Authors: Douglas Jackson
'I don't know,' Rufus lied. 'He comes at night. He spends time with Bersheba. He talks, but I don't listen.'
The Greek shrugged. 'No matter. There will be other occasions, and perhaps you will find it profitable to listen. If you have something for me, hang a white cloth on the barn door. The next day, be at the little fountain behind the palace of Augustus at the seventh hour and I will meet you there. You can never have too many friends, Rufus. And I would make a very dangerous enemy.' The last words were said with a gentle smile, but Rufus understood the threat that lay behind them.
Narcissus then asked about Caligula's banquets. Of course, he knew Rufus attended. Who else was there? What was said? Who was chosen and what was her husband's reaction? Small things, but morsels that could be traded for other morsels. Here, Rufus was happy to supply the intelligence the Greek sought, and Claudius's freedman left satisfied. Rufus wondered if he would have been quite so sanguine if he had known what passed between Caligula and Claudius at the last banquet.
'Tell your Greek to keep his long nose out of other people's business, Uncle Claudius, or I will have the guards cut it off,' the Emperor had warned.
XIX
It had been more than three months since Rufus was last ordered to the palace and he allowed himself to believe he was safe from further summonses. So the shock was all the greater when he was shaken awake in the middle of the night to find a young legionary officer in a red tunic standing over his bed.
'You are to come with me,' the soldier ordered brusquely and hauled the blankets back.
While he followed his escort through the endless corridors and stairways, Rufus had time to wonder why the man wore the uniform of a regular unit rather than the black of the Praetorians, normally the only military presence in the Palatine complex.
His confusion increased when they reached their destination on one of the upper floors of the grand building originally built by Tiberius. He was certain he'd never been in this part of the palace before. A great gilt-inlaid door, intricately carved with scenes of hunting and the games, barred their way. The young soldier stepped forward and knocked gently, then turned and walked away without a word.
As Rufus stood with his heart thundering against his ribs, the door opened a few inches to reveal a pair of jet-black, almond eyes. Before he could say a word a slim arm slipped through the gap and a hand took his wrist and pulled him inside.
At first, the room was in complete darkness and his head spun as his senses were deluged by the musky scent of exotic perfumes so thick he could taste them on his tongue. A shiver ran through his body, but not one of fear. He heard a gentle rustling, which seemed to emanate simultaneously from both his right and his left, before the light of first one then a second tiny lamp pierced the gloom at opposite sides of the room. They were followed in quick succession by a dozen others until a paradise was revealed. The space before him was a vast treasure house. At its centre was a massive canopied bed hung with thick drapes of imperial purple. A hundred gold statues lined the walls, gods and goddesses vying for position with emperors and kings. But the object which drew his eyes was a human form, almost inhuman in its perfection. It stood naked on a plinth at the foot of the bed, the light of the lamps glinting yellow on the cold white of its marble flesh. From a handsome young face sightless eyes stared in concentration. The figure bent forward from the waist, his left hand close to his right knee and his right arm extended behind him, strong fingers curled round the discus he was about to hurl. With a genius it was impossible not to appreciate, the sculptor had created life from the lifeless. Each vein over his subject's tensed muscles stood out upon the flesh as if it pulsed with heart blood. Each rib was visible beneath the perfectly formed pectorals of his chest.
'Do you like my immortal?'
The voice close to his ear made him jump.
'He will always be as he is, frozen at his most beautiful. He will never grow old. His flesh will never wrinkle, nor his eyes grow dim.' Drusilla's voice was soft and Rufus could feel her breath on the back of his neck. 'If only human beauty could be so everlasting, instead of blossoming for a mere instant before fading into the ugliness of age. Do you think I am beautiful?'
Rufus hesitated, not sure he wanted to see what was behind him, but her hands descended gently on his shoulders and turned him to face her.
She wore a diaphanous robe that clung to her flesh like a second skin where it touched. Here too was perfection of the human form. Yes, he decided, she was beautiful, but it was a sharp-edged beauty that he understood could bleed him dry. He felt the heat radiating from her flesh and caught the slightest hint of the natural scent of her body in his nostrils. The robe highlighted shadows and clefts of unthinkable promise. For a moment, he forgot where he was and who he was with. Then his mind split in two. One part of him wanted what was about to happen with an urgency he had never experienced. Drusilla's blatant sexuality lit a fire in his lower belly that threatened to consume him. But there was another Rufus, Rufus the slave, who realized he was in more danger than he had ever been in in his life. And this Rufus was screaming at him to escape while there was still time.
'My lady, p-please . . .' he stuttered.
Her lips parted and her face edged towards his. Then her perfect nose wrinkled and she gave an unimperial snort.
'Yeugh. You stink.' She clapped her hands twice and from behind a curtain at the far end of the bedchamber emerged the girl who had let him into the room, quickly followed by a second who was her exact twin. They were short and compact, with hair so black it was almost blue, and their slanted eyes twinkled with mischief.
'Bathe him and bring him to me,' the Emperor's sister commanded, turning her back on Rufus and disappearing behind the drapes of the giant bed.
The two girls looked him over and nodded to each other. Then, while the first, whom Rufus identified by the red cord she wore round the waist of her shift, disappeared back behind the curtain, the second approached and motioned for him to remove his tunic. He shook his head. She reached to do it herself, and, alarmed, he pushed her hand away. With a grunt, she stepped back and stared at him, perplexed.
Drusilla's annoyance was clear through the thick drapes. 'If you do not remove your clothing, I will tell my brother I found you hiding in my bedchamber. I'm sure you would not want that.'
Reluctantly, Rufus complied, pulling his tunic over his head as the first sister reappeared with a small basin, but he still hesitated before giving up his loincloth.
He closed his eyes as they bustled around him, turning him this way and that. More disconcerting than his nakedness, or the touch of the soft, warm cloths they used on every part of his body, was the way they cooed to each other like a pair of mating turtledoves. He tried to keep his mind empty. This was just another ordeal a slave must endure. But the more places they found that needed their attention, the more difficult it became to ignore their ministrations and he realized with anguish that his shame was literally growing with each passing second. He swallowed hard and thought desperately for some escape route from this pleasurable agony, then opened his eyes wide in shock as he felt a delicate hand take him in its grip and raise him up so another could have access to his scrotum. The touch of the cloth there had a gentle urgency and now there was no hiding his desire.
'Waste not a drop, or you will have the flesh off each other's backs.'
The voice was answered by a delighted twittering from Rufus's tormentors. The girls took a step back and surveyed their handiwork. They must have been satisfied by what they saw, for the sister with the red cord took him and led him towards the bed.
Rufus stood before the purple curtain knowing what was required of him, but without the nerve to take the next step. A small hand pushed him in the back and he pitched through the thick cloth and landed in an ungainly heap on a soft coverlet.
At first he was dazzled. The area within the curtains was a gilded sanctuary, lit by four scented lamps suspended from the poles which held the drapes aloft. It was dominated by a huge bed scattered with soft pillows, and the poles were carved with graphic sexual scenes featuring combinations of male and female figures involved in various erotic acts, many of which seemed unlikely, if not impossible. But it was the slim figure on the bed which held his attention. Drusilla was lying on her back, completely naked, with the tawny mane of her hair draped around her head and her arms thrown above it. Her pale flesh glowed like molten gold in the lamplight. Not a single hair blemished the smooth lines of her body and Rufus's eyes devoured every curve and hollow of that beautiful form. She had faultless, rose-tipped breasts that rose and fell as she breathed; a smooth, flat stomach and generous, wide hips. She smiled at him from under hooded lids, and for the first time he was aware of the scent of her arousal and noticed the liquid sheen on the fingers of her right hand.
'Am I not beautiful, puppy dog?' she asked, in a voice husky with desire. 'Am I not the treasure you have dreamed of, but could never have?'
He tried to reply, but his throat was so dry he couldn't speak. He was kneeling near the foot of the bed, just close enough for her to reach him. She put out her hand, but the enormity of what he was doing had eaten into Rufus's brain and it in turn sent a panic-stricken message to his body. That which had been so impressive only moments before faded away from her.
To his astonishment she laughed lightly and sat up, her breasts rippling with the movement.
'Better still, puppy dog. I relish a contest, none more. First we must both relax.' She reached to the side of the bed and picked up a vial filled with a red liquid. 'A massage, I think.'
She gave him the bottle, which was warm in his hand, before lying back with her hands behind her head, exposing the full length of that sensuous body to him.
'Now, shoulders first. Come, place yourself over me, with one knee to either side,' she instructed him. 'Now!' The sharpness in her voice as he hesitated startled Rufus and he almost spilled the precious liquid. He did as he was ordered, aware of the closeness of her belly beneath him.
'Pour a little of the oil at the base of my throat, just there. That's right. Now place a drop on your hands and put them round my neck.'
Again, Rufus obeyed, as gently as he was able, conscious that his hands felt huge and rough against the slender vulnerability of her throat.
'Rub the oil in with your fingers. Mmmhhh. No need to be quite so delicate – I am not a toy. Yes, that is much better. Just think, you could choke the life out of me before anyone had time to stop you.' She laughed as he flinched. 'Now move out to my shoulders. Use your fingers. You have such strong fingers.'
Rufus felt her body shift beneath his hands as he smoothed the slippery liquid into her flesh and the sensation moved something in him, because he felt himself grow again, this time even more than before. She noticed it too.
'That's better, puppy dog. Now, some oil here.' She pointed to a spot between her breasts.
This time he responded immediately, and he did not need her instructions to smooth the viscous liquid right and left, his hands moving over the firm orbs and feeling her tiny nipples grow hard under his fingers. She shuddered below him.
'Yes, like that, puppy dog. You are a fast learner.'
He moved his hands over her, quickening the rhythm until she gave a little gasp: 'Lower.'
Lower, across the polished ivory of her abdomen and further, where he found he had been wrong: between her navel and that other place was a thin line of fine down. He tried to keep his eyes from her sex, but now he was drawn to it like a moth to a nightlight. Instinctively, he reached to touch it.
'Not yet.' Her hand grasped his wrist. He looked up at her and saw that her eyes were no longer hooded, but wide open and aflame with a naked hunger. 'Start again at my feet, puppy dog, and move upwards.'
'Like this?'
He did as she ordered. He was becoming familiar with the game now, and he made his way over ankle, calf and the long silky curve of inner thigh with agonizing slowness, and when he eventually reached that place she shuddered again.
All the time his hands had been on Drusilla's compliant young body, Rufus's own desire had grown, and the molten feeling in his guts had moved inexorably into his groin. He was so hard now it was painful. He knew something had to happen and was just about to drop on top of her when she shook her body like a dog emerging from a river pool.
'Now you.'
She pushed him on to his back and took the oil from him. Now it was he who experienced the sensations which had so pleased her. The feel of the fingers first hard, then soft, forcing the oil into the very fabric of his body. And there was something else. With the oil came a slight burning sensation, intense and erotic, so that his whole body seemed to pulsate with energy.
When she reached the object of her desire, it throbbed and twitched in her hands.
'Now, puppy dog, now you are ready.'
She raised one knee and with an easy movement slipped on top of him.
Rufus immediately felt as if he had been enveloped in warm honey and he groaned with the pleasure of it. By now each was so aroused that the heat of her body on his could have only one outcome, and as she began to rock back and forth and her muscles contracted around him he exploded inside her with an agonized cry.
Undeterred, Drusilla maintained her grip on him and slowly increased the tempo of her movements until, grinding herself into his lower body, she too climaxed with a series of stifled gasps that ended in a long, drawn-out moan.
Rufus opened his eyes a few minutes later and realized he had been dozing. The warmth of the room, the softness of the bed and the power of their lovemaking had combined to rob him of his instinct for self-preservation. Now a thrill of fear shot through him as he absorbed the full extent of what he had done. He moved to raise himself, but a slim arm across his chest forced him back and he turned his head to find Drusilla staring at him with open curiosity.
'My brother would kill you if he knew you were here,' she said, as if she was discussing the next day's weather. 'He is terribly jealous.'
There seemed nothing to say, but to stay silent was to let her believe she frightened him, and he sensed a challenge in her words.
'And will he?'
'Only if he finds out, but he will only find out if I choose it. The only people who know you are here are my little doves and Lucius, the soldier who brought you here. My little doves will not tell, because they cannot – they have been dumb from birth. Lucius will not tell, because he has more to lose than you.'
Her hand stroked the length of his thigh. 'You really are terribly beautiful, puppy dog, almost as beautiful as my immortal. What a pity your beauty will not last as long as his. Life is so cruel, don't you think?'
She said the words wistfully, but they seemed to trigger a change in her because her eyes clouded and the pitch of her voice changed.
'My brother is cruel. He knows I love him, yet he sifts through my love seeking out imperfections which might displease him. Only yesterday he wondered aloud if he should have me tortured so he could measure exactly the extent of my devotion. When he places his hands round my throat, just as you did, he wonders at its slimness, and compares it to a swan's, then informs me it would take only a single word from him to have it severed by an axe.'