She returned to their chamber dressed in one of her beguilingly translucent nightgowns of Kos lace tied in the high bosomed Syrian style fashionable in the East. Her hair was now fully loosed in a feminine flourish while her increasingly-excited client detected the sweet aura of oil of roses exuding from her skin. Her gown revealed more of her flesh than any woman dared display in public or before a stranger, yet still veiled her limbs and feminine curves beneath layers of obscuring gossamer.
Surisca delicately crossed the chamber to extinguish several of the lamps to dim the light to a soft glow. She brought two goblets of watered wine to the edge of the double-bed arrangement. She sat very close beside Suetonius where he could catch the sweet scents from her body. Her thigh and one of her knees glanced across his leg thrillingly.
They sipped their cups so closely each was touching at the brim and their eyes were only inches apart. The biographer, ever a considerate seducer, ordained to torture his enlarging enthusiasm by introducing conversation to break the ice and restrain his impatience.
"Tell me, Surisca my young beauty, how old are you?" he asked.
"Master, my mother told me I was born at Edessa near the border to the Kingdom of Parthia in the fifth last year of the previous Caesar's reign. I think this means I am eighteen years of age. Other than that, I do not know," she replied.
"So Surisca, tell me something of yourself," he invited. "You have so many hidden talents, I have difficulty knowing which Surisca is the real Surisca. I notice how even with your Syrian accent you speak good street Greek and you handle everyday Latin to an acceptable degree. You appear to have a smattering of the old pharaonic language of Egypt, while your mother tongue is Aramaic, the major language of the East. Do you read or write in these languages, my dear?"
"Master," she responded openly, "I do not read at all except some words of Greek, a few Latin words, and the simplest of Aramaic words. But I cannot write in any of these for myself, except my own name. I am not a fine scholar like yourself, master."
"How did you come to your profession, young lady?" Suetonius posed with polite interest, despite the burden of slumber increasingly making its presence felt.
"I was born to it, my lord," Surisca responded. "My mother was bonded to the mistress of a troupe of entertainers at the city of Zeugma on the border of the Parthian Empire before the previous Caesar defeated Parthia in battle. She and her mistress's household fled back to the safety of Edessa in the north of King Abgar's land, where I was born. My mother, of course, did not know who my father was. It was one of her many clients, so I am known simply as Surisca, with no fatherly patronymic."
Surisca paused to check if her client's attention had wandered or if such talk of the lower orders offended the noble patrician's sensibilities. It hadn't, she realized.
Suetonius was observing Surisca enthuse about her past with a keen gleam in her eyes. This had an agreeable charm all its own, he thought. He assumed very few of her clients were interested in her life story.
"I am told too how, in the year when Trajan put down the Judaean rebels across the East, I turned five years of age," she continued. "Because of those wars my mother's mistress was caught up in the movements of people trapped by the upheavals. Temples were destroyed, cities were put to the sword, and many people killed. Then the Legions killed the Judaean, Lucuas, and fiercely put down the rebellion, I am told.
But my mother had accumulated sufficient coins in her trade to buy her freedom from her mistress before my birth. This means I was a freeborn child, not her former mistress's property.
It is the tradition in our profession to retain some female children to learn the trade to support us in our later years. Clients become less interested as you age, so one or two children are raised to become our breadwinners. I am such a one."
Suetonius acknowledged to himself how Surisca had the checkered career typical of her caste. Here was a young woman of the world, he contemplated, who is engaged in the most insecure of trades yet who also seemed to possess her own mind to a high degree. Her strengths were attractive. They incited his bloodstream to race to his privates as his imagination conjured the warm touch of her flesh and the all-encompassing folds of her body. He felt a deep longing descend upon him.
Things then shifted unexpectedly.
Suetonius didn't recall the precise details, the memory was a little hazy, but he later guessed he had simply fallen dead asleep during Surisca's explanations. He slowly crumpled head first into the basin of her lace-garbed lap, mid-sentence. Here was a warm, comforting, secure place redolent with floral fragrances which, in his drowsiness, reminded him of his concubine Priscilla's intimate nooks-and-crannies long ago. Or was it his mother at some even earlier era?
In fact, ageing years and the call of rest had finally consumed the Special Inspector. He fell into deep slumber and its pleasing reminiscences.
"Master! Master!" a close voice cried. "Wake, master, the hour is late!"
The biographer revived from his fuddled reverie to perceive Surisca was looking down at him with an expression of great concern. It was a long time since a woman had expressed concern over Suetonius and looked into his face so closely and seemed to mean it.
"Good grief," he mumbled, "I must have drifted off. Please forgive me."
"My lord, it is time to rise. The Watch has already called the hour before dawn," she announced.
"An hour before dawn? Is that possible?!"
"You've been asleep for more than four hours, master," she said. "You have appointments immediately at dawn. I heard you demand it of your companions last night."
Suetonius sat up in the bed and looked around, his wispy hair askew.
Surisca and he were lying close together on the side-by-side traveling beds. He was scantily attired in his under-tunic and cloths. Surisca was almost naked with her long hair falling fulsomely around her shoulders. He realized she must have undressed him of his tunic and belts once he had fallen asleep, and put him to bed like a babe, though he had no recollection of that happy occasion.
A chamber slave clapped her hands from her sleeping post beyond the entrance for permission to enter. Suetonius stammered approval as she entered and bowed.
"Master, His Excellency, Secretary Julius Vestinus awaits you outside."
He nodded acknowledgement and dismissed the girl.
"My dear Surisca," he offered to his young hireling, "I must wash and dress. We have a busy day ahead of us. You too should prepare yourself for the day's chores, and make yourself presentable."
On second thoughts it occurred to him, however, how she was quite presentable just as she was. A query crossed his mind.
"But one question, my dear. Um, did we, er, make love last night? — or this morning?" he asked in a very small voice in case his memory of the joyful event had somehow evaded him by. He had been known to be forgetful of a night-time, especially after wine.
Surisca looked to the ground in the manner servants or slaves pretend when they are being scolded for their slackness in performing duties and a beating might be on the horizon.
"No, master, we have not. Have I given you bad service, master?" she replied, as any conscientious service provider would do.
"Oh, I just wondered. That's all," he responded half-heartedly. He had hoped he might have had some simple, delicious pleasure, yet had merely lost recall.
"Before we both address our morning toilet, Surisca my dear, one or two questions arose to mind in my sleep, my dear," he continued. "You remember yesterday at the embalmer's pavilion you commented upon the love bites on the neck of the corpse of Antinous on the table? You said you believed they were implanted by two different people, one set low at the front and another set higher on the throat stem? Are you sure in that opinion, my dear?"