Читать книгу The Passion of Mary Magdalen - Elizabeth Cunningham - Страница 39

When I stepped into Paulina’s cubiculo—for all its luxurious appointments still small and stinking of perfume and hair oil—I had a moment’s false hope. She appeared to be asleep, sprawled on her couch, one arm under her head, the other under her breasts, her hand resting on the curve of her pubic bone. Her shift rode up her thighs stopping just short of where her hand lay, as if she had been lifting it and then thought better of it. Her bare legs were shapely, her feet slender with beautifully curved arches and well-tended toenails painted silver. Her elaborate hairdo had come undone, and her hair fanned out like the rays of a black sun. I studied her face, her lips moist and slightly parted, her eyelids twitching a little.

Then her breathing quickened, and I realized: no one sleeps that artfully. She knows I’m here. This is a test. The mistress spread out, seemingly vulnerable in her sleep; what will the slave do? I sat down, leaned against the wall, and narrowed my eyes to slits. If she was going to fake sleep, then I would, too. For quite a while we each regarded the other through a thicket of eyelashes.

“Red.”

She gave up first. Score one for me. No, wait. I am not playing.

“Red.” Her voice was plaintive when I didn’t answer. “Don’t make me cross. Look at me.”

When I opened my eyes, she pulled up her shift the rest of the way, shifting her legs and parting her thighs to reveal her swollen, glistening sex.

“Now we’re back where we started,” Paulina said. “Only I’m not going to make a grab for you this time, and I don’t think even you would be stupid enough to raise your hand to me again. Why should you? You’re a whore. My whore. Mine. You know what to do. Do it.”

I looked at Paulina spread out like an oversweet pastry on a baker’s tray—one of those pornographic ones so common in the Subura. I wondered fleetingly how that dry, tight stick of a man could have spawned someone so round and lush. From an aesthetic point of view, she was lovely, near flawless. But nothing about her moved me. She was like a painted Roman statue, vibrant and vivid on the outside, cold stone underneath.

“And if I refuse,” I said, “what then? More luncheon floggings? The salt mines? No, I know, you’ll tell Pater.”

I saw a spasm of fury rip through her. If she’d been on her feet, she would have struck me, or plunged a knife into my heart. There was that much force in her for an instant. Then, just like that, it was gone. She crumpled, making herself small, pulling her knees up to her chest, hiding her face. Her shoulders shook, and I heard her sobbing—not loud theatrical sobs, but the kind you try to swallow. I stayed where I was, still wary. When the sobs subsided, she sat up, disheveled and puffy-eyed. I rummaged in a chest and found her a handkerchief.

“He won’t let anyone,” she said at last.

“Won’t let anyone what?”

“Touch me.”

“What do you mean? You’re a married woman.”

She shook her head. “Appius Claudius doesn’t sleep with me.”

“Ever?”

“Never. Not that I want that repulsive old satyr, but I can’t have… I’m guarded all the time. I wasn’t going to tell you, but…” She paused and looked away.

“Tell me what?”

“I’m a virgin.”

Shit. I stared at this child-woman with her pouting lips, her sumptuous breasts, her little, wet twat now drying in the breeze.

“Please, Red.”

She was almost meek. I couldn’t take it. A virgin matron with a split personality.

“Can you do it…I mean, so no one will know? I mean…”

“So your hymen won’t rupture?”

She nodded. Her eyes welled with tears again.

“Sure,” I sighed, “I’m a pro.”

Paulina was right about one thing. I did know what to do; I’d had plenty of experience at the Vine and Fig Tree with the other whores, though I’d never had a female client before. There wasn’t much to it. Paulina just lay there with her eyes closed and received my ministrations. She did not touch me at all, except—typical of her—to yank my hair when she climaxed. One thing puzzled me, though. Not that I’d had experience of any woman’s virginity but my own, but I couldn’t see or feel her hymen. Had she been lying to me? I wouldn’t put it past her, yet she had seemed genuinely concerned about preserving the evidence of her virginity, which was also odd, come to think if it.

Something smelled fishy, and it wasn’t just Paulina’s twat.

When it was over I sat back down on the floor while Paulina cooled, so to speak, re-congealed. If she were a man, and I was still a whore in the traditional sense, she would toss me a tip and leave. If she were my lover, we would lie in each other’s arms and talk and drowse. But she was neither. I was stuck with her, and I had nowhere to go.

“Get me my stola,” she said, sitting up. “Quickly, stulta.”

Clearly she was giving me my cue. I was to act as if nothing had happened, as if she had not been a mass of quivering nerve-endings a few moments ago. I decided to see what would happen if I didn’t get the hint.

“So, Paulina,” I said handing her the stola, forgetting that she wouldn’t have the slightest idea of what to do with it herself.

“What did you just call me!” She handed the stola back and stood up, gesturing for me to dress her.

“Oh, yeah, I forgot. Domina, delight of my eyes.”

She bit her lip. To keep herself from laughing? It was hard to say. Clumsily I put the stola over her head. Neither of us knew what to do with her arms. The dresser was supposed to move them for her.

“So, domina,” I said, fighting my own impulse to give in to hysterical laughter. “What in Hades is going on here?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

We’d finally gotten her arms through. She sucked in her breath while I tied the ribbon under her breasts.

“I’ll tell you what I mean.”

“Fix my hair,” she interrupted. “I suppose I’ll have to hold the mirror myself.”

She snapped her fingers as if she expected the mirror to jump into her hands. That’s what slaves were for, to give their masters and mistresses the illusion that the world was at their command. I ignored her and began to brush her hair. After a moment she picked up the mirror herself. I didn’t know a thing about dressing hair, but I enjoyed brushing Paulina’s. It was thick as a horse’s mane but softer; its texture made me think of water—smooth, almost cool. If I knew nothing about hair styling, I did know something about sex. I knew something Paulina didn’t. That orgasm had blown her wide open; her petals hadn’t folded back yet into a tight-fisted bud. She was relaxing into the sheer sensual pleasure of my hair brushing.

“All right,” she said. “Tell me what you meant by your question while you still have a tongue.”

“To begin with,” I said not breaking the rhythm of my strokes, “why are you married to an old man who won’t fuck you? I can understand why you wouldn’t want to fuck him, but that doesn’t usually cut any ice. Doesn’t he want to get heirs by you? As repellent as you find him, don’t you want children?” I fought to keep the wistfulness out of my voice. “I thought Roman matrons who produced three or more children got direct control of their property.”

She pursed her lips, frowning at her reflection in the mirror.

“Why should I tell you any of that? You’re just a slave.”

“Yes, just a slave,” I repeated. “Like all the other slaves who are watching and listening and whispering.”

Her knuckles on the mirror’s handle turned white. No doubt she would hurl it—what was another shattered mirror to her—but then she sighed, and all her muscles went slack.

“This mirror is too heavy. Just fix my hair, and I’ll look afterwards.”

“I don’t know how to fix hair, domina. I’m not a tontrix.”

“Just keep brushing it then. The other slaves will be back soon.”

So I kept brushing; she leaned her head back, her face tired and childlike.

“My mother was very beautiful, they say.” She spoke in a dreamy voice I’d never heard before. Suddenly I regretted asking anything. I didn’t want her to trust me. I didn’t want to be anything more to her than a mirror she could pick up, put down, or toss away. “My father caught her in bed with some equestrian. I think my father had him killed. My mother was sent into exile. I think,” she lowered her voice, “My father would have killed her, too, but her family rescued her. They took her away. Far away.”

“Did you ever see her again?”

“No. She died of a fever a few years later.”

“How old were you when she went away?”

“Four. I can’t remember her.”

Her voice was a monotone.

“Then my sister,” she went on in the same flat voice, unstoppable now, “my oldest sister, less than a year after she was married, she committed adultery with a senator’s son. I thought that would be better than with a slave. I was still a child; I didn’t understand. I was glad when I heard she was coming home, but then my father killed her. He strangled her.”

My hands started to shake so I couldn’t hold the brush. My stomach heaved into my throat. I got to the slop bucket just in time. My body knew before I did: The guilt-wracked man who had come to me at the Vine and Fig Tree had told me the same story; I had acted as confessor and priestess to her dead sister’s lover. I had also serviced her hateful father. It was unbearable, I had to throw up, get it out of me, this knowledge, this contamination.

Paulina just sat there not moving, not speaking.

“Did I give you permission to stop brushing?” she demanded when I was done.

“Would you rather I had vomited into your hair?”

“You people have so little self control. It’s disgusting. Now pick up the brush and get on with it. By Juno, it wasn’t your sister.”

My hands were still shaking as I went back to my task. I needed the soothing rhythm of the brush strokes more than she did now.

“My second sister—”

“I’m sorry I asked. Don’t tell me any more.”

“She died in childbirth,” Paulina went on impervious. “She was a virtuous wife. My father adopted her son.”

Someone should strangle Publius Paulus before he harmed another generation.

“He didn’t want me to be married at all. There was an opening for a new vestal virgin. I was still young enough. Our family is ancient and distinguished. I had a good dowry. They should have taken me, but they chose someone else, someone from an upstart family. That was around the time my sister got caught with the senator’s son. Those old virgin bitches probably sat around congratulating themselves on not choosing me. That’s when the rumors started. The rumors of a family curse. Poor Pater. It wasn’t his fault. All the bad blood comes from my mother’s side.”

I opened my mouth to loose a stream of invective against poor Pater the filiacide, but realized she could not and would not hear any criticism of her father. It was not the story she was wanted to tell herself.

“So even though I had a good dowry, I didn’t get any marriage offers.”

“What about Appius Claudius?”

“I’m not sure, but I think my father knows things about him that Claudius doesn’t want anyone to know, things that could ruin him, maybe even get him thrown out of the Senate.”

“So, let me get this straight.” I couldn’t hold back anymore. “Your noble Pater, of the ancient and distinguished family, is blackmailing that kinky sleaze ball into being your jailer.”

I could not see her face but as I brushed her hair, I could feel the muscles of her face pulling her scalp forward as she frowned.

“You must not speak disrespectfully of Pater,” she stated, though I thought I detected just the slightest interrogative tilt in her tone. “I will not allow it.”

“Fine,” I said. “He’s your father, not mine.”

Thank the gods. Mine was at the bottom of the sea, at the back of my mind, at the treacherous shifting edges of memory. Not that Paulina had asked.

“Pater knows what is best for me,” she droned on. “I may not love Claudius…”

Love? I’d never seen her so much as have a conversation with him.

“…but at least I have a place in society. I am a respectable Roman matron. I am restoring the honor of my family.”

She was clearly speaking by rote, repeating what she had been taught, renewing her will to believe it. I said nothing; there was nothing I could say that would not be disrespectful of Pater. Then, without warning, Paulina’s mood shifted again, and she buried her face in her hands.

I stood there, the brush suspended, my life suspended. How I longed for a sea wind, raw and bracing, how I longed for sky and the piercing cry of wild birds. Instead here I was in a place thick with human secrets and secretions.

“Red,” she whispered, “I need someone to, someone—”

To love you, I finished silently. But I can’t. I can’t.

“—to be on my side. Someone who won’t betray me. Someone I can trust.”

There was that request again, the one she had made of me in the storeroom when I sat naked with my wounds exposed. I understood it better now, but I still didn’t know how to answer her. Everyone is working for someone, Reginus had said. I could say, “Yes, trust me, Paulina,” and get the goods on her easily. I could become an information broker. Who would buy her secrets? Some lackey of Pater’s? Or Claudius’s? Or that walking erection Decius Mundus? There would probably be plenty of takers.

“Red, I’m talking to you, Red. Can I trust you or not?”

“Trusting someone is always a risk,” I said. “I don’t know that I would trust a slave I’d bought through bullying and blackmail, one I had publicly beaten. I mean, think about it, Paulina. Why wouldn’t I have every reason to spy on you and betray you?”

She was so nonplussed she didn’t even notice that I called her Paulina.

“But you’re mine,” she almost whimpered. “I can kill you if I want to. I can make your life so miserable you’ll wish you were dead.”

“You can threaten me all you like. It makes no difference. I’m already miserable. I already wish I were dead. Listen, Paulina, I may be your pedisequa, but you can’t buy or force loyalty. Why should anyone be on your side when you can order them beaten or killed or lop off a body part in a fit of pique? When you regularly throw tantrums and break mirrors, threaten to tattle to your precious Pater, and in every way behave like a petty tyrant and a spoiled brat? What do you expect? What are you thinking?”

Paulina began making loud gasping noises, as if she couldn’t get enough air in her pipes. I wondered if she were going to faint or have a fit. But instead she stood up, white-faced and blue-lipped, and turned to face me.

“How dare you, how dare you speak to me as if,” she sputtered, “as if—”

“As if I were your equal? Because I am.”

“What,” she managed after a moment, “what on earth can you possibly mean?”

“Honey,” I said, “we’re both prisoners.”

Before Paulina could figure out what to say or do next, we heard voices in the courtyard below, and then the sound of feet on the staircase.

The guard had returned.