A spasm shook Caesar, and while one part of Tertulla’s torture was now over, she knew another was just beginning. She found that she did have something for which to be thankful. She gave her silent gratitude to Juno for sparing her husband the final moment of her degradation. But as her mind returned to settle on her violation, her body joined her spirit and revolted: she leaned over the side of the chest where the lamp had fallen and emptied her stomach. Afterwards, wiping her nose and sucking lung-fuls of air through her mouth, she stooped to pick up the bedcovers, using them to clean herself as best she could. She kept a wary eye on Caesar.
“I suppose your youth gives you some advantage,” Caesar said with disdain. “But for that, you are not much use to men, are you? Remember this, Tertulla, if you fail to do your part with your husband, I will put it about that the wife of Crassus is not as chaste as her reputation. And you know I will be believed. So perform better with your husband than you have with me, and you can grow old and gray spending every denarius he owns. The alternative will be far more costly, I assure you. Now clean this place up. He’ll be back soon.” And with that, Caesar left the room.
Chapter XXX
56 BCE — Spring, Luca Year of the consulship of Cn. Cornelius Lentulus Marcellinus and L. Marcius Philippus
“This is not the way. We’re in the wrong wing! Give me that!” Crassus seized the torch from the slave. “See my atriensis in the morning and instruct him to flog you. Ask for Alexander. Now be gone!” Pahnehesy, the slave who was part of the conspiracy to delay Crassus and who had now misled him to the wrong end of Caesar’s villa, padded off to his quarters. He’d done the best he could. He hoped the few extra coins he’d been promised would be worth the stripes he’d just earned.
Crassus pointed the sputtering torch down a dark hallway and saw that it was too short to be his own. Ah, here’s the culina, he thought. No, couldn’t touch another bite. No one about. Even the slaves are abed. He was still quite drunk.
Syria.
He wondered what the food was like. Proconsul is no small achievement, and he supposed Caesar was right, he could make a sizable contribution to his already astounding fortune as a result of the governorship. I’m so tired, he thought. I could sleep for a week. Well, we’ll see what Tertulla thinks of all this. Maybe she’d like a vacation abroad. He headed back through the villa, passing columns that threw sweeping shadows like grasping arms. As he made his way through the garden atrium, rain splashed into the impluvium and blew spray in gusts over the slick tile floor. Crassus slid on a wet spot and fell to his knees. The torch skidded, hit a clay planter head-on and went out with a hiss and a small explosion of sparks.
Cursing, he got to his feet and groped along the walls until finally, he found the right wing. As he turned into it, he heard a woman’s voice, low and urgent. It didn’t sound like his wife. More words, then a grunt as if someone had been struck. He drew his puglio from its scabbard. As he made his way down the hall, past two empty cubiculae, the sounds became clearer and he realized whoever this person was, he or she was not being attacked. He squinted at a wall painting, recognized the image of Orpheus and Eurydice, the viper curled around her ankle, and confirmed that he was indeed in his cubiculum’s hallway. The knowledge, instead of spurring him to greater speed, turned his feet to stone. He thought they must surely scrape on the stone floor as he dragged himself forward. He did not want to see what he now feared awaited him.
The cubiculum had no door, and the heavy drapes that separated it from the hallway were partially drawn. Crassus peered past the curtains. The room was dark, and he could hear more than he could see. The rhythmic grunts of the man in the room were occasionally echoed by a woman’s groan, whether in pain or pleasure he could not tell. There was also the intermittently rhythmic thump of a chest of drawers as it was knocked up against the wall.
Forms began to be discernible out of the murk. Two bodies faced the wall, leaning over the waist high wooden chest. A man whose head was turned away from the doorway had his tunic pulled up above his waist and stuffed into his belt. His pale, exposed buttocks moved in a short arc, up and down, like comic moons unsure whether to rise or set. Crassus could make out the prominent bald spot on the back of Caesar’s head as he hunched over a woman’s right shoulder. Had he come to the wrong room? Crassus tried to equate the hunched and sweating man before him with the proud, armored general mounted not on this woman (who was she?) but on a snow-white steed leading the charge against the Nervii. He couldn’t do it.
This has to be our room, but where has Tertulla gone? His mind fought with his eyes, trying to blind them, but they would not be fooled. His fear spread like a stain. If I slip away now, he thought, there will be no betrayal because there will be no proof. I won’t know for sure who these fornicators are. Tertulla can tell me in the morning that she grew tired of waiting, went to search for me and got lost as I did. She found other quarters in which to take her rest. And I would believe her, or any other story she might wish to tell me, because I cannot bear to face any other truth. If I take a step forward, my world will end; and yet, if I turn away, will not doubt eat at my insides till nothing is left?
The fate of worlds may hang on the slightest hesitation, and Crassus had waited too long. Had he been able to turn away, the lives of twice ten thousand men might have been spared. But before he could retreat, shutting his eyes and ears to the truth of what he was witnessing, the woman spoke, and his last shred of hope vanished with the unmistakable sound of his wife’s voice.
“Haste, Julius, or my husband will discover how boring you are.” Her last word was turned into a grunt as Caesar responded with a vicious thrust that practically lifted Tertulla off her feet. Crassus gagged. He thought, she jests with him and makes sport of me even as she spreads her legs for him. Bile and wine rose in his throat and it was all he could do to swallow it back down again. He stared with grim fascination as Caesar’s hands gripped Tertulla’s breasts for support and more. The front of the long tunic she wore as a nightdress swung at her ankles with each lascivious stroke. The back of it was mashed up above her thighs, held up by Caesar’s pumping hips. The left shoulder of her tunic was torn. Could there have been a struggle? Or was this just more evidence of their ardor? Her own arms were fully extended, hands gripping the edge of the chest to keep her head from bumping into the wall with each of Caesar’s thrusts. Crassus followed the slender line of her bare arms up to her shaking shoulders, her twisted neck, the ringlets of her hair which half obscured her face. He was so absorbed with cataloging her treacherous features it was a moment before he realized she was looking right at him.
In this instant of recognition, in the one moment when all the gods called out for decisiveness, for retribution, for action of some kind, any kind, Crassus moved not a muscle. His wife’s gaze pinned him like an insect, and although the light was still very dim, he knew with absolute certainty that she saw him standing there. It was hard to tell, but he thought he saw a look of terror pass over her face at the sight of him. This was immediately replaced by an expression of unbearable sorrow.
Crassus wanted to die. The meeting of their eyes was far more terrible than the sight of her rutting. Before this moment, had he accepted the title, he could have claimed the moral high ground of accuser. Now, with each passing second, he became the accused, complicit in their sin, his voyeurism almost paramount to their infidelity. The longer he stood there, the more his shame grew. For every action of theirs for which there was no re-action from him, he lost a piece of himself. Each moment he lingered, shards of the man Crassus fell away and were lost. If she would but close her eyes or turn away, he would be free to move, to act. But she held him with her gaze, and every thrust from her lover was a blow to his shattered heart. Tertulla’s look riveted him to the spot just as surely as the nails that pierced Spartacus’ rebels had fixed them to their crosses.