The Horse Changer (2 page)

Scanning the contents of the letter quickly, Dolabella scowled. Then he threw that precious scroll of mine into his bucket of vomit. ‘So Quintus Dellius comes begging an appointment in the officers’ corps of Caesar’s army after the fighting is finished. Is that how it goes, lad?’

‘Certainly there must be a fight left somewhere, Excellency,’ I answered. My father’s bland assurances sounded quite stupid when I repeated them to a general of the legions.

Dolabella studied me suspiciously. Perhaps he thought I was making a jest; perhaps he was only curious at the degree of naiveté I possessed. His eyes swam over me in a way I did not like. I suspected it even then, but I was very soon to have confirmation that Dolabella was a sensualist without respect for custom or gender. In fact, he seduced whatever creature he fancied and did not care if he borrowed a senator’s wife for an evening of debauchery or used a citizen of Rome as a woman. I was certainly handsome enough to tempt him, but I doubt that is why he ultimately decided to give me a position. I expect the advertisement of my ‘virtuous temperament’ appealed to Dolabella’s keen sense of humour.

Dolabella gestured to his secretary, who leaned forward and whispered something. He nodded and looked at me again. ‘I’m going to arrange an officer’s training position for you with the German cavalry supporting Legio V. When that has finished, you will join my personal Guard. I am doing this for the sake of the friendship of our two families, but remember this well—on your life, Quintus Dellius! If you disappoint me in even the smallest detail, I will see that you…’

Before he could finish his threat, Dolabella spun toward his bucket again. As he was still heaving and gagging, I offered my sincerest assurances that I would not disappoint him. Whether he heard me or not, I cannot say. The secretary shooed me from his master’s presence before Dolabella came away from his bucket.

Legio V had served in Caesar’s African campaign. Its cohorts, at that moment, were still in transit back to southern Gaul. I was therefore instructed to wait in Rome until I received orders to report to the Camp of Mars, fully equipped and ready to travel.

Anticipating this sort of delay, my father had arranged for a Tuscan family then living in Rome to provide me with lodging in exchange for several large casks of Tuscan wine from our estate. A servant and I had brought these by mule and wagon. The servant had sold the remainder of our cargo in the market place and refilled our wagon with non-perishable goods from a list my father provided him. At that point he returned to our estate, taking my riding horse with him.

The people I stayed with were second or third cousins on my mother’s side, an elderly couple with grown children, all of whom had married and were living somewhere beyond Rome. My father had brought me to their house for a week when I put on my toga virilis, but that had occurred some five years earlier. I barely recalled the house and did not remember the family until I was standing in their presence again. No matter. They treated me as one of their own. The house, which was located in the very heart of Subura, was a fine old building, though it had seen better days. The neighbourhood was reputedly the worst in all of Rome, with every sort of vice on offer at discount rates. To be honest, such was my excitement at being in Rome, I hardly noticed the quarter’s squalor.

Perhaps a week after my interview with Dolabella I got an invitation to a party at his house. The note, written over Dolabella’s signature, promised an intimate gathering of the literati ‘with a few dancers and musicians performing, if only to make the evening more bearable’.

I naturally assumed that by literati Dolabella meant poets and writers, not those fellows who paint graffiti on every building in the city; as for the dancers and musicians I had no idea they would perform without clothing. Of course I had heard about Roman decadence, but I enjoyed a rather sheltered view of it, at least up until the night I attended Dolabella’s party.

I arrived in a toga and looked the perfect fool. This was Dolabella’s aim, I’m sure. Dolabella’s idea of an intimate gathering was to jam as many people as possible into his house. The property was overflowing with persons from every stratum of society. He mixed the dregs with the most illustrious family names, but only the young and beautiful. No greybeards at his party, nor any fellow who even looked like he had fallen on hard times. The only thing everyone had in common was perversion. Or the willingness to observe it at close quarters.

I had not been at the party long when I heard the very strangest rumour, preposterous actually, that Dolabella had filled a dozen large jars with coins. A veritable fortune, by all estimates. He proposed to award the entire contents of these to the patrician matron who could tally the highest count of male lovers before the conclusion of the last hour of the night. The contest did not begin at once, but four contestants were reportedly committed to the game and had begun making appointments. There were other matrons about, most of them without their husbands. They were obviously tempted by the prize as well. They only needed to get up their courage.

Until the main event began, which I never believed was anything more than a bad joke, we had other distractions. Most notable were the naked musicians and dancers who passed through the crowd; these were often pinched as they went by; some were even kissed. Boy to boy, girl to girl, even boy to girl. It made very little difference to that crowd, I can tell you. Pretty got a kiss, and everyone was pretty.

Gathered around Dolabella was a clutch of young boys dressed in skimpy tunics, the sort very young girls wear. These fellows had painted themselves as fashionable ladies do, darkened eyes, painted lips, and rouge upon the cheeks. If their hair was not naturally long they wore wigs of the very highest quality. I thought it must be some kind of party gag or a running joke that made no sense to an outsider, but in fact Dolabella treated them as his personal harem. Touch one of them and he would growl like a chained dog. Attempt to lure one of his she-males away and the fight was on.

Food passed by to be grabbed as one desired and of course one’s cup was simply not permitted to remain empty. After the dancers came an interlude of ribald poetry, then a series of acrobatic trysts featuring two, three, and even four players on a couch. At midnight the party favours were let loose, brothel whores brought in by the cohort. These were ready to kneel on request, but they were only there to tease. After their ministrations had begun in earnest, Dolabella called for the matrons to begin the contest, seven in all. These came for the men already inspired, and I must say many of these ladies were quite lovely creatures at the start of the evening, young, well-tended, and expensively dressed. By dawn they resembled jackals quarrelling over scraps of rotten meat. Strangest of all was the solitary slave who followed each woman around the room, witnessing and then recording her accomplishments.

Early in the evening I had found safe haven with the other country rubes, also costumed in togas, but they were eventually dragged off to one couch or another by one of the contestants. I refused every offer. Truth is I was still an innocent. For my first, I did not care to play my part in some impossible tally of lovers. But disinterest was not always enough. Refuse an offer and the next one got quite physical, even nasty. I have since learned no fury compares to a highborn lady’s outrage at being rejected once she has committed to playing the harlot for an evening.

I was not the only man to refuse their enticements, but for most of the men I expect a refusal was given for the pure pleasure of watching them go mad with frustration. A dozen large jars were filled with coins, all for the winner and none for second best.

I saw two young lords refuse one of the more attractive matrons early in the contest and admired their restraint. When these same fellows retreated quietly to the shadows, I followed them. I imagined some political intrigue from such serious men, at least until I could see why they stood so closely together. After that, I can promise you, I learned to be less curious.

Late in the evening I finally lost my innocence. This to a dark-haired lovely who only played for the joy of it. I was swaying from drink and laughing at her as she tried to undo my toga. I recall thinking she had confused me with one of Dolabella’s statues. I was also fairly sure she would never get my toga unwound, but she informed me she was married to a senator; she knew well the intimate secrets of that dowdy costume. When I found myself with my toga around my feet, it was too late to resist, and besides I had an erection Priapus himself might have envied. We finished matters where we stood and, as she walked away without so much as a kiss goodbye, Dolabella began clapping his hands. After that, his harem joined the applause, and then the whole room. At long last no virgins remained under Dolabella’s roof.

Now I must confess the full truth, for I have promised myself to hold nothing back in my history: I found the experience so exhilarating I tried to lose my innocence thrice more before the dawn and this time with any female who would have me. But some things we can only lose once. Eh, Judah?

It was summer, the season for war, but the wars were finished. Even restless Caesar was at his ease, dividing his time between the couches of Servilia Caepionis, Queen Cleopatra of Egypt, who was then visiting Rome with her consort brother, and Caesar’s patient, long-suffering wife Calpurnia.

At the second of Dolabella’s parties I went dressed more appropriately in a fine tunic cut in the Greek style. It was trimmed with gold thread and bore a line of gentrified purple to distinguish me from the pretty street boys Dolabella set about the room. It was a handsome tunic, I can tell you, so much so that I was hardly through the front gate before a sweet songbird knelt before me and proceeded to introduce me to the Egyptian arts. When she had properly fixed my attention, she pulled my tunic over my head and walked away with it. I never did see that tunic again or the girl either, for that matter.

Of course, I did not only attend Dolabella’s orgies. I also spent several nights losing at dice. During the daytime I gambled on chariot races at the Circus Maximus and impromptu wrestling matches at the baths. A perfect artist with a horse, I knew the best team in a race at a glance. I could read a man’s fighting talents nearly as well. I soon learned, however, that the finest horses in the world cannot win a race if their driver holds them back and no one is victorious in a wrestling match if there is more money to be made by losing it. Easy money? There is no such thing in Rome.