Jonathan Trigell - The Tongues of Men or Angels

Drusilla claps her hands to summon the slaves, growing tired of the expectant emptiness on the table in front of her. The naked girl who brings in the wine is newly bought, and Drusilla is rather pleased with her. She speaks perfect Greek, but is very pale-skinned, as if she came originally from some northern province, even from Germania perhaps; the girl herself doesn’t know. Her breasts are pearls tipped with pink and her hair a white like gold in moonlight. She really was an awfully good purchase.

The girl fills Drusilla’s gilt-silver goblet, with timid attentiveness. Drusilla seems to recall it came from Lesbos, this batch of wine, as much of the best does, from the isle of Sappho. To look at this slave, Drusilla wouldn’t blame that girl-loving poetess for her preference. Drusilla could have half a mind to order this little one to her chamber tonight, in compensation for an absent husband, though she probably wouldn’t even feel like it by the time the dreariness of the dinner party is over.

The thought draws Drusilla back to the moment and she smiles at the two ladies beside her on the couch. One is the wife of the duoviri quinquennales , the most important politician of this little Italian coastal town. The other is from the Rufus family, among the oldest and wealthiest lines in the area. The three women arranged on the opposite couch are similarly consequential. Life has taught Drusilla that such alliances are important and often they must be paid for, not only with the expense of fine tipples and delicacies but also with boredom.

The gorgeous slave-girl returns with a platter of durum sweets, fried with oil and absolutely drenched in honey. Drusilla takes a syrupy handful and passes some words of chatter with her guests, but cannot help her eyes being stolen once more by the slave-girl’s effervescent rump and the heart-shaped gap where light shows between her upper thighs; she really is divine. She can’t be any older than Drusilla was when she first married.

Drusilla shudders at the memory of those days. One might suppose she would have been glad to marry a king. But when you’re born a princess, that is only what is to be expected, and Azizus was not a terribly kingly king.

He was a dreadful little man actually, all belly between his genitals and his beard. He barely passed ten words a day with her outside the bedchamber, and in it he huffed and puffed away, squashing her down like he was sealing a letter, yet was still quite convinced he was a lover to humble Apollo. As doubtless every courtesan and concubine had always told him it was so.

The slaves bring in bowls of warm water, muslin towels and oil of orris so that the diners may wash their sticky fingers. Though drawn from many races, Drusilla’s slaves are uniformly comely; she does like to look upon beautiful things. But not one of them, save perhaps the new girl, could have matched Drusilla in her youth. She was once a beauty who made even her own ravishing sister envious.

Ageing is tedious for one who has been radiant when young. But even now, at forty-two, Drusilla still draws admiring gazes when she goes into town. She is helped in that by fame, of course, but largely it is her looks; this Italian resort is full of the second homes of senators and patricians; people are accustomed to celebrity here.

Most of the town’s denizens are probably only dimly aware of who Drusilla is. Doubtless they have heard that she is some kind of Judaean princess, but it has been a tangled tale, this dynasty of the Herodians, even for those involved.

Drusilla’s great-grandfather was Herod the Great; he had ten wives, until he executed one, and even though he had three of his own children murdered too, he still left such a superfluity of descendants alive as to cause succession crises and confusion for generations to come. After Herod’s death, Rome divided his kingdom between three of his sons, but shortly reneged and deposed two. And Roman prefects ruled Judaea after that. Except, that is, for a brief spell when Drusilla’s father was tried out as a client king; this was around the time that Drusilla was born, so she didn’t know much about it until after the decision was revoked again. Later her brother, King Herod Agrippa, was given token rule over Galilee and Golan. But that, too, was annulled when revolt occurred, even though Agrippa naturally sided with the Romans in the war. The Herodians were Jewish up to a point, but certainly not to the point of suffering for it.

As if to underline Drusilla’s own practical approach to her religion, the next course the slaves bring is of oysters, scallops and sea urchins, cuttlefish and clams, all cooked in a mint and cumin sauce, a dish absolutely prohibited, of course, to those who adhere strictly to the Torah, but rather fine to eat for all that. And there are also stuffed sow’s wombs and barley cakes and honeyed mushrooms and lobster, with a little vinegared cabbage and dressed cucumber. All the lounging diners comment on what a marvellous spread it is and how they must repay Drusilla the compliment when they can.

And it is well to be entrenched with influential people because the Romans give and the Romans take away. Even as a princess married to a king, Drusilla was perceptive enough to realize where the real power lay. Her husband, Azizus, was king for precisely as long as Rome allowed it. Ruler of a small Syrian city state, client king of an anthill and a patch of sand.

Next the naked slaves bring in capon, filled with lamb brain and ginger, sprinkled with crushed pepper and pine kernels. A capon is a castrated cockerel; Drusilla has never really worked out how one would go about castrating something that doesn’t appear to have anything to cut off. Just another of those tiny mysteries of life, which would be simple enough to solve if one could be bothered to ask a slave.

Drusilla’s second husband had once been a slave himself. Strange thing, to exchange a king for a freedman. But when she had first seen Felix, he was no slave: he was prefect of Judaea. He came with a retinue of legionaries into her husband’s court, and by the way that fat Syrian flustered and abased himself in trying to ingratiate, it was apparent which man was the nobler.

Felix was handsome, in a rough-cast soldierly way, and he had the look of one who would be just as hard and commanding when he fucked; which Drusilla had thought might be rather nice. And she was so thoroughly bored with her little tin-pot king in that regard.

Drusilla herself barely spoke at that initial encounter, but she had made sure that Felix took in her best side. She had looked down, as if demurely, but really to lure his eyes to the shadow-slit between her breasts. And she crouched up on the cushions as she readjusted, curving up her back like a little cat. And she could see that Felix was glued as an ant in honey.

And why shouldn’t she have trapped him thus? That being all the power she had. Felix was a brute, the kind of man so domineering that he thinks he can plunder whatever he wants from the world. So Drusilla let him take what he wanted, without him ever realizing that the choice wasn’t truly his. Felix means ‘lucky’, but in spite of this, the prefect believed he carved his own path through life. He believed he made his own luck, as lucky people invariably do.

Drusilla snared Felix so utterly that in his entrapment he supposed himself to be the hunter. He sent a magician to the court to woo Drusilla secretly on his behalf, and she allowed them both to dream that her seduction was accomplished by their cunning. How is it that men can believe they rule the world when they would risk and lose it all for the chance to screw a beautiful girl? They don’t even rule their own selves. So Drusilla said farewell to her chubby, stumpy king and plucked herself a freedman Roman prefect. She eloped, like she was Helen of Troy, careless as to whether she would leave war in her wake.