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
Cailin 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.
The city had been built on trade, and trade prospered there. Since it was set where the land routes from Asia and Europe met, Constantinople’s markets were filled with goods of all kinds. There was porcelain from Cathay, ivory from Africa, amber from the Baltic, precious stones of every kind found on the earth; silks, damask, aloes, balsam, cinnamon and ginger, sugar, musk, salt, oil, grains, wax, furs, wood, wines, and of course, slaves.
That afternoon, they traveled the length of the city to the Golden Gate, and then back along the Mese past the forums of Constantine and of Theodosius. They skirted the Hippodrome and moved on past the Great Palace. As they were carried by the great church of St. Erine, Jovian said, “I have not yet chosen a priest for you, Cailin. I must remember to do so.”
“Do not bother,” she told him. “I do not think I could be a Christian. It seems a difficult faith, I fear.”
“Why do you say that?” he asked her, curious.
“I have been speaking to your servants, and they tell me that to be a Christian you must forgive your enemies. I do not think I can forgive mine, Jovian. My enemy has cost me my family, my husband, and my child. I do not even know if that child was a son or a daughter. I have been taken from the land I love best, enslaved and generally terrorized. We Britons are a hardy race, which is probably why I have survived all of this, but I am angry, and I am embittered. Given the opportunity to take my revenge upon Antonia Porcius, I would gladly do so! I cannot forgive her for what she has done to me, or taken from me.”