by M. J. Rose
Julius and his colleagues weren’t under any delusions. If they intended to survive they needed to abandon their beliefs or at least pretend to do so. And if they were going to continue into the future they needed to relax some of their laws and adapt. But right now they had worse problems. Emperor Theodosius was no holy man; this was not about one god or many gods, not about rites or saviors. How clever Theodosius and his intolerant bishop were! Conspiring to make men believe that unless they adopted the current revised creed, they would not only suffer here in this life but would suffer worse in the next life. The danger to every priest, every cult, everyone who held fast to the old ways, increased daily. The priest he’d seen in the gutter that morning was yet another warning to the rest of the flamen.
Citizens everywhere were taking up the emperor’s call to enforce the new laws, publicly declaring their conversion. But behind closed doors, other conversations took place. The men and women who had prayed to the old gods and goddesses for all of their lives still hoped for a reprieve from the new religious mandate. Yes, in public, they would protect themselves and prove their fealty to their emperor, but as modern as Rome was, it was also a superstitious city. As afraid as the average citizens were of the emperor, they were more afraid of the harm that might befall them if they broke trust with the familiar sacred rituals. So while there was outward acquiescence, even energy for a religious revolution, much of it was false piety.
But for how much longer?
The old ways would die a little more with every priest who was murdered and with every temple that was looted and destroyed until there was nothing left and no one to remember.
The trunks of the lofty trees were gnarled and scratched, the boughs heavy with leaves. The forest was so thick the light only broke through in narrow shafts, illuminating a single branch of glossy emerald leaves here and a patch of moss-covered ground there.
There were myrtle trees, cypress and luxuriant laurels, but it was the oaks that made this a sacred grove, an ancient place apart from the everyday world where the priests could perform their rituals and pray to their goddess.
He sat down on a mossy rock to wait for Sabina. There, miles outside of the city gates, he couldn’t hear the sounds of soldiers training or citizens arguing or chariots rolling by. He couldn’t smell the fear or see the sadness in people’s eyes—ordinary people who didn’t understand politics and were frightened. In the grove there was only birdsong and the splashing of water that fell from between the cracks in the rocks into the pool below. The consecrated area stretched deep into the woods, and no matter how often Julius went there, he never felt as if he saw it all or understood the mysteries that it contained. Nothing there was commonplace. Every tree was a sculptural arrangement of boughs branching off into more boughs, with more leaves than any man could count, all shimmering in a light that was always softer and gentler here than anywhere else in Rome. Every patch of ground offered a bounty of sprouting grasses, moss, shade plants and flowers.
When he was a boy, his teachers told the story of how this grove was where Diana, the goddess of fertility, assisted by her priest, had performed her duties. The King and Queen of the Wood, they were called. Bound together in a marriage, they made spring buds give way to summer flowers and then to fall fruits.
The boys snickered, glancing at each other, making up stories about what else they did up there, all alone in the woods. Joking about the bacchanals that must have gone on in the grove—sacred or not—because they all knew what men did with other men and with women. It was not secret, it was not profane.
Only the Vestal Virgins were sacred. Vestals promised a vow of chastity during their term of service and in exchange were ranked above all other Roman women and many men. Powerful, on their own, free in so many ways, they were not bound by the shackles of motherhood or the rules of men.
In exchange for that power and importance, each woman gave up her chance of a physical life with a man until after she had served for thirty years: the first decade learning, the second serving as a high priestess and the third teaching the next generation. Some thought it was a lot to ask of a woman; others didn’t agree. From the time she was six, or eight or ten, until the time she was thirty-six or thirty-eight or forty, she remained chaste. Never to feel a man’s hand on her skin or suffer the pressure between her legs that was natural and good. Never give in to the hot eyes of the men who came to her as a priestess but saw through the veils to the woman. Because if she did give in, if she lost her fight with virtue, there was no leniency. The punishment was grave and unrelenting. She was buried alive. It was harsh. But the Vestals were sacrosanct. And only a small percentage broke her vows.
Occasionally a nobleman did get away with seducing a Vestal. Hadrian had stolen one and made her his wife, and nothing had happened to either of them, but throughout history, as of that day in the grove, of the twenty-one Vestals who had been with a man, seventeen had been buried alive and fifteen of the men they had been with had also been put to death. The rules did not bend easily.
Although it was blasphemy and he only let himself think it for a moment, Julius thought that if they adopted the emperor’s new religion, he and Sabina would be allowed to live together openly and without fear. But could they give up everything they believed?
“Julius?”
He heard her before he saw her, and then she stepped into the path of a sunbeam. Red hair almost on fire. White robes glowing. He walked to her, smiling, forgetting for just those few minutes the massacred priest he’d seen that morning and what it portended for their future. Sabina stopped a foot away and they stood apart, looking at each other, drinking each other in.
At last.
“The news in the atrium is bad. Did you know Claudius was killed?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said, but didn’t want to bring the full horror of what he’d seen into the grove.
“What does this mean? Another priest killed?” She shook her head. “No, let’s not talk about this. Not now. There’s time for this conversation later.”
“Yes, there is.”
“How many times have we met here? Fifteen? Twenty?” she asked.
“Why?”
“I don’t know if we can build enough memories to last the rest of our lives on so few meetings.”
“For me, all it took was one.”
He reached her in one stride and took her in his arms as she lifted up her face to his. Bending to meet her, he pressed his lips on her lips and pulled her closer until there was no air between them, no space between them, and they just stood like that, breathing each other in.
Purring, like a temple cat, Sabina made contented noises deep in her throat. “I want you,” she whispered.
Since the night of the fire, she had never been coy. While the flames blazed she had looked at Julius, openly, blatantly and finally told him that she’d known for a long time that he was her fate. That was why she’d been so hostile to him—to try to change that destiny—but she knew better now. As Oedipus learned, the more you run away from what is predetermined the more you run toward it.
But Julius was five years older than Sabina. Supposedly wiser. Even if she was willing to give her virginity to him, he couldn’t assume she understood the full weight of that decision. So he asked her that first day and each time they came together afterward, as a preamble to their lovemaking, as if they were taking vows all over again, if she was sure she understood the significance of what they were doing.
The grove was a place of rituals and sacrifices.
This was his: to always give her an opportunity to say no anew although he desperately wanted her.
“Sabina, are you sure this is a chance you want to take?” he’d ask, and wait for her response.
There were times when she laughed at him, undoing her brooch and letting her robes fall to the ground as if her defiance alone should be answer enough. Other days she took the question seriously and answered with gravitas, bowing her head and saying, “I am as sure of
this as anything I’ve ever done. Or ever will do.”
Her virginity had not been given to Julius lightly, although it had been given with pleasure. No matter how intensely they felt the pushes and pulls, spasms and clenches of each other’s bodies, they never forgot that if she was found out, her punishment would be severe. There would be no grace given to her.
Or to him.
“Sabina, are you sure this is a chance you want to take?” he asked that day while she was fully dressed and they had only exchanged a dozen kisses.
Her eyes filled with tears. “I’m sure,” she said, and dug her fingers deeper into his flesh.
At least for him, for now, everything that was going on below them in the city ceased to matter.
“I’ll always be sure,” she said, and reached for the knot of his robe, pushing the fabric away and off his shoulders until he was naked in front of her. Then she ran the flat of her hands up and down his arms, down his chest, around his waist and up his back, and though he wanted badly to undress her, too, touch her skin, and feel her naked against him, he didn’t want to do anything to make her stop touching him or rush her. If only he could slow down each movement until she stopped moving altogether and, forever frozen, they could stand in the grace of each other’s tastes and touches and smells. The breeze was cool when it blew over him, contrasting with the heat she had inflamed. Julius burned and chilled at the same time.
Hands on her shoulders, he pulled her yet closer, although there was no space between them, and breathed in her perfumed skin and hair: that unique smell of sandalwood incense mixed with jasmine that identified her to him as much as her face or her voice.
And then breathless, lips swollen, eyes full of shining, smoky lust, she stepped back, fumbled with her brooch, undid it and let the robe fall to the ground. Both naked now, they stood a foot apart. Touching each other with their eyes. Igniting. Feeling themselves burst into flame. Luxuriating in the heat. Not caring if this fire scorched or burned. It had already destroyed them in one way. And they’d risen from the inferno in another. Still they stood there. Touching without hands, kissing without lips, making love without entering or being entered. Trying so desperately to make the inevitable coming-together last a long time, a longer time, the longest time. He wasn’t the one to make the first move; he never was. Although she’d told him over and over that this was what she wanted, he gave her every chance to change her mind. Wishing she would, praying she couldn’t.
She took a step. And then another, and then they were pressed together and he felt her cool flesh against every inch of his body, feeling her as she warmed to him. As she leaned into him. As they fused. These first minutes with her were always the first minutes with her. It was as if they’d never been together before. As if he’d never felt any woman’s flesh against his. As if the sensation of yielding skin was unknown to him until that moment. It took his breath away, made him long to take her right away, made him aware that he would rather die than ever lose her.
Kissing her, he reveled in how sweet she tasted, until suddenly her mouth was salty.
Julius pulled back only far enough so that he could look at her. As she stood there, naked among the sacred trees, the wind and the leaves making a pattern on her body, there were tears sliding down her cheeks.
After wiping them away, he took her hands and held them both in his.
“Sabina, what is it?”
She shook her head proudly, snatched her hands back, put one on him, stroking him while her other hand reached for his and buried it deep between her legs.
“Julius. Now. Please. Everything else can wait. Words can wait.”
She lay down, pulling him on top of her. As he slipped inside, her legs went up around his back and locked him to her so tightly her thigh muscles felt like a vise. He tried to go slow but she was in a hurry and thrust up at him over and over and over again until he felt he was about to melt inside of her.
“This is how I want to die,” she whispered between gasps. “Like this. With no room for anything else in the world but us. Just us.”
It was dark in the woods, but not so dark that he couldn’t see her face. He’d never forget the look in her eyes at that moment. Unadulterated happiness pierced with devastating pain. He didn’t know how to describe it, or how to decipher it. The two emotions didn’t cancel each other out but somehow remained distinct, coexisting in the same moment.
He would have stopped if he could, would have pulled out and held her gently in his arms, asked her to tell him what was wrong, comforted her, tried to help ease whatever anguish she was in.
Except he knew her better than that. Sabina was a high priestess. Had been an independent woman from the time she was seven years old, when she was brought into the Vestal’s house to learn the ancient rituals. Now she was in the most powerful decade of the three she would spend under the Vestals’ roof. She’d been trained to understand how special she was and how to deal with it. That ingrained knowledge was now part of her nature, not something she could shake off. He would not insult her by trying to comfort her when what she wanted was much more aggressive and urgent.
The final push and pull of their lovemaking was accompanied by wind rustling through the leaves and by the little exclamations each of them made, and Julius held back until he heard Sabina cry out in that tortured pleasure song that he had been waiting for. She was right, he thought as he let go, if only they could die like that. It would be kinder than what might be in store.
When they were finished, even the wind quieted. They held each other and then sat up and spread out what they’d brought with them, and although it was prohibited for any woman, including a priestess, to drink wine, they both drank and ate the cakes that she’d made.
After the small feast, she got up, pulling him with her, and they walked to the pond. This was also part of their ritual. To bathe in the water that was both warm in spots where it was fed by an underground hot spring and cool where the water rushed down from the rocks.
Underwater their hands darted like small fishes, his swimming around her breasts, circling her nipples, then slinking away to voyage between her legs, where he found a different kind of wet than the water, wet that was silkier and more slippery; and her fingers fishtailed through his legs to cup him and stroke him and make him hard again.
Julius swam behind her and slipped high up inside her, and his hands came around her hips.
“Oh, but you’re greedy,” she whispered.
“Is it too much?”
“No. Never.”
“You want me again?”
“Again, yes. And yes again.”
He laughed at her exuberance, pushing away the thought that this was prohibited. If he let that in, it would steal the orgasm that was starting from down deep, deeper than from inside him, deep from the mucky bottom. Up. And up. And up.
“Now,” he whispered to her, because she liked him to tell her.
She thrust back against him and twisted herself on him, knowing exactly what she was doing and how long it would take so that she would come at almost the same time for what they both always knew might be the last time.
Afterward, wrapped in the blankets that Julius had brought, they sat side by side and he brought up the subject that neither of them had wanted to deal with—the changes that the emperor’s newest edict were going to make in their lives.
“It’s time for us to run away,” she said. “I’ve been thinking about this. We can take something—one of the treasures—the statue or the stones, and just disappear somewhere where they won’t care who we were before. There’s no room for the three of us and our sins here in Rome.”
Julius laughed sarcastically. “Steal the stones? Become outlaws?”
“We already are, aren’t we?”
He hadn’t heard one part of what she’d said. Or he’d heard it and it hadn’t registered. Or it had and it scared him so much he’d blocked it. Because if it was true, now there would be real and visible proof of the rules
they’d broken, and there would be no way of saving them. Some women might have explained it with words, but Sabina just took his hand and put it on her stomach. Her skin was warm, silken and smooth. And her stomach was just slightly rounded.
Chapter 17
New York City—Tuesday, 10:48 a.m.
Rachel was at Christie’s auction house to bid on three paintings her uncle Alex was interested in buying. She’d won one, lost one and opened her phone to call him on his cell as the last of the works he wanted was about to come up. This way he could listen to the action and inform her if he decided to go beyond the limits he’d set before he’d left. After years of bidding on gemstones for her own work, she was comfortable with the auction process and usually enjoyed it. But not that morning.
The room was uncomfortable despite the air-conditioning. Not the same kind of heat she’d felt in the fantasy—because that was now what she was calling it—but it reminded her of that. It was too crowded here—it caused the elevated temperature. There were a hundred and twenty masterwork paintings for sale, and most major museum curators, dealers and private collectors—or their representatives—were present.
“Item number 45,” the auctioneer intoned.
Rachel stared at the painting on the easel. It was a Bacchus, which, while not signed by Caravaggio, was believed to have been painted by his students with the master himself adding some of the detail work. Despite the lack of signature, it was breathtaking.
The colors were brilliant, the composition classic, and the features on the young god’s face exquisitely rendered. The frame, she thought, was overly ornate, maybe just a little too heavy for the work. But a frame didn’t matter. She couldn’t stop staring.
“You’re right, you must have this one,” she whispered to her uncle over the phone. “It’s beautiful.”