Raptor (54 page)

She gestured toward her twins, at which the boys quailed timorously.

“But if
you
are not afflicted with fecundity, Veleda, and are not repulsed by men, then I say cavort with them as much as you like. Only be sure they pay every last nummus you can wrest from them. The priests and preachers and philosophers, who are all men, would like everybody—especially women—to believe that the seven moral virtues are precious heirlooms, to be handed down from mother to daughter. But we women know better. Every kind of virtue exists only to be bartered, either to the earliest or to the highest bidder. As for myself, I refuse to see any immorality in any act by which I benefit. And you, Veleda, I will advise you as if you
were
my own dear daughter. I can give you some hints that will make you even prettier than you are, therefore a more valuable commodity. For instance, when you go out at night, carry a handcloth doused with oil of thyme. On meeting a prospective stuprator, waft the cloth before your face. It will make your eyes gleam and sparkle alluringly. Also—”

“I am not a commodity, Caia Dengla,” I said, to stop her spate. “I earn my every nummus by honest labor. And I imagine, if I ever
were
to become a mother, I would be proud to have two such loving sons.”

“Loving!” she snorted. “If I had had daughters, they would by now be loving me most voluptuously indeed. But these? From their infancy, when I had to abase myself by serving as their nutrix, they have been repellent to me. A small
man
sucking on each of my paps—
eheu!
I could not even sell them to be charismatics, for they were not beautiful enough, or to be brought up as slaves, for they were not intelligent enough. However, thanks be to Bacchus, they will soon turn twelve and I will be rid of them.”

Clearly, she did not and never would believe that I was anything but the cheapest street-corner night-moth, especially since I continued to spend at least one night a week away from her house. For my part, I would have supposed, from the lip-licking way in which Dengla had spoken of her nonexistent daughters, that she and the Rasen woman Melbai must be sorores stuprae—except that they never exchanged affectionate caresses or words or even glances and, so far as I could tell, never spent any substantial length of time, day or night, in the same room. They did, however, go out together every Friday evening after cena and stayed out all night. I had no least interest in making inquiry about that, and Dengla proffered no further comment or advice on my own nighttime pursuits, and for some weeks I simply went on living my double life without significant incident.

During Holy Week, I several times went to mass at the city’s Arian church, to see wherein the Arian Christian services differed from the Catholic. The priest, one Tata Avilf, was an Ostrogoth and all his deacons, subdeacons and acolytes were of one or another Germanic nation or tribe. But they were hardly ravening savages; they were as benign and bland and routinely, even lethargically, devout in their observances of ritual as any similar group of Catholic clerics.

On Easter Eve, there were five or six catechumen Competents to be received into the Christian mysteries, and the priest did their baptism very nearly the same way I had so frequently seen it done in St. Damian’s chapel, except that each Competent was three times immersed in the baptismal water, not just once, as is required of Catholics. On the Saturday after Easter, I sought audience with Tata Avilf, pretending to be a Catholic contemplating conversion to Arianism, and respectfully asked him to explain the difference in baptismal immersion. He obligingly told me:

“In the early days of Christianity, my daughter,
all
catechumens were thrice immersed at their baptism. It was only with the emergence of Arianism that the Catholics changed their liturgy to specify a single immersion. It was done simply to set their creed apart from ours, you see, much as the Church had long ago made Sunday its Sabbath day, to dissociate itself from the Jews’ Saturday Sabbath, and also had made Easter a movable feast, simply to set it as far as possible from the fixed Passover of the Jews. But we Arians do not dwell on the differences between the Catholics and ourselves. We believe that Jesus desired his followers to practice generosity and tolerance, not exclusivity. If you were to decide this minute, Caia Veleda, that you want to convert to, say, Judaismus—or even revert to the paganism of our ancestors—why, I should simply wish you happiness in your choice.”

I was astounded. “But St. Paul said, ‘Preach the word; reprove, entreat, rebuke; do the work of an evangelist.’ Tata Avilf, you would not even
counsel
against my making such a drastic departure from the Christian Church?”

“Ne, ni allis. So long as you live a virtuous life, daughter, doing harm to no other, we Arians would aver that you
are
obeying what St. Paul called ‘the word.’ “

Quite by coincidence, on my way through the streets after leaving the Arian church, I glimpsed the widuwo Dengla and the Rasen woman Melbai coming out of another—or out of a pagan temple, rather: the temple dedicated to Bacchus. They and numerous other women—and a few men—were emerging furtively, by twos and threes, all deeply muffled in their cloaks, but Dengla was distinguishable by her vivid red hair. Those people looked in all directions, evidently to see whether there was anyone about who might recognize them, then scuttled hastily away from the place. That was a reasonable precaution. Even among the most unregenerate pagans, the worship of Bacchus had for ages been considered dissolute and reprehensible. The temple’s exterior walls were much bedaubed with lewd verses and imprecations written by disapproving passersby.

I remembered Dengla’s having invoked the name of Bacchus. And it is well known that the Romans who displaced the Etruscans, or Rasenar, from the Italia peninsula had regarded them—and still regarded the scattered remnants of them—as a people steeped in sordid superstition and sorcery. So Dengla and Melbai were Bacchantes. And this was a Saturday morning, so the Bacchic temple was where those women spent their Friday nights. But what kind of worshipping, I wondered, could they and those other people find to
do
in there all night long?

“Would you like to find out?” Melbai bluntly asked me, when all three of us had got back to the house. “I saw that you saw us, girl, as we left the shrine. Many prurient folk are itching to know what occurs inside that temple, and I would wager that you are, too. As it happens, I am a Venerable—a priestess—of the Bacchic society, and I can introduce you there. You might even relish the rites enough that you would wish to become an initiate.”

I said indifferently, “A minor god. Of wine merely. I know that all his votaries are women, but I cannot imagine what he has to offer that would interest me.”

“Not merely the god of wine, Veleda,” Dengla put in. “Also of youth and feasting and joy. We Bacchantes do drink much wine, but the music and singing and dancing intoxicate us far more ardently. We are exalted to the state that the Greeks call hysterikà zêlos, passion of the womb—but of more than the womb, actually—of the whole body and all its senses. A woman is excited to wild ecstatic ferocity and to strength enough that she can, bare-handed, tear apart a live kid for the ritual sacrifice.”

“It sounds enchanting,” I said drily.

“Nor are all his votaries female,” Dengla went on, as if I had not spoken. “Originally they were, but some centuries ago a Campanian woman had a vision in which the god instructed her to induct her own two adolescent sons, and the Bacchic societies have been conjuncti ever since. You must have seen some men leaving the temple with us, Veleda. Or perhaps you would not call them
entirely
men. The Venerables among them are all eunuchs. Some of those willingly castrated
themselves,
just so they would qualify for our priesthood. And the male lay worshippers are all fratres stupri.”

I said, “It sounds ever more enchanting.”

“Well, they are amusing to watch,” Dengla said, snickering.

“And Bacchus is not any
minor
god,” said Melbai. “Only nowadays in the Roman Empire is he so shamefully neglected. As you may be aware, girl, the Greeks have long and highly regarded him as Diónysos. But you probably are not aware that we Rasenar were even earlier devoted to that same god, calling him Fufluns. The ceremonies of his worship are older yet, for they derive from ancient Egypt, where, long before he became Fufluns and Diónysos and Bacchus, he was revered as the goddess Isis.”

Yet another divinity of mutable sex, I thought. Perhaps I, as a brother-sister mannamavi, should at least pay my respects to him-her.

“And next Friday,” Dengla said eagerly, “is our highest holy night of the year. That is the date of the annual Dionysia Arkhióteza. The Bacchanalia. There could be no more thrilling time for you to visit.

I was surprised. “I thought the Bacchanalia had been banned by the Senate aeons ago.”

Dengla said contemptuously, “An edict was pronounced, yes. But that was simply to placate the hypocrites of the time. The Bacchantes had only to become less visible and more anonymous. The revels never really ceased, nor would the authorities wish them to.”

“After all,” said Melbai, “they provide a vent for the emotions and lusts and urges of all the persons prone to the hysterikà zêlos. Emotions that might otherwise erupt in ways harmful to the public order.”

“Furthermore,”
said Dengla, pointing to her twins, who cringed from the gesture, “Filippus and Robein will celebrate their twelfth birthday on Tuesday. So they will fortuitously enjoy the eminence of being initiated into the rites next Friday, which is not just
any
Friday, but the night of the Great Dionysia. You might like to honor the event with your presence, Veleda. You seem tolerably fond of the brats, and you will not be seeing them again thereafter, unless you continue to attend services at the shrine.”

“You would impel your own sons into a den of fratres stupri? And abandon them there?”

“What higher calling could the louts aspire to? Their lives will be dedicated to serving Bacchus.”

“Serving him how?”

“You will see, if you come to the Bacchanalia. Do come.”

So I went.

Over the weeks, I had brought to my room in the widow’s house some of my other feminine clothes and trinkets, of rather better quality than I had worn on first arrival there—each time, of course, pretending they were new purchases enabled by my “wages.” So, on the Bacchanal Friday, when I was being as self-conscious as any other young woman about to make her entrance into an unfamiliar circle, I said to Dengla:

“I suppose I ought to wear my very best raiment on an occasion like this.”

“If you like,” she said carelessly. “But it does not matter. You will be taking it all off before the night is over.”

“I will?” I said, in some slight alarm.

“Eheu, do not look so scandalized. Why is it that girls of your station are always the most prudishly modest of females when they go anywhere except streetwalking?”

“I have told you, Caia Dengla, I am not a whore.”

“And I have told
you
that you need not put on any poses for my sake. I know that no furrier pays you enough to have afforded that ‘very best raiment’ of yours. But even if you stole the things, I do not care, so long as they were not stolen from me. Why, I have acquired much of my
own
best raiment, and many other valuable possessions, by the very same means. Anyway, it is not
demanded
that you disrobe during the rites, though you would look most conspicuous and rude if you do not, when everyone else does. However, if you subscribe to the Roman custom, you may keep on one of your undergarments. Also, you need not—um—participate in the rites if you do not care to. Many of our most devout votaries attend the shrine only to observe, and they seem to attain a marvelously high degree of hysterikà zêlos by doing nothing but watching. Now, if you are going to change clothes, Veleda, go and do so. It will soon be time for us to be on our way. Melbai has already gone ahead, to don her vestments as a Venerable. I will collect the twins, and let us each hold one firmly by the arm, so he does not try to flee. The little imbeciles are as fearful as if they were kittens going to visit a kennel of wolves.”

Well, I thought, the Latin word “lupa” strictly means “bitch-wolf” but it is informally employed—though it grossly slanders the wolves—to mean an “unchaste woman.” So, more than likely, the kittens had
reason
to fear. But I got dressed in my best undergarments and amiculum overdress—and put on, last of all, my most fetching feminine adornment, that coiled bronze breast guard I had bought at Haustaths—and then obediently took fast hold of one of the boys, and the four of us proceeded to the temple of Bacchus.

The interior of that temple was, as Dengla had said, dimly illuminated; only a single torch was bracketed on either side of the capacious, high-ceilinged room. But there was light enough for me to see that the furnishings consisted mainly of soft couches, perhaps twoscore of them, set at random about an open space in the middle of the mosaic floor. Among the couches were set tall vases of irises, daisies, primroses—all white flowers, to be visible in the dimness. There were also scattered about the floor little pots in which roasted pinecones smoldered, and I remembered what old Wyrd had long ago told me about that resinous incense: that it “makes a kunte as hot as the incense itself.” At the front of the room, where I would have expected an altar or ambo, there was only a tremendous marble table that might have stood in an extraordinarily elegant taberna, because it bore a pyramid of ten wine casks—stacked on their sides and fitted with taps in their vents, ready to pour—an array of goblets and cups and numerous trays piled high with grapes of various colors.

“Where in the world do the grapes come from?” I asked, as Dengla and the boys and I sat down on one of the couches. “It is not even summertime yet.”

“Did you not know? If ripe grapes are buried among a bin of radish roots, they will stay fresh and sweet for months. And of course we
must
have grapes, all year round, to eat in honor of the god of wine.”