“But it is never enough for the man who can have everything,” Timarchides continued, his tongue flicking playfully into Varro’s ear. “For if I have come this far, why not further?” His hands seized Varro’s buttocks, gently but firmly, prising them apart.
“So tense, Roman?” Timarchides said. “There is no point in resisting. What use was there in resisting when the Roman armies came to Greece? Why stand and fight like Philip and Antiochus, Perseus and Andriscus?”
“I do not know of whom you speak…” Varro pleaded.
“Why should you know?” Timarchides responded. “They are forgotten Greek heroes, who fought for nothing.”
The tip of his penis nudged against Varro’s anus, the olive oil now warm and liquefied, melting the men together.
“My ancestors gave up the fight soon enough, in favor of roads and taxes, prefects and praetors. And what did we give you in return? Answer me, Varro. What has Greece given Rome?”
Varro cleared his throat nervously.
“Philosophy?” he ventured. “The playwrights, Sophocles and-”
Timarchides shoved his cock roughly inside Varro, his hands seizing Varro’s waist, refusing to permit any struggle in any direction.
“Culture!” Timarchides shouted. “Greek culture! How does it feel inside you, Roman?”
Varro gasped, his hands clutching at the edge of the table, his eyes screwed tightly shut.
“It is what I tell myself,” Timarchides laughed, thrusting repeatedly. “Every… time… I… fuck… a Roman…!”
Varro thought of Rome, eternal and ever greater. His mind dwelt on the unstoppable, ever-widening growth of the everlasting city, as her sons forged ever further, bringing the light of civilization to the world. He thought, proudly, of his birth as a citizen of no mean city, and put from his mind all considerations of his fall from grace. He thought not of his loss of freedom, or the course it set him on. A course that brought him here, bent over a table, in a dark, unforgiving room, while a sweating stranger ground against him, causing waves of sharp pain in his bowels, as spurts of hot liquid forced their way inside him.
VIII
It was best to arrive with the others. Best to be one with the crowd, a surging, teeming mass of humanity. Farmers and blacksmiths, wives and daughters, temple maidens and priests, all came to the arena. But most of all there was the rabble-the crowds of men and women who had no true profession. Freed slaves and unemployed laborers, inured to a generation of grain dole and handouts from politicians, drones happy to suck on the teat of Mother Rome, while other, nobler men fought the wars and brought in the wealth.
Successa was one of them now, she imagined. Who would want a disfigured whore, after all? She might find clients in the darkness. She might make an occasional trade at masked orgies. But what long-term client could she ever hope to cultivate? What man would retain her if she removed her mask to show her seething, weeping welts and scars?
Successa smiled all the same, clutching her veil close to her face as she sauntered through the crowd. She passed fruit sellers and sausage sellers, wine merchants and barbecues. She breezed past the sizzle of chicken and mice, and only briefly glanced at the morning doxies. A woman leaning on the wall by one of the staircases pulled down her gown to reveal full, veiny breasts. The man passing by smacked his lips approvingly, but did not reach into his pouch for coins. Nor was he likely to. Not before the first blood of the day was shed; not before the crowd felt their own blood quicken at the sight of blood on the sands.
The early arrivals thronged toward the front. Successa squinted at the welcome sun, and climbed toward the upper seats, which she knew would be in shadow by midday. And if it rained, the awnings, those great protective sails, were overhead. Seeing the musicians and trumpeters setting up on their dais, she carefully paced a few dozen steps away for the sake of protecting her ears. Eventually, she found the perfect seat, not too far from the killing ground, not too close to the band. It afforded her, too, a view of the balcony, a place where she had once been fondled by a shipbuilder from Puteoli. She looked hungrily at its marble benches and soft cushions, and tables whose coverlets fluttered in the gentle breeze. The balcony was a world away from Successa, now, and as desolate as her heart.
And then, she watched as the dignitaries began to arrive.
“Apologies, apologies,” Batiatus laughed, his hands held high in supplication. The sudden rush from the shadows to the sunlight caused his eyes to tighten against the glare. Shading them with his hand, he squinted around the balcony, and found it empty.
“The pulvinus yet stands empty?” Lucretia asked beside him.
Ilithyia glared at them both, as if this was somehow their fault.
Cushioned chairs were placed in prime position, with small tables set ready for refreshments. But there was not even a single slave standing ready to serve. Batiatus leapt back nervously, not wishing the crowd to take him for someone of importance.
“Do we arrive at appointed time?” Lucretia asked.
“Once again this town conspires to fuck me.” Batiatus spat in exasperation. “Apologies,” he muttered. He smiled cautiously at Ilithyia and Lucretia, and glanced at the position of the sun.
“The time is right for the games to begin,” he mused. “The crowd arrives in all its questionable glory. We are mere moments away from the venatio: the great hunt itself. Who would miss the sight of beasts locked in battle? Where are the dignitaries? Why does the sacred chair of honors, the pulvinus itself, sit absent noble ass?”
He leaned, baffled, on the balustrade and scanned the crowd below. A woman in a veil seemed to be staring up at him, but turned away to gaze at the empty sands.
A gust of wind puffed a scrap of dirt into Batiatus’s eye, and he flinched, cursing.
Lucretia looked about for a slave to come to his aid. Seeing none, she shook her head in resignation and prepared to dab at her husband’s eye with a corner of her gown.
“This is most unwelcome,” Ilithyia said sourly. “The sun shines, and I fear I shall have to fan myself.”
Sailors called it the Afer Ventus, the wind out of Africa. Sometimes it brought warm rain out of the sky as it spent itself against the coast of Italia. Sometimes, it brought reddish dust, mingled with a storm as if the sky were bleeding. Sometimes it brought ships.
Household slaves cursed it for the scum it left on marble floors. Sailors blessed it for the ease with which it filled the sails of ships out of Sicilia. Tack a sail before the Afer Ventus, and there was a clear line straight to the western Latin ports-Ostia or Puteoli or Neapolis.
The ship had been a dot on the horizon, but steadily it grew in size, her sails appearing redder as the distance through the mist decreased. Soon, they were the color of wet terracotta or whipped skin, straining with the full force of the southwesterly wind. The dockside slave masters watched her with half an eye as she grew nearer. There was no need to take to the water in man-powered cutters too soon, no point in rowing out to meet a vessel that was already powering toward port under full sail. Instead, they waited until they saw small, crawling dots, like tenacious beetles, clambering up the masts to furl the sails.
Despite the pitching sea, the distant sailors clung on and drew in the vast sailcloths. To observers on the harbor watchtower, she did not visibly halt, although she stayed in place on the gently rolling waves, neither growing nor diminishing in size.
Now there were shouts from the crews of the cutters-three thin boats packed tightly with heavily muscled oarsmen, heaving against the waves and out toward the waiting vessel. Drenched already by the spray and spume, the cutter crews made swift work of the distance between the harbor and the newly arrived ship.