To Love Again (24 page)

They were a study in contrasts, these two brothers. Although they were of almost equal height, Phocas being
slightly taller, no one who did not know them would have realized they were siblings, born of the same parents. Their father had been a courtier, their mother his mistress. Villa Maxima had been her home. Phocas favored the paternal side of his family. He was slender, with a long aristocratic face made up of a slim nose, narrow lips, and deep-set dark brown eyes. His hair was dark and straight, cut medium-short, and brushed away from the crown of his head. His clothing was expensive and simple. Phocas Maxima was the sort of man who could easily disappear amid a crowd. It was said by the women he owned that he was a lover of epic proportions who could make the most hardened courtesan weep with joy. His business acumen was admired citywide, and his generous works of charity kept him in favor with the church.

His younger brother, Jovian, was his opposite. Elegant, classically educated, a slave to fashion, he was considered one of the greatest wits of his time. He adored beautiful things: clothing, women, works of art, and particularly beautiful young men, of whom he kept several to see to his every need. His dark curls in careful and deliberate disarray, he was easily recognizable at the races, the games, the circus. The success of Villa Maxima was largely due to him, for although Phocas could keep the books and see to the budget needed to run the brothel, it was Jovian’s wonderful imagination that set Villa Maxima above all the other expensive brothels in the city. Their late mother, a famous courtesan of her day, would have been enormously proud of them.

“What have you in mind?” Phocas asked him, his curiosity provoked by his brother’s particularly excitable state regarding the girl, Cailin.

“Are we not famous the length and breadth of the empire for our entertainments?” Jovian said.

“Absolutely!” Phocas agreed.

“Our living tableaux have no equal. Am I correct?”

“You are correct, brother dear,” Phocas answered.

“What if we took a living tableau a giant step further?” Jovian suggested. “What if, instead of a tableau, we staged a playlet of delicious depravity so decadent that all of Constantinople
would want to view it—
and would pay handsomely for the privilege
. No one, brother dear, would be allowed to view this playlet at first but our regular clients. They, of course, would talk about it, intriguing their friends, and their friends’ friends.

“Only those personally recommended by our clients would be permitted to enter here to view our little entertainment. Soon we would have so many requests for entry that we could charge whatever the traffic would bear, and thus make our fortunes. No one has ever before done anything such as I propose to you. Others will, naturally, copy us, but they will not be able to maintain the level of genius and imagination as we can. Cailin will be the centerpiece of the performance.”

Phocas could fully appreciate his brother’s plan. It was absolutely brilliant. “What will you call your playlet, and how will it be performed, Jovian?” he asked his sibling, fascinated.

“ ‘The Virgin and the Barbarians’! Is that not marvelous?” Jovian chortled, most pleased with himself and his cleverness. “The scene will open with our own little Cailin seated before a loom, modest and innocent in white, her hair unbound, weaving a tapestry. Suddenly the door to her chamber bursts open! Three magnificent naked barbarians enter, swords in hand, their intent quite plain. The frightened maiden leaps up, but alack! They are upon her, rending her garments asunder as she shrieks her protest! They violate her, and the curtain descends to the cheers of our audience.”

“Boring,” Phocas said dryly.

“Boring?”
Jovian looked offended. “I cannot believe you would say such a thing to me. There is nothing boring about the scene I have described to you.”

“Violation of a virgin is an ordinary topic of living tableau,” Phocas answered, disappointed. “If that is all there is to it, Jovian, then it is boring.”

“The gods!” Jovian exclaimed. “It is all so clear to me that I have not explained it in detail to you. Our virgin is violated by three barbarians, Phocas.
Three!”

“Indeed were it one or three, it is boring,” his brother repeated.

“All three of them at one time?”
Jovian slyly elucidated.

Phocas’s brown eyes grew wide.
“Impossible!”
he said breathlessly.

“Not at all,” his brother answered, “but it must be choreographed most carefully, as one would choreograph a temple dance. It is not, however, impossible, dear brother. Oh, no! Not at all; and nothing like it has ever been presented here in Byzantium. Does not the church itself constantly decry the wickedness of man’s nature? There will be riots before our gates in an effort to see the performance. This girl will make us our fortunes. We shall retire to that island in the Black Sea that we bought several years ago and have not seen since.”

“But will the girl cooperate?” Phocas asked. “You are, after all, expecting a great deal of an unsophisticated little provincial.”

“She will cooperate, brother dear. She is very intelligent for a woman, and because she is a pagan, she has no foolish qualms. Since she is not a virgin, she has no respectability to lose in this. Do you know what she asked me? What her future held after her youth and beauty had fled. Of course I told her she might eventually purchase her freedom if she were clever, and I believe she certainly is. With the proper training, Cailin will be the greatest courtesan this city has ever known.”

“Have you decided upon the men involved?” Phocas said, now all business. “And how often shall we schedule this spectacle?”

“Only twice weekly,” his brother replied. “The girl’s physical well-being must be protected, and the unique nature of the performance involved considered. Better our clientele be left begging for more than our little playlet become too ordinary too quickly. As for the men, I saw just the trio I will need at Isaac Stauracius’s private slave market two days ago.”

“What if they are already sold?”

“They will not be,” Jovian said. “I thought I might want them then, although I wasn’t certain. I gave Isaac five gold
solidi to hold them for me. I was to tell him by tomorrow, but I shall go today. They are quite magnificent, Phocas dear. Brothers, all identical in features and form down to the last detail. Big, blond Northmen. They have but one tiny flaw. It is not visible to the eye, but Isaac wanted me to know. They are dumb. The fool who captured them had their tongues torn out. A pity, really. They seem intelligent, and hear quite well.”

“Go and fetch them, then,” Phocas replied. “Do not let Isaac cheat you, Jovian. After all, he does not know how we are going to utilize these young men. Their physical defect should certainly lower the price he will ask appreciably. But wait! What of their male organs? They are large? No matter how beautiful these creatures, they must have big manhoods. How can you be certain of that without Isaac suspecting something of the use to which we will put this trio?”

Jovian looked drolly at his elder sibling. “Phocas, my dear brother, you wound me deeply. When did I ever purchase any male slave for this house that I did not inspect their attributes most thoroughly first? At rest the manhoods of these three hang limply at least six inches. Aroused they will lengthen to eight, if I am not mistaken, and I rarely am.”

“Your pardon, brother,” Phocas said with a brief smile.

With an answering smile and a bow, Jovian departed his brother’s presence. Calling to his favorite body slave, and current lover, to come and join him, he walked swiftly through the gates of Villa Maxima and out into the street.

Chapter 8

C
ailin had always believed that the home in which she had grown up was luxurious, but life at Villa Maxima was a revelation to her. No windows despoiled the outside walls of the building facing the street. One entered through bronze gates that led by way of a narrow passage into a large, sunny, open courtyard. The flooring in the courtyard was designed of square blocks of black and white marble. Great pots were set about the perimeter of the space. They were planted with small trees and pink damask rosebushes. There were always attractive slaves on duty within the courtyard to welcome visitors and to direct them up the two wide white marble steps onto the colonnaded portico, and through it into the atrium of the villa.

The atrium was magnificent. It had a high, curved, vaulted ceiling divided into sunken panels that were carved and decorated in red and blue, and gilded with gold. The walls were decorated with panels of white marble, and the baseboards were overlaid in silver. The entry to the atrium had two squared columns and four rounded pillars in red and white marble, all topped with gilded cornices. Above the entry were three long, narrow, latticed windows.

The doors leading from the atrium were of solid bronze, and the door posts sheathed in green marble, carved and decorated with gold and ivory. The floor was of marble tiles of various contrasting shades of green and white arranged in geometrical patterns. In the recessed wall niches set about the room were marvelous marble sculptures of naked men and women, singly, or in pairs, or groups, all in erotic poses
calculated to titillate the viewer. There were marble tubs filled with brightly colored flowers, and several marble benches where clients sat waiting admittance as their identities and credit were checked.

What little of the rest of the villa that Cailin saw in her first weeks in Constantinople was equally magnificent. The walls were all paneled, and centered upon them, painted pictures in frames. The subject of most of these paintings was erotic in nature. The ceilings were all paneled, and decorated with raised stucco work which was gilded or set with ivory. Doors were paneled and carved with colorful mosaic thresholds. The floors were either of marble of various hues, or mosaic pictures made of pieces so tiny that they appeared to be painted. The floor of the main chamber where the entertainments took place had the story of Leda and Jupiter illustrated in exquisitely colored pieces of mosaic that gave a jeweled effect.

The furniture found at Villa Maxima was typical of a wealthy household. Couches were everywhere, and they were ornately ornamental in design. Wonderfully grained woods were used for the legs and the arms, which were often carved. Tortoiseshell, ivory, ebony, jewels, and precious metals were used to decorate them. The couch coverings were of the finest fabrics available, embroidered in both gold and silver threads as well as sewn with jewels.

The tables were equally beautiful, the best being made from African cedar. Some had bases of marble, others of gold or silver, and yet others of gilded woods. There were chests for storage, some simple and others of elegant design. The candelabra were of bronze, silver, and gold, as were the lamps, both on the tables and hanging. There was nothing that could be considered lacking in grace or beauty about the villa and its furnishings.

Cailin had been assigned a charming little room with a mosaic floor whose center decoration was of Jupiter seducing Europa. About the walls, frescoes showed young lovers being encouraged and bedeviled by a host of amusing winged cupids. There was a single bed, a lovely decorated wooden
chest, and a small round table to furnish the space, which had but one window looking out over the hills of the city to the sea beyond. The room was sunny most of the day, and the light gave it a cheerful outlook that made Cailin feel comfortable for the first time in almost a year. It was not a bad place to begin her new life.

For almost two weeks that life was uncomplicated and pampered. She was fed more food than she had ever before eaten. She was bathed and massaged three times daily. Her feet and her hands were attended to, the nails pared, her skin creamed to soften it. She was made to rest continuously, until she thought she would die of boredom, for Cailin was not used to being idle. She saw no one but Jovian and the few servants who attended to her. In the evenings she could hear laughter, music, and merriment from elsewhere in Villa Maxima, but her chamber was very isolated from the rest of the house.

One day Jovian came and took her in a highly decorated—and to Cailin’s taste—flamboyant litter to tour the city. He was a font of fascinating facts and general information. A town had been founded a thousand years before by the Greeks on this very site, Cailin learned. Located at the junction of the east-west trade routes, the town had always flourished, even if it was not particularly distinguished. Then, just over a hundred years ago, the emperor Constantine the Great had decided to leave Rome, and chose for his new capital the town of Byzantium. Constantine, the first emperor to embrace Christianity, consecrated the city on the fourth day of November in the year
A.D.
328. The city, renamed Constantinople in his honor, was formally dedicated on May 11, 330, with much pomp and ceremony. Already building and renovation was then in progress.

Constantine and his successors were always building, and little remained now of the original Greek town. Constantinople currently had a university of higher learning; its own circus; eight public and one hundred fifty-three private baths; fifty-two porticos; five granaries; four large public halls for the government, the senate, and the courts of justice; eight
aqueducts that conveyed the city’s water; fourteen churches, including the magnificent St. Sophia; and fourteen palaces for the nobility. There were close to five thousand wealthy and upper-middle-class homes, not to mention several thousand houses and apartments sheltering the plebian classes, the shopkeepers, the artisans, the humble.