Free Roman Blood by Steven Saylor Page A

foyer came to usher us inside. He relieved us of our hats, then disappeared to fetch the announcer. I looked over my shoulder at the doorkeeper, who sat on a stool beside the portal busying himself with some sort of handicraft, his foot attached to the wall by a chain just long enough to allow him to reach the door.
    The announcer arrived, obviously disappointed to find that it was Cicero and not some groveling client from whom he might extort a few denarii before allowing further admission to the house. From small signs—his high voice, the visible enlargement of his breasts—I realized he was a eunuch. While in the East they are an indispensable and ancient part of the social fabric, the unsexed remain a rarity in Rome and are looked on with great distaste. Cicero had said that Caecilia was a follower of Oriental cults, but to keep a eunuch in her household struck me as a truly bizarre affectation.
    We followed him around the central atrium and up a flight of marble steps. The announcer pulled back a hanging curtain, and I followed 50

    Cicero into a chamber that would not have looked too out of place in a high-priced Alexandrian brothel.
    We seemed to have stepped into a large and overdecorated tent, plush and pillow-strewn, with carpets and hangings everywhere. Brass lamps hung from standing braziers in the corners and exhaled trickles of smoke.
    It was from this room that the smell of incense permeated the house. I could hardly breathe. The various spices were being burned without the least sensitivity to their individual proportions and properties. The crude concentrations of sandalwood and myrrh were nauseating. Any Egyptian housewife would have known better.
    "Mistress," the eunuch whispered in a high voice. " T h e esteemed Marcus Tullius Cicero, advocate." He quickly withdrew.
    At the far end of the room was our hostess, sprawled face-down amid cushions on the floor. Two female slaves attended her, kneeling on either side. The slaves were dark-skinned and dressed in Egyptian style, wearing diaphanous gowns and heavily made-up. Above them, dominating the room, was the object before which Caecilia prostrated herself.
    I had never seen anything quite like it. It was clearly an incarnation of one of the Oriental earth goddesses, Cybele or Astarte or Isis, though I had never before seen this particular permutation. The statue stood eight feet tall, so tall that the top of its head grazed the ceiling. The thing had a stern, almost manly face and wore a crown made of serpents. At first glance I assumed that the pendulous objects adorning her torso were breasts, scores and scores of them. A closer look at the curious way in which the orbs were grouped made me realize they must be testicles. In one hand the goddess held a scythe, the blade of which had been painted bright red.
    " W h a t ? " A muffled voice rose from the cushions. Caecilia floundered for a moment. The slave girls each took an arm and helped her up. She spun around and looked at us in alarm.
    " N o , n o ! " she shrieked. "That stupid eunuch! Out, out of the room, Cicero! You weren't to come inside, you were to wait outside the curtain.
    How could he have made such a stupid mistake? No men are allowed into the sanctum of the Goddess. Oh, dear, it's happened again. Well, by rights you should all three be sacrificed as a punishment, or at least flogged, but I suppose that's out of the question. Of course, one of you could take the place of the others—but no, I won't even ask it, I know how fond you are of young Tiro. Perhaps this other slave—" She glanced 51

    at my iron ring, the mark of a common citizen, and seeing I was no one's slave threw up her hands in disappointment. Her nails were unusually long and stained red with henna, in the Egyptian fashion.
    " O h , dear. I suppose this means I'll have to flog one of the poor slave J
    girls in your place, just as I did when that eunuch made the same stupid mistake last week with Rufus. Oh, dear, and they're