to the river traffic, for % warning to any dreamer on the hills:
Rome is here, and Rome is still awake
.

The evening was thundery, close and hot. Fireflies blinked in the bushes of a garden. Dianus swaggered.

He was not a man Vusca had ever liked, but yet, like a brother he had grown up with, he was accustomed to him, prepared to be loyal.

A trumpet sounded
gates
from the Fort rampart, now several streets behind. The whole town took its timing from there, rising with the sun at
cockcrow
, securing its door at
gates
. All but the wine-shops and eating houses which were blooming out on the dark like the fireflies.

They did not go by way of the forum, but cut around to the south. Beyond the Julian Baths was a maze of side lanes. Here Dianus located a modest house that had once belonged to a minor official of the basilica.

A baker’s that took up the front was closed, but over the house door hung a shining lamp of expensive Aegyptian alabaster.

Dianus rapped on the door.

After a pause, a male voice spoke up. “Who’s there?”

“I,” said Dianus flirtatiously, “and a friend.”

“Which house are you seeking?” obtusely demanded the porter through the door.

“The house of Lililla.”

“This is that house. Is my mistress known to you?”

“Soon she will be,” said Dianus. And losing patience, battered on the door.

A growl answered from within, not human but canine. Dianus stepped off.

“By the Victory! I think there’s a real wolf in there.”

“Take yourself away,” advised the porter, over the growling. “My mistress receives no one without invitation. There are men and dogs here.”

“So I can tell,” bawled Dianus. “Keep her then, your bloody mistress. But she’d have done better not to fall out with the Fort.” He waited, listening to see if this did any good. It did not. With a volley of oaths Dianus strode off. Vusca kept pace. He was more tickled than anything. Whores came three to the denarius, but this one, as he had suspected, traded by the Greek mode.

He considered the woman Lililla slowly. This was not the hot haste of his passages along the west hill after Lavinia.

Lililla was available for an honest price. The dealings of harlotry, if not of women, he grasped.

Eight mornings later, when the drills, and a store inspection, were over, Retullus Vusca went up to the forum and searched among the stalls and shops. He ended up in the cave of discreet Barbarus (a blond hill tribesman, now more civilised-Latinised than half the town, and capable of speaking Greek more honed than the Pilum Commander’s, though this latter was not difficult). Here was found a suitable article.

A painted vase of Aegyptian
nard -
a most generous, but not effusive, down-payment. It was dispatched to the house of Lililla by one of Barbarus’ own sons. The papyrus read: “This from your admirer Centurion Velitis Re. Vusca. If he calls upon you this evening, may he hope not to be refused?”

A smaller papyrus reached him before sunset at the Fort.

It answered: “Lord, I touch your gift to my heart. Come.”

This time the door was opened and the porter bowed.

Lamplight, and a pleasant foreign smell of other oils and incenses filled the lobby. The atrium was the old way—it was an old house—partly unroofed, with a tank of water, but it had been made attractive with Greek lamps and the paint redone on the walls. At the shadow’s edge stood a man with two wolfhounds on leash, just visible, a tactful reminder.

In the central room Rome ceased, and Par Dis too. It became an Eastern pavilion. Silk ropes, draperies, images of ivory. On glowing charcoal burned sticks of something that the Pharaohs might have favoured.

Vusca found himself suddenly excited and nervous, like some boy.

He planted himself firmly, and as the slave went out, looked round and saw the woman, Lililla.

She reclined on a couch, in a fringed robe that gleamed like water even as she breathed. Her lips were nacred and her eyes all kohl. She got up without hurry, and came towards Vusca. When she reached him, she kneeled down with the liquid boneless movement of a snake. She brushed his foot with her fingers and got up again, and looked into his face.

“The centurion honours me,” she said. Her voice was low.

He discovered he had no words. He had meant to play her game with her, all courtesy and fakes. But everything about her was sex. Though she was not to be tumbled like the she-wolves, heated and quick, every line of her said
Take me
.

He would have to leave it all to her.

Perhaps that was the idea.

She conducted him to the couch, and gave him a wine bowl of silver. Lovers performed acts thereon that, when he caught glimpses, startled him. The wine was black and spicy. Something in it?

Soon, she made him lie back upon the couch. She undid his clothes with damning competence. She began to do things to his body, with her hands, with a fan of feathers she took up, with smooth strigils of enamel. He need do nothing. She worked on him like a complacently smiling physician. She removed her own garment only when he had showed himself ready, as if to reward him. She was small, with round breasts, round heavy hips, an indented waist, strong thighs. Her feet and ankles, like her hands and wrists, her face, were delicately shaped. She was fleshy but firm, like a satiny fruit. Her lips were the same. When she absorbed his penis into her mouth he was half alarmed. She seemed to have no teeth.

When she drew on him, he almost could not check himself. He held back with some trouble, wanting to possess her. She seemed to read this from his eyes, let him go and mounted him, and took him in again at the second mouth, the mouth he wanted most.

She performed all the labour, she also controlled him with a wicked, subservient mastery, not permitting him to ejaculate at first, reining him by a strange pressure at the base of the column. When his seed did spurt, it came in a convulsion. He had seldom if ever known a climax so intense. He found, astonished when she removed herself from him, that she had also penetrated him.

She went away briefly, while he lay there, and returned freshly robed, carrying the wine-cup, which she offered on her knees.

Unlike the other whores, she had made no pretence of her own pleasure. Neither had she shown a whore’s aversion, any impatience or indifference. She had been created for his use. It was as natural as that.

When he had drunk the wine and sat up, she said, “It grieves me that my lord must leave me so soon. But I too have some tiresome business that must be completed this evening. I shall number the days, until my lord’s return.”

Vusca was better able to take up the game, now. He said, “I’d meant to buy you a present, Lililla, but found nothing worthy of you. If I left this purse, perhaps you may know of some small thing that might divert you a moment?” He reached among his clothes and handed her the purse, open just enough she could see he had been generous again.

“My lord’s kindness will enhance any gift a thousand times,” said she.

Vusca was aware his kindness would go straight into the coffer.

When he left he was untired, for she had done all the work, and the extreme ejaculation seemed to have robbed him of nothing. He felt fit and jaunty, and congratulated himself on having found her. Though she was rather costly, he could afford a luxury now and then. He had no others.

He began to visit Lililla quite regularly every third or fourth week. He did not know who her other clients were (certainly not Dianus). They were reticent, and so was he.

He and she never talked, beyond short beginning and concluding euphemisms. She wanted no conversation. She wanted, though never appeared interested in, only money. On several occasions, if he was willing, they did things he had never before heard of, let alone experienced. These things were never strenuous on his part, and she seemed a creature with wax for bones. She always welcomed him smiling, and with an obeisance. Her face was not loving, or liking, bored or sly. It simply
was
, without pretence.

She was perfect.

Until, near the summer’s end, Retullus Vusca went to the house of Lililla and everything altered.

That was a rainy twilight, with a lilac tinge to the hills and sky. Even the stones and plaster, the tiled roofs, had a mauve, wet, lizardskin sheen.

He knocked, the porter admitted him. In the lobby he smelled that the aroma of the place was wrong.

The gums burning were swarthier, more cloying. In the tank of the atrium the rain plopped. They walked around under the covered area, and the man with the dogs was absent.

The central room was in a mist, a sort of damson gloaming like the streets outside.

The slave shut the doors. Vusca saw where the smoke came from. A large skull, perhaps of a bear, sat on one of the inlaid tables, and resins were fuming out of it.

She was on the far side, dim through the smitch.

He said harshly, “By the Bull, can’tyou get rid of that thing.”

Then she stood up, and he saw, with a peculiar clutch somewhere in his loins, that she was clad like some kind of priestess. One breast was bare, and her body bound in a tight garment crossed diagonally by white fringes. On her head was a wig of mulberry black, in ringlets with silver discs on them. Her arms were gripped by bangles of slick black lacquer.

Was this some new sexual gambit? He did not care for it if it was.

“Lililla—’ he said.

She said, “Lord, I have had omens. When this happens, I am not my own. Come here, you must attend.”

He was disgusted. Very nearly frightened. And there was the same slithering in his veins he had felt at the initiation to the Rites of Mithras, when he was only seventeen.

He had a veneration for the gods. After a minute, he went to her, and when she told him to sit, did so, gazing at her through the choking smut from the skull.