The Book of the Beast Read online

  She was a Christian, as well. That he liked even less. He was himself a Mithrian, and had the mark between his brows. He sensibly worshipped Mars, too, the Warrior, for his profession, and gave seasonal respects to Jupiter the Father. The odd mysteries of Jusa Christos put him off, what he knew of them. It sounded like Greek Dionysos, without enough wine.

  He began to frequent the house, though, and became friendly with her uncle, the guardian. He was allowed to talk to her, then, and here and there they sneaked off and furtively fondled. He saw he would only get what he wanted by marrying her and that there were advantages in that - for though rough, the villa had some money in it. Then he wondered if they would insist he become a Christian. But that was not their formula. Apparently he might do as he wished, providing he let her practise her own religion.

  He saw later, once he had wedded and bedded Lavinia, had had her, and installed her in married quarters at the Insula Juna, that the whole point of this understanding was that she should then attempt to convert him, day and night long. Those were the first arguments.

  He did not mind it too much. He was a Centurian Velitis. His bed was in the Fort.

  She next withheld her favours, to punish him for not wanting some priest to push him in the river, half drown him, tell him all his sins were washed out, and now he must love his enemies.

  "You forget, Vinia," he said. "I'm a soldier. My enemies I kill."

  "The armies of the Emperor are upheld by Christian legionaries," she said promptly. Obviously someone had told her what to say. It was probably true, and if it was, accounted maybe for the great running cracks that were dismantling the Empire. There were certainly no legions left by now in this hole of Par Dis where, like a fool, seven years before their meeting, he had got himself sent. Someone had said the best means to promotion were the difficult and savage postings. And Par Dis, with its town of baths and basilica and circus, was not even so bad. It had originated from some silver mines, hence the name (for Pluto-Dis, god of the Underworld and its riches). But the silver ran out after a few decades. The Empire had been ever-stretching in those days, however, and saw no harm in making a frontier station on the site. There were already roads, a fort, a native settlement. The walls and town were added. The river was useful in the trading way, and sometimes provided fine oysters.

  The oysters were all gone now, like the silver and the two legions. Only men of the Auxilia, native companies under Roman officers, held the line in this flung forth province.

  He had had his promotion. He had reached centurion, with a command of skirmish cavalry. There he stuck.

  It was a curious idea: when he was travelling the miles here from Rome, to begin all this, Lavinia had been seven years old. For seven more she grew up, lying in ambush for him on the west road, coming out with the plums at the fatal moment.

  When she would not have him, he went with the amiable whores at the She-Wolf. One evening the drunk uncle stormed to the Fort, and made a fool of himself (and of Vusca) over it. How could he (Vusca) be such a barbarian, wasting his strength on these women, neglecting his wife, when all she longed for was to bear him a son.

  This turned out to be a fact. Lavinia had now decided to pine not only for a Christian husband, but for a baby.

  She went and lived in the villa a while. When she returned to the married quarters, they were reconciled. She had become thin, scrawny with dissatisfaction, or sadness. Her mouth turned down and there were two cut lines either side of it. He did his best. But he did not seem able to please her now, even in bed

  .They tried for her baby in grim sweaty grindings.

  One day she was pregnant. He, less interested than she, made the correct offerings. He supposed she merely praised her ghastly slaves' god, who refused presents with typical petulance.

  It was a bad winter. There were wolves at the gates. Uncle went wolf-hunting and was mauled. He died a week later and when Lavinia heard she miscarried in the fourth month.

  After this, she did not conceive again. They eventually left off the dutiful grindings. He went back to his whores and she went off to her Christ. When Lavinia met her husband, she would cry. She greeted him in tears as if after an absence of months. Then they would talk, attempting to be rational. But soon her niggling would commence, her whining. She could not seem to control it, like foul breath. At last he shouted, or he was cold, or he mocked her. Finally all he was able to do was leave her, and hear her crying again, from the street below. He tried to enact this repetitive scene as seldom as he might. He had only come here today because she sent him a wild message. He had got the impression she was ill.

  But she only said she had had some dream. Her god had told her something or other. And that Vusca and she must return to full relations.

  She was using her god now to drag in the erring spouse. If he had been a Christian, it might have worked. He could not think why she wanted him. As lovers they had nothing, and as two people, nothing.

  She stood there, fragilely brittle and dry as a dead leaf somehow preserved. One tap, and she would be in pieces. His annoyance would not resist that. They might separate, he said. L^e was not, after all, by blood more than somewhat Roman, and had relatives in the north. Surely she would prefer to go to them. And perhaps, if there were a divorce, she might (he grimaced, who would want to?) remarry, more happily.

  To a Christian, divorce was unacceptable.

  She had not married a Christian, he reminded her. He, she said, had undergone a Christian marriage. To please her, he said.

  He had loved her then, she said. He apologised, which was cruel. She cried. On his cue, he left her.

  The East-West Road ran straight through the town, straight through the forum, with its market,

  law-courts, temples, straight on to the East Gate and the Fort. The plan of the town was still pure, whatever else crumbled, whatever slums accrued, the two highways unswerving as ruled lines, the original buildings symmetrical. Above the town, to the south, west, east and north, were the endless ups and downs of the hills that held the river valley. The route east, the view of the hills, even the bustle of the forum - when going in this direction - cheered Vusca up. The sight of the Fort itself, though it was the cradle of his disappointments (his life had had little besides), had a look of home which the Insula Juna never did.

  Vusca was a man who preferred to be among men. He distrusted women, did not understand them. The life of the legions suited him, with its fellowship of the march, camp or barracks, the orderly routines marked out by trumpets. Though he had yearned in his youth for more active service, now even that had stopped its gnawing. The practice skirmishes of his corps of Velites ably substituted. He realised it was a kind of make-believe. They all indulged in it: the code - that they were ready to repel the hordes, and could do so; the symbol - of Rome astride the world for ever. Rome was not going to last. She was tearing her own heart out. For the hordes, they were those same smiling tribesmen who had their hutment the other side of the river, who bartered with the Fort and in the market, sent stray daughters to train in the brothel, or crossed the water entirely to take up Roman ways, like Lavinia's grandfather. One knew the horde was still there, of course, behind the friendly obligement, the tunic or dalmatic. It could turn into a snarl, that smile. And then what? The other bet was, Rome would pull the Auxilia in as she had pulled in her legions already, leaving the frontiers bare, letting go. Then you must decide on marching home to the Mother you could scarcely remember. Or deserting.

  No, Vusca did not delude himself. He simply, along with the other centurions, and doubtless the Pilum

  Commander, lived in the moment.

  One thing, if the Auxilia was recalled, he could go to Rome and leave Lavinia here.

  He was thinking of this in the forum, and its wryness amused him, when he saw a woman coming down the steps of the Temple of the Father and Mother.

  There was nothing in that, everyone but the Christians -and sometimes even some of those - went to make offerings to Ju
piter or Juna Anga. But she was not dressed like a Roman. Her garments looked more Eastern, and her face was covered by a wisp of veiling. There was an element in her walk, provocative, liberated, that suggested the hetaera rather than the she-wolf. A Greek prostitute's freedom. No doubt she was a whore, for she had that other look, too.

  Something about her aroused him, even as he sat on the horse fresh from Lavinia's howling. Desire did not come so readily now. He wondered what it was about this one that stirred it. He was not even close enough to catch her perfume.

  Behind her trotted a slave, hurrying with a parasol like a huge pansy-flower to shade her mistress. They went away towards the Julian Baths.

  Vusca rode on towards the Fort.

  "There's a new woman. She's set up house behind the Julian Baths. The chief Lupa's roaring. Reckons this one will put her girls out of business."

  Dianus laughed, and the dark sunlight of evening glinted on his eyes and on the silver of his service bracelets.

  "Ah?" said Vusca cautiously.

  "An Eastern bit, or so they say. I've not been there. Yet. Her name's some foreign thing, Lilu, Lillit - so they call her Lililla."

  "If she's an Easterner, she'll be a Christian."

  "The Christians can't be whores, their thighs are done up," said Dianus. "This one worships properly." "I maybe saw her," said Vusca.

  "You maybe did. Come and see her again. Or do you want to go back to your wife?"

  It was dusk, and up on the roof-walk of the Light Tower the men were igniting the brazier. As they walked away from the Fort, the flame fountained behind them, Dis Light, for a guide to the river traffic, for % warning to any dreamer on the hills: Rome is here, and Rome is still awake.

  The evening was thundery, close and hot. Fireflies blinked in the bushes of a garden. Dianus swaggered. He was not a man Vusca had ever liked, but yet, like a brother he had grown up with, he was accustomed to him, prepared to be loyal.

  A trumpet sounded gates from the Fort rampart, now several streets behind. The whole town took its timing from there, rising with the sun at cockcrow, securing its door at gates. All but the wine-shops and eating houses which were blooming out on the dark like the fireflies.

  They did not go by way of the forum, but cut around to the south. Beyond the Julian Baths was a maze of side lanes. Here Dianus located a modest house that had once belonged to a minor official of the basilica. A baker's that took up the front was closed, but over the house door hung a shining lamp of expensive Aegyptian alabaster.

  Dianus rapped on the door.

  After a pause, a male voice spoke up. "Who's there?" "I," said Dianus flirtatiously, "and a friend."

  "Which house are you seeking?" obtusely demanded the porter through the door. "The house of Lililla."

  "This is that house. Is my mistress known to you?"

  "Soon she will be," said Dianus. And losing patience, battered on the door. A growl answered from within, not human but canine. Dianus stepped off. "By the Victory! I think there's a real wolf in there."

  "Take yourself away," advised the porter, over the growling. "My mistress receives no one without invitation. There are men and dogs here."

  "So I can tell," bawled Dianus. "Keep her then, your bloody mistress. But she'd have done better not to fall out with the Fort." He waited, listening to see if this did any good. It did not. With a volley of oaths Dianus strode off. Vusca kept pace. He was more tickled than anything. Whores came three to the denarius, but this one, as he had suspected, traded by the Greek mode.

  He considered the woman Lililla slowly. This was not the hot haste of his passages along the west hill

  after Lavinia.

  Lililla was available for an honest price. The dealings of harlotry, if not of women, he grasped.

  Eight mornings later, when the drills, and a store inspection, were over, Retullus Vusca went up to the forum and searched among the stalls and shops. He ended up in the cave of discreet Barbarus (a blond hill tribesman, now more civilised-Latinised than half the town, and capable of speaking Greek more honed than the Pilum Commander's, though this latter was not difficult). Here was found a suitable article. A painted vase of Aegyptian nard - a most generous, but not effusive, down-payment. It was dispatched to the house of Lililla by one of Barbarus' own sons. The papyrus read: 'This from your admirer

  Centurion Velitis Re. Vusca. If he calls upon you this evening, may he hope not to be refused?" A smaller papyrus reached him before sunset at the Fort.

  It answered: 'Lord, I touch your gift to my heart. Come." This time the door was opened and the porter bowed.

  Lamplight, and a pleasant foreign smell of other oils and incenses filled the lobby. The atrium was the old way - it was an old house - partly unroofed, with a tank of water, but it had been made attractive with Greek lamps and the paint redone on the walls. At the shadow's edge stood a man with two wolfhounds on leash, just visible, a tactful reminder.

  In the central room Rome ceased, and Par Dis too. It became an Eastern pavilion. Silk ropes, draperies, images of ivory. On glowing charcoal burned sticks of something that the Pharaohs might have favoured.

  Vusca found himself suddenly excited and nervous, like some boy.

  He planted himself firmly, and as the slave went out, looked round and saw the woman, Lililla.

  She reclined on a couch, in a fringed robe that gleamed like water even as she breathed. Her lips were nacred and her eyes all kohl. She got up without hurry, and came towards Vusca. When she reached him, she kneeled down with the liquid boneless movement of a snake. She brushed his foot with her fingers and got up again, and looked into his face.

  "The centurion honours me," she said. Her voice was low.

  He discovered he had no words. He had meant to play her game with her, all courtesy and fakes. But everything about her was sex. Though she was not to be tumbled like the she-wolves, heated and quick, every line of her said Take me .

  He would have to leave it all to her. Perhaps that was the idea.

  She conducted him to the couch, and gave him a wine bowl of silver. Lovers performed acts thereon that, when he caught glimpses, startled him. The wine was black and spicy. Something in it?

  Soon, she made him lie back upon the couch. She undid his clothes with damning competence. She began to do things to his body, with her hands, with a fan of feathers she took up, with smooth strigils of enamel. He need do nothing. She worked on him like a complacently smiling physician. She removed her own garment only when he had showed himself ready, as if to reward him. She was small, with round breasts, round heavy hips, an indented waist, strong thighs. Her feet and ankles, like her hands and

  wrists, her face, were delicately shaped. She was fleshy but firm, like a satiny fruit. Her lips were the

  same. When she absorbed his penis into her mouth he was half alarmed. She seemed to have no teeth. When she drew on him, he almost could not check himself. He held back with some trouble, wanting to possess her. She seemed to read this from his eyes, let him go and mounted him, and took him in again at the second mouth, the mouth he wanted most.

  She performed all the labour, she also controlled him with a wicked, subservient mastery, not permitting him to ejaculate at first, reining him by a strange pressure at the base of the column. When his seed did spurt, it came in a convulsion. He had seldom if ever known a climax so intense. He found, astonished when she removed herself from him, that she had also penetrated him.

  She went away briefly, while he lay there, and returned freshly robed, carrying the wine-cup, which she offered on her knees.

  Unlike the other whores, she had made no pretence of her own pleasure. Neither had she shown a whore's aversion, any impatience or indifference. She had been created for his use. It was as natural as that.