by Mark Morris
The words had barely left her mouth when there was a commotion at the door of the atrium beyond. They heard the massive timbers swing open, and Batiatus’s voice. It was raised in a note of familiar displeasure. Naevia took her accustomed place behind Lucretia’s shoulder, silent as a shadow.
“Quintus?” she called.
“I’m here. Where are you tucked away?” he bellowed impatiently.
“In bed chambers.”
Batiatus appeared in the doorway. Behind him the dark shape of Ashur, black eyes alight from the lamps. Batiatus dropped his toga to the floor and stepped over it, his sandals slapping on the tiles.
“Water,” he called. “I would have soil of streets rinsed away. And wine. Juno’s gash, I’m fucking tired.”
Lucretia sprang off her couch and clicked her fingers at Naevia. She glared at Ashur.
“Is he to join you in the bath?”
Batiatus waved a hand. “Out. Wait in my office and I will join you to open book and dwell on this house’s poverty.”
“As you wish, dominus.” Ashur cast a long look at Naevia, and then left.
“Poverty. Not a word fit for jesting,” Lucretia said. She kissed Batiatus on the lips.
He looked her up and down appraisingly.
“It appears new wig lies upon wife’s beautiful head.”
“Fetching, is it not?” she said. “Orontes came bearing his wares today.”
“And with what weight of coin did he depart?”
She dismissed the money as she would dismiss a slave, with an insouciant waft of her hand.
“Twenty sesterces.”
“Twenty. A substantial sum for shank of German hair.”
“It does not please you,” Lucretia glared.
Batiatus raised a placating hand. “It pleases me. As would any item adorning loving wife. Helen of Troy would rage with jealousy upon sight of you.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You overflow with praise, the excess suggesting mockery.”
“Lucretia, I crave a moment of peace,” Batiatus moaned, his voice weary. “I would soak and drink. And see you calmed by thought that your beauty illuminates.”
The girl Flavia had reappeared with an ewer of clear water and a box of oils and unguents. She untied the sandals from Batiatus’s feet and began to wash him. He sighed in contentment. Lucretia handed him her wine cup. He drank from it and raised his eyebrows appreciatively.
“You ply me with Falernian wine?”
“It should not sit fermenting for guests. Imbibe for lifting of mood after draining day spent upon streets, dealing with that greasy whore peddler.”
Batiatus leaned forward and slipped Flavia’s gown from her shoulder. One pale, pink-tipped breast was revealed. Batiatus stroked the nape of her neck as she continued to wash his feet.
“Put mouth upon cock,” he said.
At once, Flavia left his feet and pulled aside Batiatus’s tunic. His member came into view, already tumescent. She bent her head over it and dutifully took the glistening head of the organ in her mouth. Batiatus closed his eyes and sipped his wine.
“Ah, the pleasures of home,” he murmured.
As he settled back, Lucretia asked, “Did you make purchase?”
Batiatus’s eyes opened again, flashing with momentary anger.
“I did not. The dirty hole Albanus paraded meat rank enough to offend flies. Then he-” Batiatus closed his eyes once more, thrusting his hips against the girl’s mouth.
“Then he revealed true purpose of invitation,” he resumed after a moment. “I was but a mere decoy set in place for the bidding of a rich Greek. Croesus’s brother he might have been, so freely did he dispense coin. I could not match him.” Batiatus thrust angrily and the girl gagged. He curled his hand into her hair, holding her head firmly in place while he drank more wine.
“What was the object of such lofty bidding?” Lucretia asked. She leaned back on her couch, her eyes going back and forth between her husband’s face and the bobbing head of the girl at his groin.
“A nymph of beauty rare and untouched, appearing handmaiden of Venus. The Greek swine shit six thousand sesterces for her as if fortune nests untouched up ass.”
Lucretia gasped. “Six thousand!”
Batiatus matched her gasp with a groan, and shuddered into the slave girl’s mouth. He breathed out slowly, holding her in place for a moment, and then he slowly uncurled his hand from her hair. Flavia raised her head, wiped her mouth discreetly and adjusted her master’s tunic. Then she bent to his feet once more and began massaging them in the tepid water.
“Ashur makes enquiry towards this Greek. Hieronymus his name. The man has powerful friends in very high places. Rumors stir the air in marketplace that Capua will see him host one of them in coming weeks.”
“Rumors uttered into weary ear by every feebleminded fool who knocks upon door,” Lucretia snapped.
“Even fools may light upon truth on occasion.” Batiatus stood up, splashing water on the floor. He padded about the small room barefoot and gestured with his cup.
“The odor of future coin reaches nostril, Lucretia. A man free to part with six thousand for one black-haired cunt must be willing to part with a great deal more for extravagances beyond it. The House of Batiatus profits from the indulgences of men such as this. We have but to offer magnificent spectacle and coin will flow to us in a torrent. And who better to tempt brimming purse than the slayer of Theokoles, whose fame now reaches Rome itself?”
“Crixus fought Theokoles as well,” Lucretia said, drawing her robe about her. “He yet lives to return to glory.”
Batiatus snorted. “He is a shell of the behemoth that used to stride into the arena. Spartacus hauls in the crowd like fish into net. And we will use him to land the extravagant Greek. Make preparations for his invitation to ludus. We will whet his appetite for blood.”
“A thing requiring great expense,” Lucretia said waspishly, stung by her husband’s ready dismissal of Crixus, who before his recent injuries had frequently shared her bed.
“A worthy expenditure when the reward to reap is great. I will speak with Doctore to gauge if the Thracian’s training in the new style becomes him.”
“Spartacus is untrustworthy, Quintus,” Lucretia protested. “With his wife dead, what will bind him to our purpose?”
“His gratitude for what I have done for him,” Batiatus said. “I brought him his wife. True, she lived but a moment before dying in his arms, but she was yet his wife, delivered as promised. For granting him presence in her last moment, I earn his gratitude. The man holds honor close to chest despite wild Thracian blood running within. Whatever I desire of him, he will repay with loyal duty.”
“Crixus is a man to place trust in as he has proved countless times,” Lucretia persisted. “He has delivered much to this house and dreams only of reclaiming victory in its name. He lives to please us, Batiatus.”
“I will hear no more of Crixus! The man lies injured with wounds that will forever diminish fighting skill. He will not be fit to take to sand before Saturnalia, if ever again. I will decide who fights for this house, Lucretia. I am its paterfamilias and its lanista.”
Lucretia realized she had overstepped the mark.
“You are right, Quintus. I do not mean to question judgement.”
Batiatus bent over her, smiling.
“And I do not mean to snap at you. Foundation of this house rests upon shoulders of devoted wife just as much as myself. Spare no coin. Perfume every slave and lay out the richest spread of food. When this shit-eating Greek enters our house he will collapse under weight of stimulating delicacies. And upon his sating, we will display the titans of the arena that reside under roof. Hieronymus will depart with voice singing of the marvels of the House of Batiatus.”
“To send song alighting the ears of Roman friends in exalted positions,” Lucretia said. She smiled like a cat.
“Our thoughts are as one.” Batiatus kissed his wife on the mouth and then spread his arms ex
pansively.
“Fetch Orontes to return and display only his best wares,” he declared. “The wife of Batiatus shall shine like the brightest star in sky.”
III
For the next several days a procession of pack mules, litters and carts made their slow way up to the heights above Capua to call upon the House of Batiatus. The cellars were stocked to bursting with amphorae, some shipped in from the Mamertinum vineyards in Sicily, unloaded at Neapolis and brought north. There was even a jar of the famous Opimian vintage, over fifty years old and considered the finest wine ever pressed.
This, Batiatus fussed over like an old man with a young bride, for it had cost him the equivalent of three slaves. He kept it not in the cellars below, but instead in his office, in a cool corner, and while he was seated at his desk going over the household accounts, sometimes he would stare at it, and, depending on what his books told him, would either feel a ripple of pleasurable anticipation at the thought of his first mouthful, or would gnaw his thumb in a spasm of momentary doubt.
Most of the time, in truth, the doubt would prevail, for it could not be denied that the ludus was sliding heavily into debt with such preparations and expensive purchases. Batiatus alternated between beseeching the gods to bring the Roman visitor or visitors, whoever he, she, or they might be, not only to Capua but to the very doors of his villa, and cursing the self-same gods for teasing him with rumor, even as they withheld the fabled visitor-or visitors-from the city gates.
Lucretia, meanwhile, had brought in contractors to lay a mosaic floor about the pillars of the peristylium, and another pool had been dug there also, the water piped in from a spring beyond the house, as cool and fresh as though it had sprung from the slopes of Olympus. The walls of the peristylium had been faced with travertine marble, hauled at enormous cost from the quarries outside Rome itself, and every slave had been outfitted with new clothing which stood folded in heavy chests in their quarters below, the chests to remain closed upon pain of a flogging.
Day after day, Batiatus frequented the forum of Capua, in the hope of running into the Greek Hieronymus again with an air of casual happenstance, but he saw nothing of him. The market buzzed with rumors of his extravagances, and the land agents that Batiatus knew were all willing to divulge that great tracts of property had been bought and paid for in Capua itself.
Demolition work was going on at a series of insulae which had defaced the outskirts of the city for decades, but when Batiatus tried to identify the buyer the trail went cold with suspicious rapidity. There was talk of Roman money changers, a consortium of noblemen from the Palatine, but it proved impossible to delve deeper. This was not just discretion on the part of the agents, but a kind of fear. The most that Batiatus could discover was that someone of great power was involved, someone high up in the cursus honorum. Not even the local magistrates would say more, no matter how much Falernian he poured down their throats.
As a last resort, Batiatus found himself, much to his own disgust, courting the Syrian slaver, Albanus. He invited the man to dinner, fixed a grin on his face, and had a pair of pretty slave girls wait on his guest in revealing garments while the two men reclined in the triclinium. Lucretia did not attend: she sent her apologies, prettily worded and voiced by Naevia. Albanus did not seem to mind, but reclined on his couch to be fed by Flavia like a baby bird, whilst Batiatus plied him with wine and questions, the temper in him brimming higher with every wasted moment.
“The dark haired girl, Athenais-indulge me with her story, good Albanus. Such a beauty must have one for the telling,” Batiatus said, wincing at the taste of the wine. It was a very ordinary vintage from Praetutium, though Albanus seemed to relish it. The slaver fancied himself something of an expert, and grew boring on the subject. Southern Italy had been known to the Greeks as Oenotria, land of wines, for centuries, and Albanus knew many of the local grapes.
“It’s true, she does. Every man and woman possesses story, even slaves,” Albanus said, staring down into his cup and swilling the wine in a slow circle so that it caught the light. “My own place of birth was Antioch. A few centuries past I would have called myself Persian. And following them, Alexander’s heirs would have made me to be Greek. Now, I am Syrian, my city ruled by the Armenian, Tigranes the Great. Cities, countries, they have histories and destinies as wayward as those of men, their lives lived but longer. Though names change the land remains as it ever was. Don’t you find it to be true?” Batiatus gritted his teeth. “Such truth can only be discovered by so wide a digression from discussion at hand. Turn mind to the girl if it would but accommodate it, good Albanus. Curiosity rouses for tales of her and the new master she pleases.”
Albanus stroked his beard. It was oiled and perfumed and it gleamed in the light of the hanging lamps.
“Such a treasure she was to have won. A virgin sold by indebted father, which stands a common story in my trade. But this girl possessed education above others of her kind. Skills to read and write, sing and sew. She could have been perfect wife for one not requiring noble blood and the patience for woman of knowledge!”
“And what role does she play for the Greek?” Batiatus asked.
Albanus shrugged.
“He but purchased her to use as gift to give.” He raised himself up on one elbow. “Fitting offering for a man who in possession of everything.” He stroked Flavia’s chin. “Something unique and beautiful that mere coin cannot match.”
“He made transaction only to give her to another?”
Albanus smiled. “His preference lies in boys, like many Greeks. The girl was in the nature of a-” But there he stopped, as if he had already said too much. He leaned back on his couch and raised his cup. “Your wine deserves compliment, dear Batiatus. Your hospitality without fault.” He looked wistfully at Flavia. “I only wish I had more to tell in return.”
Batiatus stood up and pulled Flavia to her feet. She was not tall and her long black hair was bound up behind her head. He loosened it now and let it spill down her back. A tug of his fingers and the flimsy robe slid down onto her hips. Another, and it lay in a pool of fabric at her feet. She stood naked, pale, flawless.
“Wonderful,” Albanus said, the breath hitching in his throat, turning his voice husky.
“I must excuse myself for brief moment,” Batiatus said casually. “Flavia will entertain.” He smiled.
“Indeed,” Albanus murmured. He ran a hand up and down Flavia’s body.
“I would see you well satisfied by time of your departure,” Batiatus added. “Make my home yours.”
“Your words the very soul of courtesy,” Albanus murmured. “And this creature an offering of Vesta herself.”
Batiatus left the room. He paced up and down the atrium for a few minutes, eventually turning angrily and tossing his cup into the pool with a splash.
“I know you’re here, Ashur,” he said. “Attend.”
A shadow stepped from behind a pillar. “Yes, dominus.”
“Spill words of investigation.”
“Unfortunate lack of discovery. The man’s litter-bearers are Gauls possessing no facility with common tongue.”
Batiatus’s face twitched. “The dripping cunt laughs at me while swilling wine and groping slave. Follow him upon his slithering away and find what cocks he wraps around.”
The lamed former gladiator bowed slightly.
“As you wish, dominus.” He stood still and thoughtful as Batiatus strode away, a shadow within blacker shadow. There was a smile on his face.
Less than an hour later Ashur’s smile had turned into a snarl and a whispered curse. After partaking of Batiatus’s hospitality, sated both with wine and Flavia’s attentions, Albanus had turned not north toward home, but south toward the lower-lying marshes which were eventually bisected by the Volturnus River.
Ashur followed at a distance, fearful of discovery as the road became narrower and less populated. Fortunately, it became more serpentine too, and lined with ever more abundant trees and bushes, whic
h, together with the darkness, afforded him much-needed cover.
Eventually, close to a point where the Volturnus was at its widest as it meandered past Capua on its course to the Tyrrhenian Sea, Albanus’s litter-bearers came to a halt. Ashur used the foliage to conceal his advance, trying to get close enough to Albanus to see what he was up to. He watched as the slave trader, still swaying slightly from the effects of the grape he had consumed that evening, alighted from his transport and meandered down to the bank of the Volturnus.
What is the inebriated cunt doing? Ashur wondered. Taking a piss? It was a cold night, and a dark one, the moon mostly obscured by scudding cloud. Water from the recent rains had been retained by the thirsty plants to such an extent that Ashur’s tunic was quickly soaked as he brushed against them. Within less than a minute the rough cloth was sticking clammily to his shivering skin and mud was oozing over the tops of his sandals and squelching between his toes. If Albanus had simply halted to relieve himself, Ashur vowed that he personally would cut off the bastard’s cock and choke him with it. He waited, a brooding shape in the darkness, eyes fixed on his quarry.
It soon became clear, however, that Albanus was waiting too. He prowled the banks of the Volturnus for what seemed an age, back and forth, back and forth, watching a bend in the river a short distance away. What was he waiting for? A delivery of goods? An expected visitor? Whoever or whatever the trader had come here to meet, it was clear he did not wish to make fanfare of it. This pleased Ashur. He knew all too well that secrets were currency, and that there was much profit to be made from them. Warmed by these thoughts, he waited patiently in the shadows, already imagining dominus’s voice raised in praise of his efforts and the coin that would be pressed into his hand as a consequence. He dreamed of the day when his status would be elevated to such an extent that Batiatus would grant him his freedom, perhaps even consider him an equal-a trusted advisor and friend. Ashur may not be a Roman, but he had all the cunning and ambition of one.