Читать книгу The Passion of Mary Magdalen - Elizabeth Cunningham - Страница 41

“Isis!”

I stand before the tawdry painted statue at the temple of Venus Obsequens; only it’s not the temple; it’s Paulina’s cubiculo, dark except for the coals in the brazier and filled with the breathing of wall-to-wall slaves.

“Isis, you have betrayed me.”

“Then make your complaint, daughter, make it well, as the druids taught you.”

She wants me to make a poem, this plaster and paint goddess who led me to the river and overturned my boat, who abandoned me to slavery.

Suddenly I have a sistrum in my hand; I am shaking a rhythm with it, the rhythm of birds’ wings beating the sky, the rhythm of the river where it meets the tides of the sea. I hear my voice wailing. There are no words, but my voice dissolves the walls, and there is only light, bright, unbearable.

Then I am in a grove of trees, a dark grove, like the ones on Mona. I am drawn to one tree in particular—a massive tree it would take six men to ring, a tree with bark like the flow of water, the current of a river. Lodged in the hollow of the trunk with the tree growing all around it as if it were a wound, I see the coffin.

“How do I get him out?” I cry out. “How do I free him?”

As if in answer, my foster-father King Bran appears beside the tree. He gazes at me, and the leaves of the tree turn gold, not autumn gold, gold as the sun, as light itself.

“Ah, lass, we all want to be free.”

He holds out his arms, but before I can reach him—

I woke up cold and cramped in Paulina’s room. It was dark, but there was a particular quality to the cold and to my wakefulness that told me dawn was not far off. Wrapped in my cloak that doubled as a blanket, I went outside and sat down in a corner of the courtyard. It was colder away from the sleeping bodies, but I needed to be by myself. Those other bodies, however warm, were not my friends. There was no comfort in their nearness. The fierce, faraway stars seemed kindlier than my chamber mates, so I sat and looked up at them.

The dream left me aching with longing, but I welcomed it. It was the first dream I could remember since I had come to domus Claudii. If I only had my surface life as a slave, the same every day, flat and featureless, I might as well die. I would die. Underneath, even if I could only know it in sleep, there was a world of great dimension, of numinous trees, a loving king, and a story that was not over yet. Curiously, the dream had changed. In waking life, I felt more trapped than ever, but I had not dreamed of being bound by the riverweeds. I had dreamed of the tree—in Isis’s story, she finds the coffin in a temple pillar. But for a Celt the grove is a temple.

“Hey,” said a startled voice. My thoughts scattered and hid as someone entered the courtyard from the passageway. “What are you doing out here?”

“Who wants to know?” I was angry. My cold dawn sanctuary had been invaded.

“I do.” I recognized Reginus’s voice as he neared me.

“Leave me alone,” I growled. “Or I’ll tell Publius Paulus that you were absent without leave.”

“‘Atta, girl, Red,” Reginus encouraged me, ignoring my threat. “Now you’re catching on.” He sat down next to me and huddled close for warmth. “I’ve been meaning to have a chat with you. This is too good a chance to pass up. And besides I’ve got a flask of wine, and some fresh baked bread, so be nice.”

“Have a friend in the kitchen, do you?” I said, tearing off a hunk of bread. “Oh, I forgot. You don’t have friends. You’re screwing someone in the kitchen.”

“That’s right,” he said amiably, and he passed me the flask.

“So what do you want with me, Reginus?”

“Idle curiosity. What have you done to the domina?”

“What do you mean?”

“She’s different since you’ve been here.”

“Different how?”

“She keeps looking to you, as if she wants your approval. I’ve never seen her do that with anyone but Publius Paulus.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I recoiled at the thought of having anything in common with that man. “She throws fits with me the same as she does with anyone else.”

“But with you, she’s watching for a reaction.”

I shrugged. “What do you care, Reginus? Oh!” I suddenly got it. “Of course. You report on her to someone. Her father. You’re his slave. Well, get this straight, I wouldn’t pass on information to Publius Paulus about my worst enemy, which Paulina is. It may be your job description to tattle to him, but it’s not mine. And if you want to keep those balls you’re so proud of, don’t try to weasel secrets out of me.”

“My, my. Aren’t we the savage Celt?”

I didn’t even bother to say shut up.

“I’ll tell you something, Red, in confidence—”

“Don’t.”

“You’re wrong about me. I don’t report to Publius Paulus. I—”

“Listen, Reginus,” I stopped him, “if you’re not trying to trick me, why are you telling me anything at all. What do you care about what I think of you?”

“The hell if I know!” He sounded genuinely perplexed. “Hey, if you want to work for the bitch, work for her. Just leave my balls alone, ok?”

There didn’t seem to be much point in explaining to him that I wasn’t working for anyone, that I wanted no part of this dismal place and its pecking order. It was all Reginus knew.

But I knew something else. At least in my dreams.

“Red!” It was Paulina, half-furious, half-panicked. “Where is Red?”

“Well,” said Reginus, helping me to my feet. “I will say I don’t envy you. Why I’m bothering with you, I don’t know, but take it from me, Red, if you’re working only for Paulina, you may be backing the wrong horse. If I were you, I’d hedge my bets.”

I didn’t ponder much over Reginus’s hints, though I knew what he meant. Paulina was not a player. She had no power; she was just a pain. People with real power didn’t have to beat up on their slaves; they had more interesting victims. Ambitious slaves did what they could to ally themselves with power. But I did not want to succeed as a slave—to succeed would be to concede that I was a slave, which, of course, outwardly I was. But in my heart, I still fiercely guarded my sovereignty, though I no longer knew if it existed.

The light waned toward the darkest time, and the cold grew bitter. Then Saturnalia began, days and days of nonstop partying. The festivities kept Paulina distracted and the chamber slaves frantically busy as she changed her clothes, hair, and makeup half a dozen times a day. Now and then Paulina took me with her to a banquet. More frequently she left me behind, specifically whenever she knew or feared that pater might also be attending.

Though a break from Paulina’s demanding company was always a relief, those long nights were also lonely. I was homesick, more homesick than I had ever been in my years of exile. In the Holy Isles, winter was the time of storytelling and music. There was no storytelling at domus Claudius, only tale-bearing. The slaves who were not busy serving at banquets sat around the braziers in numb silence—too cold, wretched, or mistrustful to talk, at least when I was there, hopelessly tainted in everyone’s eyes as the domina’s pedisequa. Only Boca ever made me welcome in the kitchens, saving me scraps of food and making a place for me at the outskirts of the hearth where she hovered, barely sure of her own place. In return I defended her from cuffs and taunts. We were both at the bottom of the slave heap.

This time of year also stirred my sweetest memory. It was on the shortest day that Esus and I had become lovers. I was already five months gone with my father’s child. But it hadn’t mattered. When we made love on that grey, cold day under the yew trees, summer came in midwinter, and the air turned warm and golden all around us. But when the memory rose, as I went through my tedious day with Paulina, I pushed it down. I didn’t want to expose it to the dead Roman air of the insularium, stale with perfume and the stinking breath of too many wretched people.

On the longest night, with Paulina away at the imperial festivities on the Palatine, I decided to go for a ramble through the insularium, despite Boca’s hand wringing and head shaking. She considered it dangerous for a woman to walk the corridors and courtyards alone, but warrior witches had raised me, and I’d picked up a few more pointers from the whores at the Vine and Fig Tree.

The sky was extraordinarily clear, the stars so distinct that they appeared to dangle at different depths, this one nearer than that one, like fruit on a tree. I wanted to pluck one from the night, feel it burn on my hand, burst on my tongue. When I came to an atrium that appeared to be deserted, I lay down in the center of the courtyard, trying to see only sky, no walls, only the stars making their silent journey from east to west. Had he seen the same stars lying out on that hard, dry ground I had glimpsed in my vision? Did he ever think of me?

He thought I was dead. Joseph had said so. And no one knew where he was or if he was alive. Why had I dreamed of the coffin sealed in a tree? Don’t let him be dead, I prayed to something. Or if he is dead, let me die, too.

The stars blurred, and I closed my eyes. It was so cold I could feel the tears stop and freeze on my cheeks. I knew I should get up, but it would be so easy not to. I could just slip away, out of this body that Paulina thought she owned. I could go, to the cold, to the stars, to the night. And not come back. Sometimes temptation is like that, so distant and dreamy, you don’t recognize it until it’s too late.

I don’t know what forces intervened, but just as the potentially deadly drowsiness overcame me, someone stumbled into the atrium, gave a loud belch followed by a long fart and the unmistakable sputtering hiss of piss on cold ground. I raised my head and saw the archetypal arc gleaming in the torchlight. Most people would not interpret a stream of urine as sign of divine intervention, but the sight recalled my first vision of my beloved. Before I ever shared the same ground with him, I beheld him across the worlds in the well of wisdom on Tir na mBan taking a leak in an alley. God has spoken. Selah.

The owner of this appendage gave it a shake and dropped his tunic. Only then did I look higher and recognize the handsome profile of Decius Mundus.

“Holy Isis!” I said out loud without meaning to.

He turned and saw me, a slave woman supine on the ground. Not a good position for self-defense, I realized. For a moment he scowled becomingly (he did pretty much everything becomingly). Who wants a witness when he’s farting and pissing? Then he brightened. After all, I was only a slave. Unlike the male slave holding his torch for him, I presented certain possibilities.

“I think,” he said, grinning, “that you would be more comfortable lying on my couch. Come along.”

He snapped his fingers and began to walk away. Then he surprised me by turning back and helping me up. Pressing his hand on the small of my back, just above the swell of my buttocks, he guided me down a corridor in the direction of a raucous sounding party. I was still a bit dazed and had not determined what to do. Decius Mundus was a guest of Appius Claudius and a famous equestrian. I might have to think of a more subtle method of extrication than knee in the groin. Right now, frankly, welcoming the warmth of his body and cloak, I was putting up no resistance.

I could smell the fumes of wine, sweat, and musk before we even stepped into his room. Decius was giving a party for his buddies, all male, all drunkenly shooting craps. Though the game was clearly hot, my entrance caused a stir.

“Hey, Dec! I thought you were just taking a whiz? Where’d you find this?”

“She have any friends?”

“You gonna share, right? I haven’t had any since—”

I sighed. I had entertained parties of drunken soldiers before but not without a lot of help from my sister whores. I glanced at the door. Decius’s torchbearer or bodyguard, a hulk I didn’t recognize, blocked the way effectively. Shit. Seven to one. Seven guys too drunk to come in a hurry. This would not be pretty.

“In your dreams,” Decius laughed. “This one is mine. I found her.”

“Hey, what happened to that oath we swore? Remember, share and share alike.”

“Yeah,” said Decius. “What’s yours is mine, and what’s mine is mine.”

I was practically drunk on the fumes. I could imagine how muzzy-headed the men must be. Decius, playing host, handed me a glass of wine.

“That’s right!” someone shouted. “What’s mine is mine and—”

“Naw, naw, that ain’t it.”

“I know, I know!” Another drunk lurched unsteadily to his feet. “Let’s shoot for her.”

“Yeah. Fair’s fair.” A chorus of assent.

“All right, boys.” Decius threw up his hands. “Have it your way.”

Then he caught my eye and winked, a gesture I interpreted to mean: Don’t worry, whoever wins, I’m still in control. Was I reassured? Not hardly.

“Wait just a minute,” I interrupted. The wine had hit my bloodstream like a spring flood when the snows melt. I could feel myself growing larger, bolder. “If y’all are gonna roll,” (Don’t ask me where the y’all comes from; in Latin, of course, I said vos.) “I’m gonna play, too.”

This concept was apparently too complex for the soldiers to wrap their tiny sodden minds around. In a collective stupor they sat and scratched their heads, that is, the ones who weren’t already scratching their balls.

“But I don’t get it,” one of them finally blurted out. “If you won, what would you win?”

“Myself,” I said quietly; then louder, “myself, myself!”

There was a silence; I sensed they were all a little uneasy.

“Never heard of no woman playing craps,” someone grumbled.

At the Vine and Fig Tree, the whores rolled the die whenever business was slow. But I did not think now was the time to mention my erstwhile profession.

“Well, fair’s fair,” Decius Mundus settled it.

So in Decius Mundus’s small but elegant guest apartment, we crouched on the floor in a circle as if we were in an army barracks or camp and took turns casting the die. We each had three rolls, and a one in eight chance of winning. Better odds than I’d had in a while. Better odds than the soldiers knew. While I waited my turn, I could feel my hands growing hot. I held the smile that wanted to spread across my face inside.

When the die came to me, I acted cool, unconcerned, ignoring the breath of the men hovering too close and the laughter of the man who was winning—so far. I rolled once. Surprised grunts. I rolled twice. Shock followed by held breaths. I rolled a third time.

“Shit!” exploded the man who had just lost to me. “That’s fucking unbelievable.”

“Believe it!” laughed Decius Mundus. “All right, everybody. Party’s over. Clear out and you’ll still have time to hit the brothels on the way home—those of you who have any money left.”

It took awhile, but the room finally emptied of soldiers like the last glug, glug, glug of a flask of cheap wine. I waited, not wanting to leave in their company. When his guests had all gone, Decius draped himself alluringly on his couch. If my luck held, he would be out for the count in a minute. I glanced at the doorkeeper, a perfect slave, feigning indifference. Thanks to Reginus’s tutelage, I knew better. My presence in Decius Mundus’s apartment and everything that happened would be reported to the highest bidder in the information market.

I checked on Decius again; his eyes were mere slits. I would just go now, a stray slave woman waylaid by a drunken party. Nothing more. I headed for the door.

“What’s your hurry? Where’re you going?”

Decius roused himself, and the slave, who had been standing aside, moved again so that he completely blocked my way.

“I won, remember?”

“You won,” he agreed. “So you can do what you want. Don’t you want to stay awhile?”

Did I?

“Take a break, Fido.” He sent his man away. “The woman will do as she pleases.”

A man who respected a woman’s sovereignty; that was more seductive to me than the way he lay back, shifting his leg to best display his pelvis, his arms open and resting on the couch, his whole posture inviting. A slow smile spread over his face as he took me in, starting at my feet and moving up, lingering on my thighs, belly, breasts, with a heat I could feel across the room, before he finally connected with my eyes. A hot look, a wind blowing from southern places. Yet as he held me in his gaze, something in me knew: he is no different from Paulina. He’s looking at himself. I’m just a mirror. I’m supposed to reflect how irresistible he is, how unnecessary force is for a man like him.

I closed my eyes to shut him out. Inside I found a desert and a dreadful thirst. What did it matter? I could take a plunge with Decius Mundus, let him plunge in, bring down my juices, awaken my secret springs. Why should I wish for cold, distant stars when I could have hot stars exploding in my belly, my breasts, my head.

For a moment I saw the green gold light under the yews, felt the heat of my sudden summer with Esus. But he had left me. Long ago now. I’d been a whore. I’d had hundreds of men. What would one more matter?

“Come here,” Decius groaned.

I opened my eyes. He was holding out his arms, his cock rising, making a comical tent out of his tunic. All I had to do was ease myself onto him. It would be easy, so easy.

Too easy, a tart voice inside me said. Way too damn easy. For him. To have a slave woman, send her off with dripping thighs back to her servitude. At the Vine and Fig Tree, men had at least paid for the privilege, and I had the means there to keep my womb plugged up tight. If I went to Decius now, we might both have pleasure. But only one of us would pay.

“Sorry, Dec,” I said lightly. “Thanks for the offer. But not tonight.”

The blood abandoned his cock and rushed to his face. That’s it, I thought. Now he’ll jump me. But he recovered quickly, too lazy, too tired, too generally pleased with himself to press me.

“Your loss,” he shrugged.

Loss, yes, but not of Decius, though he might have provided a brief distraction.

“Wait,” he said, as I turned to go. “I’ll escort you. You shouldn’t be wandering around alone at night, especially not during Saturnalia. If someone else had found you, it would have been a different story. Where are you quartered?”

“The domina Paulina’s cubiculo.”

“Ah.” He sounded interested, though I couldn’t see his face as we walked single file through a corridor. “That’s why you look familiar.”

He hadn’t said so before.

“My title is pedisequa,” I sighed.

“What were you doing on the other side of the insularium,” he asked a trifle sharply; no doubt he brokered information like everyone else. “Her quarters are almost half a mile away.”

“The domina was out,” I said shortly. It was none of his business what I did or why.

“Ah, yes, on the Palatine.”

“Were you there earlier?” I steered the conversation away from myself.

“I wasn’t invited.” He answered candidly, but for the first time his tone was serious, almost grim. “My rank’s not high enough—yet.”

“Yeah, mine isn’t either.”

“But you’re a slave.” He didn’t catch my irony. His sense of humor evaporated when it came it himself.

“Listen, Dec.” I turned around.

He collided with me and caught me against his chest. For all the wine fumes and the smoke from the brazier, he smelled like the outdoors to me, like the world beyond the walls. However vain he was, there was something so uncomplicated about him, simple. Refreshing in Rome. Maybe he was just stupid, but in that moment, I wanted the comfort of that simplicity so badly I almost wept.

“You can always change your mind,” he murmured into my hair.

“I can find my own way from here.” I gently pushed him away. “You know and I know, the walls have eyes and ears. It would not be cool if anyone saw me with you.”

“Why not?” He was diverted from his lust. “Would it jeopardize my standing with Claudius in some way?”

Yes, it was all about him.

“It would jeopardize my standing.”

“You have influence with Claudius?” he asked eagerly.

“I meant my standing with Paulina. If she found out I’d had you when she can’t.”

As soon as I spoke, I regretted it. Damn! I needed to work on my slave mentality. Never give away information. Never.

“Oh, ho!” Decius grasped the implications immediately; what mental acuity he had was entirely focused on advancing himself. “So that’s the way the wind blows. And do you think the domina has much influence with her husband?”

“It all depends.” I shrugged; ambiguity is all. “But if I were you I wouldn’t breathe a word to Paulina about tonight.”

“Right,” he said.

I left him pondering insofar as he was capable of it. As I crossed the courtyard to Paulina’s cubiculo, a gust of wind lifted my cloak. I felt my ass flapping in the breeze.