'And what is that?'
'Where can I find these much-celebrated indoor privies?'
Rufus laughed. 'We've passed them already. You'll have to turn back. The second door on your left will lead you to it. You'll know it by the blue tile and a little relief of Triton above the door.'
Cicero wrinkled his nose. 'I suspect you'll know it from the smell. And while you're at it,' he called after me, 'see if you can find where Tiro has got to. The same thing happened the last time we came — claimed he got lost among the hallways. If he's still in the privy, I suppose he must be in some distress. Tell him it's what he deserves for refusing to follow my example of fasting at midday. So much food, it's an unnatural shock to the system, especially in this heat. . '
A turn to the left and a short walk down a narrow hallway brought me to the blue-tiled door. Small niches in the doorway contained tiny conical heaps of ash, the remnants of incense and sweet-burning woods to cover the fetid odours from within. On a day as stifling as this, the incense needed constant replenishing, but Caecilia's servants had been lax in their duties, or else all the incense had been claimed for the mistress's sanctum. I stepped through the heavy blue curtain.
There are no people on earth more adept at managing water and waste than the Romans. 'We are ruled,' as one Athenian wag once told me, ‘by a nation of plumbers.' Yet here in one of the finest houses in the heart of the. city something was badly amiss. The blue tiles needed scrubbing. The stone trough was clogged, and when I pressed the valve only a trickle of water emerged. A buzzing noise drew my eyes upward. Across the ventilating skylight stretched an immense spider's web, filled with flies.
I did what I had come for and hurried from the room, sucking in a deep breath as I stepped through the blue curtain. The breath caught in my throat and I held it, listening to the sound of muffled voices from a doorway across the hall. One of the voices was Tiro's.
I crossed the hall and inclined my head towards the thin yellow curtain. The other voice was that of a young woman, a countrified voice but of some refinement. She spoke a few muffled words, then let out a gasp and a moan.
I understood at once.
I might have withdrawn. Instead I stepped closer to the curtain and pressed my face against the thin yellow cloth. I had thought it was to me that she had given that baffling, seductive glance, for my sake that she had lingered in the room. I had thought her silent message had been for me to decipher. But she had been looking through me all the while, as if I were transparent. It was Tiro, standing behind me, to whom she had given the look, the message, the invitation.
Their voices were low and hushed, no more than ten feet away. I could barely make out the words.
'I don't like it here,' she was saying. 'It smells.'
'But it's the only room close to the privy — it's the only excuse I could make — if my master comes looking for me I have to be close by…'
'All right, all right.' She let out a gasp. I heard them grappling. I pushed back the edge of the curtain and peered into the room.
It was a small storage room lit by a single window near the ceiling. A white light eddied into the room but seemed incapable of filling it. Motes of dust spiralled through the dense, heavy air. Amid the stacks of boxes, crates, and sacks, I caught a glimpse of naked flesh: Tiro's thighs and buttocks. His thin cotton tunic was lifted up and pressed against his back by the girl's clutching fingers. His groin pressed into hers, retreated and bolted convulsively forwards in the ancient, unmistakable rhythm.
Their faces were joined together, concealed by a block of deep shadow. The girl was naked. The sexless gown, lying shapeless and abandoned on the floor, had given no hint of the voluptuous lines of her figure or the breathtaking purity of her white flesh, gleaming and hard like alabaster, moist with sweat in the hot airless room so that she shone as if she had been rubbed with oil. Her body responded to his, pressing against him, wriggling upright against the wall with a strange convulsive motion, like a snake writhing on a hot pavement.
'Soon,' Tiro whispered, in a husky, breathless voice I would never have recognized — a voice neither slave nor free, the voice of the animal, the beast, the body.
The girl wrapped her hands around his buttocks, holding him tight. Her head was thrown back, her breasts lifted high. 'A little longer,' she whispered.
'No, soon, they'll be waiting for me…'
'Then remember, you promised, like last time — not inside me — my father would…'
'Now!' Tiro gave a long groan.
'Not inside me!' the girl hissed. Her fingers clawed into the tender flesh of his hips, pushing him away. Tiro staggered back, then forwards again, collapsing against her. He pressed his face to her cheek, then to her neck, then to her breasts as he slid downwards. He kissed her navel. He touched his tongue to the glistening strands of seed that clung to the smooth flesh of her belly. He embraced her hips and pressed his face between her legs.
I saw her naked, revealed in the soft, hazy light. Only her face was hidden in shadow. Her body was perfect, sleek and graceful, as pale and unblemished as heavy cream; neither a girl's body nor a woman's but the body of a girl awakening into womanhood, freed from innocence but unspoiled by time.
Without Tiro between us, I felt as naked as the girl. I drew back. The thin yellow curtain fell shut without a sound, gently rippling as if a stray breeze had wandered down the hallway.
8
'So they did it right there, in the rich woman's house, right under his master's nose. Good for them!'
'No, Bethesda. Right under my nose.' I pushed the bowl away and looked up at the sky. The glow of the city obscured the minor stars, but the greater constellations shone bright and glittering in the warm evening air. Far away to the west a band of thunderclouds loomed like the dusty wake of a mounted army. I lay back on the couch, closed my eyes, and listened to the stillness of the garden and all the little sounds inside it: the quiet sputtering of the torch, the chirr of a cricket beside the pond, the loud purring of Bast rubbing herself against the table leg. I heard the gentle clatter of dishes and Bethesda's light footfall as she retreated into the house. The cat followed after her; the purring grew louder for an instant and then diminished into silence.
Bethesda returned. I heard the rustle of her gown, then felt her presence as she joined me on the couch. My head dipped from her weight, then soft hands lifted me and cradled my face on her lap. Another weight dropped onto the foot of the couch. Warm fur stroked against my bare feet, and I felt the vibration as much as heard it — the loud contented purr of a cat grown fat on delicacies from its master's plate.
'Did the meal displease you, Master? You ate almost nothing.' Bethesda gently stroked my temple.
'The meal was delicious,' I lied. 'It was the heat that killed my appetite. And all the walking I did today.'
'You should not have walked so much in this heat. You should have made the rich woman hire you a litter.'
I shrugged. Bethesda stroked my neck and throat. I grasped her hand and ran her fingers against my lips. 'So soft and smooth. You work so hard, Bethesda -1 tease you for being lazy, but I know better — yet you keep your hands as soft as a vestal's.'
'Something my mother taught me. Even the poorest girl in Egypt knows how to care for her body and to keep herself beautiful. Not like these Roman women.' Even with my eyes shut I could see the face she made, disdainful and haughty. 'Putting creams and makeup on their faces as if they were laying mortar for bricks.'
The Romans have no style,' I agreed. 'No grace. Especially the women. The Romans became much too rich, much too quickly. They are a crude and vulgar people, and they own the world. Once upon a time they had manners, at least. A. few of them still do, I suppose.'