Blood and Steel

Chapter 40

Rome

The Subura,

Six Days after the Ides of March, AD238

After the customer had left, Caenis sat on the thin mattress on the narrow, hard stone platform. He had been a pig, unshaven and unwashed. The reek of him, stale sweat and goats, lingered in the tiny cubicle. She looked at the one painting set in the cracked plaster of the wall. A man and a woman made love on a high bed. It had big round bolster-like pillows, a colourful bedstead, swags of material hanging down. There was a wine jug on a table, an elaborate lampstand. The woman sat on top of him. They looked at each other with intimacy and fondness.

Caenis did not blame her mother. She remembered their conversation the morning after the first time she had been sent to a man. While her father lived, they had plenty of everything. He had been a good worker, highly thought of in their district by the Magnesian Gate. When he died, her mother had sold his anvil, tongs and hammer. That had kept them for seven months. After that life had been miserable. Her mother had barely provided for them, by weaving, by spinning thread for woof and warp. Working all hours, her mother had made sure she had enough to eat. There had been nothing for luxuries. Her mother had fed her, and waited for her hopes to be realized. She was pretty, and, now she was a woman, it would be easy for her both to keep her mother and buy herself fine clothes. She would be rich, have purple dresses and maids.

She had wept. Her mother had told her to pull herself together, thank the Graces that she had good looks. Dress attractively, look neat, smile, never cheat a visitor, never talk too much, do not drink too much, keep clean, look after her figure, be amiable and lively in bed, never sullen or slovenly; all good advice. There had been no purple dresses or maids, but the next year had not been too bad. Some of the men were young and attractive, some little more than boys, hardly older than herself. The money was good; occasionally she received presents. She had given half the coins to her mother, saved much of the remainder. When her mother died, she had been able to put aside more. Then a local pimp had tried to force her to work for him. That was when she had left Ephesus. On the ship to Rome, she had stopped being Rhodope. First she thought of calling herself Margarita, but decided against the name. A Pearl was pretty, but could be dissolved in wine. She wanted something altogether tougher. Caenis better suited the woman she wanted to become; Bitch.

The bar was quiet, but she should go down. Although Ascyltos was an easy innkeeper, he did not like his girls idle. Caenis washed herself over the chipped bowl, as much for hygiene as anything. She was not unduly worried about getting pregnant. She was careful. Every morning she drank a mixture of willow, iron rust, and iron slag diluted in water, and she wore an amulet of a pierced bean wrapped in mule hide. She put on her breast-band and short tunic, a pair of sandals, nothing else. The room still stank of goat. She took some of the cheap perfume she had bought, and sprinkled some on the stained mattress. Before she left, she blew out both the lamps. Ascyltos was always moaning about the waste in his establishment.

There were only three customers in the bar. Two draymen sat in a corner, drinking and talking quietly, oblivious to everything else. The other was Musaria’s regular. She was sitting on his lap, whispering into his ear. That girl was a fool. The man never had any money. The previous month, Musaria had sold two necklaces another customer had given her. They were Ionic, weighing two Darics each. She had given most of the money to this regular. It was obvious he would never take her away, marry her.

Behind the counter, Ascyltos came up behind her, put his hands on her hips, and drew her back against his crotch.

‘When Musaria has dealt with him, she can watch the bar for a while. It is time you reminded me of the pleasures my customers enjoy.’

Caenis said nothing, not even when he ran his hands up under her tunic. There were worse innkeepers, and, as one of her customers said, no one misses one olive from a jar.

A couple of cronies of Ascyltos came in, and he joined them at a table. Having served them wine and water, she went back behind the counter, and cleaned some cups.

She would like to get married. Of course the law said a prostitute could not wed a freeborn citizen. But it was often ignored, and there was nothing to stop her marrying a freedman. If she had a husband, and no longer had to sell her body, the infamia would be gone. She would be able to make a will, receive inheritances, would have the rights of any other woman. But, unlike Musaria, she was not stupid enough to think customers came to the bar of Ascyltos looking for a wife.

She had savings. There was always the fear of theft. The bags of coins and cheap jewels were hidden in different places in her room in the tenement, two lots under floorboards, one behind a loose brick. Yet everyone in the neighbourhood knew she was in the bar almost every evening, and a determined thief would find them. She had asked the die-cutter across the corridor to keep an ear for anyone breaking in. Occasionally she let him into her bed for free to keep him well disposed. Although how he would stop any thieves was another question. He had been of little use when she was attacked in the street.

Anyway, the money she had was not near enough. When she had more, she would leave Rome. It would be easier than it had been uprooting herself from Ephesus. If she could get hands on more, she would go to one of those magical islands the ship had called at on the voyage here; Zacynthos or Corcyra. She would say that her parents were dead, she had no family, and now her husband had died. Many men would marry an attractive young widow, one with money. If she was married, she could become Rhodope again.

A man she half-recognized came into the bar. Asked if he wanted a drink, he said maybe afterwards.

Back in the cubicle, she lit the lamps, and bolted the door. Thankfully, he was not one of those who wanted to talk. She pulled off her tunic and breast-band, and took his penis in her mouth. Was it true a respectable wife would never do such a thing? When he was ready, she got on all fours on the narrow bunk, and let him take her from behind. Was that another thing a good wife would not allow?

Face down on the mattress, as the man thrust into her, she wondered how she might get the money she needed.

She knew something about the Senator Gallicanus, a shameful secret that would make a mockery of his claims to philosophy and old-style virtue, that would disgrace him in the eyes of the world. That should be worth a great deal to his political enemies. But, even if she discovered who they were, how could she gain access to them? A prostitute could not walk up to the mansions of the great and demand admittance. If they listened, why would they believe her?

Yet now fate had given her two other ways to acquire the necessary coins.

Unexpectedly, Castricius had arrived at her door that afternoon. The young knife-boy had been very full of himself, claimed he had been released from gaol by the Senator Menophilus himself, and sent on some very important secret mission to the North. But he was no fool. He had given the soldier escorting him the slip somewhere in the Apennines, and returned to Rome. He had taken new lodgings, but the Subura was teaming, and the authorities would be too busy with the war to come looking for him.

Caenis had not believed a word of the story, but she knew he was an escaped prisoner, and there would be a price on his head. It would be all the higher if she bore witness against him for the murder in the Street of the Sandal-makers.

And then there was the die-cutter. Unable to sleep, one morning before dawn she had followed him. He was so short-sighted, it had been child’s play. And now she knew where he went. Later, watching them leave, she had realized what they were. Who else met in secret in the dark? And one of them had been careless enough to make one of their signs. The authorities would reward anyone who pointed them to a cell of atheist Christians.

With what was stashed away, perhaps she need only inform against one of them.

The man finished and left. The cubicle smelt of cheap perfume and goat.