his head, legs splayed, all his vital organs exposed in what I found a confusing mix of arrogance and vulnerability.
I had seen naked men before but never one so utterly on display. So I inspected him, from his hard face with the softness of dissolution just under the surface, to the muscular arms and chest, just beginning to lose their tone with age, his still-trim waist and, of course, his appendage. Having grown up on an island where the only males were animals, I had always felt that penises were a sort of afterthought on humans. The general’s was large, soft, flopped over on one side, and—I peered more closely—hooded. You understand, of course, that the only penis I knew well was circumcised. (You don’t want to hear about that penis? Better stop reading.) Under my interested gaze the general’s appendage began to stir and poke its purplish head out of the foreskin. The general’s breathing quickened.
“Barbarian bitch!” His voice was hoarse. “You have captured me. I am utterly at your mercy. Now what are you going to do to me!”
Clearly this was my cue. Never mind that I could think of plenty of things I’d rather do to him than play with his appendage. If I didn’t want to go back to the block, I’d better get on with the job.
“Roman dog,” I said in Celtic, remembering that I supposedly didn’t speak Latin. I advanced on him with the rope. “First I will smear you with honey and let the ants swarm over you like the armies of Rome,” I continued as I took my time tying him up with fancy Celtic knots. “Then I will marinate you in excrement for three days and three nights. After that I will roast you slowly until you are almost dead. Then I will feed you alive to the swine.”
Actually I was beginning to enjoy myself—just a little. I pulled the knots tight. It was true. He was at my mercy. At least for this nanosecond. Suddenly I was overcome with a sense of absurdity. My mothers had once captured a man and ravished him against his will. (The true story of my conception—a truth I found out too late.) Now here I was with a man who was paying to be ravished, and it was my job to do it.
“Bitch!” Romans certainly lacked the verbal prowess of the Celts. My poor, mad, dead father would have been eloquent at least. “Naked, savage, barbarian bitch,” he prompted desperately, straining against the ropes, his appendage swollen to near bursting.
Oh, all right, I thought, struggling to get out of my silly garment. I felt much better naked, almost free. I had to stifle a war cry as I pounced on him. Then I played with him cruelly, dangling my body over him, not quite letting his appendage touch me.
“Bitch,” he screamed. “Let me have it!”
He was so loud, I was afraid Bonia would come charging upstairs. When I finally lowered myself onto his weeping cock, I have to admit it filled me quite satisfactorily.
“Take any pleasure you can,” I heard my namesake Queen Maeve of Connacht whisper in my ear. “If there’s no Fergus around it might take thirty men to satisfy you.” She paused a beat. “But it looks like you’ve got all night.”
It was all over in a few strokes. He sighed and looked so relaxed I caught a glimpse of the child he might once have been.
“Untie me now,” he commanded. The Roman general was back.
I considered not comprehending. I was a savage, after all. But what was the use. I was trapped here. One of the old women came in with washing water and towels.
“Mistress Bonia wants to know, will you be wanting another half hour.”
“Yes, yes,” he said. “I believe I will. My compliments to the house on a fine new acquisition.”
When the serving maid had gone, he got out of bed and gestured for me to lie down.
“Now then my hot little barbarian. Your turn.”
And so began my life as a professional. Before the night was over I understood what many people don’t: whoring is hard work. I’m not going to give you a blow by blow description of all my engagements that night. I did not have thirty men in succession as Queen Maeve boasted she had, but I did service quite a few. When I came back downstairs after the general, my sister whores feted me, feeding me grapes and figs and pouring me a cup of unwatered wine. Then it was back to work up and down the stairs with men, old men and young, fat and thin, handsome and ugly.
Twice I went with another whore. As promised, Berta gave me instruction on the care and feeding of the male member. No doubt he paid extra for being the object lesson of a novica’s education. When I went with Succula, we took over the bed while the man watched. I had never made love with a woman before, but as my first experience of orgasm had been with two snakes in a cavern deep in the earth, I was open to the unexpected and to the naturalness of what other people might consider unnatural. After the clumsiness of some of my customers, I felt nothing but admiration for Succula’s skill and a desire to improve my own.
As I look back on that night, I see choices I didn’t recognize then. I could have disavowed my body. That’s not me straddling the general. That’s just my body. Or I could become my body, its opening and resistance, its capacity for cruelty or compassion. But there is another possibility, and I think I sensed it even then: that I—this fraught ecstatic coupling of body and soul—could become the conduit of some wild force, the mediator of it, the priestess.
I don’t remember how that first night ended. I suspect, after finishing with some man, I just didn’t get back up again and Bonia, in her mercy, let me sleep. I do remember the dream I had near dawn.
I am standing by a river that swirls with mist. The reeds rustle with the wind. Then I see something floating on the water, parting the mists, a wooden box, wider at one end than at the other. A coffin. Suddenly I know he is in that box, my beloved, floating down the dark river. I rush towards the coffin but the waterweeds bind my legs. The current flows past me and I float helpless, my arms streaming towards him.
I woke disoriented in close, airless darkness. Maybe I was in the coffin. I could still hear the sound of the river and the wind rattling through the reeds. Then I saw grey light leaking through the gauzy curtain covering my doorway. I got up and stepped out onto the balcony. Below me the fountain played, and an old woman swept with a broom made of sticks. When she saw me she smiled toothlessly.
“Go back to bed, my sweet,” she said. “Isis love you! It’s much too early for a whore to be up.”
A whore. By Bride’s breasts, she meant me.
Yes, me. Whoever that was. Red, the hot new whore at the Vine and Fig Tree? After a few weeks it became apparent to everyone that my popularity was not just due to novelty. The plaque hanging by my door was no longer blank but crowded with my praises. I had an aptitude for the work, unmarred by my bad attitude, which seemed, if anything, an asset. I fit the bill as Savage Barbarian better than Berta who had more appeal as the kindly, maternal, all-forgiving type despite her avowed hatred of Romans.
Every day was much like another. We slept through the morning; then we ate, bathed, submitted to the ornatrices before working non-stop from mid-afternoon
