Raptor (52 page)

The girls and women of high degree, like their menfolk, unquestioningly accepted my imposture. And the females—dowagers, matrons, maidens—even more than the males, seemed intrigued by my reputation for omniscience. At any rate, they took advantage of every opportunity to meet me, to be introduced to me, to engage me in conversation. Before long, this revealed to me something about myself that I had never had reason to realize before. Rather to my own surprise, I found that I could make friends with women more easily than other men could. I do not mean briefly reciprocated flirtations or even passionate love affairs; I mean close relationships, whether or not they included romantic or sexual involvement. And gradually I came to understand
why
I was more fortunate than other men in that respect. It was simply because of the fact that men and women see each other differently.

The way the world works, men in general are regarded as superior to and dominant over women in general. So it is only natural for the ordinary man to look on women as creatures bred just for his use and convenience. That ordinary man—though he may be ugly, aged, ignorant, stupid, crippled, poor and worthless—will yet regard every woman on earth as
available
to him, if he should want her. Even if she is a noblewoman and he the tetzte slave of a slave, he is convinced that, if he cared to, he could woo and win her, or abduct and rape her, simply because she is female and he is male. Well, I too had been inculcated with the attitudes that the world considers right and proper. I was by nature half male, and had lived most of my life as a male among males. Now, as a man grown, I was certainly not immune to the allure of a beautiful girl or woman, and not above yearning to possess her. On the other hand, I could not consider any female to be my inferior or subordinate, because in part I
was
one. Even in my male embodiment, when I was behaving and thinking like other men, feeling myself to be as manly as they, involved in purely masculine pursuits, still the female half of my nature was never entirely submerged.

Of other females, most that I had known heretofore had been peasant drudges or cowering nuns, barring some notable exceptions—the errant Sister Deidamia, the gallant Lady Placidia, the sprightly little Livia—and those vicious viragines, the Domina Aetherea and the clarissima Robeya. But now I was consorting with females of good breeding, of some liberty and leisure, of intelligence and education—several of them could even read and write—so I was able now to observe the ways of women who had not been broken in spirit by lifelong toil or religiosity, not been made terrible by overweening ambition. And I realized that their thoughts and feelings were precisely the same as my own when my female nature was manifest.

Although men and tradition and laws and religious dogma have declared that a woman is only a receptacle to be filled, she knows she is more than that. So she does not perceive any man as being simply a fascinum capable of filling her. She looks at a man differently from the way he looks at her. He first assesses only attractiveness and desirability. She tries to see what underlies his surface. I know, because I had looked at Gudinand the same way.

The females of Vindobona may at first have felt drawn to the newcomer Thornareikhs simply by their curiosity about the stranger and his supposedly mysterious knowledge of many matters. But they warmed to me and clove to me for an even simpler reason: I did not regard them or treat them as an ordinary man would do. I behaved toward them as I, in my female embodiment, would wish a man to behave toward me. That was all it took. Many of the women and girls became intimate friends of mine, and many made it clear that they desired to become even more intimate than that, and a number of them did.

I daresay that an ordinary man, left to choose from such an abundant garden, would have picked only the flowers that were fairest and most perfectly formed. But I had seen beyond those surfaces, so I chose the ones that I had come to
like
best, regardless of their age and comeliness. Some were beautiful, but not all. Some were maidens barely nubile, and I was their first lover, and they had to be tenderly taught, and I believe I taught them well. Some were matrons past their prime, but no woman is ever too old to delight in carnal pleasures, and some of those had things to teach
me.

The first unequivocally amorous invitation I received, and accepted, came from a highborn lady whom I will here call Dona. I will say that this one
was
a beautiful woman, with eyes the veritable color of violets, but I will give no detailed description that might hint at her real identity.

I went to her chambers eagerly that night, but also a little apprehensively. Even undressing in her presence caused me some small anxiety—not about my masculine organ, which was already an ardent fascinum—nor about my maidenly breasts, because, by consciously tightening my pectoral muscles, I could keep them almost indiscernible. I was more concerned about the lack of hair on my body. I still had only the pubic escutcheon and the tufts under my arms, and I feared that Dona might find it odd that I had no manly hair on my chest, legs or forearms, not even a sandy roughness of beard beneath my facial skin.

I need not have worried about that. Dona cheerfully stripped off her own clothing, keeping on only one article, as feminine modesty dictated. But she was cheerfully unprudish about that, too; the one thing she retained was merely a fine gold chain linked around her tiny waist. So I could clearly see that Dona herself was entirely devoid of hair, except for the raven-black tresses of her head—and she expressed some mild surprise that I was not likewise sleek and smooth all over. Thus I learned another new thing: that it was the upper-class Romans’ custom, men as well as women, to depilate themselves of every hair on the body, from the cheeks on down.

Dona explained, as if to a backward child, “We do our utmost not to resemble the savage barbarians who are as hairy as the furs they wear. Have you some reason, dear Torn, for not waxing away those three useless little traces?”

“It is the custom of
my
people,” I said, “to regard them as ornament.” After all, I needed the pubescence to conceal my lack of scrotum and testicles.

“Alius alia via,” Dona said, airily dismissing the subject. “You are otherwise a very sightly young man.” She ran her gaze appreciatively over me. “That little tick of a scar in your eyebrow is invitingly kissable. But that crescent scar on your right arm is the one thing marring the purity of your body. What caused that?”

“A certain lady,” I lied, “who, in the transports of her ecstasy one night, could not restrain her ravening desire and took a
taste
of me.”

“Euax!” Dona exclaimed, her eyes now glistening like those of a cat. “Already you excite me, Torn.” And she stretched like a cat on her soft and capacious bed.

And here was the moment that mainly caused me concern, because I had coupled with only one woman before, and then under false pretenses. Although I was to do nothing with Dona this night that I had not done in the long-ago with Deidamia, I had at that time been Sister Thorn, and thought myself totally female. Now I was doing those same things as a male, and zealously, as Gudinand had done them to Juhiza.

So, when Dona and I passionately intertwined, I found that, at least in some corner of my consciousness—how do I make this understandable?—I was
reminding
myself of the ways in which I had instructed Gudinand to employ his fingers and lips and fascinum. And at the same time, for Dona’s benefit, I was also reminding myself of those particular attentions that had best pleased both Juhiza and Deidamia. Happily, this reminding myself did not at all distract me from my performance as a male, and did not in the least diminish my virility. I was as unflagging as Gudinand had been, and Dona was as gratefully and insatiably responsive as Juhiza had been.

Furthermore, while she and I both unreservedly reveled in my maleness, I was again having that sensation of our both being several and various persons simultaneously—Thornareikhs and Dona, Juhiza and Gudinand, Sister Thorn and Sister Deidamia—active and passive, penetrator and engulfer, giving and receiving, spurting and swallowing. As had happened before, my feeling that we two were of many mingled personalities, of composite sexes and of fluctuating, alternating functions, gave an indescribable extra intensity to my enjoyment. I believe that it somehow added to Dona’s, too, even though she could not possibly have shared that sensation of more-than-human multiplicity.

At any rate, when at last she could speak intelligibly, Dona gasped with joy, “Macte virtute!” and humorously added, “I shall recommend you to my friends.”

“Benigne,” I thanked her, mock solemnly. “But I scarcely think it will be necessary. A number of your lady friends have already signified their eagerness to—”

“Eheu! Hush, you braggart! You are likely to be drawn into more contests than you can cope with. Let me tell you a story of a man who once had two extremely possessive lovers. One was a handsome but elderly lady and the other a very young and winsome girl. Can you conjecture what happened to the man?”

“Is this an enigma, Dona? I should imagine that he lived happily ever after.”

“Not at all. He very soon went completely bald.”

“I do not understand. Even excessive—ahem—excessive exertion would not make a man go
bald.”

“I told you his two lovers were jealously possessive. The elderly lady plucked out all of his dark hairs, and the young girl plucked out all his gray ones.”

She laughed at her own story, and Dona was the blithesome sort of person who laughs all over, and that made her lovely body jiggle so invitingly that I was again inspired to find other things for us to do than talk.

I will recount no further details of that occasion, or of other occasions with Dona, or of other occasions with other Vindobona women and girls—except to say that I never went bald. So I went on, for some months more, thoroughly enjoying my being Thornareikhs, continually seeing and learning and experiencing new things.

In December, I participated—along with every other person in Vindobona, from the herizogo down to the meanest slave—in celebrating the seven days of Saturnalia. In the grander residences, the better families spread sumptuous feasts, and each of those lasted from dusk to near dawn. Though they commenced with stiff formality, they eased, as the hours went on, into drunkenness and bawdry.

The most riotous of the festivities I attended was the one the legatus Balburius furnished for his Gemina Legion. Since the ostensible excuse for the Saturnalia is the ascent of the sun from its midwinter low point in the sky, and since the god Mithras is regarded by his devotees as the Deus Solis, and since almost all Roman soldiers still worship Mithras, those troops naturally celebrate the festival with real debauchery.

I was loitering in one of the fortress barracks, watching the soldiers carouse with the harlots who had come up from the city’s low quarter, when I was accosted by a decurio far gone in wine. He flung a comradely arm around my shoulders and launched into a harangue intended to persuade me to abandon my current religion, whatever that might be, and convert to the loftier creed of Mithraism.

“You would have to begin, of course, in one of the probationary grades, hic, as a Raven or a Secret One or a Soldier. But then, with study and application and due piety, hic, you would be initiated into the Lion grade, and be accounted a confirmed Mithraist. With further study, and by doing good works, you could then rise to the grade of Persian. Now, at some legion posts, that would be as hic as you could go. But here in the Gemina Legion, we have
several
Sun-Runners, of which I have the honor to be one. And—believe this or not, hic—we even have a Mithraist of the very highest, most coveted title, the Father. He is, I hardly need hic, our esteemed legatus. Now, young Tornaricus, I am willing to sponsor your acceptance on probation. What say you, hic?”

“What I say is
hic,”
I replied, making jape of him. “In my lifetime, Decurio Sun-Runner, I have known many persons who wished to convert others. Every single one of them insists, ‘You must embrace
my
god and
my
religion and
my
priesthood and
my
beliefs.’ I say to all of them—and to you, Decurio—thags izvis, benigne, eúkharistô, but I respectfully decline the offer.”

Then, in February, the whole city celebrated the Lupercalia. Long ages ago, it is said, this festival included the ritual sacrifice of he-goats, and the flaying of them, and the slicing of their hides into thongs for the making of whips. For aeons, though, the Lupercalia had been but a tame holiday. The whips were made of cloth ribbons, and the only remainder of the earlier ceremony was that small naked boys ran through the streets wielding those soft whips, and numerous women would step in the boys’ path to get “lashed” by them. The superstition was that, because the original whips had been fashioned from lustful he-goats, the “whipping” would cure a woman’s barrenness or increase her fecundity. Otherwise, the Lupercalia existed only as one more excuse for feasts and convivia and revels.

Then, in March, Vindobona and every other community in the empire was given another reason for celebration, on a day that was not ordinarily marked with the red creta chalk on the calendar. In the first week of that month, messengers went all about the provinces with the announcement that a certain Glycerius was to assume the imperial purple on the sixteenth day before the calends of April. No one knew much about this Glycerius, except that he had been a soldier who had been yanked from obscurity to be interim keeper of the empire after the almost simultaneous deaths of the Emperor Anthemius and the King-Maker Rikimer. Now Glycerius was to be invested with the title, and all Roman citizens were bidden to celebrate his ascension on that March day, and to wish the new emperor “salve atque flore!” A nonentity he might be, but Vindobona always gladly welcomed any excuse to hold a convivium. This being a state occasion, at least by proxy, every woman attending the festivities wore a stola, and every man a toga, and I was pleased that my sartor had insisted on making one of those for me.