crowd, the randy young men, the matrons with their virgin daughters making a show of spinning wool) were heated with charcoal braziers, but the atrium, open to the stars, was downright chilly.
I was in a bad, bad mood as we huddled together in a corridor awaiting our cue. My first day and night out in the big Pomegranate had made one thing clear to me. Rome was nothing but one big brothel. I existed for the entertainment of the senatorial class, just as the charioteers did. That we were good at what we did only made it worse.
“Red,” Succula pinched my cheek. “Stop scowling. This is the fun part.”
I loved Succula, but she just didn’t understand.
“Take a swig.” Succula passed me a wineskin. “They’re so in their cups we’ll never catch up.”
I took a big, long, thirsty drink.
“That’s enough.” Succula snatched the skin away. “Only a dumb whore gets drunk. There’s our cue. Get your podex in gear, girl.”
I don’t know if it was the sudden rush of unwatered wine into my bloodstream or the Middle Eastern rhythms—Romans liked ethnic entertainments—or the flickering lights, or the flash of stars overhead, but I let myself go. As we danced, swaying back and forth, circling each other, our hips switching, our arms moving as if we held live serpents, I heard the sistrum, its music a rasp that evoked the wind moving in the river reeds. I smelled the sweet smoke of the Temple of Isis or Venus, whoever she was.
Then I saw it: not the Temple of Venus Obsequens alone, but all the temples that had come before it, in all times and places, one after the other, each temple more ancient and vivid than the last, skin after shed skin revealing what pulsed beneath, the colors and patterns brighter and bolder each time. Then at last there were no more temples, only rock and earth and a chasm where stars spilled through.
When I came to myself again I found I was in a chamber with a frightened boy who wanted to fuck his first whore and instead found himself face to face with some wild divinity. For a moment, I almost felt sorry for him as he cowered on the couch, unable to summon the contempt for a slave that should have protected him and kept him in control.
But then I made myself remember: his people had enslaved and maybe murdered my foster-father. I looked at the soft, pimpled flesh of this over-indulged Roman youth and felt a rage and revulsion I had never known before. I wanted to be sick again. No, I wanted more than that: I wanted to kill him. The hairs on my neck rose as it dawned on me that I could. There he was, alone and vulnerable. Here I was, full of power and fury. I could tear him to pieces.
I closed my eyes and clenched and unclenched my hands. If this is meant to be, I spoke to something I did not name, if I am meant to be an instrument of revenge, use me.
I waited, and my crown ignited as the fire of the stars rained down.
No, I protested silently, without knowing fully what I meant. Not for him.
Open your eyes, a voice inside me said.
Reluctantly I obeyed. When the boy saw me staring at him, he began to whimper.
Find the god in him, the voice prompted.
No, I answered. I hate him. I hate what he will become.
Call forth the god.
The fire was burning in my hands and in my sex, but still I resisted.
Why bother? I challenged the voice. These people already think they’re gods.
Look again. Look deeper. The voice was implacable.
The boy kept his gaze on me as if I were the goddess, death, fate, all in one. And I was. He saw the truth. So I looked at him again. I looked deeper, and I saw it: earth and grain, sun and rain in the form of this boy. In that instant I knew something I could never again forget: all flesh is innocent.
I let out a long breath I hadn’t known I was holding, sat down at one end of the couch and took his feet in my hands, pampered feet, hardly calloused, bigger than the rest of him. I explored their shape, the tendons, the length of the toes. The fire flowed through my hands as I touched this humblest part of the body, the farthest from the head, the closest to the ground.
Then the boy started to cry.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do,” he said.
“You will.” I released his feet and stretched out beside him.
“Don’t tell anyone,” he begged.
“I am the keeper of secrets. I am the temple of mysteries. Enter.”
The voice that had spoken within me now spoke through me. All distinction was lost between myself and whatever power claimed me. I was the chasm and the stars. I was the riverbed; through me the source flowed relentlessly to the sea.
Afterwards the boy slept on my breast and drooled. I was alone again with my small self, the force that had filled me ebbing away.
“Who are you?” I whispered aloud. “What do you want from my life?”
I heard nothing but the boy’s soft snores.
I did not speak to my friends about what had happened to me with Anecius’s son—for so he was—my sense that some deity had taken me over for her own purposes. I say her purposes, because I had definite suspicions about Isis. I was wary of this roaming Egyptian goddess and even more alarmed by the priestess’s insistence that I belonged to her. Being a descendant of the goddess Bride—so my mothers claimed—I had taken goddesses for granted, and never felt the need to become a devotee any more than you might worship your grandmother, however much you loved her. I didn’t like the idea that a goddess could control my life. Deities ought to stay in their place, I told myself, in their own groves and wells and be thankful for the votive offerings that came their way. Though my ears pricked up whenever someone swore by Isis or prayed to her, I made no attempt to seek her temple again.
Bone had apparently decided not to report to Domitia Tertia my bolting from the litter and running off to a disreputable temple. As the whore chosen to initiate Anecius’s scion, I was in especially good odor. I had passed muster; my probation was over. I was allowed to go to onsite jobs—private orgies, power baths, literary soirees. Bonia also set up an in-house schedule for me, so that my regulars could count on finding me at home, so to speak.
In short, I was a success, more of a success as a whore than I had ever been as a student. On the surface of my life everything glittered. Winds of excitement and bustle whipped my waters into saucy little whitecaps. If I were a lake or a sea, you would want to sail on me. I’d give you a good ride but (mostly) not capsize you. No one could see past the sparkle to the depths where strange life forms lurked and currents no one suspected crossed and pulled, where the full force of me waited to be raised by some storm.
No
