Field of Mars (The Complete Novel) (3 page)

“Do you like this, dominus?” she whispers, hoarse and breathless already as if an orgasm is coming fast upon her.

“Yes, but … but … not right now.” My hands are on her waist with enough gentle pressure to stop her movement.

She releases me from her grasp and backs away, disappointed. “I don’t please you?”

“No, you’re very pleasing, but I have things to think about.”

“A man can think far more clearly after release, dominus,” she grins, seeing a chink of light in the crack. “That much I know about men.”

This isn’t a conversation I want to have, not when there’s an anxious meeting with Marcus Licinius Crassus in the wings. “Maybe later,” I tell her, a nebulous postponement easier to deliver than outright refusal.

Erika is disappointed, or at least gives a good impression that she is. To avoid further temptation, I close my eyes as she removes herself from the water, and try to focus on why I, lowly historian Appias Cominius Maro, might have been summoned thus into the presence of the World’s Richest Man. But now I can’t think about anything other than the crevices of Erika’s body interacting with protuberances of my own. So I give up trying to think and instead remove myself completely from the water.

The blond slave whose name I wasn’t given, materializes with a thick linen sheet. She helps wrap it around my shoulders and torso. “This way, dominus,” she says gently, her voice like milk and honey, and gestures at the false wall. I walk behind it and see a massage bench, the oils and strigil ready and waiting. I’m still well inside Epikrates’s hour – plenty of time – and lie face down on the bench, but with some difficulty because of an erection that refuses to retreat.

The oils are warm and fragrant and feel good massaged into my skin, the slave’s fingers and hands adept at their work. The strigil is eventually deployed and the oil scraped away just as I drift into the arms of sleep. “If you could turn over, dominus,” I hear.

I do as I am bid and turn to lie on my back and it’s then that I see the masseuse is now naked, her breasts swaying as she applies the oils. This is too much and my heart thunders anew in my chest, the faded erection now pulsing enlivened, nodding back and forth with every beat of my racing heart like an animal at full gallop. The blond woman’s hand fixes around my shaft and she kisses the tip before taking me briefly into her mouth. It’s then that Erika reappears. Walking swiftly across the room, she steps up onto the table. “Now, dominus?” she asks, looking down at me, a hand on her hip and all the weight on one leg, her skin impossibly smooth and her nipples pink and erect and pointing at the heavens.

I swallow involuntarily, a beaten man and Erika knows it. She lowers herself onto me, guided home by the blond woman’s sure hand around my shaft. Once I am buried deep within her, Erika starts to rock – slowly at first but then faster and I can feel the sharp edge of her pelvic bone against mine as she moves with a hooking thrusting action I’ve not before experienced. And then our breaths are catching in our throats, the blond woman standing beside the table, her fingers inside herself as she joins in with our climax, my hand on her breast massaging an oiled nipple as the two women begin to kiss, devouring each other’s mouths.

And then as quickly as it began, I am done and breathless. Erika slides off me and I watch as she and her companion complete each other’s pleasure with fingers and tongues. These two are slaves and they are too good at what they do for this not to be their role in Crassus’s household. I’ve been manipulated. This sort of thing never happens, at least not to me.

As lust begins to evaporate, all parties spent, the old woman with the bad hips enters the room but sees nothing and certainly makes no comment. She places my toga, now cleaned and folded, on a bench and waddles off.

“Can I get you something to drink, dominus?” Erika inquires again, dressing, her eyes properly downcast, but her breathing still hard.

“No, I thank you.”

The blond one offers to assist me with the toga, but this is a job for a good Roman wife and I decline the offer politely as Epikrates arrives, his timing impeccable. Was he watching from some unseen corner? “The dominus is ready for you, Appias Cominius,” he says.

Epikrates looks at me with the innocence of ignorance that is far too complete not to be duplicitous in my seduction. I think about saying something but I let it rest, mostly because I’m surprised at how serene I feel. The nervousness about meeting Consul Marcus Licinius Crassus is gone and there’s no tension in my system, my mind now clear of anxiety. Perhaps Erika was right and she has done me a service, or perhaps not – I also feel drained of resistance and will most likely now agree to anything. I make a final adjustment to my new pale blue toga and depart without a backwards glance.

The domus is, in fact, a vast mosaicked labyrinth of colonnaded and vaulted passages, stairs and open spaces, with the gods only know how many rooms. On my way through I glimpse the central atrium – an open collection of pools, fountains and statues, its numerous benches and walkways occupied by Romans I assume are executing Crassus’s business affairs as they hurry along, scowling at their feet, oblivious of their surroundings.

Epikrates takes me further into the bowels of the place and eventually we exit into a grand colonnaded loggia clinging to the cliff face on the western side of the Palatine. A spectacular outlook and yet Crassus would’ve bought this land for a handful of sestertii. The cliff face would have been worthless without the
monumental, and no
doubt
 expensive, feat of engineering required to build these stalls.

The loggia space is light and airy, one side completely open to the Aventine across the valley. The marble floor is strewn with thick oriental rugs and at the far end is a magnificent original Periclean Greek figure of Hercules, the famous one that depicts him using a burning firebrand to cauterize one of the Hydra’s necks. I’ve seen this figure several times before, but only cheap Roman copies of it. Now having laid eyes the original I swear it has all the power and grace of the demi-god himself. At the opposite end of the room is a grand desk of white marmor lunensis, the vertical piers depicting more of Hercules’ labors, its horizontal expanse strewn with numerous fine Egyptian papyrus scrolls. By now I’m sure that Crassus’s personal god is this hero. There are too many references to Hercules in his domus for it to be otherwise.

“The dominus will be with you presently, Appias Cominius,” says Epikrates, appearing briefly to interrupt my gawking before again departing.

I jump when a sudden nearby roar erupts. Walking over to the colonnade, I see the enormous Circus Maximus laid out on the valley floor below. Clearly visible are the chariots of the popular red faction and the green faction lining up at the start, their horses bucking and surging. The thunder I felt earlier rises again from the sprawling arena and I realize it’s the feet of thousands of spectators stamping in unison on the flagstones.

“Who is your faction?” asks a voice behind me. I stand up straight like a guilty party caught stealing. It’s Marcus Licinius Crassus. He walks out onto the porch with small steps, his back straight. “Do you have money wagered?”

“I’m not a betting man,” I say.

“I’m sorry?” he replies.

“I said I don’t bet.”

“That’s a shame. I could have told you whether you were going to win or lose … I’m not sure I trust a man who doesn’t trust his own luck.”

“But you know the outcome. So, as I’ve always suspected, luck has nothing to do with it.”

Crassus smiles, his downturned lips merely continuing their drooping inclination. “A fair thrust, an equally fair parry.”

He sizes me up, and I him. Crassus is sixty years old, but looks older. His face is strongly featured with deep lines running from the corners of a long aquiline nose to the corners of those downturned lips, which are thin and hard. It’s a face of cruel calculation. In that face I can see the man who ordered the crucifixion of 6,000 slaves captured at the close of the Servile War, and the decimation of his own legions in order to fortify the courage of his troops.

Crassus’s high, domed forehead is fringed with hair that still holds color. I suspect he dyes it. The way he turns his head when he speaks and asks for answers to be repeated suggests that he is partially deaf in one ear. His frame is on the slim side and that of a man well past middle age, his bare knees bony and slightly swollen, the skin covering them sagging and lined. Though stupendously wealthy, his overall condition does suggest a man who holds his appetites in check. Perhaps it’s his reputation speaking, but there is an air of studied rapaciousness in the way he looks at me. Is he on the hunt for advantage? If so, I wonder what I could possibly have that he wants.

“You’re taller and more athletic than I would hold for a historian,” he says, attempting a smile. “With a few scars you could pass for a legionary. Can you use a gladius?”

“Not without causing damage to myself,” I say honestly.

He grunts. “Can I offer you some wine?” A slave appears, a large Numidian with skin that is glossy and utterly black. Crassus mumbles something at him and then turns back to me. “Perhaps something to eat?”

The questions make me think of the hospitalities the house of Crassus offered me earlier. “No, I’ve recently dined,” I say.

“What?” Crassus asks, reinforcing my first impression that his hearing has dimmed.

“No, thank you,” I repeat. In truth I’m hungry, but the nerves have returned and eating and drinking are two items they won’t permit.

The consul makes the slightest gesture with a finger and the slave is gone. “Come, let’s talk.” Crassus walks to a couple of couches on the porch arranged for the view, beckoning me into the one at his left. “You’re wondering why you’re here,” he says, articulating my very thought. “We have no mutual acquaintances, you’ve never held public office, and I know that your family is significantly less than patrician. You live in an insula on the edge of the Subura with a woman whose family is of no consequence. I am a patrician, Consul of the Republic of Rome, and you are a teacher of history.”

“And not a very well known one,” I inject into his overview of my general unworthiness.

“It’s not the small number of followers that matter in this instance but the quality of them,” he says.

I am a little confused and he has picked up on it.

“We do in fact share much common ground, you and I, for I am to be Proconsul of Syria, a five-year term beginning with the new year. All Rome will find this out tomorrow when a decree from the Senate is made public.”

This news does scatter some of the clouds, but not all.

“Before we proceed, swear that all we discuss in this room will be kept private or this meeting will conclude and you can go on your way none the wiser.”

My curiosity has to know what this is about. “I swear it,” I say.

“Your lectures on Ptolemy III and his conquest of the part of the world I will soon inhabit interest me greatly.”

Epikrates, he had given me a hint. “I never saw you in my lectures,” I say.

“My particular interest in Syria has come upon me only of late, for obvious reasons.”

“With respect, Marcus Licinius, I still fail to see how a historian can be of any assistance to the future Governor of Syria.”

“History and fame are two sides of the same denarius, Appias Cominius. Adrianus Fabius Maximus, Leonidas, even Ulysses would be as mysterious to the world as your Ptolemy III, if not for learned men who set their deeds down for posterity. Indeed, I feel a pang of sorrow for this third Ptolemy. According to what I’ve heard reported, he was a general to exceed even the Great Pompey, and yet his name and deeds pass ever more into obscurity as the number of years lengthen before him. Why endeavor to achieve if no one beyond yourself knows of your achievements?”

I am beginning to understand where this is going.

“Syria is your especial subject, is it not?”

“Well … yes.”

“Knowing what has happened in that part of the world will be a helpful guide in the present for a governor who wants to make his own mark on history. As you are a man who records the deeds of others, that makes you a man no less than Homer himself.”

Homer? The flattery is heavy-handed. “Hardly. And I’m no poet, I can assure you.”

“No, but you are a storyteller.”

“I am literate …” I say, a little wary.

“Of course you are.”

The Numidian returns with a gold tray holding a magnificent crystal pitcher and two fine crystal cups.

“Appias Cominius, it’s not hot but I can see you’re perspiring,” Crassus observes.

I can feel a sheen on my forehead, though he is right – there is little heat in the air here in this loggia. The Numidian presents me with his tray and I reach for a cup. Crassus and I both drink.

“Syria is a wealthy province. There is much that can be achieved within and without its borders for the glory of Rome,” the consul informs me.

But of course, he means for the glory of Crassus. Syria is a new province in Rome’s dominion and is yet to feel the yoke of a governor keen to squeeze her dry. With Crassus as proconsul there’ll be nothing left but desiccated husk.

I turn as a roar from the Circus fills the loggia. Either the right faction has won, or someone has died well or killed well.

“I sense reluctance,” Crassus says over the noise.

“Forgive me, Consul. I’m unsure of what I’m being asked.”

“I’ve been accused of many things, but being obtuse isn’t one of them. I want you to be my Xenophon. Come to Syria; record what you see for the benefit of future generations.”

It’s a momentous offer.

“Your abilities will make your fortune,” he adds, in the event that I haven’t already grasped this. “On your return, no doubt you’ll have the funds to buy a spectacular Italian villa.”

“What if you don’t approve of what I write?” I ask, trying not to be overwhelmed by the lavish picture he paints of my glory days to come.

“I will demand the right to justify my actions, if I deem it necessary, to be included with any dispatch. But you, Appias Cominius, will have the final say on what is ultimately reported to the Senate and the People of Rome.”