The Passion of Mary Magdalen. Elizabeth Cunningham

Nothing more. I headed for the door.

      “What’s your hurry? Where’re you going?”

      Decius roused himself, and the slave, who had been standing aside, moved again so that he completely blocked my way.

      “I won, remember?”

      “You won,” he agreed. “So you can do what you want. Don’t you want to stay awhile?”

      Did I?

      “Take a break, Fido.” He sent his man away. “The woman will do as she pleases.”

      A man who respected a woman’s sovereignty; that was more seductive to me than the way he lay back, shifting his leg to best display his pelvis, his arms open and resting on the couch, his whole posture inviting. A slow smile spread over his face as he took me in, starting at my feet and moving up, lingering on my thighs, belly, breasts, with a heat I could feel across the room, before he finally connected with my eyes. A hot look, a wind blowing from southern places. Yet as he held me in his gaze, something in me knew: he is no different from Paulina. He’s looking at himself. I’m just a mirror. I’m supposed to reflect how irresistible he is, how unnecessary force is for a man like him.

      I closed my eyes to shut him out. Inside I found a desert and a dreadful thirst. What did it matter? I could take a plunge with Decius Mundus, let him plunge in, bring down my juices, awaken my secret springs. Why should I wish for cold, distant stars when I could have hot stars exploding in my belly, my breasts, my head.

      For a moment I saw the green gold light under the yews, felt the heat of my sudden summer with Esus. But he had left me. Long ago now. I’d been a whore. I’d had hundreds of men. What would one more matter?

      “Come here,” Decius groaned.

      I opened my eyes. He was holding out his arms, his cock rising, making a comical tent out of his tunic. All I had to do was ease myself onto him. It would be easy, so easy.

      Too easy, a tart voice inside me said. Way too damn easy. For him. To have a slave woman, send her off with dripping thighs back to her servitude. At the Vine and Fig Tree, men had at least paid for the privilege, and I had the means there to keep my womb plugged up tight. If I went to Decius now, we might both have pleasure. But only one of us would pay.

      “Sorry, Dec,” I said lightly. “Thanks for the offer. But not tonight.”

      The blood abandoned his cock and rushed to his face. That’s it, I thought. Now he’ll jump me. But he recovered quickly, too lazy, too tired, too generally pleased with himself to press me.

      “Your loss,” he shrugged.

      Loss, yes, but not of Decius, though he might have provided a brief distraction.

      “Wait,” he said, as I turned to go. “I’ll escort you. You shouldn’t be wandering around alone at night, especially not during Saturnalia. If someone else had found you, it would have been a different story. Where are you quartered?”

      “The domina Paulina’s cubiculo.”

      “Ah.” He sounded interested, though I couldn’t see his face as we walked single file through a corridor. “That’s why you look familiar.”

      He hadn’t said so before.

      “My title is pedisequa,” I sighed.

      “What were you doing on the other side of the insularium,” he asked a trifle sharply; no doubt he brokered information like everyone else. “Her quarters are almost half a mile away.”

      “The domina was out,” I said shortly. It was none of his business what I did or why.

      “Ah, yes, on the Palatine.”

      “Were you there earlier?” I steered the conversation away from myself.

      “I wasn’t invited.” He answered candidly, but for the first time his tone was serious, almost grim. “My rank’s not high enough—yet.”

      “Yeah, mine isn’t either.”

      “But you’re a slave.” He didn’t catch my irony. His sense of humor evaporated when it came it himself.

      “Listen, Dec.” I turned around.

      He collided with me and caught me against his chest. For all the wine fumes and the smoke from the brazier, he smelled like the outdoors to me, like the world beyond the walls. However vain he was, there was something so uncomplicated about him, simple. Refreshing in Rome. Maybe he was just stupid, but in that moment, I wanted the comfort of that simplicity so badly I almost wept.

      “You can always change your mind,” he murmured into my hair.

      “I can find my own way from here.” I gently pushed him away. “You know and I know, the walls have eyes and ears. It would not be cool if anyone saw me with you.”

      “Why not?” He was diverted from his lust. “Would it jeopardize my standing with Claudius in some way?”

      Yes, it was all about him.

      “It would jeopardize my standing.”

      “You have influence with Claudius?” he asked eagerly.

      “I meant my standing with Paulina. If she found out I’d had you when she can’t.”

      As soon as I spoke, I regretted it. Damn! I needed to work on my slave mentality. Never give away information. Never.

      “Oh, ho!” Decius grasped the implications immediately; what mental acuity he had was entirely focused on advancing himself. “So that’s the way the wind blows. And do you think the domina has much influence with her husband?”

      “It all depends.” I shrugged; ambiguity is all. “But if I were you I wouldn’t breathe a word to Paulina about tonight.”

      “Right,” he said.

      I left him pondering insofar as he was capable of it. As I crossed the courtyard to Paulina’s cubiculo, a gust of wind lifted my cloak. I felt my ass flapping in the breeze.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

       TAKE ME THERE

      You don’t need to know much about the rest of the winter. It was cold and cramped, damp and wretched. Rain and sleet frequently confined us all to the insularium. Decius Mundus carried on a cautious flirtation with Paulina that kept her in a constant state of arousal that I was obliged to relieve. I did not see much of Decius as Pater dined at domus Claudius more often than not, and whenever Pater was there, I was banished to the kitchens. I would have thanked the gods for that respite, but I still wasn’t speaking to them, specifically not to Isis, except in my dreams with their tantalizing snippets of her story—or mine.

      The only other part of the day that gave me any relief was our late morning trip to the baths. The palatial buildings were the largest indoor space in Rome, cavernous, with ceilings so high birds nested on the ledges of pillars. Doves mostly. Their sound brought back my dream—if it was a dream—of the Temple of Jerusalem and Anna the prophetess sitting below the walls in the terraced garden surrounded by birds. Sometimes, weightless in the warm water, I could feel my dove form hovering over me just out of reach. If Isis was all sovereign, one of her titles, why couldn’t she just pick me up in her hands and toss me lightly into the sky as Anna had in my dream?

      As it turned out, it was in the baths that Isis reentered my life by way of idle gossip. The gods are like that; they will stoop to any means.

      “Do